The Reborn Forest Read online

  The Reborn Forest

  By

  Renee Bradshaw

  Mara allows the world to move around her, pushing her in the direction best for it, and never for her. Until she is selected to go out on a routine urn planting, helping souls move on into their next life. She is given the choice to continue drifting through life, or make a change.

  Copyright Page

  Copyright © 2017 by Renee Bradshaw

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  ISBN-13:

  978-1542464703

  ISBN-10:

  1542464706

  http://www.reneebradshaw.com/

  Dedication

  For my family, who let me respond to the voices in my head with countless hours in front of the computer.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A note from the author

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  Mara inspected her hands - too clean. Manicured, filed, presentable, flawless. The white nail polish glared back at her, stark next to her beige skin. Hands that would never be unstained again after she stepped off the bus.

  Nails betrayed life in the office: suits, keyboards, phone calls, tracking records, e-paperwork. Six mindless days a week. The only excitement? Her yearly move up one floor. Two years ago, her window crested the building across the street, leaving behind the view of prostitutes, gas-guzzlers and the general scurry.

  Her mornings were spent in meetings, nodding, drinking coffee, and pretending not to live in daydreams, all the while Mara gazed at the top of The Reborn Forest. The reborn reached for the sky, and with the help of the wind waved hello to everyone in the city. Then, in the late afternoons, Mara copied and shredded her way through man’s history in a windowless room, and the forest became a faint thought.

  For years she had intended to rent a bicycle and ride up to the forest. She contemplated the idea in the same manner people planned to start an exercise program on Monday, or promised to read more in the new year. As with most intentions, the ease and comfort of routine won out.

  What would be the point? She often pondered on a quiet morning while lying in bed, debating the health benefits of a long bicycle ride versus a couple more hours of sleep. Four hours of physical exertion to look inside the iron gates, only to turn around and return home by nightfall. A waste of a free day for only moments of view.

  Besides, Mara’s office had a window with a view these days.

  A view that no longer held comparison after her arrival in the forest.

  “Reach under your seat and pull out the wooden box,” the foreman said, stepping onto the bus. He was a deep brown, as though he spent many hours outside in the natural world. She only saw people that leathered at the Thursday markets; farmers with roasted skin, aging faster than those who sat in offices.

  She reached below and pulled out the smooth wooden box with Sierra carved into the top in elegant script. Her seat companion held a box inscribed with Tango.

  “You’re anonymous out here,” the foreman continued, “that means, no exchange of personal information. Don’t care if the person sitting next to you is the love of your life or your new best friend. Remember your forest name. It shouldn’t be too hard since it’s on the box.”

  The foreman pulled a brimmed russet hat from the back pocket of his chestnut overalls and became shades of brown head to toe. A sturdy tree trunk, complete with a bird’s nest of a thick beard.

  “C’mon.” The foreman stepped off of the bus and the twenty-six lottery winners stood to join him. Mara’s fingers ran over her smooth wooden case, tracing her forest name.

  She studied the man next to her – Tango. He watched the line of lottery winners with fear shining in his pale blue eyes. He shifted from foot to foot, jittery. Mara bit the inside of her cheek. They had ridden in silence to the forest, and she had not noticed how nervous he seemed. If he had not intimidated her with his good looks, would she have talked to him? Calmed his nerves? Instead, she had stared out the window the entire trip up the mountain.

  “I heard there are twelve souls in each box,” Mara whispered.

  “Shh.” Tango blinked at her with startled, wild eyes.

  “Sorry.” Okay… Tango doesn’t want to talk.

  The pair behind them inched forward, bringing their cases into view. Whiskey and X-Ray.

  “I heard it’s twenty.” Whiskey’s said, her voice small and high pitched, like a mouse squeaking in a nearby room.

  “It’s different each time,” X-Ray grumbled, looking around the bus as though he did not want to be caught speaking to them.

  “How do you know?” Mara had bartered and pleaded for information in the two weeks leading up to her first planter rotation, but found no one willing to share concrete details.

  “This isn’t a first trip for everyone.” X-Ray tucked his box under his arm and patted it with fat sausage fingers. Sausage fingers always came from wealthy families.

  “Are we allowed to talk about this?” Tango asked, eyes darting around the bus at the others. He reminded Mara of someone who might be in an advert for toothpaste — perfect for the early morning look, stubble growing on his face. She blushed at the intimacy of the thought. Not to mention the stupidity. Of all the days to imagine such things.

  “We can only talk about how things work in the forest, while we’re here.” X-Ray jabbed towards the window with his thumb. “When you go home, it’s best to forget the forest. The bus ride, however, is generally quiet.”

  “Out of respect for the dead?” Mara guessed.

  “Out of not mingling without the parameters of casts.” X-Ray shifted his box and looked away from the other three.

  The front of the bus cleared and Tango stepped into the aisle, followed by Mara. She would not let X-Ray’s indifference to the day get to her. The bubbles of anticipation threatened to brew and bubble out of her. Her heart pounded. This was the moment she had fantasized about her entire life. Too much excitement to contain within the walls of the bus, or to let a stranger diffuse.

  Both in awe and jealousy, she had read about the assault on her senses to come. One’s first steps into the forest held comparison to no other experience. And when she exited the bus, she was not let down.

  The first change in her world came from below with the fluidity of the land. Even through her thick work boots, the world shifted beneath her feet. Solid, but mushy, like a crumbling pie crust, the ground constantly changed. She had only seen earth from behind the city’s iron fences, little soil patches between the cool comfort of concrete. Never had she stepped on it.

  “Mud,” X-Ray said, patting her shoulder.

  “Huh?” Mara pretended to be oblivious to his patronizing tone.

  “Mud. It’s
why the ground is so… squishy? Slimy? It’s why you newbies stand here looking like babies who just learned to walk.” X-Ray droned on, mocking anyone in listening distance with a basic Earth Sciences lesson. “When rain, or runoff, mixes with dirt, it creates-”

  “We know what mud is,” Mara said, refusing to take another step while she was in X-Ray’s vision. He shrugged and continued to the other side of the bus. Whiskey scurried after him.

  Mara’s nose was the next to notice the new world. Her lip curled, unsure of what to make of the new scents. The aromas were of the markets, pulling back a corn cob husk, and hand carved furniture, all rolled into one perfume.

  “It grows on you,” the foreman said. Mara turned to see him leaning against the bus near the engine, his eyes fixated on the city in the distance.

  “It’s too much- I don’t know what exactly. But it’s like...” She searched for words that would make sense to one who was not skyscraper bound.

  “It’s death and life. The air and earth without the grease of the city.”

  “I have a cleaning spray that’s supposed to smell like The Reborn Forest.” Mara resisted the urge to set her box down and cover her nose.

  “Not the same thing is it?” The foreman laughed. It was the first time she had seen him smile since she had met him that morning.

  While they had been talking, the rest of the planters emptied the bus, and now excited gasps and murmurs came from the other side. She only needed to step around the bus to top off her excitement.

  She hurried to fall in line behind the other planters, but the toe of her boot snagged on a thick rope protruding from the ground. The foreman grabbed her elbow as she stumbled, and her grip on the box grew tighter still.

  “A tree root,” he said.

  “From a reborn? Did I injure it- her?” she asked.

  “They don’t feel pain. Not like us.” He released her arm and walked away.

  She stepped around the bus and stood in full presence of the forest. The reborn reached skyward, and Mara had to tip her head back to take in their beauty. Brown and green, luscious with life. Light glittered through their branches and leaves, creating a dizzying effect on the solemn group in front of the gate.

  “Each soul watches over us,” the foreman announced, cutting through the rustling music created by the leaves. “If you deface or take any actions behind the gates against orders, the reborn will remember into the next life. They will await you on the other side. There are more eyes than you can see in The Reborn Forest.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The foreman’s gruff voice was full of purpose and agility as he gave the same speech he likely presented week after week. Mara, along with the rest of the lottery winners and newly dubbed planters, nodded as one in blind agreement.

  What else can we do?

  “Your cases hold all the information you need to make it to the other side of today. You’ve been assigned a plot, in which you, and you alone, work. You cannot share the work with anyone because the souls you hold in your case, the plot you’ve been assigned, are all are based on your ERLs.”

  Expected Responsibility Levels. Away from the city, but not away from the classifications that control our lives.

  Standing on her tiptoes, Mara watched the foreman as he pulled a large, E shaped key from a ring at his belt and slid it into the gate’s keyhole. A loud groan, followed by an even louder squeal reverberated through the small clearing. As though it had been years since it had last opened, instead of a week.

  “Come.” With a single word, the foreman commanded the planters like they were his well-trained army, ready to follow him anywhere. To his credit, they stepped through the large gate after him without hesitation, funneling in and then fanning out.

  The breeze lifted the loose strands of hair around her neck and the leaves above mirrored the movement in their rustle. She had been certain that when she finally stepped foot into the forest, she would find it open and comforting. But comfort did not come as she set upon the path, surrounded by an iron fence.

  The only welcome to the planters were the scents that drifted over them, stronger inside the gates. Mara decided it was not much different from the spray at home, only missing the comforting familiarity of the bleach undertones.

  No one dared speak. The only sound their boots, squishing through the mud.

  A cracking noise beyond the barrier caused several planters to move in closer together, and Mara kept an eye on Tango as he scanned the forest. With each tiny snap and rustle, he seemed to grow paler yet. She glanced at the foreman who did not take notice of the sounds, nor the whispering when it started.

  “Just small animals,” X-Ray said, nudging Tango with his elbow as he pushed by.

  Mara glared at the back of X-Ray’s shiny head, feeling defensive for Tango.

  “Ghosts of the forest,” Tango whispered and Mara sighed. If he kept talking like that she would start to question his mental state.

  A few more moments of walking in silence passed before the cracking noises turned urgent in their pace, growing heavy and loud. Expressions around her changed to horror. A few women turned as though they were prepared to run back to the bus.

  But the foreman pointed to a small green creature climbing the side of a nearby tree. Its long tail whipped behind it, slapping at the leaves.

  “There’s your ghost of the forest. A lizard.” The foreman snorted, looking back at Tango. “Legends. Most of what you hear are legends.”

  Mild laughter moved through the group like an ocean wave crashing lazily on the shore, and Tango reddened.

  “How many urns can be buried without a single ghost coming forward?” Tango whispered, close to Mara’s ear. She looked up at him, the red tint already disappearing from his cheeks.

  The foreman stopped abruptly at two small gates, mirrored on either side of the path, and everyone shuffled to a pause as he pulled the keyring from his belt. “Alpha. Bravo.”

  Two of the frailest looking women Mara had ever seen broke apart from the group. They held out their cases for inspection as if to prove they were indeed the names called out. In a pleasant and joking voice, the foreman commented on their similarity. “Do you two know each other?”

  “Sisters,” they answered in unison.

  Mara’s eyebrow shot up as the unease of the surrounding crowd grew thick. The lottery was random across the city. How could two sisters get called into the same lottery group, let alone assigned Alpha and Bravo? What about the rule stating there would be no contact with other lottery winners when returning home?

  The sisters looked as though they might tip under the weight of their cases. But they stood with heads held high, ready to be the first planters of the day. They might have been the small distraction promised to Mara. Something to pull eyes and thoughts away from her if there were any, but what if they did more than distract?

  Mara held her breath, certain the foreman would send the entire group back to the bus, citing espionage. The planters would file into a building for examination, the foreman would call the day a loss and start fresh with a new set of lottery winners next week.

  However, if an inspection was called, Mara would be free from making any more choices about the forest.

  Instead, the foreman’s eyes simply flickered with surprise, then he took his authoritative stance again in front of the women. They were his opposite in every way: fair, frail and frightened. “Enter your compounds.”

  The two almost identical women stepped through two almost identical gates and stared back at the planters with two almost identical expressions. Jaws set, they did not move as the foreman closed the gates in their faces, leaving the lock to hang on the bar.

  “Explore your section of forest, but no others. Don’t take or add anything other than what you’re instructed to. When you’re done, sit outside your gate and wait for us. You will not walk back to the bus alone.”

  And with that, the foreman turned and continued on his way up the trail, the lottery winner
s scampering to keep up. The strangeness of the two women, soon became a memory with the excitement of each following gate.

  The foreman made the same speech at every gate, the only change was in the forest around them. Trunks grew thicker, leaves lay thinner. The trees colossal by the fourth gate, Mara remembered those old stories about the reborn touching the clouds. Angels playing on the branches.

  “Kilo. Lima.” The foreman spoke to another pair and Mara looked skyward. She had questions forming every second, questions she had carried her entire life and new ones that formed over the past two weeks.

  Every good citizen knew there were times in life when it was best to keep questions quiet. Best to pretend one is satisfied not knowing. Sometimes, it is not appropriate to ask. Sometimes, one might be better off not knowing. Yet, other times, people were better off not letting others know that they could think outside of the proverbial box. The one holding everything the world collectively knows, or at least publicly admits.

  “The trees have changed,” an older woman said, her eyes sharper than most, her tongue quick, and not fumbling. Mara would have stumbled over a question in her nervousness. Age earned confidence.

  “Each enclosure holds a different breed of tree,” the foreman said, stepping closer to her. Age had a way of commanding answers. “They may look the same to your eyes, but they’re not. This sector has a more drastic change than the last group of trees. Sturdier. Older. Will weather more storms without so much as a bit of moss.”

  “Is that how they… age is a factor?” the old woman asked.

  “Yes. That’s how they determine how long the tree will grow. Before your soul goes back into the earth.” Rumors in the city turned into truth in the forest.

  “Or to other uses,” she said, a crack in her voice as she met the foreman’s gaze. Just then, the clouds shifted and sunlight grazed her face.