by Blair Aaron
CHAPTER 2
The next morning, while she attended daily church services, the congregation was abuzz about the mysterious man who saved Lili. The preacher tried his best to focus on his daily lecture, but the crowd was never as responsive as it usually was.
“Today I'd like to remind my beautiful congregation as Waldensians, we have made a sacrifice of poverty in the name of Christ. We are simple town, full of simple people, and if we wish to retain our nobility as Christians, we must continue this path of humble poverty. To be rich in Christ, but poor in funds, is to be the richest man in all of Creation. Amen,” he said, bowing his head at his wooden lectern. The church house, hot dust swirling through the sun rays, aggravated a sneeze Elsa spent several minutes withholding. She sneezed over the back of a young woman's bonnet. Several of the people ahead of her turned back to give her a stern look, sending embarrassed red flushes through Elsa's cheeks. She looked down to avoid their gaze.
“And we witnessed a miracle last night, outside these very doors. Should any of you doubt the power of our Lord, please look down at the front pew for proof, as our dear Lili sits with us once more, her lovely son Ennis by her side. It has been a long time since one of our own have ventured past the borders of our tiny village, into those Forbidden Forests, and longer still, that two of them have returned to speak and see as they did before they left us.” Lili huddled with her son on the front row, covered in a black shawl, frightened and weary of how the other church members would treat her. They were cordial to her, of course, and kind, as the townspeople were to everyone. But there was a titanic undertow of fear coursing the veins of this little village. They feared what Lili had seen, or worse, what knowledge she had brought back with her from her venture into the deep solitude of the forest. So fragile and innocent this town was, with utterly no defense against danger, with not a single violent member.
“Innocence,” the preacher continued, “has been preserved in this village yet another day.”
“And what about the man, sir?” a young girl spoke out from the altar. “What are we to do with him?” she asked.
The preacher looked out over his audience, at the girl who asked the question. He paused in silence, thinking, though the girl believed herself on the verge of castigation for interrupting a leader.
“I'm s-sorry,” she said, before he could respond. “Please forgive me for speaking out of turn, it won't happen again.” She looked away hiding her face.
“My child, this is a place of worship. You belong here as well as anyone else. As for the man, I know you all are thinking of him. I know some of you fear what he might bring to this community, possibly danger.” He stopped, taking a breath. “After some thought, the governor and I have decided to allow him to stay,” he said, grabbing the edges of the podium. The entire congregation erupted into confusion and boisterous chatter. Several lone voices peaked out from the vocal rumble and gossip.
“And what should we do with our children? Who's to keep them safe?” one asked.
“Yeah, we have wives and families we cannot protect from someone, should he want to harm us.”
The preacher made an effort to quiet down his people. “We do not believe this man wishes to harm us. He's very ill and has almost no energy. Leaving one of God's creations out to die, when we can help him, is not our way. All of you know this.”
“He will bring others, more dangerous!”
“We have no reason to think he intends to harm us. After all he brought us our sweet Lili and Ennis home. What motive would someone have to harm us, if they would do that?” The congregation quieted down. “We are following of Jesus, who preached love and forgiveness. This man will not bring harm to this village, I can assure you. We are people of peace and kindness. This was most surely the reason he has returned our Lili and Ennis,” the preacher continued.
“Where have you stored him?” another asked.
“We have not stored him anywhere. He resides, resting in the sable cabin on the outskirts of town. Our dear Father O'Grady, along with the resident healer, watches over him. When there is news that changes the course of this story, I will make an official announcement to all of you. Now, if you please, will you follow along with me on Exodus 3:14…” The preacher continued his sermon, ignoring crowd's unrelenting restlessness, as if nothing had interrupted him to begin with.
CHAPTER 3
“Darling,” Elsa said, holding her friend by the shoulders, her face too close for comfort, “please kiss me.” Elsa then kissed Priscilla on the cheek, as she turned away in revulsion. Two other girls, Sarah and Chloe, squealed with delight at Elsa's jocularity. The four girls stood in a circle in Priscilla's bedroom, several candles softly burning in the corner by the door. The room was tight, somewhat crowded, but this was where the girls held their semi-weekly vigils on gossip among the other young people of the town.
“I can't believe you did that to me, Elsie. God will smite me for kissing a girl,” Priscilla said, rubbing her cheek with the palm of her hand.
“Oh you'll be all right,” Elsa said, her smile stretching across her face, in the way a big sister might after she's put a younger sibling in an embarrassing choke hold. Priscilla fell back on the bed, between twin sisters Chloe and Sarah. The twins were red-headed, with powder blue eyes, and their smiles belied a mysterious secret only they knew, bonding them together, a two-person tribe against the outside world.
“Elsie,” one of them said, looking up at her from the ridges of their crafty brows, “we have something to show you.” The sisters were known for pulling pranks and concocting mischief in their tween years, but the community caught wind of their shenanigans and put Elsa in charge of making sure the girls didn't stray too far from God's way. Elsa, still laughing at Priscilla's reaction to her joke, looked over at the twin girls, immediately recognizing their familiar glare when they were up to no good. Elsa caught her breath, folded her billowing dress down, and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Ok,” Elsa said, “let us see what thing you have stolen from Father O'Grady's shed again.”
“Oh no,” Sarah said, fighting back a snicker, “this is not from the shed,” while the other sister dug through a cloth bag, tossing aside the thousand things in her way.
“It's so dark in here, Elsie. I'm afraid I lost it,” Sarah said, the twin digging in the bag.
“You can't serious Sarah,” her sister said. “This is the best thing we have ever gotten for our collection.”
Elsa watched them toss the conversational ball back and forth, her anxiety growing as she anticipated just what “thing” the girls had stolen. While she waited, she tried to make a point to them about the consequences of breaking their moral code not to steal anymore. “You were so young when you developed the habit,” Elsa said, as she waited. “We--that is Father O'Grady and I, along with the rest of the community--thought you might grow out of it. Girls, it's wrong to steal, you know this. You could hurt someone.”
“Here it is!” Sarah said, ignoring Elsa's warnings. She pulled out a rag folded over some mysterious object, and presented the ball of cloth to Elsa, both the girls' expressions resembling that of a cat who had caught a rat and wanted to show their prize to their master. Elsa took a deep breath, and took the present from Sarah's outstretched hand, trying to guess what the cloth hid beneath its layers. She slowly opened the folds of the cloth to reveal crushed red ivy, folded in an irregular, ugly pattern.
“Girls,” Elsa said, trying to catch her breath. “Where did you get this?”
“What is it?” Priscilla said, trying to peek. “I want to see.”
Sarah smiled without hesitation. “We got it from the man in the woods.”
“Ohmmmmm,” Priscilla said. “You should not have done that. Oh you're in trouble now.”
“Do you mean the man who apparently saved Lili?” Elsa asked Sarah, her eyes dilating with panic.
“Yes ma'am!”
“Oh dear God,” Elsa said, dropping the ivy down onto the floor. Pris
cilla, though the same age and stature as Elsa, possessed a mind far younger in years than her body. Priscilla approached the wad of cloth laying there on the floor, and it seemed to all of them, the ivy nestled in the rag waited for each of them to hold it, as a baby who's been separated from its mother might. All four girls stood there in silence, before Elsa told them what they were to do.
“Sarah and Chloe, you made a grave mistake. How many times has Father O'Grady made it clear we are not to go near the edge of the forest?”
Sarah could see trouble was on her horizon, again. “Yes, but you don't understand. We didn't get the ivy from the woods. We got it from the man who came out of the woods,” she said.
Elsa thought for a second about the man whom she watched last night, lying in the grass, unconscious, as Father O'Grady sent for medical help to bring him to shelter. The image which had been burned into her mind from the moment she laid eyes on him, a fact Elsa had unconsciously ignored, did indeed feature a beautiful, yet poisonous red ivy encircling the contours of his comatose frame. Her mind raced, attempting to separate the different potential reasons she panicked so strongly upon realizing she was so close to the red ivy. She wondered if Sarah's gift made her nervous because it came so recently from the magical woods that surrounded their village and therefore might still exude intoxicating influences. Another reason, however, might be that the plant and its evocative color reminded Elsa of a still stronger emotion regarding the stranger who ventured into their tiny community, an electric feeling she had put in the back of her mind the instant she became aware of its birth, for fear of what the feeling she had developed for the man might mean for her future. She wiped the sweat from the palms of her hand.
“Listen to me for just a second,” Elsa said, looking at all three of them. “We are not to speak of this to anyone in the village until I figure out what to do. Do you understand what I'm saying, Chloe and Sarah?”
“Of course. But why? Father O'Grady would not have allowed the man to stay in our town if he was a danger. Did you not hear his sermon today?”
“I did. But this is different. You have crossed a line both he and the rest of your guardians have warned you about. This time there will be consequences that you cannot ignore. I am thinking about your safety, do you see?” Both the girls nodded in agreement. “I do not enjoy keeping secrets from my people,” Elsa continued, “but you have given no choice.”
“We understand,” Sarah said, looking worried.
CHAPTER 4
Elsa undressed from services for the day, and as she took off her top, she noticed a red smear on the white cotton area of her brazier. Her fingers were smeared with red, and she wondered for a brief moment whether the ivy had thorns on it. But she wasn't bleeding. She went over to the water basin on the table, splashing water on her fingers, leaving a faint pink across the skin. Elsa poured a dollop of water on the area on her cotton dress which was smeared with red. But the water only diluted the color. Panicking, Elsa scrubbed the area harder and harder, making only a small dint in restoring the white on her dress. She began to breathe heavily, feeling as if the evil forest was on its way right now, this night, ready to close her in its grasp forever. The sounds around her tiny cabin home, normally a faint and reassuring gesture from the natural world, in that moment posed a sinister overtone to her life. Elsa felt more isolated with every passing moment, in the faint yellow light that cast a tint across her face, creating playful shadows on the wall, where the white light from her gas lamp and the moonlight intermingled, casting a magical tint over everyday angles and familiar objects in her house. The blue-tinted darkness of the night, spilling through the window, blurred the boundary in Elsa's mind between her real life and the imaginary place in her head, a place she had been warned was dangerous to ever-shackling freedom, but the sight of the red ivy tonight, along with the memory of the strange man from the forest recalled by it, weakened Elsa's resolve. There was something in that man she longed to understand and know, in a more comprehensive way than she had ever known her schoolmates or life mates.
She tried to calm herself, as she crawled into her clean bed sheets, alone in her room, with only the candle at her nightstand and the quiet of the town as it fell asleep with her. She lay in bed, her thoughts circling around that mysterious man with blond hair and beautiful blue eyes. That night, she had a dream about Lili, standing at the edge of the forest, with her back to the town. In Elsa's dream, she could not speak, and try though she might to get Lili's attention, warning her not to enter the forest, Elsa could not make a sound. Elsa waved her hands up in the air, screaming at the top of her lungs, but to no avail, as her dream world kept her silent. Before she took her first steps into the Forbidden Forest, Lili took one look back at the crowd of people gathered near the church, her eyes blood shot and bleary from the incessant longing for her son, her gaze piercing through Elsa's perspective. Elsa felt like Lili was staring straight through her, and as Lili turned back and made her way into the forest, Elsa's heart sank with every step Lili took. Then Elsa bolted out of bed, her heart racing, her stomach drenched in sweat, her head pounding.
Lili, she thought, may have returned from the brink of the abyss with her son in tow, but there was something missing in her eyes upon her return. Lili seemed blank and empty since making her way back to the towns from the Forbidden Forest. Elsa wondered what exactly Lili had seen on her journey, but the thought sent shivers down her spine, as she knew how blasphemous, how heretical, it was to think about such things. Still, she worried for Lili's mental state and resolved to see her the next day to inquire further about the man she brought back with her.
CHAPTER 5
Since her disappearance into the Forest, the local community tried their best to clean up Lili’s home once she returned with her son. Elsa walked from the town square, on her way to Lili’s dilapidated cabin, the bushes in disarray, the weeds growing out and around the pathway leading toward the door. Elsa stood on the porch, listening for sounds of life from inside the house. She heard little Ennis laughing and giggling, as if he had all the friends a child his age would ever want. Elsa smiled, knowing little Ennis had not been affected in any permanent way in his sojourn into the forest.
Lili took some time to get to the door, and upon answering, Elsa saw her appearance had worsened since she returned from the forest. Lili stood there in the doorway, saying nothing, almost as if she half-expected Elsa to throw a pie in her face.
“Lili,” Elsa said, smiling in the most polite way she could. “How are you?”
“Getting some rest,” she said, trying her best to put on a good face for company, though she clearly was not prepared to host that morning. “How are you, my dear Elsa?”
“Oh I was just thinking about you last night,” Elsa said, handing Lili some soup she cooked as an excuse to come over. Lili took the brown bag and smiled the best she could. Remembering her dream last night, Elsa's emotions near bowled her over, and she couldn't resist hugging Lili, the soup bowl crushed between their two torsos. “Lili, I missed you so. We are all so glad you're back.” Elsa could feel the tension in Lili's body release ever so much in light of that comment. She wondered why Lili would think the community did not want her back. “Can I come inside?”
“Of course you can, my friend,” Lili said, her mood a little lighter and more effervescent. Elsa followed her into the house, her view trailing behind Lili, as they journeyed through the extended hallway in her home, and Elsa thought for the first time, even though she had visited Lili many times in earlier, how odd Lili's home was designed. In light of recent events, the house's contained structure, with its subdivided rooms, locked closets, and absence of open area where sunlight can works its joyful magic on even the most depressed, seemed cruel and almost claustrophobic. Elsa's chest tightened a little, as she sat on the wooden bench at the center of the den.
“Where is little Ennis?” Elsa asked. “I could hear him on the doorstep, and it sounded like he was playing with a few friends. I am
glad the other children don't treat him differently, because of what happened,” she said.
Lili creased her brow, somewhat confused. “Ennis is by himself in his room. No other children have stopped by to play with him.”
“Oh,” Elsa said. “There must have been an echo from his room, then.” Lili agreed. They sat there in silence for a prolonged moment, the awkwardness growing between them, as it seemed both women wanted to ask each other something that had been lurking in the back of their minds, but both were too afraid to start first. For Elsa, she worried about Lili and her mental wellbeing, but also wanted to know what Lili knew about the provocative man Elsa saw unconscious on the ground the other night, near the forest's border. “Lili,” she said, taking a deep breath for the big reveal, “I had a bad dream last night.”
Lili, who had been looking absently down at the floor up until this point, suddenly looked up, as if something she had anticipated and feared would happen was just confirmed by Elsa. “You did?” she asked. “What about?”
“Well, that's the thing. That's why I'm here. It's hard to explain,” Elsa said, picking the skin from the tip of her thumb, nervous.
Lili seemed to get increasingly nervous as Elsa waited to reveal why she had come to check on her. “Do your best, my friend.”
“What do you remember before you went in the Forest?” Elsa asked, trying to broach the subject bit-by-bit.
“I remember everything fine,” she said. “Although…I try to forget. When I think about that day when Ennis left me, I can hardly breathe.” She tried to smile through her pain and fear. This particular topic of conversation seemed somewhat unrelated to what was on Lili's mind, because she relaxed back into her chair, for a moment giving herself the leeway to think about lighter things than the dark cloud hanging over her head. Elsa, being largely intuitive and paying especially close attention to her friend, picked up on this. “Turnips were on my mind that morning. It was so sunny, bright, and chipper. Ennis and I decided to take ourselves down to the market to make that special platter we make usually every Sunday. When I saw how deep purple the turnips were, I was so excited, and for a split second, I started daydreaming about Ennis' father. Since the time he left us, I had not felt even a second of relief, but that day was different. That day, for a split second, I felt free. Then I turned around, looking for Ennis, and that's when I saw his little body running full speed into the woods across the way.” Her voice broke, the panic of that moment setting in. Lili took a deep breath.