I remember the night of this recording, a few weeks after Mama disappeared. I didn’t know then that it would be one of the last times in a decade that I would be standing in this exact spot on the Stökéwood lawn edge, grass devouring my baby toes.

[Video rolls]

“It’s almost dark. I thought I heard someone calling inside the forest, so I came out here to see,” Tai says, wiping her nose on camera. “But the branches are so thick I can barely see the tape and stuff the police put inside.”

Rustling, and the camera turns: Teddy approaches Tai from behind, each footstep crushing the long grass.

“You promise you won’t go into the forest at night, Tai?” he asks, a large white hand falling on Tai’s shoulder.

Tai scrunches her nose into the camera. “No. I don’t promise.”

Teddy doesn’t chuckle, and Tai fights a shiver, her lips blue-tinged.

“Why shouldn’t I go into the forest at night?” Tai asks him.

He points at a knobbly root by their feet—the camera swivels. “You could trip or something and tear your pretty skirt.”

She swipes at the silk around her knees. It’s an old oversize scarf of Mama’s with a palm tree pattern that she knotted like a sarong. There are no palm trees up here.

Tai flips the camera onto herself, sticking out her tongue at its lens. “I don’t care. This is Mama’s. She has a thousand. She won’t even notice if I ruin one before she’s back.”

Teddy doesn’t say a word, but the camera sneaks up to his face. His eyes are glossy. He looks like a boy.

“Aren’t you afraid of spirits in the forest?” he asks, his tone strange.

“You mean aren’t I afraid of dead people in the forest?” Tai asks off-screen, voice wobbling.

“What?” he asks, alarmed. “Did the kids at school say something to you?”

“I know this is Delirium Forest.” Tai pauses. “It’s my forest. I’ve always known.”

He’s silent, and there are only crickets. He crouches next to Tai.

“Do you know why it’s called that, Tai?”

Rustling in the trees. “Because some people go in human and come out a spirit. And sometimes those spirits can’t find their home,” Tai says.

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he turns his ear to the trees, cupping it. “Do you hear that? If you really listen, you can hear whole families of spirits whispering, finding each other on their way home. Hello, Uncle! Hello, Daughter!” His tone is faux cheery, his smile weak.

Tai says nothing.

“It’s dinnertime soon, sweet girl,” he says, taking Tai by the shoulder. “Is Saxim ready, too?”

Tai turns the camera onto herself and stares at it bleakly.