Read Part Two…

Dreams came quickly, probably something in the seasoning. The dreams were vivid. The dreams were Leaf.

She taught him knots. She had showed him parts of the island he would have never dreamt existed. Together they had discovered the Tree. She had become his shelter. She was everything the others wished they could be to Fin. She was like him.

The others may have taught Fin to survive. But she showed him life.

She was life.

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His slumbering mind catapulted him into a cacophony of experience, weaving together the panicked story that only dreams and nightmares can. Howl’s filled the cold and empty air. The hungry demands for bloody prey flew through the sky like loosed arrows. Fin’s heart was beating so fast it hurt. The island sprawled out around him, leaving him exposed, leaving him vulnerable.  The openness was suffocating. Claustrophobic screams roared through him with each wolfish proclamation. The darkness was a blanket; the howls were the monsters under his bed … beasts, waiting for him to fall asleep. The more he struggled the tighter the blankets became. The louder the feral screams grew.

He had to get away from the beach. Too open. He plunged into the forest, each tree casting its long shadow like a curse on his intrusion. Angry branches whipped at him, biting his skin and roots grabbed for his feet. His dilated eyes searched for starlight, but there was none. The trees began to close in, the feeling of suffocation clamped down harder against his throat’s apple. He fell.

Dirt slammed against his chest like a hammer to an anvil. His jaw clacked against itself and sent his vision running in two directions. He could have sworn those topaz glints of hungry eyes were right there. Right through those trees. He wondered if dogs climbed and the idea consumed him. His arms flailed for purchase on the nearest trunk. His heart dropped, weighed down like it had turned to stone. An anchor tied around his hope – drowning him in that big, empty sea. He found himself in a pocket of those horrible totems. Hollow, wanton faces spitting their gooey sap at him as he found the will to climb off the muddy forest floor.

Then he was falling.

Falling.

For a long time.

The world flipped upside down. The howls faded into nothing and then singing tree frogs filled the silence. Fin was back on his beach, sitting under a snow-white sun. And everything was right.

Follow me, said Leaf

Just a second.

Her words reached out to him. A lighthouse cutting through the fogbank. Her words made him float. Her words carried him to his feet. He found himself walking after her.

There was a vague awareness that the island’s predators were still around. Wolves and who knows what else were still present, right around the corner. Maybe behind that very bush. But no, not here, Fin decided that wasn’t the case. With her he wasn’t alone anymore. It wasn’t much, but a pack was a pack, right? His dreams shifted into a collage of memories. Each section returning to his mind’s eye in detail so vivid his deep, slumbering mind tried to sleep forever.

When she saw his wounds she scolded him for being careless. She rubbed ointments on his arms and back, where the trees had whipped his skin clean off. She made a compress for the ache in his head, heating a binding of seaweed over a makeshift pan on Fin’s campfire, and sprinkled it with herbs from the forest, and tidal plants from the ocean. It seeped the pain out like a greedy cup of water does to a teabag. She taught him how to make them himself, too. Just in case. There’s no need, he would insist, and he’d smile a laid back smile only she ever got to see, I’ve got you here.

And she would smile back, reassuringly, with sad green eyes that only smiled because Fin wanted them to.

Time bumped and tripped into itself, pretty clumsy, for the measurement of everything, it seemed.  The past blended together into a sweet, dangerous smoothie and he gulped it down. Dreams could never get the re-telling of things quite right, but the feeling was there. That part at least, was never wrong, and it begged the question, did the rest even matter?

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He woke up just the same. The house – if it could, in fact be referred to as a “house” – still nagged him about the hole in its roof. He pushed the thought aside. The sun poured down on him, he’d fallen asleep right outside the camp fire, warm sand pushing up against his arms and legs. The familiar taste of river fish was still in his mouth. Arms stretched, he managed to stand up with a yawn, and wandered over to his basin of mint paste. The recipe was courtesy of Leaf. Granted, he’d needed to get creative with some of these remedies since those sweet and perfect days had past, but he made due. He washed the paste out of his mouth and spat, discarding the fuzzy reed he used as a brush. His face scrunched up: it was a bitter batch.

A sheen of sweat was already coating his skin. The air was humid today, thick. A long list of tasks began to assemble themselves in his head, that he was sure, really, really needed doing, but eh, a truly profound syllable intervened. Instead, he started the day with a walk. Clearing his head from last night’s sleepy adventure was too appealing. The walk had the opposite effect. He tried to convince himself he was surprised, and failed. With every step he took on the sandy shore, his thoughts departed back to the place he left off last night.

It started with the feeling of being watched. A pair of unwanted eyes violating his space, sending his breath into an anxious staccato. The sense that these eyes had become too interested was growing. They were getting closer. They radiated hunger. His chest started to compress like he’d fallen asleep on his pillow planted face down. There was no getting away from it. A logical, underdeveloped part of his mind tried to explain that no one was watching, and he just needed to calm down. A logical, underdeveloped part of his mind was quickly silenced by its strong-armed, overdeveloped counterpart: Feeling.

Alone on this beach or not, his old friend Helplessness had come knocking again. He tried to run into his head, practically throwing himself into the escape. And with eyes wide open and panicked heart beats, the doors slammed shut in his face. His immediate surroundings faded out of focus, and was replaced by the exaggerated colors of fear. Every time he came here it was different. Not very different. But different, just the same. His vision shifted between the two worlds of past and present, and he scratched nervously at his sides. An invisible rash he couldn’t see was overwhelmingly itchy and made his stomach flip over.

Further down the shoreline he saw one of the others. His thoughts darkened at the sight, another blundering fool here to steal his serenity. An impulse overtook him, a rope spotted just in time, flung down to provide a happier alternative to life in the lion’s’ den; he turned his heel and dug his foot down into the sand, bolting towards the forest. He tripped. His arm screamed at him when the seashell it sliced itself open on left its mark. Ignoring the pain with a determination that only came from years of this sort of “running”, he picked himself up and dove into the cover of trees. The other was running to help him, but a certain gesture put a stop to that.

Birds were singing above him, perfectly contented to ignore his plight. The trees had faces today, all of them were watching. Always out at the best of times. Their strange whispers tickled at his ears in that unspeakable language they had. The gears inside his head were turning furiously, searching for some way out. It hit him. The Tree. All of his thoughts positioned themselves into the act of tasting its fruit. His feet trampling down the forest floor were lost in the fantasy, deftly stepping over roots, his hands brushing wooden limbs out of his path. His concentration was akin to the sort of focus that is only available only to the deeply disturbed or dangerously addicted.

It seemed his body knew where he was going before he did. The center of the island, or what he assumed was the center, at any rate, since what he found there was so significant, called him. It was the only part of the island he’d ever attempted to find twice, and succeeded at. Once with her, once alone, now again. The relief of the strong fantasy hit his nerves like a sedative. Sinking his teeth into the golden center of that fruit lifted him above the canopy of leaves, above the sky, above stars. Above Leaf. But he’d have to peel the fruit first, that much he’d learned the hard way. His head started to ache as he smiled to himself. The first time his teeth had crashed into the rocky exterior of what looked like soft skin he’d thought he’d never chew again, Leaf had laughed and laughed.

For all the things he hated about this weird, foreign island, where he was no more than a stranger in an involuntary home, this made up for it. At least when he remembered it. His heavy chest reminded him that the center of the island wasn’t exactly close. The tightness of panic had started to relax its grip as his fast paced burn sat comfortably in its place. An invisible vice was spinning away, loosening its grip. His lungs were grateful for the breathing room.

He thought of the giant Tree where the fruit grew. The rough bark under his hand was spiny, each woody chunk of oak pushing into the palm of his hand. It was like the tree had more life than he did, and his attraction to it was forgettable. The driving power of his first encounter with it propelled him to the island’s epicenter once again.

Sweat was pouring out of him now. He didn’t really mind, it felt good to be moving. He felt good. He broke into a brisk walk. The curvature of the ground bended up, which he was almost certain was not the case last time. A dry cough burst out of his lips, his throat was parched, but that was good too. There was clean water surrounding the tree, he chided himself only slightly for not bringing his water skin.

Each foot up the elevating path was like summiting a compressed mountain. The muscles in his thighs burned and his calves protested that they were liable to become jelly. He was almost certain it wasn’t this steep last time. The thought of the oasis poked through his discomfort like a needle. He fled toward the notion.

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