It was curious, she thought, to see humans in the ground.

Alive ones, anyway. The dead ones were layers deep, from centuries past, so long ago that the creature had not been alive herself to see them buried. Though it was hard to tell how long these living ones would stay that way. She found humans were tricky like that.

There they were, lying prostrate, breathing ever so slightly with their arms facing upward. Every so often, a finger would twitch. The creature’s many limbs stretched down and out into the earth, a network of synaptic roots, and she would notice sometimes the ones that had kicked off their shoes and the ones that hadn’t. If they had, they were easier for her limbs to reach, and she liked them more. Assumed they were more considerate than the others. She tried not to play favorites, but it was hard to be completely impartial.

The humans in the ground had started recently. Or recently for her, anyway. She had seen humans, alive, above the ground, for as long as she could remember, which was a very long time. They had changed a bit, sure, but the creature could never tell exactly how much. She remembered past humans in snippets, different limbs recalling sensory memories out of order. It was difficult to know how long it had been.

Two of them wandered into the clearing on bicycles, then dumped the machines carelessly on her limbs. “Dude, what the heck?” One of them shouted over the wind.

“There’s something here,” the shorter one replied.

“What do you mean?” The first responded. “It’s just dirt. We’re in the woods, man.”

His companion didn’t turn to face him, just put a hand out to beckon him closer. “No, look. The rocks are all — I don’t know how to describe it, just, like, weird.”

The two were silent as they pressed their bodies onto the dirt. They had found the crossing-over place, she figured, then shuddered as a part of her was snapped off.

The first man turned the stone over in his hand. “It’s like a geode or something.” He took it with him. She did not remember how they left.

Sometime before that, an older human woman stepped into the clearing, footsteps undisguised and slow. She twisted around heavily and pulled a green plastic bag out of the front pocket of her small backpack. Without pausing, she dumped the contents of the bag onto the ground in the middle of the clearing. As the creature looked to see what was being given to her, she remembered that perhaps this woman’s mother, or grandmother, had performed the same motions some time ago. She saw it was the same objects in her memory. Fingernails, bits of dark hair, a couple of teeth.

Human parts, the creature realized. How kind.

Another time, another time. Before or after, she didn’t know. A trio entered the clearing on foot. A pale adolescent boy ran ahead of a woman pushing a stroller. He stopped abruptly in the middle of the clearing and the woman bumped the front wheel of the stroller into him, causing him to shriek.

“Bitch! You scared me,” the boy yelled. “Don’t ever do that again.”

The woman raised her eyebrows, still for a moment, then said, “You need to learn some manners.”

“No, I don’t,” he retorted. “You fucking freaked me out! You can’t get mad at me for being scared.”

“Here,” the woman said, crouching to the ground. “Here’s a cool leaf, right? Weren’t you just saying you learned about xylem and phloem in school? You get to keep it.” Then she pulled something from the ground and pressed it into the boy’s hands. He grumbled, but shoved it into his pocket.

Don’t worry, thought the creature, willing the woman to hear even if the creature knew she wouldn’t. I’ll count it as his.

The two men from earlier came back to the clearing at some point with another human following closely behind. “There’s something growing here,” the first man said.

“No shit,” the new one observed, gesturing toward the creature.

“Not that,” the first one countered. “I mean something cool. Useful. There’s, like, a vegetable patch or something growing over here.”

The three made their way to where the first man was pointing. “That’s something, all right,” one of them observed.

“If it’s vegetables, could be worth telling Gina. Bring her a cutting, she’ll take care of it.” They shuffled around and left with another piece of her.

How odd, the creature thought at the time, that these beings could commit to their favors so carelessly. Or maybe they didn’t know what they were promising.

Now, as she remembered these humans she’d seen before, they kept coming to the clearing. She kept seeing them dig their way down into the ground and cover themselves up with the displaced dirt. It was a gift, she realized now, repaying what they had grabbed from her before. What excellent fuel these vessels in the ground could be.

If you take from my body, you owe a body favor, the creature repeated in her mind. She knew she did not have the mouth to say it in human words, but she hoped thinking it loud enough would suffice. A favor for a favor. An understanding that had existed long before the creature’s memory.

Methodically, she burrowed a limb into the food of one of the bodies, letting her own rhythms fall in time with his slow heartbeat. This was the boy human, she recalled. It was comforting to know he had come to pay his dues. Or maybe he had just been willed by forces beyond both their reckonings. These things had a way of eventually working themselves out. 

Small seedlings started to push through the dirt, appearing on the surface of the crossing-over place. She threaded her fingers through tendons as blood started to pump upwards through her fibers. It was a wonderful thing, she mused, how all the creatures of the earth lived in such symbiosis.