by Billy Coffey
And then another smile, wider than all the others stacked end to end. Zach felt a fear creeping across the small floor of the cave right toward him. Inching up his ankles and into his knees, up through his legs and into his chest, where it mixed with the rottenness in his lungs and made him shiver. Something had happened to Allie in the night, something either wonderful or terrible (Zach couldn’t tell which and thought deep down at the center of things, people reacted to both in the same way), and that something had changed her in a way that made the old Allie disappear. Whether this Allie was better or worse than the previous model, he couldn’t say. All Zach knew was that her chuckles sounded more like crying than laughing, and he’d begun to believe that the woods had broken them both, only in different ways.
“Can you walk?” she asked. “Because we really should go, Zach. Like I said, cold front’s set in. We need to get moving before the way gets too cold.”
He thought he could. Zach wiggled the toes inside his boots to make sure and flexed his knees. Everything south of the border had gone solid during the night, but none of the hinges were frozen to the point where a little walking around wouldn’t grease them up again. His head worried him more, and his swollen eye. Allie didn’t know what to look for in the woods, and sometimes what had to be seen came and went in an instant. Sam might be good for that—dogs had better sight than even a woodsman, not to mention better noses. Zach would have to keep an eye on Allie’s dog from now on. He would try to make Sam his eyes.
But that wasn’t really the question—not could Zach walk, but did he want to walk. On that query, he had no answer. Sure, there was neither water nor food (aside from the few scrubby pines atop the hill), but at least the cave offered shelter from the worst of the cold and wind. Allie sat there grinning, waiting for Zach’s answer, and the only thing he could think to say was no. He couldn’t go. And the more he thought of all the reasons why, the more Zach realized only one of them was near the truth. He’d given up. He could do no more.
“It’s east, Allie,” he said. “That’s where we gotta head. I can’t tell where east is without the sun. I won’t know the way to go. We’re lost.”
“We ain’t lost, Zach Barnett. How many times I gotta say that?” Still that smile, shaken by the cold and the weariness, but not by his admission of helplessness. “I know the way, Zach. It’s straight on. All the way to the end.”
3
“Well, then, which way’s straight on?”
Allie felt the pinch of her lips widening. Her nose wrinkled. She couldn’t stop those smiles, even if she knew Zach found them uncomfortable. Truth be told, Allie had to get used to them as well. It had been so long.
“I’ll show you. Come on.”
She rose and waddled to the front of the cave, keeping her jacket snug over her hips and the blotch on her jeans hidden. Her feet had stopped their burning, though they were still swollen and sore. Sam followed close. Once he even tried to nip at Allie’s heels. She chuckled—and how strange that sound was, and how wonderful!—and jerked her feet away, believing Sam was playing more than he was hungry enough to eat just about anything. Zach shuffled behind, forcing his body to move. It was slow going for him, though not so much that Allie worried. Now there was no worry in her at all.
The day lay frigid and stark. Allie stretched her back and neck as she stood. Sam scurried out and found the nearest tree. He cocked his leg and remained there a long while, hopping a bit to keep his balance. What came out of his bladder was only a dribble that looked more green than yellow. They would have to find water soon. Allie’s mood could not be dampened, but she nonetheless felt a pang of hurt for her dog. Not love, but as close as she would allow.
Zach inched his way from the hole and tried to stand. Allie took his arm. He brushed her hand away with his left and then took it with his right, as though it were him minding her. Allie grinned again. That smile reminded her how her daddy used to smile all the time, but then everything ended and that smile had died behind a face as blank and unmoving as a stone unless Miss Howard was around. She thought of how Marshall had fallen into drink and how he would sneak around behind the closed bedroom door and the cracked door of the shed out back, like he was ashamed.
Allie always thought it right that her father would feel that way. Now she thought different. It was her smile and how good it felt—so good that Allie found herself seeking cause to have another and another, however small that cause may be—and how maybe her daddy’s bottles had been the same. It was an elegant theory for an eleven-year-old, yet still not to the mark. Marshall Granderson hated his drink, yet he had found it the only thing that could numb him to the world. That’s what he wanted most—to draw that curtain down, to not feel anymore.
In that respect, he and Allie were more the same than either of them would care to admit. And so it was a small victory in the grander scheme of things that Marshall had found Allie’s scarf in Bobby’s truck the night before. Because as he sat with Grace and Kate on the sofa by the glow of the sheriff’s office Christmas tree, he didn’t want to feel numb. Not anymore. Now Marshall only wanted his little girl back. He calmed the tremors in his hand by taking hold of Grace’s. She let her fingers lace with his and thought about how many times Mary had done the same.
Allie and Zach walked hand in hand to the edge of the far rocks. Stretched out before them was the steep drop that had almost been Allie’s landing place and the fog over wild country beyond—what Zach could only guess was a maze of ashen hills and rifts hidden by millions of gray trees.
“It’s that way,” she said.
Zach looked, then looked over his shoulder. The rocks and fog hid what he knew remained there—the wide woods that now lay broken and torn, the doe’s grave. The maze of tangle and briar they called darkwood, for lack of a better name. But was that way east? Zach couldn’t remember, nor did he have the sun to tell him. He turned back to Allie. Her eyes were straight on and filled with a glow he could only call purpose.
He said, “I don’t know if that’s east, Allie.”
“It don’t matter.”
“It matters.” Whether it was the throbbing in his head or the heaving in his chest or just the end result of giving up, he also told her, “East is town. Any other way we go, all we get is more lost.”
And now her smile cracked. It was only a small dip of her mouth, not enough that she suspected Zach saw. And even if he had, Allie thought he would just give it over to the cold seeping into her again. She kept her eyes forward over that unending span of wild land. She saw no tree move but at the wind’s hand. She felt nothing of Who chased them, only the pang of hurt that came from knowing Zach had not been leading them to her momma for the past day, but back to town.
“We’re not going home without my momma, Zach.” Her voice calm and even, wanting to speak truth but not rile. “You made a promise. A man’s only as good as how he backs what he says.”
For his part, Zach measured his words the same. He had to be careful here, what with Allie being so fragile. One wrong word and she might light out on her own. Might even step over the edge of the rocks, thinking she didn’t have to use her frozen feet at all anymore; she could just fly all that way from the hill. Much of Zach’s mind had fogged over, but he understood two things: there would come a time when he and Allie would fight over where they were going, and that time was not now. But when that time came, he would not let Allie go it alone. Zach would drag her back to Mattingly if she gave him cause. A man may only be as good as how he backed his word, but he was also only as good as how safe he kept those he loved.
He followed Allie’s eyes, trying to see past the clouds to what lay ahead.
“We need water and food, Allie, and we need to know where we are. River’s best for that. Not a brook like the one we found, but the river. River leads straight on into town. We’ll have water and probably food, too, and we’ll have a way home. We find that water, we’re saved.”
“We’ll find it out there.” Allie didn�
��t think that a lie; she knew they’d find something somewhere beyond that mist. What she had in mind wasn’t the river, though. It was red trees. That was where she’d find her momma. It was also the place where Zach might die.
“Okay, we’ll go,” Zach said. “But you let me go first, and no question. That thing’s still out there.”
Allie nodded. “You lead, Zach.”
She turned and smiled one last time. That glow warmed him despite worries of how it had gotten there and what poison lay beneath it. Yet there was no poison, only truth, and the glow Zach saw came not from Allie’s face but from a place deep inside her—one that would spark just a while longer before flickering to the point of death.
“We’ll go down where we come,” he said. “It’s too steep here.”
“Let me get my pack. I’ll put your fire maker in there.”
Allie went quick, giving no thought to how all that fast moving hurt her feet. She gathered the bow drill and cinched the zippers tight. There would be no need for the pads until later. There was no time to change her soiled one now. She’d have to hope pulling her jacket down would be good enough. When she returned, Zach and Sam were waiting at the edge of the hill. In Zach’s hand was his knife and a handful of more pine bark. He bent, offering some to the dog, who sniffed and nibbled.
“There’s something I gotta get before we go,” Zach said. “It’s on the way.”
“Okay.”
She munched and spit the chewy pulp, letting Zach lead them. The woods had taught Allie much in the last days and had much to teach her still, but what wisdom she carried most was how much of a man is his honor, and how easily bruised that honor could become. Sam wedged himself between them, keeping a careful eye on the trees ahead. The three of them managed the slope well enough, though Zach paused once. To make sure nothing lurked, he told Allie. To catch his own breath, he admitted to himself. He found the spot where he’d fallen the day before, marked by a large rock jutting from the ground, stained with his blood. His staff rested nearby. That was all.
“It ain’t here,” he said. The words turned in him like a key that unlocked his dream from the night before. A part of Zach knew it wouldn’t be there even before leaving the rocks—that if he ever saw it again, it would be atop the beast’s head. “My hat’s gone.”
Allie (who’d had no idea why Zach would want to revisit such an awful spot until he’d spoken) tried thinking of something positive to say. She nudged him with her shoulder in their familiar I-love-you way and said, “It’s okay. Your daddy’ll get you another when we get home. Might even be one waitin’ under the tree.”
Zach kept his eyes low, afraid that if he looked up he might cry. He shook his head. “That’s the one I want. It was important, Allie. You don’t understand.”
“I know it was important,” she said. “You were handsome and rugged and all in it, but that hat was just a thing.” She thought of her daddy and his drink again. “You think they have a power, but they really don’t. The power comes from something else.”
He mumbled something Allie couldn’t hear. The words were Like your compass?
“Come on,” he said. “Day’s wasting. Farther we get from here, more likely we won’t be followed. We’ll have to go quiet.”
“As a mouse,” Allie said. “You hear that, Sam? You be chary, now.”
Sam looked too tired to walk, much less bark. And yet he soldiered on as always, willing to follow his master even into places he knew were black, because if a good dog understands anything at all, it is love. They moved on around the hill, skirting the wood where the beast had been the day before. The sky around them looked like ash, the clouds so thick and overcast that the helicopters would be grounded the entire day.
4
Jake returned from the cell with an empty beer bottle. He told Marshall, Grace, and Kate that Bobby had been in his shop all day when Allie and Zach went missing—had in fact spoken to Andy Sommerville, owner of the town’s BP station, who’d brought his old Dodge by for an oil change that afternoon. Jake said he was on his way to Andy’s now. He asked Marshall to go with him, fearing what would happen should Marshall be left alone with Bobby. Grace and Kate went as well. For an hour that morning, Big Jim Wallis served as both mayor and sheriff of the town of Mattingly. He kept the state police away when they arrived to form the day’s search, and he told Bobby to mind his manners. Bobby promised he would. He sat alone in the cell and finished off the three bottles of beer Jake had left him. A man’s only as good as how he backs what he says, after all.
In many ways that was the darkest day for the town. For Allie, it was the brightest. She moved through the woods with a heart as lightened as anything she’d felt since before The Storm. And why not? She’d been privy to a magic bigger than any compass she could strap on her wrist. What that magic had given Allie was a strength she’d forgotten she possessed, and the knowledge that she had not been starving for food the last few days, but for faith the last five hundred. Zach was quiet only until they’d cleared the hill. After, even he felt the difference in the forest that day. The air was still cold and the trees still close, but there was a freshness as well—as though even in the deep winter, spring whispered its promise. The beast had moved on. They spoke of many things in the next two miles. Of home, mostly—how good home had been for Zach, and how good it would now be for Allie—and of Christmas—presents and warm beds and time away from school.
“Miss Howard, she’ll be glad to see us again too,” Zach said. “She’s kind, Allie, even if you don’t care for her. And she likes you for you, not for your daddy. Shoot, whole town’ll probably throw us a parade.”
Even the mention of Miss Grace Howard wasn’t enough to fade Allie’s smile. Besides, it was true—she was kind. In the end, that was what bothered Allie the most, even more than her teacher’s pining for Marshall. But Allie considered for the first time that Miss Grace was probably just lonely and cold and wanted someone to keep her warm. She thought in the end most people were like that, even some who had a body to love. Everyone was lost somehow, turned around in their own darkwood, looking for something that would help them go on. Everyone just wanted to find their way home.
“What do you want, Zach?” she asked. “Most of all.”
He measured his steps and looked ahead. Sam wandered out front (another reason for Zach to think they were alone again), though not so far that the mist swallowed him. Zach measured his footfalls with the thump of his staff, trying to ignore the wheeze in his chest and the thumping in his head.
“To go home,” he said. “To see my momma and daddy again. I’m tired of adventuring. I guess it’s been fun except for the knock on my head and the way my insides feel like they’re spilling out, but I’m cold and hungry and dirty, and I really don’t want to do this anymore. I want to see you safe, Allie. That’s what I want most. What do you want? Besides your momma, I mean.”
“For things to be like they were.” She looked up at him. Her smile became a fragile thing. “Do you think that’s wanting too much?”
“I don’t think most people want too much. All they want’s just a little more than they have.”
Allie thought that true, and it was the ring of those words mixed with the faith in her heart that carried her on through the great wood. The laughter from her mouth became infectious; soon enough, even Sam regained a hint of the spring in his step. And now Zach was laughing too. About how everyone might be so happy to have them home that they might get extra presents under the tree, and how maybe Miss Howard wouldn’t give them any homework at all the rest of the year, and how there would finally be someone to sit at the empty place at Allie’s kitchen table. They didn’t speak of anyone looking for them that day. Zach never craned his neck to peer above the canopy of the big oaks and maples to spot a helicopter, nor did Allie think of her father in tears, searching through the town and wondering why she wouldn’t come home. Both of them seemed unbothered by the dawning notion that no one was going to find them an
d they would have to find themselves. The river, then, Zach thought, just as Allie thought, My momma will know the way. Each of them knowing that was true, even if neither knew the cold that had stalked them like a thief for three days had finally snuck into their minds, robbing them of their wits.
Such was how they traveled that morning, tracing a winding line on into the woods, a line that looped and doubled back. They traveled north and south before turning westward, toward the mountains. And yet they were both buoyed by a faith that kept them believing even when they shouldn’t have believed at all. Isn’t that what all faith truly is, the will to push on regardless? And is not every faith judged real or false not by the heart that harbors it but by the world that seeks to break it? Is it not in the end no different from a man’s honor or a boy’s hat or a little girl’s compass, a thing so valuable and precious yet so fragile, so easily lost if laid aside out of fear or worry?
The long stretch of life behind and ahead says yes to each of those questions. Yet for Allie and Zach, the road behind lay too short for them to know otherwise. They were only children, after all. Morning eased into midday when they crested a small ridge to find the fog lifting and the wide woods ending. Before them lay a sea of darkwood wider and longer than Zach believed anything could grow. Sam stilled and would not move, his decision already made by what he smelled somewhere deep in the tangle:
Something waiting. Something ready.
5
No sound came from within (Not even a snapping branch, Zach thought), but the silence wasn’t enough to convince Allie they were alone. The woods had snatched her hearing and replaced it with that near constant buzzing, had robbed her of her feet and mind, but it had also allowed Allie to reclaim something she’d long been without.
She could feel again, and what she felt from inside the twisted snarl of trees and bushes ahead was Someone waiting.
And yet Allie’s first thought wasn’t that they were in danger, but that this was what she deserved for daring to hope again. All those good feelings she carried, the memory of the stars and the light and all the calm and comfort of believing they were close, so very close, all fell away at the sight of that tangle of trees and shrubs. What came in its place was a sour reminder that all the treasure one found in life could be taken away in an instant, and so it was better not to find any at all. You could never lose what you never had.