Paper Forests: The Paper Forest, #1

By Tegan Anderson

Special ebook edition featuring redesigned cover art and extra content

 

"While your children and grandchildren are away, I like to think that they're visiting a fantastic place, somewhere where they aren't restrained by an illness or held back by their own emotions, a place where there is nothing but health and happiness to greet them."

 

Once upon a time, Oliver wakes up in a Forest full of magic and monsters, not quite dead, but not quite alive either. He wakes with three other people whose lives have been cut short, each more tragically than the last.

 

Together, they embark on a journey that will take them deep into the heart of the Forest, where they will have to face the ghosts of their pasts and their long-hidden secrets. Secrets that will force Oliver to choose between finding a new life in the trees and finding a way home.

 

Welcome to the Paper Forest.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Little Oaks Independent Publishing
• Release date: Aug 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9798201775896

Tegan Anderson

On a cold Autumn evening back in 2008, seven-year-old Tegan Anderson began to write their first short stories, finding a more creative way to learn their spellings. Many years and many more short stories later, they haven't stopped for anything. Now, they're writing more than they ever believed possible. Tegan may write the worlds they would prefer to exist in but currently lives in Devon with their overflowing bookshelves and expanding imagination. 'Beauty in the Breakdown' is their debut novel.

Book preview

Paper Forests

Tegan Anderson

Little Oaks Independent Publishing

Copyright © 2023 Tegan Anderson

First published in Great Britain by Little Oaks Independent Publishing

Text © 2023 Tegan Anderson

Cover illustration  © 2023 Ksenia Kholom’yeva

Book design © 2023 Tegan Anderson

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

No reproduction without permission.

All rights reserved.

The right of Tegan Anderson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Independently published

www.tandewrites.com

This book is dedicated to the child I was when I started believing in magic, and to the person I was when I started to turn magic into words.

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

A Note from the Author

PROLOGUE

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

EPILOGUE

PAPER GHOSTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A Note from the Author

Please note that this book depicts issues of mental illness, terminal illness, homophobia, fantasy violence, self-harm ideation, blood, death, and gore. I have done my best to approach these topics with sensitivity, but if you feel this kind of content may be triggering for you, please be aware.

PROLOGUE

In a counselling room with a circle of chairs, you would expect to find a group of teenagers. They would have empty eyes and slumped postures and minds that told them they were immune to the influence of society. However, those influences would be the reason they were in that room in the first place.

Now, the room is full of adults, holding on to each other as their final shreds of hope flicker before them.

We’ll go around the circle one by one, says a man who stands at the edge of the circle, scratching at the stubble across his cheeks. Introduce yourself and tell us a little about why you’re here, as much as you’re comfortable sharing. Remember, we’re here to support each other, not to block each other out.

The first person to stand is a woman, likely in her late forties or early fifties but looking many years past her age. She has the delicate features of a porcelain doll, but her tears smear her carefully applied makeup and her skin looks many sizes too big for her skinny frame. She smells like a cheap but strong floral perfume. There’s a man beside her with an untrimmed moustache and a fuller figure from comfort eating. He doesn’t stand.

"I’m Caroline Harwood. This is my husband, Michael. My son…Our son…His name is Oliver. He’s in a coma. He’s only seventeen."

Her hands shake as she talks, but her voice doesn’t falter. Her words sound rehearsed, almost as if she’s been repeating the same story over and over again to other counsellors, private therapists, or old friends who visit and ask where her eldest son is that day. The man beside her reaches up and holds one of her hands in both of his, bringing her knuckles up to his lips.

He overdosed on heroin a few weeks ago and it surprised the doctors that he made it. He’s been on life support ever since. We’re praying for the best, but it isn’t looking promising.

A few tears leak out of her eyes as she sinks back into her chair, not uttering another word for the rest of the session.

The counsellor continues around the circle, all wet cheeks and hollow eyes blurring into one figure, looking like despair personified.

A young man is representing a little girl named Gracie. She was critically injured at age seven—along with her mother—in a car accident where he was driving. An elderly couple speaks about their grandson, Ansel, only fourteen years old. They weep until they remove their glasses and pull out tattered handkerchiefs. A middle-aged man and woman, who don’t make eye contact or acknowledge each other’s presence besides interrupting each other, talk about their son, August. He is a terminal cancer patient approaching the end of his life expectancy.

After allowing each child to be spoken about for a few minutes, the counsellor steps in, sensing that the adults are becoming too distraught or too uncomfortable to continue. He stands in the centre of the circle and cracks his knuckles.

One thing that you all have in common is that you have a child who is on the verge of being taken away from you, whether it is by a natural illness or something that could’ve been prevented. You mustn’t worry, for they have been placed in the best hands and there are people who are trying their best to look after them.

The adults in the circle lean in, desperate to hear anything that could ease their pain, even if it’s just a story woven for their own comfort. In this situation, it is a story, although there is some truth behind every word.

While your children and grandchildren are away, I like to think that they’re visiting a fantastic place, somewhere where they aren’t restrained by an illness or held back by their own emotions. I like to believe that they’re in a place called the Paper Forest, where there is nothing but health and happiness to greet them.

ONE

Once upon a time, I awoke in a strange place. It was clear that this place was not my home.

The sun hasn’t risen when I sit up and rub at my bleary eyes, surrounded by an almost familiar cold darkness and the stale aroma of dirt. Trees tower over me, almost one hundred feet tall, and the bark is as smooth as ice. The canopy of leaves is dark enough to be mistaken for black. Dried mud from the day before leaves smears across my clothing. The vegetation consists of only trees and sparse patches of dead grass. Everything around me looks different from yesterday; I think the world resets when I’m sleeping.

There may be no living grass, no flowers on the ground, but there are three sleeping people, all wrapped up in their dreams. They’ve been here for the past few days, the rise and fall of their chests being the only evidence that they were still alive. They are the only things which have remained the same since I woke up here, surrounded by unfamiliarity.

The sleepers lie in a triangle. There’s a little girl, maybe seven or eight years old, with stubby brown braids and a cornflower blue raincoat. One of her hands clasps at her zipper while the other is curled into a fist by her face, her thumb tucked into her mouth. The other two sleepers are both teenage boys dressed in jeans and oversized band t-shirts. One is pale with hair like raven feathers and soft features. The other has a face made from sharp angles rather than curves, with skin like bronze marked with bruises and a mane of mahogany curls.

As much as I want to wake one of them, I resist the urge and walk through the trees instead, taking a mental note of the scenery so I can find my way back to where they rest. Waking one of them might change this world even further.

Seemingly endless, the Forest stretches out for what could be miles in each direction, every tree the same distance apart, organised as if they are soldiers about to step into battle. Everything is identical, but the spot where I woke up is the anomaly. There, the trees space out further and I slip on mud wherever I step, even though there is no sign of past rain or water nearby.

Hello?

I stop walking.

Hello? Is someone there?

It’s the first sound I’ve heard in days other than my breathing and my shoes sticking in the mud.

I can’t see you. Can you come closer? I don’t have my glasses. The raven-haired boy is sitting up, rubbing at his dirty face. His wide eyes and round cheeks don’t match his scrawny frame. Although hunger and thirst no longer affect us here, his body looks as if he’s been starved almost to death.

He squints in my direction, shielding his eyes with his hands even though there’s no sunlight to disrupt his view. I step into a patch of moonlight so he can see me better.

My name is Ansel, he says hesitantly to fill the silence, and I realise I haven’t responded to any of his calls.

I’m Oliver. I scratch at my arms. The tiny dents and scabs that linger beneath my fingertips remind me of the last few moments of my life. The marks from the belt still haven’t faded. They never will, not here. I’m frozen in the moment of my last breath. Before you ask, I don’t know where we are or how we got here. I woke up a few days ago. It changes every day.

It changes?

I nod. The Forest changes everything but your clothes. On the first day, it was a rainforest. The second, it looked like something straight out of a Tim Burton film. Now, I pause while I look around, it’s just a muddy forest.

As I say this, Ansel peels himself from the ground, his clothes squelching as they pull away from the mud. His face distorts in disgust as something cracks beneath his weight: his glasses. He curses, fumbles around for the remains, and then hurls them away as hard as he can. Here, there’s nothing we can do to fix them.

We stand on opposite sides of the clearing, leaning against the trees and waiting as if we’re wanting the other person to step forward and take charge, the one who will watch over the remaining two sleepers and find our way home. There’s nothing we can say to each other, not until he realises why he’s here. I know why I am.

The sun rises and sets again before another sleeper awakens. This time, it’s the other boy, closer to my age than Ansel. He doesn’t say anything. His paint-splattered hands tremble as he rubs at the bruises which decorate his skin, purple and blue roses against a brown canvas. One hand drifts towards his neck and he fumbles with the collar of his shirt as if he’s looking for something. He drops the hand in defeat. All emotions evaporate from his face. His focus is somewhere behind me, as if I don’t exist to him.

In another world, he could be beautiful.

In this world, he’s a crooked thing, a boy too close to turning monstrous.

I want to be afraid of him, but I’m not.

What’s your name? Ansel asks. The boy does not move, but Ansel must close the distance between them to make out his features. He gets no reply, so he doesn’t bother asking again. It’s not like we’re under a time constraint.

Time…I count seconds, then minutes, until I reach an hour. The sun appears over the horizon as I reach my target, almost as if the new world is listening to me. Today, the sunrise is beautiful, with orange-hued rays kissing candyfloss clouds and bringing warmth to the air. I don’t have the chance to enjoy it.

The little girl wakes up as soon as the sun has fully risen. When she opens her eyes, she screams, a sound that seeps beneath my skin and is painfully wrong in such a childish voice.

I run towards her before my brain can register why. Ansel reaches her first, dropping to his knees and pulling her against his chest. She pushes him away and presses herself against the ground, each scream looking as if it is about to tear her body in two.

Nothing we say can console her, so the other boy and I keep our distance. I return to keeping note of our surroundings. A golden trail of sunlight illuminates a string of orange daisies sprouting up from the mud. They wind into the trees and out of sight.

Now that everyone is awake, we’ll be able to start moving. There must be a way of figuring out where we are and how we can get home.

It’s okay, Ansel murmurs when the girl has calmed down enough to take a breath, wrapping his arms around her as she shakes. In this moment, he looks like an older brother trying to comfort her after a bad dream. It’s over now.

She looks up, not at Ansel, but into the canopy of the Forest above us. Her wide eyes lack the childish innocence that I’ve seen in my siblings.

No, it’s not, she whispers back. It hasn’t even begun.

✽✽✽

We have been following the daisies for hours when the girl—Gracie, not Grace, she tells me firmly—runs up to me and grabs my hand. Her palms are cold and clammy, and I resist the urge to pull away. She quickens her pace to keep up with me; three of her steps are equal to one of mine.

I feel strange, she announces after we’ve passed a few dozen trees. Her pink Velcro trainers stumble across protruding roots, so I slow down for her, casting an eye around to see where the others are. Ansel is striding confidently ahead of us, no longer disorientated by his broken glasses. The other boy is somewhere behind. I can’t see him, but I can hear his heavy footfall crushing fallen twigs.

What do you mean by ‘strange’? I ask, turning my attention back to Gracie. She stops walking and crosses her arms across her chest, crinkling the plastic of her raincoat. Her lips curl into a pout.

I should be hungry. I haven’t had my breakfast. With that, she turns away and stomps ahead to catch up with Ansel. She’s found comfort in him since this morning.

I understand what she’s feeling. I woke up four days and I still haven’t adjusted to the effects this new world has on me. My first instinct was to search for food and water, but I realised I didn’t have an appetite by the time I found some. I carried berries around with me all day until the world reset and my pockets emptied. Hunger never found me. Neither did thirst.

As we walk, I hear snippets of Ansel and Gracie’s conversation, occasionally broken by the other boy’s movements like static.

Have your parents told you the story of Hansel and Gretel? Ansel asks. He’s holding Gracie’s hand and swings it with each step.

No. I catch a glimpse of her screwing up her nose. What’s that?

Even from this distance, I can see his body tense. He hesitates as if he didn’t prepare for this scenario. Hansel and Gretel were the children of a woodcutter. One day, they were playing in the woods while their father was working, but they got lost.

Oh. I hear the disappointment in Gracie’s voice. If I were Ansel, I would’ve told her the authentic version of the story, the one with the parents selling the children and the witch fattening them up to eat.

If you think about it, we’re like Hansel and Gretel. We’re lost in the woods and we can’t find our parents.

You’re Hansel because your name sounds like Hansel.

He nods. And you’re Gretel.

Gracie stops in her tracks, tugging her hand back to herself. No, I’m not, she insists. Gretel is an ugly name.

✽✽✽

Another hour passes before we decide to stop for a break. Exhaustion and fatigue don’t seem to affect us anymore, but looking at nothing but trees for hours has bored Gracie and she needs time to rest her mind.

Time also works differently here: it goes faster. It was only a few hours ago when Gracie woke up just as the sun finished rising, but it’s already dipping below the horizon. I wonder if we’re in a northern country with short winter days and long nights, although the chill in the air isn’t quite cold enough. It’s like we’ve been snatched off the surface of the Earth and dumped into a world made just for us.

Gracie seems to grasp this concept a lot faster than the rest of us,