by Julia Fine
“Why, yes,” Rafe answered. “If we’re lucky. Otherwise, once we’ve ensured the door is open, we can follow him right through.”
“Of course,” Matthew muttered, “through the magic door. Makes perfect sense.”
THOUGH IN NO rush to endear himself to Matthew, Rafe did expend much energy on me. He was enamored of my father, turning around to pepper me with all sorts of questions about Peter’s upbringing and schooling, very few of which I was able to answer.
“So once he’d finished his graduate studies, he came straight to Coeurs Crossing?”
I bit my lip, my jaw skewed, wondering.
“Surely you help him, though? With all the research? You seem like the type who wouldn’t mind spending days in the stacks.” Rafe turned back to me, nodding in admiration. I had no idea what he meant by stacks, but I would take any compliment he offered. The experiences he projected upon me—time spent in libraries establishing theories, attending parties where I charmed prominent scholars—seemed like those I could have had, with opportunity. I wanted to be the girl he thought I was; I liked myself more through his eyes.
As we drove on, Rafe spoke of Peter’s studies. He was well versed in the legends of the forest, and the catalogue of missing Blakely women. He even thought he knew where they had gone.
“Imagine a holding place,” he said. “A slice of time outside of time, where all those women who should be dead are still living.”
“Like a memory.”
“What do you mean?”
“The way a memory is real, but also not real.” I spoke quickly, with bravado. “If time is one long line and we’re all moving across it, there has to be a place we’re headed, and a place that we’ve just left. Obviously, the memory is the place that we left.” Rafe seemed impressed.
“That works if you believe in the concept of progress,” said Matthew, chiming in for the first time in half an hour of conversation. “If you think progress is a fallacy, then there’s no destination. We’re just barreling forward blindly.”
“I didn’t say a destination, I said a place. And just because we aren’t in the place we’ve come from, doesn’t mean we haven’t left it.”
“So what you’re saying is the opposite of Schrödinger’s cat.” Matthew smiled.
“What?”
“The cat in the box,” said Rafe. “Does the cat actually exist in the closed box if you can’t see it? A famous philosophical quandary.”
“I don’t care about philosophy,” I said, frowning. “I’m talking about physics.”
“So was he,” Rafe smiled, approvingly. “Physics and philosophy, science and stories, are more intertwined then some”—he looked at Matthew—“might make it seem. Those fables about your family aren’t nothing. They’re clues. They’re a way to move through time, both figuratively and literally.”
“So instead of moving in the straight line, you want to start doubling back,” I said, nodding. “To start moving in spirals.”
“Exactly! For decades scholars have thought it was words that held the secret to entry,” said Rafe. “But it seems clear to me it’s movement. It’s presence that’s needed. Physicality. Skin”—he winked—“on skin. Wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes,” I said. “Physicality. Of course.”
“I knew you’d understand.”
I wondered how much Rafe actually knew about me. He showed no sign of having been aware of my existence before our first encounter in the graveyard. I was certain that Peter had taken great pains to hide any connection between the research he published as the Toymaker and the anthropological work that he did under his own name. Rafe’s language was likely haphazard, his discussion of the physical meant not to frighten me but rather to provoke the response he must be used to from girls softened by his smile. Still, I felt anxious. I tried to appear normal. I kept my fingers hidden in the sleeves of my jacket. I shifted in my seat so that Rafe would not accidentally touch me while gesticulating. He did seem quite clever. I hoped he hadn’t guessed.
“Here,” he had said, outside that café at the edge of the highway, leaning down to pet a dog tied next to Marlowe. “Let him sniff your fingers, Maisie, he’s a sweet one. Come give him a pat.”
“Here,” in Matthew’s car, passing back a paper bag, “it’s just dried fruit and nuts, if you’re hungry.”
“Look! Go pick that flower. The color would be gorgeous in your hair.”
He doesn’t know, I told myself. How could he?
The Undiscovered Country
Deep in the wood, Imogen stalks a roaming roebuck, its tufty bottom a white shock against tangles of green. Her feet are blistered, her gut aches, yet she follows, for she feels she must do something, find some semblance of release for the pressure that has tightened her spine since the black-eyed girl awoke.
This wood makes all the women hunters. They know the animals within can never die, but cannot help but make chase. There is no better show of human power than to be proud purveyor of death, to attempt slaughter. To kill for sport, for indulgence, speaks to the infinite depths of human desire, an innate need to demonstrate the irreversible, to have lasting effect. Here, where time flows like honey, where their own deaths have died, the women need and they need, and it frightens them. During the hunt, that need abates.
The buck crashes into the black-eyed girl’s grove, paying the frozen child no mind, crossing a short distance and then pausing, looking back in hopes that stillness will lull his pursuer to submission. A yellow butterfly dances about his black nostrils, forcing him to sneeze in a sharp burst of breath.
Although Imogen does stop short when she breaks into the clearing, it is not because of the buck. Her impediment is the black-eyed girl herself, still lying motionless and silent on her pallet. Imogen sees the girl and stumbles, hands clutching her large, laden stomach. The color drains from her face. She crosses herself, whispering a prayer of protection.
Once Imogen has withdrawn her attention, the roebuck decides the chase has passed. Several hundred feet away, he nibbles at a bush, grunting as he digests, while Imogen stands staring at the black-eyed girl. Her anger shifts to something less tangible, water to mist.
Suddenly, the buck coughs and emits a distressed bleat, full-throated and low. He collapses, foam erupting from his mouth. Imogen watches. Nothing sickens in this shadow wood. In her centuries in residence, she has seen nothing die. She goes to the roebuck, strokes his neck and coos to him. She notices a cluster of bright berries tucked under the leaves where he had stopped to eat.
The animal twitches, his back leg manic, splayed at an improper angle, hummingbird quick. And then the convulsions slow until they cease altogether, the last notes of the roebuck’s life played out. His glassy eyes remain open.
Imogen runs a finger along the short fringe of his lashes, the knobbled stubs of his velvety antlers, the jaunty tips of his shapely ears. She goes to the roughage and plucks a stem of three ovular berries, their red almost translucent in the light. She rubs the branch between two fingers, spinning it, making the berries dance. She carries them to the black-eyed girl.
Solemnly, fully aware of the sin she is committing, Imogen holds the fruit to the black-eyed girl’s mouth. The black-eyed girl cannot turn her head or curse her. She cannot spit the sweet back in Imogen’s face, which is stoic as she exits the clearing.
The black-eyed girl blinks. She swallows the berries, relishing their juices. What might kill a roebuck will not harm her, not here in this wood. A different hunger gently prods her, a patient reminder, polite. Soon, she tells it, soon.
She wiggles her largest left toe.
13
Rafe was emphatic that without traveling each stop along the path, we’d be accomplishing nothing, which meant first one long twisting trek through muddy fields and sparse groves, and then another as we made our way back along the outer rings, walking in the opposite direction. Only then, said Rafe, could we fully explore the spiral’s center. Matthew said the whole affair reminded hi
m of groups that went in search of missing bodies. Rafe whistled as we walked, his spirits high.
“Ever since I can remember, I’ve been set on doing things correctly,” he said, grinning. “Whether showing all my work at complex math problems when I was a kid, or slaving over ancient runes’ translations during my graduate studies. Better to do it slowly and correctly the first time than have to start all over, am I right? It’s always bothered the bejeezus out of my mother, who’d ask why I needed so long to tie a shoelace, or why I was ignoring my little sister’s scraped knee. I’d tell her I wasn’t ignoring anything, just focused. I’d say to get what you want out of life, it’s important to have singular focus, wouldn’t you?”
I was behind him, so he didn’t see me nod.
Matthew, who’d gone on ahead of us, unconcerned with proper foot placement, was not yet so far that he could not hear Rafe’s speech. He didn’t make a sound, but in response strayed deliberately from the path, so that rather than tracing a spiral he was walking toward our ultimate location in a diagonal line.
It was dark by the time Rafe and I joined him back at the outer edge of that first spiral, where we had left the car.
“We’re going to call it a night,” Matthew said. “It’s too dark to do anything else.”
“Too dark to look for Peter? But he might be in trouble. We should keep on through the night, just in case.”
Matthew shook his head. “We’ve waited this long already. And we’ll be more effective at . . . whatever this is . . . with a few hours of sleep.”
“Why don’t you rest here, and Maisie and I will head back into—” Rafe started.
“No,” said Matthew. “We’ll stick together, and we’ll wait until it’s light.”
Rafe shrugged, then winked at me. “Whatever you say, Captain. Don’t worry, Maisie.” He put a hand on my sleeve, and I tried not to startle at the contact, to wait the appropriate amount of time before pulling away. “A few hours won’t make much difference. I’ve got a quick call to make. Be back soon.”
I watched him walk off with his mobile phone, tracking his movements by its unnatural light, and tried to parse the meaning of that wink while Matthew prepared a place for us to sleep. If Rafe said a few hours wouldn’t matter, then they wouldn’t. He knew more about my father’s journey than I did. And along with his interest in Peter and the forest, Rafe was apparently now interested in me. Unlike Matthew’s interest—cold and cautious, scientific—I felt a heat from Rafe’s attentions. I felt a strength in the curves of my hips and the heft of my breasts, a power budding every time Rafe looked at me.
When he returned, we spent the night as we would for most of our journey: myself sprawled across the back seat, Matthew and Rafe out on blankets in the grass, flanking each side of the car. It was like camping trips he’d taken as a kid, Matthew insisted. Rafe told me that he liked to see the stars.
WE RETURNED TO the center of the spiral the next morning to discover an abandoned, three-walled structure that had been hidden by the mist the night before. We were, I realized, at the westernmost edge of the forest that bordered Urizon, though it seemed hardly the same being, its trees slimmer and spread much farther apart, its floor level, the grass lush. Mother Farrow had told me that at one point this whole continent was forest, webs of wood from coast to coast. Like an emperor expanding his holdings, one original tree must have seeded and spread, until a migratory bird might look down to see green in all directions.
“I thought there was a lock we had to fasten. Or unfasten,” said Matthew, leaning against the far side of the building, watching us walk around the structure with his arms crossed over his chest.
“Not a literal one,” said Rafe. Again he put a hand on my sleeve, giving my clothed shoulder a squeeze of recognition, as if to suggest that I understood what Matthew did not. This time, I did not startle at his touch.
We could see the sky through the rifts in the roof. A gray morning light made a brief halo over Matthew’s hair, then was gone as wispy clouds sailed past to block it. A thin stream of sweat had gathered between my breasts, another at my temple.
On the side opposite from which Matthew had parked, we found what seemed to be a cellar—a dug-in pit, lined at the bottom with stone. A fossilized ladder led from the side of the barn down into the hole.
“Looks like an old jail cell,” said Matthew, behind me. “See the remains of the chains?”
THE NEXT LEG of our drive was spent debating the significance of the jail cell, and discussing the meaning of the spirals and their role in Rafe’s research. Matthew took the stance that we were wasting time, our efforts clearly amounting to nothing.
“What, you were expecting some rift in the sky? Some blaze of light? That isn’t how it works. Unrealistic.” Rafe shook his head, half smiling.
“Something, at least,” said Matthew, pulling onto the main highway.
“There is something,” Rafe countered. “A sort of electricity. You can feel it, Maisie, can’t you?”
I nodded, though the charge surging through my body seemed to have more to do with Rafe himself than our recent accomplishment. I noticed every time he shifted weight in front of me, aware of his slightest adjustment. Was he equally attuned to my movements? At times I thought I caught him looking at me, his expression one of thoughtful satisfaction. I wanted to unsettle him. When I leaned down to retie my shoelace, I deliberately repositioned my shirt so that the tops of my breasts were just visible, pressed together.
Once we had exhausted the topics of rituals and deities and doors, I found myself dallying with flirtatious repartee, at which I was not adept, but was aided by the loud bursts of sound that periodically exploded from the engine of the car and distracted from my worst faux pas.
“So you’ve never seen the city? You are in for quite a treat,” Rafe said.
“I know I am, especially seeing it with you. I’m sure there’s more that we can see . . . together.”
I caught the reflection of Matthew’s rolling eyes in the rearview mirror.
WE STOPPED AT a roadside oasis for something to eat after I’d spent twenty minutes remarking to no one in particular that we hadn’t done much the night before regarding dinner. Matthew went in to order us some sandwiches and coffee, leaving me alone, for the moment, with Rafe. We got out of the car to stretch our legs, the small dirt parking lot empty around us, despite Matthew’s worry that there’d be a crowd inside.
“Your hair looks pretty like that,” said Rafe. “Did you have it that way before?”
My body tingled with the compliment, urging me toward him. I wasn’t sure how to respond, but before I could embarrass myself I started coughing, my throat suddenly blocked.
“Maisie?”
My face was hot, my head felt buoyant. Rafe gave me a large thump on the back, which only increased my discomfort. “Are you choking?” he asked, and I shook my head, although I thought perhaps I was, and the panic that accompanied this thought made me gag harder.
Rafe wrung his hands, then pressed them against his own abdomen, as if practicing for how he might assist me. Luckily, we had no need for his experimentation. After a moment, the guilty parties showed themselves: three perfectly round red berries came up in a swirl of bile and landed on the grass. I cleared my throat, embarrassed and confused. I’d had a scone for breakfast, and a cheese sandwich the night before. There had been no berries. I had not eaten any berries.
“I’ll grab some water for you,” Rafe said, dashing over to the car.
“I must not have chewed them properly,” I mumbled. “Silly of me.” Had I imagined it? But, no, Rafe had seen them too. Were they some sort of warning? A reminder of the dangers that awaited if I listened to the urges I had recently discovered, if I gave myself to Rafe? A punishment for wanting.
I shook off the thought, “I’m fine.” A viscous wetness like an amniotic sac held the berries, clustered in the grass. “I’m fine,” I repeated. But I could not rid myself of the bitter taste the berries had left u
pon my tongue.
A Few Brief Years of Possibility
The black-eyed girl lies on her bier and blinks up at the silhouettes of branches, wisps of cloud. A bold bird hovers close above her, while others warble his praise from their perch on the outstretched finger of a nearby poplar. These wrens have teased the black-eyed girl for weeks, now. They’ve grown reckless, diving and cheeping, showing off for their brothers. Beautiful, dull targets, putting themselves within reach.
Look!
Closer comes this spotted wren, closer, closer. Here, he thinks, what fun. He has learned from the others, watched them experiment, rejoiced each time they returned to the tree branch, boasting of success.
The foolish wren emits a mating call, darts back, giving a sly, beady look to his intended paramour. He whistles. Down he comes. A wing brushes the black-eyed girl’s cheek.
Her hand shoots up, reflexes newly tight, a spring come suddenly uncoiled. The black-eyed girl grabs the wren. She feels his oily skin against her own, the straw blades of his feathers.
She squeezes.
ACROSS THE CLEARING, Mary watches the bird, hears the gush of his insides collapsing. Afraid, but too curious to run, she hides behind a large tree. Cheek pressed to bark, she peers carefully around until her own eyes meet those black ones, upon which Mary twitches and then disappears from the black-eyed girl’s view. Mary takes several slow breaths, bracing herself against the tree trunk, observed by a rabbit that has halted his consumption of a sprig of purple flowers. She hisses at the animal, hoping to frighten him away, but the rabbit merely frowns at Mary and continues his meal.
Mary’s mythology is limited. Despite all Lucy has told her of toppling empires, breaking ground, Mary can think of only one use for a child of the forest. Mary wants the black-eyed girl to grant her wishes. Ideally there will be three, a proper number, but Mary is not so proud that she’d falter at just one. And if the girl has only one wish to bestow upon the women of the forest, Mary is determined to make that wish her own.