Blackbirds

The woodland boy looked down at the stranger, whose outstretched arms were turning a map this way and that. A deer in a tree would have looked less out of place.

“The blackbirds say you’ve gotten lost.”

He didn’t jump. Not one bit. His shoulders didn’t even hike. All he did was lower the map slightly, and cock his head to the side.

“It’s rude to follow people like that, you know,” came the reply. “And no, I’m not!”

The boy was around his age—almost fifteen springs old, or thereabouts. He swivelled around, and let the map disappear into the fabric of his cloak. There was a bead of sweat trickling down the dark brown skin of his forehead as his eyes cast about the clearing’s edge for a moment, before they found him perched on a boulder at shoulder’s height.

“And besides—blackbirds can’t talk.”

The woodland boy wanted to say something rude, like “If you’re not lost, then go on and leave.” or “Blackbirds can talk, actually, and they say you’re awful.”, or even “Bugger off!” but the streams scolded him when he spoke like that. And anyway, winter was melting into spring, and that always put him in a good mood. It was nice to see the hedgehogs again and bluebells were his favourite—they would be flowering in the coming weeks.

Actually… now that he looked, there was a ring of them around this stranger. Odd, that. Bluebells didn’t normally grow like that, especially this early in spring. He’d passed through this clearing this morning, as the closing frost of winter was thawing at last, and running into the soil in rivulets. No flowers.

“Yes, they can,” the woodland boy sniffed, and tried not to stare at the circle of bluebells. “They told me that you’re lost.”

A blank stare in response. And then: “Who are you?”

This struck the woodland boy as a rather personal question. How was he to respond to that, anyhow? Who are you? He was who he was. The child of the woods.

“Who are you?”

“I asked first,” he said with a scowl, but answered nonetheless. “I’m Henry.”

“You are your name?”

Henry ignored this. “What’s your name?”

“I don’t have a name.”

When Henry planted his hands on his hips, the long, thick fabric of his cape went swish, and the big, poofy sleeves of his shamrock shirt were revealed. The woodland boy glanced down, and saw that Henry was wearing boots, rather than going barefoot like a sensible person. And the more he looked, the more impractical this boy’s attire was. His cloak would snag and get sullied—though it was black, so the dirt wouldn’t be visible, at least. But those huge sleeves were ridiculous. They’d tear, and fast. The woodland boy would have said something if Henry hadn’t insulted the blackbirds.

“Everyone has a name,” he retorted, and levelled him with a stare. His eyes were so dark they appeared to be black. They burned like coals.

“Not me. Don’t need one.”

“Right.” Henry pulled out his map and began to turn around. “I’ll be on my way, then. Goodbye.”

“And what way is that?”

“Home.”

The woodland boy hummed. A home that was not trees and creatures, rivers and bluebells? How odd.

“You’re not going to find it,” he said, and hopped nimbly down from the boulder to the edge of the clearing. “The woods move with the seasons, and winter just turned over into spring. Also, your map is complete nonsense.”

He laughed, or tried to. It burst out of him like a half-cough, too sharp and forced and awkward to be considered a true laugh. And his expression, too, was pained. The smile was easy, but his eyes gave him away. Henry believed him. The truth of it was solid, like the boulder behind his back and the trees that edged this clearing.

“Don’t be stupid,” he said, smile stretching wider as the map folded beneath his iron grip. “Woods don’t move.”

“This one does.” was the woodland boy’s response, with all the tact and grace of a fawn’s first steps.

“Well, it’ll have to stop, then,” said Henry, starting to march away. “I have to get home.”

The woodland boy glanced down at the spot where he’d stood. A yellow carnation swayed in the centre of the ring.

***

“Does this place ever end?” Henry asked, cross-legged and leant against a tree trunk.

The woodland boy glanced down at him from the branch he lounged on, before returning his attention to the deadwood he was carving. Henry’s coily hair was hard to capture in wood.

“Of course it does,” he mumbled. He didn’t really like thinking about the edge, never mind talking about it, but the owls would sometimes tell him stories of towns and things. Not that those were of much interest.

“Where is it?” he said miserably. “I walk in one direction, but it just goes on and on, and then I fall asleep. A fox tried to eat me a few days ago.”

“Ah, Juniper’s curious, is all.”

“Juniper?”

“Aye. She’s just interested.”

“No, that’s not—I mean. The fox has a name and you don’t?”

His work was really starting to take shape now. Henry’s hair was awfully big, and his cape was tattered at the edges, which was a bit difficult to get the wood to agree with. Edges were horrible like that.

“She said her name’s Juniper. It would be rude to just call her a fox.”

Henry said nothing.

Spring was really blooming now. There were more flowers than usual, he silently noted as his blade flashed in the noon sun. It was a simple thing, dark grey with a brown leather hilt. He’d owned it for so long that he could barely remember the man who gifted it to him. The burly hunter was only passing through, said something about the need to defend himself against the creatures of the woods.

The woodland boy stole a peek at Henry down below, and narrowed his eyes at the cluster of forget-me-nots that had blossomed by his feet. Henry was odd. He couldn’t remember meeting anyone odder, though he’d have to admit that the pool of people he’d met was rather small. Be that as it may, he doubted people sprouting flowers wherever they went was particularly normal. But what did he know, really? It wasn’t like he’d ever left the woodland. Well, whatever. He’d be happy to never know if Henry was actually perfectly normal, if it meant he’d stay in the woodland forever.

For a while, the air was filled with distant birdsong, and the quiet shuck, shuck, shuck of wood being whittled, and fluttering to the soft grass in curled clumps. He would occasionally glance down and see more forget-me-nots spattering the field, wondering how Henry could be so engrossed in his own melancholy that he didn’t notice the flowers appearing all around him.

He resolved himself not to say anything on the matter. What good would that do? He’d just scare Henry, and then he’d only have the squirrels and such to speak to. As much as he enjoyed their company, he could only discuss hazelnuts for so long at a time. He wasn’t sure that Henry even knew what hazelnuts were.

So, no. He would not speak on it. Even if there was a daffodil now…

No! He didn’t need to know how he was doing that. He didn’t!

Oh, but there was a bluebell now, too.

He pursed his lips, and slowly drew his leg, which had been dangling in open air, onto the branch to join his other one. This time he did not look below.

Don’t ask, he thought as he opened his stupid mouth.

“How’re you doing that?”

He held his breath.

The pause before he heard Henry’s boyish voice was agonizing. The woodland boy kept his gaze trained on the tears he was trying to work into his statuette’s cape. Shuck, shuck, shuck. The wood cascaded to the soft grass in curled shavings.

“Doing what?” Henry asked at last. It carried the cadence of something strange.

He bit his tongue. Hm. Words were rolling around in his mouth, but he couldn’t pick them out and order them neatly so that whatever came out wasn’t garbled nonsense. A warm breeze swept over them as his knife continued to chip at the wood. Absently, his dark eyes wandered up to the branch above him. Maybe he could climb up the tree to avoid this conver—

“Agh,” he hissed, as the blade nicked his finger. He watched a bead of blood bloom from the side of his thumb, bright red and stark against his tawny brown skin. Well.

“Are you alright?”

“Yes,” the woodland boy said, much too quick, as colour filled his cheeks. He huffed, stuffing the statuette into his worn trouser pocket. “I’m fine.”

Then he hoisted himself to his feet and dropped down to the grass beside him. Henry jolted, falling sideways in a mess of limbs (and he did seem to be mostly limb) as a strangled “Gah!” sound accompanied his tumble. His cape was all tangled up in his legs and arms now, as its various holes got caught on his elbows and knees. He watched him struggle to right himself, before finally jerking up and casting the woodland boy a vicious glare.

“Do not—” he sniped, and thrust his finger up at him, “—do that again.”

He fought a laugh and nodded with all the seriousness he could muster.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

‘Sir’ was something the hunter said, if he was remembering that right.

***

“You know,” Henry said some time later, as the pair of them walked side by side, “I’m starting to think that this place really does move.”

The cape was gone now.

“’Course it does,” the woodland boy replied. “We just walked in a circle, and the lake that was here is gone.”

Henry couldn’t find it in himself to make a fuss about this.

“How’s your thumb?” he asked, as cowslips burst from the ground around his steps.

The woodland boy flexed his hand, apprehensively eyeing the material Henry had carefully wrapped around the spot of blood on his thumb. It didn’t hurt anymore, not that it had all that much to begin with. He got scrapes like that all the time, but Henry made a big stink about the bright line of red that had tracked a path across the curve of his hand, and pulled some—bandage? Yes, that was the name… some bandage out of his pack. He personally didn’t see the point of such a thing. The bandage and the pack built from cowhide. But people from outside the woodland were an odd sort.

He stared at the yellow cowslips that had grown in Henry’s presence and wondered if he actually was from outside the woodland.

Maybe he’d just been wandering, far away from home.

“S’alright,” he muttered.

Henry grinned, showing off that gap in his top row of teeth. As he did, he swore that the grass was a bit greener. Just for a moment.

***

Henry didn’t really talk about his ‘home’ anyway, but he hadn’t even mentioned going there in a mighty long time. He’d finally lost the boots, and instead let his feet soak up the dirt and all the life that churned and burst inside it. He’d been angry, at first, when he watched a patch of golden crocuses sprout before him, and the woodland boy was forced to admit that he’d known about that since the first time they met.

But Henry wasn’t really one for grudges, and his strop only lasted a few days. Now, it was almost summer.

He liked making daffodils the most. When they’d sit by a stream, watching it froth and bubble along with their feet dipped into its freezing embrace and elbows sinking into the muddy earth, he’d grow them languidly. His sun darkened finger would trail across the dirt and a few daffodils would bloom, all gentle-like, and keep them in half-company.

Sometimes summer showers could be really terrible, depending on where the woods moved that year, and the roots might rot. So, he enjoyed the daffodils and bluebells and all else that Henry grew whenever he could.

***

“Hey woodland boy, check it out!” Henry said with a bright grin. Now they were deep in winter. “There was a town nearby, so I went out to get these furs for us.”

He hefted up big, heavy furs that they could drape over themselves, to stay warm during the winter. But the cold didn’t affect the woodland boy at all, and he felt weirdly offended, or something, that Henry had just up and left. Offended wasn’t the right word, really… Something stung. Sort of. He didn’t know!

“Oh,” he said dumbly, and stared at the huge grey and brown furs. Had they been bears? Did Henry really think he could wear an animal like that?

“Ah, no,” Henry said in a rush, and attempted to heave them over his shoulder. This wasn’t very successful. “It’s just fur. They sheared it.”

“From what?”

Henry shrugged.

“Feel ‘em, though!”

The woodland boy reached out nervously, and let his fingers brush the furs. Oh. It was soft, very soft, like tangling your hand in the way that sheep looked. He’d only seen sheep once or twice in the past few years, but he bet they felt like this. His hand dug in further, and he couldn’t believe he had gone fifteen—almost sixteen—springs without ever feeling this once.

“The town was so cool. They were having this winter festival, with this game where you’re blindfolded and act like a lumbering bear, and all the other…” And Henry went rambling on.

In all honesty, he didn’t really care for Henry’s stories about his worldly travels (they didn’t bore him, really, but why ponder about things outside the woods?), or the little trinkets he’d had in his pack when he first stumbled into the woodland. And that was all so long ago, now. But this fur business? This, he liked.

It almost made him forget that Henry had left the woodland for a short while.

***

The cycle of the year had run its course, and it was almost spring again.

He found Henry stood at a mouth of the woods, staring out at a winding path that disappeared into rolling hills, buried beneath a sky so blue it almost hurt. Henry was different, now. Less wiry, with lean muscle and calloused, fun hardened feet, and no dumb cloak. The shirt had stayed, of course it had, and those huge sleeves were miraculously mostly unripped. It helped, he supposed, to be able to bend branches to your will, and make paths through bushes with your thoughts alone.

“Hey, what’re you doing?” he asked carefully, like he did not know the answer, and was not afraid of the answer, and wanted him to answer.

“Thinkin’,” he mumbled, pulling his hand out of his weathered trouser pocket, and rubbing the back of his neck in that tell-tale ‘There is so much that I wish to see and do, that I haven’t seen, and haven’t done’ way.

“About?”

He couldn’t help his wince when Henry said “Home.”

And he understood all at once.

“You’re leaving.”

Henry buckled down to the dirt, and trailed a little row of daisies into the soil with the pad of his thumb. He didn’t say anything, watching the daisies sway in the breeze.

“I’ll come back. Next year, when the woods return.”

The woodland boy chewed on his lip, and for the first time in a long one, his eyes turned hot with unshed tears. He lowered down next to Henry, and gazing out at the lush green grass of the hills, and the finch that was sailing over them. It cut through the sky like freedom, the truest kind of freedom.

They both felt that the woodland was moving soon. Henry had to leave now, or he would have to wait another cycle of the seasons. So he stood, hands on hips, and reached down a scarred hand to help the woodland boy to his feet.

“No point in asking you to come with me, eh?”

He offered up a watery smile, but he didn’t say anything.

Henry ducked his head with a tight smile of his own, and knocked him in the shoulder. Then he strode out, out, out, away from the woodland and into the world. And just as the woods began to melt away, moving somewhere else, somewhere far away from Henry, he turned around.

“See you around, woodland boy,” he said, with his gap-toothed smile, and vanished.

The woodland boy glanced down, tear finally falling at the sight of the bluebell at his feet.

I’ll come back. Next year, when the woods return.

Blackbirds flitted overhead.

Henry’s lost, they trilled as they flew, Henry’s lost.