Free Gone to the Forest: A Novel by Katie Kitamura

of distant movement. The silence
     remained unbroken.
    His eyes—now open to slivers—adjusted and he saw things.
     Gradations of color. Pools of light. He stumbled forward, arms spread wide. He called
     for his father. Ash flew into his mouth and he coughed again. He heard nothing. There
     was only a dense and regular throbbing. The ash already too much. He squeezed his eyes
     and mouth shut, he pressed his palms into his face, trying to cough out the dust.
    Tears streamed down his face. He was finding it hard to breathe, he saw
     for the first time that he might suffocate. He told himself he knew the land well. Each
     inch of soil and every rock beyond was familiar to him. He pressed forward. He knew his
     father had gone to the river. There was nowhere else he could have gone. He had seen it
     in the old man’s face—once he had seen the ash in the air and on the
     ground.
    The other men carried electric torches and now the light bounced through
     the darkness. He saw one of them in themist. A man standing in a
     pool of light. It was Jose. He was bare-chested and had wrapped his shirt around his
     head. He stopped and motioned to Tom. He waved his hand through the air, around his
     head. His hand, coated in dust. Tom stripped off his shirt and wrapped it, mimicking
     Jose, around his mouth and eyes. He breathed easier, into the cotton fabric of his
     shirt.
    He left one eye uncovered and using this one eye he continued in the
     direction of the river. The landscape had grown alien. He had never seen any of what he
     saw now. The ground he had always known—this place, the only thing he had ever
     seen or understood—had vanished. He accepted that he knew nothing of where he was.
     He thought this was what blindness must be like. Nothing complete or total. The field,
     constantly shifting, and small gradations of light and shadow.
    Then he saw a fragment of the old man. An arm that appeared and then
     disappeared. A smear of movement that was his back. He saw, in fragments, through the
     dust: the old man in trouble. He lurched forward toward the shape. Guided by his single
     eye, his single eye straining to hold the fragments in place. To keep the movement in
     sight. He started running, knees buckling, arms flailing.
    His father dropped out of his field of vision. He stopped and looked
     around him. He yanked the shirt from his face and shouted.
    “Father!”
    The dust flew into his face. Into his eyes and he was blinded. He coughed
     violently. The men moved in his direction at thesound. He felt the
     vibration of their movement. He continued shouting for his father. The dust flew into
     his mouth and muffled the sound of his cries.
    “Father!”
    He swung his body round. Shouting in all directions. The men were close,
     he could feel them coming closer. He opened his mouth and screamed again, through the
     ash.
    “Father!”
    He tripped over the body. There it was the whole time, all this
     time—closer than he’d thought or realized. He knelt down and found an arm, a
     torso. He could not see so he went by touch. The cord of neck, the wings of his chest.
     The body jumped and rasped.Tom leaned closer. He could not remember the last time he
     had touched his father’s body. He gripped it through the ash.
    He began brushing the ash away with one hand and then with both. He swept
     off handfuls of ash to reveal a patch of collar. A piece of skin. An open mouth. He
     brushed and brushed and uncovered his father piece by piece. He claimed a shoulder, a
     chin. Then a new sweep of ash covered him again.
    Still he kept brushing at him, like a dog uncovering a bone. The ash was
     gathering in Tom’s throat. He coughed. The old man’s eyes were watering and
     they were turning the ash to mud on his skin. His mouth a smear of damp dust. Tom sat
     back. He gave up and watched as the ash covered his father. He watched it coating his
     face until it disappeared. In the distance, he heard the men moving in his