Strange Maps

Monoflora: Part Four

Ann Collins

Jun 20, 2025

For Anders who died too young, and for Greta, who never stopped searching for him between worlds.

This part is painful, kulteseni.

I will tell it to you gently.

Evening came.

Annu lit the lantern as she always did, to welcome the vesper hours. She listened for her husband’s work-warm hands on the latch, for him to come bursting in with a song he had made while swinging his axe today.

In the cast iron pot above the fire, stew bubbled and thickened. Bread cooled upon the wooden table. But the chair where Olli should sit remained empty as an abandoned sparrow’s nest.

The mysterious clockwork that moves

the seasons came to a complete stop,

then began to run backwards

in slow motion.

wait for one

who does not come

is a very dreadful thing.

Resisting the urge to panic, Annu pulled her woolen cloak around her shoulders. And not wanting to scare him, if he should be coming up the path, she called his name hopefully, into the darkening woods beyond their door. Olli . . .Olli?

The forest swallowed her voice like snow swallows the footsteps of the lost. Nothing came back to comfort her. Only a sharp wind with a message she could not decipher.

She set out to search for him, panic driving her into the dark woods, while the moon looked down, indifferent and pale. Annu ran along the trail and shouted until her voice was raw from calling out his name. And when dawn came, cold and gray—she brought no husband home.

The villagers assembled in the square, as many times before when someone had gone missing in the woods. Twelve sharp-eyed men walked the riverbanks for miles, finding nothing but winter's stubborn silence.

Their voices fragmented around her like broken pottery as she passed: the ice was thin this year. . . his axe abandoned. . . no trace of him . . .always such a good man . . . She gathered these pieces of their talk, and turned them over in her mind like stones that would not stack together into truth.

The village women offered steaming bowls of brown beans. There were mugs of strong coffee to warm cold hands. This comfort had a brisk, no-nonsense way—no tears allowed. Yet, they offered plates of the most delicate cookies, rolled thin to crisp perfection.

The elders shook their heads and spoke of winter's endless appetite; the forest takes what it wants and gives back nothing.

Annu had grown up hearing stories told by those who had witnessed tragedy. They spoke of trees that had fallen the wrong way. . . of saw blades that slipped . . . of heavy branches with sudden recoil . . . of two small sisters on a terrible day when the younger one, with blonde curls, fell into the river. And the older one, with dark curls, tried to save her. Though neither could swim.

Annu sensed that Olli's vanishing was something else entirely, an event that made the forest hold its breath. It was a door closing. A bargain struck in wood and leaf and ancient understanding that her heart could not quite grasp.

She walked home on pathways that held no answers, only the sound of her own somber footsteps crushing snow-dusted leaves beneath her feet.

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The forest reveals at dusk

its winter mortality. Amplified

by wind, the hollow knocking


of bare branches where the path

turns to hemlock and frostbitten fern.

Footprints fade in falling snow.


Presumed drowned—a sudden slip

on icy stone, this reckoning.

Still, no body found in the river.


A black raven calls once and brushes

away the last light. Black wing

returned to black sky.

Annu entered their cabin alone, the silence heavy all around her.

She remembered back to their first night here, when she and Olli lay nested, like two shy birds, completely at home in the shelter of each other. So new they were to sharing a marriage bed. So comfortable in their closeness that neither one could sleep.

She placed another log upon the dying fire, took down their engagement portrait from the wooden mantle. It was the only likeness of the two of them, made by a traveling painter who had passed through the village last spring.

Annu placed it now, on the bedside table where Olli’s eyes could look upon her.

She pulled back the wedding quilts sewn by patient hands, and crawled beneath warm layers that still held his scent.

She sobbed into the space where his body should be.

In short bursts of sleep, Annu dreamed and wandered through a shadowed forest searching for Olli. She found strange maps, barely visible, carved into the bark of trees. Intricate spirals twirling like flower petals. Rivers twisted and flowed in directions that made no sense. There were delicate lines and symbols that looked like constellations fallen to earth. Everything pressed into the living wood.

There were charts showing paths she had never walked before—clearings never seen. She tried to decipher each map, hoping it would lead her to Olli. But always, they would fade before she could follow, dissolving like frost beneath the morning sun.

Then clearly—as if he were right next to her—she heard his familiar voice speaking:

Annu, let us draw beautiful maps of impossible places.

She opened her eyes.

To be continued . . .

Photo One: My favorite Sycamore tree along New Hope Creek, Chapel Hill, NC.

Photo Two: This is how ghost flowers sometimes dry and remain in the January woods, Johnston Mills Nature Preserve, Chapel Hill, NC.

Photo Three: Earthstar mushroom filled with rainwater, Brumley Forest Nature Preserve, Hillsborough, NC

Dear One,

Writing a sad tale does not come naturally to me. I decided to include real stories from my growing up years in a tiny midwestern town with one stoplight and more than its fair share of tragedy.

Please come say hi in the comments if you’d like. As always, I‘d be grateful to know if this sparks any bittersweet memories for you.

xo Ann

The entire story will be published in one small chapter per week.