Chapter 7 Part VII The Forest Ranger, The Use of the Ax

The bricks and mortar were gone, and now David's fingers felt rough bark.He was inside the trunk of a tree, and in front of it was an arched hole covered with shadowy trees.The leaves fell, swirling slowly to the woodland.Prickly bushes and thorny nettles covered the ground, but David saw no flowers.It was a landscape of greens and browns, and everything seemed to be illuminated by a strange half-light, as if the dawn was about to break, or twilight was about to fall. David stayed in the dark trunk, motionless.Mother's voice was gone, and now there was only the rustling of leaves and the murmur of water over stones.There was no sign of the German aircraft, not even a trace that it ever existed.He wanted to go back, run back into the house to wake Dad and tell him what he had seen, but after what happened during the day, what could he say, how could Dad believe him?He needs to find some evidence, a sign that can represent this strange world.

So David went out through a hole in the trunk of the tree.There is no starlight in the sky, and the stars are blocked by thick clouds.The air started to smell fresh and clean, but as he took a deep breath, he caught something else, something uncomfortable.David could almost smack it on his tongue: it felt like metal, smelling of copper and corrosion.He thought of the dead cat he had found on the side of the road with his father that day, its flesh and blood ripped apart, and it smelled a lot like the night air in this strange world.David began to shiver, and it wasn't all cold. Suddenly, he noticed a huge roar behind him, followed by a gust of hot air.He fell to the ground and rolled aside as the trunk began to swell and thicken, and the hole in the trunk grew wider and wider until it resembled a portal into a wide, bark-connected cavern.Tongues of flame penetrated into the hole, and then, like a mouth spitting out a piece of tasteless food, the hole ejected the still burning part of the fuselage of the German bomber, the body of a pilot still trapped in the wreckage of the pod below, The machine gun was pointed at David.The wreckage of the plane blazed a blackened path through the bushes and stopped in a forest clearing, where it continued to spew smoke and still burn.

David stood up, brushed leaves and dust off his clothes, and got as close to the burning plane as he could.It is a German Ju88 multi-purpose aircraft, which he can identify by the pod.The gunner's body could be seen, now almost twisted in the flames.David wondered if any of the pilots were still alive.The trapped body was stuck on the broken glass in the pod, its charred skull with pale teeth bared from its mouth.David had never witnessed death before, let alone one as violent, smelling and black as this one.He couldn't help thinking of the German's last moments -- trapped in the burning heat, skin burning.He felt a pity for the dead man whose name he never knew.

Something whizzed past his ears like a night bug crawling excitedly.Then came the sound of breaking.Another night bug buzzed past, but David was already flat on the ground, crawling, ready to avoid the strafing of 303 rifle bullets.Spotting a hole in the ground, he jumped into it, covered his head with his hands, and kept himself as flat as possible until the hail of bullets stopped.He didn't dare to raise his head again until he was sure that all the bullets had been fired.He stood up cautiously and looked around.Flames and sparks burst into the sky.For the first time he realized how big the trees in this forest were, taller and thicker than the oldest oak in the woods behind his house.The trunks of these trees were gray and completely branchless, unless they swelled rapidly into huge, almost naked crowns, which would have been at least a hundred feet higher than a man's head.

A box-like black object fell from the shattered main body of the aircraft, and it was now lying softly like smoke not far from David.Looks like an old camera, but with wheels on one side.He could make out the German "aiming point" printed on one of the wheels, and a label on the bottom of the box that said "tinted lens attached". It was a bombsight, David had seen pictures of it, and it was what German planes used to select ground targets.Perhaps that was the mission of the man now burning in the wreckage: when he lay prone in the pod, the city lay beneath him.Little of David's pity for him was fading.The bombsight made what they had done all the more real and all the more heinous.He thought of the families huddled in the Anderson bomb shelter, the children crying and the adults wishing that whatever was being shot from the sky would stay away from them; As the ground shook, their heads were covered with dust.

And they were lucky. He kicked hard on the bombsight, kicking with his right foot, accurate and hard.Hearing the sound of glass shattering in the box, he knew that the sophisticated lens inside was broken, and he felt a burst of satisfaction. Now that the excitement had passed, David put his hands in the pockets of his nightgown, trying to get a better view of his surroundings.About four or five steps away from where he was standing, there were four gorgeous purple flowers standing steeply in the grass.For the first time so far, David has seen the true colors. Their leaves are yellow and orange, with the flower center facing David, resembling the face of a sleeping baby.Even in the darkness of the forest, David could make out their closed eyelids, slightly parted lips, and the same pair of small holes—the nostrils.They were different from any flowers he had seen before.If I could bring one back to my father to see, I would be able to convince him that this place really exists.

As David approached the flowers, the dead leaves crunched and crumbled under his feet.He was about to bend down when a flower's eyelid opened to reveal small yellow eyes.Then its lips parted, making a high-pitched sound.Immediately, several other flowers woke up, and then, neat as one, they closed their leaves to reveal hard, barbed receptacles with some sticky residue gleaming faintly. of light.Something seemed to remind David that it was not a good thing to encounter those barbs.He thought of nettles and poison ivy. They were poisonous enough, so who knew what kind of poison the plants would use to protect themselves?

David wrinkled his nose.The wind was blowing the smell of burning planes away from him, and now it was another smell that was sickening.The smell of metal that I smelled earlier is more obvious here.He walked a few steps deeper into the forest, and saw a raised irregular shape under the fallen leaves. The blue and red dots on it indicated that something was barely covered underneath.At a glance, it looks like a human being.David moved closer and could see the clothes, and the fur underneath.He frowned.It's an animal, an animal in clothes.And claws, and dog-like legs.The animal tried to catch a glimpse of its face, but it had no face.Its head had been neatly severed from its body, probably not long ago, because a long line of blood spurting from an artery was still on the woodland.

David covered his mouth to keep from spitting.Seeing the body twice in a matter of minutes, his stomach started to churn.He took a few steps away from the body and returned to the tree from which he had come.At this moment, the big hole in the trunk disappeared before his eyes, the tree shrank back to its previous size, and the bark grew up under his gaze, covering the gaps in the tree, completely blocking the way back to his original world.It became one of the great trees in this forest--there are so many great trees here that there is hardly any difference in each tree.David fingered and pressed and knocked, hoping to find a way to reopen the door to his former life, but nothing changed.He was about to cry, but he knew that if he cried, everything would disappear, and he would become a little boy who had run away from home, full of fear and powerless.So instead of crying, he looked around and saw a large, flat rock with the tip of it poking out of the earth.He dug it out, gouging the tree's trunk with the sharpest edge -- once, twice, once, until the bark snapped and fell to the ground.David thought he felt the tree tremble, as a man feels when he is suddenly and violently shocked.The white sap inside the bark turned red, and what looked like blood began to ooze from the wound, flowing down the lines and cracks on the bark, and onto the ground.

A voice said, "Don't do that. The tree doesn't like it." David turned around.A man stood in the shadow of a tree very close to him.He was tall and strong, with broad shoulders, short black hair, leather boots almost reaching his knees, and a coat made of bird and animal skins.His eyes are green, which makes him look like part of this forest turned into a human form.An ax rests on his right shoulder. David dropped the stone. "Sorry," he said, "I don't know." The man greeted him silently. "Yes," he said at last, "I don't think you know."

He was walking towards David, and the boy instinctively backed away a few steps until he found his hand brushing against a tree.It shuddered a little again at his touch, though not as much as before, as if it had gradually recovered from its wounds, and was now convinced that it was because of the approaching stranger. , it won't be hurt like that again.David was skeptical of the man's approach—he was carrying an axe, the kind that looked like it could cut a head off a body. Now that the man had stepped out of the shadows, David could see his face more clearly.He thought, this man looks cruel and ruthless, but he also has a somewhat generous look.The boy felt that this was someone he could trust.He began to relax a little, but his eyes were still fixed on the big axe, and he was a little cautious. "Who are you?" David said. "I should ask you the same question," said the man, "this forest is my care, and I have never seen you here. Also, to answer your question: I am a forest keeper. I have no other name , or rather, no name worth knowing." Rangers approached the burning plane.The fire was dying down, and only the frame of the plane was exposed in the woodland, looking like the skeleton of some kind of giant abandoned after a fire, the roasted flesh stripped from the bones.The gunner's body could no longer be seen clearly. It was a black patch among the tangled metal and machine parts.The ranger shook his head in wonder, then walked away from the wreckage and returned to David.He stepped over David and put his hand on the trunk of the wounded tree.He looked carefully at the wound David had just made, and then stroked it gently, as if he were patting a horse or a dog.He knelt down, picked up the nearest stones, wiped off the moss, and stuffed them into the hollow of the tree to compact them. "It's all right, old chap," he said to the tree, "the wound will heal quickly." The tall branches above David shook for a while, but the other trees were still.The Ranger turned his attention back to David. "Now," he said, "it's your turn. What's your name? What are you doing here? This isn't a place for little boys to hang out by themselves. Did you come in this...thing...?" He points to the plane with his finger. "No, it came with me. My name is David. I came through the trunk of that tree. There's a hole there, but it's gone. That's why I chiseled the bark. I want to cut it A way to go in so I can get home, or at least make a mark so I can find it again." "You came through this tree?" he asked. "From where?" "A garden," said David, "there was a little crack in the corner, and I found a way from there to here. I thought I heard my mother's voice, so I followed. Now the The road is gone." Pointing to the wreckage of the plane, the ranger asked, "Then why did you bring that here?" "There was a war there. It fell from the sky." The forester may have been startled by the news, but he didn't show it. "There's a dead body inside," said the forester, "do you know him?" "He's the gunner, one of the pilots. I've never seen him before, he's a German." "He's dead now." The forester touched the tree again with his fingers, groping its surface lightly, as if he wanted to find the crevice under the skin of his fingers that could really become an entrance. "As you say, there's no more door here. But you're right to want to mark the tree, though it's a clumsy way." He reached out his hand and took out a small ball of thick thread from the gap in his coat, unraveled it until the thread was a satisfactory length, then wrapped it around the tree trunk, poured out a gray sticky thing from a small leather bag, and daubed it On the thread just wrapped.That stuff didn't smell good at all. "This thing can prevent birds and beasts from biting the string." The forest guard explained.He picked up the axe. "You'd better come with me," he said. "We'll decide what to do with you tomorrow, but for now we have to keep you safe." David didn't move.He could still smell the copper and corrosion in the air, and now that he saw the ax so close, he thought he could recognize the red marks on it.The man also had red marks on his clothes. "I want to ask," he said, with as much ignorance as possible, "why do you need an ax if that's all you're running the forest?" The forester looked at David with an almost amused expression on his face, as if he saw through the doubts the boy was trying to hide but showed because of cunning. "The ax is not for tending the woods," said the Woodsman, "it is for the things that live in the forest." He raised his head and took a deep breath.He pointed the ax in the direction of the headless corpse. "You smell it," he said. David nodded. "I saw it too. Did you do it?" "it's me." "It looks human, but it's not." "No," said the Ranger, "not people. We can talk about that later. You have nothing to fear from me, but here are other things we all have reason to fear. Now go. Their time is near, and the heat and smell of burning will draw them here." Realizing he had no choice, David followed the Rangers away.He was cold, and his slippers did not follow his feet, so the forester put his coat on him, and carried him on his shoulders.David hasn't felt what it's like to be carried on his shoulders for a long time.He was too heavy for Papa to carry now, but the forester felt no burden at all.They walked through the forest, the trees stretching seemingly infinitely before them.David wanted to pay attention to the new scenery on the road, but the forest ranger was running fast, and David had to hold on to it.Above them, the clouds temporarily parted, revealing the moon, so red it looked like a big hole in Ye's skin.The forester quickened his pace, striding across the woodland. "We must hurry," he said, "they are coming." As he was speaking, a howl came from the north, and the forester began to run.