1

The Forest of Poison

Shiro liked his desk. It stood in the living room, facing the wall of windows and beyond, the fur dark trees of the forest. The desk was painted completely white with smoothly rounded corners he could press his hands against.

He had been sitting at that desk a week ago.

It was six or perhaps six thirty in the evening. His father had worn a rumpled gray suit and carried his traveling suitcase.

Shiro had watched the trees sway.

“It’ll only be for a little while.”

His father’s voice had been a reed. Shiro had wanted to be the wind.

“There isn’t enough work here. I’ll send you what I can.”

His father hadn’t taken the picture. The picture of him and Shiro’s mother on their wedding day. His father had grown grey feathers near his temples and frequently wore a tired expression rather than the quietly pleased one on the photo.

He didn’t know about the woman in the picture. She was his mother but he’d never known her. She’d died when he was just a year old.

He liked her smile. He knew he was supposed to miss her. The children at school told him so. But he’d never felt a hole that needed to be filled. How did you miss something you never had?

His father had patted him awkwardly on the back. He was never one for hugs or playtime. They were often like strangers dancing around a door opening. One leaving and one entering.

“Be good. Go to school,” his father had said.

He’d handed Shiro a stack of money and left.

Shiro had put the money on his father’s bed. As more came in he piled the money up in the form of a person. There were no eyes, of course. Nor was there a mouth or arms. But the shape looked right.

When he turned the fan on the paper crinkled like soft laughter.

2

The women came each week. They cooked and cleaned. Shiro thought it might be the same woman but he never looked at her. He pretended to be asleep. The movement around him felt wrong. Strange. Like a bird ramming against the bars of its cage.

He went to school at first. The other boys took to calling him poor little orphan boy. He pretended not to hear. Kept his face nestled in a fat book that all but blocked their view.

After a few weeks he stopped going. His father had not called or written save the money that came in white envelopes.

He pretended he was a ghost, quietly moving around the house in socked feet. He ate cereal for dinner and tried the sour drink his father kept under the bed.

Shiro only had to puke once to realize he didn’t like the taste.

He stayed up all night talking to his friends on the computer. They were from places so far away he knew they’d never meet. They did not taunt or berate him. Their voices were all the same. Letters on a screen.

The house felt stale. Boring. He watched the forest that he’d never gone into. Watched the sway of trees and the thick green leaves he could see from his desk. There were a few dolls swinging from some of the trees. Dolls with missing eyes and hair and limbs. Some said a girl killed herself in the forest years past and those dolls were offerings.

He went into that forest. Not for the dolls. Or ghost sightings. He went into the forest for butterflies. He’d read about collecting them on the internet. How to keep them and preserve them. He liked the idea of preservation. Keeping something just so forever.

He found the first butterfly easily. Its red wings were like blood against the green of the tree moss. Something about that teased his memory.

Red was a warning wasn’t it? Keep away predators, for I am fierce.

He cupped the small butterfly in his hands, letting it go with a yelp. It had bitten him. But surely it hadn’t? Butterflies did not have teeth nor claws. Yet there was a spot of blood on his palm.

He left and came back the next day with more success.

3

He pinned the butterflies as he caught them. The leopard spotted Argynnis paphia tsushimana. The dark Damora sagana liane with smears of white like smoke. The Inachis io geisha with blood red wings so easy to spot. The ghost, Aporia crataegi adherbal, with veins like dark ice. The Libythea celtis, which looked nothing like the goblin it was named for. They stood guard over his bed, hovering and not hovering. Pinned on a board so he could dream of their wings sliding against their motionless bodies.

He wanted that red butterfly. He wanted that bloodthirsty butterfly he was sure was real though no scar crossed his palm. He felt pain like a heartbeat when he slept. No matter how many he captured he was not content.

Shiro was chasing a Papilio memnon in the forest just as the afternoon had started to cool.

“Are you going to hurt him?” a voice asked.

He turned around with the big black butterfly struggling in his net.

She wasn’t from around here, was what he thought.

“Hurt him?” was what he asked; though he wanted to ask her how she knew the fluttering insect was a him.

She had no shoes on. The pink of her toes was dark against the forest floor. Despite the lack of footwear she had no cuts or bites.

“He’s rather scared.”

Shiro looked into the net where the butterfly had started to settle. He knew that did not meant it was unafraid but that it was conserving strength. Butterflies were not considered especially strong but he thought them clever.

“I’m taking him home. I collect butterflies.”

She knelt next to the net. Her dress was a muddy sort of pink that matched the ribbon in her hair.

“You kill them then,” she said.

“I pin them so they last forever. I save them.”

Her green eyes crossed as though she’d thought of a funny joke. “You have a problem with death, don’t you?”

4

“Do you think it’s cruel?” he asked.

She ran a small finger over the rim of the butterfly’s wing, smearing some black dust on the tip. She pressed her finger onto Shiro’s forehead. It felt warm.

“It’s your nature. Would you call the lion eating the antelope cruel? Or the dog chasing the squirrel? You cannot help what is in you.”

“I’m not a dog,” he said.

“Close enough. With your black hair and eyes and your bite.”

“I don’t bite.”

She smiled. Some of her teeth were wrong. Pointed. Crooked. “But you do, don’t you?”

“You don’t know me. You don’t even know my name.”

She sat on a nearby log. “That is true. You don’t know mine either. I am… Hana.”

She said the name slowly as though slipping it on.

Her heels dug into the dirt. Small beetles and worms crawled up her toes and ankles. There were so many the pink of her skin was hidden.

“That’s creepy.”

She giggled as a beetle peeked from her pale hair. “You like butterflies don’t you? This forest is alive for more than them.”

Hana bent down, trailing ants and insects. “Shall I tell you a secret then? The burrowers are honest pure things. Those butterflies are whispers of the dead. They will lie to you. Especially if you catch them.”

She held out her palm. A golden butterfly landed in it. He’d never seen one like it. All gold and glow.

“See.”

She raised her palm. The butterfly turned, revealing the ants feasting on its body making it move.

Shiro jumped back. Hana laughed and laughed.

He ran home. Fairy tales always started just so didn’t they? Where was the witch? The hunting wolf?

5

He wasn’t a boy who was fond of candy nor was he a boy who yearned for a sister. He wasn’t a prince or a pauper.

Shiro did not sleep that night. Nor the next.

He stared quietly at the white of his desk, ignoring the beep of the messenger as his online friends tried to contact him. Ignoring the sweep of the broom and the soft humming of the woman as she cleaned and cooked.

He’d forgotten the last time he’d been to school. He counted the letters. One. Two. Three. Perhaps a month then.

He put on his gray uniform. Washed and iron by one of the women. Or the one woman. He should pay attention to that.

He put on his white socks and black shoes. He loaded up his backpack with books.

The walk to his school was not overly long. There were no school buses or transport. Mostly the other students rode bikes. Shiro did not like bikes. His father had tried to teach him once but the bike had been too big and he’d toppled over onto some rocks. He had a spiderweb of scars on his right knee from that fall.

The school administrator was a balding man named Takahashi. He may have a first name but Shiro didn’t know it. He’d thought only kids were able to have first names for the longest time.

Shiro bowed deeply. The bald man’s shoes had a smudge of dirt that almost looked like a smiling face. He thought of Hana and the crawling things that lived beneath the forest floor.

“Shiro Matsuo. You have missed almost three months of school. A boy of eleven needs an education. Do you hear me?”

Shiro nodded but did not rise. He wanted to go home and sleep under the butterflies above his bed.

“I apologize, Administrator Takahashi. I was taken ill.”

“Your father, he could not respond to my letters and calls?” Takahashi was ice and wind. Shiro was a small rock under his heel.

“He has been very busy,” Shiro said to those shoes.

“Ah well then, make sure he contacts me when he can. Your grades are important.”

6

“Yes sir.”

Shiro did not feel any better as morning drifted into afternoon. There were students he recognized only as black and white drawings like those in a comic book. They were open mouths with badly transcribed conversations.

Only Momo asked him why he’d been gone so long. She had teeth that bucked rather than ran so she cried a lot. Shiro didn’t mind the crying.

“The crybaby and the wimp.” The sneering boy had a name. As did the three others with him. Underneath their uniforms they wore t-shirts with crude English words. Shiro felt better thinking of them as those words. Eat Shit and Die, Just Don’t Do It, Funky, and Cat Fever.

“I’m not a crybaby.” Momo rubbed her snot off on her sleeve.

The sneering boy pushed Shiro to the ground while one of his friends kicked him. Shiro wasn’t fast enough to run away. He curled into a ball, gripping the soft dirt with his fingers.

“You there, stop.”

A whistle blew. Momo patted him gently on the head. Was it better that she’d saved him? Probably not.

There was always the next day and the next.

At home he dressed his scrapes as best he could. The house was clean and smelled of noodles. His image was reflected from one of the large windows in the kitchen as he ate. One big black eye and a scratch on his cheek.

Tough, his father had called him. He’d rather be clever.

He went into the woods again the next day. Past the dolls swinging at the entrance. Past the knot of old roots that seemed to grasp at his ankles.

He found a fallen tree and sat there, watching the floor. Waiting.

“Have you come to kill more of my friends?” she asked.

He bit his thumb. “Not presently.”

She sat next to him. “Did someone try to kill you then? They didn’t try very hard.”

“Just kids.”

7

“Kids like you? You’ve killed. I’ve seen you.” She wore the same dress. Her hair was covered in dead white flowers.

“It’s not the same.”

A butterfly was not a human.

She cocked her head. “A life isn’t the same as a life? If you want to be clever you’ll have to try harder than that.”

“How did you…”

“Come boy, I will show you the clever things of the forest.”

Hana took off running towards the thickest part of the forest. The part so hidden by thorny branches few dared to enter.

He followed the trailing color of her dress. The pounding sound of her footsteps. She sounded much larger than she looked.

The thorns cut his skin like small sharp teeth. After a while they swayed inward, curving away from his skin.

“They’ve tasted you enough,” Hana whispered.

She was behind him, jumping from foot to foot.

“Trees don’t taste.”

“These do. Look.” Hana pulled a branch down. The thorns retreated.

“They don’t like how I taste.” Hana frowned. “You, they like. But they’re careful. Anything old has to be careful.”

“I’ve never known anything old,” Shiro said. “My grandparents are all dead and my father is still young.”

“What about your mother?”

He poked at one of the vines that wrapped the branches. A small tendril of green stroked his finger. “She’s dead too.”

“You must be a dangerous boy if so many things die around you.”

Dangerous boy. Yes, he could be. He could be dangerous. He was in the forest of poison wasn’t he?

8

No, he shook his head. “I don’t think I’m dangerous. Those boys, they beat me up and I couldn’t do anything.”

She took his hand, turning it over. Even though it was larger than her hand it somehow felt smaller.

“Not very strong hands. Not for hurting, are they? You don’t have to hurt to be dangerous. I can show you. You have to be quiet.”

He followed her again as they wound their way through the thicket of vine and branch. The path began to get smaller and smaller until they were both crawling. She stopped suddenly, putting her finger to her mouth.

Beside them a hole opened up in the plants. A single orange flower grew in the middle of a patch of white weeds. The flower had a stem of gold and smelled of honey even from where they silently watched.

There came a crunching noise. A man in fatigues and an old floppy hat fell onto the weeds. A slobbering dog came after snarling and barking at whatever was behind them.

“Can’t get us now,” the man wheezed. “We’re already here, boy. They called us mad. Me and poor old Marley. I wonder if the monsters have eaten him yet?”

The man stared at his hands. They were red with blood.

“We had to do it. We had to push him behind us or the monsters would have gotten us both.”

The dog barked. The man sobbed. He put his arms around the dog and rubbed his face into its shoulder rubbing mud and leaves onto his face. His eyes were round with black and red with scratches.

“We had to do it,” he said again.

He reached for the flower with shaking hands. One hand grasped the stem.

“What will we do when we’re young again? I can’t even remember you as a puppy. So long ago.”

The hand that held the stem was bone white. The man started to scream as his flesh peeled away from his bones leaving a skeleton. Still, he did not let go. He screamed. The dog barked. He melted, leaving that wrist bone and hand on the stem. The dog sat down near what was left of his master.

9

“He’ll wait forever,” Hana whispered.

“We can’t save him?”

Hana smiled. “You can’t change fate. It’s where he wants to be anyway. He was named for the god of thunder. He protects.”

“I used to want a dog like that. When the thunder and lightning came and I was alone in the house. It felt like a warning.”

Shiro watched the dog as it put its head down on its paws. He thought maybe to come back later when she wasn’t with him. But he didn’t know the way.

“Come back tomorrow. I’ll find you something to save,” she said.

They went forward until the path grew wide enough to stand. Hana showed him the way back. Though it was growing dark he found his house just as he’d left it.

He dreamed of the dog. Not the man or the awfulness of his death. He dreamed of the dog waiting. Forever waiting.

Shiro went to school the next day feeling like two people. There was the boy, the dangerous boy who followed a girl into the dark forest. His voice was quiet there, he could only hear the sound of the wind rustling. In school he was not dangerous. He was not brave. He was still quiet. So quiet the boys who’d given him the black eye barely noticed him.

At least he hoped so.

He ate lunch with Momo again. She didn’t cry. She was a hero now, she said.

“You want to come to my house after school?” she asked, pointedly looking down at her shoes.

I’ll find you something to save.

“Not today. I have too much schoolwork to do. Maybe another time?”

She blushed red and nodded. He wondered what her parents were like. Stern or easy? Invisible or overbearing?

He did not wait for the woman to cook and clean at home before leaving. He changed and set out for the forest. He could find her more easily now.

She was there. Just there. Picking mushrooms and nibbling on their caps.

10

“I think that one is poison,” he said, half remembering a picture he’d seen in a book.

“Probably not,” she said.

She finished the mushroom, leaving the stem to drop. “You have to be careful today. I may not be able to help you if you make one of them angry.”

Shiro nodded. “I’ll be careful.”

Hana took his hand. Hers was warm. Damp. Not cold like he’d thought it would be.

“It’s easier,” she explained, pulling him along.

The forest seemed to shift from day to a dark blue night. Eyes watched them from the trees. Yellow and red and some green blinking all at once.

Then came the clearing. The vast clearing full of giant trees with bleach white bark. The floor was wet and thick with moss, muffling their footsteps.

Shiro looked up but could see no sky. Nothing but more tree. White and arching towards itself.

“These are nesting grounds,” Hana whispered.

“For what?”

She sat, dragging him down with her.

“Itsu. Or they once were. The forest tends to change things to suit it.”

“The forest isn’t alive,” Shiro said. He could see no monsters around. Only the trees. He did have the feeling of being watched but that was always true in the forest.

Hana picked up a swatch of moss near her foot. She brought it up close. He could see small white insects running around and around as though they’d lost their way.

“Connection, Shiro. The forest is what connects everything that lives in it. Like the nerve endings in your body. Would you not call that alive?”

Shiro shrugged.

“Stubborn boy,” she said.

11

They waited quietly after. She stroked the moss like a pet cat. Sometimes he thought it rose up to meet her hand.

He saw a flash of something in the tree. A great black beak as large as a man thrust a small round bundle down. It landed with a thunk near the bottom of a nearby tree.

“Come,” she whispered.

Quickly the gathered the small bundle, thrusting it into his hands. It made a coughing sound as they ran. Something terrible was coming for them. Shiro felt the heat against his back. He heard the roar that sounded like many voices all screaming at once.

Hana took his hand. They were in the part of the forest that had light again.

She stopped, laughing.

“Oh she’s so mad at us. Stupid old bird.”

“What did we do?”

He looked down into his hands. He saw nothing but a bundle of black feathers so dense they reflected no light.

“You wanted to save something didn’t you? Rail against fate and all that? We saved a baby Itsu. It’s a runt. Pushed out to preserve the other little Itsus she birthed.”

The feathers parted, revealing a patch of pale flesh. Shiro almost dropped it.

“No,” she said. “It has to imprint. Otherwise we can never fool the new mother.”

Shiro sat down, feeling dizzy. The thing in his hand squirmed. It felt wet and wrong.

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ll show you,” she said.

They left the forest for a quiet neighborhood of houses that all looked the same. Hana turned in circles until her eyes narrowed in one direction.

“That one.”

12

Inside the house was all lit up. Four people sat on the floor around a meal. Shiro recognized Momo right away. She was eating noodles, smiling her run away smile. Her mother had gray hair and warm eyes. Her father was round as a ball and had soft looking hands. In the middle sat a baby, as round as his father.

Hand put her hand on his shoulder.

“You’ve heard of the cuckoo bird right? The species that lays their eggs in another’s nest?”

“Yes.”

“This is like that. The Itsu can’t survive on its own. So we have to find a family with a newborn and replace it. It will adapt to its new family and eventually make its way back to the breeding grounds. Well after it eats the family. Sustenance and all.”

Shiro’s eyes rounded. “Won’t the family notice it has two infants?” He did not want to think about the last part.

“Replace, Shiro. Replace. We’ll take the baby and throw it into a river. The Sirens might care for it.”

“We can’t kidnap a baby.”

Hana crossed her eyes. “You wanted to save something. There’s a price. Always a price.”

“Besides,” she said. “Isn’t it a bit too perfect? Look at them all warm and cozy. Happy. Don’t you hate that? Don’t you want to smash the smugness of it?”

He did. He could picture it so easily. They would know, wouldn’t they? Somehow they’d know deep down the baby wasn’t right. Slowly the dark would creep in, ruining those warm eyes. That run away smile. What right did they have to be happy when he wasn’t?

Then the after. When the monster grew. Momo’s dead eyes. Staring. Red on the walls. Red everywhere.

He shook his head. The fog lifted. “I’m not doing it.”

She sighed. “You confuse me, dangerous boy. This is what you wanted. I’ve risked much for you.”

“The price is too high,” he said.

13

“We can’t give him back. She’ll be hot for months over this. I suppose I can feed it to something.” She reached for the thing in his hands.

It had a face now. A strange mixture of goblin and human. A boy, he thought.

“I can bring him to an orphanage.”

“Too cruel. It will imprint on those around it. More than two or three caregivers and it won’t be able to function.”

“He doesn’t have to be a person does he? Can he be anything? Anything at all?”

She cocked her head to the side. “Clever. But reckless. Think on it then. See if you can form it into what you want.”

He closed his eyes, imagining something better. Something strong and smart.

“Ooooh,” she said.

He opened his hand. On a bed of black feathers was a perfectly formed butterfly. Its wings moved against the skin of his palm.

He held it up, watching the gold and black of its colors as it flew off.

Shiro didn’t go back to the forest the next day. Or the next. He sat at his white desk, staring out at the green and black.

When he grew tired of staring he turned on his computer.

The chat program booted up for the first time in weeks.

Derek1892_thought you were dead

ShiroHero_exploring. went back to school

Derek1892_those assholes get you again?

ShiroHero_yeah but not as bad. listen

Derek1892_?

ShiroHero_I met this girl

Derek1892_hot

14

ShiroHero_! Not hot. she lives in the forest. doesn’t wear shoes

ShiroHero_ it’s weird

Derek1892_homeless?

ShiroHero_ it’s like she’s the queen there or something

Derek1892_the queen of the poison forest? maybe she’s a ghost. didn’t you tell me some girl died there?

ShiroHero_ I can touch her. you can’t touch ghosts, can you?

Derek1892_maybe she’s a corpse bird.

ShiroHero_what?!

Derek1892_dude you live in Japan. Nothing but demons and stuff in the trees there. The corpse bird is made from dead stuff. Reanimated.

ShiroHero_there aren’t any demons in Japan. It’s rubbish old people believe. You’ve watched too many gory movies.

Derek1892_There’s a story about a girl these boys tortured and stuffed in a barrel. Maybe she’s the girl, come back to take vengeance on young shy boys.

ShiroHero_She’s not a ghost or a demon. I don’t know what she is.

Derek1892_You should figure it out.

Shiro shut the chat program off. Derek was from America. He thought the hills of Japan were filled with monsters large and small. Foot demons and fish people.

Shiro didn’t want to think about it. That bird roaring fire. The thing that was human and then not human. It was easier to focus on homework or the strange smell coming from the kitchen.

He’d forgotten to eat again. The casserole sat and stank on the kitchen counter. He left it there for the woman to throw away.

He searched the internet for a news story about the girl. The dead girl in the forest. Nariko Mori. The picture was very old. The girl looked nothing like Hana. She had dark hair and small eyes. Her nose was a bump against her cheeks. She wasn’t smiling in the picture but looking off into the distance.

15

The article said she’d claimed to have been molested by a teacher and no one had believed her. She’d hung herself in the forest after weeks of taunting from fellow students.

He touched the screen. Touched her unsmiling mouth.

Something about that mouth seemed familiar.

She called him from the forest. The bird’s mouth opened, revealing teeth jagged and black. They sliced into his arms and back. He woke screaming.

He wanted his mother. The mother he’d never met or gave a moment’s thought. Was she kind? Shy? Her face was a picture in a frame. She’d been happy once.

He waited another day or two before braving the road to school. He wanted that hot feeling in the bottom of his stomach to go away before he looked at Momo again. He’d almost made the trade when that feeling came over him outside her house. It had been a hot wind. A winding sick thing.

“Were you sick again?” she asked him at lunch.

“Yes,” he answered. It was the truth. He wasn’t sure if it was the forest or Hana.

She gave him a rice-ball shaped like a bear’s face. It tasted sweet and had a dark bean paste center.

“You should eat more carefully,” she said. “You have those dark circles under your eyes.”

“Someone comes and cooks for me,” he said, hunching his shoulders. “I eat fine.”

“Really? What’s her name?” Momo asked.

“I’ve never spoken to her. But she leaves things.”

“How strange.” Momo drank the last of her juice bottle, crushing it with her small fingers.

“You should just stay home. Stop polluting the school with your weirdness,” a familiar voice sneered.

“Go Momo,” he whispered. They always found him. Even on the edge of the grounds. He thought the bigger boy must be able to smell fear.

“Nobody wants you here,” the boy said. The sentiment was repeated in his friend’s eyes.

16

“Weirdo,” one of them muttered.

“Orphan.”

“Baby.”

Shiro dusted off his pants as he stood. He would not curl as he had before. That hot feeling washed over him again but this time it was good. This time it was right.

His hands hurt. Someone was screaming and his fists hurt. Hands grabbed at him, pulling him off of the boy he’d been sitting on.

“Explain yourself!” Administrator Takahashi shouted.

Shiro looked down at the boy. The big boy who’d taunted him. Was his name Taichi? Yes he remembered the boy introducing himself the first day of class. Tripping over his big feet. Everyone laughing.

Shiro hadn’t laughed. He’d looked down at the big boy and felt sorry.

The boy on the ground did not look anything like a person. His face was swollen and he kept making deep gasping sounds. He had what looked like claw marks on his arms and neck. There was red where one of his eyes should be. Red and a queer white fluid.

Shiro looked down at his hands. The nails on his fingers were thick with blood. There was a sharp taste of metal in his mouth.

He didn’t answer Takahashi. He couldn’t explain that he remembered nothing about the fight.

Shiro had to wait until the ambulance came. Takashi pulled him to his office afterwards.

He sat in a chair much smaller than the desk. In the corner was a bookshelf with a picture of a smiling Takahashi that must have been taken several years ago. He had a head full of hair and a waist that dipped rather than bowed outwards. It was strange to think of.

Easier to think of than his trembling hands. The blood on them was not all his.

Takahashi sat down, looming over Shiro.

“Give me your father’s number,” he said.

“He’s out of town.”

17

“You must have some way to reach him. Some emergency number.”

Shiro sighed and gave the man the number his father had told him never ever to call unless there was an emergency.

He could hear the phone ring and ring and ring. No one answered.

“Come on,” Takahashi said.

He drove Shiro home and then pounded on the door for his father.

“He’s not home,” Shiro said. “I told you.”

Takahashi frowned. “I’ll find him. We can’t have this sort of behavior from young boys like you. You are not to come back to school until you are notified, do you understand?”

Shiro nodded.

“I don’t know what to tell that poor boy’s mother,” Takahashi muttered as he walked back to his car.

Shiro sat in the dark. After an hour the phone rang.

“Yes?” He answered.

“What is this I hear of you missing school? Fighting? Is this how you behave?” his father demanded.

“I haven’t…” Shiro whispered. He thought of talking about the girl. The forest.

“No excuses! You will make restitution to this boy’s family or you will be sent away. Your aunt has given me the names of several schools that promise to discipline juvenile delinquents. You will go to school when Administrator Takahashi tells you. He will report to me if you do not. I have enough troubles without this too.”

His father hung up.

Shiro curled onto the couch with the blood still on his clothes.

He slept for a very long time.

When he woke again he couldn’t remember what day it was. A clean blanket had been thrown around him.

He showered and changed his clothes, packing a backpack.

18

He wasn’t sure he was coming back to the house.

Hana met him there by where he’d first seen her.

“Dangerous boy,” she whispered, kissing him on the cheek.

He jerked away. “No, I don’t want that.”

She smiled, exposing very sharp looking teeth. “All boys do eventually. Now you want to ask the question you don’t want to ask. It took you long enough.”

“Are you her then?”

She twirled around. “Do I look like the girl in that picture? That poor pitiful girl who could not fight back?”

“No.”

“I watched her. She shook as she climbed that tree. Took off her shoes and socks before. So polite. Then the sound of crying as she tumbled down down down.”

“You didn’t try and stop her?”

Hana frowned. “Did you learn nothing from the Itsu? Fate, Shiro, fate. You can’t escape it. Or change it. Her choice was always her choice. Just as yours was.”

“My choice?” he asked.

She brought his hand to her face. “You wanted to kill him. Kill that boy and his friends.”

He tugged but she wouldn’t release his hand. She breathed on it. Such cold. He felt it all the way to his feet.

When she released it his hand was healed. No scratches or bruises. He flexed it. No pain. He opened his mouth.

“Do you really want to know?” she asked.

He shook his head. He wanted to forget. If he asked what she was then it ended. It all ended. He knew that.

“You want to stay a while?” she asked.

He hitched up his backpack. “I don’t want to go back. Not yet.”

“All right then.”

19

Hana took him to a part of the forest that was filled with light greens and pinks. Wide petaled flowers almost sank to the ground from the weight.

Small birds perched curiously on the edge of branches, calling down to them as they passed. They sounded like a song he half remembered. Something he’d heard a long long time ago.

“You can dream here,” she said. “It’s nice but don’t sleep too long.”

“I’m not sleepy.”

She blinked slowly. “You are, dangerous boy, you are.”

He sat down on the soft leaves below him. They crumpled under his weight. He put his backpack under his head.

“You’ll be safe here. Just remember to wake up,” she said.

He dreamed of his mother. Her lips soft on his forehead. She sang that song to him. That humming low song.

“Echo echo echo.

They call you echo echo echo.

I remember you echo echo echo.

My child. My child. My child.

So the dark comes you cry.

So the dark comes you cry.

So the dark comes you cry.

Those demons only echo.

Your cry. Your cry. Your cry.

So hush. Hush. Hush.

Hush. Hush. Hush.”

In the forest where he slept he saw the girl from the picture. Nariko. She looked asleep too. Her eyes were closed. A man carried her over his back up the tree. He placed the noose over her neck and looked out. He seemed to look right at Shiro.

20

He knew that man. Had just seen him in that old photograph in Takahashi’s office.

There was the sound of a drop and Shiro closed his eyes.

When he opened them again he was awake. Or he thought so. It was hard to tell. This part of the forest seemed to blur and move. Small butterflies that were not butterflies chattered to each other sometimes biting and scratching.

“You slept for a long time,” Hana said.

“How long?”

She shrugged. “Two days.”

“She didn’t kill herself. Why would you tell me she did?”

Hana looked up at the tree he’d dreamed of.

“She was going to. What does it matter how it happened?”

“I don’t like lies,” he said.

She frowned. “You do though. You surround yourself with them.”

“I don’t.”

“You don’t miss your mother? Your father? You’re not angry all the time? Angry at that little girl. Poor little girl. Angry at those boys. One might lose an eye. Angry at your teacher. Angry at your house. Angry at the ghosts that walk inside it.”

“He shouldn’t get away with it,” Shiro muttered.

“Your teacher? He suffers. You can’t harm a child and not suffer.”

“It’s not justice.”

Hana fell backwards, landing softly.

“Stupid boy. You don’t get to decide what justice is.”

“Neither do you.”

She closed her eyes. “Did I say I did? Sit, I’ll tell you a story.”

“No.”

“It is a good story. So sit. Listen.”

21

He sat. Her will was iron.

“There was a sculptor. He made a modest living making pots and such. What he wanted though was to sculpt the human form. He wasn’t any good at it. No matter how long he practiced his hands were floppy messes. His heads were cartoonish. His bodies were all flab and no muscle.”

“This sculptor had wife. A vicious woman built like a tree trunk. She was all the time telling him he should be a miner or cut down trees instead of what he wanted to do. One day she was making dinner and she tells him this again.”

“He stands up, places his hand on the table, and says ‘You might as well chop my hand off! I cannot be half a man. So she takes the big butcher knife she’d been using on the hog and cuts off his left hand. Not the right, mind you. She still wanted him to work.”

“He cried and moaned as blood gushed from the wound. She knew a little of the healing arts and did not want to call in the wise woman. She heated a piece of iron in the fireplace and seared his flesh with it.”

“For many days and nights he lay delirious in their bed. She gave him water which was all he could keep down. She did not bathe or soothe him. A part of her hoped he would die.”

She opened her eyes. They were red now. Swirling red. Shiro almost liked it.

“The sculptor didn’t die. He woke one morning screaming ‘Where is my hand?’. His wife had preserved it in a jar full of pickling spices. She gave him the hand and turned her back on him.”

“He went into his workshop and did not come out for more than a week. When he did he was carrying a package wrapped in burlap. He brought it into town to the shop where he normally sold his pottery.”

“The wife, she heard a commotion when she went into town next. So many people were gathered around that shop window that she could not see inside. She pushed and bullied her way past the passerby to look into the window. She gasped as she saw a sculpture of a hand. Perfectly formed in wax.”

“The townspeople did not know it was a real hand. They thought the sculptor’s accident had given him new artistic powers. He replaced his lost hand with a hook. He looked quite dashing with that wild metal thing. The girls in town were giving him second and third looks.”

22

“He stayed out most nights drinking in the tavern and basking in the admiration of his fellows.”

“The wife. Now she was most unhappy. She knew it was all a trick. When he came home one night weaving and smelling of perfume she told him she’d had enough. If he wouldn’t stay home as she wished she’d tell the whole town about him.”

“The husband looked at his wife. He tucked his hooked hand behind his back.”

“He said, ‘It’s not enough to just do one piece of good artwork. My public demands more.”

“She shivered. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.”

“He brought the hook up. ‘My dear, I’m going to need another hand’.”

Hana laughed, a deep spooky laugh.

Shiro had to admit it was a good story. The hand of wax especially.

“Do you want to see something good?” she asked.

He thought on it. “Good” was relative when it came to Hana. She’d thought the melting man was amusing. Whatever it must be had to be better than sleeping for days. He wasn’t a princess. Although… he looked down at his clothes. The pink and green had rubbed off on him like the dust from a butterfly’s wings.

“Yes,” he said.

The forest of dreams merged into a darker forest. Of bruised blues and yellow purples.

Feathers rustled as they passed trees. He’d lost his shoes somewhere and now walked as barefoot as Hana. Nothing hurt him. The forest floor was as soft as carpet.

“Wait,” she said.

Hana climbed up a dark tree as tall as the sky. He could only see flashes of her dress as she climbed up and up.

An apple dropped down. A dark purple fruit like nothing he’d seen before. But it had the roundness of the apple. It smelled like an apple (albeit with a trace of rot).

“Eat it,” Hana said.

23

There was a story like this. A girl in a forest. An apple.

Maybe he was a princess.

“Why?”

“I want you to become one of my children. My wild boys. The forest can’t change you fast enough. You’d die of old age. But this, this will work right away.”

She forced the apple towards him, smiling her shark’s smile.

“We can be together forever. And you’d never have to go home. Never have to go to school.”

Echo. Echo. Echo.

Echo. Echo. Echo.

His mother’s voice whispered to him. Hummed that song.

He pushed the apple away and ran, following that voice.

“Suit yourself,” Hana hissed from behind him.

He ran home. It took a long time. He kept getting lost. Yet always his mother’s voice brought him back to the path.

His house did not feel like the safe place he’d left. The quiet was sinister. The dark all consuming. Even the white of his cherished desk looked muted and gray.

There was no meal on the table. All had been cleaned up and sanitized.

There was movement in the rest of the house. He felt it. His father’s room?

Empty. Empty but for the man shaped mound of bills that seemed to blink in the eerie dark.

Shiro ran. He didn’t know where. He fell onto the couch, shaking. He stayed there until morning when the phone woke him. It rang. And rang and rang. He stepped into the kitchen, picking up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Shiro? Shiro I’ve been trying to call you.”

“Momo?”

24

“I asked my mother and she said no one around here cleans houses or cooks like you said.”

“Who then?” he asked.

“Shiro? Shiro?!”

He pushed the phone away. Her voice was a thousand birds all screeching at once.

His father had mentioned a name hadn’t he? The name of the woman he’d hired?

The house had been clean, hadn’t it? The food had been cooked?

He wiped his eyes, rubbing as if to dislodge something inside.

When he opened them the house was dark again. Dirty. Cobwebs dotted the ceiling, covering lights and fan blades.

He opened the door to the refrigerator. The smell of mold and rot met his nose. He quickly closed it, ignoring the section of writhing maggots.

All those times when he’d known. He’d just known. Someone was in the house, moving around. Someone he’d never seen.

What had he been eating?

He went to the bathroom, emptying his stomach.

He felt hot breath on the back of his neck.

Shiro ran from the house. He’d never run so much in his life. He ran back to the forest. Back to where he’d escaped from.

There were places to hide. Trees and thick brush. He could hide from her. He could hide from them all.

Shiro knew it was folly as soon as he’d stepped foot back in that forest. He could feel her from the soles of his feet. The thrumming of the forest floor.

“Don’t kill him. Play, but don’t kill him,” he heard her whisper through the trees and the grass and the thick moss. “Don’t kill him.”

Something pushed him forward. He turned to darkness. Shadows. Only shadows. Yet they moved and hissed.

He ran, listening for the sound of their footsteps. There were none. They flew against him, crashing him into bramble bushes and the hard ridged bark of trees.

25

They were herding him. Moving him like a dumb animal. He felt dumb. Dumb and slow as he ran without thought, the hairs on the back of his neck up.

He had never run so far or so fast. His chest burned. He’d torn a hole in his pants somewhere, injuring his knee. It stung and bled as he stumbled onto it.

The shapes surrounded him. Shadows covered in ink and feather. Shadows with sharp white teeth and red eyes. They howled and screeched.

He turned around and around as he scratched him then let him go. He was in a circle. Trapped, like a caged animal.

Shiro howled back, feeling that red inside. That heat in his gut.

“Boys. Boys. My dangerous boys. You have been naughty,” she said.

Hana stepped into the circle.

The shadows did not stop. Still they clawed at him.

She stomped once on the ground. Cracks appeared, shaking under her bare feet.

The shadows stilled. All except one who had its hand at Shiro’s throat.

Hana’s face changed. Feathers gray and black filled her face forming a round wide head. Her eyes grew round and spread apart. The pupils turned an odd shade of orange. Her lips morphed into a beak both sharp and long.

She made a deep sound that came from her gut. The shadow let him go. She pounced on it, dragging it into the dark. He heard wet breaking sounds and a voice that wasn’t a voice sobbing.

Hana stepped into the light and was herself again. Or at least the self Shiro knew best. She had a spot of blood on her lip. She licked it off.

“I know you’re jealous boys. But you’ve disobeyed me. I said you could play. Not kill. He is mine. You do not touch what is mine.” Her voice was delicate. Almost sweet. The shadow boys trembled.

“I will find you later. Don’t hide from me. You know I do so love a game of hide and seek,” she said.

The shadows fled, leaving Shiro in the circle.

“You’re not supposed to…” he said.

26

She shook her body, feathers fell down like rain. All shades of gray and black and in between.

“I did say the forest changes us, did I not?”

“Are you going to eat me then?” he asked.

She took his arm. Her grasp felt cold this time. So cold. He could almost sense those brittle bird bones underneath the pale of her skin.

“Not yet. You must have questions. All boys do. Let’s do that first. We have time. I have so many things to show you.”