Dead Girl in the Metaforest

Come with me, into the forest.

Chances are, you haven't been in for a while, have you? Don’t try and tell me that National Trust Halloween trail counts, or that playground picnic where you never lost sight of the ice-cream van, or when you lost a ball in a bit of scrubland round the back of the estate - full of dangerous pricks for sure, but not the kind you’ll need to worry about out here.

This is the real stuff. Get your boots on - we've got a job to do.

Bet you never knew England has rainforests, did you? Hardly anyone does. It keeps itself secret. Puts out a lot of stories about fairytale forests, wild woods, ghosts in the glades. If everyone went traipsing about on the sphagnum moss they'd obliterate the microhabitats, and you don’t want to drag that out on your soles. But today, needs must.

Hurry up, will you? There's a girl missing.

Gosh, yes, a child missing in the woods. Only ever means anything sinister, these days. Fairytales have long been uprooted, moved into cities. Language is uprooted, moved into cities. We’re five generations deep into the industrial revolution. Did you know, our use of nature vocabulary has declined by sixty per cent since it began? That's how you end up in this situation! Little girl, somewhere out here.

We need to be quick. Get ahead of the official search. I don’t want this to be some kind of procedural - stand ten metres apart, comb the ground, mark any evidence, stop at nightfall. Terribly formulaic. I know every echo of this place. I could find you by the snap of the twig under your foot. No point me getting caught up in law enforcement bureaucracy. Let the trainer brigade have the pleasure of examining under a thousand identical leaves.

Do remember to breathe deeply, even as the air thickens with damp. This is what’s technically called a temperate rainforest. Naturally us English can’t have anything without qualifying with a bit of underwhelm. Give us a rainforest, but make it temperate.

Would you recognise a hawthorn shrub? Probably not, even though you've heard it a thousand times. Leave the berries. They’re not poisonous, just taste like mulch. Those, though - recognise them? Bilberries. Tiny, purple inkbombs. Kind of thing your grandma would get in trouble for pinching, coming home covered in stains like bruises. And look here, some of these have been picked. That’s not the birds. Keep your eye out for a trail.

You’ll notice the sun thinning out the further we go, a carpet of moss dappled with intermittent rays - the whole forest absorbs, immerses itself, holds still. I’m trying to make it sound ancient, like there's some memory here. A place like this might even care for a child; show us impressions of her vulnerable footprints. Are you keeping your eyes open for her, or have you already drifted upwards, following the treecrawler scaling that bark? Don’t lose yourself. We’ve got a purpose here, remember.

By rights we should stumble on a clue about now. What would you expect? If she came bearing gifts, maybe one’s been dropped just off the path, a breadcrumb for us to follow, abandoned, ambiguous. Clothing could serve just as well - torn, stained, now it’s becoming sinister. Maybe nothing more than a set of tracks in the bracken, if you know how to read them. A neat skill for a guide to have. Or perhaps - look closer - the purple smear of bilberries, crushed, discarded, hopeful, intentional. In any case, the thread runs on. So do we.

Liverwort mats are underfoot now, moving off the path and further into the depths of the forest. See that fallen tree up ahead? Possible a child could have climbed across, an adventurous one, those whorls could be neat footholds. Perhaps it looked like a good hiding place, just over the trunk or under the root-plates of the sessile oaks just beyond.

Let me help you on up. That thing clinging to the trunk like a withered orange glove? A fungus. This whole trunk is teeming with life. Stag beetle larvae gnaw away for seven years before they ever see the daylight. You’d find glow-worm larvae too, hunting snails at night and illuminating it from within.

Maybe she was drawn to that. Bringing her deeper, into the woods, where we go too.

I suppose it matters what I call this place, doesn't it? Forest, woods, rainforest, woodland. People don’t take this place on its own terms, do they? Whatever it is, couldn’t be a worse time for us to distance ourselves from these places. Treat it like scenery, a profile pic backdrop.

Stop. Did you hear that? Was it a cry, a greeting? I couldn’t quite make it out over the rustling leaves. Oh all right, and the sound of me going on and on - hold my hands up to that. We’ll go that way.

You’ll love this part. They used to say the druids held rituals here. We’re in deep now. These gnarled oaks have burst through the boulders, hundreds of years old but stunted like juveniles. Imagine this place in the sixteenth century, mist winding like smoke between the stones and roots. You don’t need me to conjure the ghosts.

If I know people, this is where she’ll be. It’s the mystical heart of the forest, the desktop-wallpaper, visitor-centre poster type of place.

Tread carefully here, it’s a clitter slope. The whole place is a granite bedrock, broken down over the years to a tumble-down hill of boulders cloaked in velveteen. Does me warning you make a difference? Probably not. Maybe it only makes you feel more conscious of how easy it is to slip.

Do you see that? This is the part where you’d expect to see her, isn't it? This is why we’re here - why humans are always there, stumbling around in nature, seeing eyes in bark and fingers on branches. Condemning it to an eternity of symbolism, constantly projecting, unable to meaningfully confront the reality of it: every millimetre, alive.

Instead, we have to transplant this living thing into it. We understand a missing child.

So what is that thing over there? Focus in. A pale hand, or a fungus playing tricks with us? Shall we edge closer? We all expect a body, I suppose, but perhaps it is a child asleep, tucked up in the ancient ferns. Maybe it’s not a child at all, but a fox, about to skitter, or perhaps to stop and look at us with eyes that are too bold. It’s possible you or I have some other reason to be here, disguised by time or deceit or magic. Perhaps I have told you a tale.

I expect you’re itching to do something now. I will fail to satisfy your human need for resolution. But the forest tends to its own endings; no need for gardener’s secateurs in these wilds.

I must leave you here.

I do hope you remembered to put your boots on, as I suggested. They'll help you choose your steps, and on whose terms, I’m sure you will discover.

Do watch your step.