Forest

It’s dark, I can’t even see directly in front of me. But somehow, I know I’m awake. I know I’m not imagining this. Dreaming it. I roll off of what I decided was a bed, and fumbled my way blindly around the room. Listening to my own footsteps and the sounds around me, I assumed half-heartedly that the floor was wooden, and I was in some kind of cabin. As I felt around the walls – the room was pretty small – I knew they were wooden as well. Good lord, where on earth am I?
My answers came when I found a latch. Pulling it until it came undone; I then reached down to what was an edge. This must be a door, I thought, and tugged. It opened easily, surprisingly enough. A deep orange light flooded into the room, and I turned around to observe my former setting in a new light.

And then, my mind froze in its place. My sister, her blonde hair a stringy tangled mess around her snowy face, lay unconscious on a bed that was several feet to the right of my own. I approached her, gently shook her thin frame. She awoke, half-asleep but functioning. “Where are we, Elodie?” She mumbled, rubbing her eyes. Light as they normally were, they looked eerily black in this light.
“I’m not even sure yet,” I admitted, smiling at her, “But we should go look around.” She nodded at this, pulling herself up.
“Hey,” She said as I walked toward the door, “Your bruise, it’s gone.” Absentmindedly, my hand drifted to my cheek, pressed down hard. No pain.
“Interesting.” I looked at her. “Mia, do you think we’re dead or alive?”
“I don’t know, but we’re bound to find out. C’mon.” She pushed past me, eager as always, and made her way up what I quickly registered as stairs. Like everything else thus far, these two steps were constructed of wood.

It was only when I stepped up beside my sister that I knew where we were.

The ship rocked gently on the waves below, the entire thing constructed of wood. I could hear others on the ship, but paid them little mind. The dock alone was enough to keep me distracted for some time. The wood shone in the sunlight, or rather, what little was left. Above, the sky was painted beautiful shades of orange, red, and pink. Some traces of blue were still left as well, pale but visible. Clouds lined the horizon, and in the sun’s shadow they looked black or grey. The sea looked golden, the waves gentle, barely creating any audible noise when they hit the sides of the ship. A gentle breeze flowed through, and while it shouldn’t have made me cold, I hugged myself. Somehow, that tiny movement in the air chilled my bones. I took in the beauty of it, and sighed.

Mia seemed as mesmerized as I was. She made her way to the edge of the ship, resting her arms on the guardrail, careful to avoid pieces of wood that were sticking up. She gazed out at the sky. “Elodie, do you regret dying?”
“How do you know we’re dead?”
“Nothing was ever this beautiful in life, El. Nothing.”
I was silent for a moment, briefly recalling the autumn evening skies and the way the ocean roared and crashed against the rocks at home. Were those not beautiful in their own ways? But I swallowed my thoughts and answered her. “We’re together, aren’t we? We are without violence, aren’t we? So no, I don’t regret a thing. We died like we should have. Together.”
“It’s just funny to me,” Mia continued, only briefly contemplating my answer to her. “Here we are, treading a golden ocean, but we left our bodies way back in the sea.”

I didn’t say anything. I simply walked past her, turned and gave her a half-hearted smile. “I’m going to go explore the ship, sister,” I said, making sure she could see on my face that I would be safe without her. After all, I wanted to do this on my own. Because I was younger than her, she did often insist upon accompanying me. “I shall return in a moment.”
She gave me a brief concerned look before sighing and nodding. “We’re already dead, what’s the worst that could happen?”

There were, as we had heard prior, more people on this ship. Some were old, some were young. The men heavily outnumbered the women; the women heavily outnumbered the children. There were so many people standing and sitting idly about, that I wondered how all of them fit into the cabins like Mia’s and my own. Most of them minded their own business, but one boy, a boy with short black hair and hazel eyes, approached me. “Exploring your new surroundings, eh?” He said, his voice bright, cheerful.
“I am,” I said, uncertain. Why come to me, of all people? “I…I’m new here, I guess.” A flicker of understanding lit in his eyes.
“I was new here…two days ago, I think. Time doesn’t seem to pass here, but it feels like it’s been a couple of days. I’m just waiting, now.” His eyes trailed to a woman fifteen feet away, who was caring for who I assumed was her daughter. “I hope to join my family.”
“What do you mean, exactly?”
“Well, it’s difficult to explain…Oh, there’s one going on now. C’mon, miss, I’ll show you.” Without hesitation, he took my hand in his own, tugging me along to the front of the ship. I went, unwillingly, but I went. We walked quickly across the deck until we came close to a clearing in people. A woman was floating in the air, seemingly going up toward the heavens. She went slowly, while a circle of people below, on the deck, watched. Silence ensued; no one even seemed to shift themselves into a more comfortable standing position. A million questions came to me all at once, but I honored the silence and kept my lips pursed. The ship seemed to stop rocking; the waves below became completely inaudible. A bright light blanketed the woman, and then she was gone. The people who had surrounded the area scattered again, not unlike a bag of marbles when turned upside-down. I turned to the boy.
“What on earth was that?” I asked him, my voice filled with some inexplicable excitement. He looked at me as though that was the dumbest question he had ever heard.
“That was what we, the ship’s attendees, call moving on. When Heaven decides you’re worthy of the paradise it contains. If you aren’t accepted, though….Two things may happen.” He looked out at the sun, which was now barely above the horizon. The sky had darkened, stars beginning to mark the inky black that was coming upon us. He sighed, and then continued. “First thing, you’re trapped in Purgatory. Here. This ship, forever. I’d say it’s worse than Hell. Second thing is…Well, Hell. If Purgatory isn’t enough, you’re thrown overboard. And when that happens, the ocean will swallow you whole.”

My stomach twisted. “I…Uhm, excuse me, sir.”
“No problem,” He said, moving out of my way. As I walked away, he shouted after me. “Call me Daniel, by the way.”
“I am Elodie. It was a pleasure meeting you, Daniel.” I called out weakly, quickly. I needed to get back to Mia.

Mia sensed my troubles before I had even opened my mouth. As soon as I got close to her, she turned to me, her grey eyes dark with concern. “Well, what is it?”
“Someone here told me about this ship,” I said, my voice on the brink of cracking. I was filled to the brim with anxiety. “How this is only a middle ground. We’ve got Heaven waiting for us, or Hell.”
She seemed to take this in for a moment, and then shrugged. “As long as we are together in the end, it doesn’t matter where I end up. I need to look after my little sister even now, you know.” She smiled at me, teasing me in her own way. “Who told you of this, anyway?”
She definitely wouldn’t like what I was about to say. When we were alive, we didn’t have these kinds of issues; that is, boy issues, and so I don’t know how she’d feel about that. But I did and do know that she’s extremely protective and any word of boys would set her on overdrive. “A boy,” I said, trying to remain nonchalant, “His name is Daniel. He’s been here for a couple of days.” I didn’t bother explaining the concept of time here. To be honest, I didn’t feel like I could have even if I’d wanted to.
My words, as predicted, made my sister frown. She sighed, looked at me with by far one of the most serious faces ever. “Don’t you think men are the least of our concerns right now?”
I felt my face heat up a little bit, not so much out of embarrassment but more so anger. My sister implying I would pursue a man here, of all the places…
“Mia! Those aren’t my intentions. Don’t imply those things.” I said, fast enough that the anger didn’t flare up anymore. Without a doubt it would have, had she kept it up. But instead, her face softened and she turned away from me.
“Well then, we ought to go rest. It’s nighttime and well…” She paused to gesture around us. “There isn’t too much else to do here.”

“Alright.” I’d found that arguing anything with Mia was difficult. She was impossibly stubborn.

And while this place was not a home, nor would it ever be – or so I hoped – It was peaceful. That night, in my pitch black room, the soft snoring coming from Mia and the gentle rocking of the boat put me to sleep.

I got out of bed only when I felt like it was time to. Mia turned, mumbled something, and continued dreaming. I watched her for a moment before I left the cabin.
The skies were a dark grey, and somewhere off in the distance, thunder rolled. The wind was strong, but as the boy from yesterday, Daniel, approached me, it stopped. And so did my voice. His face went from happy to frustrated when he noticed it, and everyone else seemed a bit aggravated as well. What the hell?
He stood beside me in silence, waited. The wind picked up again ten minutes later. “God damnit,” He sighed, leaning against a closed cabin door. “I hate when that happens.”
“What was that?” I asked him. “The wind stopped, and no one could speak…”
“That wind gives us our voices, Miss Elodie.” A small smile broke his serious features. “Without it, well, we can’t speak to one another.”
“But why? What purpose does that serve, exactly?”
“I don’t know,” Daniel admitted, peeling himself away from the cabin and instead leaning against the guardrail beside me, “It’s always been like that, I’ve heard.”
“I see.” I felt a bit embarrassed, I’ll admit it. Here was this man, talking to me, and all I could do was ask questions about such menial things. Recalling what my sister had said the previous night didn’t exactly help. Did I really come off as that desperate for human interaction in this place?

“So, El – do you mind if I call you El? – How did you get here?”

That was unexpected. Nervously, I picked myself up and sat on the guardrail, steadying myself to the point where I was sure I wouldn’t fall over. I looked up at the sky, inhaled, and then I began. “Well, my sister and I were created by this man. We were meant to hold all of the knowledge of the world, kind of like a database for him to access whenever he wanted. But, as with any experiment, something went wrong. Bad equation or something. I don’t know. Anyway, my sister and I, we had the ability to think freely. And for a time, we served our father of sorts well. But then we got older and older, and then we decided to run away together, and help others. Our father, he was a selfish man. We wanted to find good people with small problems in which we could repair. But…” A strange sadness bloomed in my chest. “…We, well, we were labeled witches and sentenced to die. The day we did die was the day they intended to burn us, side-by-side, at the stake. We decided to spare them the trouble.”
“So you took your own lives.” He said to me. It wasn’t a question, or an implication. He already knew.
“Yes. We went to the cliffs nearby, used what little mind power we had acquired to separate ourselves from the others, and fell into the sea. Our bodies are still there, I’d think. Fish food.” I wobbled a bit on the rail. Daniel was quick to steady me, grabbing my arm and pulling me forward a little.
“I’m sorry,” He said quietly, stepping back. “Just know that not everyone is so quick to judge. Some people will allow you the chance to be yourself; you just have to open up to them. Be yourself, and they’ll like you for that. Or they won’t. Hey, shit happens. What year?”
“Excuse me?”
“What year did you die?”
“1683.”

This seemed to throw him off for a minute. Then, understanding flickered in his hazel eyes. “I see. I died in 1690. I was eighteen.”
“I was seventy-two.”
“Holy shit, seventy-two? You old coot.”
“Looks can be deceiving, right?”
He studied me for a moment. “Right. I wouldn’t have guessed you to be any more than twenty.”

Suddenly, Mia appeared from our cabin. “Good…morning, I guess.”
“Morning, Miss.” Daniel tipped his imaginary hat. “Lovely day, ain’t it?”
“Absolutely wonderful.” Sarcasm, clearly. Mia hated the rain. I on the other hand, I loved it. I loved the cool feeling of it, the scent, and the way it made the waters seem to rage at its touch. And hey, a little thunder is nice.

Daniel remained with us the entire day. He told us stories, told us about how he’d passed – His father, the only remaining living family member he had, had asked him to go hunting for their next meal. An unexpected snowstorm hit, Daniel found himself lost, and thus, he froze to death – and played random childish games with us, games we hadn’t even thought of since we were young girls under our father’s care. At the end of the day, he bid us farewell, and we retired to our cabin. Things went like this for what felt like weeks and weeks, and while new people were coming every day, we seemed to greet and then ignore them for the duration of their stay. The way I saw it, why would I acquaint myself with someone who would be leaving for the better or the worse in some day’s time?

Then one night, weeks later, Daniel, Mia and I had an interesting conversation. We were lying on the planks of the top deck, looking up at the stars, when Daniel rolled on his side and looked at us. “We’ve been here for so long…do you think we’re all stuck here? Purgatory forever?”
“I don’t think so, no,” Mia said, not taking her eyes off of some constellation. “Our time will come.”
“Mia,” I sat up, looked at both of them. “He has a point. Look around us. With the exception of the people who are stuck here, which are few…We have a whole new group of people. And it’s changing every day. Why is it taking so long for us to be processed? What makes us so much different from all those average people passing through here on their way to happiness or suffering?”
“It doesn’t matter, though,” Daniel sighed. “Honestly, leaving now is the last thing I want to do. I don’t want to leave you girls behind. It’s like you’ve said before, El. Why acquaint yourself with people who will just as quickly leave? I don’t want to do that.”
Mia fell silent, moved by the boy’s words. I had to admit, I was touched as well. This boy came into our lives at quite literally the most unexpected time, and after living with all of this hate, all of this disdain for us and our kind…Someone understood us. Cared for us. Ironic how things turn out sometimes.

“I…Daniel. If Heaven takes us, they could offer me all of the happiness in the world. A family, love. Everything. And I still think that…” Mia looked off into the distance. “I would miss these days, these days with my sister and my new friend. Nothing can replace this, not for me.”
“Or me, either.” I smiled at both of them. “We’re all in this together.”

That night was a beautiful night indeed. However, we couldn’t have been more wrong about being together.