You know the stories. Know them just as deeply as the woods from which they sprang. You know to stay on the path, to ignore that tug within your chest when the wind whispers through the leaves. You know it’s the voice of the trees trying to call you home. You know, in the furthest reaches of your soul, how perfectly you’d fit beneath their roots.
You know it’s not time yet.
You’re young, though sometimes your bones feel the centuries your ancestors lived. You’re only borrowing them after all. Your mother told you that story the first time you asked her how many times you’d been here.
“Just as the rings within the tree stump tell us how many years it has stood, the knots in your bones will answer that question. So, we won’t know until you return them to our Great Mother, which is many years off yet.”
She said she saw her grandmother in your eyes, and you loved that. The thought that you cradled her mother as she cradles you, that she might return in your own child one day.
“How will I know?” you ask one night, fighting off the pull of sleep. “How will I know when I need to give them back?”
“You’ll feel it. The forest will tell you when you’ve had your fill of this life.”
“But it calls me already. You said I had to ignore it. That I can’t answer its questions.” You can hear it even now, whispering through the wood of the door, or perhaps from the wood of the door. It came from the forest as well after all; it has its own cycles to complete.
“Which question has it been asking?” Her voice is tender, the sound of her smile soothing you like a lullaby.
“Who are you?”
“You’re right, that is a question you do not answer. Not to them, nor to anyone else. You answer that inside yourself, right here.” A gentle hand presses to your chest; gentler lips brush your forehead.
Your eyes are heavy with sleep, the whisper of the Great Mother pulling you into the dark safety of your dreams. And yet, you still have the strength to ask one more question. “What will it say? The day I am to return what I have borrowed?”
“Welcome home.”