What Should Be Wild

by Julia Fine

  “Two ways of moving about your death,” I whispered to myself, quoting a poet whose name, just then, escaped me.

  The second spiral lay across the unlabeled moors to the south and the east of Urizon—Peter had jotted some coordinates in red pen over a smear of poorly erased pencil. The third spiral was drawn directly south, over the city.

  The spirals were so like the path I’d walked in the strange forest—Peter must have known it waited for me. He must think me still wandering in the wood. Of course he would have gone off to find me.

  “This is it,” I announced, excitement mounting. “We’ve found him! I’ll just follow all these lines, and there he’ll be.”

  Matthew opened his mouth as if to say something, but before any sound escaped, he frowned instead, twirling his hair.

  “What is it?” I said. “What were you about to say?”

  He waited, debating with himself, then finally answered. “No offense, but that’s ridiculous . . . You aren’t a kid spy in some novel. This isn’t some treasure hunt. And if your father left the map, that means he didn’t bring it with him, so he can’t be following it.”

  “It’s our best and only clue,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  I thought this twist of my words a dirty trick.

  “And even if it really were a map of where he’s gone,” Matthew continued, “all you’ve got is his vicinity, some stops he maybe plans to make. Tell me, where’s the destination? It’s not like you can just set out and find him.” My impending protest must have been obvious, because before I could respond Matthew changed tactics. “Okay,” he said, swallowing his condescension in an attempt that might have worked had I been ten years old and blind to the clear effort that he took. “Let’s say you’re right, this is a map of your father’s journey to . . . whatever. None of these places are far enough away that he’d be gone for very long. Your house is even on the route. The best bet you’ve got is to just wait it out.” He paused. “My school term ends this week, but if you’d like I can wait with you.”

  “No.”

  “I only meant,” said Matthew, reddening, “that I’d understand if you didn’t want to be all alone in the house. After Aunt Abby’s death, your . . . recent experience. But if you think you’re well enough to handle things, I can obviously—”

  “I didn’t mean that you shouldn’t stay,” I said flatly. “Only that I won’t. By which I mean, I’m going to go.”

  “Go?”

  “To find my father. My name is on this list. The spirals all connect in the wood where he last saw me. He must be looking for me.”

  Matthew pressed his knuckles to his nose. “Oh, come on. You don’t know that. You don’t know anything about his timing. You’ve nothing to go on. And besides . . .” He stopped, considering his phrasing, “I’d been under the impression you preferred to be alone.”

  At once, I saw my path to victory. I knew precisely what Matthew meant, and the tact that it had taken to arrive there, but I blinked like a fool and asked him, “Why?” When he frowned, I continued, “I don’t follow your logic. Did you not just suggest I might need company?”

  This was a strategy I’d employed throughout my childhood, most commonly on Mrs. Blott when she assigned me a task I found distasteful. I had learned the game from Peter, who was expert at exploiting fallacies, and whose explanations of such appeared far less manipulative than my own. I generally tried to hide behind a mask of naïveté, to imply that I had no ulterior motive, yet even at my most successful I could never disguise my glee at setting up a verbal trap and catching my partner in a snare of their own making.

  Matthew did not take my bait. “What will you do if you go after him?” he said.

  I thought for a moment. “I’ll learn about the things he’s studying. These circles and numbers. My involvement, why he’s written down my name.” However successful my improvised plan proved to be was secondary; anything seemed a choice alternative to sitting locked up at Urizon and unfolding my inadequacies, taking in the loss of Peter, Mrs. Blott. Better prepare for a new journey than contemplate the meaning of the one I had just taken, better sort through the tangible mystery of the map than parse the strangeness of my time spent in the wood and the pull that I now felt to return.

  “How will you get there? Wherever there is.”

  I squinted. “I suppose I’ll have to walk. Or I can bicycle. Neither seems especially difficult.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I am.” And to prove it I reached for the map, let my bare hands spin the paper so the spirals seemed to twirl, the shaded forest shimmering, before I pulled away. I was daring Matthew, testing his generosity, stretching the bond that death and mystery had lately formed between us. Will you really, I was silently asking, let me take this journey on my own? Is it true that you’re enamored of my body? Do you think you’re being practical? Or are you afraid?

  Had Matthew not risen to my unspoken challenge, I cannot say that I’d actually have left Urizon. I’d been made bold by recent trauma, and mine was the sort of courage that would dissipate once enough time had passed. Matthew was right, there was the outline of a trip but no real substance, and it would not have taken long for me to realize the flaws in my plan.

  But out of curiosity, compassion, or perhaps because he’d nothing more pressing to do, Matthew decided that his role in my story was not finished. His fascination intrigued me. His earlier insistence that he paid no mind to curses made me question my conception of my body. Was it possible to be both simultaneously frightened and awed? Already, though at the time I did not know it, my life and Matthew’s were entwined on both sides of the moment that he cocked his head, and frowned at me, and told me that in four days, once his last exam was over, he would help me to explore the nearest spiral if my father had not yet returned.

  The Promise Ring

  Helen, 1666

  The daughter of a wealthy engineer, Helen was one of the first generation of Blakelys to live at Urizon just after the great house was built in the spring of 1653. Her father William had left the village of Coeurs Crossing as a young man, setting out to make his fortune by championing new methods of waterpower and hydraulic development. Helen was three years old when William returned, successful, to raze the old family property, erasing any sign of what the Blakelys had once been. The frame of the little house Helen was born in had been easily demolished, but when the workmen went to pry up the tiles in the cellar, they were seized by superstition, claiming to feel strange chills each time they bent down with the shovel. Pushing through, they found a dirt-laden manuscript buried beneath the floor, nestled next to an odd wooden carving. The man who took both discoveries to the woodpile found himself sobbing unexplainably once he set them down there, his partner struck with the same melancholy until the objects were removed and returned to the site of the house.

  They did not ask the owner’s permission. William Blakely did not know of the carving until it was embedded in the woodwork of the servants’ stairs, at which point it was too late to remove it. He never knew of the manuscript, slipped onto a shelf at the back of the library.

  Aside from these small remnants of the old world, William and his wife made their home a paragon of new money propriety. Urizon was lavishly decorated in the finest trappings of the age, impeccably staffed. The children were provided the best governesses, tutelage in music and painting, instruction in etiquette. William was determined to surpass his feudal roots, to establish the family as significant not only in Coeurs Crossing but the county, the commonwealth, even the unexplored reaches of the world. Such a task would be difficult, but not fully impossible. With money, William thought he might do it. With money, and with marriage. Which is, perhaps, why Helen’s actions struck him such a blow.

  The Blakelys’ cook had a young son named Simon, a rosy-cheeked child who grew into an earnest young man. At six, he had been Helen’s playmate. By sixteen, the two were very much in love. Helen heard her father grumble that th
e boy had no ambition, content to live a quiet life in the village, having declined William’s offer to serve as head coachman or groom. But Helen found such quiet comforting, and noble. She admired Simon’s love of the land, the common people. She admired his ability to be happy. Helen had only vague memories of her earliest childhood, that time before her family was moneyed, but in them she remembered her mother as kinder, her own life more free. With Simon, she felt seen. She felt valued for more than her mastery of manners. Every chance she found, she slipped away with him, at first exploring the forest and village, and then spending hours simply talking, until words turned to touches, and the two shared stolen moments in the wood.

  The youngest of the Blakely daughters, Helen was the last to be given her dowry, but the day did finally come when a man with means and title required a wife, petitioned her father, and was promised her. The transaction was presented to Helen as a joyous one, her mother clucking and kissing her, her father beaming with pride. Helen—who until that very moment had lived in blissful denial of her role as William’s pawn, who’d seen her mother and the governesses’ instructions as the enemy, her father as ally, who knew of William’s ambition, but had always believed his love for her to eclipse any love of fame and title—felt her heart tighten with panic. William had always praised his daughter’s needlework, her poetry, the striking figure she cut in her favorite dress. He had laughed off her mother’s concerns that Helen spent too much time out of doors, claiming that as long as her complexion didn’t suffer, he saw no harm in a child of his enjoying the gardens, the sky. Surely, thought Helen, his love meant that her needs would be considered, her unease about the match would be addressed.

  But as preparations for the nuptials continued, Helen found that her concerns went unheeded.

  “He’s so old,” Helen said of her unwanted paramour, “past fifty.”

  “Nonsense,” said her father. “He can handle a healthy young girl.”

  “I haven’t even met him,” whispered Helen. “I don’t know him.”

  “He was here at the house several months ago, attending your mother’s birthday celebration. The gentleman in red. You remember.”

  “I don’t,” said Helen, close to tears. “I don’t remember. I can’t marry him. I certainly don’t love him.”

  “Love”—her father chuckled—“has not a thing to do with marriage.” He folded the letter he’d been writing, the heated wax dripping like thick burgundy blood. As he stamped the Blakely seal, he spoke more firmly than he had before, settling his daughter’s fate: “And you’ll do as I say.”

  “I won’t,” said Helen. She froze, afraid of her own brashness. Stone-faced, William slowly rose, menacing as he came around the desk. He stood still for a moment in front of his daughter, and then slapped her.

  Helen recoiled, her empty hand flying to her cheek, which had never before felt her father’s wrath. William grabbed her other wrist and twisted.

  “You will,” he said coldly before leaving Helen there in his study. “Your new husband will be here tomorrow.”

  Helen’s cheek stung from the blow. Her wrist was raw. She was too stunned to cry, and instead felt an utter blankness. This could not be her life; she could not stand it. Helen imagined the emptiness she’d feel as she climbed into this older man’s carriage, as she looked back for a last time at the lengthening drive. She imagined suffering through his dinners and balls, his age-spotted hands upon her body, being smothered by his sweaty, hirsute chest. Helen shuddered. If only I could stay a child, she thought. If only we were simpler, hadn’t come into such money.

  The thing to do, of course, was to escape to Simon. Run immediately to his house in the village, despite the distance, the rocks tearing her slippers, the midsummer heat, and collapse into his thick, hardworking arms. She pounded her fists against his front door, inhaled the comfortable, acrid smell of him when the door opened.

  “What’s the matter?” Simon asked, but Helen could not answer through the sudden gush of tears. He led her into the house, rubbing her back, pushing the hair from her eyes—touches more tender for the novelty of happening not out in shaded forest but the candlelight of his home. When Helen had recovered herself, she squeezed Simon’s hand so tightly that he thought she would draw blood.

  “We have to leave.” Helen’s voice was hoarse from crying. “We have to leave now.”

  “Hush,” Simon said into her forehead. “You’re safe here with me. We can work it all out in the morning.”

  “There isn’t time. We must go now.”

  “It’s all right,” whispered Simon, “we’re together. It’s late. Try to calm yourself. Try to sleep.”

  She stayed that night, for the first time, on Simon’s straw mattress, traced her finger across the curled hair on his arms. She welcomed him inside her, the pressure painful at first, but then comforting, making her whole.

  Helen was content to cut all ties to the Blakelys, stay forever wrapped in Simon, live off hard, honest work, and raise his child. Her renunciation complete, she fell asleep against the slow swell of his chest.

  She awoke some hours later to the sound of angry voices, the heavy wheeze of horses, the wails of Simon’s mother.

  “They are coming,” said Simon.

  “Who?” Helen grasped his hand, squeezing it white.

  “Your father. Your brother. Men from the house.”

  Helen dressed herself as quickly as possible. The men burst through just as she slipped a final sleeve onto her shoulder, but before she could work out the intricacies of her heavily boned bodice, which she’d only ever laced with housemaids’ help. She let it drop to the floor with a clatter, her underdress displaying the pert fullness of her breasts.

  AT WILLIAM’S INSTRUCTION, Simon was dragged to a tree at the edge of the forest. Helen’s mother made her daughter watch as they tied Simon’s wrists to level branches, tore his shirt from his back, exposed the flesh and muscle, rippling and brown. The titled man who had won Helen’s hand sat atop his horse some distance away, watching, a bland expression on his face.

  “You mustn’t make a sound,” said Helen’s mother. “Act either pleased with his capture, or as if you are too startled to care.” She pinched Helen’s arm.

  Helen’s throat was thick with tears, her body motionless.

  William’s valet hit Simon with a knotted, nine-tailed whip. At first Simon was silent, bit through his lip to bury the pain, but as the lashing continued, he could not help but shout.

  Once Simon had been reduced to a whimpering mass of blood and pus, once his back was a long rug of woven welt marks, the man with the whip stepped back. He turned to William.

  “Will that do?” he asked gruffly.

  William was silent and still. He looked at the diminished Simon for a cold, endless minute before asking his daughter’s betrothed.

  “Is it punishment enough?” William’s voice showed no emotion, did not betray his own sense of whether justice was fulfilled.

  Helen clasped her mother’s hand. The horseman, her fiancé, cast a long last look at Simon. He took a military pistol from his coat.

  HELEN WAS GIVEN a month to prepare her trousseau while the fiancé awaited her back at his estate, a six-day journey south of Urizon. She did not cry. She did not beg her parents’ lenience, or forgiveness. Instead, she moved about the house in a permanent haze, stuck in the lost place between sleep and wakefulness. Salt in her tea, slippers on backward. One morning she took one of the hunting dogs out past the yard, brought him on a tether down into the forest. Climbed a tree and made herself a noose.

  At first, when she opened her eyes, Helen thought herself caught, stuck somehow between her life and what came after it, a bit of bread lodged in the back of a throat.

  “Simon?” she whispered.

  She heard only the trees rustling around her, moving to hide the great house from her view.

  9

  Four days passed quickly with no sign of Peter, although every night I dreamed him in the
forest. I dreamed his face in the gnarly bark of trees, his body bolstered by tangling vines. I dreamed a sapling oak tree had come thrusting from his breastbone, its trunk his heart, its roots his arteries and veins. In the dream I knelt beside him and I grasped his trembling hand, and it was my touch that set free the sapling, sent it towering, erupting, far past where my eyes could see. I would awake and reassure myself a dream recurred did not mean a reality. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that a seed had sprouted through me since I’d entered that strange shadow forest, that its trees were now entangling my mind, becoming an obsession. I couldn’t shake the feeling that my father was in danger, and that I somehow was its cause.

  In the mornings, despite fog or cold weather, Matthew would leave before the sun had risen fully to go jogging. Cup of tea in hand, I watched him through the window, his hair held with a sweatband, leaning down to stretch his calves on the veranda. He’d then plod grunting and huffing off down the main road, to return an hour later, wet and flushed.

  “Where do you go?” I asked him.

  “No place in particular.”

  “Then why bother going?”

  “It clears my head.”

  Shaking mine, I did not press the question. Activity, to me, was endeavored for effect. I participated in experiments so Peter could be paid after publishing his studies. I read books so I could have some understanding of the world outside my door, so that I might, upon reshelving them, gaze proudly at the empire I’d conquered. Even the myths that I delighted in hearing served a practical purpose, teaching me how to behave, while at the same time showing me a sordid history that helped me take comfort in the relative stability of my present. I did not yet understand ritual for its own sake, as a way of making meaning.

  While Matthew was gone, I searched our bookshelves, poring through fairy tales and histories of our village, none of which led me any closer to the purpose of the spirals and the map. I hoped to find some record of the Blakelys, my mother’s family, whose names Peter had written next to mine. He’d always been reluctant to discuss them, claiming that we had no information, with my mother gone there was no way to answer my questions. I’d long suspected this was deflection, and now I knew for sure he had been hiding his own knowledge of my heritage.