Bright Eyes

He had watched them since their arrival in these woods. They were a quiet and gentle people whose only violent outlet seemed to be chopping down his trees. For the longest time, he had considered this an attack, but he was yet too weak to retaliate. True, true, the small clan would have to level most of the forest to do him any real harm, but pain is pain no matter what amount. Consider this the next time a sucker-fly lands on your skin and goes to work, siphoning off only a tiny droplet of blood for itself. You itch, scratch, and swat at it, do you not?

But time passed—a little slowly for him—and he gradually became aware that these people only cleared enough space to build their houses. Once the clan was settled in, an amazing thing happened. The lines between building and tree had disappeared entirely.

The trees themselves were drafted into the clan’s everyday lifestyle. Rope strung between them served a variety of uses. He had listened as amorous young men perched in branches and softly called at the upper windows of their coy idols. They lived, fed, and grew in his expanse, and he became used to the pain of their chopping. After all, winter hurt, but would never kill him. Always, he would grow back. And so when the autumn came, and the leaves fell, and the clan cut down his trees for firewood, he said nothing. He settled into his deep sleep and bid them good luck on surviving the bitter forest cold.

His sense of identity was a thing that spanned centuries. The clan, little by little, grew into the hundreds, into a tribe. And just as slowly, he had come to understand that he was a he. He had thoughts and feelings. They told him so, in a quiet way, like one whispering to a dreaming sleeper.

All this was set in stone the week the boy was lost. Tamon, it had been. Tamon was young and foolish, and set out into the forest to give his hunting father a scare. Inevitably, the young boy got lost, never once seeing his cunning, hidden father as the man waited patiently for game. The boy cried, screamed, and wept in a matter of hours. It took just as long for the one watching him to realize this was the perfect chance.

He had studied them for so long. He had learned their words and their shape. The forest is nothing if not adaptive.

A wooden frame, blood of sap, and flesh of the lightest clay. Moss would have to do for hair, but the eyes… the eyes he had no substitute for. Not as if he needed them. But his people talked so much of each others’ eyes that he felt strange trying to imitate without them. So he reached deep within himself, in a painful way that only the truly introspective can understand, and finally retrieved two bright quartz crystals from a geode.

He walked to the stream where Tamon trudged in a panic. The boy was almost fevered with worry, and kept looking up at the sky between the trees, where it grew unabashedly dark. Tamon hurried on, hoping this was the stream which led near to his tribe’s camp, the whole while unaware of the silent form stalking him, whose footsteps would never be betrayed by the complaints of twigs and sticks.

Tamon screamed when he heard “Hello.” He put his hands to his face and covered his eyes, as if this childish ward would protect him from all harm. If I can’t see it… it can’t-

“I said ‘Hello,’ little boy.”

Tamon pulled his hands down and saw the shape of a man. The shape was tall and willowy, but the voice was deep and untried. Tamon stared in silence. Surely I haven’t walked so far as to the western clan. This is a stranger’s voice.

The figure stepped forward, into a swath of light permitted by the treetops above. His skin was pale, like Tamon’s. He was barely clothed in… in bark? No, some kind of tough leather. And his hair… and his eyes! Those quartz eyes shone brilliantly in the twilight, and it was those eyes—those eyes he had sought to be so much like them—which made the boy scream and hide his own again.

“What is wrong?”

“You are a spirit-man and you will eat me!”

“I will not eat you. I have tasted of your blood before, and it is not good.”

This seemed to only make things worse. Tears trailed from the boy’s fingers.

“I will take you to your tribe.”

“I’ll not trust you, Jack o’ Bright Eyes! I’ll not trust your lies!”

The man blinked, more taken aback by the rhyme than its insult.

In the silence, Tamon composed himself. If he was to die, eaten by a spirit-man, he would know the spirit-man for what he was. Always, when he had interrogated his elders, they would say “A spirit-man eats little boys who run off… and who lie. And steal.” And he would beg them to go on, to say the thing’s shape that he may know it, to speak of its mind and its heart… this thing so similar to men but not. And they would only say “They are often bad things. But sometimes good. But even the good ones will eat the flesh of thieving boys!”

Tamon slowly lowered his hands and looked at Bright Eyes, sniffling only a little. He thought, under the circumstances, he had behaved honorably enough to pride his ancestors. And for the few hard-case dead relatives who still weren’t convinced, the boy cocked back his head and called “Eat me.”

“What? Why?”

“Go on! Do it! I’ll show you no fear.”

The spirit-man tilted his head to the side, an unconscious movement that felt too natural to be ignored. “You are strange.”

“And you are a coward!” Tamon could see them all, all of his ancestors all the way back to Red Bear, even grand-uncle Yulish who had been so cruel and picky, grinning ear-to-ear in pride.

The figure sat down on the forest soil, looking up at his accuser. “Do you want to go back to your people, or not?”

Silence. Wind tittered through branches. The nearby stream struggled to keep from chuckling.

“Yes.”

“Then follow,” Bright Eyes said as he stood. He walked a little ways into the forest, stopped, and glanced back.

Tamon stood with his arms crossed. “No tricks from you! My tribe is near the stream. We follow the stream.”

The spirit-man blinked once, twilight still finding those eyes. “This is the wrong stream.” He turned and kept walking into the forest.

Tamon turned about, looked around him for some magic landmark that had appeared out of nowhere to confirm his side of the story, and saw none. Defeated, he grudgingly followed the spirit-man deeper into the forest. He decided to follow and save his strength… just in case Jack o’ Bright Eyes decided to eat him after all.

The stream waited long enough for the boy to be out of earshot before bursting into laughter.