The Forest of Hands and Teeth

by Carrie Ryan

  But as much as I have searched I still cannot find any signs of God etched upon the buildings. Instead, Unconsecrated shuffle from houses, seep from shops. The whole scene is too surreal to comprehend, and so I look away, training my gaze back on Harry and Jed and Cass and Jacob.

  When the sun is high enough to hit me full in the face I start to get thirsty and so I stand and turn to go inside. That's when I see it—the arrow protruding from the wood of my door. Wrapped tightly around the shaft and tied with a string is a small piece of paper.

  I pull it from the arrow with my jam-sticky fingers and unfurl it. I immediately recognize Harry's small swervy letters. Contact, Finally, the note reads, and I can't help but giggle. The giggles turn into full-blown guffaws when I see the other arrows piercing the wood around the house, just out of my reach. Each one with a piece of paper tied around the shaft. There must be at least ten arrows in the side of the house.

  And then I look over the railing of the porch and see that a few Unconsecrated are milling around in the dust with arrows sticking out of various body parts, each of these also with notes. I'm laughing so hard now that I have to rest my hands on my knees, my back heaving with the release of it all.

  I turn back to look for Harry and he's at the end of the platform, waving like he always is, a large grin on his face. Now I understand his earlier motions, trying to get me to turn around and look behind me. I start to giggle again.

  Even from here I can tell that he's proud of himself. Proud to have finally come up with a form of communication, no matter how many kinks the form contains.

  I wave back and clutch the message to my chest. I wonder what the note on the first arrow said, if he had written longer missives that became shorter with each drift of the arrow as it careened past its mark. I wonder how many of the Unconsecrated below carry plans for escape.

  It's my turn to write back and so I slip into the house and down the ladder and run down the stairs and into the kitchen, where I find Travis, who's in the pantry counting jars and making notes in a ledger.

  “We've made contact!” I say, waving the sheet of paper in front of his face.

  He frowns a little, perhaps lost because I'm so excited I can't explain myself very well. But then he smiles at my own grin and takes the note from my hand and reads it.

  “It's from Harry,” I say. “He tied it to an arrow and then shot it at our house. He had a few misses,” I tell him. “Actually quite a few misses. Turns out I was betrothed to the worst shot in the village!”

  I don't realize until after the word is out of my mouth: betrothed. It's as if the individual letters hang in the air like fat rising in water. Like a promise that still lingers. Our eyes meet and I think I see sorrow there. A realization that no matter what bubble surrounds us here, Harry and I have a history together. A bond.

  “Travis,” I say, not knowing what words I can utter next to reassure him. To make it better.

  “What will you write back?” he says, filling the emptiness. He hands me the note and returns to counting jars.

  “I don't know,” I tell him. And it's true. There is a part of me that wants to write him everything. That remembers our friendship as children and our Binding night and how we were close once before. That remembers how close we were to becoming husband and wife before the breach occurred.

  I'm surprised, suddenly, at how lonely I feel.

  And this is a terrifying thought to have in front of Travis. Travis, who makes my heart beat and my fingers tingle just to think about. Travis, whose breath I measure as we sleep, whose heart is the cadence to my life.

  I let the note drop to the floor and it drifts across the wood with a sigh. Travis turns as if to retrieve it and I stop him as he is halfway kneeling. I join him on the floor, eye to eye. I trace the contours of his face with my finger, trying to remember what it was like the first time I had such freedom with this boy.

  I know the instant my nearness affects him. I know it in the sound of his breathing, in the way the air catches in his throat, the way his mouth opens ever so slightly. I know it in the way his eyelashes flutter, how he sees me now through a haze of desire.

  He pulls my face toward him, his lips brushing mine, and then he places my head against his shoulder. His arms wrap tightly around me and I understand how he needs me. I curl against his body, let him twirl his fingers through my hair.

  And I close my eyes because a part of me still feels lonely and lost. A part of me doesn't know what future we can hope for in all of this, what happiness we can wring from these days. What future can any of us have if we are the last humans? The ones with the burden of carrying ourselves on, of re-creating the world?

  Responsibility crushes around me. Responsibility for Travis, for Argos, to the promises I have already made to Harry that still bind us somehow, even though we never completed the final ceremony. My chest begins to collapse with the weight of it all, the pure panic of the possibility of failure.

  I slip from Travis's arms and do not look back to see the questions I know must be in his eyes. He says nothing to stop me.

  Then I tear through the house for paper, my fingers shaking as I carry a small stack to one of the bedrooms upstairs.

  As I stare at the blank page, I am at once awash in words but unable to find the ones I want to use. The words that can convey the turmoil broiling through me. And so I start by writing everything I wish I had ever said to Harry. And then to Travis. And to Jed and Cass. To my mother, my father, my future. I write it all, filling sheets of fine paper with cramped and hurried words that I don't care if I smudge.

  When I'm done I take my stack of paper up to the attic and sit against the wall, a box of arrows by my feet. With trembling and ink-stained fingers I wrap each sheet around an arrow and tie it with string I found in a sewing basket.

  Then I step out onto the porch and take aim. Growing up, all the children in our village are taught how to use weaponry, including a crossbow. The weapon feels familiar in my grasp as I run my finger down the shaft and load an arrow. For a brief moment I wonder how the paper and string will affect the trajectory, if it will still fly true.

  I notch the arrow and then with a sharp thwang the bowstring snaps back into place, sending the arrow flying. I watch as it curves through the air before embedding itself in the skull of an Unconsecrated woman.

  She falls and does not rise. I pick up another arrow with another letter and let that one fly as well. Again and again I embed my story into the skulls of the Unconsecrated that surround us and still they keep coming. Their hunger driving them on, not caring that they walk over the truly dead forms of their fallen legion.

  By the end, when all my arrows but one are gone, I've dropped twenty Unconsecrated. And yet there's no rest. No dent. Nothing to mark my accomplishment.

  I take the last arrow with the last note tucked around it and I let it loose. It flies straight and buries itself in the wood at Harry's feet, where he stands at the edge of the platform watching my little hunt.

  He leans over and plucks the paper from the shaft, leaving the arrow where it lies. He unfurls the letter and reads it. I tell him we are well and ask him if they are doing okay. And then I ask him if they have pondered escape.

  I wait for his answer.

  “They're starting to break through,” Travis says to me when I come inside. He's sitting at the large empty table in the main room of the house, looking at the door. Argos sits next to him and Travis absently tickles his ears. We both hear the scraping of the Unconsecrated against the wood. It is unending.

  “I thought you said it would hold,” I say. I try not to sound accusatory but I cannot help but feel a certain sense of betrayal. As if Travis had promised to protect me and now he's giving up.

  “We both knew it wouldn't last,” he says and I wonder if he's not just talking about the door and our defenses.

  “How do you know they're breaking through?” I ask, my voice soft as I walk to the door and place my hand over the wooden beams th
at separate me from the outside world. They feel strong under my fingers and yet I can sense the strain on each individual splinter, the constant stress these timbers are under.

  “I can hear it. In the way the wood groans under their weight. When I'm down here alone that is all I hear.”

  My head drops to my chest under his accusing words.

  “I've been trying to figure out ways to escape,” I tell him. “But I haven't been able to come up with a plan that will work.”

  “Oh” is all he says.

  I trace my finger along a wide crack in the wood. “To get one of us across. That isn't the hard part. It's …” I hesitate for just a moment too long.

  “It's my leg,” he finishes.

  I nod. “And the dog,” I add.

  Travis almost laughs but it's more like a sigh as he pats Argos on the head. Argos leans against Travis's leg in response, his eyes closed with contentment. The loyal companion.

  I turn to face the two, my hands behind me as I lean against the door. “I won't leave you,” I tell him.

  “I know,” Travis says.

  “You don't sound as if you believe me,” I say.

  “I know,” he responds. “But I do.”

  “We will find a way out of this.”

  I am about to walk over and grasp his hands, needing him to believe me, when he says, “And then what? What will happen after that?”

  “And then we will find a way out of this village and we can go down that path and we can find the outside world,” I say to him in a rush of words. “It's like we always said—”

  “It's like you always said,” Travis cuts me off. He won't meet my eyes.

  I swallow, the emptiness beginning to fill me again. My heart flutters in my chest; my breath becomes shallow. I let myself fall back against the door.

  “Travis, I don't understand. This is what we've talked about since the day on the hill. Since you were at the Cathedral and I told you about the ocean and …” I gesture to his leg and he places a hand over where his wound would be.

  “Because I had hoped that it would make you happy,” he says. “Up on that hill, when we finally kissed, I wanted you more than anything else in the world. More than the village or my brother's friendship or my betrothed.” He cringes at the word as if it's bitter on his tongue.

  “I still want you more than anything else in the world,” he whispers. “I would still risk it all for you.”

  He places his elbows on the table and puts his head in his hands; his fingers dig in his hair. At his side Argos whines, upset at his new master's outburst, upset at the instant instability in the air.

  “Then why didn't you come for me?” I say, my voice barely carrying any sound. I clench my fists, the heat and anger and shame of him never coming for me starting to roil in my body.

  For a long while he does not speak. And then he asks, “Do you even know how I broke my leg?” I shake my head. He has never told me the story and I never asked, assuming he would tell me when the time was right.

  He doesn't raise his head from his hands as he continues. “It was because of the tower. That old watchtower on the hill in the village. I used to climb it and look past the fence and into the Forest and wonder what else was out there in the world. I used to wonder how our little village could be all that was left of the once-great universe. How could we be all that was left? How could we be the ones God would entrust with the future of the human race?”

  He looks up at me now. “We aren't Noah, we aren't Moses. We aren't prophets. Why us?

  “And so I began to wonder why the Sisters would teach us that we were all that was left. That the fence marked the end of the world. And I would climb that tower and I would plan my escape.”

  His eyes get a faraway look as if he's imagining what it's like to be back in the village, up in that tower. As if he is seeing the old views, feeling the wind caress the tips of his ears.

  “Did you know that when we were kids Cass used to tell me your stories? She used to laugh at you. Not in a mean way, but in the way that Cass used to laugh at everything before…” He gestures around us at our world now.

  I shake my head. “I thought Cass never liked my stories. Never remembered them.”

  “Oh yes, I would beg her to tell me if she had any new stories from you.”

  “Why didn't you ask me yourself?” I whisper.

  “Because you were Harry's,” he responds.

  “Not always.”

  “Yes, always,” he says. “Always in his eyes,” he adds in a softer tone.

  I begin to pace in front of the door, expanding my path until I'm striding along the room. “Why did you care about my stories?” I finally ask.

  “Because you knew it too. You knew about the world out there. Past the fences.”

  “So what?”

  “So I needed that belief. I needed that…” He shrugs. “I needed that faith.”

  “I still don't understand,” I tell him.

  He slaps his hands on the table, startling both Argos and me. “I climbed the tower that day to say good-bye to the Forest. To give up on those dreams and accept the life I had chosen. To forget about the world outside the fences. To forget about you.”

  I stop pacing. “What happened?”

  “It was icy. I was careless. I thought of you and your stories of the ocean and how you always believed it so strongly.” He lets a hand fall back onto Argos's head. He doesn't look up at me when he adds, “I slipped.”

  I fall into a chair with a thud. “I never knew.”

  He shakes his head, his gaze still on Argos. “At first, when I broke my leg, I was delirious with pain and I thought it was God's punishment for wanting more. For being unhappy with the choices I had made. For daring to imagine a life outside the Forest.”

  He looks up and meets my eyes. “I was ready to give it all up, then. To follow His path, whatever it was. But then you came into my room night after night and you told me about the ocean and pulled me through the pain and I didn't know what to believe anymore. I didn't know if I was being tempted or being shown the right path.”

  He wipes his hands over his face. “You must understand that Harry has always loved you. That he would do anything for you.”

  “I'm not sure that it's enough,” I tell him.

  The corner of his mouth twitches as if he is almost about to smile. “I'm not sure either of us will ever be enough for you, Mary,” he says.

  I know he's hoping that I will tell him he's wrong. I can see it in the way he holds his breath, waiting for me to correct him.

  Instead, I look back at the door and the splinters and the cracks and the way it heaves under the weight of the Unconsecrated that will never stop pushing, trying to get into our world. That will never stop until we are all dead as well.

  A shiver presses through my flesh and I pat my hand against my leg to call Argos to me for comfort. But he does not budge from Travis's side. Instead he lays his head on Travis's lap, his wide brown eyes staring up at me.

  All I can remember is the waiting. With every breath and heartbeat, the waiting for him to come for me. “I wish I knew, Travis,” I say. “I wish I understood.”

  “I know,” he says. Because he does know. He knows my desires better than I do.

  I wonder then about my mother. My mother, who grew up listening to stories about the ocean and then passed them on to me but never went to look for it herself. She believed in these stories. The passion with which she would pass them on, the tremor in her voice when she talked about the time before the Return. The way she would cradle that photograph of our ancestor in the waves.

  And I never asked her why she didn't leave. Why she didn't go in search of the ocean. Why she only passed these stories down with no instructions of what to do with the enormity of the memories other than pass them down ourselves.

  I wonder, now, if she didn't leave because of us. Because of Jed and me. But in my heart I know that's not the case. She didn't leave in search of the ocea
n because of my father. Because he was enough for her. Enough to keep her snug within the fences her entire life.

  Until he was the one on the outside. Only then did she leave the village, only then did she take that risk. For the man she loved she was willing to wander the Forest in constant hunger.

  But not for the ocean. Not for herself.

  “What do we do now?” I whisper, afraid of the answer. The house shudders under the pressure of the Unconsecrated outside. I pace back over to the door and lean against it as if my added weight will keep them at bay.

  “We find a way out,” he says. “We keep going.”

  I nod my head and we're both silent for a while. Looking at each other but not really seeing each other. Both of us lost in our own thoughts, our own world.

  “Do you think they know about us out there?” I finally ask. When I see the confusion on his face I continue. “Not out there where Harry and the others are. I mean out there. Beyond the fence. Down the path.” I throw my hand out toward the shuttered windows.

  Travis shrugs. “I guess I never thought about it that way. I spent so much time on that tower trying to figure out how to get out there that I never considered there would be people trying to get into our village.”

  I tap my fingers against the wood of the door, my hands still behind my back, as I ponder this. “Do you think Gabrielle was trying to find us? Do you think that she knew we were there? Or do you think she was just following the path like us, taking it wherever it would lead?”

  “I don't know,” he says. “She probably just escaped from this village when it was overrun, just as we escaped ours.”

  I tilt my head back until it rests on the door and I am looking at the ceiling. I think back to that night when I first found Gabrielle's footprints in the snow. “Before, I always imagined that she left her village by choice, that she had the fortitude I lacked. When I was in the Cathedral and it was silent at night I used to dream of following in her steps. Of slipping through the window and drifting down the path until I found her village.”