I was still kneeling in the moss, as if that were a posture one chooses, and not something the body slips into when it doesn't know what else to do.
The ground beneath my knees was warm. Not pleasantly warm, not alive, warm like something that has just stopped resisting. Beneath that lay cold. It waited. Cold has patience. I had learned that.
The trunk in front of me, the tree Jonas had hung against, stood the way trees stand. Upright. Uninvolved. The bark closed, as if it had stitched itself shut. No cracks. No hands. No trace left of what had been there. Only at the base a dark stain, slowly fading, as if the earth were taking it back without even being curious.
The forest is quick when it wants to forget.Quicker than people think. Quicker than guilt.
Today it was quieter than usual.Not full.Not calm.Quiet like an animal crouching because it has heard something larger than itself.
The totem hung at my belt and felt dead. Not still. Not sleeping. Dead like something that no longer answers, no matter how you ask. I laid my hand on it. Cold. Heavy. Foreign. No hum, no pull, none of those fine vibrations that usually say: I'm here. I hear you.
Beneath the silence lay another tone.It didn't come from the needles. Not from the wind. It came from farther down, from where things run that are no longer tended. A steady hum, so low you feel it in the bones before the ears.
Power lines.Electricity that officially no longer exists.Electricity that never learned how to stop.
Samuel.
The name was still in my mouth, though I hadn't spoken it. It stuck between my teeth like ash you spit out too late. I swallowed. Once. Twice. The name stayed. I tried to focus on the smell of resin, on wet earth, on the metal in my own breath.
It didn't help.
The forest had heard the name.It hadn't taken it.It had thrown it back.
I wanted to say Sleep.Not to the voice under the hut. To myself.
But before the sound could take shape, something tore open in my head.
No pain.A grip.As if someone had found an edge you can pull on.
I was back on the hill.Not gradually.At once.
The heat hit me like a wall.Not forest heat, not summer, this other heat that tastes of dust and metal, that settles on the tongue and stays there. Flies landed on my lips because there was salt. The body sweats before it knows what it's running from. Above us the lines hummed, steady, insistent, as if holding on to something that should have fallen long ago.
Father stood beside me.
He never stood loose. Even in stillness there was tension in his shoulders, as if he were always waiting for the moment you have to run. His shirt clung to his back. The skin at his neck was dark from too much sun and too little shade. He didn't look down at the men. He looked at the ground, as if the ground said more than any face.
Down in the valley they were building the towers.
Not masts as you know them. Not old carriers with a clear function. More like skeletons. Metal legs with cross-bracing, too open, too honest. As if someone had set up bones and forgotten to give them skin. On some of them red lights blinked though it was day...a proof attempt.
Men in helmets carried crates. Black boxes. Some rolled them carefully, others dropped them as if they'd forgotten that things can strike back. One held a measuring device to the earth. Another wrote down numbers that meant nothing to him.
"Only temporary," one said loudly enough for us to hear.
Temporary things always have time.
I was younger. Thinner. My hands were cleaner. I wore no mask. My throat was bare, air moving in and out easily, as if that were a promise.
"What are they doing?" I asked.
Father didn't answer at once. He let a man with a radio pass by. One who laughed without knowing why. Metal struck metal. A short, bright sound.
"They're measuring," he said finally.
"What?"
"Everything," Father said. "And once they've measured it, they believe it belongs to them."
I looked back at the towers. A man dragged thick black cables through an opening. They gleamed like snakes. He cursed when they jammed and kicked them, as if resistance could be trained out of things.
"Do we have power?" I asked.
Father laid his hand on my shoulder. Heavy. Grounding. An anchor.
"No," he said. "But that doesn't mean there isn't any."
The lines above us hummed, as if they'd heard.
Then I smelled it.
Not smoke.Not fire.Ozone. Sharp. Clean. The smell of air that has just been injured.
"Do you smell that?" I asked.
Father nodded almost imperceptibly.
"What is it?"
He hesitated. Not from ignorance. From caution.
"That's air remembering itself wrong," he said.
Down below someone called out: "Delta to outpost. Link established. Graypoint protocol ready."
The word cut. Deep. Direct.
I didn't know it then. Father did. I saw it in the way his mouth hardened, in the way his fingers curled just a fraction.
"We're leaving," he said.
"Why?"
"Because they're starting."
"With what?"
Father pressed my shoulder harder. "With the part they can't control."
We stayed a moment longer. Father hoped. He did that sometimes. Too long.
Then something broke.
Not loud.Not visible.A tear in sound.
The birds went silent, as if someone had flipped a switch. Insects stopped. Even the hum of the lines thinned for a breath, as if the world hesitated.
Below, a red light flickered. Once. Twice. Then it froze, cold.
"Stage one. Activate!" someone shouted.
I saw it then or part of it.
Between two towers, just above the ground, the air was different. Thicker. Distorted. As if someone had washed the background too hot. Dust didn't fall there. It hung.
"What is that?" I whispered.
"Don't look," Father said.
Of course I looked.
The light came on.
White. Hard. Not like floodlights. Not like fire. It didn't fall outward but inward. It cut into the air. It cut into the ground. It cut into something that stood there and should not have been standing.
The thing breathed.Slowly.
When it exhaled, it sounded like wood tearing. Not burning. Tearing.
And then Graypoint began to burn.
The snap back tore the breath from my chest.
I was back in the now, but my body didn't believe it. My stomach clenched. I gagged dry. Blood ran from my nose and dripped into the moss. The taste of iron filled my mouth.
The totem was no longer dead.It pulled.Hot. Impatient. Away from here.
The forest was not still.It yielded.Not everywhere.Only in one place.
Between the trunks cold light flickered. Not fire. Not floodlight. A cut in the dark.
The name still rang in me.
The forest does not hate the name.It hates what the name opens.
Something stirred under the hut. Not the old voice. Something deeper. Awake.
I understood.
If I stayed, the light would come to me.If I went, I would go where the circle is not in the middle.
The totem pulled again.
I stood up. Slowly. My knees trembled.
"Breathe," I heard Father's voice.
I did.
Then I went.