ALAIA, HAVING DIED, resisted the Crossing Over. At first, the pull of it had been almost too powerful. Almost, she had been taken. The force of that natural occurrence had all but faded during the one hundred and nineteen years since her death; now it was nothing more than an adhering memory.

The crossing would have been easy during the silent days when death was fresh. But she had chosen this place not only to die, but also to exist. So, she had brought her illness here to be shed of it, like a snake of its skin. Then, embowered under a colored ceiling of autumn maples, she fought the persistent

gentleness of the Lifting.

“No,” she had cried from her bed of moss, “leave my bones and my spirit, for here is my eternity.”

Thus, she defeated the Lifting and avoided the Crossing Over. She became part of the forest, as much as any creature that it nourished. The well-intended teachings of her parents, and the remnants of the vain pursuits of her shallow and demanding friends came to nothing here in the dark depths of the virgin forest stillness. Here, the whispers of true worth wafted through her mind on the summer winds while the tittering brook sang to her of purity and lasting clarity.

Those gifts, meant only for those who could recognize them, she accepted before her death, and in that she gained the Truth. When the sickness came, she set her mind to carry the Truth into death, and not to cross over. With that accomplished, she would live with the Truth in the place that had granted it.

She would probably not be able to cross over now. From the decades and the verdant earth, she had drawn strength that returned some of what she owned in life. If she wanted form and substance, it was hers if only until her strength to maintain it failed. She could have speech, song, beauty, and even

mortal companionship. She had earned those abilities, and the Crossing Over had never been desirable—until now.

Now the fires approached, devouring the forest that had nurtured her and concealed her from the invading mortal eyes of those who would destroy her and this place. Behind the fires, driving the fires, were the men with their saws and axes, and the lust to kill, take, and ruin. Her homeland would die as

she had, long before it might have blossomed.

Alaia lay her vague form down upon the exact spot that had once witnessed the scattering of her bones by the scavengers. “Lifting,” she said, calling it. “I am ready. Come. Take me.”

But the Lifting had no response. Indeed, the Lifting was not here to respond. It was lost to her, as she had surmised. Although she might cross the many miles of wildwood in less than a second of mortal time, she could not

transcend that time to take her back to the date of her death where she might accept the benevolent urging of the Lifting. Here she would stay, resisting whatever the living might bring to replace the forest.

She met the first one in a glade of yellow-leafed poplars. Youth and strength lingered upon him, and seeing that, her memory of life brightened. But the powerful, perspiring arms glistened with his kind of mortality as he forced his ignorance upon the particular poplar he had selected to be his victim.

Again and again, he swung the axe. The wounded tree shuddered, as did Alaia, with each bite of life the axe took. The fluttering white chips filled the air around him, and fell like mangled butterflies to lie dying on the forest

floor.

“Do not do this thing.” Almost, she ended her plea with “mortal,” but she remembered in time that she must show herself to this mortal as a mortal.

He turned. The focused determination to slaughter that had been in his eyes before she spoke drained to some reservoir of evil locked inside him. Those same eyes now flashed with fresh surprise, then darkened in lust as he mentally grasped at her image to store it away in a dark crevice of his unclean

mind.

Never having lifted, Alaia owned the power to see such things.

“You would destroy my home, sir, if you continue. I beg you, refrain from this vileness and return from whence you came.”

“What?” He rested the axe head on the ground and leaned on its handle. “Are you asking me to stop working?”

“Indeed, sir, I am. You destroy my home.”

“This ain’t your home, girly. This land belongs to the Company. We’ll do with it as we please.” He took one step toward her.

She killed him then with the axe, without touching him or it. The bloodied dark hair of his severed head collected several of the poplar chips as it rolled to a stop. In his dead eyes, she saw her reflection fading from the golden-haired mortal form of fifteen years to the translucent entity of one hundred and nineteen years that she was.

The saws and axes fell silent. The black, rolling clouds of smoke diminished to a gray fog as the fires burned out. Alaia, although saddened beyond mortal comprehension at the loss of forest and wildlife habitat, assumed that the violence she wrought upon the trespasser had served as intended. The

reality of her misinterpretation came upon her suddenly.

She sat among the fox cubs, stroking them with her ghostly touch, and coaxing them toward their den to keep them safe from the circling hawks. Mother Fox allowed Alaia’s presence, recognizing her as a keeper of the Truth. It was the fox that sensed the men first. She barked, a short, high-pitched

note of alarm that sent the pups tumbling into the den.

The deep pools of light that were the eyes of Mother Fox flashed meaning that only Alaia could receive, giving her the intruders’ location. She willed herself to be there.

No less than eight mortals trod across the ferns, their boots breaking the stems that had risen in quiet peace for more generations than the men would care to count. Unkind bolts of reflected sunlight darted from metal stars affixed

to their chests. They carried weapons foreign to Alaia’s memory.

She understood then that they searched for her. In their ignorance of the Truth, they thought to punish its keeper. She knew then also that the cessation in destruction was temporary—a time of quiet to last only until they felt safe in

continuing.

She appeared to them as she had to the first. They stopped, bunched together like minnows in a brook.

“Do you seek my life? Would you take what was taken before your time?” She knew they would not understand her questions.

A man of advanced mortal age spoke to her. “Who killed Ernie Potts? You?” His voice was harsh, raspy with age.

“Did he carry an axe to wield against this place?” she asked. “If so, I did.”

The men looked at one another then, as if to reassure themselves. Mortals were like that, she remembered.

“You’ll have to come with us,” the aged man said. A forefinger went to the trigger of the weapon he had not yet raised.

“I am a keeper of the Truth. I cannot leave.”

“Well, I’m a keeper of the peace.” He elevated the weapon to where it pointed at what all the men thought was mortal flesh.

She considered turning the weapons upon the bearers, but because they carried no saws, no axes, and no fire, she refrained. “You can be no keeper of peace, mortal. Was it peace that burned my woods and felled the trees? Be

gone from here,” she said. “I grant you that.”

“You called me mortal. Are you not that yourself? Or are you spirit?”

Too late, she realized her error. But no matter. To prove herself, she allowed her form to fade slightly, and return. “I am spirit. I avoided the Crossing Over. The woods are my home. I will protect my home, as you would, mortal.”

The aged man considered that. He lowered his weapon, knowing it to be useless against a ghost. Seven others, in ignorance, were not lowered.

“Name yourself, spirit.”

“I am Alaia.”

“How long dead?”

“Twelve decades. Dead at fifteen mortal years.”

“Things have changed, Alaia. This land is owned, and not by you.”

“Then who?”

“The Company. You cannot stop its progress. I’m sorry.”

“Tell me mortal, how are you called?”

“Trundell.”

“Will you accept the Lifting and the Crossing Over when it is your

time?”

“Of course.”

“It’s time now. Yours and the seven with you. Are you certain you will

accept?”

“Wait, Alaia! I know your power. Take me only, for I am close to my time. These others are merely followers—Company men. I will send them away.”

She was touched in the way that only those not crossed over could be.  This man offered his mortality in exchange for that of the others. He was ready to cross over. Unafraid and ready, he was, so unlike herself those years ago. “Then send them, Trundell, and follow me.”

She relaxed the tensions that held her mortal form intact, thereby refreshing her powers. She kept only enough visible substance for Trundell to discern. She led him at a mortal’s rate of travel, moving deeper and darker into the trees that closed in around them like night. He did not falter from fear,

and flee, but followed.

A league from where she found him, she stopped him. He gasped for the air his mortality required.

“Sit here, Trundell. Rest. Tell me of yourself, and the Company.”

“You will kill me then?”

“We shall see.”

“I work for the Company. They bought this land fifty years ago. Only now have they decided to exploit it. The valley residents, the mortals, will live here in houses. There will be noise, confusion, sharp words, hurtful deeds, but more.”

“More?”

“There will be unity, love, and compassion. There will be all of those mortal weaknesses that you’ve forgotten. Mothers will raise their children, and grandfathers like myself will watch their growth. Generations will pass, and the Company will flourish, giving work and strength to all who come here. You are but one. You haven’t the power to stop it. That is the truth.”

“That, sir, is not the Truth. I hold the Truth. The forest gave it to me before my death.”

“Yes, Alaia. You hold the Truth. But not all truths are yours. There are many. You refused the Crossing Over because you thought you held the only truth. Now, because you know only the one, and cannot cross over, you must find a way to exist among the mortals.”

Blasphemy, to be sure, but she had to ask. “What other truths, Trundell?”

“You died in innocent ignorance. Do you think you’ve learned in death? Who taught you? I think you shunned those in life who could have shown you more.”

“It is a true thing, that I shunned the vanity of mortals, then and now. But with good reason, sir. I tell you, I held and hold the Truth. Do not attempt to take that from me.”

“Never, Alaia. It cannot be taken. The worth of the Truth of this forest is not measurable by mortals. Only one such as yourself can know that worth. But your Truth by itself cannot stand against the mortals and their truths that will inhabit this place. Make room, child. Share your Truth, and learn of

theirs.”

In the void that had once housed a mortal heart, steaming rage arose and boiled over into words she almost spoke. But she held them back, considering the possible wisdom of mortal age.

“Leave me, old one,” she said.

And he did.

The smoke had dissipated to nothing. The deer had ceased their flights of fear from the smell of it. Some even grazed those regions of blackened landscape, nibbling at the tender growth recently sprung from the fecund soil that had accepted the death of the burned and fallen timber. Alaia knew, because

she had ventured there, thinking to catch a glimpse of the old man who had brought her such distress by the questions he left unanswered.

Why had she bid him go before seizing that part of his wisdom she needed? Perhaps he had crossed over during the winter, and had allowed the Lifting to take him and the answers he held.

Since his departure, she had sought those answers within the Truth. Neither the snow nor the wind that drove it against the ridges and piled it in the hollows had a reply. The frozen brook offered only silence. And now, as spring laid its warming rain across the timbered bottomlands and fern-filled meadows, she made her queries to the entire wildwood.

Nothing answered her, for she had asked the Truth for knowledge that lived inside the hearts of mortals—mortals who had no part of this forest, this Truth.

The April morning shower passed and sunlight yellowed and brightened her flowering home. Under the crystalline shimmer of raindrops lingering on the budding branches, Alaia wept. For the first time since abandoning mortality, since rejecting the Crossing Over, she wept. Alone she was, and even more so because of Trundell’s offer to share his truths and the truths of others who would have brought them here except for the murder she had done.

But her bleeding misery was yet incomplete. A bear crashed through the new growth, breaking the saplings and bringing confusion to the ordered entanglement of woodbine and honeysuckle. It did not pause to respect her presence, and in the fleeting glimpse it gave her, Alaia saw the fear and the questions she could not answer.

The men were back.

Confined forever to the forest she had chosen for her eternity, she longed to be away from it now. But the constraints of Cross Over refusal would not permit it. The best she could do was to get above it, to be out of the shade, fully in sunlight where not even the tallest of the oaks could see her cry.

So she lifted, not to that other place where the Lifting would have taken her, but simply up and up into the haze of clouds that held no more substance than her own misty chill.

From that height, she saw him. Trundell. Others of his kind were with him, but not those she had seen before. Trundell walked toward her forest, coming across the black ground that mortals like him had burned. The others were female, one adult and two younger than Alaia when she died.

She willed herself to the forest floor, to the very spot where she had sat with Trundell in the fall. For his sake and those with him, she assumed mortal form. Perhaps he would expect her to be angry at his return. He would not know that joy and purpose had abandoned her with his absence.

He carried one of the children as he approached. “The little ones tire,” he said. “It’s a long walk from the village.”

“Did the Company send you, Trundell?” Her question held none of the welcome she wanted to express.

“No, Alaia. But still, I trespass. Shall I depart?”

“Your dare bring these with you?”

“We spoke of truths, remember? These are my truth.”

She looked upon them then, more studiously than she had from above the oaks. Now she searched for whatever truth Trundell referred to. A young mother and her daughters, surely. The similarities of features were too great for any other conclusion. All had dark hair, dark eyes, skin as smooth and pale as inner bark. Lovely creatures. She had forgotten the beauty of living youth.

“These are yours, Trundell?”

“My daughter and her children. My truth.”

“Do they know me? Do they know . . .” She could not say it in their presence.

“Yes. But they do not fear you, Alaia. I have explained.”

“Explained?”

“You were protecting your Truth. You were threatened.”

“And now?”

“Disturbed at the encroachment. Curious. Needful. But not threatened.”

She had no response to such wisdom.

“I have come to share my truth, Alaia. And partake of yours, by your leave. Your truth is founded in this place, just as mine was once founded in wealth and adventure. As a young man, I was certain I held the only truth—to take as much as life would relinquish before my crossing over time. I lived to that end.”

He lowered the child to the leaves. No more than five mortal years she was, and clinging now to her grandfather’s leg like a vine.

“I had a wife, too frail to stand against my absences as I was led astray by my truth. I survived the sorrow of her passing. In that, I came to know that truths are nothing without some part of another’s. Sharing. Love. You missed that, Alaia, because your death came too soon.”

The woman moved in close to her father, and the older child followed. They stood together, the unity obvious. Their truth.

She considered that.

The Company didn’t take the whole of Alaia’s wildwood. Mistakes of ages past had taught men the folly of that. She sat with the foxes, content. The foxes accepted her as always, for she was of the forest. And now, because of that oneness, the foxes knew and accepted the mortal children. Their warm

and curious hands ruffled the red fur and stroked the muzzles. The pups scampered across the laps of the giggling cherubs who gave to Alaia, unwittingly, the innocent truths of childhood, and little more than that could mortal or spirit hope to receive.

In return, Alaia gave of herself, so that in their time the children would cross over holding her Truth . . . and theirs.