free to light (jordskott | klara & ylva)

[kimaracretak]

free to light. jordskott, klara & ylva. tfw you die and the murderforest who loves you is like oops up you get let me take care of whoever did this to you while you have some tea. 1.2k words, rated t. for shadowedhex in bulletproof 23/24.

Horrific murder-forest adores and protects (but doesn't trap) character

Klara steps off first train from Stockholm into Silverhöjd on a summer morning, and it is evening by the time she crosses into the forest — it should not be evening yet but the blues and pinks of the sunset are reaching out for her as the sun descends. Their glow is reflected in the shining face of her watch, whose hands are fixed at 7:07, just as they were when she stepped on to the train.

She breathes out, and imagines she can see the chill air in front of her shimmer in return. Imagines it's saying welcome home, just like the previous night's rain is saying here you areas it drip, drip, drips onto the back of her neck from where it had been waiting up in the leaves.

Klara steps off the train into the forest, and it takes an entire day. It takes no time at all. Gratitude tightens in her chest as she leans her forehead against the warm bark of a beloved pine, spreading through her like the tree's sluggish sap, and it is distraction enough that she does not think — why was I gone?

She lifts her arms and it seems to take another day before they're wrapped around the trunk, as if she were swimming through the earth itself. She breathes in and it feels more difficult than it should.

Words gather in her throat, as thick in the back of her mouth as memories are thin at the back of her mind, and Klara wonders if she should scream.

(She remembers screaming, she thinks, she does not remember Stockholm— remember the train—)

When she lifts her head the sky is a riot of warmth limning the green in colours so bright they make her want to open her eyes.

If she opens her eyes, she will see the forest. If she had left the forest—

Ah.

In the time that might not have passed at all, the reality of her death settles over Klara's skin, rough like linen that hasn't been worn in yet, an ill-fitting shapeless thing that she never would have chosen.

She wonders, briefly, how it happened, and if Ylva would make sure her bones were buried, the only thing the Silverhöjd of this century would have eaten with love. And that is all she has time to wonder, before she realises the rough feeling scraping against her arms is not just the tree bark prickling through her sleeves.

Klara steps off the train and into the forest, out of the earth and into Ylva's hands.

She's flat on her back, aching head buried in the rich loam of quickly-turned earth, and the old witch is scraping the remnants of death from her skin with ungentle hands. There's a chill creeping across her skin, and, deeper, the dull throb of something not quite mended. Dirt trickles down her face as she blinks, grits against her teeth when she tries to open her mouth.

So she had been buried, after all.

"Careless brat," Ylva says, but there's too much relief in her voice for the words to truly wound. "My knees can't stand this for long, you know."

Speaking is easier than she'd imagined it to be. "I'll try to die in your living room next time, then."

It earns her a sharp pinch to the tender back of her hand, and despite the pain — the pain she's alive to feel! — laughter bubbles up to the surface.

"It's no laughing matter," Ylva scolds. "I always thought it would be Esmeralda, but you've been a woman grown for longer than she's been alive. You're not to do this again, you understand me?"

And now that the disorientation of death is fading Klara can feel the fear underlying her words. There's so few of them, now, and to lose one—

"I'm sorry," she says. Pushes herself to sitting, leans into Ylva's offered touch and lets that be an offering in place of all else she can't quite say.

The light in Ylva's eyes softens, and Klara realises then that true morning has come again. "I know," she says, and the birds around them sing I know and the leaves above them whisper I know. She sinks a hand back into the dirt, feels the myriad lives under the grasses and leaves brush up against her skin. "Thank you."

Ylva's mouth twitches with the ghost of a smile. "You can thank me by helping me up and making the tea while we wait for the trees to find him that did this to you," she says. Klara does the first easily; hopes that Ylva will have revised her opinion on the second by the time they reach her house.

The ground is crisp under her feet as they walk, her spirit light. She does not wish to repeat the experience anytime soon — ever — but there's something of a comfort in knowing that Silverhöjd's power is still strong enough for this.

She will need to thank the forest properly tonight.

*

First, though, there is the quiet warmth of Ylva's hut, waiting at the end of a path that seems shorter than it should have been. Fear spikes in Klara's heart — is this the dream, then, and not my living? — but it subsides when she registers the calling of the crows following them above. She may not know their words as Ylva does, but she knows when the forest and her creatures are trying to ease the way, and her trembling legs are grateful for that, too.

It warms something in her — the walk, but the knowledge that this is possible. That Silverhojd is recovering, now that the logging has stopped, and can create out of love again, rather than the frantic, desperate, hopeless grasping for survival that had marked too many recent years.

Survival...

"How long?" Klara asks as they reach the clearing. She doesn't want to know. She has to.

Ylva pauses, gazing up at her with a look that makes Klara feel every day of the years that separate fifty-five and three hundred. "Less than a day," she settles on. "Esmeralda rang me. When she couldn't reach you."

And there's something in there that she should be paying attention to, probably, but, "You have a phone?" She can feel the laughter rising to the surface again, bursting free when Ylva just scoffs and turns away, stomping towards her house in a displeasure Klara knows is entirely put on. "You have a phone!"

"Only for the girl!" Ylva calls back without turning around. "So don't be getting any ideas!"

She disappears inside, but Klara can't quite bring herself to follow just yet. She stretches out her arms, lifts her head to the sky and takes in, for the first time since she'd stood up, the deepening twilight, real and bursting with life. Here it is not reaching out for her, here she is already held — she can feel it in the tiny rocks pressing into the soles of her bare feet and in the gentle brush of leaves and spruce needles drifting across her shoulders, can see it in the snowdrops blooming against the walls of Ylva's hut and the smoke rising from its chimney.

She doesn't have to imagine anything now, she knows, blood-deep in the way only people like her and Ylva can know, that all of Silverhöjd is saying I'm glad you're alive. She knows her would-be killer's body will feed the trees, and, by extension, her.

In the middle of the clearing that cannot be found unless it wants to be, Klara opens her mouth heedless of the grave soil still clinging to the corners of her lips and now, when she screams, it is not a memory.

It is a scream of joy.