Again, thanks to everyone who made it this far. The story comes to an end with this post. If you are new, start with Part 1
I hustled down the slope at a skip, two hops on my good leg for each on the bad. The smoke billowing from the great tree entombing Martina fought a losing battle against the rain. The same tree Roger and Callum had bowed before, that burned bright and from which the enormous orange form emerged. The orange figure was gone. Callum too. As the rain belted against the forest canopy above, I hoped Roger found the same fate as Callum and Martina was safe. Somehow I didn’t feel that lucky.
The base of the huge tree came into view between the gaps in the forest. The entire trunk was caked in black charcoal, a triangle the colour of bone carved at around head-height. Could Martina have survived? Or was she now the same ash-coloured creature as Roger and Callum?
At the base of the tree lay the discarded, stained cloth that had wrapped the corpse of Roger’s son Miles. One end of the cloth disappeared into a growing pool of dirty water. Roger and Miles were gone.
“Martina?”
My voice trembled and barely rose above the cacophony of rain drops pelting the leaves and branches above. As if on cue the rain relented and the sky brightened.
“Martina?”
The response came as a thin whimper from above. The trunk of the tree cracked as if expanding under heat. Martina. She was trying to push her way out. I scampered around the tree to find a way to climb up and get to the hole Callum dropped her in. The tree rose as a smooth cylinder. I gave a half-hearted attempt at scaling the trunk knowing it would fail.
The trunk cracked again, a razor thin wedge opening and then closing again. I kicked at the forest floor until my toe thumped against something solid. I picked up a rock the size of my fist and bounced it once on my palm to feel the weight and then smashed it against the trunk. The bark cracked under the pressure, like the shell of an oversized egg. Suddenly aware that Martina might wear the rock on the head, I raised my arm and beat at the tree as high as I could. Soon a small hole formed, enough that I could get my hand in. The bark came away in clumps and the hole grew revealing a hollowed interior of wood baked black by heat.
As the hole grew so did the sound of whimpering from within. My hands worked with urgency and then in an instant they stopped and I took a hasty step back. An ashen grey hand poked up into the hole. I was too late. She was one of them.
The hand extended further and the ash grey coating blended into the reddish skin of an arm. I stepped forward and yanked at the bark. A vertical split formed and a huge chunk came free, opening the space like a door. Martina tumbled out and collapsed to the soggy forest floor. Her hands and feet were the colour of ash, the rest of her skin the red of a deep sunburn. Her bulging stomach almost glowing red hot through tattered clothes tinged with black.
Martina put a hand to the floor and screamed in pain as the ashen skin hissed against the damp ground. She collapsed to her back and pulled her limbs in close, rocking back and forth. Whatever process that turned Roger and Callum into what they became had started but not finished with Martina.
I dropped to my knees and put a hand to her shoulder.
“Are you alright?”
Veins of red streaked stained the whites of her eyes. She opened her mouth to answer, but took in a sharp breath. Her eyes shifted from mine and looked over my shoulder. I felt him there. The warmth. My stomach clenched and I couldn’t breathe.
“Tom.”
The intonation of a furious father. Roger.
I recoiled at the sight of him, emerging from the dark entrance of the cave. The hard enamel of his burnt-grey exterior had bubbled and melted away leaving an oblong shaped head and a left arm that looked like it might fall right off. The rain had done a number on him as it had with Callum, but Roger managed to find shelter enough. The soles of his feet hissed against the damp of the forest floor. If it hurt, he didn’t show it.
“Everything was in place,” he said. His chin trembled. His eyes burned with anger. “We were so nearly there.” He turned his gaze back to the mouth of the cave where, mingling with the gloom, the charred corpse of Miles lay. The leathery limbs splayed out as if he might get up off the ground. For a moment I imagined it, the body rising like a mummy in a low budget horror movie. But Miles did not move.
“Every night I hear his screams as the fire consumes him. It was through fire he would return, and the screaming would stop. And now look.” Roger gestured to the soggy forest around us.
“You tried to kill me,” Martina snapped.
“A sacrifice was necessary. He demanded it. Nothing is gained without cost.”
“You lied to me.”
“You believed what you chose to believe. The child was never yours to keep.”
Roger growled and swung down with his fist and struck a hot blow across my cheek. I sprawled to the ground and blinked hard to stop the forest from spinning. Roger planted his feet either side of my head, blister like bubbles marking his legs. He took a small object in his hands and raised it to the sky. I groaned and trained my eyes on his fingers. A metal triangle pointed to the sky.
The calm of the grey sky turned to a withering white. I raised a hand to shield my eyes from the brightness. A small circular hole formed directly above us and grew, the inside filling with burning red. Heat washed over us as if someone opened the door of a giant oven. The layer of moisture on the ground evaporated into the warmth of the air. Tiny leaves strewn on the ground crackled and shrivelled.
Roger cackled and his voice boomed. “Through him everything will burn.”
A shaft of orange light focussed on the great tree that was Martina’s prison. The tree glowed red before exploding in a ball of fire sending shards of bark flying through the forest. I pulled my hands to my face and screamed. I tried to stand, but the heel of Roger’s foot slammed my head back down to the ground.
Somewhere in the chaos Martina wailed. I felt around in my pocket and found the water talisman, the object to call the woman in blue, to call the water. I balled the object into my fist and flung it out in the direction of Martina’s voice. She had to find a way to bring back the rain and finish Roger off. I raised a hand to signal her and Roger pinned it to the ground, my skin sizzling below his foot.
I turned to the sky. The same enormous head in orange coalesced below the clouds and spat fire like some demon dragon. The overwhelming heat turned my eyes to sandpaper. I might have cried, but there were no tears to fall.
Sparks of orange broke out above, as the dried leaves ignited. A gust of wind picked up glowing embers and spread them through the forest. I forced my eyes shut against the stinging of the smoke.
And then whispering. It reminded me of the first night in the lookout. The breathy syllables that came before the storm. I searched the sky for rain clouds and found only fire.
A trickle of water lapped at the underside of my exposed ankles. I tapped my good leg and felt a puddle of cool. I raised my head and looked to the cave. Martina stood at the entrance holding the talisman aloft. Water rose from the cave floor, a swell of the underground pool below. A deep rumble from within drew Roger’s attention. He turned in time to see a geyser of water burst from the mouth of the cave as if it were the nozzle for an enormous fire hose. The final time I saw Roger, saved as a photograph in my memory, was him taking a step towards Martina, his hand outstretched and ready to snatch the talisman from her hand. The water beat him there and engulfed Martina. At the end, Roger shielded his face against the torrent. I took a deep breath and braced for impact.
The summer I turned twelve, my family spent our summer vacation at a small coastal town a few hours south. The house stood on the shores of a bay shaped like a horse shoe. Beyond the bluff on the south side was a second beach the locals called ‘Boomer’. There, away from the protection of the bay, enormous waves smashed themselves into a riot of white foam at the shore. My mother warned me against swimming there. I didn’t listen. I waded in up to my waist and laughed nervously as the wash of a wave almost lifted me from my feet. When the retreating water sucked me deeper and a giant wave crested above my head I stopped laughing. The awesome power of unrestrained nature unleashed on my head and I lost all control. Weightless and at the mercy of the forces of the ocean I tumbled and held my breath and prayed.
And that is what I did now, picked up by the wave of angry water bursting from the cave.
White water forced its way into my nostrils and ears. Stray branches clawed at my arms and legs as the water lifted my body from the forest floor and tossed my limp body between the trees. I whimpered and braced for the inevitable impact that would break my ribs and force all the breath from my lungs. But it didn’t come. I opened my eyes to see a flowing trail of ocean blue in amongst the bubbling white.
My head breached the surface and I gulped in a desperate breath. The torrent flowed like a river, my arms flailing to grab hold of something, anything. My shirt pulled tight and I spun around, thin arms squeezing an embrace around my torso. Martina.
Wet hair streaked across her face and she yelled, “Hold on.”
I grasped at a thick branch beside her, the river of water spreading out across the valley, quenching the fires. The water subsided as fast as it arrived, and we clambered to find a foothold among the branches at the top of the forest canopy. With trembling limbs we clung to the top of the tree and watched the water recede until only a thin layer sat atop the forest floor.
The white in the sky dissipated and revealed a clear and cloudless blue. The orange face spitting fire was gone. So too was Roger. He had survived the rain, but surely he could not have survived the flood.
I reached out for Martina’s hand to say thank you and she winced. The horrible grey on her hands and feet from the aborted fire ceremony peeled away and below it the flesh was red and raw. We sat there, panting, barely able to move.
“How do we get down?” I said.
Martina shrugged.
In the distance a thwap thwap sound rose and the bright red of the rescue helicopter rose above the tree tops. I had begged them to come, and someone had listened. I waved a tired hand and the helicopter turned. They saw us.
The official story reads like this: A localised wildfire broke out in the valley near the cave, the cause a burst of lightning. Against all protocol, three lookout staff ventured down into the valley after raising the alarm. Before the wildfire could spread, a freak storm hammered the forest and the resulting flash flood extinguishing the fire. In the chaos Callum from lookout three drowned, the two remaining lookout staff were rescued by helicopter. Roger remains missing, whereabouts unknown.
It is a neat, though unlikely story. The motivation for the lookouts leaving their posts to rush into a fire is never explained. The truth, however, is even more unlikely and harder to believe.
Martina and I know the full story, but we came to a mutual understanding to keep it to ourselves. Who would believe us anyway?
When we made it back to the Ranger Station, Hitch shook his head at me. After the raving messages I sent down during the commotion, it was generally thought that the trouble was mostly my doing. Needless to say, I lost my job as a lookout. It didn’t matter, there was no way I was going back out there anyway.
Though I am sure Roger is gone for good, I still see him in my dreams. The red fire in his eyes. The mangled corpse of his son at his ash-grey feet.
The water talisman Martina used to call the water from the depths of the cave spilled free from her hands when the torrent of water lifted her into the trees. It still lies somewhere out there in the forest. So too does the fire talisman that Roger held right to the end. The potential for catastrophe remains, for the creation of further creatures that Callum and Roger became. We can only hope the talisman remains lost and buried.
Six weeks after our rescue, Martina gave birth to a healthy and happy little boy. She texted me a photo of her cradling him in her arms, a blue beanie protecting his head against the cold. In the photo Martina’s hands are still wrapped in bandages. The healing process will be long, but the doctors are hopeful there will be minimal scarring.
I moved further north to a small town on the plains, far away from anything resembling a forest. Up here it is cold and it rains all the time. But that is how I would have it.
I found work mopping floors at the local aquatic centre. It’s batshit boring, but everyone is friendly, and that is most of the battle. There is something calming that comes with dragging around a bucket full of water between the lap pools. It is not what I aimed for as a child, but for now it will do. I need some time to reset before venturing onto anything remotely strenuous.
And no one here has called me Waterworks Winslow yet.
During the long winter nights I am often awoken by the drumming of rain on the tin roof of my tiny flat. I lie there in the dark waiting to hear her voice, the whispering of the woman in blue. Sometimes I think I can hear her and I sit up in bed and focus, straining to hear those breathy syllables again. But always the sound dissipates leaving only the gentle roar of the rain.