Darkhenge

G. GORT: IVY

I should have guessed.

As we ran down the glass stair and the bubble-seamed tunnel, reflections of ourselves ran beside us, a figure with my lichen-stained hair, and another in the mask he wore under the other; a face made of ivy leaves.

Above, through the transparent roof, I could see all the roots of the forest, an unguessable tangle, a million filaments stretching and reaching down into the soil, from gnarled lumps vast as boulders to threads tinier than worms. The forest drank, and in its depths snakes slid and insects burrowed. Billions of ants scurried like thoughts below it; its millennia of leaves fell and crushed and soaked and rotted.

He stopped so suddenly I banged into him, breathless.

“Listen!”

He caught my arm. Far off, the faintest whine. As if in the forest someone had started up a saw, had begun to cut the trees.

I couldn’t answer. Pain was soaking my side. Blood dripped from my arm.

“Chloe!” he gasped.