In the fresh dew of the early spring morning, a young woman with brown hair tied tightly into a bun wearing a plain brown dress stood at the edge of the woods carrying a leather bag in her arms.

She touched the old rotting leaves at the edge, then pulled her foot back.

She recalled Mother’s words from around two years ago, the day before Mother died and left her on her own: “Remember my dearest, don’t go into the woods. The woods are the boundary.”

“What is beyond the boundary?” she’d asked, gently holding her Mother’s hand.

“Beyond?” her mother’s gray-blue eyes stared into her own more intently than they had in days. “The boundary is the edge of our world. Beyond it is unknown, because no one who leaves ever returns.”

The day after Mother died, they sang and carried her vessel to the river that ran into the woods and disappeared into the vines tangled in the distance.

From Earth we are born

With water and earth, we dine

Feasting on the rings of time

And at last, when naught is left of our vine

To the water’s edge we bring our dead to mourn.

The mourners tumbled her wrapped up vessel into the swift current. The river grabbed her empty vessel like a hungry beast and carried her away toward the ever-forbidden boundary.

The young woman standing near the entry of the river brushed her hand over the vines in front of her. The vines that supposedly made the woods impassible.

Her kind was supposed to be immortal. Their vines were never supposed to wither and die, but one after another they slowly died. First Mother, then a month later Father’s body joined Mother in the river. Everyone said he just couldn’t let his wife cross the boundary without him.

After Father, a neighbor sickened and died. Then the village chief. Each month, another empty vessel rolled into the river to travel across the boundary.

The last one… The last one was the end for her. Her best friend, her life partner. She ran her hands over the beaded bracelet he’d given her that morning.

His soft brown curls were damp with sweat. The first signs of the emptying.

“I think it’s my turn,” he’d whispered to her. His hand gripped hers gently, “My dearest Amelia, I have one last request to beg of you.”

“No, we haven’t even been together that long, why is the Emptying taking you? It must be something else!” She held his hand tightly, like she’d gripped the hands of her Mother, her Father, her elder brother, and her sister. All Empty and given to the water to mourn.

He reached up and wiped a tear off her face. “My dearest, don’t mourn with the river yet. I’ve been researching this strange Emptying, and I think I figured it out. The Source is dying. The river flows as fast as ever, but the water coming in carries less Source, and without Source, our land is drying up. Our vessels are emptying.”

“But what can we do about that?” she asked, laying her head down against his too-warm chest, hearing the reassuring rhythmic beating of his heart.

“You must go to where the river enters the glade, and travel into the woods. You must cross the boundary,” he gently wrapped his free arm around her and held her close.

After what seemed like a long time, yet far too short, he released her and gently pushed her back. “If you are quick enough, maybe you can make it back before I am Empty.”

The thought of saving him motivated her and she stood to leave, but he held tightly to her hand. “Wait, before you go –”

He released her hand and closed his eyes. He formed a circle with his hands; inside it a red beaded bracelet appeared.

“If the Source is dying, should you be using it for such frivolous matters as a bracelet?” she asked as she held out her hand for him to slip the bracelet onto her wrist.

“Using it doesn’t seem to matter that much. I think it’s fine to use Source,” he pulled her close and gently kissed her.

“Hurry back, my love,” he whispered as they slowly pulled apart.

She ran a hand one last time across his face before pushing back his damp brown curls from his green-blue eyes. “Goodbye, dearest,” she said, then fled from the room.

She’d quickly made a bag, and stuffed it with food. Food was the one thing you couldn’t create from Source. Source couldn’t nourish you the way food did.

She ran her hand over the bag, her eyes closing as she pulled the Source into her hands, and formed a leather strap which she used to secure the bag to her body.

To save her partner, her Evan, she had to go. She had to leave him. She looked back at the village she’d known for her short one hundred some years. The village where she and Evan had combined their Source and built a home. The place where only around 20 homes were left, empty pockets showing where Source once maintained a home.

A tear trailed down her cheek. She wiped it off and flung it toward the raging river on her left. “Let the river have your mourning,” she shouted at the grumbling river.

In the distance she could see people starting to move around the village. Soon they would all breathe a sigh of relief that it wasn’t their loved one showing the symptoms next. It wasn’t them. They would realize she was gone, and that Evan was beginning to Empty.

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and clasped her hands. She could feel the Source in her hands ready to do her bidding. She pulled them apart slowly, imagining her right hand running down the length of a blade, and her left hand feeling the shape of the hilt. When she opened her eyes, she was holding the hilt of a blade in her left hand.

She attacked the vines blocking the woods and slowly cut an opening. The vines were dense and twisted with anger. Behind her, they quickly grew back into a knot. All around they attempted to grow into her to stop her forward progress. She cut as fast as she could, flailing her blade like she was dancing with ribbons at the harvest festival. The vines whipped around, slicing her arms and face. She grimaced and used her right hand to slowly coat her body in hard Source like tree bark to protect her from the vines while she fought forward with her left hand.

As parts of her body became covered in Sources, the vines stopped attacking those areas. When she was completely covered in Source, the vines pulled back and space formed just in front and behind her. As she walked, more space opened in front of her, and the vines closed behind her. She only knew she was staying straight on the path from the sound of the river chittering away to her left.

After a while, she tired of trudging forward through the dense leaves and sat in the rotten foliage for a break. She pulled a green apple out of her bag and munched on it. She needed to be faster. Every minute she wasted was time where Evan was suffering alone in their house.

She finished the apple and threw it into the vines. She stood up, dusted off the rotting leaves clinging to her, and continued trudging through the woods.

Her voice kept her company:

“Let not the wandering mind wake,

Sleep on in the day till it does break,

Speak softly of the wood

For fear is their food

Let the Source wrap you in its embrace

Its softness shall be a hard shell to protect your face.”

She tripped, and stopped mumbling the old poem. Her eyes focused down on the uneven ground woven with roots.

“At the end of the road

Lies the truth of your code.

Let it be your light

As you realize you must fight.”

Whatever did the poem even mean? It was something the ancestors passed down to be remembered by the people. They were all immortal, and yet eventually everyone felt the calling of the river. They would go down to the river, and sing the song of mourning as the vessel stepped in and was swept away.

From the boundary to the river and from the river to the boundary. The world moved with the river, and eventually one must leave paradise.

She ran her fingers over the bracelet. Let him live. Please, Source, let him live.

The dim light filtering through the trees dimmed and disappeared. She stumbled on the tree roots and found herself lying with her face pressed against a root. She couldn’t continue forward in these conditions. She closed her eyes and ran her hands over the walls of a small bark like bubble protecting her from the woods. She would sleep here tonight.

Sleep claimed her mind for a time. When she woke, she poked a hole in the Source dome and saw that the dim light was back. She dismissed the Source completely, and started her trudge toward the boundary again while eating another apple from her bag.

Toward the end or the beginning of it all, wherever the source of Source was. She had to find it. She had to save him.

The light blinded her as the vines opened up to an open space. A glade like the one she lived in, except now she could see this one ended. A shimmering blue barrier was just a few paces from where she stood at the edge of the woods. The glade and the barrier ran into the river to her left, and the blue wall continued as far as her eye could see past the river. To the right, the glade and the woods ran off to some horizon that she couldn’t see as well.

This must be it, the mysterious boundary that no one returned from.

If this was the end, she had to either return and hold Evan in her arms until he was an empty vessel, or she had to go into the barrier and see what was beyond.

She stuck her hand in and felt nothing. She took a deep breath and walked forward into it. Blue nothingness surrounded her. Above. Below. There was nothing. She fell, but there was no floor. Just emptiness. A small partial sphere way above her head slowly grew distant, then disappeared into nothing. Blue, falling. Her heartbeat slowed. This was normal. Eternal. The end for all who entered the river. Eventually the blue became dark, and her own consciousness faded as night demanded sleep.