The Final Days of Springborough

“Where are you going, little girl?” The spirit in her hut whispered, seemingly in her ear. She waved her hand by the side of her head, like one would when shooing a pesky fly, hoping that the spirit got the hint to go away. But, it never did. “It’s dangerous outside. Wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”

“Sure, you would,” she replied, with the sassy manner she learned by being a girl on her own. “You would like my company forever, something that only comes with me entering the gates of eternity. Not today, though, voice in my head, in my hut- not today. I’m going to go out, into the woods, find myself a living beast, kill it, clean it, cook it, eat it, and spend another day making sure everything is ready for when my parents and my brother return.”

The spirit was silent after that, offering no more pearls of wisdom or creepy premonitions of doom, the latter being more of what it offered. She first heard the spirit a week or so after her family departed. Why it had waited to speak to her, she had no clue. From what she could tell, she was the only one that was able to hear it at all. But, the spirit talked to her, at first just calling her “little girl” as she slept, waking her from fitful slumber, but disappearing when her eyes opened. It wasn’t until she told it to “shut up” one morning as she was surveying the horizon for her brother’s ship that the spirit asked incredulously “Little girl, you can hear me?!”

From then on, Brynn wished she hadn’t made it known.

The spirit talked incessantly, obviously starved for attention. He talked of falling off the cliff, “It was late at night, and I took too many steps. Suddenly, I was flying, feeling free. Just as suddenly, I was dead, freer and more lonely than when I started my walk.” It would talk of its life when it was alive, “Jimmy. That’s what they’d call me, yes. Good ol’ Jimmy. I was the only one that didn’t mind the woods. Didn’t mind long walks, so I’d always get the patrols. They’d send me out, and I’d wander. Nothing much to see but wildlife and the suns rays coming through the trees. I do love the way it illuminates the fog.” Once, when Brynn asked if he had anybody else he could annoy, Jimmy responded, “Not really, no. My last assignment was straight from King Daniel’s mouth. King Daniel told me to go as far as I could, to the cliffs of Quakenfalls, and look out over the waters for any type of weather. He and Queen Jenniffer were about to embark on a journey, and didn’t want to be caught unawares. I, apparently, went farther than I could go, and ended up here.”

“Why don’t you head back? Haunt the castle?”

“It appears that once one has left their living being, one is doomed to stay where their body rests. I’m at the base of these cliffs, and so I’m doomed to stay around here. Unless, perhaps, you wish to find my bones and move them to the castle?”

Brynn peered down the cliffside at the waters. Not only had she no idea how she’d get down there to search for the bones, but the waters seemed pretty deep as they battered the cliff’s edge. There’d be no safe way to even scrounge for Jimmy’s skeleton. Sometimes, as she looked out over the waters for her brother Jage, and down the coast North and South for her father John and mother Jaklyn, she’d peer out over the cliff’s edge to try and spot the bones of Jimmy. Somehow, Brynn now felt like she was responsible for four lives, plus her own, as she was left to guard the cliff’s edge.

So, Brynn would nod, letting the spirit talk, trying desperately to find a happy place in her head where she could get away from listening. Here she was, worried for her family, trying to survive and make her own little world a better place, haunted by a spirit who was more starved in death for companionship than Jimmy seemed he was when he was alive. Jimmy, when his spirit was imprisoned in a body, seemed to be a perfect friend for Brynn, a man who came around when he could, but didn’t feel like he had to be around always. As a spirit, Jimmy was around always, and couldn’t leave when he wanted.

“If you retrieved my bones, I’d be most grateful,” he’d request, randomly. “I don’t want to be stuck here either.”

“I don’t mind your company, Jimmy,” Brynn would say, being polite. “It’s just that I miss my family, and you don’t warn me before I might fall off the cliff and meet your same fate. So, I don’t necessarily know how much I can trust you which certainly weakens our friendship.”

“Don’t know how much you can trust me, yet.”

“Yet,” Brynn agreed.

Brynn’s stomach rumbled, and growled, and purred, and so she grabbed her quiver of arrows, her bow, threw on her shoes, which were just moccasins in need of some repair, and she headed out into the forest. “Wish me luck,” she said over her shoulder to Jimmy the spirit.

No response came. Brynn wished she could see him, like she could see the animals’ spirits, but he remained just a voice. She sometimes imagined him. A tall, slender man with brown hair, a brown beard, a smiling mouth and soulful eyes. She pictured him in sea-ravaged clothes and barefoot; and every time she went off to the forest to hunt, she pictured Jimmy standing by the hut, smiling at her so she didn’t fear. With sad eyes because he couldn’t follow her, and he’d give a little wave to assure her he’d be there when she got back; that no matter what, whether her parents had returned or not, or whether her brother’s ship was on the horizon or not, she was not going to be alone. She’d have somebody to talk with as she ate. But still, Brynn wished she could see him.

The hut and the cliff’s edge and the waters were far behind her when she first saw an animal that she could eat. The forest of Fortis was well known to have a diverse mix of creatures that all seemed to get along and create even more diverse creatures. In her eyesights, she held the sight of something that looked like a squirrel mixed with rabbit mixed with a fox, and either way- this squi-bbi-x looked like just enough meat to hold her over for two days. So, Brynn kneeled, felt back into her quiver for an arrow, brought out the wooden rod affixed with a stone arrowhead on one end and eagle tail feathers on the other, and began to aim.

But, the low yaaaawwww of the bow string being pulled taut gave alarm to the squi-bbi-x, and it bounded/hopped off, leaving Brynn to gaze out to where it might have gone. No trace. So, Brynn, keeping the arrow in place, stalked quietly through the woods looking for her next target. She was really hoping to spot a big bird of some sort as she was really getting tired of eating the red meat of these land roamers. She absolutely detested (but sometimes forced herself to eat) a lizard or other reptile she’d perchance to slay, so she was really craving the white meat of a pigeon. She remembered the chickens of the village, how her mother would mash up tomatoes, and slowly cook them with spices and powders. Once the mixture cooled, Brynn would dip her chicken in this tomato concoction, and it was oh-so-sweet. She’d have to maintain her own jars of the tomato dip because her brother, Jage, would eat the tomato mixture straight which, while Brynn thought it delicious, she could never do.

She missed her brother.

She missed her parents.

She missed the tomato dip.

She was hungry.

Brynn searched the branches for dinner, knowing that hitting a bird through all the obstacles was super challenging. She thought about making a trap for birds, or at least, finding seeds and berries, putting them somewhere she could watch without being seen, and picking off the birds one by one. Maybe Jimmy knew the differences between the berries, and could tell her which were poisonous (if any were) around here, and she could mix poison berries with non poison berries, and trick the birds into eating them. Then, she wouldn’t have to aim her arrow, but rather just pick dead bird bodies off the forest floor. Would that poison the meat? Could she then cook out the poison over an open fire? Brynn would see if Jimmy knew that as well.

Suddenly, an object floated in the distance in Brynn’s peripheral vision, and with an arrow already slung, she turned to face the object, aiming straight for the heart. It was a person coming at her, and without thinking, Brynn loosed her arrow, sending the death bolt through the sky. She watched her arrow sail with that numb panic that came knowing your second thought came a second too late, and she might have just mortally wounded a fellow human. She thought this way until she watched her lethal arrow fly right through the being. If the person had a heart, Brynn knew her arrow would have sunk into it, squashing its beating. But, this woman’s heart had already stopped. She had no body. She was another spirit roaming the forest of Fortis, a spirit whom Brynn could see, and who was looking at Brynn with alarm.

“Who are you?” Brynn asked, feeling like she should apologize for attempting to kill this already dead woman.

“Do you not recognize me? I was the Queen,” the spirit replied. “I have been murdered.”

And just like that, Brynn wasn’t hungry anymore.