Page 62 of Where Light Cannot Follow

We both turn toward the sound.

The tree beside us heaves forward and releases another wail. I freeze completely. There's a face in the trunk—flaring nostrils, thick brows, a mouth stretched wide as it unleashes an inhuman cry that seems to vibrate through the ground beneath my feet.

"Is th-that..."

"Yes." Virgil's voice has gone flat. Careful. "They were human once. Don't speak to any of them. They ensnare easily, twist words into traps. Stay close to me. Now that we've entered the Forest, a single misstep could root you here alongside them."

I follow behind Virgil, mindful to place my feet exactly where his fall—or would fall, if he left impressions. "How did they end up like this?"

"They spent their mortal lives rooting themselves in the destruction of others. Poisoning everything they touched. So now they're rooted in turn."

I look ahead, toward whatever has been tugging at me since we entered these woods. My stomach drops. "Who am I here to see, Virgil?"

He turns at his name, as though he understands I cling to it like a lifeline thrown across dark water. His expression is soft amid the human-tree horrors that chatter and weep and babble nonsense around us. His gentle look is a landing space.

"Do you wish for me to answer?" he whispers.

"I think I already know."

He nods and says no more.

We walk deeper into the Forest. The trees press closer here, their bark-faces contorted in expressions of rage or anguish or something in between. One stretches a branch toward me like a beseeching hand—please, I didn't mean it, I was only doing what I had to do. Another snarls as we pass—you think you're better than us, don't you, you'll see, you'll end up here too. A third simply weeps, her face barely visible beneath the moss consuming her features—my children, where are my children, I only wanted what was best for them.

I keep my eyes forward. My feet on the path.

We round a bend, and my body stops before my mind registers why.

This tree stands apart from the others. Still. Solid. Not thrashing or wailing, but watching with a predator's patience.

His face looks more like it did when I knew him twenty years ago than how it appeared in his hospital bed at the end—but I'd recognize either version. After all, I favor my father. We share the same strong nose and jaw. The same thick dark hair, now sprouting around bark like vines reclaiming a statue. The same cutting eyes I once believed held secret wisdom, before I learned what they actually concealed.

"Father," I whisper.

Despite standing a dozen feet away, he lifts his face.

"Michael." The branches of his tree shift, crackling with dry leaves. "Is that you, son?"

Part of me is frozen, unable to move. Another part wants to turn and run back through the screaming trees until this place is nothing but a memory.

"I'm here, Dante." Virgil's voice reaches me low and private. A sacred thread stretched taut between us.

I meet my poet-guide's eyes—the softness I once dismissed as weakness—and offer him a pained smile. Then I turn and face my father, closing the distance between us. "It's me."

"You ended up here, too, then. Damned place." He shakes his face within the trunk, bark rippling with the movement. "Damned god. Didn't attend enough confessions, I suppose. No appreciation for a busy man's schedule."

I almost scoff. Confession means nothing here. But I'm at a loss for words or reactions. I'd never intended to see this man again. And yet⁠—

"I visited you in the hospital. When you were dying. You never woke, but I was there."

My father's brows rise. He nods slowly. "I think… I think I knew that. Felt you there, perhaps. Decent of you to come. We should have reconciled before then. That Dante pride, though." He shakes his head again, leaves rustling. "Gets us every time."

"Did you regret it, in the end?” My voice emerges thin, nearly soundless.

"Regret?"

Virgil stands close enough that I can sense him, but just out of direct sight, offering me privacy. Somehow, I don't want it. I wish he'd draw closer.

"What you did to me." My voice steadies. "How you betrayed me."