The Forest of Hands and Teeth

by Carrie Ryan

  We are alone in the little one-room cottage that will house Harry and me, until we have children and need more space. The thought of children with Harry falls like a stone inside my stomach.

  In the last few days I had already begun to imagine what Travis's and my children would look like, how their tiny hands would curl around my finger. I had already dreamed an entire life between Travis and me. And now that was the only life that we would ever lead together—the one in my dreams.

  Sister Tabitha and I stand facing each other, our backs rigid until she smiles just a little, releasing a breath as if on a laugh.

  She shakes her head. “There are things we must accept in this world, Mary. Things that may not make sense to us now, but that we must adhere to. That we must keep sacred if we hope to persevere.”

  She walks over to the narrow bed and sets a basket down on the white quilt. As she continues to speak she starts to unpack its contents. “Take for example the Unconsecrated. We do not understand them. We only know they hunger. But we know to leave them be. No one in this village even bothers to question their existence anymore, although I am sure our ancestors wasted a lot of time doing so.”

  She sets down a delicate-looking white braided rope and then pulls the Scripture from the basket. She winds the rope around the book as she continues with her speech.

  “It is the same with marriage. Our ancestors knew that in order to survive we had to persevere. They knew to keep strong bloodlines. That creating each new generation was the most important task beyond keeping the village safe and fed.”

  She brings the bound Scripture to the small table on my side of the room and sets it down. Then she turns to the fireplace and stirs the embers while adding small strips of dry wood until the logs begin to crackle.

  The flames eat at the bark, curling it into red-rimmed tendrils but the heat cannot penetrate me, cannot warm me. “There is something you need to know about your mother, Mary,” she says, kneeling by the hearth. “You should know that she lost children.”

  I fight to keep my face passive, swallowing my gasp of shock. I can only think of my brother and me when we were young, sitting by my mother and father in front of the fire. I hear the lullaby that my mother used to sing to us at night.

  I am at war with myself. At once desperately needing to know more and detesting myself for giving in to Sister Tabitha. For giving her what she wants, which is my obedience to her will. To her superiority.

  “When” is all that I say. I swallow, clear my throat. “When did my mother …” I can't finish, fearful of bridging this gap between my mother's life and my own.

  “Before you,” she tells me. “And after you.” I can't see her eyes but I wonder if there is sympathy there. If she is sad for the babies that my mother lost and if she feels futile that she couldn't stop it even though she is the healer among us.

  For a moment it is as though Sister Tabitha and I are connected through my mother's grief.

  She rises and then turns to me. “Many, many times. So much that it seemed you were never supposed to have been born.”

  Any sympathy I may have had for Sister Tabitha shatters; the sound of my mother's moans the day she turned comes screaming into my ears. It washes over me until I feel nauseated and unable to stay in this room, to be near this woman.

  But still I stand my ground, unwilling to let her see the effect she's had on me. She walks back over to the table and lays her hands on the Scripture. Then she comes to stand before me.

  Her eyes meet mine as she reaches down and grasps my right hand. She then unwinds the rope from the Scripture and wraps it around my wrist as she goes. Each time she completes a circle she knots the rope in a complicated pattern, forcing me to repeat Vows Of Fidelity. Three times we repeat this, three circles of rope, three knots, three vows.

  With each twist, each tether, each word, I feel myself falling farther from Travis and I must bite my lip to keep from weeping.

  “You are a Bound woman now, Mary. And you have a duty to your husband, to God and this village. It is time to own up to that duty, Mary. It is time you stopped playing by the fences. There is nothing out there. Your mother found that out the hard way and you would think that you would have learned your lesson from her.”

  I try to yank my arm back but she keeps a tight hold on my wrist.

  “I have done everything that I know how to do for you, Mary. I have taught you of our Lord. But you were not happy. I procured you a husband. But you are not happy. What will it take, Mary? Will it take the destruction of this village before you will find happiness? Before you will be content with the life you have been given?”

  Her eyes are a summer thunderstorm. Sweat pricks my skin and trickles down my back, seeping through the thin material of my gown.

  I can feel her breath on my cheek and I try to lean away from her but the wall keeps me from moving.

  “Pray to God, Mary.” She continues, “Pray that He will bring you mercy and that He will give you a child, a way to love outside yourself.” She shakes her head as she speaks, her voice now a whisper. “It is what your mother did, Mary. How do you think she ended up with you?”

  I want to slap her, I want to rail against her body with all the fury and pain and hate inside me, eating away at me. But I can't. Because suddenly, it's not Sister Tabitha I despise, but myself. Never has it occurred to me that my mother had any difficulty conceiving me. Never did I question the ease with which I assumed I had entered her life.

  I am struck with the knowledge of my own selfishness. That this woman in front of me knows more about my mother than I ever did or ever will. All of the stories my mother passed down to me flood into my head at once. Never did I wonder why my mother told me these stories. Never did I wonder what these tales meant to her.

  Never did I wonder what my mother believed. What sort of life my mother lived at my age. So acutely do I miss her at this moment that I want to crawl into myself with shame and longing.

  Sister Tabitha is about to say more when we both hear a knock at the door. My heart skids. Travis, I think. He has finally come for me. My face is so close to Sister Tabitha's that I can see the sweat as it escapes her skin. For a moment I wonder if she can hear what I'm thinking, if she can feel the way my body tingles in anticipation. She smiles again, barely, and then leans back. Harry enters the room and I want to weep when I see him there, his cheeks pink from the evening air, his hair damp and starting to curl over his ears.

  I look past him out the door into the dusk of evening, hoping to catch a glimpse of Travis, hoping he's out there waiting just at the edge. My eyes search every shadow but there's nothing—the world is empty. And then with a click the door falls shut.

  In his arms Harry carries a squirming black dog that doesn't look older than a year, its body just growing into its paws. The dog tumbles to the floor and runs in a few circles and then comes and wiggles over my feet, its tail sweeping items off a low table nearby. “A wedding present for you, Mary,” he says, dipping his face a bit as if embarrassed.

  I want to smile. I want to thank him. But in my mind I'm still looking past the door, waiting for Travis.

  Harry holds out his left arm. Sister Tabitha takes it and, leaving a length of slack between us, wraps the other end of the rope around his wrist three times, completing the same series of complicated knots and vows that she had performed with me.

  Keeping her hand around the middle of the rope that joins us, Sister Tabitha recites an old prayer from the Scripture. When she's done she says, “You are now Bound,” and then she walks to the bed and pulls a long blade from the basket she had brought with her earlier. She sets it on the table, next to the Scripture. “This is your last chance to renounce each other. Your last chance to sever the ties between you. Tomorrow you take your final Vows of Eternal Constancy.” And then she slips from the cottage, leaving us alone.

  Harry turns toward me and I keep my eyes on the awkward-looking dog, who has curled up by the fire and is gnawing on a thi
n log he pulled from a pile stacked next to the hearth. Harry reaches out and plucks something from my cheek and holds it out for me to see, but I can't tell what it is.

  “Eyelash,” he says. “Make a wish, blow on it for luck.”

  The earnestness of his expression reminds me of when we were children. Of how we used to run through the fields just after a harvest when the air was full of sun and the smell of life. In that moment I remember one afternoon when all the children of the village were playing, chasing each other through the maze that our parents had cut through the corn.

  Getting lost and tangled together in the late-afternoon sun as if there were nothing else in the world that mattered besides twisting along a path that led to nowhere but the middle of a field. When finding the end of the path was not quite as important as the journey to getting there.

  That one afternoon, when I couldn't have been older than eight, I grabbed Harry's hand and I pulled him into the maze with me. How we laughed as we tripped our way down the many paths, going in circles, discovering dead ends. And how it began to rain, not enough to drive us out of the maze, but enough that we could quench our thirst by sticking out our tongues.

  How we found a cove off the path that was easy to miss, just a narrow little entrance that opened up into a small round clearing filled with nothing but soft clover, as if this spot had never been planted or never sprouted.

  A spot where the rain didn't fall and the sun still shone.

  I remember how Harry and I grabbed each other's hands and spun in circles until we were dizzy with laughter and twirling and how we fell to the ground, our fingertips just touching.

  Just then the most amazing rainbow burst through the rain and covered our little cove of clover. Everything around us was color and light and I remember how Harry turned his head toward me and how I turned toward him and how he said, “For luck, Mary. For us. Forever.”

  The passion in his eyes at that age, still a boy, is the same that I have seen in Travis. The same I see in Harry now. I realize that I've been so angry at Harry for my own fate, as if he has been my enemy and not the friend I have always known. I can see now that his life is as constricted as mine. That we are both tumbling against the same rules and that perhaps it's unfair for me to blame him for where we find ourselves now.

  And I crumble. “I want to leave here,” I tell him. My voice is nothing but a whisper.

  He is silent and so I continue. Now that I've said this, I can't help but say more, can't help but speak the words that have been gathering in my head like dark clouds before the storm, building pressure and growing, and rolling over themselves in chaos.

  “There's a world out there. Beyond the fence—there's another side. An end. I know it. There was a girl. Her name was Gabrielle and she came from the other side. She was an Outsider and she was here and now she's Unconsecrated and I know it was the Sisters who sacrificed her. She's the Fast One, the one in the strange red vest and she's the proof and they killed her because they didn't want us to know. They have never wanted us to know.”

  My tirade leaves me panting, and I'm terrified at having let this idea out into the world, of having spoken my true desires. These are not proper thoughts—no one I know has ever expressed a desire to leave our village. To trade utopia for what may lie beyond.

  “Will that make you happy, Mary?” he asks. His voice is soft, without censure or judgment.

  I finally look him in the eyes. He reaches out and slips his hand into mine, the white rope dangling between us.

  For a flash of a moment I hate Harry for not being Travis. And hate Travis more for never coming for me. For leaving me to this night. But most of all I hate myself for loving Harry's brother with everything that I have so that there is nothing left over for him.

  And for being too much of a coward to cut him free. To use the knife to sever our bonds.

  He leans forward and I realize that he smells like Travis. I have to close my eyes as he brushes his lips over my forehead. The heat from the fire almost suffocates me. His mouth moves to my ear. “Will leaving here make you happy, Mary?”

  He's so tender, so eager to make me happy in ways that no one else has. Tears start to crowd in my eyes and my body begins to respond to this man as if it were his brother whispering into my ear. As if my body can't tell the difference between the two, between their whispers and the feel of their breath on my flesh.

  I squeeze my eyes and nod my head. Terrified that he'll cast me out for such a desire—that he'll refuse me and I will be left to the Sisters.

  “We will find a way for you to be happy, Mary. I promise you I will find a way for us.”

  I nod again, unable to open my mouth and speak for fear of letting out the sobs I'm trying to trap inside.

  “I just want you to be happy, my Mary,” he echoes, reaching out and tucking a strand of hair behind my ear and then leaning in to kiss the path his fingers just took. I open my eyes and look at my new dog, at the way he twitches by the fire as he sleeps his young dog dreams, likely chasing something he will never catch. The only difference between him and me being that tomorrow he will forget that he ever wanted something beyond his grasp and I will always remember.

  Harry continues to trail kisses down my neck until I am forced to close my eyes, a gasp slipping through my lips like pleasure.

  Eyes still closed, I raise a hand and trace the curve of his shoulder blades. I wonder if Travis's back holds these same curves. If my hand would fit against his skin the way it fits over Harry's. So many times have I relived Travis whispering in my ear, imagined Travis kissing along my jaw. Tonight I try to draw on those same memories, afraid that I've forgotten them, feeling traitorous at my own confusion.

  But the visions refuse to come and I can recall nothing of Travis. It is only Harry in the firelight, his skin warm and smelling of fresh-turned soil. And I cannot help but hear Sister Tabitha's words repeat themselves around the room. About this being the life I have been given.

  Not the life I have chosen.

  When the siren wails the next morning I am in bed. The dog Harry brought me last night as a wedding gift, whom I have named Argos, begins to bark madly, trying to decide whether to attack the noise or hide in the corner.

  I feel a sharp tug on my wrist and suddenly I'm half sprawled on the floor.

  “Mary, get up,” Harry shouts. He's pulled me from the bed and I stare at the rope stretched taut between us. With his free hand Harry is reaching for something on the table, and yet all I can do is stare at that rope. My mind is a haze of images from the night before: Harry kissing me, Sister Tabitha admonishing me to be a good wife and bring children to our village, Argos and his puppy dreams.

  “Mary, you have to help me here!” He is yanking on the rope and I feel it bite into my wrist. I can see how his hands are shaking. He steps to my side, grabs my shoulders and pulls me to the table. He picks up the ceremonial blade left by Sister Tabitha and slides it under the Binding rope.

  And then the pressure on my wrist releases. Free, Harry starts to ransack our cottage, gathering clothes and food and stuffing them into a bag.

  I pick up the other end of the rope, let it slip through my fingers. The fibers are still warm where the knots around Harry's wrist used to be.

  Time feels as if it has slowed, stretching taut like a thread of wool. The siren blocks out every other noise so that I can see people running past the window by the door, throwing glances over their shoulders, fog swirling around their feet so that it appears as if they are gliding, but it's all almost silent, their moves lost in the one long solid note of the alarm.

  The panic I have been bred to feel doesn't come. Instead, I walk to the window, not bothering to cover my body as I watch my friends and neighbors scramble for the platforms. Even now a part of my brain, the part that is buried in my subconscious, urges me to action. Urges me to get dressed and to run. Run with the rest of them before it's too late. Before the platforms are full and all the ladders have been pulled away.
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  Behind me Harry is shouting orders but his words mingle with the siren, all a jumble in my head. A small part of me wonders if this siren will delay the ceremony, if there will still be time for Travis to come for me. I wonder if there really is a breach or if it's something like my mother, someone getting too close to the fence. Someone taking a risk, losing their mind, getting Infected.

  Argos scratches at the floor frantically trying to dig his way out. His nails scrabble and slide uselessly on the wood and I can sense his rising panic. He lifts his head as if to howl, his teeth bared, his eyes pleading for me to do something.

  Finally, I am just reaching for my skirt when I see it. A flash of bright red out of the corner of my eye as it streaks past the window. I know that color. I know how unnatural it is. I know that speed.

  The Unconsecrated are here, among us. This is no drill.

  Gabrielle is here.

  I fumble with the buttons on my skirt and I go to the door as I pull a shirt over my head. I pause with my fingers just touching the latch. What if it's too late? My heart pounds as indecision streams through my blood. What if the platforms are already full?

  I look back at Argos who is trying to determine whether to follow me, whether he trusts me to protect him. Harry is oblivious as he races around the cottage flinging open cupboards, searching for weapons.

  Outside the window I see two children running through the fog, holding hands. They're brother and sister. I know them—have known them since the boy, Jacob, was born six years ago. Jacob trips and falls, grabbing at his now-bloody knee. The sister pauses, noticing that her hand is empty where it just recently held the hand of her older brother. She looks back over her shoulder at Jacob on the ground, his arm stretched out to her for help. She shakes her head, her fingers in her mouth and her eyes wide, her blond curls bouncing with the gesture.