Atear sat in the dusty, dark basement of a house he didn’t know was empty, where he tied off and cut a thread. He tugged at the newly sewn pocket; the stitches held. He swung the bag, with its new pocket, over his shoulder. Then he stretched and noticed the stillness. After climbing the ladder upstairs, he found the house empty. Atear didn’t care much. The only person he thought cared about him, his father, died twelve years ago.
With an empty house and no one to see him leave, Atear could enact his decade-old plan to find his father’s village. And so, into his bag, right next to the map, he packed food: a carrot, apple, and sandwich. As he left the house, he grabbed his Uncle Lavric’s coat, the thickest in the house. Atear jogged down the packed dirt paths of the town, past all the buildings that formed the monotonous background of his life.
Despite no one from the town entering the forest since anyone remembered, a faint path led away from the town through the forest. Trees rimmed the path, with the sides of trunks bare of branches to leave the sky above the path clear.
At the edge of the path, a stark line between the barren ground of the town and the tree roots of the forest, Atear hesitated. He had been planning for years, confident he could make the trip his father had. But everyone said never to enter the forest.
With a deep breath, Atear shifted his bag and stepped into the forest. Timid steps turned to quick steps turned to running. A thick tree root grew into the path. Atear tripped. His momentum carried him forward; his knee scraped against granite. Blood gathered on the knee, but Atear didn’t notice. He leaned against the oak that had tripped him and pulled himself up. He stared through the brown-edged leaves and scratched a mosquito bite and continued at a careful pace.
At a fork in the path, Atear stopped. He grabbed the map and a carrot from his bag. As he crunched the carrot, he unfolded the map and turned it. Once the town Atear had left was at the bottom, he traced his finger along the route he had taken to the fork, in the map shown next to a drawing of a boulder. Atear pushed aside tree branches to look for the boulder, but he couldn’t find it without leaving the path. The shaky pen line he had drawn nine years ago of his route turned to the left, and so, upon finishing his carrot, Atear headed left.
He worried if he was on the correct route until he saw a stone bridge, the same as on the map. The centuries-old bridge had held up against all erosion. Atear climbed down to the riverbank and slurped water from the diamond-clear river with its pebble bottom.
He sat by the river to eat his sandwich. In the heat of the midday sun, he took off his coat. Across the river, a robin landed on the branches; it called out its song. Atear wanted to find a bug to feed the bird. He turned over what he thought was a rock. After he saw the bottom was dry and absent of bugs, he tossed the rock into the river. A few twigs decomposed into the dry dirt in the rock’s indent. Dirt plumed off the rock, revealing it to be not a rock at all but a piece of wood. Atear fished it out of the river and found that it was a carved wooden duck. He returned to shore and set the wooden duck down to find a meal for the cardinal.
Under where the statue had been, he saw no bugs. After digging down an inch further and finding no bugs, Atear set some chicken from his sandwich down on a rock. He watched from the bridge, where he dried the duck statue with the coat.
Atear turned the duck around in his hands. He imagined his father leaving the duck behind; maybe he had wanted to leave something behind to attest he had made the journey. Atear smiled.
The cardinal flew down and swallowed the chicken. Atear watched it eat and fly back to its branch. He left an inch of his chicken on the bridge. He continued down the path and snacked on his apple, the last of his food.
At dusk, the wind picked up and blew birch leaves through the tangled, bare branches. Atear shivered and put on the coat. He had expected to reach his father’s village in the evening; He regretted stopping for lunch. Atear continued on, but he watched the sides of the paths for a clearing to sleep the night in.
The stars faded into view before Atear finally saw the village; he jogged despite his sore legs from a full day’s walk. As he crossed the forest’s threshold for the second time that day, he heard a shout. He didn’t know what it was, but the intruder call had been raised. The townspeople were busy collecting their arms, ready for a fight.
As Atear stumbled into the ring of houses, the town’s steel greeted him.
“Answer for why you came, invader,” the mayor said.
Shocked by the response to his arrival, it took Atear a minute and a half to respond, during which the townspeople whispered about him.
“This is the town of my father,” Atear said, stepping into the light cast by lanterns and torches. “And thus I thought it should be my town as well.”
A woman holding a pitchfork stepped towards Atear.
“Your father was exiled. We have no need for his kin. Go back home,” she shouted.
Atear stumbled backwards. He turned towards the forest.
A farmer holding a lantern called out, “Wait! We can’t send him into the forest at night. Even Zayni, we exiled at dawn.”
Atear followed the farmer to his home. The farmer gave Atear some cold soup left from dinner and blankets. Atear slept on the sitting room floor that night.
The farmer shook Atear awake before sunrise.
“It’ll be best if you leave now before anyone against the exile decides twenty years isn’t long enough to put an issue to rest.”
“I’m against exile,” Atear mumbled, collecting his bag and coat in the dark.
“They wanted to execute your father. Even I supported the exile; I was the closest thing Zayni had to a friend. He couldn’t stay in the village.”
The farmer waited for Atear to stand before leading him out the door.
At the edge of the forest, they stopped.
“After your father left, I found this at his home.” The farmer handed Atear a notebook. “I kept it. I assumed he had died and figured someone should keep it to remember him by. But I suppose that’s you.”
Atear tucked the notebook under his arm and entered the forest. He trudged away, looking back over his shoulder at the village he thought would be his home.
He heard shouting from the village– people angry about him and his father.
Atear ran.
Out of breath, he stopped at the creek. Out of sight from the village, he allowed himself a drink. He sat on the edge of the bridge and dangled his feet over the water.
He opened the journal to the first page and read about his father’s life and how he had no one to talk to or spend time with. The same as Atear.
As the journal went on, there were fewer entries and more nature drawings. Four pages in a row were drawings of the same duck, the wooden bird in Atear’s bag. A year before he was exiled, was the last entry.
“I’ll need to find something drastic. I can’t go on like this.”
The next page held an unfinished drawing of a tree. Every page after was empty.
Atear watched the river flow and held the wooden bird.
Once his stomach grumbled, he left the bridge and continued. As he walked back to town, the midday sun beat down upon his head. The jacket was too warm for even his waist, so he tied it onto his bag.
As Atear passed the fork in the path, he could hear people shouting. Tired as he was, he started jogging so he could find out what the commotion was for.
He ran into his aunt. She helped Atear up and hugged him.
“Where were you? We’ve been looking for you since noon yesterday,” Atear’s aunt led him back into town.
When his uncle saw him, Lavric whistled sharply twice. Townspeople came out of the forest with scratches from the tree branches on their arms and legs.
“I was so worried when I heard you had disappeared,” Atear’s neighbor said.
At home, Atear hid the journal under his bed and put the wooden duck on a shelf next to the scarf his uncle had sewn for him.