“Come on, love. I ain’t going tae hurt you!” Mary Brigitte peered under a rotten log of a giant fallen oak, trying to coax the woman out. In the shadow, she could only gleam a pair of sad, terrified eyes, set in a swarthy, weathered face. The woman in question had been silently following Mary Brigitte since she appeared in this hellish place, but always kept her distance. Brigitte’s ears, fine-tuned to catch gossiping novices in the refectory, could hear her mutter quietly in her language. Language Brigitte did not recognize, other than that it was likely Asian.

  She tried to approach the other woman several times, only for her to always fall out of sight and disappear into the woods, quieter than a ghost. She did not want her to disappear completely, and it was only partly because she feared for another soul’s life in this terrifying forest. Frankly, she was just as afraid for herself, and the strange animal sounds, smells, and paw prints she encountered did not put her at ease. The other woman seemed to always go quiet and vanish into the foliage whenever they encountered even a hint of danger, which was disturbingly often.

  “Look, I'm a nun,” she crossed herself, and mimed putting on her veil. “I help people, that's what I do. And I want tae help you. We would be safer together.”

  The other woman muttered some more, mimicked crossing herself, then muttered something else, bowed, and touched her forehead.

  “Ah, I dinnae get a word you're saying.” Brigitte thought for a second. “The bow? Are you a Buddhist by chance? I'm afraid I do not know much about your faith. Meant no insult. Nae matter, come along.” She grabbed the other woman’s hand, and felt her immediately soften and deflate into obedience, like a much abused dog being put on a leash.

  “I dae not want to force ye. But please, come, we must seek shelter.” The other woman emerged from her hiding, and turned out to be even older than Brigitte herself. Sixty years old at least, and not one of those years easily lived, by her estimation. Brigitte smiled. “We old biddies got tae stick together, innit so?” She winked and smiled some more at the older woman, who in turn cracked a near-toothless smile herself, and nodded. “You look like you’re made of the tough stuff, just like me. We’re gon’ make it just fine.”

  They trudged forward, Brigitte like a stately ship, forcefully pushing through the green sea of the undergrowth, the other woman following her silently like foam on the waves. It immediately occurred to Brigitte that while she did have a knack for leadership, she had no idea where to lead. The primordial deciduous forest seemed to spread into all directions as a nearly uniform green-brown mass that obscured the horizon and the sky alike.

  But she felt that staying put would not serve them well. All the survival advice she soaked in, and occasionally gave, as a globe-trotting nun and a charity worker, was that if you ever find yourself stranded in the wilderness you should stay put and wait for help to arrive.

  But to Mary Brigitte, this advice only made sense if one was lost in an ordinary wilderness by ordinary means, not died and then resurrected bodily, naked and in pain, in a terrifying green Limbo. She shook the pain off quickly, and nudity never bothered much, since she always considered her body to be merely a sturdy vehicle to cart her soul around in. But having her skin smacked repeatedly by a multitude of weeds and bushes sounded urgent alarms in her head.

  Mary Brigitte was married to Jesus, and her heart was mostly split between the love for her God, and for humanity as a whole, even if she was not always fond of the particular specimens she encountered. The shootout that killed her was not the first, just the most unfortunate example of her failing to love the fellow man unconditionally. She was however very fond of plants, and managed to not only find the time to achieve a hard-won doctorate in botany but also accrue decades of experience as a gardener and a herbalist, to the point that some of her fellow sisters jokingly called her a witch.

  And maybe, in some way she was one. She always enjoyed the idea of God as a Gardener, and the plant life as a shard of the beauty of Eden given to humanity to steward. On the practical side, she managed to save countless lives, or when need be, mercifully ease the end of some, thanks to her knowledge of medicinal herbs, which were often the only available medicine in places where she worked. She even prevented, or, if the need arose, ended a few tragic pregnancies with her makeshift concoctions.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  If God took issue with that, she was perfectly willing to fistfight angels over this.

  But regardless of how fascinating the multitude of weeds smacking her skin was, she was acutely aware that sooner or later she would experience firsthand that some of them were poisonous, or severely irritant. A few times she had to stop herself from walking head first into what looked like poison ivy, or crawling through caucasian hogweed that dripped with caustic juice. Nettles of most kinds she mostly ignored, though it did not make their harmless stings any less painful. It occurred to her though, that they did not need to encounter any wolves or bears to meet their second demise, just have enough rotten luck to stumble into gympie-gympie, the one kind of nettle that killed you, or made you wish it did.

  And then her analytical mind threw all kinds of giant question marks, because she realized the plant ecosystem of this place made absolutely no sense. She saw English oaks growing side by side with Osage trees, not five meters from a grove of false acacia. Russian rubber dandelion next to a type of silver fern that grew only in New Zealand. The multitude of types of ferns and mosses fighting for the meager sunlight streaming from the canopy defied anything she knew about not only what was, but what could be possible in any sensible forest.

  “Love, we’re either stranded in some particularly shoddily managed botanical garden, or the evil cousin of the Garden of Eden. None o’t make any sense whatsoever.” She stopped to take a breath and assess the situation. The other woman sat down cross-legged, and helped herself to some fern shots she found.

  “Wait, are you sure these are fine tae eat… oh.” She now noticed that the ferns the old lady ate were indeed edible swamp ferns, normally native to Cambodia and Laos, and thus, wildly out of place in these seemingly subboreal woods. Apparently though, she was not the only one to know a thing or two about plants.

  “Guess’ we could have a longer break and a lunch just as well. Ma legs are about tae give up, and ma stomach is empty, what's with voiding it the second I arrived here.” She nipped at the ferns, not fully trusting them. Finally, she settled on munching on several dandelions and a handful of wild spinach, which she knew for sure were safe, if not particularly nutritious.

  “So,” she said, when the last dandelion leaf disappeared, “how about we know each other? I am Mary Brigitte. Mary. Brigitte.” she pointed repeatedly at herself. “What’s your name?” she pointed at the woman.

  The quiet mumbling stopped.

  “Nakry,” the woman said, and returned to chewing on a fern tip.

  “Nakry? Is that your name? Never heard it before. Where are you from, Nakry? How did you get here? Dae maybe have a family looking for you? Maybe… maybe you know why we’re here?”

  All she got in response was a sad, unfocused stare from eyes that looked like they'd seen too much.

  Brigitte knew a broken soul when she saw one.

  She met plenty of people, mostly women and children, who’s bodies survived wars, famines or epidemics, but their souls crumbled inside leaving a husk that just went through the motions of survival, but not actual living.

  “Don’ want to talk, it's fine. Donnae worry, I talk for the both of us.” She sat closer to Nakry, and hugged her. Nakry’s frail, bony body was cold as a stone, the chill of the forest must have sapped all the heat out of her. Brigitte, being considerably bulkier, had still some body heat to spare. Still, it saddened Brigitte that Nakry did not even react properly to being held. Some people loved being hugged, some hated being touched by strangers and stiffened. But Nakry simply accepted it with sad, limp ambivalence, and it occurred to Brigitte that the woman would react to violence or abuse in the same fatalistic way.

  Then, as she usually did when words failed her, Mary Brigitte started to sing. She did not have much of a singing voice, but one cannot spend decades being part of a convent without learning to hold a tune. Her acapella attempt at His Glory was soon interrupted by Nakry joining in with a song of her own. And though the words did not match, the tune did, and for a while the two of them jammed along, lifting each other’s spirits.

  Just as she was about to finish and catch her breath, Brigitte felt the voice freeze in her throat, when she saw a pair of dark, predatory eyes peer at her from the shadow, and a giant green-brown hulk emerged from the bushes.