Issue #97

The Forest Is a Loop

by Dafydd McKimm

The forest is a loop. That much is now clear to you.

Ahead of you is your quarry, the great flightless bird that you are hunting, sword in hand, intent on cleaving its crested head from its thickly plumed body. But always it seems just beyond your reach, always it runs a little faster, pounding the trail with its enormous muscular legs, tearing up the ground with its giant claws, onward, onward, brilliant feathers streaming behind it in streaks of red and gold and black. You have been running forever, or so it feels at least; absorbed in the singular focus of the hunt, it only just occurred to you that the sun has not moved in the sky, the light in the forest has not dimmed, has maintained the same crepuscular quality of dappled half-light for as long as you can remember, as you hurtle, sword in hand, past that same rock, that same tree stump, again and again and again.

The forest is a loop.

A strange thought occurs to you--for the first time? Or have you thought it before?--that perhaps it is not you who are hunting the bird at all but that in fact, the bird might be hunting you. You can see it ahead of you, a golden-scarlet blur zig-zagging through the trees, but what would happen if you were to turn your head? Surely you would see its beady eyes focused on you--its quarry--see its hungry beak snapping in anticipation of tearing at your soft flesh, its thick, red tongue straining after you like a homing missile as you zig-zag through the trees, always just ahead of it, see its leathery black legs, like the steaming pistons of an engine, propelling it forward on feet tipped with thick, razor-sharp talons, ready to tear open your innards in a flash should you stumble. And suddenly you are afraid, and you are running, heart thundering in your chest, for your life!

But you have a sword in your hand, and the dense, corded muscles of a man who knows how to wield it; you find courage in your heart along with the certainty that if you turn and face the bird, this endless chase will surely end--with its death or yours; but still, it will end. You stop and turn, sword ready to swing.

But nothing--no great mass of feathers and talons--crashes into you; the bird, too, has stopped, and to your surprise, has also turned its back, as if it, too, had the very same idea, at the very same moment, made the very same decision to confront you. You turn again, and charge again, and it is running, too, again. You stop again, and turn again, and it, too, has stopped and turned away again. You have a dreadful premonition: the bird may not be a bird after all; the bird might be yourself; you, who wears on his back his great feathered cloak, with its contours and semiplumes of red and gold and black, trapped in the forest's infinite loop. Easy enough to prove the truth of it: you shed your cloak, let it drop to your feet, but the figure ahead of you remains feathered--not you, then, but truly a bird. You re-don your cloak and again you turn and run, again you stop and turn, but where once there was a mass of feathers now you see--the rear silhouette of a man, a bundle lying about his feet as if he, too, has just shed a feathered cloak. If he is a man, then where is the bird?

The answer comes to you in a flash. If the two of you are indeed not the same and the forest is a loop, then he must now be looking at your back, and, seeing you clothed in a feathered cloak, must think that you are the bird and not he. Could he be right? Could you all along have been the bird and he the man? (You are, after all, covered in feathers.) You search your memories for anything that might make the distinction and remember--ah yes!--you remember yourself as a chick, a fragile bony thing covered in down, suckling on a pipette of sweet nourishing slurry, and a caring hand stroking your bony body, and big pair of loving brown eyes. . . Good god! You are the bird!

You turn again and run, your great talons, which once you'd mistaken for boots, pounding the ground. You are a great, flightless bird and you are fleeing this man, who may or may not be the one who raised you; or is it, in fact, you who are hunting him? What terrible turn of events could have turned you against the one who raised you, or he against you, whom he raised so tenderly? Or perhaps--the memory is not a memory at all, but your imagination, and you are not a bird but a man after all, a man imagining or dreaming that you are a bird!

In the confusion of it all, you close your eyes. You have gone round and round, forward and back, to no avail, for a thousand thousand years (or so at least it seems). To keep running this way, to and fro--to keep thinking this way, forward and back--is madness, pure madness; something has to change; you need to find a way to break out of this infinite loop of possibilities and doubt. You cannot go up, neither as a flightless man nor as a flightless bird; but you can perhaps go down. You stop still in your tracks, eyes still tightly shut, and with beak or sword, it doesn't matter which, you gouge great chunks from the ground.

Down you go, digging for a thousand years; you dig, dig, dig, with beak and talons and sword and hands, until, finally, you hit something that is not earth or rock, something smooth and flat, and a little brittle to the tap. And you hit it, again and again, until you hear a crack, and another as the first crack spreads. Your heart quickens: whatever you are, man or bird, bird-man or man-bird, you are about to hatch.

***

You open your eyes and blink in the light. Your eyes are sensitive, having been closed for so long; what's left of your feathers are slick with grime and sweat, and stick to your little body like the down on a newborn chick. Out you come into the light; "Come on little one," a voice says. "Come on. Out you come now." And when your vision clears, you look up into a big pair of loving brown eyes, and the only thought in your newborn head is how will it all go wrong?