Retribution

• Georgia Christie, Grade 9, Killara High School
• Short Story
• 2013

Excellence Award in the 'Dream Big 2013' competition

They used to say that old Mae lived in the very earth; that each night she tucked herself into the comforting enfolds of the forest undergrowth and became the damp, sultry soil; the decaying leaves; the toadstool-encrusted tree trunks. Deep, sunken lines adorned her face, grooves traced by a garden trowel into surprisingly supple flesh. She was wild. She was wild, and no-one knew how, or why, or what from, or even how long she’d been there. All anyone knew was that Mae had lived in that forest since before the townsfolk had settled on its outskirts, way back in 1937, when the moss had clung like lost children to a dense, green wonderland that bedazzled the minds of men. So much so that they took out their saws, brandishing them like machetes, and proceeded to rip apart Mae’s home, until the last tree lay like a fallen soldier in its corpse strewn battlefield.

“Vile, worthless…abominations of nature…murderers…” were the vehement hisses that hung on the wind for many months afterwards, following many a villager home; curling round the cusps of street corners and beckoning uncannily from the shadows and silence.

For weeks the old woman, stripped of her veil of foliage, lurked ominously in the alleyways and peripheral visions of the villagers, croaking harsh forewarnings, of dark omens and horrid things approaching. But the villagers merely laughed scornfully, shrugging off her morbid forebodings like flies.

Oh, how their thoughtless mockery came back to haunt them when the first ferns sprang from the walls of the townspeople’s homes, quickly shrouding every surface in a thick carpet of deathly, acid green. Vines as thick as elephant trunks grasped the wooden structures with supernatural strength, frames buckling and dissipating into rubble beneath the writhing masses of vines.

The villagers fled.

You can still see what remains of the village, though, if you venture out into the heart of the new forest; debris embedded deep in the soil like shards of shrapnel; bricks and stones and glass and wood, now crumbled into dust and sorrow; in the forest that achieved retribution.
And now and again old Mae is seen flickering through the trees, wearing a deep set frown and a layer of filth, muttering and grimacing in undisguised disgust as she watches concrete replace earth, despairing that her forest will be next in queue.

She needn’t worry. Our grandparents learnt their lesson.

We leave the forest well alone.