Chapter 5: When the Forest Answered
1012 Words
The forest did not welcome everyone.
This was the first thing the babaylan told me as she tied a strip of woven cloth around my wrist, her fingers cool and deliberate against my skin.
“It tolerates,” she said, tightening the knot, “most. It tests a few. And it speaks only to those it chooses.”
“That’s comforting,” I murmured.
She smiled without humor. “It should not be.”
We walked at dusk, when the air thickened and the cicadas began their relentless chant. Warriors escorted us to the forest’s edge but did not cross it. Even Datu Kalas lingered behind, leaning casually against a spear, eyes bright with anticipation.
Rajah Alon stood beside me, silent.
He wore no armor—only a dark red wrap at his waist, markings painted faintly across his chest and shoulders in ash and oil. Ritual markings. Ancient ones.
Seeing him stripped of rank and steel did something unsettling to my chest.
“You do not have to do this,” he said quietly, for my ears alone.
I looked at him. Really looked.
This wasn’t a command. This was concern.
“And if I don’t?” I asked.
“Then the forest will keep wondering,” he replied. “And so will my people.”
“And you?”
His jaw tightened. “I already am.”
That settled it.
The babaylan stepped ahead, her staff striking root and earth in a steady rhythm. With each step, the forest seemed to lean inward, branches knitting together overhead until the sky thinned to a ribbon of bruised purple.
The balete stood at the center.
Massive. Ancient. Its roots sprawled like petrified serpents, thick enough to cradle a body. Lanterns flickered around its base, their light refusing to climb its trunk.
“This is where you fell,” the babaylan said.
My pulse spiked. The air felt heavier here, humming against my skin like static.
“I didn’t mean to,” I said again, uselessly.
“No one ever does.”
She gestured to the ground. “Sit.”
I lowered myself onto the earth, cool and damp beneath my palms. The babaylan knelt across from me, her eyes reflecting firelight.
“Blood remembers,” she intoned. “Soil remembers. Speak your name.”
“Maya Reyes.”
The forest breathed in.
Not metaphorically.
The leaves shuddered. Roots shifted. A low sound rolled through the ground, felt more than heard.
The babaylan’s eyes widened just a fraction.
“Again.”
“Maya Reyes,” I said, louder.
Something answered.
A pressure bloomed behind my eyes, not painful, just present. Images flickered—water, fire, a woman running barefoot through trees that burned and bloomed at once.
I gasped.
Rajah Alon stepped forward instinctively.
“Do not touch her,” the babaylan snapped. “Not yet.”
His hands stilled, clenched at his sides.
“Tell us what you seek,” the babaylan said.
“I want to go home,” I said immediately.
The forest went still.
Then—amusement. Ancient, vast, unmistakable.
Home is not always where you began.
The words weren’t spoken aloud. They unfurled inside me, layered with voices that were not human, not singular.
“I don’t belong here,” I said, shaking.
Belonging is not permission. It is recognition.
The ground beneath me warmed.
I cried out as pain flared along my wrist—the cloth burned away, replaced by heat carving into skin. Rajah Alon swore and moved again, but the babaylan held him back with a raised staff.
When the pain faded, a mark remained.
A leaf. Veined like lightning.
The forest’s mark.
Kalas inhaled sharply from the edge of the clearing.
The babaylan bowed her head.
“She is chosen.”
Murmurs rippled outward—fear, awe, hunger.
Rajah Alon stared at the mark, something raw flickering across his face.
“What does it want from her?” he demanded.
The forest answered him directly.
What it has always wanted from you.
The ground split—not violently, but deliberately—revealing water beneath, clear and luminous. Reflections danced across bark and skin.
Memory surged.
A warrior kneeling beneath this tree centuries ago. Blood soaking soil. A vow sworn to protect the boundary between worlds.
Rajah Alon staggered.
“You,” I whispered, understanding crashing into me. “Your line. You’re bound to this place.”
His voice was hoarse. “I am its guardian.”
And she is the key.
The realization hit like a blow.
I wasn’t here by accident.
I was here because something was breaking.
Kalas stepped forward now, unable to contain himself. “If she is the key,” he said smoothly, “then perhaps she should not belong to only one man.”
The forest growled.
Not metaphorically either.
Roots surged upward, stopping inches from Kalas’s feet. His smile faltered—for the first time.
Touch her without consent, the forest warned, and you will feed me.
Silence fell.
Rajah Alon moved then—placing himself between me and everyone else.
Possessive. Protective. Unyielding.
“She stays with me,” he said. “By my life.”
The forest considered.
Then the pressure eased. The lights dimmed. The roots settled.
The ritual was over.
But nothing felt finished.
Later, as Alon walked me back in silence, I broke first.
“So,” I said weakly. “Chosen. That’s new.”
He huffed a breathless laugh. “You are infuriatingly calm.”
“I’m not calm,” I said. “I’m coping.”
He stopped walking.
“Maya,” he said—my name, bare and unguarded.
I looked up.
The space between us felt charged, fragile.
“I will not let this place consume you,” he said quietly. “Even if the forest demands it.”
Something in my chest twisted.
“And if it demands you?” I asked.
His gaze darkened.
“Then,” he said, “we will both defy it.”
Behind us, unseen but satisfied—
The forest listened.
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