1) The narrator rides their bicycle through a forest trail at night to arrive at a lake. 2) They recall an unsettling experience getting lost in the forest previously and seeing strange drifting lights. 3) While sitting by the lake, the narrator hears a noise and wonders if a mythical forest spirit called a jinn could be in the woods.

1. Jinn of the Forest
My bicycle rattles as I turn off Main Street and onto Quarry Edge Drive and pedal past evergreen
trees, a Chapters, perfectly symmetrical houses in perfect lines, and stop at the corner of Quarry Edge
and Yellow Brick Road.
A phone vibrates in my pocket. I pull it out, click a button, hold it to my ear.
“Oye.”
“Are you coming?” asks Camilair.
“I don’t know. Probably.”
“Where you headed? The Bridge?”
“Well, to the lake likely.”
“It’s going to be dark. Better make sure the flashlight you duck-taped to your bike doesn’t run out
of battery juice man.”
“Whatever man...I’ll text you about later.”
I stash the phone into my pocket. Smoke clouds billow from the shops. I lift earbuds off my coat
and plug them in. I kick off the ground. A song called Black Sands by Bonobo shakes little bones in my
ears.
*
A gap in a fence and a ditch in the grass, more a rabbit hole, lead to the back of the forest. The
flashlight on my bicycle lights a trail like a lighthouse beacon on a black sea. The trails of Heart Lake
Conservation Area wind throughout the forest. I pedal over wood chips, past evergreens, bristles.
Trees creak. Wind rustles leaves. And whispers.
I round a bend, cycle up the trail and arrive at a parting. Two paths stream into the forest. The
one to my left goes down a slope, crosses a wooded bridge, then follows alongside a bog to the lake. I
peer into the trail ahead and see only bush and branch and thick black. I travelled this one only once
before. It had me spiralling through the deepest and darkest depths of the woods. To the farthest
edges. At every corner and every twist I lost focus. My sight blurred and things appeared the same.
This sameness had me lost for a while and gave me a feeling, like something peered from between the
trees at my confusion. Then I saw it.
Drifting specks of light in the distance. Drifting as if they had somewhere to be. It was then that
the strange feeling, all at once, disappeared.
I swerve onto the other path and coast down a winding slope. I brake to a stop at the bottom.
Crickets chirp. Wind howls.
Ahead, on the bridge, eyes glow and stare. I shift the headlamp. A family of raccoons scuttle
behind trees and gaze curiously from the sides. The trail dwindles. I walk my bicycle to a clearing by
the lake, lean it against a bench, and breathe the smell of burnt campfire wood and filthy water. I sit on

2. a picnic bench. Across the lake lanterns around a house glow in the night, something like oversized
fireflies. The distant glow spills onto a tree, illuminating each leaf with varying degrees of light.
The lantern flickers and casts small shadows.
I stare, almost hypnotized.
The lake reflects the canvas of the night. Stars glow and the face on the moon stares. I hear a
noise. I turn around and look into the black between the trees.
If, she’s in the woods…
Old tales tell of a class of spirit who roam the unseen world, ceaselessly. Jinn appear in animal or
human form. They often do good or the purest malice. My mother’s father encountered one during
World War II. He once told me the tale.
It was many moons ago. I was a high ranking officer in my battalion, stationed in Africa. I assigned a soldier to
deliver intelligence. Then decided, because of the importance of this assignment, to accompany him. We gathered all
the necessities for the journey, food
provisions, water, a torch, two loaded, double-barreled rifles, and we set off. We drove through the savannah for two
days and three nights.
On the third night, she appeared.
It was windy and hot. And dark. The sort of dark that is indistinguishable to open or closed eyes. Fields of
nothing but black space surrounded us. The jeep’s headlamps lit only the desolate road ahead of us. I closed my eyes.
A frigid breeze swept along the dirt road and into the jeep. I opened my eyes, and she was there, on the road before
us. The soldier braked. The jeep slowed to a stop under a dead, twisted tree hunched over the road. Crooked branches
reached down from above.
The woman stared at me for a moment, then drifted like a breeze along the dirt, out from the light of the jeep’s
headlamps into darkness. I shifted my hand onto the rifle on my lap.
I saw her approach, slowly, from the dark. In the flashes of torch light her face, neck, and collar bones shone like
porcelain. Her earrings like chandeliers. Her gown of jewels, golden yellow, ruby, emerald, and royal blue jewels,
glinted in the fire’s light.
She stared.
The torch flickered onto eyes black like new moons.
She held her gown off the dirt. Something moved below. I glanced to the ground. I saw no feet.
The fire flickered and flashed.
The light reached the ground and I thought I saw a foot.
She dropped her gown and spoke.
I have walked for hours in the heat. I am thirsty. And alone. Good sir, take me to where I must be.
My tongue froze. I nodded.
The woman drifted toward us like the frigid breeze. It was then, in each flicker and flash of the fire, I noticed her
footprints. Every footprint in the dirt, curiously, was backward.