The Estate

The woods were dry. It hadn't rained in at least a month -- highly unusual for this time of year -- and the air didn't feel like that would change any time soon. The forest floor was covered with millions of brown leaves that crackled under each of Soren's steps as he tried to remember how to get back to town.

He'd left Norris that morning in a fit of irritation, fed up at half the village. He wasn't fifteen anymore: it was hardly his fault that someone had decided to light the old shacks at the edge of town on fire. He couldn't really fault everyone for blaming him first, but it made him feel as though he was still an irresponsible kid in their eyes. That was the problem with everyone knowing you your entire life, flaws and all: you'd never stop being that worst version of yourself. Even if you hadn't lit a fire for anything other than utility in ten years.

Soren had headed into the woods to clear his mind, bringing nothing with him except for his carving things, thinking he'd find some wood and settle down to work for a while, and a pack of matches, just in case. Even years into adulthood, when he didn't set fires anymore, he felt anxious without them. If nothing else, at least he'd find good wood to carve, he had reasoned, and indeed he had, losing track of time and losing track of the turns he took. He'd tried to head south at first, sticking to an easy path so it wouldn't be hard to get home no matter how far he went, but he knew the woods well and hadn't worried nearly as much as he should have, and now the setting sun was warming his back and he was completely and totally lost.

This couldn't be happening. In theory Soren had prepared, but he hadn't really thought it a real possibility. Why keep track of every step when you'd never been lost before? Soren turned and walked north anyway, hoping he hadn't strayed too far off course. In the low light, he didn't see a single landmark he should have recognized: the hollowed-out tree filled with children's offered toys, the drystone wall he'd hopped over this morning, the old rusted abandoned tractor that was as old as his parents.

The trees started to thin, and Soren found himself in front of a cracked asphalt road marching into the setting sun. Only one road led out of town, and this wasn't it. That was a narrow road which meandered east for no more than a few miles before reaching a wider north-south road that went on further than Soren had ever been. This road was three lanes on either side, headed east to west, and marked with signs up and down either side: plainly not the road Soren knew. Some of the signs were years old, pointing towards cities that no longer existed, but some were clearly newer, made of wood and hand=painted to draw attention. Soren walked up to one of the newer signs, feeling increasingly lost and increasingly ill about that fact. It read: BIRCH ESTATE. 3 MI EAST

The next sign said: ARE YOU COLD? LOST? HUNGRY?

After that: WANDER NO LONGER.

The signs repeated after that. Soren stared at the sign and thought, This is the sort of place people go to and die. But what other choice did he have? To keep shambling along this road until he gave up? At least this way he had a destination, and there was a chance, however small, that they weren't crazy. Perhaps it would be full of travellers, and one of them would be able to give him directions back home. Reluctantly, he turned east and started walking on.

There was no mistaking the Birch Estate, even in the dark. It looked like something out of another world, one that operated as though the past twenty years had never happened. It rose higher than any building Soren had ever seen, and its eerie white facade glowed faintly in the dark of night. Reluctantly, he made his way to the door, noting the electric light beside it -- where had they gotten electricity? -- and knocked.

It was opened almost immediately by a young woman, about his age, with long fingers and hair as black as night. "You're lost," she said, a question that didn't sound like a question.

"I know it's late," said Soren, "but is there any way someone could tell me how to get back home, it's this town called Norris, sort of north-west-ish from here?"

"You're right. It is late," said the woman, not answering his actual question. "We can figure that out in the morning. There's a room ready for lost folk such as yourself."

"Thank you, but I really don't need --"

"Come in." She took him inside and led him into a lobby lit by more electric lights, and then up a dark staircase to a dark hallway and through a heavy door to a dark room. "Sleep here." she said, lighting an oil lamp. "We'll talk later."

"I just need directions," he said.

She shook her head. "Good night."

Morning brought a hazy orange light into the room that unsettled Soren. He peered out the frosted-glass window to find a red-orange sky that spoke of not-so-distant wildfires. Oh, well. He wouldn't have been able to get home today anyway, because he'd barely been able to sleep a wink. Something unsettled him about this place, though he couldn't quite name what. He hadn't seen anyone at all downstairs except for the woman who let him in, and though he'd been awake all night, he hadn't heard a single sign of life. It didn't feel like a place people should be.

But maybe it was just the electricity. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen electricity.

The hallway was as dark as it had been last night. When Soren finally made it to the stairs and saw the electric glow at their feet, he almost felt relieved. In the lobby, he was met with the woman from last night standing at her desk.

"Oh, excellent!" she said when she saw him. "You found your way down."

He didn't know what to say to that.

"I'm working on breakfast for you and our other guests," she continued, though it looked like she was just blankly watching from the desk. "Is there anything in particular you'd like?"

"Can I meet the other guests?" he asked instead.

"I'm afraid they're all sleeping," said the woman. "I can do oatmeal, gruel, grits, or porridge."

"Do you have toast?"

She shook her head with a smile. "Grits, then. Wait here a minute, please." She disappeared through a door behind her desk which Soren could have sworn hadn't been there a minute ago, leaving him alone. He took this as on opportunity to snoop around.

Besides the desk and the main door he'd come in through last night, the lobby contained a mismatched collection of chairs: from threadbare armchairs to stiff wicker patio chairs to plush things that looked right out of a castle. The fact that none of them matched wasn't unusual: the only people who could get a full matching set of anything in today's world were those who could make it themself. Heavy black curtains covered each window, blocking the ominous morning light, and the buzzing of electricity was the only noise breaking the room's silence. When Soren peeked through the curtains, the road outside looked even more sinister than it had last night.

"Are you looking for something?" asked a voice behind him. Soren turned to see what must have been one of the other guests: a tall woman dressed like a hiker. "They don't like when we open the curtains."

"Just looking outside," he said. "I should get going soon to head home -- do you know the area around here well?" She looked like she'd know every road and trail like the back of her weathered hands.

The guest frowned at him. "That's not how...okay."

"Do you know the roads, at least?"

"No," she said. "It isn't worth thinking about anywhere outside of the Estate." She sat down in one of the least-comfortable-looking wicker chairs with a completely neutral expression and said, "What brought you here?"

"It's embarrassing," he said, "but I got lost."

"That's not hard to do in these woods."

The woman from the desk arrived, carrying two bowls and one steaming mug. It couldn't be coffee, people didn't have that anymore -- but people didn't have electricity anymore, either. The guest took the mug and one of the bowls, and offered the other to Soren, who reluctantly took it. He was hungry, but as he looked down at the greyish slop in front of him, not sure if he was hungry enough to clean the bowl.

Over the course of the next hour, the other guests showed up. There were fifteen of them in total, and they didn't look all that different from the people Soren knew, but when he looked at them as a group there was something about them he couldn't put a finger on, something that made them look strange. They didn't talk, just ate their breakfast and looked around. It made his skin crawl. When they all finished, they put their bowls aside and the woman from the desk said, "Shall we go feed the Queen?"

"Wait!" said Soren, seizing his chance. "Does anyone know how to get to, um, what's the number of our road, route seventy-eight? There's a town just off it, it's called Norris, and I'm trying to get back..."

They all stared at him blankly. "At least come see the Queen with us before you leave," said the front desk woman. The others all gave a vigorous nod.

Soren followed them uneasily to the back of the Estate, where they went outside into a patch of land that straddled the line between clearing and garden. In the center of it rose a tall birch tree with jagged eyes carved all over its white bark. The strange crowd of guests stared up at it reverently. Soren backed slowly towards the Estate, his skin once again crawling, but someone grabbed his arm before he could get very far. It was the guest he'd spoken to earlier, the hiker woman. "Don't go yet," she said. "This is important."

"Does anyone have a sacrifice for the Queen?" asked the dark-haired woman from the front desk.

A balding middle-aged man stood up and placed a hand on the tree. "Today I will give the Queen a memory," he said. "From when I was young." He went on to describe a vacation he'd gone on when he was young, to a tropical island by way of a budget airline. The plane had nearly fallen out of the sky, it was that bad, he said, and it was important to him because it was the last trip he'd taken on an airplane before the Event. "This is the second-to-last memory of flight I have remaining," he continued. "I've sacrificed the rest to the Queen." The crowd nodded solemnly. The trees rustled above them.

The eyes carved into the Queen seemed to all focus on Soren.

When Soren went to bed that night, despite his best efforts to stay awake, he fell fast asleep, and he dreamt of the that tree. Its eyes opened wide and black and stared at him, and the wind through its branches seemed like wails calling his name. Something pulled him towards it and he watched, helpless, as his body sank into the wood bit by bit.

The second day dawned with more fire. No one gathered to "feed the Queen" because everyone was too busy tittering to each other about whether the Queen would protect them from the wildfire, how they needed to protect her as well, whether she was strong enough, et cetera. No one stopped worrying to give Soren directions, but it didn't feel exactly malicious. They didn't seem to understand what he was asking: why would they bother learning about the rest of the world, why would he even bother wanting to go anywhere other than the Estates? Some of them must have travelled this area before coming here, and he knew this: had something happened to them?

In a brief moment of peace before a lunch that turned out surprisingly good compared to the previous day's slop, he asked the woman at the desk if she had any road maps. Even something twenty years old and practically dust would be better than nothing. She shook her head with the faintest of smiles. "Don't even bother looking," she told him, which of course made Soren start searching the few rooms he was allowed into and a couple more he definitely wasn't."

It was completely fruitless. He gave up mid-afternoon.

The third day, he decided to make conversation with the guests. He took his carving things from his bag, sat down across from the man who had talked about airplanes two days ago, and began to work on a mouse. The blackout curtains were open, bathing the lobby in a fiery orange light as Soren asked the man to please explain what exactly that whole ceremony had been about.

The man tilted his head at Soren. "What do you mean?"

"Telling the tree about airplanes."

"I don't -- I only went on an airplane once, or twice I suppose, before the Event."

"You told everyone and that tree about it. It almost crashed: how could you forget something like that?"

"I don’'t know what you're talking about."

"Stop bothering him," said the woman from the desk, suddenly right behind Soren.

"I'm just asking about yesterday."

"We don't speak of the things we give to the Queen."

"What does that mean?" he asked, frustrated. "Nothing you say makes any sense."

"You'll pick it up in time," she said.

"I'm leaving tomorrow, whether or not these fires clear," said Soren. "I'll get directions from somewhere else."

"Let's step outside for a second."

Soren started to gather his things, and the woman held up a hand.

"Leave it. This won't take long."

He followed her outside to the garden with that strange tree in its center. The woman leaned against the tree with a smile. "This is our Queen," she said reverently. "She keeps us safe from the fires, from storms, from thieves and pillagers, from whatever the world would throw at us, and she makes it so that we never have to leave. In exchange we give her things. She likes memories of the world Before best -- though you're young, do you even remember it? -- but she'll take anything that hurts to give up." She paused. "And she and I both think that you shouldn't go home."

Soren stared at her.

"You already fit in so perfectly here, and the Queen just loves how you've brought more life to her Estate. Of course, I'm sure that would fade it time -- it always does -- but she disagrees. She thinks you could bring enough life for us to restore the world to the way it used to be."

"No. I'm sorry, but I don't want to stay here at all." He had to force the words out, struggle to find some reasonable reply to all the unreasonable things she had just said.

"We thought you might say that," said the woman. "And we agreed that if you wouldn't stay of your own will, we would give you up to her."

"What," he said, memories of the other night's dream flooding back to him.

"If she had you to feast on, we wouldn't need to give her memories for months," she said. "It would be best for all of us."

"No, it definitely wouldn't," said Soren.

The woman took his hand and pressed it to the Queen's bark. A jolt went through his heart as he imagined his hand sinking in just like in his dream, but the bark was as hard and scratchy as it should have been, if a bit oddly warm. "Can't you feel it?" she asked him.

He didn't answer, only pulled his hand away. "I'm leaving tomorrow."

"Well," she said. "It was worth a try." She reached for him and he jumped back. The Queen's branches rustled with displeasure.

"Could I just have one more night?" he said quickly.

"Absolutely not," said the woman. "It's obvious you'll run away while I sleep." She took his hands and. staring right through his eyes, added, "It truly isn't that bad. We won't hurt you. We'll just bury you beside her roots so that you can give your life to her and she can become stronger to better protect the rest of us. It's a very important sacrifice." She turned to the tree, dropped his hands, and said, "It won't be bad at all. It's how I'd like to go, when my time comes."

While she was distracted, Soren took his chance and dove back into the house. She hadn't let him have his things before so that he wouldn't have a chance to defend himself, but even if he couldn't outrun her, now he could get his bag and the whittling knives inside of it and do some damage. He made it back to the lobby, afraid to look behind himself, and found that the bag had vanished from his chair and all the guests were gone. He heard the woman running after him and started out the front door, back to that cracked road. Which way had he come from? He looked at the sky for guidance, but it was noon, and the red sun had no hints to give. Before he could pick a direction, the footsteps behind him got louder once again, and Soren was forced to dive left and around the house, exactly where he hoped no one thought he would go.

He pressed his back against the Estate's white walls and hid behind a chimney, watching as the woman led her pack of guests into the road. Some of them started off in each direction, and Soren inched along the side of the house, unsure what to do. The dried-out trees above him rustled their branches as though they were watching. He snuck a glance behind himself and saw a group of guests -- including the hiker woman and airplane man -- moving towards him with eerie precision.

Soren looked back to the trees and found the Queen dawning in front of him.

It was then that he realized he'd never taken the matches from his pocket.

He wished he could have told that one to everyone back home: see, I never even considered setting this place on fire until they tried to kill me, of course I wouldn't do that to our town. It's the middle of a drought, even when I was a kid I knew better than to light fires in a drought. But I guess I don't know that anymore.

He whispered an apology to the forest for what he had to do. Half of it was already on fire: hopefully this wouldn't be too bad.

The first match snapped in half when he struck it, and the second fizzled out when he tossed it to the ground, but the third took. The leaves around the Queen's base went up in flames almost instantly, the month of drought making them dry as paper. The crunching footsteps behind him stopped, the marching guests presumably unable to comprehend the flames licking up their Queen's carved trunk. Soren watched this happen and thought, wait, what have I done?

When he stepped to the side, running towards the road, away from the fire, the guests didn't react. Some of them stepped closer to the Queen, some of them ran into the house, presumably looking for water. None of them bothered to chase Soren. When he reached the road, he ran into the wind, hoping it would keep the fires moving past him, even if it wasn't the way home. He'd make it back eventually, hopefully someday soon.

After all, no one could ever give him worse directions than the Estate.