Forest Grim by Alexis MacIsaac

Declan had been alone when he saw the doe and fawn in the forest. His friend had gone on about some secret cave in the nearby woods, and he’d wanted to get a look for himself. But his friend was a “feckin’ liar.” There was no cave in those parts.

Yet on his way home, as he was working through his disappointment, he passed a clearing, where a doe lay with her baby. They sat so still he thought they might not be real. He understood they were alive only when he looked into their eyes.

“It’s like they really saw me,” he said.

I imagined him, before those creatures, holding his breath until his cheeks grew red, not daring to blink. Part of him would’ve wished he’d taken his phone, for a picture or a video, but the louder part of him would’ve been happy he was able to keep those moments to himself.

“How anyone shoots creatures like that, I haven’t a clue,” he said.

His voice had gone quiet and he looked beyond me as he said it, as if before him lay a mother and baby, their blood abloom, soaking the floor beneath us.

It was typical of him, to say something surprising like this. Only the evening before he’d seen the deer, Declan had tried to fight some poor tourist at the pub, who’d laughed when Celtic scored an own goal.

“Go on then!” he’d spat into the stranger’s face, spittle flying. “Hit me!”

The tourist had shielded his face, palms up, spluttering one “sorry” after another, before backing away from Declan, who loomed over him with red eyes.

I should have left him then, if I’d had any sense, but the next day he’d gone for that walk in the forest, to clear his muddy brain and to rid himself of the shame of having drank too much. And then he’d come back with that story of the doe and fawn, and I allowed the part of me that wanted to hold his head against my throat to dominate the part of me that wanted to throw all his things in a bag and toss them out onto the street. It would have been easier, I thought, if I could predict him.

“I want to go back,” he said. “Will you come with me?”

We went for a hike early in the evening. A mist had fallen and dew clung to leaves. Above us, trees lurched, swallowing light, the sound of our feet in the dead air. We walked with no particular destination in mind. My shirt clung to my clammy chest, and I soon unzipped my jacket. A pain crept into the space between my eyes. I wished I were at the flat, alone with a cup of tea; I didn’t want to be walking along rough terrain. The magic of Declan’s experience could not be recreated, and my softness toward him would inevitably give way to a kind of heaviness.

There was no real path to follow in the woods, but he seemed to know where he was going. I would have thought his feet would make more noise given his size, but he looked a part of the scenery in a way I never could.

“Your hair is pretty in this light,” he said, his eyes focused on a point ahead.

I felt badly then, for wishing I were somewhere else. Though the compliment was more of an apology. Before we’d left, he’d laughed at my choice of trainers. “You look a right eejit wearing those.”

On the hike, we didn’t hold hands; we were past that point now. He walked slightly ahead of me. Looking at him, it was hard to imagine that I could love a person like that. Declan elicited such a multitude of feelings, it was hard to know which ones to trust.

“How long will we be out for?” I asked.

“’bout an hour, I’d say.”

We walked in silence for a few more minutes, until I heard a rustling. For a moment, I thought it was Declan, kicking leaves, but when I stopped, I heard something that sounded like a struggle.

I called out, “Wait!”

He stopped, but he didn’t turn around.

“I hear something,” I said.

He turned around and then stood still, so that we were facing each other, a space between us. Neither of us seemed to breathe. The stirring began again. Our heads both snapped toward the sound. I moved toward it, my feet quiet.

I didn’t see anything at first, except trunks and branches, but with another sound of struggle I saw what lay at the foot of a tree. A robin. Its orange breast punctured and encrusted with blood. I crouched down to get a better look. The bird hopped a few steps on its one good leg, away from me, one of its wings extended while the other hung at its side.

“Declan,” I whispered. “Help me.”

The ground grew dark as Declan loomed over us. His heavy breathing cut through the silence.

“There’s nothing we can do,” he said.

The bird shuffled farther from us, wanting to get away. I extended my jacket like a hospital gurney. The bird looked at me with its black eye; I was sure it was afraid, but it also looked strangely defiant. It stopped moving. I picked it up with and placed it in my jacket. It didn’t protest. It seemed to know this was the only option.

“We can bring it to a sanctuary,” I said.

Declan sighed.

“What sanctuary? There isn’t one for miles. Even if we found one, the bird’s too far gone. Look at it.”

In my palm, the bird had completely stilled, but its eyes still held life. It seemed young, like it had only recently been a chick.

I stared at Declan. Wouldn’t take my eyes off him.

“We’ve found it, and now we’re to take care of it,” I said.

He let out a steady stream of breath, and then he held out his hands and said, “Give it here.”

One of his palms could have held two birds. I wanted to keep the robin close to me, but Declan had given the command with the kind of authority I feared. I stepped closer to him, my head almost at his chest, and I passed him my jacket with the injured bird who hadn’t let out any sound since I had picked it up.

He received the robin gingerly, and then he held it up to his face so that he and the bird were eye-to-eye. The robin opened its beak and let out a sharp cry. Instinctively, I reached out so that my fingertips almost touched the robin’s crown, but Declan snatched his hands away.

The forest seemed to inhale.

Declan clasped his fingers around the bird’s neck and broke it with a quick twist. The bird lay collapsed in his hands, growing colder and colder with each passing second.

I made a sound that mimicked the robin’s cry before I brought my hands to my mouth. I wanted to vomit but I swallowed the bile and instead lunged at Declan, snatching the bird from his fingers. He didn’t protest; he let me have it. He pressed his palms to his skull as if he couldn’t believe he’d just played God.

“I’m sorry,” he said, looking toward the ground. “It was the right thing to do.”

“Go away,” I said, turning away from him.

I crouched down with the robin clutched close to my chest. I could feel Declan behind me even though I couldn’t see him.

“C’mere. You don’t mean that.”

“Go away!” I screamed.

The shadow of him receded. He took a step back and then another, and then he continued to walk until the forest absorbed the sound of his feet.

When I sensed he was gone, I dug at the earth, and then I placed the broken bird in the shallow hole. A prayer didn’t seem right, so I gave a moment of silence.

I dusted off my hands and began to walk back in the direction we’d started, my vision clouded. Declan was a fast walker – he’d be well ahead of me by now.

I wanted out from under the branches. I wanted to feel pavement under my feet rather than dead leaves. I wanted the sun to break through those go-awful branches that seemed intent on blocking everything good out. The silence of the place made me thirsty, and I reached for my water bottle, allowing myself to feel each swallow, to know that I was here, alive, that nothing and no one could touch me in this moment. And it was then, just as I was acknowledging the sheer luck of my vitality, that I heard the shot and then the scream, one after the other.

I took off running through the woods, the sound of the bullet like a signpost. It was far off, but not so far that I couldn’t make it. The image of the robin came to me as I ran. I wished I could fly. Tree trunks blurred. Breath laboured into air. Blood pumped in my throat.

“Where are you?” I cried out, my voice thin.

“Here,” came the strangled reply. I thought it could be Declan, but I wasn’t sure. The sound was so close. A cave with creeping moss emerged in a clearing. Within the bones of that rock lay a deer whose neck flowered red, her eyes stilled. Declan stood apart from them; his palms pressed against his ears, as if he couldn’t bear the silence. There was also a stranger, a few feet away; his rifle pointed toward the ground. He turned to me, the man I did not know, his mouth half-open.

“I could’ve shot him. Jaysus, I could’ve shot him. Didn’t see him at all before I pulled the trigger,” he said.

Declan appeared not to hear the man at all. He looked at me, his eyes wet.

“I thought it was good luck, seeing a deer a second time –”

He bit down on his fist. I’m certain he tasted blood.

Before I could say anything, beyond us, there was a bleat. And I knew who made the sound before it emerged from the lungs of the forest. The fawn. We stood as sentinels while the baby slowly walked toward its mother and then nudged at her chin, disbelieving she was really gone.

I understood then what I was meant to do.

I walked past Declan, past the hunter, toward the doe and her fawn, whose trembling legs seemed unlikely to take it very far. As I closed the distance between us, it understood; it turned away from all of us and ran alone into the woods.