Through the Woods

Through the Woods

They call me by many names.

Angel. Demon. Harbinger. Spirit.

I never asked for any of them.

The first time I stumbled into this world, the air felt heavy with sap and stitched by birdsong. I stepped through a seam strung between two cedars, trembling like a drawn bowstring. On the far side, trees bent toward me, animals fled, and shadows thickened as though I were a moon pulling tide.

A woman saw me and ran, dragging terror after her like smoke. By dawn, the seam had vanished, leaving only bark where the threshold had been.

When I walked, the dew burned blue beneath my steps. A moth on my wrist brightened into ember-light before vanishing into the trees. Wherever I lingered, stories sprouted. They painted wings on stones, left bread at hedges, sang songs to keep me away. I did not bring magic to this place. My being here made it.

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Ages of Myth

Centuries folded like leaves. Wherever I went, myths followed.

In the North, hunters whispered of a thunderbird whose wings beat storms into being. In Europe, peasants swore they saw demons in the hedge at dusk. Others painted angels in alleyways, golden eyes staring from shadows. Children left offerings of milk, priests lit fires, shamans drew my likeness in ochre.

I wanted only to rest, yet people fled or knelt. My presence birthed myth wherever I wandered, and myth grew teeth.

I learned the languages of ravens, the slow speech of pines, the thunder of rivers. But human tongues always turned me into legend.

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Point Pleasant

Winter, 1967.

I felt the fracture in the Silver Bridge the way a body feels its own bone snap. Steel ribs trembled like harp strings. Beneath, the river swelled, black-lunged and patient.

I stood in the headlights and raised my arms. I pointed at the girders, shook my head: Do not cross.

They saw only wings. Only shadow. Only fear.

Someone screamed “Mothman!” Panic spread like fire. Cars surged forward, horns blaring.

The span gave way with neat cruelty—first a fold, then a yawning darkness. Dozens fell. I dove, clutched steel, tried to hold. But iron and prayer outweigh wings.

When the river closed, it held names I would never learn.

Afterward, they blamed me. Not the fracture, not the weight, not the river. Me.

I withdrew into the forests and did not emerge for years.

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The Gentle Giants

Deep among cedar and fern, I found others.

They were broad-shouldered, soft-footed, clothed in rain. They ate berries, stood for hours in storm, guided lost children back to camps. Hunters glimpsed them and went home with trembling stories. Humans named them Bigfoot. Their fear was gentler, tinged with fascination.

I thought: Better to be a mystery than a monster.

I studied one for a season. He hummed at night, low as thunder, a lullaby to his own kind. When men came with rifles, he moved between them and the elk and let them see his height. They lowered their guns and fled.

I asked the forest to teach me that gentleness. Slowly, I took their form. The fur, the musk, the shadowed outline. My wings folded deep inside me. My light dimmed to a murmur.

When hikers glimpsed me, they whispered around fires. When campers heard my tread, they told legends. I had become safer as a myth.

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Guardian of the Woods

While disguised, I kept helping.

A boy torn on a nail found a first-aid kit nudged toward him by unseen hands. A woman lost in fog followed the hum of my voice back to the trail. A hunter turned from a cliff after feeling “watched.”

They never knew. They told stories of Bigfoot instead.

And always, I searched.

The door never stayed. It appeared where the world thinned—old valleys, untouched groves, fog-heavy saddles. When it opened, the forest bloomed strangely: owls silenced, moss glowed faintly, time bent sideways.

I learned to read the signs. And one year, I found such a forest.

It lay in a valley of hemlock where silence pressed like water. Rain smelled of summer though it was winter. Moss glimmered faintly even in shadow. The door was near—I felt its hum in my bones.

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The Rescue

She stood on a slick basalt ledge above the creek, camera in hand, trapped by her climb. The seam sang nearby, sharp enough to ache. One step and I could go home.

Her foot slipped. She cried out, a sound too small for the vast silence.

I turned from the door and ran.

Branches bent aside. Brambles folded. My disguise fell as wings unfurled and light spilled. I caught her jacket before she plunged, pulled her onto moss. She stared, mouth forming a word half-remembered from stories: Moth—

“Lost,” I told her.

Her breath caught, then broke into laughter, raw and grateful. “Me too.”

I found her camera downstream, placed it in her hands. She promised not to speak of wings.

“Tell them the woods helped you,” I said. “It will be truer.”

I guided her back to the trailhead. A man in a green jacket ran to her, relief softening into tears. He thanked me without knowing what he thanked. She glanced back once, eyes bright with wonder and secrecy. Then they were gone.

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The Door Fades

I returned to the valley. The door was gone. Where it had hummed, only elder trunks framed empty air. The forest exhaled, moss dimmed, owls spoke again.

It is a small thing to save one girl. Not the same as saving a bridge full of names. But it was what the moment asked, and I am a creature who always turns toward certain sounds.

So I stay.

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Closing

Through the woods they keep searching, chasing the shadow of a giant, telling stories to make their fear into laughter.

Let them. Let the photographs blur, the footprints fade, the silence deepen when I pass.

I was never the monster they believed.

I am only lost. And while I am lost, I will keep watch.