Eyes Open

“You see over yonder, Ollie?” Ollie’s father roughly jabbed him with his bony elbow. the man’s digit described the glowing tree-line at the foot of the hill. “That’s where they are. Should’ve burned it down years ago.”
His dad shook his head. “Never should’ve let them in in the first place!”
“Someone has to act, and it’s going to be us, boy!” Ollie stepped back as his father stepped forward, lighting a torch and holding it aloft in the night air. It illuminated the burning shield tattooed on his neck.
Like moths Ollie’s eyes were drawn to the flame. Its white-hot heart drew a memory on his retinas:

The Folk were caught off-guard by the attack of their allies, the people of the Kingdom. The Folk had cured their poxes and healed their wounds. They had promised they always would in return for peace. But the King’s subjects feared the Folk more than they valued peace. The Folk and their woods burned as the people howled and chopped and marshalled the inferno.

Ollie followed his father a few yards behind out of fear.
“They’re an infection, son! We have to burn them out of our community!”
Ollie stepped in a puddle near the foot of the hill. The water’s dark mirror reflected another memory:

A woman of the Folk, aglow with forest magic, laid hands on the ruined leg of a warrior. A woman of the Kingdom loomed behind her. As the knight’s limb was made whole the woman shoved the healer back into the city’s dirt where they had found her, spat and laughed.

Ollie stumbled in his father’s wake.
“Come along, boy! We took them into our civilisation when they had nowhere else to go. What did we get for our troubles? Knives in the back! Why wouldn’t they want our great Kingdom leading them, protecting them, showing them the right path? Eh?”
Ollie no longer heard. He rose and peered into the clouds above. Their wisps revealed a new memory:

A man of the Folk, all but invisible in black, dropped from ornate rafters onto the King’s throne. He roared in pent-up rage as he sucked the life from the monarch. The man’s body, pustulating and poxy, tumbled to the floor beside the King’s, just as dead.
The Kingdom drowned all the Folks’ children.

Ollie’s father approached the trees.
“The last of them live in this fairy-ring, Ollie. We’ll be heroes when we cure this infection!”
Ollie ran to the first great ash. His eyes peered into the swirl of an ancient knot:

A slender hand reached through a window to enact a terrible trade, one tiny boy of the kingdom for another identical one. The be-glamoured and bundled cuckoo screamed and a man came to attend. He held the child tenderly to his face, right by the flaming buckler emblazoned below his ear.

“No, Dad. We’ll cure you instead.” Ollie began to glow with forest light.