Jennifer Lord (@jenniesuz.bsky.social)

'Eyes in the Trees' by Hana Gammon For generations, my family has been protecting travellers in these woods. It is dark in here, and it is easy to forget where you are. Some repay us in their own way. They give us old things from the bottoms of their pockets. Stones with holes bored through them by water. Bird’s bones brittle as glass. Some give us their words, and I have always treasured those the most. Stitched onto tattered scraps of cloth or whispered into our ears, we carry them around as protection of our own. Others do not pay us at all, but run. Forward, into the trees, or away from them, it hardly matters to us. It only matters that they arrive safely. Last spring, my eldest brother was shown gratitude in the shape of rust threaded through his heart. Words were etched into the branches he hung from, in a language none of us could understand. The stench of iron dripped into the roots below. They left him with his eyes all turned up, looking nowhere. I still wonder if the ones who did it found their way out again. Still, we protect them. It is dark in here, and it is easy to forget what you are. They cannot always find the paths between the trees, but we can. We have sharp ears. Sharp teeth. Sharp eyes looking out in every direction at once. We know that they need us. The rumours do go, after all, that there are monsters in these woods. --- Hana Gammon lives in Cape Town, South Africa, and enjoys exploring the dark and peculiar through her writing. Her short story, "The Undertaker's Apprentice", won the Africa region of the 2023 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and her debut novel, The Specimens, was published August 2024 with Tartarus Press. http://dlvr.it/TLLhYc