Doll House

XXIII. ... and new beginnings

 Through clear eyes, she watched as once more, the sun rose from amid the trees. In the distance, she made out the familiar shape of the moon, drifting back into the cold, lonely place where the moon hides when it's not in the sky anymore. They'd been alone this night, on the bridge and in the world of nightmares. Or perhaps they hadn't.

The boy stood resting against the old man's car, as the fire spread through the forest and reached them, almost. It was over, finally.

As he slowly walked away, with the last of his strength, Tara could feel the flames lapping at her frozen cheeks. The boy kept one arm around the toys, protectively, and with the other, he sought his way through the forest, limping from tree to tree.

It was an exhaustion like no other that he felt in his legs, in his stomach, in his very bones. A night and a day, he'd been trapped in this forest. A night and a day running from someone he'd once loved and looking into a sea of nightmares and recognizing his own.

Felt like more, like ages had gone by and he was now an old man, leaving behind these woods. There were things he no longer remembered, but there were also things that would never be the same inside him. Before him, he saw the eyes of the girl as she'd been, not now, not in those last moments, but once, in a not so long ago past, sitting by herself in a corner, waiting for something incredible to happen.

And it had.

In his own mind, the bear, who had never revealed his name to anyone and who never would, was coming back, his brain still addled by wraiths and spirits, his mind still slightly wondering. He would remember what he'd seen on the other side forever, and it was strange just now, to know that others had seen them, too. Nightmares sometimes come unbidden, he thought as he stared out into the daybreak outside the old forest.

And then, there was Tara, who'd thought once that the worst thing that could happen was to lie forgotten, slowly sinking into old age and decrepitude, on a cold mantelpiece, just gathering dust. But she saw now, there were worse things that could happen. You could be remembered. She thought now how different all this would have been if the girl hadn't tiptoed in that chilly morning, if she hadn't spoken a single word to Vicky Mayall and let her wonder around for a little while, abandon her to her loneliness. There were worse things than being lonely and she wondered, briefly, where Victoria Mayall was, right this second, if indeed, she was anywhere at all.

Once they were safely outside the forest, they turned to look at the soaring flames once more. They had engulfed the woods now, and the house and everything else that was in them. They stood, watching, bidding their sad words of goodbye over and over, and yet, never quite able to actually leave. It was as if a part of them was stuck inside that forest and they needed to watch it burn for good. Or perhaps, it was something calling out to them.

Somehow, they'd all expected there would be screaming. That they would hear the voices lament their fate, mourn the destruction of their beloved forest. But the voices were gone now, they didn't make a single sound. From afar, they too stood watching as the forest burned down to a cinder.

After a while, the boy turned once more and left, this time for good.

'There is still a long journey to go,' he said aloud, yet somehow to himself. 'And I don't know how far the fire will spread.'

Far, but not far enough. The truth was, as long the boy was still alive, then the woods would never be really dead. The voices would cling to his memories, to his dreams, prey on them, survive off them, until they found someone stronger to feed on.

The boy feared, but in the soothing light of day, he forgot.

His thoughts tried hard to slip away from him, to leave him on the side of the road and drift back into the forest. He walked in a haze and the more he walked, the more the others felt it, too. The mist that had settled over the rest of the world. The smoke.