“Are you ready for bed?” asked Dad.
“Yes.”
She stepped back out of the hug and removed the canteen belt. After setting it on the shelf, she walked over to her Haven. Ever since the light began to weaken, she’d longed to have the bars between her and Tree Walkers and couldn’t wait to feel safe enough to truly rest. Wisp fiddled with the plastic clamps until she figured out how to remove the knife from her leg. It probably wouldn’t be smart to sleep with that on. She set it on the bookshelf and crawled into the Haven.
Dad eased the door closed and inserted the key. “Goodnight, sweetie.”
At the click of the lock, she let out a deep breath of relief. The Tree Walkers couldn’t get her now, no matter what they did. She put her face against the bars. “Night, Dad.”
He leaned down so she could kiss him on the cheek, then turned her head for him to return the smooch. Dad headed off to the outhouse. Smiling, Wisp curled up on the plush red fabric, snuggled her head into her pillow, and closed her eyes.
Safe in her Haven, she had not a care in the world.
The Mother Shrine
-5-
An hour of foraging the next morning yielded a lovely breakfast of grubs, some of which had been bigger than Dad’s fingers. Wisp impaled them on thin sharpened sticks she’d made long ago for grub roasting, and toasted them over the fire.
She stretched and roamed around the cabin for a little while after, debating another walk into the woods to find some mushrooms. It would be better if Dad could find a boar or something, even if she had to wait home while he did so. However, between them being gone all day yesterday plus the morning grub hunt, Dad appeared quite intent on putting time on the bullet machine.
Rather than disturb him, Wisp decided to visit Mother.
The cabin’s main room had three doors. One led outside, the metal door went to Dad’s room, and the door opposite Dad’s room led to Mother’s shrine. It had been a few days since she spoke with her, so it sounded like a perfect idea.
She padded over and knocked twice on the thin door made of planks nailed together. “Hello, Mother. May I enter?”
No sound of protest came from within, so she pushed the door open and got a breath of air so heavy with the scent of pinesap the taste settled on her tongue. An undertone of another fragrance, musty and unpleasant, simmered at the edge of notice beneath it. The small chamber, barely a quarter the size of the other room, contained two small tables each with a single drawer, standing on either side of a large wooden chair. White plastic panels covered both windows, dimming the light, but still allowing enough to reveal a slender figure in the chair.
Mother sat as still as ever, her hands clutching the ends of the armrests, talon-like nails yellow and cracked. Long, dusty dark brown hair framed a face as grey as the dress she wore, lips peeled open enough to bare her teeth, giving her an expression like she’d stepped in something cold and slimy. Her right eye opened more than her left, both black, empty sockets. Stain trails ran down her cheeks from long-ago shed tears of darkness.
Coffee cans littered the ground by the chair, containing pinesap, and other magical substances Dad said allowed her to see out from the Other Place. Years of dead flowers formed a ring around the chair, tokens of love she’d placed there on special days going back as far as she could remember.
“Hello, Mother,” said Wisp.
She clasped her hands in front of herself, bowed her head, and shuffled forward, moving her feet an inch at a time until she stood by Mother’s withered right hand. After a reverent moment of silence, she knelt and rested her head on Mother’s arm, the coarse fabric scratchy against her ear.
“Dad taught me about how to make a fishing spear yesterday. He caught fish with it for supper, and we went on a walk. He let me go with him!” She reached up and placed her hand upon Mother’s, careful not to damage the dry, crusty skin. “I’m twelve now, but you knew that since I visited you on my birthday last month. I like the summer. It’s warm. I’m glad my birthday’s right before the summer starts.”
Mother didn’t reply.
“I am sad that you had to go to the Other Place and can’t be with us. Is it nice there? What is it like? Do you see other people or can you only watch us here in the forest?”
Mother said nothing.
Wisp caressed Mother’s hand with her fingertips while telling her all about the walk with Dad, finding the crashed thunderbird, and the hidden cold room. “I saw your Jeep. Dad says it’s broken now and isn’t useful anymore, but I was scared of it at first because it looked like an angry monster face. Dad laughed at me. The blood on the seats made me sad. I’m sorry you got hurt. Dad said you got better though. This cabin is much nicer than that place. I’m glad you asked him to go here.”
Mother continued to gaze into nowhere.
“I hope I’m being a good daughter. Dad said you’d tell me if I’m bad.”
Only silence came from Mother.
Wisp beamed, proud of herself. “Thank you!” She lifted her head away from the dried out arm, stood, and leaned close to give her as much of a hug as she dared, lest she hurt the brittle shrine. “I love you, Mother. Thank you for watching over me and Dad.”
A sniffle startled her.
It took her a second to realize it came from Dad, standing in the doorway behind her. Tears streamed down his cheeks, glistening over his frizzy, black beard. Wisp smiled at him before turning back to Mother and picking up the gauzy bundle of cloth in her lap. She held the tiny dress up to the feeble light from the white plastic covering the windows. After dusting it off, she refolded the toddler-sized garment in a neat square and set it back on Mother’s lap.
Floorboards shifted under her feet as Dad walked up behind her. While she stood with her hands clasped in front of her, head bowed at Mother, he put a hand on her shoulder. Wisp looked down at the footprints she’d made in the dust. Dried out and browned flower petals scattered across the wood in front of her toes.
I need to get her some new flowers. She brushed at the tiny dress.
“That used to be yours,” said Dad. “It’s the very first thing you had to wear. Mother likes to keep it close, so she feels like you are with her all the time.”
“I don’t remember it.” She struggled to think, but couldn’t picture ever being small enough to fit into the sacred garment. “Are babies that big? Where do they come from? What did I have before that?”
Dad grinned. “Nothing. As soon as you were old enough to learn how to use the outhouse, Mother made you that dress.”
She peered up at him. “I had to learn how to use the outhouse? What did I do before?”
He wiped the last of the tears from his face, and chuckled. “Babies just… well… let go wherever.”
Wisp laughed. “They ngh everywhere?”
“Oh yeah. You used to start playing with it if we didn’t get to you fast enough to clean it up.”
She cringed, horrified. “We probably shouldn’t be talking about ngh in Mother’s shrine.”
“Mother doesn’t mind. Some day you might understand. When you have a child, everything they do is wonderful. Even when they make ngh on the floor.”
Wisp narrowed her eyes in disbelief. “Ngh is not wonderful.” Her mood fell somber, and she again rested her hand atop Mother’s. “Tell me about her? What was she like before she went to the Other Place?”
“When we met, she was, oh, about two or three years older than you are now.” Dad stepped closer and stroked Mother’s hair. “I love her hair.”
Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen… “Mother was fifteen when you found her?”
“About that, yes. I was a little older, almost nineteen. We knew right away we were meant to be together. It didn’t take her long to start talking about how much she wanted a daughter, more than anything. But, our people had decided she should be with someone else, a choice made before she had become even old enough to walk. Your mother did not have any love for him, so she begged me to go into ex
ile with her.”
That he had given up his home, everything he had known, for Mother got her sniffling. “Did it hurt when she went to the Other Place?”
Dad pulled his hand away from Mother’s hair and covered his mouth, holding back a sob. “I… don’t think so. If she was in pain, she never said anything. I don’t know what happened more than a sickness took her. At first, I was afraid she’d eaten a dangerous mushroom, but I didn’t get sick or even feel strange, and we’d shared all our food.” He sank to his knees and took Mother’s hand in both of his. “Nothing I did helped. I couldn’t protect her. She knew she was going to the Other Place, and found peace with it. Knowing she had you made her happy.”
Wisp knelt beside him, tears welling up in her eyes as she put an arm around his back. “Don’t cry. Mother is still with us. She’s watching from the Other Place, keeping us safe. Maybe once she got there, she made the sickness leave you alone.”
Dad lapsed into heavy sobs, muttering apologies and rambling incoherently for a few minutes.
She rubbed his back, hugging and muttering, “It’s okay,” and “Mother loves you,” every now and then. He set Mother’s hand back on the armrest, patted it, and turned to embrace Wisp, pulling her into his lap as he rolled off his knees to sit on the floor.
Dad, her fearless protector, clutched her like a small child holding a doll, weeping openly until the shoulder of her shirt had soaked through. “She’s watching us.”
“Yes,” said Wisp, her voice a mere breath on the wind. “She’s still here.”
He squeezed her close, rocking side to side. Wisp clung to him until he got himself under control a few minutes later. Dad leaned back enough to make eye contact, smiling at her. “We are lucky to have a daughter like you.”
She reached up and wiped his face. “Mother’s flowers are all brown. Can we go collect some new ones?”
“Of course.” He took a couple deep breaths, and the strong, fearless Dad returned. “She will like that.”
Wisp grinned and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’ll be back with some new flowers for you.”
Mother said nothing.
Monster in the Woods
-6-
The repetitious squeak-clank-squeak from the bullet press faded out of Wisp’s awareness after a few hours.
She sat cross-legged inside her Haven, leaning against the bars closest to the cabin’s back wall, the pillow tucked behind her head, book perched in front of her. The door remained open, since Dad was awake. If any Tree Walkers found them, he’d be able to protect her. She’d been reading since they finished supper. The story had been hard to follow, so she’d been cycling through various positions trying to get comfortable enough to keep going with it. Most of the stuff about ‘computers’ made no sense at all, and even Dad couldn’t help her understand. Somehow, this woman in the story could do things with them that made powerful men get angry and want her dead.
…Katrina bolted from the elevator, ducking gunfire from two security men as she rushed across the lobby…
“Dad?” She marked the spot on the page with a finger.
“Hmm?” The squeaking paused.
“What’s a lobby?”
“Uhh. Something about politics I think.”
“What’s politics?”
“Oh, wait. I think a lobby is like a big, fancy room.” He snapped his fingers a few times. “Like the front room in a huge cabin, the one where the door to the outside is.”
“Okay.”
She resumed reading.
… bullets ricocheted off the marble floor behind her, zipping past her legs …
“Dad?”
Again, the squeaking paused. “Hmm?”
“What’s riko-chet-ted?”
He spun around on his stool and tilted his head at her. “What?”
“A word. ‘The bullets riko-chet-ted off the marble floor.”
“Oh, I think that book spelled it wrong. It’s ricka-shay. If you shoot a gun at something that’s hard, the bullet will bounce off and keep going in a different direction.”
“Really?” She stared at him.
He illustrated a bullet flying into a solid surface and bouncing away at an angle with his hands. “It’s kinda like that, but it’s almost impossible to guess where it’ll go.”
“Wow.” She pictured a woman running and people shooting the ground behind her. “I understand. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Learning is always a good thing.” He swiveled back to the bullet press.
Squeak-clank-squeak.
Wisp turned a page, squirming so the pillow sat a little better at the back of her neck.
…Katrina raced around the building into the alley, where Rodolfo waited with the limousine…
Again she poked the paper to mark her spot and looked up. “Dad?”
He swiveled to stare at her, one eyebrow twitching. She’d seen him make that face a few times… usually when something he worked on frustrated him.
“Sorry.” She flashed an apologetic grimace and resumed reading.
Dad let a long breath out his nose. “It’s all right. Go ahead.”
“What’s la mouse-e-nay?”
“Not a damn clue. That’s either spelled weird or you’re not saying it right.”
“Limo… O… o-seen?”
Dad stroked his beard, thinking. “Maybe limousine?”
She peered through the bars at him and shrugged. “I guess.”
“It’s a big kind of car that a lot of people can get into all at once and go somewhere.”
“Oh, like a SUV.” She nodded. “Thanks.”
“What’s a suvve?”
She flipped back a couple pages and hunted for where she’d seen it. Once she found the spot, she crawled out of her Haven, stood, and walked over to him. “Here. It sounds like a big Jeep that a bunch of people can get in.”
He looked at the page above her pointing finger. “That’s SUV. See how all the letters are big? That means it’s not like other words around it. You just say the individual letters, not pronounce it like a word, ‘suvve.’ It’s ess-you-vee. Words like that with all the letters big are like a code.”
“Strange…” She traced her finger around it on the page and muttered, “S-U-V. What’s the difference with a limousine?”
“A limousine is more like a car, but long. The SUV is like the Jeep. Big tires.”
“Tires?”
Dad rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You remember the Jeep?”
She nodded.
“Those big black round things?”
She nodded.
“Those are tires.”
“Don’t cars have tires, too?” She tilted her head.
“Yes, but they’re not as big.”
One of the books had a picture of a car on the front. She ran across the room, leaning over the Haven to pluck it from the bookshelf before bringing it back to show Dad.
“That’s a car. Okay. A limousine… take that car and stretch it out like twice as long.”
She nodded. “Who’s strong enough to do that?”
“I don’t mean actually stretch. A limo just looks like that.”
“Oh.” Wisp stuck her tongue out and rolled her eyes at herself. “Dumb. Sorry.”
“A SUV is taller, and not as long. Some of them can even drive off roads.”
She tilted her head around while the thoughts swam within. “If we got a car, it should be an SUV since there’s no roads left.”
“There’s no SUVs left either, sweetie.”
Wisp shrugged. “Oh.”
“Besides. We don’t need to go anywhere that far that we’d need a SUV, a car, or a limousine. We’re happy staying right here at home.”
She giggled. “Yeah.”
Dad rotated back to face the bullet machine. She hovered close, watching him pour a little bit of the magic fire dust into a brass case, seat it in the machine, and turn a hand crank until a rod came down and pushed a bullet in. The repetitious task
proved, at least for a few minutes, more interesting than the book she struggled to understand.
“What’s a computer?”
“It’s a kind of machine from before.” Dad wheeled down the crank. “Electronic stuff.”
“Oh. If it’s not alive, how can it get a virus?”
“Where’d you get that from?” asked Dad.
“The book. This girl is making the computers have viruses so they do what she wants them to.”
He laughed. “That book is silly. Machines can’t get sick.”
“Yeah.” She flipped it closed and sighed. “I think I’m going to read a different one.”
A faint buzzing came out of the distance, increasing in volume. At first, she started looking around for the bug, but the noise kept getting louder, filling her head with images of a bitey-bug the size of a black bear.
“Dad! What is that?”
The buzzing pulsed higher-pitched and fell low, back and forth a few times at random. Fearing a tremendous insect about to crash through the wall, she screamed and ran to the Haven. Dad rushed after her, pushing the door closed and locking it.
“Stay hidden. Stay quiet.”
Wisp looked up at him, but the words her brain struggled to find evaporated at the look of fear in his eyes. She’d never seen him that frightened before. She barely managed to nod.
He reached in and patted her cheek. “I love you, sweetie.”
“What is it?” She grabbed his hand. “Dad, what’s that noise?”
“Dangerous. Stay as quiet as you can.”
He withdrew his arm from the Haven and pulled the blanket down to cover her.
His footsteps drifted away across the room. Wisp curled up against the innermost corner, hiding her face behind her knees. Mother, please protect us from the giant bug! Make it go away!
The buzzing lessened to a low, constant rumble. Dad’s rifle clattered. Footsteps crossed the room faster. Squeaky hinges announced the front door opening. She jumped when it slammed closed with a loud whack of wood-on-wood.
Wisp curled her toes into the soft bedding and wrapped her arms around her legs, pulling her legs tight to her chest. Her hair cascaded down over her shins as she bowed her head to her knees.
The Forest Beyond the Earth Page 5