Every morning, the sun (presumably) rises. Bellory, who is twenty-five years old and has dark, wavy hair, wakes up. She dresses in a loose white shirt and a pair of beige pants. She steps out of her caravan, where she lives alone. And she says, “Good morning.”
The trees have, by that time, just opened their leaves and their eyes. When Bellory speaks, the trees look at her. They would look at her whether she spoke or not, but Bellory always speaks to them.
“Did you sleep well?” She walks up to each tree around her caravan in turn and asks the same question. She does not touch them. Of course she doesn’t. My people know better than to touch the trees after what happened to Lebba and to me. She asks them, “Is it nice and sunny today?” and “Can you see far into the distance with the eyes on your branches?”
I would like to know the answers, too. If only they could answer her.
*
Bellory is alone now, but she has not always lived alone. Her father was a warrior, and he died long before we arrived here. Her mother, however, was still at the time of our abrupt relocation. She was a seamstress for the whole tribe. But she died last year. And since then, Bellory has spent her days speaking to the trees.
I wish she would make some friends. If she would make some friends, or even just one, she would have someone to talk to, a real person. But she never goes to see anyone, only stays in the area around her caravan, and no one ever comes to see her.
*
I suppose, since the eyes look at her, she feels like they are listening. Well, perhaps they are (if they are, it is for words of treason only), but Bellory, Bellory, that doesn’t make them human. Won’t you find a real friend?
Useless words. She can’t hear me, and she doesn’t even notice that my ghost has the attention of some of the trees. No one ever does notice. It’s a lonely un-life, recording the fate of a cursed tribe.
*
Bellory is twenty-seven now. She has spent the past years talking only to the trees, and today she has said something new to them.
“I had something delicious for lunch yesterday.” One of the tree’s eyes is right at Bellory’s own eye level, and it is this eye that Bellory gazes into as she speaks. “It was meat—venison. Do you remember meat? Roasted meat, so rich and flavorful, like smoke in your mouth from a fire. Do you remember fire? Dancing with light and heat…”
She rambles on, and I am concerned. Of course Bellory did not eat meat yesterday; there is no meat here, nothing but the moss. I worry that she has lost her mind. Or rather, her sanity— because I suppose we have all lost our minds, at least what we once defined as our minds, our personalities, our own thoughts untouched by the control of Hakiara, praise her kindness and mercy. In any case, I didn’t know that it was possible to go insane here, though I suppose any number of factors could cause such a thing. As I said, we’ve already lost our minds, haven’t we?
*
There is someone watching Bellory.
I just noticed. I don’t know how long he’s been there, but I just noticed that some of the nearby trees are looking in his direction rather than at Bellory or at me. He is standing behind one of the trees and looking straight past it at Bellory.
I remember him—his name is Keless. He was a warrior before the relocation, and now, of course, he is nothing, just as the rest of us are. His red hair is wild and curly, nearly obscuring his eyes. But his hair can’t hide the intensity in his gaze. He’s staring at Bellory as if her face is some form of nourishment—the last one he has.
*
I follow him home in the evening. He lives with his mother, previously a dancer, and his father, previously a fighter. I remember him now. I think, even back when we still lived in Hakiarad, I may have spoken to him once or twice, during our fighting training. It’s hard for me to remember. I wasn’t good with people back then, and he’s seven years older than I am, anyway. In the forest, I know I talked to him a few times, but I can’t remember what we said.
His parents ask him where he was all day, and he lies. He tells them he had been talking with his friends. In reality, though, he spent the entire day staring at Bellory. I think he blushed when he lied, and I think his parents probably figured him out. They didn’t press him, though.
*
Keless is back again today, staring at Bellory.
It’s hard for me to interpret his expression, and I find myself wishing that I could read his mind. I suspect—and it’s only a suspicion, but I really think it may be right—that he’s in love. In any case, I’m fairly certain that he is as worried about Bellory as I am, or more so.
Now, he does something I wasn’t expecting—he steps out from behind the tree toward Bellory. He calls her name.
She breaks her gaze away from the nearest tree, her eyes nonplussed. Suddenly, she is silent, as if she hasn’t spoken in years and doesn’t intend to break her silence now.
“Bellory,” Keless says again. He steps closer to her. She watches him approach without moving, only gazing at him, as if she has become one of the trees she has conversed with all these years.
“Bellory, come with me.” Keless’s hands are shaking as he holds them out imploringly, silently begging her to take them or to leap into his arms. “Are you lonely here? You’ll be less lonely if you’re with others rather than here by yourself.”
Keless has gotten too close, and finally Bellory pulls away. “Mother—”
Keless’s face is pained. “Bellory, your mother...”
“My mother.” Bellory points to the closest tree, her eyes clouded, deliberately unfocused. “I can’t leave her.”
“Bellorly, your mother is…” I can tell, just by his face, that Keless will not let the word “dead” pass his lips fir fear of distressing Bellory further. And besides, Bellory whispers,
“I know she is.”
She stands with her feet spread shoulder-width and her shoulders held back, the posture of one who is confident, but it is a sham. The prattling Bellory has fallen away, leaving a broken, lonely, unguarded woman.
“Keless.” She speaks his name softly. He blushes to discover that she knows it, and Bellory continues, “I can pretend here. Please leave me.”
Keless hesitates, pained uncertainty in his face. For a moment, he turns away; then he faces Bellory again. “No,” he says firmly. He steps forward quickly and catches Bellory’s arms in his hands, not letting her escape, which, by her expression, is what she wants to do. “I’m not going to leave you, Bellory. If you need to talk to someone, you can talk to me. If you want someone to just be nearby, I can do that. Will you let me do that?”
He has brought his face close to hers, and she clenches her eyes shut as she pulls back and turns her head away. “But I... I say ridiculous things,” she confesses. “I don’t think you want to listen to the things I say.”
“I would like nothing more than to listen to everything you say,” Keless answers, very softly and very seriously. He releases Bellory’s arms and offers an embrace, which Bellory accepts after a hesitant second, burying herself in Keless’s chest.
Watching from some distance away, spirit that I am, I am pleased by the scene, and pleasantly relieved. So she knew all along that she was speaking nonsense.
*
The temperatue here, as with so many other features of this cursed forest, can best be described by what it is not. It is not cold here. It is not hot. Nor is it cool, nor warm, nor any other temperature that one could define. The air lacks this innate quality, just as it lacks taste and scent, so that every breath we take reminds us that the forest we live in is no ordinary one.
In this forest without temperature, sometimes people warm us from the hearts outward. These people stand out because of they contrast with the nothingness around us.
That's why it's so easy for us to know when we're in love.
I say this now because I feel that I should finish the story of Bellory and Keless, though it has been years since I last wrote of them. They married each other within a month of that conversation. It seems fast, but in overwhelming darkness, even the tiniest pinpoint of light is obvious. We know when we are in love--and such was the case with Bellory and Keless.
Keless coaxed Bellory into interacting with others again, convincing her that she did not need to stay in her caravan alone. She began to regain the ability to interact with others, and she became a functioning member of the tribe again, as long as Keless was willing to stand by her. He always was.
The story of Bellory and Keless ended today. Today, at the age of forty-seven, Bellory died.
It was an abrupt but peaceful death, the kind that I sometimes think are simply caused by the forest itself. She died by Keless's side; he was holding her hand. When he awoke and found that she had gone to oblivion during the night, he shook her, twice, in sad disbelief, and then in sadder belief, he prayed for Ky to accept her soul into oblivion and went to find others to help him with burial rites. As he left, he turned his face towards a tree and opened his mouth, as if—
But he shook his head. Talking to the trees had been Bellory's way to survive, but it would not be a fitting tribute to her, and he—somehow—would survive without such desperate self-delusion. He had been her strength; if he proved to be weak now, everything he had done for her would be a lie.
I am glad that Bellory died before Keless did. She was able to spend her last moments with the one she loved, and she didn't have to be alone again.
