Kiri by Sarah Hozumi

Oslac toiled his way through the woods beyond his home, stopping to allow his daughter to catch up to him but not daring to look at her. His ears faithfully absorbed the beautiful sounds of his daughter humming to herself while picking her way among the roots of the trees, and his heart began to splinter. They had been walking for half a day now, their pace waylaid by Kiri’s wandering attention. He heard her attempt to whistle at a bird in a low branch nearby and thought about just turning home.

Still, the thing had to be done.

They walked without speaking to one another, his daughter seeming to be content enough to sing or hum while dancing along behind him. Deeper and deeper into the forest they ventured, until the thick canopy of leaves overhead dismissed the sun, leaving them in shadows.

At last, Oslac turned around and went to one knee before his bewildered daughter.

“Kiri, do you see the clearing behind me?”

His daughter twisted her upper body around his hulking frame to spy what he spoke of, and her eyes lit up.

“Oh, there’s a great tree with red leaves there. It’s beautiful. Do you think I could climb the branches?”

The innocent question was like a hot iron swift against his neck, but he managed a grimace and gave a small nod.

“You know your mother is to have a baby brother or sister soon, yes?”

“Yes, Father. I don’t care which one it is, as long as it’s healthy. That’s what Mother said, and I agree.”

He had to force himself through the deed or he would never be able to at all. If he hesitated any longer, he would simply stand and announce the two of them were going home. But his wife needed a miracle, and this was all Oslac knew.

“Your mother is not doing well, Kiri. She is very sick, in fact.”

“But she said she’ll get better.” Kiri gave her father a look that begged he confirm her words, but he shook his head.

“No, Kiri. She might die soon. And the baby.”

Tears sprang into the little girl’s eyes, and it was all Oslac could do to stop himself from sweeping her up into his arms and wiping them away. He hugged himself, instead, his arms shaking against his ribcage.

“What can we do?” she demanded between crying. “There has to be something. I know you think I’m too small to do anything, but I am seven now, you know. That should count for something.”

Only seven, Oslac thought with growing pangs of regret. If only it didn’t need to come to this.

“There is something you can do, Kiri.” His voice was growing unnaturally calm from the effort he exerted to maintain some semblance of composure. “You see that tree behind me, with the red leaves?”

“Yes, Father.”

“That is no ordinary tree. It’s…there’s a spirit inside of it, some people say. My mother used to tell me that anyway. The tree is actually a god of this forest, and it likes to contain a spirit. I don’t know why…Mother never told me why…” He was rambling now, and he could see Kiri’s eyes were already following the path of two sparrows nearby rather than listen to him, but he had to keep going. “The tree is happy to trade spirits, though. The thinking is that you could give the tree your spirit, and the spirit inside of it could go to your baby brother or sister. Doing that is said to make the baby stronger so that your mother might have an easier time birthing them.”

“Oh,” Kiri said, her eyes still on the sparrows. “Why are they lifting their wings and pecking at their feathers with their beaks like that, Father? What does that mean?”

Oslac gripped his daughter’s shoulders and forced her to look straight at him, and at last, his voice began to crack from the stress of what he had to ask her to do.

“Kiri, listen to me. You must go to that tree alone. Only those offering their spirit can enter that clearing. You must go there and stay there. The tree will slowly bring you into it…I don’t know how, but you must accept it, Kiri.”

“And then when can I go home?”

The overwhelming grief at his decision stunned him into silence. He hadn’t even told his wife what he was doing – he planned to tell her Kiri got lost in the woods.

“Father?”

If it were possible, he would offer his own spirit, but the family needed him for cutting wood, repairing their home, and hunting. They would starve without his prowess in the forest. That left only Kiri.

“This is your home now, and there is no returning. You are to remain in that tree possibly forever. I don’t know. But stay here. For the sake of your mother and your baby brother or sister, you must stay here.”

And before Kiri could possibly begin to comprehend what was happening, Oslac shot to his feet and broke into a run through the forest. He didn’t slow, even as branches whipped across his face, until he was well away from the clearing. Even then, he stopped only long enough to catch his breath before hurling himself through the forest again.

He was back at their little home nestled against the edge of the trees before nightfall. His wife’s cries of pain breached the walls of their house, stabbing into the chilling air, but he dared glance back into the woods to ensure his daughter wasn’t there, half of him hoping she was all the same.

There was no one.

Oslac cursed himself under his breath, then headed into the home to tend to his wife.

***

Kiri watched her father run through the forest like a deer being chased by a wolf, bewildered at what new game this could possibly be. Though the dread welling up in her little chest told her what her father had said was true, she was desperate to believe he was merely playing some kind of game and would return with a laugh and pick her up, put her on his shoulders, and take her home.

The sun pulled at the shadows in its path across the sky until night had well and truly fallen, yet Kiri hadn’t moved from a stump near where her father had left her. She shivered in the night air, drawing her knees up to her chest, but she refused to take her eyes off of where she had last seen him.

“He’ll come back,” she said into the new sounds of the forest of wolves howling, owls screeching, and the wind whistling through the branches. “I don’t need to be scared because he’ll come back.”

But there was no sign of him.

She thought back to what he had told her – something about a tree – and her attention finally shifted to the clearing a few steps from her.

There was a lone tree in the nearly perfect circle, surrounded by wildflowers and tall grass. Unimpeded by sprawling branches eager to block out the sky, the moon’s light danced among the tree’s leaves, and Kiri marveled at how they seemed to glow. To her, the way the light on the red leaves ebbed and flowed per the command of the winds gave the tree the appearance it was on fire. Though she knew the tree would provide no real warmth to her, she still felt herself drawn to it.

As soon as her left foot, then her right, stepped into the clearing, a burst of light along the perimeter sent her running to the trunk of the tree. She jumped to reach the lowest branch, which was as thick as her legs, then pulled herself up until she was well hidden among the branches and leaves.

“It’s all right,” she whispered to herself. “Father will come back soon.”

An owl that had landed along the edge of the clearing simply hooted at her before turning its attention to the remains of a mouse trapped between its talons.

***

Kiri fell asleep in the tree, finally lulled into dreams of sitting on her mother’s lap by the way the moon’s light moved along the leaves like waves against the shore. She awoke the next morning to the sounds of birds singing among the branches nearby and twigs snapping as animals picked their way through the underbrush.

While she knew she would need to find food until her father finally did come back, Kiri’s first thoughts were of how comfortable it felt sitting high up in the tree, nestled among the branches, her back against the main trunk. A night with the tough bark rubbing against her neck should have been enough for her to want to gratefully hop down and stretch out any aching limbs, but her body signaled that it was altogether at ease remaining where it was. And it was such a long way down to the forest floor that it made more sense to stay a while longer up in the trees.

There might be bears or wolves who want to eat me, too, she reasoned. It’d be safer up here a bit longer, at least until the sun warms the ground.

She waited, reveling in how hidden she surely had to be high in the tree, and watched the forest work its way into life around her. There were the flowers that began to unfold their petals just as the sun’s rays hit them, the insects floating in the air just beyond her reach, the hundreds of birds and their various calls echoing throughout the trees. It all was wonderful and yet somehow familiar to her, as though she had dreamed about those exact sights and sounds her entire life.

It must be nice living here, she thought, her eyes on a group of mice racing up the trunk of a tree to her right, beyond the clearing. The owl had only just been there the night before, and she considered warning the mice to be careful in case it returned, but spending so long in the tree, observing the world around her, had taken its toll on her. She soon could barely keep her eyes open, let alone speak.

Kiri fell asleep just before the sun’s rays were directly overhead, the trees’ leaves happily shielding her from the harsh light.

***

The call of an owl startled her awake, and she lifted her head away from the tree’s trunk to witness the sun’s last light before it faded into darkness. For how long she had slept, however, Kiri still felt tired, the normally effortless task of supporting her head now proving to be too much for her. Her body sent shivers of thanks up and down her spine when she rested her head against the trunk again, and she contented herself with moving only her eyes to keep up with a flight of bats overhead or a group of fireflies illuminating the leaves like stars.

Hunger should have called to her by then, but her stomach was altogether silent. Kiri wondered if her growing struggle just to move was a sign she was actually starving, yet when she thought of what she might want to eat, nothing came to mind except dim flashes of the earth far below and of the sun now journeying beyond the horizon. It made no sense to her, and thinking such thoughts wore her completely out. She fell asleep for a third time to the gentle song of a nightingale hiding in a bush nearby.

***

A distant voice of instinct the next morning told her she should be screaming in terror to find her legs had taken on the features of the tree branch on which she sat so that she could no longer distinguish between the two, her feet buried into the wood like it was made of sand. Yet she noted the loss of her legs with polite interest, then became absorbed in watching a herd of white-tailed deer prance along the edge of the clearing, their tails flicking out of rhythm to their ears twitching. When they were out of sight, her attention moved to the hammering of a woodpecker in a tree to her left, followed by the sheer joy of watching a great brown bear lumber around the edge of the clearing where the deer had been not moments before. The forest was truly so full of life, and she was left in awe.

Her hands began to sink into the trunk, along with her back, but Kiri barely noticed, lost in the sheer revelry she found herself in to witness a red fox move with barely any noise beyond the odd dried leaf crackling underfoot. It seemed to be intently staring at the ground, and Kiri joined in out of sheer curiosity.

Her entire lower body had disappeared into the tree, thickening the branch, yet Kiri found no interest in trying to save herself.

But then the red fox looked behind it, and a smaller one appeared. A baby, by the looks of it.

Memories of Kiri’s mother and father came thundering back into her mind, and suddenly the signals her brain had somehow ignored from her body were now at the forefront. Her body begged her for food and water, but above all, it demanded air. It felt like something was melting her lungs out of her chest, and she made such a loud choking noise that the red fox and its baby immediately disappeared into the folds of the forest.

It took immense concentration and willpower, beyond what Kiri thought was possible, but she managed to lift first her left leg, then her right, out of the tree branch. She pried her hands free next, then used her hands to lift the rest of herself out of the wood. What had been intended as a leap away from the tree became a clumsy fall that landed her with a heavy, hard thud against the roots surrounding its base.

Every part of her now begged that she flee from the tree and never look back – that even if she was to forever be lost in the woods, at least she would be far away from it. She broke into a run, then came to a complete standstill seconds later, just before the clearing’s boundaries.

What had her father told her? Her mother was dying, and the baby inside her would probably die, too. And her father had looked so sad when he had told her, “You must go there and stay there.”

Her father always took such good care of all of them, fixing things around the house, bringing in wild deer and rabbit every week for them to eat, always making sure Kiri and her mother got the best picks of meat and the ripest fruit from their garden.

She could see, too, the way her mother always lit up to even see her father, and how tightly love had wrapped her father around her mother. He would be lost without her. Even if Kiri escaped from the tree and ran all the way home again, if her mother and the baby ended up dying, then what was the point? And it would be all her fault. All because she couldn’t stay in a tree.

 “I’m all right,” she said to herself. “I’m brave. I can do this for Mother and Father and my baby brother or sister.”

It took more courage than Kiri thought she could ever have, but she wrenched her eyes away from the depths of the forest, back to the tree with its crimson leaves now dazzling in the early morning sun.

Kiri approached the tree and placed one hand on its surprisingly smooth bark.

“I’m sorry I ran away.” She leaned her head against the tree in repentance. “Please don’t punish my mother or baby brother or sister for it.”

Then, with a deep breath, she climbed back up.

***

The sun set nearly in time to Kiri falling into the tree. She had spent the morning and some of the afternoon consoling herself that she was saving her family, then the late afternoon became a series of welcome distractions created by the wildlife surrounding the clearing.

The last sight her eyes took in before fading away completely were of two cardinals in a tree nearby, one a brilliant red and the other a pale brown. The way they nuzzled one another, while forbidding the smallest sliver of space between them, reminded her of her parents, so happily in love, and she was grateful she could help them find a happy ending.

Sarah Hozumi

Image: A beautiful owl with wide spread wings flying through dark trees. From pixabay.com