Forest

Forest

Pushing his way through the fronds of damp fern, leaving dark trails
on his khaki shorts, Jake wondered why it had taken him so long to come
back to the country. After all, all the reasons that had driven him
away from it those years ago were null and void now, and had become so
a long time before. He knew that he should have done this a long, long
time ago.
Before those thoughts could encroach out of their holes, he looked back
at his friend, Tim. City-boy to the extreme, he was not having a good
time on this trip, Jake knew. Right now he was several metres back,
sitting on a rotting tree trunk with a look of weary disdain spreading
across his features. Jake grinned.
"How you doing, Timmy-boy?" He couldn't help but be amused by him. Jake
had warned him months before they had left that the hiking and camping
hardly gave them first-class accommodation. But he hadn't been
perturbed by those words. Now, a few days into the trip, he was looking
frazzled.
"Fuck off, Jake."
"Ooh-hoo! I did tell you, Timmy-boy, that it wasn't going to be all hot
showers and regular meals! Don't get mad at me coz you can't hack the
pace, ok?"
"Fuck off, Jake."
Jake grinned again. This really was too much fun! He walked back to Tim
and flung his pack into the leaf litter before climbing onto the trunk
that lay like a giant's limb across the trail. All around them was damp
deciduous woodland. He inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with the
freshly scented air and feeling all those city toxins being expelled.
His nostrils twitched as the musky tang of fox filtered along in the
light breeze.
His memory filled with remembered childhood snatches of seeing fox cubs
scampering around their earth, the mother lazily watching out for
danger in the late afternoon sun.
He was content standing there in silence for as long as necessary,
mesmerised by the dappling effect on the fern and low bushes that
rippled under the gentle gusting wind. He felt Tim shift his weight on
the wood beneath his feet, and jumped down.
He stood in front of Tim and leaned into him, placing his hands on
Tim's bare knees.
"I'm sorry, Tim." The apology, as far as he was concerned, wasn't his
to make, but neither was one strictly needed, but he knew Tim, and knew
that until he had made some sort of reparation Tim would sulk.
Tim's eyes flicked up at his face, startling him with their blue
intensity. He was far more beautiful than was good for one man to be,
but that beauty was countered by a self-indulgent and selfish streak
that was sometimes cute, often childish, and seldom endearing for
long.
Before Tim could move his head forward, Jake straightened and took a
step backwards, knowing that the best way to get out of a possibly ugly
situation was to not get into it in the first place. He studied his
watch, licking his lips nervously.
"Come on, we'd best get going, or else we aren't going to get there in
time."
"Get where?" Tim's question came out as a petulant whine, one that Jake
had countered many times on this trip alone. Well, he wouldn't have to
put up with it for too much longer.
"I can't tell you. It's a surprise. Now come on! Move!" With that Jake
shouldered his pack once more and, checking his compass unnecessarily,
struck out along the trail without looking behind to know if Tim was
following.
Soon enough as he disappeared from view down a slight dip in the path,
he heard Tim shout for him to wait. He paused and began counting to 10.
Before he reached 8 Tim came running along behind him, his breath
short. The boy might be good on a rowing machine and the bike, but give
him solid earth to run on and he was knackered before he had
started.
"Ready?"
Tim merely glowered at him. Jake was counting on the view a good few
miles up through the forest to mellow Tim's shrewishness.
Back in the city, back in what was old and familiar to him, Jake knew
that Tim was as sweet as could be, his selfishness covering up for
big-city hurt and heartache. Somehow, in the heavily-populated streets
and all the rushing activity, that made sense, was sensible, was
commended and even expected.
But here, here where nothing existed without everything, where acres of
aching silence swelled around them and dramatic pauses in the landscape
made the heart swell, suddenly all that seemed trivial, added new
depths of perspective and perception. Jake couldn't excuse Tim's
attitude, not here with all the earth throbbing through his veins,
revitalising him down to his very copper core.
Jake trudged on, drinking in the energy from the ancient oak trees, in
silence. After a time, he felt a softly skinned hand slip into his,
grip his fingers and squeeze his palm.
Was it in his imagination, then, that he heard a small word that
sounded very much like sorry in a voice that sounded very much like
Tim's?
Jake stopped in his tracks and squeezed the hand that was in his
wordlessly. In his eyes were more words than he could ever express, and
Tim could see them and could read them. Feeling calmer than he had done
for a while he checked his bearings against his map that hung around
his neck and against the map that he had held in his head.
"We're nearly there, Tim." He couldn't keep the tremor of excitement
out of his voice.
"Yes, I suppose that we must be." A small smile toyed at the edge of
Tim's lips.
Already, thought Jake, it's happening to him already, and we aren't
even there! In his private thoughts, Jake had been vaguely aware that
the ground that they were walking upon was becoming rockier, and the
underbrush becoming sparser.
After they had walked a few hundred metres or so, Jake paused and held
up his hand for silence. Tim began a sulk, but then stopped as his ear
began to pick up a sound. At first it was faint, reaching the ears in
tremulous whispers as of a velvet cloak being swept across flagstones
at the end of a long hall. Gradually as they became used to it, the
sound ceased its games and became more noticeable until, even at this
distance, the sound became everything. It permeated the trees, swept
around the leaves, stalked over the ground, owning the very land
itself.
Jake revelled in the noise. Every pore drank it up as the very water of
life itself. He could feel it spilling into him, reaching into the very
darkest depths of him and overflowing out of his skin. His eyes blazed,
his mouth grinned as he led Tim at a run up the rise and helter-skelter
between trees, ignoring roots and bramble.
The sound that had seemed so possessive of the land down-slope, now
seemed to be the lord and master of all. It poured out of the hollow
that Tim could make out up ahead and threw itself out into the
surrounding country, staking its claim wherever it could.
Jake grinned back at Tim as he led him by the hand. By now Tim had
figured out that the noise was the rushing of a waterfall into a pool,
but he was unprepared for the sight that befell him as they stood at
the rim of a great oval-shaped depression or bowl. He stood there,
fingers twitching nervously. Jake stared, his eyes gulping in every
detail, every crack in the rock, every piece of moss of fungus that
grew, and yet his gaze never settled, it always moved.
The water cascaded out in great rainbow arcs from a point set in the
rock face above - a natural spring line - at the far end of the oval.
The white torrent flew crashing to the green-blue water below that
reflected nothing but the ever changing but changeless sky. White
flecks of foam rippled out for a few metres before the water calmed
itself to a mirror-like quality.
The walls of the bowl were a soft grey colour, the sun occasionally
glistening off points of mica, creating flashes of light and colour.
The water didn't seem to be flowing anywhere. At an unspoken question
Jake pointed almost directly beneath them.
Tim leant over and peered down. He thought that he could dimly make out
some sort of channel in the rock below but he couldn't be sure.
"It goes down under the hill again until it reaches the river proper!"
Jake shouted in Tim's ear, seeing his confusion. "Come on!"
Jake threw his pack down on the damp earth and stripped off his
clothes. Struck dumb with amazement, Tim merely stared as Jake ran at
the edge and then took off into space. His body glistened in the
sunlight as Jake arched over, arms outstretched, eyes to the forested
horizon. He had stepped; he soared. His gaze fell with his body to the
lake. He saw his reflection swimming up to welcome him. In those final
moments he felt a shifting, his soul began to waken and depart. He
gazed into his eyes and saw a glimmer of hope of what would be now that
his soul could fly free.
Tim rushed to the edge. He could see the fading ripples and splashes of
foam from Jake's entry, but nothing stirred below. He could see no body
there, no pale shape looming in the depths. No bubbles popped at the
surface belying Jake swimming underwater. Tim could think of half a
dozen good reasons why Jake had not surfaced, and a dozen bad
ones.
"Shit! Jake, you idiot! I am going to fucking kill you when I get my
hands on you! Do you here me?" Tim screamed his fear across the bowl,
hearing his voice echo harshly for a few beats before being swallowed
up by the immense all-consuming roar of the waterfall.
"Jake? This isn't funny!" Tim half-expected Jake to come lurching
through the forest, his skin glistening with water, having climbed up
some hidden track, a big idiot-grin on his dumbass face. Tim made a
noise of irritability, but he would get Jake. He wouldn't be here when
Jake got back.
He muttered under his breath. "Fuck you, Jakey-boy."