Chapter Ten: The Whispering Tree
811 Words
The road beyond the village was quiet, but never silent. Birds called from the treetops, the wind hummed in the tall grass, and in the distance, the world seemed to breathe again.
Aera walked with purpose, the bell strapped to her side beneath a folded cloth. It pulsed sometimes—not in warning, but in recognition. As though it felt the forgotten things lingering in the world around them.
Kael kept close, quieter now than ever before. Since the fall of the Voice Beneath, he’d watched Aera differently—not with fear, or even awe, but with something deeper.
Respect. Maybe even grief.
They’d seen too much to return to who they were.
---
They arrived in the village of Neren’s Hollow by dusk.
It was a quiet place nestled beneath a massive, ancient tree whose branches reached out like arms protecting the cottages below. But as they stepped into the town square, Aera’s bell pulsed sharply.
Something was wrong.
A woman stood beneath the tree, whispering a name over and over.
"Jorah… Jorah…"
Others passed by her without looking, eyes hollow. Children played, but didn’t laugh. Even the wind didn’t move the tree’s branches.
Kael stepped forward. “Ma’am? Are you alright?”
The woman didn’t blink. Didn’t seem to hear him.
Aera’s breath caught.
“She’s not whispering for someone alive,” she said. “She’s trying to remember someone who’s been erased.”
She approached and placed her hand on the woman’s shoulder.
“Who’s Jorah?” Aera asked gently.
The woman’s lips froze. Her eyes turned to Aera, full of water and confusion.
“I… I don’t know,” she whispered. “But I say his name so I don’t forget it again.”
---
They found the elder of the village, a bent man with skin like bark and eyes that never focused.
He welcomed them in, offered soup, but said little—until Aera pressed.
“There’s something wrong here,” she said. “Your people are forgetting. Not slowly—violently. Something is pulling the memories out of them.”
The elder nodded slowly.
“It started after the tree cracked,” he murmured. “Three winters ago. We heard it at night—a splitting sound, deep in the roots. The next day, one boy didn’t know his own name. A week later, his mother forgot she had a son.”
Kael’s jaw clenched. “And no one tried to leave?”
“They did. But the moment they passed the tree’s shadow, they forgot why they were walking. Forgot where they were going.”
Aera stood. Her bell buzzed faintly.
“We need to see the tree.”
---
At its base, the tree was wider than a house. Its bark was split down the center like a scar, and black sap oozed slowly from the crack.
Aera approached and knelt.
There, nestled among the roots, was a small wooden mask, worn smooth by time. It had no eyes.
She reached for it—
“Do not pick it up,” came a voice from the branches above.
Aera froze.
A figure stepped down through the limbs, light and silent. A woman, wrapped in vines and veils of wind-blown hair, with bark-like skin and a face carved with grief.
“You carry the bell,” she said softly. “Then you already know: this tree is not just old. It is witness.”
Aera stood slowly. “Witness to what?”
The woman gestured to the cracked bark.
“Once, this was a sacred tree. A place where stories were laid to rest in peace. But long ago, someone buried a lie here. A memory twisted so cruelly that even the roots recoiled.”
Kael frowned. “A lie?”
The woman nodded. “A child was taken. Not by accident, not by spirits—but by someone from the village. And they made the others forget. Every year, more names vanished. The tree tried to hold them. But lies rot. And rot spreads.”
Aera stared at the mask.
“And the mask?”
“It belonged to the child. The first forgotten.”
Aera turned to Kael. “It’s happening again. Not echoes this time—but erasure.”
Kael glanced at the villagers in the distance, still going about their routines, still unaware of what they’d lost.
“Then we stop it,” he said. “We dig up the lie.”
The woman in the tree looked at Aera, her eyes ancient.
“But to do that,” she warned, “you must wear the mask. You must see what the tree saw.”
Aera stepped forward, heart steady.
“Then I’ll remember for them.”
She reached down—and lifted the mask.
---
The sky turned black.
The world went still.
And Aera fell into memory.
- Writer
