Boy from the Woods (9781311684776) (35 page)

“I’m not asking you without reason,” she
heard Michael tell her neighbor.

Thorsten exhaled in
frustration. “I’m sorry, but seriously?
How can you ask that of me?
Surely you can
see…” His voice wavered.
“You
know
how I
feel about her.”

“And that’s why I’m asking you.”

“Excuse me?
Look, I know you don’t have to take my feelings into consideration,
but…”

“I hope I’ve
made myself clear,” Michael interrupted him mid-sentence. When he
whipped around and turned th
e corner,
Julia tripped backward and tried to slink away unnoticed, but it
was too late.
He bumped straight into her.

“Oh, hi,” she babbled nervously, casting
around for an excuse to be here. “I, uhm... had to put these
bottles in the shed, so...”

His gaze
shifted from the bag stuffed with soda bottles to her face
screaming guilt. “You saw me talking to Thorsten?” he asked
calmly.

She turned red. “Okay,
yes.
But I didn’t mean to
eavesdrop.”

“That’s all
right. I had to talk to him to ask him something having to do with
you.”

Yes, that had
been abundantly clear. Michael had told Thorsten in no uncertain
terms to stay away from her. That’s why her neighbor had sounded so
distraught. Michael was jealous, and frankly, he had every reason
to be.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t
have… you know…”

“I’m not blaming you for anything,” he
mumbled.

And then he kissed her. His lips softly
explored hers, his hands running up and down her back. The world
around them seemed to hold its breath. The wind had died down and
the full moon had risen. Overhead, the stars twinkled in the
nightly blue of the sky, dappled in red streaks of sunlight at the
horizon, where the sun had set. Julia felt his breath on her cheek
when he slowly pulled away from their kiss. “I love you with all my
heart,” he said.

“And I love you.” Julia smiled.
“Why so serious tonight?”

“Well, I just am. I want you to know I mean
every word I’m saying.”

They leisurely strolled back to the table
holding hands. Their friends were having a last cup of coffee.
Thorsten was nowhere to be seen, and Julia knew exactly why. Maybe
she should drop by his place tomorrow, just to clear the air.

“We’re leaving in a few minutes,” Tamara
said. “Some of us have to work tomorrow.”

Gaby
scrunched up her face. “Why-oh-why did I have to sign a two-month
contract at the stables? I’ve been to London now.
I
don’t really need the money anymore.”

“Why don’t you save up for
your next break?”
Axel suggested. “Maybe
we can go somewhere together.”

Gaby’s face lit up.
“Definitely!
Okay, fine. I’ll muck those
damn stables for a few more weeks.” She shot Axel a passionate and
longing gaze. Julia couldn’t help looking aside and shooting
Michael the same kind of look.
In response, he bent
over and kissed her softly.

When the coffee was gone, all the guests
left. Michael was the last one to leave. Julia waved goodbye to him
at the gate when he drove off in his mom’s car honking the horn at
her.

She could
still feel his lips on her mouth as she climbed the stairs. Humming
a tune, she switched on the light in her room and half-heartedly
hit a few notes on the keyboard in the corner. The tune she was
humming was the song she’d composed just before the London trip –
the mournful song she had played on Michael’s piano after their
afternoon in the forest. The song she had aptly named
Farewell
,
because it felt as though she was leaving something behind in the
melody of that tune.

Julia sat down and started to play it again,
the sounds drifting outside through the open window, up into the
sky where the pale moon shone, down to the edge of the forest where
she had said goodbye to things this summer and learned new lessons.
She was on the threshold of a new chapter, and it was time to turn
the page in her hand.

At that
moment, her mother coughed
quietly,
standing in Julia’s doorframe. “What a wonderful song, darling,”
she observed. “Is it something new?”

Julia looked
at her mother thoughtfully, then shook her head. “No, I don’t think
so.
It feels old. I call it
Farewell
.”

Ms. Gunther nodded.
“I think I understand what you mean.”

Julia smiled. “Good night,
Mom.”
She got up, switched off her
keyboard and prepared for bed. As she drew the curtains and closed
her bedroom door, she heard her mother softly singing her song in
the hallway. With a satisfied sigh, she crawled under her comforter
and read in her scrapbook until her eyelids started to feel heavy.
That’s when she turned off the light and invited the dreams
in.

16
.

A
voice woke her from her
dream.

Julia sat up
in bed with a start. For a second, she thought Anne had called her
name, but that couldn’t be – she was staying with their dad in
Innsbruck for the week. She looked around her room bathed in cold
moonlight. Didn’t she close the curtains before? Or had she
forgotten?

And then, she
heard it again. A clear voice sounding like
tiny bells, seemingly coming out of nowhere.
“Come out to the woods.”

A shiver ran
down her spine, but it was because of the chilly wind blowing in
through the window – the voice didn’t frighten her. It sounded warm
and f
riendly. Julia rubbed her face. Her
forehead was slick with sweat. No wonder she had goosebumps all
over her body in the wind touching her skin. She got up and walked
over to the window to lean outside. There was no one down there who
could have called her.

Without
thinking too long about it, she got dressed and snuck quietly
downstairs so she wouldn’t wake her mom. Julia stepped outside into
the yard. The moonlight turned everything to silver, lending the
world a fairylike atmosphere. She glanced down the road running
past her house, momentarily shrugged, then started to walk in the
direction of the forest. Who knows, maybe she had become as
sensitive to the woods as Michael had. Maybe the woodland sprites
had called her out to dance.

Julia smiled. Good to know she hadn’t turned
into a boring, responsible adult just yet. Who in his right and
rational mind would take a stroll to the woods in the middle of the
night because a mysterious voice had summoned them? Actually, this
was kind of exciting – something that could have happened in one of
her fairytale books.

Once she got to the forest trail, her feet
automatically took her in the direction of her old meditation spot.
Her oak stood silently erect amidst the other trees, partly
shrouded in shadows. However, the moonlight clearly illuminated a
familiar figure standing next to the oak tree. He looked like he’d
been waiting for her.

“Michael?”
she asked in surprise. “What are
you
doing here?”

He took a step toward her and softly kissed
her cheek. “I want to talk to you.”

“Uhm… here?” She raised an eyebrow.

He nodded solemnly. “Yes,
here.
This is where it all started.” He
took her by the hand and slowly stepped back until they were
standing directly under the oak, their faces lit by moonlight
seeping through the foliage. Julia held her breath. Michael’s eyes
had never looked as vividly green and intensely sad as they did
now. His whole face looked different, but she couldn’t quite put
her finger on the reason why.

“You heard my voice?” he asked.

“It was you?” She blinked
at him.
“How could I possibly have heard
your voice in my head?”

“Because our
connection runs very deep,” he replied. “Because I’ve been hearing
your voice in
my
head for years.”

She shook her head in confusion. “You lost
me, sorry.”

His gaze fell
down, to his hand touching the tree trunk. “You used to come here
to draw, to write, to sing, read or dream.
This was
your realm. You felt safe here.
And I
kept you safe – I was the angel that went with you.”

A strange sensation ran through Julia. This
was it – Michael was going to tell her more about his sudden
attraction to her after the accident. But why wasn’t he making any
sense? What had he said exactly… he’d offered her safety under this
tree?

“So… uhm… you used to come here too?” she
ventured.

He stared
into her eyes, even more forlornly than before. “I used to
be
here.”

Her eyes grew
wide with astonishment. She gingerly looked up at the branches of
the oak.
Her
oak.

“What do you mean?” she whispered.

“I guess you
could call me a prince of the forest,” he softly replied. “A
real
prince. An oak tree – an ancient being with a forest life
of many centuries, living in connection with all the other
creatures of the forest, rooted in soil.”

Her mouth turned dry. “A tree,” she said in a
monotone.

“A tree,” he nodded.

This was unreal. It was
crazy.
She had never heard a more bizarre
story in her life, and yet, Julia knew he wasn’t lying.
She could sense it.

“What… how…” she
stuttered, then stopped.
She didn’t
know
what
to ask.

Michael
gently caressed her face. “You have always sensed that trees
have a certain life force,” he continued his
remarkable tale.
“You felt they could feel.
That
you
could feel
them.
And you can. Trees are souls – very
quiet, peaceful souls that peek up from the soil like sprigs, grow
into green twigs and then, even bigger. Their life seems eternal.
And a tree soul is never alone – it is always connected with the
other souls around it. And when a tree has lived out many hundreds
of years and its time is almost up, it falls into a slumber. It
sleeps, losing its individual awareness, merging with the
consciousness of the woods once more, to be reborn as a young
shoot.”

Michael
leaned against the oak, running a hand through his hair.
His voice dropped. “But sometimes, it’s different.
Sometimes, a tree connects with a human being at
the end of its life. A human who often visits the tree, for
example. And this connection jolts it awake, so to speak. This
means the tree soul won’t dissolve into the forest consciousness –
it pulls loose and is reborn as a human, usually as a child or
other family member of the person who released it from its tree
existence. This is how our souls evolve, from species to species.
Sometimes from tree to animal, sometimes to human.”

“And you… you
had a connection like that with me,” Julia said in a wavering
voice, staring at Michael wide-eyed. Except it
wasn’t
Michael. And in
a way, she had always known.

The boy in
front of her nodded. “Yes, I did. But my bond with you was
different from what the other trees had always taught me. I
didn’t
want
to be born as your child or grandchild. I wanted
to be with you… as an equal.” He smiled shyly. “It was only when I
ended up in this body that I realized I was in love with you. As a
tree, I didn’t have enough understanding of what it was I was
feeling, but as a boy, I did.”

“This body.”
She touched his shoulder with some trepidation,
then his head, his cheek. “What did you do to it? Did you steal
this from Michael?”

He shook his
head. “No, of course not. He came tearing through the woods on his
motorcycle and his wheel caught on a protruding root by the side of
the road. The road was slippery with rain, and his bike overturned,
throwing him off.
His head hit a stone, and he was
gone.” He put a hand on hers reassuringly. “He died on impact. He
didn’t suffer.”

Julia couldn’t help but well up at his
words.

“I saw his
soul floating away, reuniting with the source. He looked… peaceful.
It was then that I made the swift decision to leap from my old body
to this new one. On Midsummer Night, when the force of lightning
connects the powers of heaven and earth, above and below – that’s
when this becomes possible.”

Her knees
buckled. Michael supported her as she sagged down against the
oak.
“This is impossible,” she mumbled. “This
can’t
be real.”

“And yet, you know it is,”
he calmly said.
“I think you’ve always
felt it, but you couldn’t explain it.”

She shot him a suspicious look. “Hmm. Can you
read my thoughts?”

He smiled, looking roguish all of a sudden.
“Sometimes. As a tree I could always hear your thoughts, but now it
happens in flashes.”

“So did you
pick…
him
… on purpose?”

“No, because
I had nothing to do with his accident. I didn’t even know who he
was until I entered his body and my… or actually,
his
…
memories returned. It’s a striking coincidence I ended up in the
body of the boy you were in love with yourself. Or maybe not – I
don’t really know if there is such a thing as coincidence. It’s a
typically human word. In the forest, all are connected and
everything happens for a reason.”