The Hum in the Roots
Faye carried the beeswax candle in both hands as she walked under the old trees. It was not lit. She liked it that way. It smelled of honey and warm afternoons, and she pressed her thumb into its soft side as she went. Plum sat on her shoulder with her heavy sleepy lids half down. Starlight came through the branches in thin lanterns and lay in patches on the moss. Somewhere past the mossy stones, at the dark end of the path, something was humming. Faye stopped walking. Plum's tufted brows lifted. "I hear it too," Faye said.
Faye had never walked past the mossy stones. That part of the path went under a hill of roots where the starlight did not reach, and thinking about it made her feel small inside. The hum came again, low and round, like someone singing with their mouth closed. It did not sound angry. It did not sound like anything she knew. Plum turned her head all the way around, which she did when she was thinking hard about something. Faye looked at the stones. She looked at the candle in her hands. "One more step, then we can stop," she said, and took one.
The moss was cool and springy under her boots. She counted four steps and stopped, exactly the way she had said she would. Nothing happened. The forest went on smelling of wet bark and crushed leaves, and underneath that was something else, something sweet. Plum shuffled down from her shoulder onto her wrist and gripped gently with both feet. "Four more," Faye said. She took four more. The hum grew fuller. It was less like a sound now and more like a feeling in the soles of her feet. The sweet smell came again, stronger, and Faye knew it. Honey. Warm afternoons.
Under the hill of roots, the dark was softer than she had expected. It was not empty dark. It was full of moss and old wood and the slow breathing of the forest. Faye stood still and waited until her eyes learned it. Shapes came forward one by one: a leaning trunk, a fallen branch in a coat of lichen, Plum's pale face close beside her own. "One more step, then we can stop," Faye whispered. Plum clicked her beak, which was very nearly a laugh. Faye stepped. The hum wrapped around her ankles and climbed her like warm water filling a boot.
At the end of the roots stood a wide old tree with a long split down its trunk. The hum was coming out of the split. Faye leaned close, and warm air touched her face, and the honey smell was so strong that she laughed without meaning to. Bees. Hundreds of them, tucked deep in the dry heart of the tree, shivering their wings to keep each other warm through the cold nights. The hum was the sound of them doing it, over and over, taking turns. Nobody had asked them to. They simply did it, all night, all winter long.
Faye sat down among the roots with her back against the tree. The bark was warm, like a hand that had been holding a cup. She lifted the candle into a thread of starlight and turned it, thinking how it had been made by small shivering creatures in a dark warm place, long before it ever reached her hands. Plum settled on her knee and shut her eyes, then opened one. "I wasn't scared," Faye said. She thought about it. "I was a bit." Plum tucked her head down into her feathers, close against Faye's leg, and the tree hummed on behind them both.
When the hum had settled into her like a second heartbeat, Faye stood up and brushed the moss from her knees. She stacked three mossy stones at the mouth of the root hill, small and neat, so she would know the way in next time. Going back was shorter than coming had been. The path she had been afraid of was only a path now, with cold moss and thin starlight and the smell of honey following politely behind her. Plum flew ahead to a low branch, waited, flew ahead again. "One more step, then we can stop," Faye said. Neither of them stopped.
Her blanket was where she had left it, folded in the crook of two roots, with her lantern beside it, still unlit. Faye lay down and set the candle near her cheek so she could keep smelling it. Far off, quiet as a held breath, the old tree went on humming in the dark. Plum hopped down onto the blanket and stood very close. Faye opened her hand, and Plum stepped into it, one warm foot and then the other, and Faye's fingers closed gently around them. The starlight moved slowly through the branches above. Faye's eyes shut, and stayed shut.