Blackbirch Woods

by Meredith Anne DeVoe

  She’ll be the bride of shadows

  And I will breathe her breath

  Night-time will envelop her

  Shadows be her light

  Earth will draw her to its bed

  Evening veil her sight

  ‘Unless faith is more than fate

  ‘Love stronger than my envy

  If hope can outlast hell’s long hours

  If grace can fill the empty

  Only then you’ll join the living

  And no more belong to me

  Only then you’ll see the sun again

  And you will be free

  I WANT THAT CHANCE

  Violet’s face was pale, and she was quiet for a long time. The moon rose higher, topping the trees to shine directly on the river. The two sat in each other’s company. At some point, their hands had joined again. The river murmured, clouds drew in from the west and overtook the moon. The breeze grew cool. She shivered lightly in her fleece jacket, and he put an arm around her shoulder. She tucked her head under his neck.

  “Aren’t you very cold in the winter, Willis?” she said, to break the silence, and because it had occurred to her to wonder.

  He grinned joylessly. “I don’t see the winter, at least not after the ground freezes. When the life of the ground goes to sleep, so do I. When the sap begins to rise in the trees, I begin to dream of daylight gleaming through melting ice, of sun shining on my face. But when I wake… it is always night.” Of the desperate cold of November sleet and March rains, Willis did not speak.

  She thought about that for a while. “What about when it rains? Where do you stay? Or when it’s really cold, but the ground is still soft?”

  “This is where I am. I have no other place. There are some places to shelter in the woods, but I have no other garments, nor food, nor respite from the dark and cold, Violet. None but you. If you took me to the edge of the woods, I would falter and faint; my life is bound here. If you cut down all these trees, I would be trapped in this ground till the end of time. If you struck me dead where I stand, by next evening I would stand here again. If you gave me new clothes, tomorrow night they would be on the ground and I would stand here in the same. My hair won’t grow, nor beard, and if you cut it, tomorrow night it will be long again.

  “I once guided Africans running away from slavery to Canada, and in the morning they forgot me. There was a time when these woods continued north to south across this state, almost border-to-border. I called a Civil War deserter a coward to his face, and talked him into returning to his troop. A hunter took me for a white-tail deer and shot me in the back, and I died by the river bank, but the next night I awoke again. I died of snakebite once, too, and the same again—the next night, as if nothing had happened. I drowned in the brook when the water was high. I struck a man senseless who tried to abuse a young woman, and guided her out of the woods, at the turn of the last century. I sat at the campfires of hobos during the Great Depression, and of hippies evading the draft for the war in Vietnam. I know what they used to call me—the Wentham Ghost. But I remain Willis James Wood, and while the world goes on, for me it is 1817. And it will always be.”

  They were quiet again for a long time. The breeze freshened. Finally he shook her shoulders lightly and said, “It will soon rain. Let me take you back to your tent before you get wet.”

  She shook her head, rolling it against his chest. “I want to stay here with you.” He heard a sniffle or two and felt warm tears soaking into the front of his shirt, but her body was still and relaxed, curled against him. He told himself this was the only time, the last time, and freely breathed in the scent of her hair and felt the warmth her body shared with his, like gold, like the sunshine he was so long denied, as though it would go on forever. As though tomorrow night and every night after he would not be alone and cold in the dark. He sunk his face into the top of her head and wrapped his arms around her, and wished for time to stop forever.

  It was a long time before it began to sprinkle. Violet sensed more than saw that dawn was near. She had made up her mind. Finally she let him accompany her in the increasing rain to the tent, where they stood silently for a time, having no words for goodbye, close together, feeling each other’s warm breath on their faces, the cold rain soaking their clothes and running into their eyes. He held her hands between his, finally, and kissed her cold fingers. He whispered goodbye into her ear and turned away. She stood with her arms wrapped around herself for a few moments, praying silently and beginning to shiver. She crawled quietly into the tent, where she sat on her sleeping bag.

  He had left long before, but she sat and watched as dawn came. Her parents awoke and she debated how much to tell them. She remembered. They ate granola bars in the tent for breakfast and had devotions together. They took turns running out, laughing, to go to the bathroom in the woods. They played card games. The rain increased, setting in for the day. After a couple of hours the family agreed to pack it in. They stuffed the wet tent into its sack and ran for the car, soaked to the skin when they got there.

  The Cronins insisted that they come inside for coffee and to change their wet clothes for half-wet ones from their packs. They dried the damp sleeping bags in the clothes dryer, which was behind louvered doors in the kitchen, while they sat and ate sticky buns in the warmth of the breakfast nook while the rain poured down the clouded window panes. Outside the rain washed orange and ochre and yellow leaves from the trees and beat down the ragged remains of summer. And she remembered Willis.

  But the more preoccupied she became, the more impossible it seemed to be begin to talk about it, at least with the Cronins there. And once they got in the car, finally, and she was alone with her parents, she pondered how to even begin explaining about—what was his name? And while she pondered, riding in the backseat of the car, dry and warm, she had nodded off…

  2010

  He had said goodbye. But here he was.

  Katydids murmured anxiously in the silence between them. A gust of wind blew the white dress around her legs.

  “Willis…” she faltered. Then he stepped resolutely toward her. His expression was complicated; she could see happiness muted by anxiety.

  “Violet, I came to warn you, it’s a bad night to be out here. They are wild tonight. I do not know what will happen, but I had to come…” his voice trailed off as he came near her. “God knows, but it’s good to see you.” He made himself stop talking, with visible effort.

  Violet felt a confusion of emotion. She was surprised to find that the love and longing she felt toward him was even more than last year. As she examined her heart, she found that she had this to say—

  “I still want that chance, Willis.”

  She heard his breath catch for a moment, but then he took her hand briskly and led her back to her campsite. The wind was blowing up to a gale. She heard the gusts begin far off in the woods and roar through the trees until they passed; even the river was lapping fretfully on the boulders. Her white sundress flapped at her knees. He picked up her shoulder bag and began stuffing her things into it. The candles on the hearth guttered, but the moon was hard and brilliant and shadows of branches moved across his figure.

  “They are angry with me, Violet. I am not sure why, they used to just pass me by. Now it’s as if they resent me. Yet, they seem to want me. They tug at me, scratch me with branches.”

  Violet touched his arm. “I’m not afraid. There is no greater power or spiritual force in the universe than Christ in me, and in you, Will. Do you believe that?”

  “I believe, Violet, you know I do. But why then am I still here? I don’t know how to make that power real. How to make it work for me.” He finished with her bag and handed the strap to her. She took it from him and set the bag on the ground.

  The wind ripped through the glade. Somewhere nearby, a large tree branch broke loose and crashed to the forest floor. In response, he arched his body over hers to protect her, pushing her back into the shelter of the hearth, but the branch missed
the campsite entirely.

  Violet gripped his upper arms before he could pull away, and spoke. “You make the power of your love real when you act on it, just like what you just did. You have to make the power of your faith real by acting on it too.

  “Take a chance on God, Will, step out in faith. Trust him. He sent me to you for a reason. You love me and I love you, not by chance. Do you think God wants you trapped? Think on what he gave, what he did so we could be free and have life. He wants you to be free, to walk in the land of the living, and have life. Take what He is offering.”

  She was thinking, but did not say, You may not get another chance.

  His hand found her cheek, and his thumb traced her face from temple to lips. His breath and fingers smelled of sweet black birch.

  Go on, she urged him silently, her heart thumping. Her hand covered his.

  She hardly noticed how quiet the night had grown until she heard him whisper, “Violet… O God, what am I doing?… Violet, beloved, will you be my bride?”

  “Yes, I will,” she whispered back. She smiled at him.

  He put his other hand on her other cheek, leaned forward, and kissed her lips.

  BRIDE OF SHADOWS

  Willis drew his face back, smiling, his eyes bright. Then his face changed, his eyes closed, and he heaved a heavy sigh.

  “I have not talked with your father, Violet. I know, my ways are out of another time. But it’s my time.”

  Violet was almost woozy from her first kiss—her reaction to it had taken her by surprise—but he was right. She sighed deeply, putting her hands over her eyes. There had to be a way through this. She still tasted his lips on her own. She prayed silently. And she realized that the sound of the gale had retreated far off into the woods. She heard a sound of feet shuffling through the woods, and when she opened her eyes, she saw a flashlight peeking through the trees. Without turning his head, Willis said, “It is the minister. Reverend Peterson.”

  “Reverend Peterson?” Violet called. “It’s Violet Aubrey. And Willis Wood.”

  The minister trudged to the campsite. “Willis! Well, I might have expected… although, I suppose you understand why no one expects to see Willis.” He chuckled briefly. “Violet, I was visiting the Cronins and they asked me to come out and check on you. Wentham windstorms, and all that. Mr. Cronin’s back is out, see, so they asked me to come out. Everything seems to be okay

  now, as far as the wind goes.” He hesitated, and it was as if in the dark he was trying to sense what was going on.

  “Willis.”

  “Yes, Reverend.”

  “I’ve known you for a long time, Willis. At least as well as anyone can know you. We’ve had many a long talk about things. Did I miss something? Because I thought you told me last autumn that you had decided it would be better to leave the girl alone.” The old minister was a tall man and still had a presence about him. Even in the dark under the trees, Violet could sense his stern appraisal.

  “Yes, sir. And I only came to her tonight for the same reasons as your friends sent you out here, on account of the windstorm. I came to warn her, and help her to get out of here. But she won’t go. Sir… I have asked her to marry me, Reverend. I don’t want to live if it means being without her, sir, and I have no other hope.”

  “Hmmf.” The minister regarded him for a moment, and then turned his gaze toward Violet. His eye glittered slightly in a stray moonbeam. “And you, young lady, what do you know of this young man, and what you propose to get yourself involved with?”

  Violet composed herself to address the big man. “Reverend Peterson, I have known Willis since I was seven years old. He helped me when I was lost in the woods, then. He told me all about how he lives here, about the night people, all that. Of course, I didn’t remember anything about him anytime I left here.

  “Sometimes after that he would come and visit me when my family was here together. I tried doing things to remember him afterwards, writing about him in my journals, but for one reason or another, something always happened. In fact, Willis himself would make sure of that. He didn’t want me to remember, because he was afraid I would get more involved.

  “But I’m very involved. I love him. I have loved him from the beginning.” In the corner of her eye she saw Willis turn to look at her. “Last year he told me goodbye, that he wouldn’t see me anymore. From then until now, I have not met with him, but tonight he came, like he said, to warn me about the night people. Reverend… I choose this. I don’t want to never see him again; I want to try to get him out of here. He has told me plainly what the risk is, and what might happen, and what would be required—as far as he knows. And I am willing. I believe that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And that He who is in me is greater than all the forces of darkness, and that if I resist the devil, he has no power over me. And this is of the devil, whatever keeps him bound here.

  “Willis has just brought up the fact that he has not spoken with my Dad.” Violet paused, and took a deep breath. “I also believe that would be the right thing to do. But you know what his situation is, Reverend. How can he possibly get my Dad’s blessing? He asked me, and I said yes. Now what do we do?”

  Reverend Peterson’s face had changed while she spoke. His mouth had relaxed and even stretched slightly to an almost wry expression. His eyes were very serious. But there was compassion in them, and hope.

  “Not to mention the fact that you cannot legally wed a boy who has been legally dead for almost two hundred years, Violet.”

  She had once seen a movie heroine use this word in a situation somehow reminiscent, and it came to her lips now: “Nevertheless.”

  After a moment, Reverend Peterson shifted his exacting gaze to Willis. “Willis Wood, you and I have talked long and hard about consequences. You danced with the devil, and you paid long for it. Now, I care about you like my own son. You know I want to see you set free. I’ve fasted and prayed and fought warfare on your behalf to see this curse broken. I don’t have so many years left, and what will happen after I’m gone? Maybe Violet is the answer to our prayers after all.

  “I don’t have to tell you, son, that it will surely cost something on her part. And if she succeeds, what then? The world is not the same as the one you left, Willis. You have no idea. How will you live, how will you keep her? Your big farm has long since passed into other hands, be they your relatives or no. Have you thought about that?”

  “Long and often, Reverend. As you said, I have no idea. I…” He glanced at Violet, and back to the minister. “I can only trust to God’s grace. That is the only way and hope I have for anything. If I draw back, then I know for sure that I will stay here till judgment day. I know I’m asking a lot of Violet—everything, in fact.” He turned toward her again. “And I am afraid, although she says she is not.

  “But I believe it when she says that God sent her, and I believe in her. In two hundred years I’ve found nothing else I could believe in, but that as God sent Jesus Christ into the world to redeem us, he sent Violet to be… Christ with skin on. For me. Does that make sense, sir?”

  Reverend looked hard at him, but that same compassion and hope showed in his eyes. “Well, nothing about this, about you, and these night people and whatever else, fits neatly in any category I know of. So, Willis, I one night after we talked I went home and did some research.

  “As it turns out, this little backwater of which I’m so fond is rather dated in its civil laws. Marriage licenses are easily acquired and marriages officiated and filed without much fuss. However, that still leaves the problem of a legal identity for you. Violet can’t marry Willis James Wood, because as far as the law is concerned, he doesn’t exist.”

  The minister folded his long frame and sat down with a grunt on a rock. Willis and Violet sat on the hearth again and waited.

  “Back some years, a young couple moved here. Both their parents had been card-carrying, tree hugging hippies, and they were carrying on family tradition with a vengeance, VW Mi
crobus and the whole nine yards. They rented a farmhouse and a few acres and started raising goats, all that. Willis, maybe you remember them- the Grays?”

  “I met them a time or two. They would walk in the woods at night sometimes. I wondered what happened to them.”

  “They were nice kids; I married them in their sheep meadow with a bunch of their friends and family. They were even coming to church and got baptized. About a year later, they were driving their new baby home from the hospital on a cold winter’s day. The microbus hit black ice and slid into a tree, and all three were killed.

  “I was doubling as Town Clerk back then, and I couldn’t file the death certificate for the newborn right away because the birth certificate hadn’t processed through the proper channels yet. I picked up their mail until the post office started returning it to sender, and stuffed it all in a box, and what with one thing and another, I forgot all about it. No one ever came to get the stuff.

  “The long and short of it is, I searched and searched, and lo and behold, in a basement corner I found that box of mail. The birth certificate and social security card were still in there, in the envelopes. A little musty, but intact. I never did file that death certificate.

  “The baby’s name was Elijah Williams Gray. He would have been twenty five years old. You could take his papers and his name and have a legal identity for yourself. You could even go by ‘Will’, boy, and no one would ask any questions. And you could marry Violet legally under that name.”

  Violet was floored. This man obviously really did care about Willis to have gone to all of that thought and effort. She wanted to cry out—

  “However,” said Reverend Peterson, “We got a problem. First we have to get you out of these woods. I can’t help you with that, except with prayer. But if I understand you correctly, you have to be married first, is that it?”