Gina Ranalli - House of Fallen Trees

The three of them stood shivering in the cold until the burning clothing became nothing more than a pile of ash in the middle of the flagstone walkway.

Out of the corner of her eye, Karen saw the fox-red dog peering at them warily from the edge of the woods. When she turned to look at it face-on, the dog backed up a step, as if afraid to be seen.

Taking a few slow steps in its direction, Karen stooped and made low cooing sounds, holding one hand out straight, inviting the dog to come sniff her.

The dog lowered her head, nostrils flaring, trying to catch Karen’s scent from a distance of twenty feet. She seemed tense, ready to spring away if anyone made any sudden movements.

“Dusty,” Karen said softly. “Come here, girl.”

She didn’t know why making friends with the local stray seemed important to her all of a sudden, but it did. Maybe because the dog was real, something solid and incapable of feeding her a line of bullshit. Behind her, she sensed the men backing up, perhaps to give the dog a more secure feeling about coming forward. Karen remembered Saul saying how Dusty didn’t seem to be too crazy about men.

“It’s okay,” Karen told her. “I won’t hurt you.”

Then it occurred to her the dog was almost definitely hungry. Despite a thick, fluffy coat of fur, Karen could still clearly make out the dog’s ribs and hip bones.

“Do we have anything to give her?” she called gently over her shoulder.

There was a moment as Rory considered it. “I guess we could give her some hot dogs. I don’t know what else she’d like.”

“She’d probably like anything at this point,” Saul said. “I’ll go see what I can find.”

“It’s freezing out here,” Rory said. “I’m gonna go get something to clean up that mess.”

Karen knew without turning that he was referring to the pile of still smoldering ashes.

“Do you want me to bring you a sweater or something?” Rory asked.

“Sure,” she replied without taking her eyes off the skittish dog. She heard the men’s footsteps as they climbed the porch steps, still watching the dog for any hint of trust.

“Aw, fuck,” Saul said. “God dammit. We’re locked out.”

Rory let out an annoyed groan of disgust. “You’re shitting me. That’s impossible.”

“See for yourself,” Saul replied.

Karen straightened up and finally looked away from Dusty to see Rory and Saul taking turns with the doorknob.

“Fuck me,” Rory said angrily. “How could this have happened? It’s a fucking deadbolt .”

Feeling the now familiar sinking feeling in her stomach, Karen didn’t want to give voice to how she thought it may have happened, but couldn’t seem to stop the words from coming out. “Someone locked us out on purpose.”

Both men turned to look at her. Rory rolled his eyes, but Saul seemed genuinely worried that she might be right. At least, that’s what Karen was hoping his expression meant. She supposed, realistically, he was probably just worried about how the hell they were going to get back inside.

“Come on,” Rory said to Saul. “Let’s start looking for an open window or something.” They clomped back down the porch steps and disappeared around the far side of the house.

Karen turned back to the forest line only to discover, with a large amount of disappointment, that Dusty had vanished back into the woods.

She stood there, uncertain of what her next move should be. Follow the men or follow the dog, try to get Dusty to trust her. A chilly breeze stirred her hair and rather than make her want to go back in the house, it made her all the more worried for the dog. “You’re being insane,” she muttered to herself as she began walking into the woods.

Somehow, the further in she went, the warmer the temperature seemed to become and she found she wasn’t shivering quite as much.

Stepping carefully around trees, exposed roots, brush, and the occasional stone, she called out to the dog, saying her name repeatedly. It was dark in the woods and getting darker as the distance between herself and the house increased. Her eyes adjusted as she traveled and she felt a sense of peace come over her.

Had Sean known these woods well? Had he walked past these very trees, stepped over this very rock? Was he still in here somewhere, held by the soft earth like a mother holding a child? She didn’t want to think about that but couldn’t help it.

Would it be so bad, she wondered, to have your final resting place be somewhere like this, rather than a sterile cemetery surrounded by complete strangers for all eternity?

She had heard of “green” funerals, where the deceased is wrapped in canvas and buried in a place very much like this, though designated by the state as an official burial ground. It would be nice, she thought. To recycle yourself that way. Feed the earth and the roots of the tree you were buried beneath and in turn, the insects, the worms, who would then feed the birds and so on. Would that not, in its own way, make a person truly part of the universe, some little speck of self flying off into the sky to live another day and continue to nurture a world so badly in need of care? The idea made her smile and she thought when this was all over she would look into having a green burial herself. She’d always thought she would prefer to be cremated but now she knew her body would be serving a purpose by returning to the earth from which it came.

“Dusty,” she called softly. “Come here, girl.”

She stopped, listening for any sounds of rustling in the woods. There was nothing, not even bird song.

Strange.

Walking again, her feet crunched over pine needles and moss grown frosty with the cold. She didn’t think the dog would have gone far, but who knew? Maybe that hollow log Saul had told her about was somewhere nearby and Dusty was hiding inside it, hoping the strange woman calling out to her would go away.

Karen had the sudden uneasy feeling that, if Dusty felt her territory was being invaded, she might actually attack her. Given the dog was so shy and skittish, Karen doubted anything like that would actually happen, but you could never be sure. For all she knew, the dog had had another litter and could be protecting it as she had done in the past.

For probably the hundredth time in her life, Karen wished she wore a watch. How much time had passed since she’d entered the woods? The light seemed to have dwindled somewhat, but not enough to make her think she had been wandering the forest for more than, say, twenty minutes or so. Regardless, though, she knew she should turn back. She, like everyone else, had heard countless stories of people becoming lost in the woods, even though they had just barely veered off the designated path. But she was smarter than that. She’d made sure she had kept walking in a relatively straight line, steering herself around the various blockades only to continue on in a western direction once she was on the other side of them.

Still, she knew it could happen to people much more familiar with their surroundings than she currently was and she had no desire to end up like them: cold, scared, hungry, alone.

Lost.

Reluctantly, she stopped walking again, looking around for anything that could be a fallen tree, a log in which a frightened abused dog might take a tiny bit of solace. She saw nothing. Just ferns and tall pines, their boughs hanging low and heavy, their trunks and branches covered in moss an almost magical shade of brilliant emerald green. She studied the green, taking a mental picture of it, storing it away so she could later recall it and do her best to describe it with words, though she already knew words would prove woefully lacking when it came to such wild beauty.

“Okay, Dusty,” she called out. “You win. We won’t make friends today, but I’ve got my eye on you.” Despite feeling foolish, she smiled. She had no idea why she was even interested in the dog. She remembered her previous thought about how animals, even worse than people, would inevitably break a human heart just by the simple act of loving and leaving. Of course, unlike people, they made no promises to stay either. They simply were, always living in the moment, giving no thought to the future beyond hoping for a tossed French fry or a good scratch behind the ear. She envied their simplicity, their constant state of Zen.