The Edge of Reach

One warm evening in the small village of Reach, while the last light of the sun and a thin young moon shared the sky, a boy named Elan stood at the corner window of his house. Outside, the other children were playing ball beneath the lamplight, and the shadows of moths danced on the ground around them. Elan watched through the wooden slats, flexing his legs each time the ball was kicked, imagining it was his own foot that sent it back. There was nothing in the world he wanted more than to be out there among them — to laugh, to make jokes, to be one of the group, to look like they did. But Elan had been shy since the day he first understood he was different, and every morning the face in his mirror reminded him of it.

This warm evening, though, would not be like the others. To understand why, you must first hear about the forest — and about Malit.

---

Elan’s bedroom was painted the same blue as the sky that hung over his family’s farm, and each morning, before he even lifted his head from the pillow, his first thought was of the forest. The forest was the only place where Elan felt free. A farm means chores, and Elan had his share; but once the animals were fed and the vegetables gathered from the garden, his father would let him spend the afternoon in the woods, so long as he was home by supper.

It had not always been so. When Elan was small, the forest had seemed a mysterious, even frightening place — the sort of place where strange creatures might creep out and gobble up a boy. He would never have gone there at all if someone hadn’t made him. That someone was his friend. His only friend, in fact. Her name was Malit, and she lived in a small house near the farm. In those days he was too young for chores, and his mother let him play from morning until suppertime — and every one of those hours, he spent with Malit.

She was the first real friend he ever had: someone who didn’t care that he was different. You see, Elan did not look like the other children of Reach. Across his face lay a great black mark, as though someone had splashed him with a bottle of ink, and it had been there since the day he was born. His mother told him it made him unique, and that in every other way he was just like anyone else — just as clever, and just as handsome. The other children did not seem to think so. They stared, or said mean things, or kept away. But Malit never spoke an unkind word, and in all their days together she never once asked about the mark. She was simply glad to have someone to play with; that was enough for her. When he was with Malit, Elan didn’t hide his face or shrink into himself. He could be exactly who he was. He could be free. And even now, every time he stepped into the forest, those same feelings came back to him, just as they had when the two of them were together.

In the forest, the sounds of the village faded to nothing. There were no builders sawing logs, no ironworkers hammering at their forges — only the breeze, and the slow swaying of the trees. It was like another world, and only the two of them knew the path in. Every day was a new adventure, and Elan thought he might never tire of it. Most days they simply explored the trails and the trees; but some days it rained, and rain sent them home early. So they decided they needed a shelter. There were no caves to be found — and caves were dark and scary anyway — so they agreed to build a house of their own in the woods.

Now, building a house is no easy task. You must be big and strong, able to carry logs and lift them up high. Elan and Malit had no big muscles. But they were clever, and cleverness finds a way.

They searched for two whole days before they found the perfect spot, deep in the heart of the forest. The sound of water led them there — a slow brook spilling between two great boulders — and beside it lay a flat clearing where the sun always shone, and where you could see just over the treetops and down into the valley below. Malit said it felt like standing at the very edge of Reach: the place where their whole world ended and another one began. In the middle of the clearing was a wide circle of pale sand.

They stuck their feet in deep, marveling that such a pit could exist. No matter how far they pushed in their hands and arms, they never once touched the bottom. When they had played their fill, they set to work. They hauled the biggest, flattest stones they could carry and pressed them into the ground beside the sandpit — that was the floor of their new house. They planted branches around its edge — those were the walls. But the roof stumped them, and for a long while they sat and thought about what might keep out the rain. It would have to be strong, and it could not leak.

Then, all at once, Malit jumped up and ran into the trees. Elan looked around, afraid something had frightened her — but she came back grinning, dragging a long sheet of tree bark behind her. “This will be perfect!” they said at the very same moment. Together they gathered up the biggest pieces of bark from the thickest trees they could find, taking only what had already fallen — for they didn’t want to leave any tree cold when winter came. They layered each piece over the last, working up from the bottom edge of the roof, and when the job was done they stood back to admire their work. Before they left the forest that evening, they made a promise: the house would be their secret, theirs and no one else’s, for as long as they lived.

That night, both children dreamed of the house. Malit dreamed of a table to eat at, and Elan dreamed of a fireplace to keep them warm in the cold seasons. Their dreams were so vivid that when morning came, each of them remembered every detail.

But their wonderful dreams only made the next day crueler. When Malit met Elan at the edge of the forest after breakfast, her face was streaked with tears, and she wore an expression he had never seen on her before. Between sniffles, she told him that her family was moving in two days’ time, far away from the village of Reach. They talked of running away to the house in the woods, of living there together in secret. But even as they said it, they both knew it couldn’t last — someday they would miss their families too much. Two days later Malit was gone, and Elan was very much alone again.

That was more than a year ago now. He still remembered the day she left — how they had both cried, and promised they would find each other again someday. He wondered if he could ever keep that promise. He couldn’t remember the name of her new village, and perhaps by now she had forgotten the name of his. Elan missed her more with every passing day. She had shown him the magic of the forest, and with her gone, it seemed nothing would ever be the same.

The day everything changed began like any other. When his chores were done and his father gave his nod, Elan ran up the trail behind the farm toward the woods. But this day was not like other days. He never met other children so far from the village. Yet there they were, a whole group of them, gathered and talking beside a pile of logs the woodcutter had left. Elan’s mind raced. He could run home, or find another way into the trees. Before he could choose, it was too late: they had seen him, and they came running down the trail to meet him. Elan was more afraid in that moment than he had been on the day Malit first grabbed his hand and pulled him into the dark of the forest.

“Hey — I’ve seen you,” one boy said.

“Yeah, he’s the one who’s always running behind the farm! Sometimes I see him up the mountain,” said another.

“What’s wrong with your face?” a girl asked. “Are you sick?”

“I’m not sick. I’m unique,” Elan heard himself say — quietly, in his mother’s words.

“You’re what? Speak up!”

“My mom says he has some kind of disease, and that’s why he looks that way,” said the middle boy. “She says he’s dirty.”

At this the children edged back a step — all but the oldest boy, a tall one, who stayed exactly where he was.

“So. You want to go into the forest today too, eh?” the tall boy said. “Well, this is our forest. But you’re welcome to pass.”

Surprised at his luck, Elan picked up his feet and started up the hill toward the first line of trees — until the tall boy jumped into his path.

“That is — you’re welcome to pass if you play a game with us.”

Elan did not want to play any game. But if he refused, he feared they would follow him — and if they found the little house at the heart of the forest, they would surely destroy it. He could not bear to lose the last piece of Malit he had left. So he decided to play along, and slip into the woods once they had gone.

“What kind of game?” Elan asked.

“Oh, it’s easy — but not everyone can do it. You see that log over there?” The tall boy pointed to a long log with its center hollowed out. “I bet we can get through to the other side faster than you. You’ll go first, and we’ll count how long it takes. Then each of us will take a turn, and we’ll see who’s fastest. A competition.”

“I don’t want to go in there. It’s dirty,” said the little girl.

“It’s not dirty. I’ve walked through it myself,” the tall boy replied.

“You go first,” the middle boy sneered at Elan.

Elan peered into the log, to the circle of light at its far end.

“Even if you’re faster — I can still pass?”

“Oh, sure. We just want to play a game. As long as you play, you can pass!”

It would only take a moment to reach the other side, Elan thought, and he set one foot onto the log’s inner trunk. “I’ll go now.”

The children looked at one another. Then, all together: “We’re ready!”

Elan tucked his chin to his chest and hurried toward the light, moving as fast as the narrow space allowed. Behind him he could hear the children shouting, though he couldn’t make out the words. He didn’t have far left to go when the log began to move. It rocked from side to side, knocking him against the rough inner walls. He kept his legs driving forward, following the light at the end. The log lurched again and threw him hard against one side. They were only trying to scare him, he told himself; he was determined to make it through. The log narrowed towards the end, forcing him to drop to his hands and knees and crawl as fast as he could.

He never reached the light. The log tipped loose from the pile and began to tumble. Suddenly there was no up and no down — only turning, and battering — as it dropped from the stack and struck the smooth grass of the hillside, where it began to roll. It rolled faster and faster, terribly fast, and Elan could do nothing but press himself flat against the inside of the spinning trunk and hold on.

After more dizzying turns than he could count — after his shoulders were bruised, his arms scraped raw, and the back of his head cried out in pain — the log finally rocked to a stop at the bottom of the hill.

This was what he had always been afraid of. He had seen it in those children’s eyes. They were not kind the way Malit was kind, and no one would ever understand him the way she had. He would never — never — let himself trust anyone again.

From high on the hill came yelps of laughter. Not one of them came down to see whether he was hurt, or even alive. By the time Elan gathered his senses and crawled out through the mouth of the log, the children were only dots along the trail back to the village. He lay in the grass and did not get up for a long time. He missed Malit now more than ever.

He couldn’t go home in such a state — dirty, bleeding, covered in the fibers of the tree; it would only cause trouble. Then he remembered the stream at the heart of the forest. Slowly but steadily he made his way up the trail and into the dark woods, and it was midday before he reached the little house. He washed the dirt and dried blood from his skin in the cold water of the brook, then lay down to rest in the grass beside the pit of sand. His hand moved through the tiny white grains, and with one finger he began to draw Malit’s face, as well as he could remember it. He tried to hold the tears back; they welled up anyway and dripped from his cheeks into the sand below. Oh, how he wished she were here now.

But try as he might, he could not quite call up her face. Only a year without her, and already her features were slipping away from him — the shame of it stung. He crawled to the middle of the pit and started again, this time with her smile. Her smile, at least, he could never forget. And once the smile was drawn, the rest came more easily, until at last a face looked up at him out of the white ground. It wasn’t a good drawing, and he couldn’t be sure the face was truly hers. But it was as close as he could come. He fetched water from the stream, mixed it into the sand, and began to sculpt her nose along the lines he had drawn. Slowly, a face began to rise out of the pit, growing truer and truer as he held the image of Malit in his mind.

When he finally reached home that evening, he kept the bruises and scratches covered so his mother and father wouldn’t see. If they found out, they would go to the other children’s parents — and then the children would only torment him worse. And there was another reason: his mother had shielded him from the world when he was small, and the sight of his bruises would surely break her heart. He hurried past her in the kitchen, saying he was very tired and not hungry, and tucked himself into bed. His stomach growled and protested, but he would not give in, and soon he was asleep, dreaming again of the forest.

He rose earlier the next morning than he ever had in his life, and finished his chores before the sun was up — before even his father was awake. He took a thick helping of bread and cheese, ate half of it on the trail, and saved half for later.

When he reached the clearing, the birds were singing all around it in the morning sun. They seemed to be cheering him on to finish what he had started. And so it went, day after day: chores before dawn, then the trail, then his hands in the sand, working the face nearer and nearer to done. Each day he built her up out of the sand. The slope of her shoulders, her arms folded as if resting, the whole of her lying in the pit as though asleep.

After many days, more than he could count, the face was finished. It was perfect. And it was not Malit’s.

He stood over it, astonished. Malit had round, chubby cheeks; the girl in the sand had high cheekbones and a sharp line of jaw, like the ridges above the valley. Her hair flowed longer than Malit’s ever had, the way the brook flowed between the boulders. How had he made someone else entirely, while thinking of no one but his friend? Still, he had created her, whoever she was, and he was proud of the work. He talked to her the way he used to talk to Malit, pretending she was still there. He told her jokes. He ran around the rim of the pit, imagining her chasing behind him. And day by day the girl grew so real in his mind that when he spoke, he could almost hear her voice answering.

But this, too, could not last forever. There came a day when Elan wanted someone real — something more than a shape in the sand. In his loneliness and frustration he snatched up a rock to smash the sculpture. He lifted it high above his head. He could not bring it down. Even if she wasn’t alive, she was dear to him, and destroying her was beyond his strength. He dropped the rock and trotted home, wondering whether he should ever return to the sandpit at all. That night he ate supper with his family, who were surprised and glad to see him at the table.

Later, lying in bed, he gazed out his window toward the edge of the forest, faint under the glow of the moon. As he watched, dark clouds rolled slowly in, and thunder boomed in the distance. At first he thought nothing of it — it rained often at that time of year. Then lightning flashed, and in the flash he remembered his girl in the forest, made of sand, with the rain coming.

She would be washed away. Gone forever — just like Malit.

Elan threw back his covers and was out the window before he could give it a second thought, running as hard and as fast as he could toward the trees. And just as he neared the tree line, something appeared in the sky above him. He had never seen anything like it in his life.

Squinting up into the first stinging drops of rain, he saw an orb of light. It glowed like a bolt of lightning, though not quite so bright, and it glided above his head, level with the ground. Then it dipped, and slid away between the trees, moving faster and faster. Elan ran after it. He slipped in the mud; he fought to stay on his feet as the rain washed the trail out from under him; and always ahead, the orb’s pale rays flickered between the trunks, leading him deeper in. At last he stumbled into the familiar clearing. The ball of light swung high into the sky above the pit — hung there for a heartbeat — then came crashing down into the sand with a blinding white burst that turned the forest, for one instant, from night to day.

The flash sent Elan tumbling backward, and for just a second he could have sworn the rain was falling upward. He found his feet in the slippery grass and crept toward the pit, which was glowing now with a soft light. What he saw amazed him — and broke his heart. His sculpture was gone. The pit of sand had become a pool of liquid glass.

He stared at his own reflection in it until ripples spread from the center. The ripples grew stronger; a small point broke the surface; after the point came edges, and curves — and Elan understood that his sculpture was rising, whole, out of the pit.

His face lit by the glow of the pool, he watched her float up and settle upon the glassy surface. The moment she came to rest, the light went out, and the liquid glass turned back to plain wet sand.

And the girl — no longer sand, but skin, skin very like his own, faintly dappled like the light of the forest floor. She drew her first breath of the wet night air.

Her muscles twitched against the ground. She struggled to rise, her legs shaking like a newborn fawn’s. Elan’s eyes went wide in disbelief. Timidly he came near, then steadied her, one hand at the small of her back and the other at her wrist. She looked up at him, opening her eyes for the very first time, and smiled.

It was the smile of Malit. The smile he had so desperately missed.

With her arm around his neck, he helped her away from the pit and into the little house, the glow of her skin fading with every step. He wrapped her in the blankets he kept there, under the bark roof, while the rain drummed above them. A stillness he had never known settled over him as she sat close by. Just like Malit, she was not afraid of his face. She accepted everything that he was. She had not yet spoken a single word, and yet somehow he knew that she was kind. He rocked her gently in the blankets until, without meaning to, he fell asleep.

When the morning sun came, the girl was sitting beside him with her hand resting on his cheek — resting, he realized, on his mark. She was stronger now, and her eyes held a glow that reminded him of the glassy pool.

“Who are you?” he asked.

She smiled, and her voice was gentle. “Do you not know? I am the spirit of this forest. By walking my hills and valleys, you learned my face. I hope you will forgive me — I guided your hand as you drew, so that I might enter your world. It would not have been possible if your heart had been closed. But your heart was open, even in its grief, and that made the difference.”

As he heard this, every feeling from every day he had ever spent in the forest with Malit came flooding back into his eyes, and his lip trembled.

“I don’t know what to do,” he pleaded. “I have nowhere to go, and there is no happiness without Malit.”

“That is why I have come. What you need is not your friend returned to you. What you need is to know how to walk forward on your path.”

“Where does my path lead?”

“Wherever you let it. This life of yours is not for others; it is yours alone. Only you can choose where your energy goes, and to whom you give it. You have so much left to give — and so far you have given nearly all of it to the forest. I thank you for that gift. But energy held too long in one place grows old and loses its power. Now it is time to move yours to where it can blossom and grow.”

She took his hand in hers.

“Look at the forest. Watch how the energy moves. Rain falls on the mountain and runs down to feed the trees and the grass; it gathers in the valley, and the sun draws it back into the sky to fall again. If it stayed in one place, it would turn stale and feed nothing. The trees drink the water and make fruit for the birds — and for you. The birds feed their young, and one day those young will raise young of their own. It is the movement that brings this place to life. Without movement — without change — there can be only death and sadness.”

“But how am I supposed to change? Where would I even go? This is the only place I have, and I don’t want to leave it.”

“It is not the place that matters; it is the change. The forest never moves, yet it is always changing. You are just as you were when I first saw you: your heart is kind. But kind is not enough — it must also grow strong. You have seen the dark energy that waits outside this forest. You must learn to guard your good energy against it — to be the master of yourself, and steer your path where you choose.

Dark energy hates to move, and hates to change. It wants only to swallow the good around it. When it sees a heart full of kindness, it thinks it has found something easy to steal. In that moment, you must show it you are not weak. The funny thing about darkness is that it is easily fooled — it believes whatever you show it. Show it only strength, and it will believe you are strong, and it will turn away. It is always more afraid of you than you are of it.”

“I don’t know why things have to be so hard.”

At this, the spirit of the forest laughed and smiled widely at him — and it was not the smile of Malit this time, but the smile of his mother.

“The rabbit must escape the fox. The mouse must evade the hawk. This might seem cruel, but it is the fox that makes the rabbit swift, and the hawk that makes the mouse clever. It is in the moments you face the darkness that you grow the most. Without the dark, there can be no light; one needs the other; it is all part of the cycle. The cycle is almost never easy — but I believe a day will come when you understand.”

Elan turned her words over in his mind, and thought that perhaps he was beginning to.

“I think you are ready now to start your new journey,” she said.

“Can I come back to see you again?”

She was quiet for a moment. “The energy you gave this forest has let me stay here for a time — but I’m afraid there is very little of it left. Will you help me return to my world?”

“I will miss you,” said Elan.

“You cannot miss what is not gone. I will always be here with you — in the wind that blows through the trees, and in every drop of rain from the sky.”

So Elan agreed to help her. He lifted her in his arms, carried her out through the doorway of the little house and into the bright light of day, and laid her down gently in the very place where he had first drawn her lines in the sand. The moment her body touched the white grains, a blanket of blackness fell over the clearing — a darkness so deep that when he looked up, he could see the stars — and the glow of the sandpit rose again, just as it had on the night of the storm. The spirit smiled at him gracefully as she let go of his hand and sank into the glass forming around her. A moment later she was gone. And in the very same moment, a sudden breeze moved through his hair, and he understood: she was all around him.

After that day, Elan returned to the heart of the forest whenever he could — though as he grew older, the farm asked more and more of him, and he could not visit the green hills and rocky slopes as often as he wished. But while he worked, he thought about everything she had taught him, and imagined how he might use it to grow. It took many months, and many harvests. Slowly, surely, Elan’s heart became strong. It did not become hard, and it did not turn mean, like the hearts of children ruled by their darkness. Elan took care as he grew his power, and his confidence followed. Yet he knew, just as the spirit had told him, that he could not keep growing without change — and that to change, he would one day have to face the dark energy itself.

---

And so we come back to that warm evening in Reach, with the last of the sun and the young moon sharing the sky, and Elan at the corner window, watching the children play ball in the lamplight while the shadows of moths danced around them.

This time would be different. This time, he would show the strength of his energy.

Elan lifted his head high and walked out the side door.

He crossed toward them in the dark, the lamplight still a stone’s throw ahead, their faces not yet clear. One boy broke for the goal, dribbling the ball close between his feet. The tallest of the group closed in and swept his leg hard to steal it — and took a younger boy down in the process. The boy pitched forward and slid across the gravel and dirt. The others burst out laughing while tears cut streaks through the dust on his cheeks.

Elan knew that laughter. He knew that pain, too — he had felt it inside a rolling log, a long time ago, with the same laughter ringing above him. For a moment, he could feel the boy’s torn hands as if they were his own.

Without thinking, Elan ran into the middle of the group, took the boy by the arms, and set him on his feet. He brushed the dust from the boy’s shirt while the children stood and stared.

“Hey — I know you,” said the tall boy. And Elan knew him too. He was older now, and taller, but he was the boy from the log pile. “You’re the one who runs up the trail behind the village. What’s that on your face?”

Heat rose in Elan’s cheeks. And from far away — from the heart of the forest — a gentle voice came back to him: It believes whatever you show it.

So he showed it strength.

He walked straight at the tall boy, who stepped backward, uncertain, and kept stepping until his shoulders met the wall. Elan stopped only inches from his face.

“If I pushed you to the ground right now, and your hands bled — would you laugh at yourself?”

“Get away from me!”

“Well? Would you?”

A long pause. “No… I’m sorry,” the tall boy said at last.

Elan stepped back and looked around at the children, every face slack with shock.

“We take care of our friends. When they’re hurt, we help them. You are not being his friends. You think laughing at someone else’s pain will make you feel good — but that’s only because you don’t know the truth.”

“What truth?” asked a small girl. And Elan recognized her too: the girl from the log pile, the one who had asked if he was sick.

“When you hurt someone — or when you stand by and do nothing while someone needs help — you’re feeding a darkness inside you. A monster. And when that monster has eaten its fill of other people’s pain, it will come for yours. It will eat your happiness until you are weak and broken. And then it will spread to the people around you, until no one is happy at all.”

The children stood in silence. Then the smallest girl in the group walked over to the fallen boy. “Are you all right? I’m sorry you got hurt. You can come to my house, and I’ll put a bandage on your hand.”

The strength that had carried Elan was fading now, and the weight of what he had just done began to settle on him. It was as if it had been someone else entirely. Across the circle, the tall boy clenched his fists and started forward.

“What do you know, with that filthy disease on your face?” He drew back his fist — and a step away from where Elan stood, the two younger boys stepped in between them.

“Stop it! He’s right — you’re never nice to us, and we’re tired of it!”

The tall boy looked from face to face and found no help in any of them. “I don’t want to play with babies anyway. A bunch of losers, all of you.” And he stormed off into the dark.

“Who are you?” said a boy that Elan did not recognize.

Elan stood tall and took a slow breath. “I’m Elan. I live on the farm just over there.”

The boy looked toward the darkness where the tall boy had gone. “He’s always mean to us, because he’s older. His dad yells at us, too, if we climb his fence.” The children’s eyes fell to the dusty floor, considering the memory, until one of them shrugged and said, “Maybe you could be our friend instead. You seem nicer than him.”

The youngest girl turned to the group and asked, very quietly, “Is it okay if I ask about his face?” None of them answered her. So she turned back to Elan, gathered her courage, and said: “You aren’t… dizeeseded, are you?” — doing her best with the older boy’s word.

Elan was ready for the question. His voice came out strong and unwavering. “I might look different, but I’m the same as you.”

The children considered his words, studying his face — closer now, and less afraid. Elan paused for a moment, and then said:

“Well. There is one difference. I have a secret.”

“A secret?” whispered the young girl.

They were all leaning in now, and Elan noticed that not one of them was looking at his mark. They were looking at him. He thought of Malit — of how his first friendship, the only true one he had ever had, began with a hand pulling him toward the trees and a promise to keep something wonderful just between them. The little house had guarded his grief for a long time. Maybe now it could hold something better.

He glanced left, then right, then cupped his hands around his mouth and leaned in close.

“I know the secret of the forest.”

At this, the other children’s eyes lit with interest. The forest? What secret? Where is it? — but Elan only smiled.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Tomorrow I’ll show you.”

Someone kicked the ball between their huddled group. Elan stopped it with a foot. He had rehearsed this moment a thousand times behind the wooden slats of his window. He turned, angled his foot precisely and sent it back into the lamplight, and through the goalposts. Just like that, he was no longer an outsider of the game. He was in it.

High on the mountain behind the farm, a breeze slipped down through the trees. It ran alongside the length of the trail, crossed the fields of his family’s farm, swirled the dusty ground into little eddies of whirlwind, and brushed his cheek, soft as a hand — then swept on into the lamplight, where the shadows of the moths danced.

Elan laughed to himself, and kept playing. He didn’t turn to look for her in the dark. He didn’t need to.

You cannot miss what is not gone.