The Whispering Forest

Risa Kharkongor

Part 1

The clouds hung low over Mawlynnong, like thick blankets of cotton pressing gently upon the treetops, as if they were listening to a secret only the forest knew. Twelve-year-old Lari Khongdup stood barefoot on the damp earth, feeling the mud cling to her toes, the scent of moss, bamboo, and wild turmeric swirling in the morning air. Her heart thumped like a tribal drumbeat inside her chest, both from excitement and fear. Her mother believed she was still asleep in her bamboo cot, curled beneath a faded woolen quilt. But Lari had slipped out before sunrise, careful not to wake the chickens or disturb the prayer bells hanging from their door.

She had been planning this journey for weeks, ever since the stream behind their stilted house had turned brown with filth and the cicadas—those cheerful heralds of monsoon—had stopped singing. No one else seemed to notice. Not the headman who only spoke of tourist money, not the shopkeepers who now sold plastic packets, not even her teacher who once taught them about sacred groves and clean rivers but now came to school with packaged snacks. But Lari noticed. She noticed the silence. The wilting ferns. The dying songbirds. And she knew the forest was in pain.

Her father, once a respected forest ranger, had vanished two years ago during a routine patrol near the Dawki border. People whispered that he had gone too far into the ancient groves where even spirits feared to tread. Some said he had run away, others said he had been taken by smugglers. Lari believed none of them. She believed he had gone to save something. Something no one else dared protect anymore. And now, she would follow his path—not out of anger, but out of a promise she had made silently at his funeral, staring at the damp soil where no body had been buried.

With a small rattan bag slung over her shoulder, she carried three rice cakes, a flask of water, a tiny pocketknife, a crumpled map drawn by memory, and the only photograph she had of her father—smiling in uniform, his arm around a baby Lari. She kissed the photo before tucking it into her bag. “Watch over me, Papa,” she whispered.

The forest greeted her like an old friend—silent, solemn, watchful. As she stepped past the last line of betel nut trees that marked her village’s edge, a chill passed down her spine. The mist clung to her skin, curling into her hair, and the roots of trees twisted like sleeping serpents underfoot. She crossed a living root bridge that arched gracefully over a stream now reduced to a brown trickle. The bridge groaned gently under her weight, as if recognizing her.

For hours she climbed slippery slopes, crouched under low-hanging vines, and tiptoed past hornet nests. She passed forgotten stone altars and ancient monoliths covered in lichen. She greeted them with soft words in Khasi, as her grandmother had taught her. “Ngam toh tang khynnah,” she said. “I am not just a child.” It was a declaration to the forest and to herself.

By midday, her legs ached and her stomach grumbled, but she pressed on until she reached the abandoned ranger post near Nohwet. It was a place once alive with patrol dogs and laughter, now overtaken by silence. The bamboo walls were sagging, the roof caved in, and moss crept across every surface like slow-moving fire. Inside, the smell of old wood and mold was overpowering. She coughed and stepped carefully, avoiding the places where the floorboards gave way to nothing.

And then she saw it.

On a shelf, nearly hidden behind a rusted lantern, was a glass jar. Inside it was a rolled-up notebook, dry and intact. Her fingers trembled as she unscrewed the lid and pulled the paper free. The handwriting was unmistakable. Her father’s. The first page read: “To whoever finds this—listen. The trees are speaking. They are in danger. They showed me their memories. They are ancient and afraid.”

Lari’s breath caught in her throat. She flipped through pages filled with sketches of bark patterns, maps of the hills, and journal entries that made little sense at first. One line repeated itself again and again in shakier ink: “Not all forests sleep. Some remember. Some cry.”

Before she could turn another page, a rustle behind her made her freeze. Her instincts told her not to run. Slowly, she turned.

A boy stood there. About her age. Barefoot. His clothes were made of stitched leaves and jute string, his dark hair wild with forest twigs. His skin looked like it hadn’t seen the sun in weeks. His eyes, however, glowed—not with light, but with knowing.

“They’ve been waiting for you,” he said softly, voice like the rustle of wind through bamboo. He pointed toward the shadows outside. “You’re the last one who can hear them.”

Lari wanted to speak, but her throat was dry. She clutched the notebook tighter. “Who are you?”

The boy didn’t answer. Instead, he turned and walked into the mist. She hesitated only a second before following. The forest, silent until now, seemed to sigh with relief.

Somewhere deep within the trees, something stirred awake.

Part 2

The boy moved like a shadow between the trees, silent and surefooted, as if the forest parted just for him. Lari followed, her legs stiff from the trek but her heart unwilling to stop. The thick mist swallowed the sun, turning everything around her into a muted painting of greens and grays. She clutched the notebook close, the words echoing in her mind—They are ancient and afraid.

“Where are we going?” she called, careful not to be too loud.

The boy didn’t answer at first. He only looked back once, his eyes catching the faint light like a firefly in dusk. “To the heart,” he said. “Where it still breathes.”

It made no sense. But something about the way he said it—so calm, so certain—compelled her to keep walking.

The trail was no trail at all. They crossed moss-covered boulders, crawled under drooping branches, and waded knee-deep through a marsh that smelled of wild ginger and decay. Birds watched from high above, silent witnesses. At one point, they passed a grove of trees that seemed…wrong. Their trunks twisted unnaturally, leaves tinged brown despite the season. The boy stopped there, placed his hand on the nearest trunk, and closed his eyes. “They’re dying,” he murmured.

Lari reached out hesitantly, placing her palm beside his. The bark was warm. Almost pulsing.

“This used to be a sacred grove,” he said, opening his eyes. “But the village forgot. Someone sold the land. Men came with machines. They took more than trees.”

Lari swallowed. “My father… was he here?”

The boy nodded. “He tried to stop it. He listened. Most people don’t. But he did.”

“Where is he now?” she asked.

The boy didn’t reply. Instead, he turned and kept walking.

They reached a ridge just as the mist began to lift. Below them spread a hidden valley, lush and green but scarred—bare patches like wounds, streams choked with weeds. Lari had never seen this place on any map. It was as if the forest had hidden it out of shame.

She crouched beside the boy. “What do you mean, the forest showed him memories?”

He opened the notebook and flipped to a page Lari hadn’t read yet. There, drawn in delicate lines, was a tree with a hollow heart. From it rose smoke—not fire, but something darker. Around the base, animals lay still. Above, a crow circled with wings of ash.

“It’s not just pollution,” the boy whispered. “The trees remember sorrow. They hold stories, like people do. Only… they don’t forget. Your father found a way to listen. And now they want you to do the same.”

“But I don’t know how,” Lari said helplessly. “I’m just a kid.”

“You were born under the full moon, near the waterfall grove, right?” the boy asked suddenly.

She blinked. “Yes. How do you—?”

“The forest marked you. Your father knew. That’s why he brought you to that place, even when you were still in your mother’s belly. You are linked.”

Linked. The word hung in the air, heavier than any she’d known. It wasn’t magic, not exactly. It was something older.

“Then teach me,” she said finally. “If I’m supposed to help, I need to know how.”

The boy gave a small smile—sad, as though he’d waited a long time for this moment. “You already started. The moment you stepped into the forest and listened, really listened. But it’s not enough to hear. You must let it enter you.”

Lari didn’t fully understand, but she nodded.

They descended into the valley, where silence hummed like an old song. The boy led her to the base of an enormous tree—far taller and broader than any she had seen. Its roots spread out like fingers gripping the land, and a hollow gaped near its base.

“This is the Heart Tree,” he said. “It’s one of the oldest in the world. Your father sat here. He left something behind.”

Inside the hollow, nestled among dry leaves, was a pouch made of bark. Lari reached in and pulled it out, her hands trembling. Inside were small bundles of herbs, a carved whistle made of bamboo, and another note.

She unfolded the page, heart thudding.

“If you’re reading this, Lari, then you found your way. I knew you would. You have what I lacked—faith, not just in nature, but in people. I’ve learned that healing the forest isn’t about fighting machines. It’s about helping others see what they’ve forgotten: that the earth is alive. The forest chose you, my daughter. Don’t be afraid. Listen with your whole heart.”

Tears welled in her eyes, but she didn’t let them fall. She looked at the boy. “What now?”

He pointed to the whistle. “Blow it. The trees will answer.”

She lifted it to her lips and blew. A low, haunting note echoed through the grove. The leaves shivered. Birds took flight. Somewhere, water began to trickle. The air changed. She could feel it—beneath her skin, in her chest. A slow warmth spread through her, not from outside, but from the earth itself.

The forest had heard her.

But just as she lowered the whistle, a loud crack echoed from the valley’s edge. Trees rustled violently. The boy stiffened. “They’ve come.”

“Who?”

“People who don’t listen. Who cut and burn. We have to warn the others.”

“Others?”

“There are more like me. Hidden in the forest. Children who stayed. Who listen. We’re not alone.”

Lari looked at the whistle, at the tree, and then toward the dark ridge where smoke had begun to rise.

She wasn’t afraid anymore.

She had found her voice. And now, the forest was calling her to use it.

Part 3

Smoke bled into the sky, slow and curling like wounded breath. Lari stood frozen for a moment, the whistle still clutched in her hand. The boy beside her had gone tense, his bare feet gripping the mossy earth. The stillness of the forest shattered—not with noise, but with anticipation, like a deep inhale before a storm. Somewhere beyond the ridge, metal teeth were waking, engines purring with the hunger of greed.

“We don’t have time,” he said, eyes fixed on the rising column of smoke. “They’re clearing another patch. The trees there are young, not strong enough to fight back.”

Lari looked down at the pouch her father had left, then back at the boy. “You said there were others. Where?”

“In the north grove. Hidden behind the waterfall cliffs. But they won’t leave unless they trust you. You have to make them believe.”

Lari blinked. “Believe what?”

“That the forest hasn’t given up yet.”

They ran. Down the slope of the hidden valley, across slippery stones and tangled roots, through ferns that brushed their arms like warnings. The boy led the way, his breath steady even as hers grew ragged. Her legs burned, her sides ached, but something inside her kept her moving. Not fear—purpose. A fierce, urgent pull she couldn’t name.

They reached the edge of a stream swollen from last night’s rain. The boy leapt across easily. Lari hesitated, then stepped back, sprinted, and jumped. Her feet landed hard on the other side, nearly slipping, but the boy caught her wrist and steadied her. They kept going.

By the time they reached the cliffs, her clothes were soaked with sweat and dew, her hair stuck to her face. The sound of falling water roared ahead, a natural curtain of white noise. The boy slowed and pointed to a narrow ledge behind the cascade. “There.”

Lari nodded, her chest rising and falling rapidly. Together, they ducked behind the waterfall, its mist clinging to them like breath. Behind it, the world was dim and hushed. A wide cavern opened into a hollow grove lit by shafts of golden light. And there they were—children.

Seven of them.

Boys and girls of different ages, with faces marked by earth, moss in their hair, and eyes wide with curiosity. Some sat on thick branches, others crouched near a small fire, and one carved symbols into stone. They looked like something out of a forgotten folktale.

“She’s here,” the boy announced.

The children stared. One girl, taller than Lari with sharp cheekbones and a necklace of river shells, stood slowly. “How do we know she’s not like the others?”

Lari stepped forward. “Because I didn’t come to cut,” she said. “I came to listen.”

The children exchanged glances. The girl raised her chin. “Prove it.”

Lari pulled out the notebook, holding it with both hands. “This belonged to my father. He was a ranger. He disappeared protecting these woods.”

A younger boy with a crooked smile piped up, “Then why didn’t he come back?”

Lari looked down at the worn pages. “Maybe because the forest still needed him.”

Then she held up the bamboo whistle and, without waiting, brought it to her lips and blew.

The sound was low and long. The air in the grove shifted.

Leaves trembled.

The fire flickered blue.

And then, faintly, a breeze swept through the cavern though no opening allowed it. The vines along the walls seemed to lean toward her. One of the older boys stood abruptly. “The trees… they answered.”

The girl stepped closer, her expression changing. “The whistle… It was his.”

Lari nodded.

The girl looked around at the others. “Then maybe… maybe she’s the one.”

Lari took a breath. “There’s smoke. Beyond the ridge. Machines are coming again. We need to do something.”

The children stirred. Murmurs filled the grove. The boy who had brought her there—the first she met—spoke softly. “It’s time.”

Together, the children moved as one, gathering small pouches, herbs, and wooden tools. One handed Lari a sling made from woven bark. Another gave her a pouch of white ash. “For the markings,” he said. “The forest knows its protectors.”

Lari smeared the ash across her forehead, drawing the spiral her grandmother once traced on her during story nights. “The root never forgets,” she whispered.

They emerged from the waterfall, blinking against the sunlight, and began to move through the forest in silence. They were no longer children, but a quiet force. Lari felt it in her bones—that this was more than resistance. It was remembrance. The land remembering itself, and its guardians remembering their duty.

As they approached the ridge again, the sound of engines became clear—chainsaws, shouts, and the dull clank of metal against wood. Smoke curled into the trees like a lazy monster.

Lari raised the whistle again and blew. The note was higher this time—urgent, sharp.

Then something strange happened.

Birds flew in formation across the sky, their wings beating in rhythm. A low hum vibrated through the ground. Trees began to sway—not from wind, but from within. Roots shifted. Leaves rustled in warning.

The children formed a circle, each placing their palms on the earth. Lari joined them, kneeling. She didn’t know what would happen, but she trusted it.

And then the forest responded.

From the grove’s edge, a wall of creepers burst forth, thick and fast, wrapping around the path where the machines advanced. Vines lashed like whips. Trees leaned, blocking roads. Stones cracked open to reveal tangled roots that tripped heavy boots.

The men yelled. Confused. Frightened.

And just beyond them, Lari stood up.

“This land is not for sale,” she said—not shouting, but steady, like the forest speaking through her.

The boy stood beside her. “Tell your masters,” he called, “The guardians have returned.”

Lari looked up. For the first time in months, she saw birds circling in peace.

And somewhere deep inside her, the forest whispered a single word.

Begin.

Part 4

The men stumbled backward, falling over tree roots and tripping into puddles. One of them—a man with a neon vest and muddy boots—raised a walkie-talkie and barked, “We need backup! Something’s happening here. The forest’s… alive!”

Lari didn’t flinch. Her legs were trembling, but her heart beat with purpose. She felt the earth under her feet not as solid ground but as a living body. She looked to her side. The boy nodded silently. The others emerged from the shadows, children cloaked in bark, ash, and courage, like sentinels of the land.

More men arrived. Bulldozers rumbled, their heavy wheels cracking the undergrowth. The sound vibrated through the trees like a wound tearing open. Lari stepped forward, holding up the whistle again. She blew a short, urgent call.

This time, the response came not only from the forest—but from the sky.

Clouds began to gather, thick and low. Winds howled through the canopy. Branches clashed like swords. The smell of rain tinged the air, though not a drop had fallen yet. A sudden gust snatched one of the men’s caps and flung it into the trees. Another backed away muttering, “This place is cursed.”

A girl from the forest circle stepped forward and threw a handful of ash in a ring. It spun mid-air, hanging like a glowing sigil. “You’re not welcome here,” she said.

The men hesitated. One of them, a contractor with clipped hair and a cruel mouth, shouted, “This land was leased by the government! We have rights!”

The boy who led Lari turned to her. “Now.”

Lari reached into her father’s pouch and took out a tiny folded paper—yellowed, creased, and bound with a red thread. She untied it. Inside were words in Khasi, written by her father’s hand. A protection chant. Not magic, but memory.

She held it aloft and read aloud. Her voice cracked at first, then grew steadier:

“Ka mariang ka dei ka mynsiem jong ngi. Ka jingsngap jong ka ka dei ka shongkhia jong ngi.”

The forest is our soul. Its silence is our sorrow.

As the final word left her mouth, the clouds above cracked with thunder—but still no rain. Instead, the trees moaned, a deep creaking sound like the groaning of a thousand old bones.

The machines stalled. One bulldozer simply stopped working. The operator frantically turned keys, hit levers, cursed under his breath. Nothing.

A second engine sputtered, then died. Tools dropped from hands. Something unseen pressed back—gently but firmly—like the very wind told them to stop.

And then the forest grew quiet.

The contractor’s walkie-talkie buzzed. Static. Then a low, garbled voice came through. “Abort mission. Immediate recall. Orders from Shillong HQ.”

The man stared at it. “What?”

“Repeat,” the voice crackled. “Stop clearing. Legal stay in effect. Violation reported. Environmental breach. Immediate halt required.”

Lari blinked. She hadn’t expected that. She turned to the boy.

He smirked slightly. “Sometimes, people listen. Even if late.”

“How?”

“Your voice carried farther than just here.”

Lari looked at the trees, confused. The boy gestured toward the cliff behind them. There, standing with an umbrella and a camera slung over one shoulder, was a woman in a forest-green coat.

“My name is Tara Dkhar,” the woman called out. “I’m a journalist.”

She stepped forward and smiled. “And I think you just saved an entire valley.”

The contractor growled. “This is all nonsense. Some prank. Kids playing forest gods.”

Tara held up her phone. “I’ve been filming since I heard the whistle. And I sent it all—live—to three environmental agencies, three media channels, and two MLAs.”

The man paled.

“Time to leave,” she said coldly.

One by one, the men began retreating. Their machines left behind like rusting beasts, powerless now. The boy beside Lari placed a palm on the earth, whispered a word, and the vines slowly relaxed. The forest was no longer fighting—but it wasn’t forgiving either. Not yet.

Tara approached the children, lowering her umbrella. Her eyes landed on Lari. “You’re his daughter, aren’t you?”

Lari’s breath caught. “You knew my father?”

“I interviewed him once. He was the only one warning us that the forest was bleeding long before anyone cared.”

Lari swallowed. “Where is he?”

Tara’s expression darkened. “No one knows. But he gave me something once. I kept it.”

She reached into her coat and pulled out a small cloth bundle. Inside was a pendant made of carved wood, shaped like a leaf, with an etching of a spiral at its center.

“I think he meant it for you,” she said softly, placing it in Lari’s hand.

Lari’s fingers closed around it. Warmth pulsed through the pendant. She didn’t cry. She didn’t have to.

Tara looked around at the children. “Will you let me tell your story?”

The boy nodded. “But only the truth.”

Tara smiled. “That’s all I ever wanted.”

The clouds began to part. Shafts of light pierced through, illuminating the clearing. Birds returned to branches. A squirrel chattered nearby. The forest breathed.

Lari turned to the others. “This isn’t over,” she said.

“No,” the older girl agreed. “It’s just beginning.”

They had stopped a machine. They had awakened voices. But the land still hurt. There were other valleys, other groves, other forgotten corners where no one had listened yet.

But now they would.

Lari pressed the pendant to her chest and looked up at the sky.

“I’m ready,” she whispered.

The wind heard her.

Part 5

The days that followed felt like waking up from a storm into a song. Not a loud, triumphant tune, but something soft, echoing through tree hollows and between blades of grass. The forest had stilled again—not in fear, but in watchfulness. It was no longer waiting for a protector. It had found them.

Lari sat near the Heart Tree with the children of the grove, the notebook open on her lap, pages fluttering in the breeze. Every line her father had written seemed to take on new meaning. His words weren’t just records—they were instructions, stories woven into roots and rivers, warnings meant for someone who would care enough to follow them. She was that someone now.

The others had started calling her “Leaflight.” It was a name the forest had once used for her father, whispered by wind and stone, and now passed down. She didn’t feel worthy. Not yet. But when she placed her palm on the tree bark and closed her eyes, she felt a presence—not exactly him, but a knowing warmth, as if his breath had become one with the earth.

The boy, whom she had come to know as Wanshan, sat nearby grinding herbs with a stone pestle. His hands moved rhythmically, skillfully. Lari had asked about his family once. He had only said, “They went away. But the forest stayed.” She didn’t ask again.

They had work now. Not just to guard the grove but to heal it. The fire vines that had burst out in defense now had to be coaxed back. The wounded trees needed salves of honey and crushed bark. The animals—startled by the noise and presence of machines—had to be lured back with fruit and patience.

“We must help the forest trust us again,” Wanshan said. “It defended itself, but it’s still afraid.”

Lari spent the mornings learning the names of leaves not written in books, the evenings reciting chants that echoed like lullabies to the trees. The other children began sharing their own stories—how each had arrived, what they had seen. Some had been orphans. Others had simply wandered into the woods and never gone back. Not lost—found.

Tara, the journalist, visited often now. She didn’t try to lead. She observed. She listened. She sat with a notebook—not unlike Lari’s father’s—and asked questions that mattered: “How does a tree remember?” “What does silence mean in a sacred grove?” “What is home when the land itself is hurting?”

Lari gave her answers that weren’t always words. Sometimes it was a leaf pressed into her palm, or a walk through a grove at dusk, or a whispered name of a bird that hadn’t sung in weeks and finally did.

One afternoon, Tara brought news. “Your video is everywhere now,” she said. “People are calling it ‘The Day the Forest Fought Back.’ Politicians are scrambling. One of the bulldozer companies just pulled out of all its Meghalaya contracts.”

The children listened in silence.

Wanshan asked, “Will they stay away?”

Tara looked uneasy. “For now. But they’ll come again. Or others will.”

Lari stood. “Then we’ll be ready.”

But it wasn’t just about fighting. That night, as fireflies lit the trees and frogs croaked a steady rhythm near the stream, Lari sat with the notebook again. She realized the next chapter wasn’t about resistance. It was about restoration.

“We have to go to the broken places,” she told the others. “Not just here. All of it. We have to help the forest remember what it was.”

The tall girl, Nisa, raised an eyebrow. “You mean leave this grove?”

Lari nodded. “One valley at a time.”

The children looked at each other, then at Wanshan. He was silent for a long while before he said, “If we leave, others must stay. The Heart Tree must never be alone.”

“I’ll stay,” offered a quiet boy named Dapbor. “The tree knows me.”

A plan began to form—not in grand speeches, but in quiet tasks. Wanshan drew a map in the dirt with a twig, connecting the groves they had heard of. “There’s one near Mawkyrwat,” he said. “Dying fast. Bamboo groves being cleared for a resort.”

Lari nodded. “We’ll go at dawn.”

Tara offered to walk with them partway. “There’s an old tea estate I know nearby. Abandoned. You can rest there on the way.”

Before they set off, Lari stood beneath the Heart Tree one last time. She tied a strand of her hair to one of the branches—a sign of bond, as the elders had done long ago. “I’ll come back,” she whispered. “And I’ll bring more voices.”

The wind stirred gently in reply.

The journey to Mawkyrwat took two days through dense forest paths and steep slopes. Along the way, they encountered evidence of more damage—trees felled and stacked, plastic wrappers caught in branches, ash pits where once orchids bloomed. It hurt. But it also fueled them.

At the tea estate, they met a group of women tending to wildflowers among broken walls. “We grow herbs now,” one said. “We stopped the company from turning this into a warehouse.”

Lari smiled. “Can we stay the night?”

The woman nodded. “If you tell us your story.”

And they did.

Around a small fire, they spoke of whistles, ash circles, children of the forest. The women listened, eyes wide. One reached into her basket and handed Lari a pouch. “Old seeds. Wild varieties. Nearly gone. Maybe you can plant them where the trees have cried.”

Lari took them with both hands.

The next morning, they stood at the edge of the next grove.

It was quieter here. Sick quiet. The kind that came after forgetting.

But Lari knew what to do now. She lifted the whistle.

The wind waited.

Part 6

Lari blew into the whistle, and at first, there was no answer.

The grove at Mawkyrwat was silent in a way that made her skin crawl. Not peaceful like the Heart Tree’s forest, but hollow—like the breath had been knocked out of it. The trees were thin and spaced too wide, their leaves dull. The underbrush was gone, scraped away by machines months ago, and a plastic bag fluttered from the branch of a dead bush like a white flag of surrender.

But then, as the whistle’s sound floated through the air, something stirred. Not the trees—they were still too wounded—but the ground. A soft ripple in the soil, like a slow exhale. Lari lowered the whistle and knelt, pressing her ear to the dirt.

“I can hear… humming,” she said quietly.

Wanshan joined her, frowning. “It’s trying to wake up.”

The others spread out silently, placing their palms on tree trunks, examining the broken stumps, the charred roots. Tara stood a few feet away, filming with a quiet reverence, capturing every detail without speaking a word.

Nisa poured water from her gourd into the soil around a dried-up sapling. “Even the worms are gone,” she murmured. “We’ll need more than whispers to heal this.”

Lari opened her father’s notebook again. One entry read:

“When the land is silent, bring memory to its roots—song, scent, seed.”

She remembered the pouch the women at the tea estate had given her. Carefully, she untied it and opened her hand to reveal a dozen small seeds, each marked by a different shade of brown or black. She held one between her fingers. It was light—so light she feared the wind might carry it away.

“What kind are they?” she asked.

“Khasi turmeric,” Tara answered. “Wild variety. Nearly extinct.”

Wanshan looked at the grove. “Then let’s make this the place it returns.”

They began to dig. Not with tools—just fingers, sticks, patience. They cleared patches where the soil still held life. In each spot, they placed a seed, covered it gently, and marked it with small circles of white ash.

Lari sang softly as she worked—not a song she knew, but one that came to her in fragments. A hum, a rising tone, a sound her grandmother once made while grinding rice in the morning. The others joined in slowly. Nisa added a beat with her palm against a fallen log. Dapbor drummed the earth with his heels.

The grove listened.

It wasn’t magic. It was something older. The rhythm of belonging.

By sunset, they had planted all the seeds. Lari sat back, dirt on her face, ash streaked across her cheeks. The work had been quiet but powerful. The silence in the grove now felt different—expectant.

“Will it work?” she asked Wanshan.

He didn’t answer immediately. He placed his hand on the ground once more, then closed his eyes. “It already has.”

That night, they slept under the stars. No fire—just the warmth of each other’s presence and the soft sound of insects slowly returning. A single owl hooted in the distance. Lari smiled in the dark.

At dawn, they found the first sprout.

Tiny, green, trembling. Barely there. But alive.

They gathered around it in silence.

Tara took a photo but said nothing.

Lari knelt by the sprout and whispered, “You are the start.”

That day, they walked deeper into Mawkyrwat, through trails barely used, guided by Wanshan’s instincts and Nisa’s memory. They reached another scarred patch—a place once known for rare orchids, now a stretch of pale earth and cut stumps.

This time, they weren’t alone.

An old man sat beneath a half-dead tree, his eyes closed, lips moving as if in prayer. He didn’t move as they approached.

Wanshan crouched beside him. “Are you hurt?”

The man opened one eye and chuckled. “No. Just tired of being the only one who remembered.”

He looked at Lari. “You blew the whistle, didn’t you?”

She nodded.

“I heard it,” he said. “Not with my ears. Here.” He tapped his chest. “It reached me.”

Lari smiled. “Will you help us bring this grove back?”

He stood slowly. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

He showed them where rare ferns once grew and where the forest spring had been buried under mud. Together, they began to clear debris, not in haste but in rhythm. The old man taught them chants the elders had long forgotten. They placed stones in sacred patterns and sang lullabies to the roots.

By the end of the third day, the air in Mawkyrwat had changed. The wind carried the smell of something green, and the soil no longer felt hollow.

When they returned to the first grove they had replanted, dozens of new shoots had appeared. Lari bent to touch one. “They’re listening now.”

The children knew then—they wouldn’t stay in one place. Not anymore. They would carry the forest’s voice from valley to village, from root to river.

Tara, before she left, handed Lari a tiny microphone.

“For when you want the whole world to hear,” she said.

Lari tucked it into her pouch beside the whistle. “I think it’s time.”

Part 7

The journey to the next valley was longer, cutting through hills that no longer echoed with birdcalls. As the group descended into the basin known as Laitlum’s Hollow, Lari noticed the difference immediately—this place wasn’t dead, not yet, but it was afraid. The trees leaned inward, their canopies like huddled shoulders, and the undergrowth was dense as if trying to protect something deeper inside.

Lari held the whistle to her lips but didn’t blow it. Not yet. The forest here didn’t need a command—it needed a promise.

Wanshan walked beside her, quiet, his gaze sweeping the terrain. Nisa led the others in silence, her hand tracing the edges of a tattered map a local elder had drawn for them. Somewhere within this valley was a spring that hadn’t flowed in years—choked by deforestation and abandoned quarries.

At midday, they stopped at a rocky outcrop overlooking a half-drained lake. Lari stared at the cracked earth around its edges, fish skeletons glinting like silver bones. She clenched her fists. “How do people not see this?”

“Some see,” Wanshan replied. “But forget. Or feel too small to stop it.”

“Then we remind them,” she said, her voice steady.

That evening, they camped near the lake’s edge. No fire again—only the starlight and the faintest smell of wild mint from crushed leaves beneath their mats. The air was colder here. It wasn’t just the altitude—it was the silence of unspoken grief.

Lari opened her pouch and pulled out the microphone Tara had given her. She had resisted using it before. But tonight, something felt different.

She held it close and whispered, “My name is Lari Khongdup. I am twelve years old. And I carry the memory of forests.”

She paused. The others looked up, listening.

“I don’t know how to fix the world. I only know that every tree that falls carries a story. And every valley we forget is a wound that never closes. But I’ve seen healing too. I’ve seen a whistle wake a grove. I’ve seen a seed find courage.”

She looked at Nisa. “We’re not here to be heroes. We’re here to be echoes.”

She clicked the recorder off.

Nisa gave a slow nod. “Then let’s make sure the echoes reach far.”

The next morning, they began exploring the valley, searching for the forgotten spring. It wasn’t on any map—but the old songs spoke of a ‘water that sings through stone.’ They followed trails where the rocks were smooth, listening for any sign.

At midday, Dapbor shouted from ahead. “Over here!”

They rushed to find him crouched at the base of a hill, where water seeped gently from a fissure in the rock. Just a trickle—but real, cold, alive.

“This is it,” Lari whispered.

The children set to work clearing the channel. They moved stones, dug small trenches, built makeshift filters with moss and bark. The trickle grew stronger. Frogs appeared. Then dragonflies.

That night, Lari sat by the water and dipped her hands in it. She could feel something stir—like the land exhaling for the first time in years.

“Sing to it,” said the old man who had joined them at Mawkyrwat, now traveling with them. “The spring remembers sound.”

Lari hesitated. “I don’t know the song.”

“Then make one.”

She looked up at the sky and began to hum. Soft at first, then louder. It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t even in words. But it carried something true. The others joined in, their voices layering like wind through trees.

And the spring sang back.

The water bubbled louder, clearer, rising from the rocks in stronger threads. They watched in awe as it spread downhill, trickling toward the lake.

In the morning, a patch of grass near the lake turned green.

Tara arrived that afternoon. She had come through a different path, carrying with her more supplies—and news.

“Your message,” she said to Lari, holding up her phone, “is being shared across schools. Journalists. Even some leaders are paying attention. They’re asking about you.”

Lari frowned. “I didn’t say it for attention.”

“I know,” Tara said gently. “But sometimes, truth is louder when it’s carried by someone who didn’t mean to shout.”

Lari nodded slowly. “Then let them listen. But not to me. To this.”

She turned and pointed to the spring, now alive, flowing toward the lake. “To this sound. That’s the story.”

That night, they planted a sapling beside the spring. Nisa carved a word into the bark—Dakha, meaning return.

“We leave this behind,” she said, “and move forward.”

As they packed the next day, ready to travel toward the southern ridges, Lari stood one last time by the sprouting green patch beside the water. A butterfly landed on her finger, wings blue like the morning sky.

She whispered, “Thank you for waiting.”

The forest was listening.

But beyond the next hill, another battle waited—this one not just against silence, but against those who had decided that the land was theirs to sell.

And Lari was ready to meet them.

Part 8

The next ridge was marked with red flags.

Not prayer flags—not the kind that danced in the wind with whispered blessings—but tattered plastic banners, tied to stakes with paint smeared in numbers and codes. Surveyor marks. Indicators of a plan already underway. Lari stared at them with narrowed eyes as she and her group stood at the edge of the southern ridge, where the pine trees thinned out and the soil turned to reddish dust.

Beyond the stakes, heavy machines sat idle—bulldozers, excavators, concrete mixers—lined up like sleeping beasts waiting for a signal. Men in hard hats wandered nearby, smoking and talking in low tones. Tarpaulin tents dotted the slope, bearing the logo of a company none of them recognized: NE Resource & Build.

“They’re building a road,” Tara said grimly. “A direct line through the forest to connect a new mining site.”

Lari looked at her. “Is it legal?”

“Barely,” Tara muttered. “Papers were rushed through. Most locals weren’t even told. And the area they’re clearing cuts straight through a nesting ground for hornbills.”

“Then we don’t let them begin,” Wanshan said flatly.

The children had grown quieter since Mawkyrwat. Not out of fear—but clarity. Each new valley was a deeper wound. And now, the forest wasn’t just crying—it was beginning to bleed.

That night, they camped high above the flagged zone, hidden in the arms of a hill covered with ferns. They didn’t light a fire. The moon was full and cold. Lari lay awake, listening to the distant hum of generators. She could smell oil and dust even from here.

“Why don’t they stop?” she whispered to the stars. “Why don’t they feel it?”

“They don’t think it belongs to anyone,” Wanshan replied softly beside her. “And what isn’t owned, they think they can take.”

“But it is owned,” she said. “By birds. And roots. And songs.”

“And now by us,” Nisa added from her blanket nearby.

Lari turned over and stared into the dark. Her father’s notebook lay on her chest. She flipped it open to a page she hadn’t dared read before. It was written hastily, almost in panic:

“If they break the southern ridge, they’ll open the wound too deep. The earth beneath is soft—ancient cave veins, water pockets. Collapse is likely. But they won’t listen. Not without proof. Find the riverstone altar. Mark it with ash. It will awaken the old flow.”

The words sent a chill through her. Collapse. A cave network. Hidden water.

She sat up. “There’s something under that ridge. Something they don’t know.”

By morning, the group was moving again. They snuck through bamboo thickets, using mist as cover, circling the tents until they found what they were looking for: a small cluster of oddly shaped stones, half-buried in moss. In the center was one shaped like a bowl—smooth, pale, and marked with black lichen.

Lari dropped to her knees. “This is it.”

They had no time for chants or long ceremonies. The machines had begun to stir. She took out her pouch of white ash and drew the spiral symbol inside the bowl stone. The moment the circle was complete, a faint vibration rippled through the ground beneath them.

Wanshan stepped back. “It’s awake.”

A low groan echoed from deep below.

The men nearby paused, confused. One of them shouted, “Check the ground! Something just moved!”

Then came the crack.

Not loud. Not violent. Just a deep, dry sound like an old bone snapping.

The soil near the edge of the ridge began to crumble.

A generator tipped sideways, one of its legs vanishing into a newly formed hole. Shouts erupted. Workers scrambled. Someone screamed, “The hill’s unstable!”

Tara, from a safe distance, had her camera rolling.

Lari held up the whistle and blew—not to call the forest this time, but to warn it. To say: We see you. We won’t let them bury you again.

Another crack. The land shifted. A thin stream of water burst from the earth just below the altar stone, hissing like a snake. Mud slid down toward the machines, soaking their wheels.

“Evacuate!” someone yelled.

By sunset, the slope had been declared too dangerous to continue work. A forest official arrived with a clipboard, flanked by two camera crews and a field geologist. Tara handed him a printed copy of Lari’s father’s notes.

“This was known,” she said. “And ignored.”

The official looked stunned.

Lari stood behind a tree, watching, not stepping forward. She didn’t want recognition. She wanted retreat.

By nightfall, the tents were gone. Only a red flag remained, limp and muddy.

That night, the children built a small cairn near the altar stone. A circle of pebbles around it. Nisa placed a hornbill feather in the center. Wanshan added a bundle of pine needles.

Lari placed her hand on the warm stone and whispered, “Sleep now. You’re safe.”

But even as they rested, she knew—this wasn’t victory. It was defense.

The forest was a patient teacher. But it would not wait forever.

And neither would she.

Part 9

They walked into the fog before dawn, boots caked with the red soil of the southern ridge, backpacks lighter than before but spirits heavier. Lari felt the quiet tension around her like a string pulled taut. The others didn’t talk much. Even Dapbor, who usually hummed or cracked jokes about frogs and ghosts, was silent. The ridge had shaken them—not just the near-collapse, but the truth of what lay beneath: an entire world they had nearly lost without knowing it.

Now they were headed west, toward a place the old maps had marked as Lum Sohpetbneng—the navel of the heavens, the spiritual center of the hills. Wanshan said it was the oldest forest of all, protected by clans and songs. But he had also heard stories that worried him.

“They’re building houses,” he said. “Luxury bungalows. A retreat for tourists.”

Lari stopped in her tracks. “At Lum Sohpetbneng?”

He nodded. “The path is still sacred, but the land just below it has been cleared.”

“Didn’t the clans object?”

“They tried. But the papers were signed in Shillong. Developers always find a way.”

That afternoon, they reached the forest edge. It was different here—cooler, the light filtered through high canopies of ancient trees, roots thick and knotted like sleeping giants. Birds chirped again. It felt… alive.

Too alive to be this close to danger.

As they moved deeper, Lari noticed something strange. White ribbons tied to tree trunks—hundreds of them. Each bore a name written in charcoal. Some were in Khasi, some in English, others faded beyond recognition.

“What are these?” she asked.

Nisa answered softly. “They’re prayers. People tie them here every year, asking for protection, for guidance.”

Lari touched one. The name was smudged, but the ribbon still fluttered in the wind like a heartbeat.

Farther ahead, they found a clearing. Bulldozers again. Cement bags stacked like tombstones. Rebar poking out of foundations like broken bones. A billboard stood at the center, proudly declaring:
“Sohpet Serenity Villas – Where the Sky Meets Peace.”

Lari’s fists clenched. “They built over prayer.”

They camped that night in a hidden alcove, deep within the untouched part of the grove. The trees here were taller than any they’d seen, and even the air smelled old. They lit no fire, spoke only in whispers.

In the darkness, Wanshan spoke. “There’s a lake nearby. Hidden. They say if you look into it, you see what the forest sees.”

Lari sat up. “Take me there.”

Before sunrise, the two of them slipped away. They moved without noise, guided by instinct more than trail. Finally, they reached it—Umiam Khyndew—a still body of water surrounded by stone. No ripples. No sound.

Lari stepped to the edge and peered into it.

At first, she saw only herself. Then the water shimmered. Images formed, one after another: her father kneeling beside the Heart Tree, her own feet stepping into the first grove, the children planting seeds at Mawkyrwat, Tara holding up a microphone.

Then the water went black.

And she saw bulldozers.

A hundred of them.

Pushing trees. Leveling homes. A city rising where the forest should be. And silence—so deep, so complete, it felt like death.

She stepped back, gasping.

Wanshan steadied her. “What did you see?”

“A warning,” she said. “The forest’s future if we don’t stop them now.”

They returned to camp in silence.

By midday, the others had arrived. Tara too, panting and muddy from the trek. She looked grim. “There’s a meeting today. The landowners, officials, and company reps. They’re finalizing permits.”

“Where?” Lari asked.

Tara unrolled a map. “At the village hall. We can’t get inside, but there’s an open courtyard. If we stand outside, maybe they’ll hear.”

Lari shook her head. “They won’t listen.”

Nisa stepped forward. “Then we make them.”

That afternoon, as the meeting began, a small group of forest children appeared at the edge of the courtyard. Dressed in leaves, feathers, and ash, they stood in complete silence. No banners. No chants.

Just presence.

Lari stood at the center, the bamboo whistle around her neck, the microphone clipped to her collar.

The officials inside paused.

Someone opened a window.

Lari didn’t speak. She blew the whistle.

A long, low note. Like mourning.

The sound carried.

And from the trees behind them came more children—dozens, maybe a hundred. Some barefoot, some holding saplings, some carrying jars of spring water.

They stood like trees.

Unmoving. Rooted.

Tara held up her phone. Streaming live.

The speaker at the podium inside the hall faltered. His voice cracked. Someone asked, “Who are they?”

One of the women watching whispered, “They’re the forest’s children.”

A journalist turned his camera.

A young girl stepped forward with a ribbon and tied it to the courtyard gate. On it: We remember what you forget.

Then another.

And another.

By sunset, the gate was covered in white.

Inside, the meeting didn’t end—it collapsed. Half the officials left. A landowner cried. The developer stormed out, his phone buzzing with notifications.

Lari didn’t cheer. She just stood.

When they walked back to camp, someone had placed a ribbon on her sleeping mat. It bore one word in bold letters:

Hope.

That night, Lari lay under the stars and whispered, “I’m not tired yet.”

The forest answered with a breeze.

Part 10

Lari didn’t sleep much that night.

Even after the quiet victory at the village hall, her mind remained restless. Hope was not a finish line—it was the first step in a much longer journey. Her father’s notebook now sat open beside her like a living thing. Pages rustled in the breeze, and the ash-drawn symbols inside looked almost as if they shimmered in the moonlight.

She traced the edge of a sketch—an old grove, a flowing river, a small child standing beneath a banyan tree with wide, listening eyes.

Was it her?

Before she could wonder more, the forest stirred. Not with danger—but with movement. She sat up. Wanshan was already awake, crouched beside the trail that led out of camp. His head tilted like an animal sensing a shift.

“Someone’s coming,” he whispered.

Minutes later, a small group appeared through the mist. At the front: a Khasi elder in white, a walking stick shaped like a serpent in his hand. Behind him were six others—two women in traditional jainsen, three teenage boys, and a quiet man with camera gear slung over his shoulder.

The elder stepped forward and nodded at Lari. “You are the one they speak of.”

Lari stood, suddenly nervous. “Who are you?”

“We are the Circle of Memory,” he said. “Keepers of the oral forests.”

She blinked. “The… oral forests?”

He smiled. “Every forest has two layers. One of roots and trees. The other of memory and song. We protect the second.”

They sat in a circle that morning under the shade of an ancient tree. The elder, who introduced himself as Bah Duh, spoke softly.

“For years, we kept our stories quiet. We believed that silence would protect the sacred. But silence also became the excuse for others to forget.”

He looked at Lari directly.

“You reminded us that remembering is resistance.”

Tara, who had joined quietly, asked, “Why now? Why come to us now?”

Bah Duh turned his gaze to the hills. “Because the forest says your voice is louder than ours ever was.”

Lari listened carefully as Bah Duh pulled out a scroll from a bamboo tube. Unrolling it, he revealed a map—not of roads or rivers—but of stories.

“There are twelve sacred sites across the Khasi hills,” he said. “Each tied to an element. Water, wind, flame, stone, seed, silence. Most are in danger.”

He pointed to the southern edge. “But this one”—he tapped a red mark—“is dying fastest. It’s called Lum Nohkrem. The hill of smoke.”

“What’s happening there?” Wanshan asked.

“Illegal coal pits,” Bah Duh said grimly. “Unregulated. Hidden. Even the government pretends not to see. But the land there is coughing. Trees are burning from within.”

Lari looked at the others. “We go.”

No one argued.

The journey to Lum Nohkrem took two days. The air changed as they neared it—growing bitter, laced with ash. The sky darkened though no clouds moved overhead. Birds stopped following them. Streams ran yellow and lifeless.

Then they saw it.

A valley stripped bare. Trees blackened. Smoke rising from vents in the ground like the earth was exhaling poison. Pit after pit, dug deep, tarred and slick, swallowing the land.

Lari fell to her knees. “They called this a hill of the gods…”

Bah Duh, standing beside her, whispered, “And now it is a wound.”

The forest here didn’t speak in whispers—it cried in silence. The children stood still, overwhelmed. Even Nisa, who had never flinched, looked pale.

“What can we do?” Dapbor asked. “This… this is already gone.”

But Lari opened her pouch and pulled out a packet of seeds.

She walked to the edge of one pit, dropped to her knees, and dug with her hands until she found damp soil. She placed a seed inside.

Then another. And another.

One by one, the others joined her.

They planted not in rows, not in gardens, but like offerings. Each seed wrapped in ash, each with a word whispered to it: Heal. Return. Remember. Breathe.

When they were done, Lari pulled out the microphone.

She faced the wind and spoke.

“To whoever listens… this is what forgetting looks like.”

She turned the camera toward the black pits.

“This was once a forest of birdsong. Now it’s a field of smoke. But even here, the land still breathes. And so we plant. Not because we know it will work. But because the forest has never stopped trying.”

She placed the microphone down on a flat rock and left it recording.

By evening, a soft rain fell—not heavy, but enough to wet the soil, to soak the seeds. A single green shoot appeared near the edge of a pit.

A beginning.

The next day, they built a ring of stones around it. A new altar.

And Lari wrote in the notebook:

“Even in smoke, the roots remember.”

Part 11

The wind howled through Lum Nohkrem like a wounded animal, tugging at cloaks and hair, whispering secrets in a language Lari was beginning to understand.

They stayed for two more days, tending the seeds. The air remained heavy, but the green shoots multiplied. Not many. But enough to prove the land wasn’t dead.

On the morning of the third day, Tara returned from a hike down the southern slope. Her boots were black with soot, and her voice was grave.

“There’s a tunnel,” she said. “Old mining shaft. Still in use.”

Lari’s heart sank. “I thought they abandoned the site.”

“They moved underground,” Tara said. “Literally.”

Wanshan squinted at the ridge. “That’s why the land still burns.”

“And there’s more,” Tara added. “I overheard them talking. They’re using kids. Boys. Maybe younger than Dapbor.”

The silence that followed was immediate and sharp.

Nisa stood. “We’re going in.”

“You’ll get hurt,” Tara warned. “They’re armed.”

Lari didn’t answer right away. She looked at the shoot by the pit, then at the altar. She took out the whistle and held it tight.

“We don’t fight with weapons,” she said. “We fight with light.”

That evening, under the cover of dusk, the children descended toward the shaft’s entrance, hidden beneath a tin roof disguised by brush. Smoke curled up through vents like breath from a buried giant.

They moved like shadows, feet silent, eyes alert.

Tara remained above, ready to film if anything went wrong. Bah Duh gave Lari a cloth satchel with herbs that could mask scent and calm breath. “The old ways were not just for rituals,” he said with a sad smile.

The mine’s tunnel was low, the air damp and foul. Inside, the sound of picks echoed. Dim lights flickered along walls blackened by years of extraction.

Then they saw them.

Children.

Maybe eight or nine of them, small and pale, hands blistered. They wore no shoes. Their eyes looked past Lari and the others, as if not used to being seen.

One boy dropped his pick. Another froze.

Lari stepped forward and knelt.

“We’re here to take you home.”

At first, no one moved.

Then one child—a boy with a birthmark under his left eye—whispered, “They said we had no homes left.”

Wanshan stepped beside her. “You do now.”

A sound from behind—the crunch of boots.

Guards.

Lari turned quickly. “Now.”

She pulled out her father’s notebook and flung white ash into the air. It spiraled in the low light, catching in the guards’ eyes. Confused, they stumbled.

Nisa and the others gathered the children. One carried a younger boy who had fallen. Lari stayed back, drawing a spiral in the soot with her finger—an old symbol of protection.

The children ran. Up, out, into the trees.

Lari followed last.

By the time the guards reached the exit, the forest had reclaimed them.

Tara was already filming.

The moment went viral before midnight.

The image of children, barefoot and blinking in daylight, standing beside Lari and her friends beneath a tree etched with symbols, spread faster than any message before.

By morning, the story had reached Delhi.

By afternoon, the mine was sealed by court order.

But Lari didn’t feel victorious.

That night, one of the rescued boys asked her, “Will the forest forget us too?”

She shook her head.

“No,” she said softly. “It remembers everyone who comes back.”

The next morning, they held a ritual—simple, quiet. Each child planted a flower at the edge of the mine, each bloom a witness to their return.

Bah Duh said a prayer in the old tongue.

Wanshan sang a forest lullaby.

And Lari, finally, wrote again in her father’s notebook:“The deepest wounds are underground. But even there, seeds wait in the dark.”

They rested for two days. Then they packed.

More sites waited.

More valleys.

More people who had forgotten that trees could bleed.

But now they weren’t just a group of children.

They were a movement.

A song that had begun quietly but now echoed through hills and headlines.

Tara walked beside Lari as they climbed back toward the ridge.

“I’ve been offered a national award,” she said, smiling wryly. “For ‘brave documentation.’”

“You earned it,” Lari said.

Tara looked at her. “So did you.”

Lari shook her head. “I’m not done yet.”

The whistle hung from her neck like a heartbeat.

The earth below them stirred—not in fear, but in gratitude.

And somewhere in the trees, a hornbill called for the first time in years.

Part 12

It was early morning when the letter arrived.

Carried not by post, but by hand—delivered by a woman in a brown shawl, who said nothing, only bowed and placed the folded paper in Lari’s palm before disappearing into the mist. The paper smelled faintly of old wood and citrus leaves, and the ink was smudged in places.

Lari unfolded it with trembling fingers. The handwriting was unfamiliar. But the message inside was clear.

“To the girl who carries the forest’s voice—
Come to Mawphlang Sacred Grove.
There is something your father left behind.
Something even you don’t know yet.
Come before the next moonrise.
—A Friend of the Root.”

Lari sat still, letting the words settle in her chest like rain filling a dry basin.

Wanshan appeared beside her, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Another valley?”

She handed him the letter.

He read it, then looked at her. “Mawphlang. That’s the oldest grove. The forest of beginnings.”

Nisa joined them, curious. “What did your father leave behind?”

“I don’t know,” Lari said softly. “But we’re going to find out.”

They left that same day. No ceremony, no goodbyes—just quiet footsteps and tightly strapped packs. Tara stayed behind, helping the rescued children reunite with families or find homes in safe villages. Before they left, she handed Lari a fresh recorder. “Tell the story,” she said. “Even if no one listens right away.”

The journey to Mawphlang took two days through winding trails lined with orchids, narrow bridges woven from roots, and cliffs where mist curled like sleeping spirits. The forest here felt older, deeper. Like walking through time.

On the second night, they camped under a hollowed-out tree, its trunk wide enough to shelter all three of them. Lari couldn’t sleep. Her thoughts spun with questions—about her father, about the letter, about what awaited them in the sacred grove.

Wanshan sat beside her in the darkness. “Do you believe in messages from the dead?”

She thought for a long time.

“I believe in what stays behind,” she said. “And I think… sometimes that’s stronger than the person ever was.”

He nodded.

When they reached Mawphlang the next afternoon, the air shifted again. Not colder. Not warmer. Just heavier. The kind of weight that settles on your shoulders when you’re standing in the presence of something that has seen too much.

The entrance to the grove was marked by two ancient stones, carved with symbols even Bah Duh hadn’t recognized. Lari stepped between them with reverence, her fingers brushing the moss that grew in spirals. The forest inside was so thick it muffled sound. Their footsteps vanished. Even the birds were quiet, as though watching.

They walked for an hour without speaking, deeper and deeper into green silence.

Then, suddenly, Wanshan stopped. “There.”

At the base of a tree unlike any they had seen—taller than ten men, its trunk black with age—lay a stone altar covered in dried leaves. On it, a bundle wrapped in bark and cloth.

Lari stepped forward. Her hands shook as she lifted it.

Inside was a smaller notebook. Older than the one she already had. Its cover bore a single hand-drawn symbol: a tree with roots like lightning.

She opened the first page.

Her father’s handwriting.

“This is not for science. This is not for stories.
This is for her. For Lari.
If she finds this, she will need more than facts.
She will need memory. Truth.
The forest showed me something. A place no one has seen in years.
A final grove, hidden beneath earth and fire.
I could not reach it.
But she can.”

Wanshan leaned over her shoulder. “He knew.”

Lari turned to the last page.

“They call it Lum Ryngkew—the root that binds all.
If it falls, the others will follow.
But if it rises, the land remembers.
I could not save it.
But maybe she… maybe you can.”

There was a map. Hand-drawn. Crude. But it showed the location.

A valley Lari had never heard of.

She closed the book and clutched it to her chest.

“We have to go,” she said.

Nisa frowned. “But that place… it’s past the fire lines. Past where the hills have already cracked.”

“Exactly,” Lari said. “That’s why it’s still hidden.”

They left Mawphlang that night, carrying not just a new mission, but something heavier—a sense of finality. As if every grove before had led to this. Every seed, every chant, every cry of a tree now funneled into one last hope.

They didn’t talk much as they walked. Words felt too small.

When they stopped to rest, Lari opened the old notebook again and whispered to the pages, “I’m coming, Papa.”

The wind didn’t answer.

But the forest did.

A fox appeared at the edge of the trail. Then a deer. Then a bird with feathers like flame.

None of them ran.

They simply watched her go.

Part 13

The path to Lum Ryngkew wasn’t a path at all. It was a thread of memory.

They crossed places where the land had crumbled, where old rivers had dried into scars, where burnt trees stood like charcoal statues against the gray sky. There were no signposts. Only silence. And sometimes, the faint call of a bird no one could name.

The map from Lari’s father’s notebook was hand-drawn and barely legible. But she followed it with the certainty of instinct. Every turn felt familiar, though she’d never walked this way before. Her feet remembered. Maybe her blood did too.

They walked through rain and mist, across bridges of stone and ladders made of vine. Nights were cold, the forest quieter with each step, as if even it was holding its breath.

On the third day, they reached a ridge where the earth split open into a deep gorge. Smoke rose from its belly—not the choking black of coal fire, but a softer gray, like breath from sleeping roots.

“This is it,” Lari whispered. “Lum Ryngkew.”

They climbed down slowly. The gorge walls were lined with moss that glowed faintly in the twilight. Vines dangled like curtains. Water dripped from stone with the rhythm of a heartbeat.

And then, they saw it.

A grove.

Not wide, not grand. Just a cluster of trees in the shape of a spiral, their trunks curved like dancers mid-motion. In the center stood a single tree, unlike any Lari had ever seen—its bark white as bone, leaves deep red like fire, roots coiled around stone like protective arms.

Wanshan stopped walking. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Nisa knelt and touched the earth. “It’s warm.”

They approached slowly, reverently.

Lari stepped into the spiral and placed her hand on the white tree. It felt… alive. Not like other trees, but like something thinking, waiting, listening.

And then it began.

The forest stirred.

A gust of wind moved through the spiral, lifting leaves into a slow whirlwind. The ground vibrated softly beneath their feet. The tree’s bark began to shimmer—faint symbols appearing across its trunk, glowing like fireflies.

Lari dropped to her knees, overwhelmed. Her ears filled with sound—not noise, but voices. Hundreds. Thousands. Layered over each other like waves on waves.

She could hear her father.

“…if she reaches here… tell her I tried…”

She could hear Bah Duh.

“…memory is not history. It is breath…”

She could hear children. Women. Men. Elders. Seeds speaking. Rain whispering. Roots remembering.

Tears streamed down her cheeks.

Then, a different sound.

Crackling.

Smoke.

Not from the sacred tree—but from behind them.

Wanshan turned sharply. “No…”

Flames.

Real ones this time.

Creeping down the gorge wall. Dry branches catching.

“How?” Nisa shouted. “We saw no one!”

But Lari knew.

Someone had followed.

The mine guards? The developers? Or worse—someone who had heard about this grove and decided it was dangerous to their profits.

The fire was slow but steady. Hungry.

Wanshan grabbed a blanket from his bag, soaked it in water from a nearby spring, and began beating at the flames.

Nisa did the same.

Lari turned to the tree. “What do I do?”

It glowed softly.

She didn’t hear words. But she felt the answer in her bones.

The roots. The song. The circle.

She pulled out the whistle, the old notebook, the pouch of ash. She ran to the spiral’s center and began drawing circles around the tree—three of them, wide and careful, her fingers coated in white powder.

Then she stood in the very middle.

And she sang.

Not a song she knew. A song that came.

It rose from her chest like breath. High. Then low. Then layered with hums.

Wanshan stopped.

Nisa too.

They turned.

The flames slowed.

The smoke curled upward and froze mid-air.

The ground pulsed.

From beneath, the roots responded.

Vines rose. Moss spread. Water burst from cracks in the stone. A wave of coolness moved outward like a slow explosion.

The fire hissed—and died.

Not all of it. But enough.

The grove was safe.

Lari collapsed to her knees, spent.

The white tree glowed once more, then dimmed. At its base, a crack opened in the soil. From it, something rose—a stone pendant, shaped like a leaf.

She took it.

Inside, etched in faint lines, was one word in old Khasi:

“Thylliej” — To rise again.

That night, they didn’t speak.

They sat in a circle, heads bowed, listening to the forest breathe around them.

And somewhere in the quiet, Lari’s father’s voice returned.

“The world won’t change because of power.
It will change because someone remembered the root beneath the wound.”

She held the pendant to her heart.

And knew she was ready for whatever came next.

Part 14

At sunrise, the sacred grove of Lum Ryngkew stood untouched.

The fire had receded to the edges of the gorge, leaving behind only smoke and silence. The white tree glowed faintly in the morning light, like a candle that had burned through the night and still refused to go out. Lari stood at its base, the pendant warm in her palm, her fingers still dusted with ash.

Nisa stirred beside the spring. Wanshan was already awake, staring at the faint char marks left by the flames. He didn’t speak until the sun breached the ridge and poured golden light into the spiral of trees.

“We saved it,” he said.

Lari shook her head slowly. “We were part of it. But the forest saved itself.”

Nisa joined them, brushing dew off her arms. “Then what now?”

Lari looked around at the spiral, at the stone pendant, at the roots that had answered her call. For the first time, the weight of everything—of every grove they had crossed, every scar they had touched, every memory they had woken—settled fully on her chest.

“I think we take this to the world,” she said. “Not just one place at a time. All of it.”

“But how?” Nisa asked. “There are too many fires. Too many voices that won’t listen.”

Lari looked up. “Then we speak in a way they can’t ignore.”

They left the grove that day, climbing out of the gorge slowly, reverently, each of them pressing a palm to the earth in farewell. The white tree did not glow again, but Lari felt it behind her—watching, trusting.

At the top of the ridge, Tara was waiting.

She didn’t speak at first. Just looked at them—mud-smeared, tired, soot-streaked—and nodded once. Then she held up her phone.

“I’ve been preparing something,” she said. “A broadcast. One hour. All channels. I have networks lined up. If you want to speak, Lari, the world will hear you.”

Lari blinked. “All… all of it?”

Tara smiled. “The city. The villages. The offices. The people with power. The ones who’ve never walked under a real tree. The ones who think forests are only for postcards and poetry.”

Lari hesitated.

She wasn’t a politician. She wasn’t a teacher. She was twelve years old.

But she was also the one the forest had chosen.

That night, in a small clearing, they made a simple stage—just a stone platform, ringed with roots and lanterns made from bamboo and old jars. They strung up leaves behind her in a spiral, and the whistle hung around her neck like an amulet.

Tara adjusted the camera.

“You’re live in three… two… one.”

Lari took a breath.

“Hello,” she said, voice soft, steady. “My name is Lari Khongdup. I’m twelve years old. I’m from Mawlynnong, a small village in Meghalaya you’ve probably never heard of. But you should.”

She paused.

“Because this is the last breath of the forest. And it’s asking you to listen.”

She held up the pendant, the etched word glinting under lantern light.

“I’ve walked through fire. I’ve planted seeds in ash. I’ve heard roots speak. I’ve watched children crawl out of mines no one admitted existed. And still, the forest sings.”

Images played behind her on Tara’s screen—clips of Mawkyrwat, the hornbills at Sohpetbneng, the cracked land of Lum Nohkrem, the spiral tree of Lum Ryngkew.

“Some of you think this is someone else’s fight. That the forest belongs to tribes, to farmers, to activists. That you’re far away. That you are safe.”

She leaned forward slightly.

“You’re not.”

She held up her father’s notebook.

“My father tried to warn you. He disappeared in these forests trying to keep them alive. But he left me his voice. And now it’s yours too.”

She let the silence hang.

Then she blew the whistle.

A long, clear note.

No tricks. No special effects.

Just a call.

And in the background, you could hear birds begin to sing.

The broadcast exploded.

In Delhi, a minister turned off a meeting to listen.

In a café in Kolkata, someone stood up and started crying.

In villages, grandmothers clutched their radios like they were holding memory.

In schools, teachers paused classes and told children: “This is your story.”

Social media flooded with one word: Listen.

That night, calls flooded the Environment Ministry.

Protests sparked in four states.

Developers canceled two projects.

And Lari?

She sat quietly by the fire, wrapped in a shawl, surrounded by her friends, the whistle in her lap and the pendant against her heart.

Tara touched her shoulder. “You did it.”

“No,” Lari said. “We just began it.”

And far away, in a valley no one had touched in years, a single white tree glowed one last time.

Part 15

A week passed.

Then two.

And still, the ripples spread.

Lari’s broadcast had become more than a story. It had become a movement. A call. A seed dropped in thousands of hearts.

Journalists from every corner of the country trekked to the hills, some respectful, some not. Elders were interviewed. Old chants were recorded. Ministers made promises—some hollow, others surprisingly firm. A new forest conservation bill was drafted. A task force was sent to Lum Nohkrem. Roads were paused, permits reviewed, companies questioned.

But Lari kept away from the cameras.

She didn’t want spotlights. She wanted roots.

She stayed in the forest, where birds returned to trees they had abandoned and children from neighboring villages arrived with empty notebooks and open ears. She began teaching—not in classrooms, but in circles under trees. About songs. About seeds. About how listening could be louder than speaking.

Wanshan built a shelter near the Heart Tree.

Nisa carved paths through overgrown groves to connect forgotten springs.

Dapbor started his own seed bank, collecting native plants from the hills, drying them with care, labeling each with tiny hand-drawn sketches.

Even Tara, usually running between towns with microphones, chose to stay longer. She helped the children record oral histories, capturing the voices of those who had never been asked their stories before.

One morning, Lari woke early and walked alone to the grove at Mawphlang. She sat beside the altar stone and opened her father’s first notebook.

A few pages remained blank.

She picked up her pen.“Dear forest,

You remember so much. But sometimes, even you forget how deeply you are loved.
So here I am, writing not what you said, but what I say to you:
I will not leave.
I will not forget.
I will be your voice when the wind is too tired,
And your song when the stream goes dry.
You raised me when I didn’t know I was growing.
And now, I am rooted in you.
Forever,
—Lari”

She closed the book, tied it with fresh jute string, and placed it inside a hollow in the tree’s base. She didn’t cry. She didn’t smile. She simply breathed, and the forest breathed with her.

That afternoon, a child arrived from a village far to the east. His feet were calloused. His clothes torn. But in his hand, he held a sapling—wrapped in a banana leaf, its roots still moist.

“I want to plant it here,” he said. “My grandmother said this is where trees are born.”

Lari guided him to a quiet spot beneath a canopy of elder trees. Together, they dug, placed the sapling gently, and pressed soil around its base.

“What will it grow into?” he asked.

She smiled. “Anything it remembers.”

From that day on, more children came. Not just from Meghalaya. From Assam. From Nagaland. Even one girl from Mumbai who had seen the broadcast and begged her parents to bring her to the forest “where the whisper came from.”

They didn’t come for tours.

They came to learn how to listen.

Lari began drawing a new map. Not with boundaries or borders, but with memory. Places where groves had healed. Places still bleeding. Places waiting.

She called it: The Root Network.

Within months, the network had grown into a real project. Schools in the northeast adopted it. Forest rangers joined with local children. Stories were collected, shared, planted like seeds in every language the wind knew.

Still, Lari avoided crowds.

But one day, a letter arrived addressed simply to:
“The Girl Who Spoke for the Forest.”

Inside was an invitation.
To New Delhi.
To speak.
At the National Earth Forum.
To receive an award in her father’s name.

She hesitated.

Wanshan said, “You don’t need their medal.”

“I know,” Lari said. “But I think they need my voice more than I need their stage.”

And so she went.

Dressed in a jainsen woven with patterns of leaves and roots, the whistle still around her neck, she stood on the largest stage she had ever seen. Cameras blinked. Reporters scribbled. The lights were too bright.

But she wasn’t afraid.

She began not with a speech, but a sound.

She blew the whistle.

A long, low note.

And the room fell silent.

Then she spoke.

“I am Lari Khongdup.
I do not come from a palace.
I come from the roots.
And the roots are rising.”

She didn’t speak long.

But when she finished, no one moved.

The forest had spoken through her again.

When she returned home, the valley was waiting. Not with applause—but with new saplings, new stories, new feet on old paths.

One evening, as the stars blinked over the hills, Wanshan sat beside her and asked, “Do you ever miss being just a child?”

Lari thought for a moment. “I still am.”

He laughed. “Doesn’t feel like it.”

She leaned back, letting the grass brush her arms. “Maybe the forest doesn’t need heroes. Maybe it just needs children who refuse to grow up the wrong way.”

He nodded. “Maybe that’s the revolution.”

From the canopy above, a bird cried out.

Not in warning.

But in song.

And the forest answered, with rustling leaves, with running streams, with light that filtered through memory and mist.

The girl who carried the forest’s voice smiled.

The whisper had become a roar.

And yet, it remained as soft as a root pressing gently through soil.

 

The End