Forest of Sorrow

This land stretches out for miles and miles. Every year, the treeline in the distance sneaks further from reach. Or so it feels. And every year, the barn owl swoops down from her tree behind the farmhouse and waits for me to follow her into the dense forest.

She’s old. Coming to the end of her life, I’d reckon. The first year she came and I thought I was leading the way with the corpse of our last family pet draped wearily over my forearm and a rusted shovel to steady each step. The small, yappy dog died in her sleep, happily by the crackling fire. She’d been old. Past the time that should’ve marked the end of her life.

That barn owl, her eyes wide and a gentle coo on the breeze between us, never once took her sights off me while I buried the canine. She set aflutter only after the job was done, flapping up a storm on her perch with an insistence that I pay attention. When I did, when I turned to ask what the fuss was over, I saw exactly where the problem lie.

Between two trees in the distance, there hanged a forlorn body. Torn denim and tattered plaid to match my own, and nothing on his blue feet. The wind caused the trees to bristle, their leaves begging for release down to the wet ground, but the body hanged still. Heavy.

The rope was rotting and the noose hard to take from his neck, but it was tied the same way I would’ve tied it with my own two hands and so I freed him with movements of muscle memory in reverse. And I swear – I swear on my life – I don’t know how that boy ended up hanging there, but I laid him to rest in a more comforting grave.

At the very last second, right before I shovelled the dirt onto his lifeless face, I thought he looked familiar. I thought the emptiness was something I’d seen a hundred times before.

I didn’t see the barn owl again until the following year. When the air hung crisp in autumn with a callous warning of a winter to come, she landed on the eavestrough and turned and turned and turned her head until I couldn’t help but to pay attention.

This time, when she led me into the woods, I understood that I was the one in tow.

I walked and she flew and we made our way through trails between the trees. And when she stopped we were next to a river, and I looked downstream and upstream in search of whatever tragedy she’d wanted me to see. Inevitably, there lay another body. A girl this time. Facedown in the water with her head bobbing against the stones. The rocks were decorated red where the water hadn’t washed the blood away. When I fisted the back of her jacket and rolled her weighted body over, I found she no longer had any face at all. Parts of it went down the river to wherever it ended, and parts of it were stolen by the fear she felt in the seconds before her demise.

I swear – I swear on my life – I don’t have a clue who would do such a thing to a girl that must’ve been so pretty one time, but I laid her to rest in a more comfortable grave anyway.

The farmhouse was empty, so I spent all of my days outside of it. The cows and the pigs dwindled in number and I wondered whether I was too old to buy any more. The chickens were alright company. In the quiet there was a peacefulness I’d yearned for my whole life.

It’s autumn, again, when the barn owl shows her expectant eyes.

She’s old. Older than any barn owl should be, if memory serves me correct.

I resign myself to trailing behind her, barely looking up this time as I already know the direction we’re going. The treeline in the distance is more distant than it was the year prior. The walk is longer. I move more slowly.

Where does the owl go when she isn’t around? A part of me believes this is her full-time job, her calling. A part of me thinks she travels from place to place, property to property, doing her damnedest to convey to each farmer the frights that are hidden just out of sight on his own land.

Maybe she believes this land is hers, and I’ve turned myself into her willing slave.

She leads me this time right into the heart of the forest, past the grave of the boy and past the grave of the girl. She leads me to a place I know I must’ve been before, because there lays a woman face-up with a blanket covering her head. It’s a blanket my wife knit years ago. And though I don’t remember being here, and although the body is decomposing and skeletal, I recognise her nearly immediately.

My hand is shaking as I pull back the damp wool.

This face I do recognise. Close to her chest she clutches a photograph full of smiling faces. It’s her and the girl from the year before and the boy from the year before that.

I remember, once, having a family just like that.

I remember the day I snapped this very photograph.

I remember losing my mind. Wanting silence and simplicity. Yearning for this loneliness that served me so little in the end.

It begins to rain. And the forest floods with mud so thick I couldn’t dream of getting out of it. But I don’t even try. Instead, I lay next to my wife on the forest floor and I don’t know whether I cry – a symbol of the grief I’m not allowed to feel – or whether the wetness of the sky simply burns my eyes.

I’ve only been horrible.

Not all the time, not for all my life, but these trees hold the secrets of every crime I’ve ever committed. And the barn owl knows. She watches my body as it sinks into the ground. She watches while it decomposes into soil and dirt. She watches as a tree grows in its place, and there she makes her home in my own demise.

She has a family. And she cares for it better than I did mine.