Chapter 2 The hidden forest
They travelled further now, sometimes alone and sometimes with the other, seeking more of their kind and watching the continuing decline of the children of men . Then came that day, the day when their future began.
Gallica was alone wandering aimlessly north and east, she had just crossed a broad plain by starlight heading towards the far mountains when she first felt its shadow. Stopping and looking towards the source of the blankness in the world a sudden sense of excitement took hold of her. The trees she could see were young, barely a century or so old, and yet they carried an aura, a memory of something far older and greater. Gallica ventured closer, reaching out to touch an outrider of the gloaming. The tree knew her as she knew it but it could not tell her what the unseen place was or why it was there. Puzzled Gallica returned to her waking place and thought but found nothing in her memory to explain what she had felt.
Many times she wandered back to the young forest after that, but the shadowed place she sensed remained shrouded from her knowing. A decade passed and she found another of her own kind but, as with the first one, it could provide no answer to the riddle of why they had woken, nor to the mystery of the forest.
Then, as she wandered amongst the growing trees on a bright morning in spring, she felt the other for the first time. Something else, not a tree, not a forest creature nor one of her own, but something alive and vital. Whatever it was it knew that she was there and it was watching her. As she reached out for it the blankness intervened, but before all contact was lost she had sense of some thing bright and powerful, of something old and yet younger than the new trees. Something knowing that might provide the answers that she sought. She made one last desperate attempt to speak to it but like mist through a clearing it evaporated before her entreaty.
Back in her place of waking Gallica sought for an explanation of what it was that she had felt, but as before she found no answers, nor did her own kind have any to offer. Two more of them she found in her searching each looking for the same reasons as she, neither able to tell her why.
The seasons turned and she often returned to that forest. She had explored others near and far but found nothing more than burgeoning nature, none had the sense of something hidden that this one did, and nowhere else did she feel the watching presence. Only here, where the trees grew faster than anywhere else and the deer and birds were most numerous was she conscious of this other. Yet still she could not persuade it to answer her pleas for communication.
Then one night as she searched again for an answer a thought came to her. Perhaps it was her form that dissuaded it, though in as much as she could tell its form was the same as her own. But maybe it did not trust her as she was; perhaps it required something older, maybe more familiar….
It took much searching and practice for her to master what she needed, but in the end she accomplished it and early on a bright summer's day, when life was basking in the pleasures of the early sun, she stood beneath the trees of the forest in the body of a young child of men.
Yet is seemed her efforts were to be for nothing, the forest remained unchanged and the secret place still hidden. As the day grew warmer and the hum of bees stronger she sank down beneath one of the larger beech trees, water seeped from her eyes and without knowing it she cried herself to sleep.
The day had moved towards evening and the night creatures were starting to stir before she woke, rubbing her eyes and accepting her failure. Rising she sighed and turned towards the open land again and began her way back through the shadowed trees. She did not think she would return.
Only as she reached the edge of the young forest, a place where she had found some form of long forgotten gate, did she find what she had sought. As she turned to look back one last time into the deepening shadows beneath the trees she felt a change in the forest, a shimmer of something shifting as if a veil had lifted briefly allowing a breeze from another place to pass across the trees. The birds and animals fell still and silent and the trees seemed to bow as if to a passing gale and then the presence was there, closer than ever she had known it before and, or so it suddenly seemed, curious.
"Why do you wear that form?" The voice seemed to come from all around at once as if from the very air itself. "You did not need it before, so why do you take it now?"
For the first time since her waking Gallica felt emotion, she thought the name of it was hope.
"I wanted you to speak to me and you would not. I thought that perhaps my form offended you and so I sought out the only other form that I know well enough."
There was a sense of something coming closer and the voice came again.
"Why do you wish to speak with me?"
"I am alone and I have so many questions. There are few of us and none know more than me."
"How few?" the voice had sharpened slightly and she though she felt a sense of chill around her.
"No more than four others and it has taken all of the time since I awoke to find them."
Suddenly the presence was all around her, wrapping her in a light brighter than that of the mid day sun. Gallica felt the full power of it for the first time, the age of it and yet the youth of it, the deep well of knowing and a boundless curiosity. She felt also the hint of something she thought was feeling, of joy and sorrows past, of loss and yearning eased by the love of the forest and the creatures that lived within them.
For a moment an image of a great forest and of people living within it in peace and joy stirred in her mind, shifting to allow a glimpse of shadows of other people and other times and other loves. Fear followed hope for she didn't understand what she saw and was bemused by the intensity of it.
The light of the other withdrew slightly leaving behind it warmth that seemed to envelope her.
"You are newborn!" The presence sounded both shocked and surprised. "What form of being are you? Where did you some from?"
Tears welled in Gallica's eyes as she considered the question.
"I do not know. Only that I awoke and was alone." With a shaking hand she wiped way the falling tears. "I have travelled across the lands and though I recognise all I see I find no answers. I do not know why I have wakened or what I am supposed to do now. I have so many questions and no one to answer them."
"Why did you come here?"
The voice was now low and kind and the light drew closer again. Gallica shook her head.
"I don't know. But I felt some sort of barrier in this forest, something that stopped me seeing all that was here, then I felt a presence, you I think and you knew that I was here. I have wandered amongst the remaining sons of men but they did not see me. I hoped that I might find someone here to help me find my way."
The tears flowed again as a sense of loss and desperation took hold of her.
For a moment there was no reply then she thought she caught the echoes of a thought.
"It has been a long time but if I try I must be able to find the way. Ah yes, that is how. If I just ask….."
Gallica felt the world shift and suddenly the light was gone. A sense of even greater loss gripped her then suddenly she felt a touch of something against her face, something wiping away the tears. She looked up and met eyes as blue as summer sky and as deep as the sea, and for a moment she was blinded to all else. Then slowly the blue eyes moved away from her as the figure before her straightened and she saw the being that possessed them.
