Morning bled into the hospital like weak tea — pale light under gray skies, rain tapping against wide windows. Rafi lay awake when the nurse peeked in with breakfast. He didn't touch the food, just stared at the cup of watery apple juice until it warmed under his palm.
In the next bed over, the smallest boy mumbled into his pillow. Not real words anymore — just a chant of rootrootrootroot until a nurse brought him something in a plastic cup and pressed it into his mouth with fake motherly care. He quieted after that, eyes rolling half-shut.
Rafi hated her for that. He hated himself more for doing nothing.
Down the hall, whispers spread faster than painkillers: the counselor had opened his eyes. Two doctors leaned over him, murmuring about amnesia, possible brain swelling, what trauma did to memory.
But Rafi knew it wasn't swelling that made the man stammer and clutch at the sheet. It was remembering too much — the clearing's breath on his skin, the roots clutching his ankles like a promise never broken.
Rafi slid off his bed before the nurse could notice. The braid girl was already at the counselor's door when he got there, her braid damp with rain from the cracked window she'd opened to spit out pills she pretended to swallow.
Inside, the counselor looked smaller than he ever had by the campfire — sunk into pillows, eyes rolling glassy between the children and the doctors. His fingers twitched at the blanket edge, plucking invisible threads.
One of the doctors asked about the camp — the storm, the accident. A polite voice that expected polite answers.
The counselor didn't answer politely. He coughed up one word at a time: names of children, the shape of the clearing, the hush that fell whenever someone tried to run. The older doctor scribbled notes, nodding as if the words made sense on a clipboard but not in the real world.
Rafi locked eyes with the braid girl. They saw it at the same moment: the counselor was spilling pieces that didn't belong to him alone anymore. Pieces that could drag the rest of them back to that dirt — or worse, make the grown-ups twist it into bedtime horror for courtrooms and TV screens.
Rafi stepped forward so suddenly that the older doctor raised a hand to stop him. He didn't care. He leaned in close enough that the counselor's cracked lips brushed his ear.
The man rasped a word Rafi didn't know. Then another. Something about a door. Something about roots that weren't finished. His breath smelled like copper and old leaves.
A hand on Rafi's shoulder yanked him back. A nurse scolded him — the counselor needed rest, she said. He was upsetting the patient.
Rafi didn't bother arguing. He pushed past the nurse, nearly knocking her clipboard to the floor. The braid girl caught his arm in the hallway, nails biting into his skin. She didn't apologize — just dragged him down the corridor until they ducked behind an empty linen cart.
Neither of them spoke at first. They just breathed, their shoulders pressed tight in the cramped space, listening to the nurse's footsteps fade.
They both knew. The counselor's mind was bleeding out the forest's secrets too fast. It wouldn't stop with him — it would pour into court reports, psychologists' files, news stories too eager for a headline.
And the smallest boy — doped and shivering in bed — he wouldn't last long enough to say anything real. Rafi had seen that in his eyes this morning: something inside him had already gone back under the dirt, curled around the clearing's root-heart and left an empty shell behind.
The braid girl bit her lip until it bled. She asked him with her eyes: what now? Run? Stay and fight? Tell the grown-ups what no one wanted to hear?
Rafi pressed his forehead to hers, so close he felt her pulse hammering the same rhythm as his own. He told her — without words — that they were alone now. Nobody else would stand in that clearing again and live. It was just them. It always had been.
Above them, the hospital's pipes groaned. A flicker of green shimmered behind a ceiling vent — so quick he thought he'd imagined it. But the braid girl saw it too. Her nails dug deeper into his wrist.
They were running out of time.
Somewhere down the hallway, a nurse screamed. The smallest boy's monitors shrieked an alarm.
Rafi didn't flinch. He just looked at the braid girl and felt the answer grow like a thorn behind his ribs: the forest was here, too patient to be shut out by glass and steel.
It would not stop until every child who knew its secret either belonged to it again — or destroyed it themselves.