What Should Be Wild

by Julia Fine

  I wondered if this was how all young men dealt with death. My instinct told me they did not, that he was different, or that perhaps he’d been prepared. He seemed on the verge of either tears or laughter. That pallor to his face, which I’d assumed was grief, could very well be malice. How would he react to find that Mrs. Blott was not dead, after all?

  “We’ll go upstairs to see her,” I said, my plan of resurrection intact, “but first you will take off those wet shoes. We’ll not track mud through her house.”

  Matthew slipped out of his squelchy brown boots and followed me up the stairs, which creaked under his weight.

  When we arrived, the door to Mrs. Blott’s bedroom had been pushed fully open. Marlowe sat there at her feet, half covered in her blanket. He was making a sound with his mouth, a wet, sucking sound.

  “Marlowe!” I said, and he lifted his head.

  Matthew and I looked at him for what felt a long while. Finally Matthew took a slow, unsteady breath, and spoke.

  “Your dog is chewing on my aunt.”

  And he was. Her frail, blue-veined ankle was resting in Marlowe’s jaw. He had been sucking, nibbling, gnawing persistently the way he was wont to with a bone. There were tooth marks in her thin, old skin, and in some spots little smears of red. Her calf had turned the angry purple of clotted blood caught in raw meat.

  “You bad boy! Get out of here this instant!” I shooed Marlowe away from the rocker and out of the room. He obeyed at once, barely whimpering as he abandoned what had been, to him, a spectacular treat.

  It was clear now that I would be unable to attribute Mrs. Blott’s unresponsiveness to an unusually heavy sleep. People did not slumber soundly while canines feasted on their ankles. Ankles did not flop down at such inclines once dropped from canines’ jaws. Nor did living bodies smell quite so . . . sour.

  My head felt light. I grasped for the bedpost to steady myself.

  Matthew moved to comfort me, reaching out to rest a hand against my shoulder. I recoiled.

  “Don’t!”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “I’m sorry,” I cut in before he could speak. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I just . . . I just prefer not to be touched.”

  “Right then,” said Matthew, rubbing his eyes as if only just awakened.

  At that moment, the doorbell, our savior, sounded noisily. It was Peter. I could see him through the window, standing at the kitchen door, not at all dressed for the weather in his good black shoes and a pair of khaki pants, clinging to his umbrella, which the rising wind swung wildly about.

  I took a towel from the closet and went down to let Peter in. Abingdon the cat had gone to cower in a corner, and, not seeing Marlowe, I assumed that he had gone to do the same.

  “As you should,” I said aloud. “Shame on you.”

  When I opened the kitchen door, Peter frowned and took the towel from me, wiped the lenses of his glasses, and lifted his head to the ceiling, where the floorboards complained as Matthew headed toward the stairs.

  “So, you’ve got her up again, have you?” Peter said. He wasn’t angry with me, merely disappointed. He looked at me as if this was inevitable: that I would rouse her, that I would disregard his explicit instructions—which, in fact, I might have had it not been for the dog. Still I generally listened to my father, and I wanted the credit that such frustrating obedience deserved.

  “It’s her nephew, actually,” I said, pouting.

  Peter nodded. “Ah, yes.”

  “You mean she told you? You mean you knew that he was here?”

  “Of course. Why did you think I had you call her before setting out?”

  I shot out my breath in a huff. I was flummoxed and unsure of what to say.

  Then two things happened in rapid succession.

  The first was that Abingdon, sensing my distress, had come to comfort me. Without my noticing he had climbed the kitchen counter, pushing off his back legs to catapult toward me, his front paws brushing against the strip of bare skin above my collar. Even as it happened I berated myself for not being more careful. Abingdon’s hair shocked out as though he had been electrified. He stiffened and fell to the floor with a thud.

  The second vital thing was that Matthew had made it down the stairs in time to see the whole affair. He looked from Peter to me to the now-still Abingdon, then back at each of us in turn. The lines of his forehead crinkled in concentrated thought.

  He turned to me. “Did you just kill that cat?”

  “I did not,” I said, pursing my mouth into a frown. “He simply fell.”

  “It certainly looked as if—” While Matthew spoke I crouched down next to Abingdon, causing Peter to cut in and interrupt.

  “Maisie, please do not touch that animal.”

  “I hadn’t planned on it!” I snapped, although I did not know if this was true. All I knew was that I had now lost two friends in the course of a few short hours, thus lowering my count by exactly half.

  “Cats are meant to land on their feet, though,” Matthew continued, standing on the lowest step and speaking toward the ceiling. “A bad jump shouldn’t kill a cat.”

  “Let’s leave off the cat for the moment,” said Peter, taking off his suit coat and wringing it out with his hands. “How is our good friend Mrs. Blott?” He was leaving a large puddle. I hoped no one would slip.

  “Well,” I said, sniffing, still squatted down by Abingdon, “Mrs. Blott seems to be deceased.”

  “Surprising,” said Peter, “because she’d seemed in perfect health—”

  “There’s a reason that it’s the cat who is said to have nine lives—”

  “—just last Friday when we saw her. I would have guessed that she’d—”

  “It is the cat, isn’t it, who is said to have—”

  “—another several years at least.”

  Despite the noise, my mind was racing. I’d been lied to—or at least misled—about Matthew. My dog had developed a disposition for the dead. Mrs. Blott and Abingdon had each crossed to a less preferable plane of existence, and I was feeling sick over all of it. I reached down to Abingdon and stroked him deliberately with a finger. He shuddered back to life, yawning and stretching.

  “There,” I said, “now we’ve dealt with the cat.”

  Matthew’s voice faded. He swayed a bit, but caught himself on the wooden banister and lowered himself slowly into a seated position on the stairs. He stared at me.

  “Maisie,” said Peter. “We’ve discussed this.”

  “I’m sorry, but things were getting rather overwhelming. It was necessary that someone take control.” Control was not a word I used with Peter. It felt dangerous and delicious to do so now. I turned to Matthew. “Wouldn’t you say?”

  Matthew blinked. His mouth moved without emitting sound. He kept jerking his head as if his memory was a magnetic drawing board that given a good shake would be swept clean. He tugged a lock of hair. “If you’re asking me,” he said finally, slowly, “I don’t know that I . . . I wonder . . . Could you show me that again?”

  There was a new sort of reverence to him, and I liked it. With the tip of my finger I touched Abingdon’s tail. The cat froze, and keeled over.

  “Marvelous!” said Matthew.

  “Maisie!” said Peter, stepping between me and the now-inert tabby. “You know better. That’s enough.”

  “But you must let me bring him back now,” I said. “One last time.”

  “I am under no such obligation. I think the animal has already been through quite enough.” Peter positioned his body to hide the cat from my view. He knelt and placed a firm yet gentle hand on my shirt. “I know it’s difficult, darling. But we’ll let things rest as nature intended. We are not supreme beings. We mustn’t allow ourselves the hubris to think we can bend nature without consequence. We will bury the cat with Mrs. Blott.”

  Upstairs, Marlowe was whimpering. I felt that I, who rarely cried, might do the same. “You can’t bury both of them,” I blubbered. “Nature did not int
end for us to be so completely alone.” I saw Peter lift his thumb as if to mitigate my sniffling, then carefully pull back. He dug into his pocket for a handkerchief.

  “Darling,” he said, holding it out to me.

  I bit down on my lip, taking his offering and blowing my nose loudly. I was embarrassed to have made such a display in front of Matthew. I thought that he would see me as a child. But I turned to him to find his eyes sparkling.

  “You know,” he said, mostly to Peter, who had straightened, “she’s right. This trick of hers . . . if this is something she can do, then it can’t be unnatural. It necessarily must be as . . . nature intended. At least as much as nature intends anything.”

  I was crouched, looking at the clean and tiled floor. Matthew and Peter both stood over me, one on either side, each his own colossus of experience and thought. Peter gave me a tender look; Matthew’s eyes were sharp.

  I felt then that I had two distinct choices. I could lower myself further, let my weight down off my ankles, sit on Mrs. Blott’s recently mopped tiles, and let Peter try to comfort me. Or I could rise, push up on the balls of my feet until I’d straightened, lay my hand in blessing over Abingdon, climb up the stairs to revive Mrs. Blott, then step into my wellies and out of the door. I took a deep and careful breath.

  As I exhaled, Marlowe came prancing through the kitchen with Mrs. Blott’s shinbone in his mouth. His jaws were clamped around her ankle and the rest of it, up where it had once joined to make her knee, was being dragged across the floor, straws that I assumed must be her tendons leaving a slimy red wake to show his path. He made for the kitchen door, the inner part of which Peter had absentmindedly left cracked. Marlowe prodded with his nose, and it swung open.

  “How the devil did he detach it from the rest of her?” said Peter.

  I watched my dog, tail wagging, disappear into the mist. The trail he left behind him was softened by the rain, but still visible.

  I stood, my body burning with a new, frightening decision.

  I took my coat from its hanger and slipped my feet into their boots. I looked at Peter, who looked back at me, slightly shocked, and at Matthew, expression inscrutable. I belted my raincoat around me and stepped out the door.

  Part

  II

  The Dark to Logic’s Light

  In the wood, the years pass like hours, the hours like centuries. Rabbit kits born at the start of long-lost springs maintain their downy ears, pinched noses. Young deer wobble for decades on matchstick legs, baby hedgehogs who have shed first sets of quills do not, for all their effort, grow into the next set. But the frozen girl ages: her breasts bloom, dark hair lengthens, cheekbones sharpen.

  What is this girl? All of the Blakely women wonder. Is she a demon, biding her time? Some sort of savior? The dark twin of the girl at Urizon? One of their own, unborn, daughters made flesh? The girl was born within the wood, not taken later, like the rest of them. There is nothing of the outside world upon her. Nothing broken. No scarred flesh.

  Helen pays homage to the creature in the clearing, watching as the girl’s limbs lengthen, her hair begins to curl, and remembers her own brief pubescence. Helen pines not for her mortal life but for her childhood, lost to her long before she woke in this new wood. Even before the frozen girl’s resurrection, Helen was drawn to her double: that child wrapped in coats and layered stockings, locked away at Helen’s former home. The living girl, always so dutiful, always tightening the laces at her wrists, adjusting the brim of her hat. Helen has long wanted to run to her and shake her, tell her to cast off her clothing, tell her that once she is a woman all her freedom will be gone.

  When the child first removed her gloves, turning green seedlings brown, reviving dead grass with her palms, Helen had stood with the other Blakelys and watched with jealous eyes. “Yes,” she whispered, though aware the girl heard nothing. “Take your pleasure while you can.” Helen felt compelled to reach out, and tried to take a few steps past the forest, ready to climb the wooden fence and slip into the yard. But even as she did, she was halted by a painful inner wrenching, as if she’d tried and failed to broach the boundaries of her body, as if she’d peeled off her skin. The trees rustled their disapproval. Like all living things, these are protective of their children; like all children, Helen feels the need to stretch her own branches, to grow.

  “I heard her speaking with that boy,” reported Emma, once Helen’s wits had returned, “and now she’s stopped wearing the hat. Why did she ever wear it? She has nothing ugly to hide.”

  Immune to Emma’s questioning, Helen did not try to answer. Familiar with Helen’s silences, Emma did not force her to respond. Instead, Emma turned to Mary, who has also kept vigil, watching the home that had once been her own.

  “Why does she hide there, all covered up, with just that dog for company?” asked Emma.

  Mary sucked her teeth, smiled sharply. “They think she’s something special,” she said, her face tight with disapproval. “But that’s a girl like any other. Locked up. Afraid. It’s the one in the hollow who will save us, when she wakes. It’s the one in the hollow you should praise.”

  Mary observes both girls, the cursed one and her double in the clearing, as they grow leaner, grow longer. While the Cothay girl throws balls for the strange woodland creature she calls dog to run after, the other lies cold and still, but breathing. When the Cothay girl fiddles with her sandbox and leaves sandwich crusts for squirrels, the other rests, heartbeat steady and slow. The sleeping girl is biding her time. She is waiting. Mary understands waiting. Mary has always found herself waiting, both in past life and in present. The girl is waiting for something, but what, Mary cannot be sure.

  THE FROZEN GIRL’S cheekbones grow hollow, her nipples peak and swell.

  Lucy and Kathryn stand by her side, watching. “This girl,” Lucy tells Kathryn, “is the height of evolution.”

  “Of what?” Kathryn giggles at the unfamiliar word.

  “She’s the fulfillment of a promise, a centuries-old spell of protection. I read of her, of a daughter, a child within a tree. Spirals to death and back again. She is the key.”

  Early on, back at Urizon, when the doctors saw that her menses did not come, Lucy had been told that a child of her own was impossible, that in her frail condition she could never nourish life. Now she feels the old book has answered her need. That the wood has been a surrogate, absorbing her desires, building from them, crafting her this gift. Lucy is sure the girl will wake soon, and be pliable, an extension of Lucy herself. A daughter: a way out of the forest, a connection to the future, a way back into the world.

  “The wood doesn’t just give you what you want,” warns Kathryn, frowning, twirling a lock of her red hair, eyeing the frozen girl’s darkening pubis. “It’s not a wood that grants you wishes. If it did, I’d have so many more young men . . . the pretty blond one Helen worshipped, Imogen’s husband, that blue-eyed boy with black hair we’ve seen sneaking around the house . . .” Kathryn sighs, shuddering in her chemise, twisting a stiff nipple with her forefinger and thumb. Kathryn has never wanted children. From a young girl, she has known to tell her partner to withdraw, to keep her body free of seed. She’s laughed as she rinsed men’s stymied futures from her thighs and her breasts in the stream. She sees the fluids of young men’s pleasure as accessories to her own unquenched appetite.

  “The wood doesn’t care what we want. It doesn’t know what it is to be human,” says Kathryn, who for years has known gnawing libido, fulfilled only biannually at the high seasons when the forest lets down its guard, lowering its veil to let strangers wander through. Pretty Kathryn, seventeen for over seven hundred years. Kathryn dines on these unwary visitors, teasing them, taking them, leaving them empty, sending them stumbling back to mothers and wives. “The wood has its own plans, its own ideas,” says Kathryn. “I hope it uses her as bait to lure in some excitement.”

  LUCY IGNORES KATHRYN’S warning. She watches the girl’s double at Urizon and belittles Peter Cothay�
�s shoddy parenting while praising herself for her own: she uses her skirts to wipe her frozen daughter’s brow, detangles the girl’s hair with her fingers, sings her lullabies. She asks an offering from each of her sisters, to adorn the child in laudatory jewels. The others are eager to share their remaining worldly treasures, despite differing in their ideas of how such tribute will resolve. All but Imogen.

  Imogen, the woodcutter’s wife, her stomach still swollen with the child who has been gestating for centuries. Imogen, who will not speak of the loss that she wears as an albatross, that stagnation inside her, the plight of these seven frozen women in physical form, a future with no future at all.

  “Do you ever feel it kicking?” Lucy asks her.

  Imogen does not respond. Imogen, so pious, still praying to a God the rest have long since abandoned. It takes all of Lucy’s cunning, all her coddling and convincing, to get Imogen to part with the wedding ring she’d brought into the wood.

  “If the girl is your savior reborn, you would not want her to forget you,” Lucy reasons. “You would not want to be the only one left here, while the rest of us ascend to her heaven. You would not want to be alone here, once the rest of us are gone.”

  Lucy finds her logic sound, and when Imogen concedes, she praises herself. She is too single-minded to realize that Imogen has only given in to stop her prattling, to end an argument that might go on for years if Lucy is not appeased.

  No savior of Imogen’s would ever need material gifts of splendor.

  Imogen believes the frozen girl to be a dark spirit, her captor. The women’s faults bound to the forest, the culmination of their long-tainted bloodline, a reminder of their guilt. She could be the original evil incarnate: that first taste of forbidden knowledge, the disobedience that cast her whole kind from the bosom of Eden. Or the girl could be the final punishment, once she has awakened. You abandoned your purpose as wife and as mother, Imogen imagines her saying; with your longing, you have done this to yourself.