The first time Nara heard the forest counting, she was seven and hiding from rain inside a hollow cedar. One, whispered the moss. Two, answered the beetles. Three, sighed the roots beneath her muddy boots. She ran home terrified, but her grandfather only smiled and placed a finger to his lips.

“All old forests count,” he said. “They are keeping track of promises.”

Years passed. Nara became the village carpenter, shaping tables, cradles, doors, and coffins from fallen wood. She never cut a living tree. Whenever customers complained that her work took too long, she walked them to the forest edge and let them listen. Most heard wind. A few heard numbers. Those few waited gladly.

One autumn, soldiers arrived with axes bright as teeth. Their captain carried a royal order: the forest would be cleared for a road by winter. The village pleaded. The captain shrugged. Roads, he said, did not grow from prayers.

That night, Nara entered the cedar where she had hidden as a child. The counting surrounded her, deeper now, thousands of voices layered like rain. She pressed her palm against the inner bark.

“What promise are you counting?” she asked.

The cedar opened a seam of amber light. Inside, Nara saw every hand that had ever touched the forest kindly: children gathering berries, widows burying letters, lovers tying ribbons, her grandfather planting acorns after a fire. Last came Nara herself, refusing to wound the trees.

The forest was not counting promises made to it. It was counting promises it owed in return.

At dawn, the soldiers raised their axes. Before the first blade fell, every stump in the old clearings burst alive. Saplings twisted upward, weaving trunks into arches. Roots lifted stones and laid them side by side. Branches bent, braided, and hardened until a road appeared through the forest, smooth enough for carts, shaded enough for deer, and too beautiful for any king to claim he had built it.

The captain stared. “Who made this?”

Nara listened. The forest had stopped counting. For the first time in her life, it was laughing.

“The road grew from promises,” she said.

The soldiers left without swinging their axes. Travelers came, then merchants, then wandering musicians who played beneath green tunnels. The village prospered, but Nara set one rule: every person who used the living road had to leave a promise at its entrance. Some promised to plant seeds. Some promised to forgive debts. Some promised to return home before loneliness hardened them.

Children pinned their vows to bark with thorns, and by morning the thorns bloomed, each flower colored by the courage of the promise beneath it.

Nara grew old beside that road. On her final evening, she carved a small stool from a branch the cedar had dropped at her door. She carried it into the hollow trunk and sat listening as the moss began again.

One, whispered the forest.

Nara smiled, understanding. Somewhere, someone had made a promise worth keeping, and the world answered.
