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Far above the trees, a flock of geese made their way southward, each riding in the wake of the one before, wings flapping in unison. A lone warbler flitted from branch to branch among the treetops, late in its own migration. A flock of waxwings, feathers flashing yellow and smooth soft brown, descended on a bush and stripped it clean of its bitter red berries.
The forest god pricked his finger on the thorn of a blackberry vine, and the vine grew a great cluster of sweet fruit, though the season for blackberries had long passed.
The forest god sang, and the trees slowed their growth, drew their precious sap down into their roots. Many withdrew the green from their leaves, and let the leaves fall useless to the ground. Seeds lay dormant under the fallen leaves, each one carrying a tiny life, suspended, waiting.
The forest god gathered wood. With careful fingers, he rehomed the fluffy white bundles of silk that housed spiders’ eggs, stowed by their mothers between dry wood and bark. He hummed to the grubs and salamanders living in damp crevices, coaxing them out, and found new homes for them in other logs too wet to burn. He gathered broken trunks and branches and twigs, and piled them higher than the tips of his antlers.
He gathered acorns - a select few he buried in the ground and sang into them a promise of long life; the rest he cracked free of their shells, then reached deep among their molecules and drew away the bitter poisons.
The forest god sang, and the bucks of the forest felt a new stirring, an irresistible urge. Does stood by and watched, impressed, as they butted their antlers together, competing for the honor of siring the next spring’s fawns.
The forest god called one deer to him, an old stag who had fathered many fawns in years past. The forest god thanked him for his years of life and for what his death would sustain, and the stag’s spirit left his body as gently as a breath when the forest god touched soft lips to his forehead in a reverent kiss.
The forest god sang, and frogs sank to the bottoms of the ponds, settled into the soft mud and leaf litter. Their hearts slowed to a halt; their bodies grew icy cold, to lie in deathless death until the warmth of sunlight could return them to life.
The forest god knelt between the roots of an ancient bay tree. His hands grew shorter, with long, inhuman claws, as he began to dig. He moved away smooth rounded stones and rough clumps of dirt to reveal a dark hollow beneath the tree, then reached long, lean arms into the hole and pulled forth - a body. An old woman, her flesh as cold as the earth she had lain in. He lifted her in his arms as easily and gently as if she were a sleeping child, and laid her lovingly on a soft bed of pelts. He knelt beside her, tenderly brushed a lock of silver hair away from her gaunt and wizened face.
Three days, beginning now. It was never enough.
He laid a hand over her heart, and waited.
Bum-bump. A single heartbeat.
He brushed away the dirt, and a few beetles, from her simple animal-skin dress. He caressed her face, and a rough stubble of beard fell away from her cheeks and chin. He pressed his thumb to her bloodless lips, then pressed his own soft pink lips to her forehead.
With his hand over her heart, he hummed a wordless melody and let some of his warmth flow into her body. Not too much, not too soon, though he felt as impatient as any immortal ever could. Bum-bump. Her heart beat again. She drew a shallow breath, and let it out slowly.
He lifted one of her gnarled hands and held it tightly in both his own - she couldn’t feel it yet, he knew, but he had missed her too much to wait. He kissed her knuckles, her fingertips, her calloused palm. Bum-bump. Gently, he rubbed and stretched her fingers, loosening stiff atrophied muscles and soothing aged joints. Warmth and love alike flowed from his hands into hers. Bum-bump. He ached for her eyes, her smile, her voice. He pressed her hand to his face, whispered her name into her papery skin - “Sarah… Sarah…” Her blood answered with a slow but strengthening pulse - bum-bump… bum-bump...
He kissed her forehead, still cool but no longer earthen-cold. A faint flush of color had returned to her face. Her heart beat slowly but continuously now; her broad, emaciated chest rose and fell with steady, shallow breaths.
The forest god sang softly to his beloved, no longer the wordless, otherworldly songs of magic, but a lullaby Sarah herself had taught him, not much more than a century ago, in the ancient language of her homeland. He stroked her hair, and held her hand, and waited.
To her, it would seem that they had not been apart at all, though she would return from her deathlike torpor hungry and thirsty and tired as though she had been awake for days. For him, it had been another year of loneliness, singing winter, spring, summer and fall through their changes with only the trees for company.
They would have three days together. It would not be enough.
Sarah’s eyes fluttered open. She smiled weakly up at her lover, and his heart broke into a thousand joyful pieces.
He helped her sit up, and handed her a bowl of clear spring water and a lump of acorn bread. She drank, and ate, and when she was done, the forest god lay beside her and held her in his arms, and she fell quickly into a true and restful sleep.
—
For three days, the forest god and his lover sat beside their bonfire and feasted on acorn bread and blackberries and roasted venison. Nourished by earthly food and godly magic, Sarah’s emaciated body grew soft and plump, recovering from the last year of fasting and preparing for the next. The forest god, too, put on weight, though less dramatically, and his body prepared for winter in other ways as well. His beard grew thicker; the fur of his hips and legs grew shaggier, more bearlike now than deer. The leaves in his hair turned red and fell away, and a crown of evergreen needles grew in their place.
—
In the gray morning light of the second day, Sarah set aside her umpteenth acorn cake and drew a long, thin cord from the pocket of her dress. She tied one more knot among the many that dotted its length, then counted how many there were, mumbling the numbers to herself. Her lover watched, fascinated by the very movement of her hands. When she had finished, she counted the knots again, to double-check - then grinned, delighted.
“I thought so!” she announced.
“Hmm?”
“I’m two hundred years old!” She sounded gleeful, practically giggling. “Two hundred!”
The forest god smiled, and squeezed her shoulder fondly, but the gesture carried an unspoken sadness.
“Is everything all right?” After so long together, it didn’t matter if something was unspoken.
“Ehm.” He hesitated, gathering his thoughts, still hesitant to turn the topic somber when it had just a moment ago brought out her beautiful laugh. “Ehm. Well. Two hundred years. Are you… Do you still want to keep going on like this?”
“I told you, we’re going to keep me alive until they can send me to the moon! Or fix this situation…” She gestured vaguely downward at her body.
“I didn’t mean - “ he began, but she ignored his protest and continued.
“Besides, I’m not just going to leave you all by yourself. I don’t suppose this year’s the year you’ve finally found someone new?” She fixed him with a stern look, less like a companion and lover and more like an aunt at Christmas demanding to know why such a handsome young man hasn’t gotten himself a wife yet - although she couldn’t hold the look long before her mouth turned up at the corners and ruined the effect.
He turned his gaze to the ground and squeezed her hand. “There’s… no one like you.”
She laughed. “Of course not. I’m one of a kind. And I love you, so much, but someday I’m going to get in one of those flying machines and go to the moon, and I won’t be able to bring you with me ‘cause there’s no trees on the moon, and what’s going to become of you then?”
It wasn’t an idle question, although her insistence that she would go to the moon was (probably) a joke, a way of skirting around the fact they both knew: that he could slow her aging by keeping her in torpor all but three days of the year, but he could not halt it altogether. Without her - without someone, at least, companion or lover or devotee - he might face something far harder to contemplate than mere loneliness. She had brought him here, or he had followed her, from half a world away, and neither of them knew if she could leave him here alone.
“What I meant was, ehm, we don’t have to carry on like this. I could still - what I said before - “ He faltered. His voice never faltered while he commanded the forces of nature, yet even after eightscore winters together this woman could still make a stammering mess of him, just by existing. “What I meant was, I could make of you a goddess. We could care for this forest together, as equals. All year. Every day of every year, until the last tree falls. Is your answer still the same? Will you still not permit it?”
She met his gaze, sadly. She pressed her forehead to his, wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “I’m sorry,” was all she said.
—
For three days, a mortal and an immortal held each other, and made the most of precious time. They watched birds passing by in their migrations; they watched the sun rise and set and rise again; they watched the hypnotic dance of the flames that warmed them and cooked their food; they watched the slow churning of gray skies. They kissed, and they talked, and they laughed, and they sang together, and all around them the forest prepared for winter.
—
The third day drew to a close. The great pile of firewood had been burned, piece by piece, to nothing but smoke and ashes. The blackberries and acorn bread had all been eaten; nothing remained of the old stag but picked-clean bones and a hide waiting to be tanned.
The forest god took Sarah’s arm and helped her climb to the top of a steep hill, where the cover of trees gave way to wide open views. From the hilltop they looked out over treetops and fields, and further, to a sea of rooftops, and further still, the distant shining towers of a city. The lights of flying machines blinked slowly across the darkening, cloudy sky.
Hand in hand, the lovers sat and watched as the sinking sun lit up the clouds in brilliant orange and pink. The stillness and shared wonder between them were as intimate as any kiss.
In the fading light of dusk, they made their way back down the hill, back to the ancient tree with the hollow beneath its roots. Sarah took one last loving gaze into her beloved’s deep green eyes, one last caress of his beautiful face - so youthful compared to her own, though he was by far the older of the pair - and one last kiss to his soft pink lips. Then she lowered herself into the dark hole between the tree’s roots.
The forest god followed her into the cool, dark earth, tucking his long limbs carefully into the cramped space. He curled himself around her, buried his face in her hair. She wiggled up against him, pressing her back still closer to his chest, hugging his arm close to her heart. When he had awoken her three days ago, she had been bony and fragile, now she was soft, and their embrace felt full and secure.
“I love you,” he whispered, and pressed a kiss to the back of her neck.
“I love you,” she murmured, with a squeeze of his hand.
He sang the old Irish lullaby to her again, the soft rumble of his voice humming through her entire body. When he was sure she had fallen asleep, he sang the magic that would slow all the workings of her body down to a deathlike torpor. He freed his hand from her grasp and stroked her hair as her heartbeat slowed, and slowed. He wished that, just once, he could slow his own heart as well, could stay with her at least until the spring came.
He lay beside her until the heat had left her body, and she was once again as cold as the earth that surrounded them. Then he unfolded himself from their embrace, and emerged from the hollow beneath the old bay tree. He covered over the opening with earth and stones, and began another lonely year.