Chapter 2: In Which Resistance Is Futile




He had been walking for what felt like forever; the trees hadn’t tried talking to him again. The Oldest Forest was as lovely as he remembered it. Like the forests where deer wandered, it always seemed to be Spring here. Only someone making careful observation, only someone dreaming slowly, could see the difference. So here, the trees were always soaked in white blooms that drifted in front of his face as he walked like snowflakes falling around him. In the places where the light shone red and the flowers stopped falling, it felt like autumn; in the places where the blooms were too high up to see, it was summer. But Spring was everywhere, tangible as air.

If he weren’t trapped against his will and lost, Seed would have been awestruck by it, even after the near eternity he had spent there, once. His neck hurt, his head felt heavy. He walked with blocks of ice for legs, not bending so much as folding to let him fall, and then catching him before he hit the ground. Somehow, this moved him along. His golden eyes vanished behind his heavy lids, as he struggled to stay on a side of conciousness. He had to stay awake, awake until he reached home. He kept repeating that idea in his head. Then he heard a rustling – not the trees speaking, but something moving in the bushes. His ears perked up as he turned his head.

“Why, hello there, Mister. I haven’t seen the like of you before,” a little voice said. Out of the bushes emerged a little brown squirrel with bright green eyes the color of spring leaves. “What are you supposed to be?”

“I’m a deer…I’m lost, actually. I don’t live in this…place,” he finished, lamely. The squirrels here were, like everything else, not exactly like the squirrels you found in the deer-inhabited parts of the forest. He wasn’t sure if he should explain his situation fully.

“You look tired. Why don’t I take you to a nice place to rest?” The squirrel asked. It went up to Seed and circled around his legs, examining his dainty hooves and sniffing around his hoofprints.

“No, I really should be trying to get –“

“But Mister, won’t you accept my hospitality?” The Squirrel pleaded.

Seed looked down at The Squirrel, at its fuzzy little face tilted to one side. Its eyes looked big and hopeful – it occurred to Seed that it could be very lonely here, and besides, it would be rude to refuse help. Seed always did his best not to be rude. “I suppose a little rest would do no harm…”

The Squirrel clapped its paws and scampered ahead of Seed, guiding him deeper and deeper into the woods, leading him backwards through clearings that spoke of passing years: winter, fall, and summer. He led him to an empty patch of purple flowers, with no trees around it for quite a ways.

“Well, my friend, you just rest here. I’ll go and find you something to eat – you must be hungry.” The Squirrel edged around the clearing, picking up large flowers that dropped whole from the trees.

Seed knelt down in the flower patch – a little heat radiated from it, like sunlight rising from the ground. The flowers were very soft, though he could see a place where the land was scarred up from where something had to have been taken from the earth. The smell, though – the smell! It was thick and slow as honey, taking him over like a tidal wave. They smelled sweet and soft, and made him feel drowsy like a warm summer day. They were ordinary looking purple flowers, but something about them reminded him of lotuses.
“Lotuses…” he mumbled. “Enlightenment? …the center of the universe?”

“I am glad you think of such pleasant things here, my friend,” The Squirrel said as he brought back his forelegs laden with white flowers.

“No, but that’s not what….what am I… rebirth?” The smell was like a haze – a delicate purple haze, flush against him. He felt like he had already eaten a big meal, and just wanted to sleep it away.

“Another happy thing,” The Squirrel pointed out. He offered Seed the white flower.

“Pomegranates…don’t eat the…” Seed mumbled, staring at the blurred-out shape of the white flower. He tried to figure out what he was babbling about, but it was like trying to trap a cloud. The world was a big cloud – he was floating in it, sailing along on a pure white sea. Bobbing up and down. Everything so light, so fluffy.

“You’re a funny guy, Mister.” The Squirrel brought the flowers to Seed’s lips. They tasted like blood red seeds. Seed giggled, once. Then sleep wrapped itself around him, and all the warnings, the cryptic symbolism of fruit and flowers, left his mind entirely.



It was a good sleep, deep and peaceful. Seed woke up a while later, with a deep relief in his bones.

“Well, thank you, my little friend. But I really must be going on now.” Seed bowed to The Squirrel.

“Where are you going, Mister?” The Squirrel asked.

Seed thought about how to answer that. Where was he going? It dawned on him slowly, like the sun was trying to rise through a curtain of heavy mud, that he couldn’t think of the answer of the question. A faint impression of something wet and grey – a bathing elephant? A big rock? He couldn’t remember. An old birch tree fallen over water? The more he questioned it, the farther away the image seemed. Somewhere grey and… he couldn’t remember what the other part was. He had known, hadn’t he? A second ago, he had known what the other part was. Somewhere… it was certainly somewhere, wasn’t it? He looked down at the flowers some more. “Home?” he answered in a small voice. Yesterday, he had known – was it yesterday? He turned in his mind and looked behind him, and what he found was all a pretty haze. Somewhen, he had known the answer. The answer to… Oh, yes, where he was going. He remembered what he had said a minute ago and repeated, “Home.”

Seed bowed again and walked away, the roots that sprouted from his ankles trailing after him. For some reason, Seed found himself trying to remember an old myth about a lost sailor – an old poem, a good one. He couldn’t figure out why, or why it seemed so very hard.

“Alright, Mister. Good luck,” said The Squirrel as Seed walked away. Its words fell not from its lips, but the air around it, with the sound of rustling leaves. “I hope you know what to do when you’ve lost your way around here!” “Lost.” “Lost.” “You’ve lost your way.”