Shadow Forest- The Complete Series

by Eliza Grace

  “You knew you wanted to help people like your Grandma.”

  “I knew that I wanted to heal people and not just their bodies.”

  “And that’s what I am to you. I’m a patient who needs healing.”

  “Your body needs healing, Tilda. Your soul needs love. When I tell you that you’re special, that I care about you, it’s not your body that I’m after. It’s your mind, your spirit, the way you joke and show so much inner strength even when you’re crumbling on the outside.”

  I look to the forest again. He is there, hovering at the borders. He can hear us talking, I know that. I do not understand why he is not intervening.

  “I really, really like you, Hoyt. As a normal, walking, unbroken girl would like a boy.”

  Hoyt stands and he reaches down toward me. His hands cup my waist and he lifts me from the ground. Soon, we are eye-to-eye and in his expression, I see something I do not expect, even though he has told me once before that I am special to him, that he cares about me, even though he has poured his life story out like an offering to my soul.

  I see love, not like. It sparkles within his eyes like a living, breathing entity all its own.

  The toes of my boots barely brush the ground and Hoyt keeps me fully supported so that I can “stand” and we continue looking at each other for another moment that stretches into forever.

  Hoyt kisses me and all the candles in the world flare to life; they heat up so hot that they explode, sending shards of glass and knowing out into the universe. And, like the shard that hit my chest in the kitchen, these shards are also painful in their poignancy.

  But also when he kisses me, I can feel the witchfinder’s great and terrible anger screaming in my mind. You are not his! He can’t help you! My stomach cramps, intense and violent, and I want to scream, but I refuse to. I refuse to break the spell that has been cast from our lips meeting.

  Into the Woods

  When the kiss ends, Hoyt doesn’t lower me to the ground.

  Instead, he grips me more firmly around the waist—his hands are so large that they can nearly touch one another wrapped around my middle and, for once, I do not feel that my stomach and hips are so wide—and he boosts me up into the air in a classic dance lift. My back arches automatically and my head tilts backwards so that my face is fully lit by sunlight. I have not danced in so long, my body longs for it.

  And then Hoyt is slowly spinning, around and around, while I stare upwards into a bright orb that is blinding. I am so lost in the moment, that I do not realize we are falling until we are nearly to the ground. It is a controlled, deliberate thing.

  Hoyt pads my body with his own so that I do not get the brunt of impact. And we are still laughing… until I realize that my body is atop Hoyt’s. I feel the heat, burning and bright, creep into my cheeks. He seems to realize our position at the same moment; his face is a reflection of my own—crimson and flushed. The dimples are barely visible, tiny little shadows on his cheeks.

  “Here, um, let me help you sit back up.” Hoyt begins to raise his body upright, yet he is still holding me tightly, so we lift together, our bodies pressing even more firmly against one another.

  “I can manage.” I squeak, embarrassed as my fingers brush his hip.

  A jumble of arms and legs, we manage to move away from each other. I crook a hand under each knee to pull my legs in a more comfortable position and then I sit fully upright, trying not to look at the Hoyt or think about the fact that we were just cowgirl-style and fully clothed…unfortunately.

  My heart is beating fast—thump, thump, thumping in my chest like the bunny in Bambi.

  “I’m sorry if… if that went too far.”

  “What?” I do look at him now, even though I know my cheeks are still ruddy with nervous energy.

  “That wasn’t really appropriate. I’m… you’re… it goes against the center’s policy.” Hoyt shrugs his shoulders, but his mouth is on the verge of smiling.

  “Good thing we aren’t at the center.” I lean over and push his leg playfully. “Or else you’d be in trouble.”

  “Does the age difference bother you?” Hoyt is picking a second flower; he must have dropped the first bent and ruined one while he was spinning me.

  “Shouldn’t I be asking you that question?”

  “My pops is eleven years older than my mom, so seven doesn’t seem like that big of a deal.”

  “Hoyt?” I let my fingers run through the grass next to my legs. It is starting to dry, soon it will yellow and then go grayish-brown as winter approaches.

  “Yeah?” The second flower in his hand is broken already; he did not take his time bending and fiddling. I know he is as nervous as I am.

  “Would you kiss me again?”

  He says nothing and I sit perfectly still, trying not to blink, afraid he will say no. But then he is shifting his body so that he is kneeling to my side, and his face is coming nearer to my own and I know his answer is yes. The stomach pains twist and turn and I can barely breathe through them, but I do not need to breathe. I need this kiss, our mouths connected. Raising my hands, I thread my fingers behind his neck and I keep him tethered to me. His body, for a moment hesitant and then confident, moves closer to me.

  I’ve never been so far with any boy before. Aaron and I only kissed a few times, held hands. I hadn’t been ready for more. But with Hoyt—there is something intoxicating about a boy wanting me, even though I am so much trouble, so abnormal. I can still feel things in that way; I still want things in that way.

  The air is electric around us. It floats about like a concert of energy.

  But, as our upper bodies start to lower a fraction towards the ground and I feel like I will be ripped apart by the pain in my belly, Hoyt pulls away. The pang in my heart when he is no longer connected to me is almost worse than the cramping. So I gasp sharply—I am surprised that I was able to withstand so much while he was touching me and kissing me, but now I cannot be silent in this new agony. It’s ridiculous, but so very real.

  “Something hurting?”

  I hate the way his face is so full of concern now, the way his eyes have that clinically-detached glimmer that makes me the patient again. “I’m fine, really. Just a little pang in my side. I haven’t eaten much today.”

  “I don’t like that—it happened at rehab the other day too.”

  When you nearly kissed me; when you told me that I was special. “Well… I mean… you know.”

  He looked confused.

  “You know. What my aunt said at the center when my stomach was hurting. Don’t make me repeat it. Please.”

  A second passes and then his expression changes. “Ohhhhh. Right. Sorry. Sometimes I can be thicker than molasses in winter time.”

  “That doesn’t skeeve you out?”

  “Tilda, I’m in the medical field. It doesn’t bother me.”

  Of course it doesn’t bother him; it’s just another thing that’s harder for the paraplegic girl, just another thing that he ‘understands,’ because he’s not a stranger to patients like me. “I don’t like when you do that.” I mutter huffily, all romantic morsels leftover from our kissing beginning to crumble into microscopic bits that mean nothing…even though they really do and I’m just being a whiney child.

  “Do what?”

  “Go all nurse-y on me. I mean—” I shut up abruptly and cross my arms over my chest.

  “I’m a physical therapist,” he repeats. “I wouldn’t be a very good one if I shied away from the natural order of the human body.”

  “I know that. It’s just… when you do that, when you ask me what’s wrong and you get this look that’s just so clinical, I go back to feeling like the cripple, like a patient that you’re trying to save and not a girl that you’re trying to… to… to love!” I shout the last, looking up at the sky and sending my words to heaven.

  “That’s not what I mean to do, Tilda. It’s just training. If you were my girlfriend, don’t you think I’d still worry about you? Don’t yo
u think I’d still go all ‘nurse-y’ when I think something’s wrong with you?”

  “You make me feel so confused, Hoyt. You say that it doesn’t matter if I never walk, that you’d still want me, but then everything else makes me feel like you want me to walk, like it’s important to you.”

  “All of that’s true.” Hoyt reaches up and cups my chin with his hand and then he gently lowers my face until I am looking at him. “I want you to heal, because I think you deserve to and because I think you’ll be happier. You, not me. If you never walk, it’s not going to change how I feel about you. It’s not your body. I’ll keep telling you that as long as you need.”

  “I want to walk for you, Hoyt. If we’re going to be together—and I’m not banking on forever and marriage or any of that stuff, we’ve only known each other a few months—I want to walk for you and for me. I want to dance with you and do all the stuff normal couples do.”

  “We can do that stuff. It’ll just take a few adjustments.”

  “Like emptying my collection bag several times a day? Like bringing a change of clothes if it overflows? Like holding my hands while I sit in a wheelchair and you dance around me?” Yanking my face away from his touch, I cross my arms even tighter so that my fingers rest against my back.

  “I carried you out here, spun you around like you’re feather-weight, and you think that I can’t hold you up to dance? Honestly, I’m a bit insulted, Tilda.” There’s a smile in his voice. I don’t want him to smile and disarm me. I want to stay angry. They told me this could happen… that I could have mood swings, depression, and all sorts of reactions to learning how to live without my lower body.

  “Would you like me to demonstrate?” Hoyt bounces to his feet and he begins to waltz alone, expertly moving through the tall grass and lavender blossoms. “See, momma always said I was lighter on my feet than a raccoon thieving outta the pig slop.”

  My insides do a 180 and I grin so wide my face hurts. “Honestly, Hoyt. Some of the things you say! God—” I pause to snort. “You sound so normal most the time and then out of nowhere you morph into a country bumpkin, like you need to be wearing overalls and sucking on a piece of wheat while tending to the family chickens.”

  “Ain’t nothing, but a chicken wang.” Hoyt clucks and then falls back down beside me, breathing hard from the dancing, his ash blond hair falling fetchingly across his forehead. I reach up and I brush the strands away from his eyes. When I go to lower my hand, he grabs it, pulls it to his mouth and kisses it. My heart jumps inside my chest, fluttering like a hummingbird. I try to find the perfect words to say to him, but I can’t. I’m saved though… if it can be called saved, because I know where the saving is coming from and why.

  A droplet of moisture hits the bridge of my nose and I look up. Hoyt jolts slightly beside me, holding out his hand with the palm up. The sky overhead has turned ominous—full of charcoal and smoke with heavy, pregnant clouds that threaten to pour. Another storm. Is it him? Is it M.H.? It is. He has seen us together and he has saved me pretty words, but I do not want to be saved. I want him to leave me alone, let me be with this man that is so kind and loving.

  I realize that the pain in my stomach is gone now, perhaps because he has focused on the weather. He said his powers were limited…

  It is getting darker by the minute. I do not know what time it is, but surely it is not sundown already. “Let’s get you inside. The bottom’s really gonna fall out any second.”

  Staring at the sky, I know he is right; our moment in the sun has ended—not just because the weather is changing quickly, but because of who is causing it to change. I hate it. I want to delay the end of the memory we’ve been making. “Better get me in quick, if I get too wet, then you’re going to see how frizzy and curly my hair gets, which is about as attractive as a clown wig.” The joke does not lighten the darkness in my soul, mirror to the sky and its roiling clouds.

  “I bet your hair looks great curly.” Hoyt smiles. God, I love his smile.

  “Okay, Mr. Optimistic, maybe someday when it’s longer you can see it, but not now.”

  A honk not too far off sounds and my attention is drawn from Hoyt’s face to the driveway. Jen’s car is approaching, her windshield wipers moving manically, even though the rain has barely started. She hates driving during storms and I can understand her fear. Hoyt stands and without asking, he picks me up again.

  He walks slowly and carefully, I can barely feel the movement. When the largest oak by the cluster of outdoor chairs blocks our view of Jen’s driving car, Hoyt pauses and he kisses me again. I know this will be our last… at least for now. And I know he will be leaving soon. But it doesn’t feel like a goodbye. It feels like a beginning.

  I hate waving goodbye to him, Jen’s hand on my shoulder, the rain coming down in unrelenting sheets of gray.

  The Green Mile

  I am curled up in my bed, knees to my chest—having forcibly placed them there since they are dead pieces of driftwood that I drag with me always now, like debris in the middle of a vast ocean, with no land in sight to wash things ashore. They feel less like a burden tonight, though.

  Because every time I close my eyes, I see Hoyt.

  But every time I open them, I see M.H. I know it is my imagination. I feel no pain in my stomach; my mother’s protective blanket is not present.

  Yet outside, the storm is raging. It has not lessened or let up for even a moment since Jen arrived back home. So, the witchfinder may not be here with me, but he is nearby—perhaps back in the forest behind the broken protection line within his physical body—and he is angry and plotting. Perhaps that is where my mother is also—keeping his rage at bay. I hope she is successful, that she is my fairy godmother and I will be the little cinder girl who makes it to the ball. My mind wants to wander away from Hoyt and toward darker things.

  But I am still so buoyant, so over-the-moon happy thinking about kisses and dancing in the field that the darker things are banished with minimal effort.

  Part of me wants to get up and put on my dress, sleep in it all night, and open my eyes to find that I have snored away the morning and afternoon and it is nearly time for my princess dream—my dream of a boy who will look past my legs, a dress that will sparkle, a memory to hold dear always. The continued beginning of something breathtaking.

  Before leaving, Hoyt promised me that we’d dance tomorrow, even if there was no dance floor. And I cannot wait to fly again, to be in his arms and spinning about a room with so much joy between us that everyone cannot help but recognize what an entwined pair we are.

  Ridiculous, I know. I’m not even eighteen and I can see my entire future before me. One with Hoyt.

  When I finally close my eyes and drift off, the storm is still booming outside, rattling the house and making the night light in the hallway fluctuate. I never sleep when the weather is bad. Never. My mother’s journal and the protection stone are beside me on the comforter. In the last of my hazy, pre-sleep thoughts, I wonder if they are giving me peace to drift to slumber land.

  I sleep until noon.

  It is still so dark outside. The other storms conjured by M.H. were gone by morning. This one is still raging well past the shadows of night. It is merciless and fierce outside the bubbled glass of my window. Rolling over gingerly, I feel the overnight bag. It is empty. I grimace, knowing that Jen has come already and emptied it without waking me. She does that sometimes, when I am especially sound asleep.

  I’m such an inconvenience to her. If she’d complain once in a while, I’d feel so much better. But her crying the other day—saying that she was worried she was failing my mother in her caretaking of me—that’s the closest she’s come to showing me how hard it’s all been. Her life changed as irrevocably as mine when my parents and Toby died.

  She’s also repositioned the wheelchair so that it’s perfectly placed for me to slide out of bed and into it. Last night, after getting into bed, I’d pushed it away. I didn’t want it sitting right beside me while I wa
s enjoying such incandescent thoughts of Hoyt (mixed in with the moodier musings about my mother and M.H.).

  Moving from bed to wheelchair and then rolling over to the bay window, I take a closer look at the weather. The bubbles in the glass look eerily like eyes and the rain like tears and everything is so dark outside that even if I had wanted to catch a glimpse of the forest and its shadows, I would not have been able to. Shaking off the image of the crying window, I make my way to the kitchen.

  Jen is there, munching on toast with jelly and reading emails on her phone. She hates having a cell of her own, but it’s a necessity—both for work and because I live with her now. When she hears me enter, she looks up and crumbs snow down to settle against the now-dark screen of her mobile. “Morning, sleepyhead.”

  “Morning.” I blush and then continue. “Thanks for emptying out the bag again.”

  She waves me off and mumbles ‘no problem’, and then she looks back down at her phone. Frowning, she swipes away the bread crumbs and taps the screen to bring the email she was reading back to life. “Everything okay?”

  “Of course not. Taylor’s having a fit because the janitorial staff came in last night and moved everything around to buff the floors.” She groans and leans back against the red throw blanket hung over her chair. “He wants me to come in now, but I’m too tired. Got literally no sleep last night.”

  “Funny, I actually did sleep.”

  “I know; you were drooling all over the place when I came in around five. Boggles my mind how you can’t sleep when it’s sprinkling, but we basically have a hurricane outside and you knock out like a baby after a bottle.”

  I stick my tongue out at her and wheel myself over to the bread box to start making myself some toast. I decide I want honey instead of Jen’s homemade blackberry jam. “So, why couldn’t you sleep? Just nervous about the opening?”