What Should Be Wild

by Julia Fine

  I imagined Rafe with me as I showered, the water running down his shoulders, my mouth on his neck, my tongue against his teeth. I wondered if he was imagining the same. When I stepped back into the room, he was seated on one of the beds, flipping through a notebook. The television hummed, its wavering fuzz dissolving every minute or so into blurred, discolored faces, as if the people trapped inside its wires were struggling, not quite failing, to break through. Help them, I thought, though I knew that they had no true need. A covered tray sat on the desk, atop the tourism brochures.

  “You must be starving,” Rafe said. “Would you believe this place does room service?”

  My mouth twisted, confused.

  “Room service,” repeated Rafe, “a meal delivered to our room from the hotel kitchen. Here—” He stood and offered me his arm, ready to escort me to the desk. Because we both wore long sleeves, I took it, and let my hand linger.

  Rafe offered me the plastic desk chair and I sat down, excited for my dinner, although I was growing restless, unnerved by the pressure of our intimacy, how he licked sauce from his lips, the way his head cocked toward the incoherent drone of the TV. The tension between where Rafe sat on the bed and my place at the desk grew increasingly hard to ignore.

  “Any word from Peter yet?” I asked, both eager to see my father and afraid of what might happen were no one to intervene.

  Rafe shook his head. “I asked the man up front to let us know. He’ll send him up when he arrives. Just enjoy yourself! Your first hotel! I’m sure he’ll be here soon.”

  I smiled and tried to comply, but could not make myself at ease.

  “You mustn’t worry.” Rafe grinned, and jumped suddenly up from his seat. He collected our used dishes and piled them on the tray, then reached for a gleaming silver pitcher. “Have some tea,” he instructed, already pouring. I nodded my consent, and lifted the cup once he’d placed it in front of me. The drink was the perfect temperature, having cooled a bit during our meal, and it tasted of licorice with some underlying, sweeter sort of herb. Certainly not my preferred flavor, but I did not wish to be rude. I drank.

  “Tell me more about what to expect with Peter. What we’ll do once he arrives,” I said, in an attempt at innocuous conversation.

  Rafe shrugged. “My part isn’t all that interesting. I’ll just do what needs to be done.” As when clouds clear quickly from an otherwise blue sky, his eyes took on a sudden intensity. They looked directly into mine, and made me shudder. “It’s important to remember, Maisie,” he said, “that we all do what needs to be done, when it comes down to it.”

  I did not understand, but before I could ask him to explain himself, a crashing sound came from below our room’s window. The backfiring of a van, the screech of tires. I lifted my eyes toward the noise and felt my stomach churning, my head begin to spin. My body tilted off my chair. I felt Rafe’s large hands catch me, squeeze my sleeved arms, turn me around.

  “Remember,” he said, his eyes pinpricks, his voice rough.

  And then I was falling and all was dark.

  Part

  IV

  Inaccurate Translations

  When Peter Cothay pulled into Urizon’s drive, the great house stood strict and imposing, and quite obviously empty. All that greeted Peter was the dog—if you could call the creature such, which Maisie did—its canine form restless and panting, whining like it knew something vital.

  “What?” he asked as he entered through the kitchen, walked the hallway to his study, Marlowe nipping at his heels. “What have I missed?”

  Within hours of Mrs. Blott’s passing, Peter had realized that Maisie must be trapped inside the forest. Abandoning precautions, he had traveled the spiral path to rescue her, spending weeks paying homage to the history, whispering the old prayers. He knew precisely where she’d gone, and how to find her. He knew he must complete the final step. And still a part of him imagined that his daughter would greet him upon his return to the estate. A part of him hoped that the late nights, the travel, the research—his whole life’s work—would in the end amount to nothing.

  PETER GREW OUT of short pants at finishing school, where upon hearing his first fairy story he developed an interest in the exotic—ancient practice, modern myth—that bordered on obsession. He did not stumble blindly to Urizon. Curiosity piqued, Peter sought out Laura Blakely and married her, knowing full well her family’s past. Captivated by the whispers, the old tales of the wood, he believed himself capable of solving the riddle that had eluded other scholars of his kind for centuries. He was sure that he could find an explanation for the strangeness of the forest that bordered the estate, for the villagers who emerged from the tree line at the solstices with accounts of woodland spirits and wandering oaks, their minds unhinged, eyes wild, the erratic disappearances of years of Blakely women. Seeking out answers might take time, but Peter Cothay was nothing if not patient. He envisioned a comfortable future, a career at the nearby university, a book or two published, a few months of each year spent exploring while Laura kept house.

  He did not expect to lose his wife so quickly. He did not expect to raise a little girl all on his own. He’d stood in the icy night air outside the hospital the night of his daughter’s birth and smoked his first cigarette in years. Pounded his chest to clear the coughing. Cleaned his glasses with a shirtsleeve. Decided he’d give it a go.

  How difficult could it be, Peter had asked himself, to act as lone parent? With a large property, some money, a new friend willing to assist—how much would his life, already drifting off its axis, truly change once the girl was brought home? If anything, a little Blakely girl could help him where her mother had failed. He’d expected to find Laura Blakely strange, tainted by the stories of her family. Instead, she had been sweet, attentive, a bit absentminded—overall profoundly normal. She did not sleepwalk or mumble spells or wake screaming from arcane nightmares. Yet Peter was surprised at the ease with which she fit into his life; how much he cared for her. It was fitting that some small bit of Laura would continue in the form of her daughter. A memorial to the mother; a continuation of the family line.

  For years he saw his child as an experiment. Maisie did not make much noise, or take up much space in the house. She was excellent research. The case study Peter published was met with wide acclaim, touted as the first of its kind in its amalgam of folklore and science, if occasionally scorned by certain colleagues who thought it an unserious pursuit. But Peter was quite serious. He took note of the little girl’s development, tested her limits. He watched the wood, waiting for a sign that the child was an extension of its power, might hold the answers to the Blakely family curse. Some days he would forget to feed her, to dispose of soiled diapers. He would find himself chastised by Mrs. Blott, scolded for thoughtlessness, even called cruel.

  But time bred love. His regard for his daughter had grown. He wanted, now, to be a set of armor, to replace her heart with his. He might have been a better father, might have dandled her or whatnot on his knee, but there was this: if he could, Peter Cothay would stretch himself around his only child like a membrane, so that the dark parts of the world would never find her, so that she would always be the full golden yolk of a hen’s egg before it breaks.

  HE WAS SURPRISED to find his study in a state of disarray. Not that Peter saw himself a paragon of organization, but the sloppy way the papers had been piled, the displacement of the dust on the desk—someone had been there. His suspicion was confirmed when he opened the file drawer and saw only a dusting of mouse droppings where should have been his working copy of his map.

  Peter knew at once who’d taken it. Rafe’s letter of apology, read and reread, still sat crumpled in the pocket of his jacket.

  Rafe, who had written him years ago asking for patronage, needing a mentor. Rafe, who believed Peter’s theories when others had laughed. Rafe, who’d seen only hand-drawn copies of the symbols in the book Peter had found under the floorboards after Laura’s death, before Maisie burst from within her
. Rafe, who said he’d come up with the proper translations.

  “Blood,” Rafe had insisted, blue eyes eager, seated across from Peter in that roadside café. “There’s absolutely no question. The symbol means blood.”

  “It could mean lifeblood.” Peter shook his head, turning the paper so that he could see it more clearly. “It could mean roots, or family.”

  “No.” Rafe had pounded his fist on the Formica table, attracting the attention of the tired-looking woman at the counter. Peter gave him a stern look, and Rafe continued with his voice considerably lower. “It’s clearly blood—a sacrifice of blood.”

  “But how can it be actual blood? A body of blood that keeps living? That’s impossible. My boy, the runes mean family. A sacrifice of family. A family that continues even after the wood has been opened, the sacrifice made.”

  “No, it has to be blood,” Rafe pressed. “Look at this symbol of a body here, these lines leading into the forest. The knife slitting the palms, the two palms pressed together. It’s the only explanation. Blood explains why it’s so difficult, why it takes so long. You have to calculate the time it takes for the blood to replenish in the body—use iron supplements, folic acid—it may have been impossible hundreds of years ago, but not with all the medical advances we have now.”

  Peter had listened for another few minutes, then come up with some nonsense about a class to teach, a paper to grade. He’d hurried home to Maisie, unperturbed by Rafe’s adamancy until the next day, when Mrs. Blott had brought the mail in from town.

  Peter remembered Rafe’s words, scrawled onto a sheet of notebook paper, stuffed hastily into the envelope:

  Cothay, I’m right about the blood, where it should come from. I know you are the Toymaker. You know that to open that forest we will need blood from the Child.

  Peter had thrown the scrap of paper in the fire, watched its edges blacken, the flames lick the words away. After that, he could have sworn some of his old notebooks were missing, the ones with the notes he’d eventually turn to published studies, the ones that tied his daughter to the subject of his work. Was that how Rafe knew? Because he’d stolen the evidence, somehow snuck into the house?

  Peter put the work first, always. Pursuit of knowledge was the goal, at the cost of all else. He’d respected Rafe because Rafe was the same: could spend hours bent over a manuscript, neglecting meals, mothers’ birthdays, pretty girls. Peter had seen himself in Rafe, and thus he knew the boy was capable of going to the furthest ends, would justify each action, no matter who it hurt, as a sacrifice to knowledge. It was only now he realized that fatherhood had changed him. He’d found a limit to who he was willing to hurt, to what he was willing to give. Somehow, without warning, a love had crept up on Peter Cothay, a love he had never imagined.

  ON HIS WAY into the wood, walking down the last terrace, Peter paused at the plot that had been turnips back when Laura was alive to tend the gardens, the plot that he’d transformed for his daughter, digging out years of rocks and old roots, their spindly anchors stretching deeper than he ever knew they could. Yanking them free, he’d remembered the rubbery blue cord that connected the last vestige of his wife to his new daughter. The odd curving scissors, their blades like the beak of a bird, gleaming in the fluorescence of the delivery room. Laura on the operating table, her upper body covered by a thin paper sheet. The nurses could not close her eyes, so they had kept the body covered by a series of paper sheets that wilted in the warm damp of the hospital room, its climate curated and stifling. Peter could not resist raising the sheet once when he was alone with Laura and her strange, swelling stomach. His wife had not withered—her skin was cold but bright. Fingernails the same length, freshly manicured. That splotch of pink polish on her left index finger still boasting the whorl of his thumbprint—Careful, she’d said, laughing, they haven’t dried yet. Now I’ll have to do it over. A physician’s assistant found him there, staring. She ushered Peter out. He had not looked again.

  PETER KNELT BY the sandbox, a recent rain making his digging difficult and slow. Despite his dirtied shirt cuffs, the scrape of wet sand on his hands, he did not stop until he’d found the soggy edge of a plastic bag, explored its borders to feel for the flimsy cover of a book.

  It was still there, where he had hidden it, weeks earlier. The book that had saved him after Laura’s death, when he’d thought himself lost, peeking out from a floorboard in what would become Maisie’s nursery. The book with its promises, its cryptic instructions, its symbols and ambiguous translations. Rafe had not stolen it, which meant he must have been stymied. Without the book’s instructions, Rafe could not have gone further in his quest to harvest blood. He could not know how or where or when—he must have given up. Peter reburied the manuscript quickly, relieved.

  There’d been a day, a winter morning, on which Maisie—maybe six years old—had rushed up to the nursery, abandoning an intricate performance with her dolls to do his work. She’d looked up at him, so trusting, chatting while he readied a scalpel, a swab of antiseptic, a vial with which to collect her blood. The instruments gleamed in the pale light that reflected off the snow outside, and in his gloved hands they’d felt so cold. A sacrifice of blood, he’d thought, picturing the runes in the book—a knife held to a palm, a prostrate body—while watching his daughter’s small, heart-shaped mouth, the freckles scattered across her cheeks, the bit of sleep still scabbing the corner of an eye.

  “Go back and play, dear,” he’d told her.

  Her face fell. “I thought that we were going to play together.”

  “We will, darling. Soon. But the plans that I had for today . . . We’ll reschedule.”

  They had not rescheduled this particular experiment, the harvest of her blood. Blood, a word with so many meanings, so many uses, so many goals. As Peter’s love for Maisie deepened, his understanding deepened with it, and he saw that blood meant more than the mere fluids of the body. Peter was his daughter’s blood, just as surely as the cruor that ran though her. Now that he knew love’s dual brand of pain and satisfaction, Peter knew that the sacrifice the book asked for could not be simple bloodshed, the slicing of a palm, no matter how Rafe made the case.

  Peter would have to bring himself, a sacrifice of family, to the forest to complete the ancient ritual. He’d go inside, he’d find his girl. He’d save her.

  The Shimmering Thing

  The black-eyed girl waits for Peter. She hears him fumbling at the edge of the forest, watches him step tentatively past the trees. She cracks her knuckles, relishing each pop of cartilage. She whispers, and her voice echoes through the wood, a low hum that finds all the Blakely women: “Come to me.” They do.

  19

  I dreamed myself as a very small child, playing in the wood beside Urizon. I was running, and Marlowe was with me. We were chasing something slippery as it twisted between oaks and rocks and poplars, always far ahead of us, always out of sight. I could not make out what it was, but I felt it was a part of me, or, more precisely, that I was a part of it, one of its belongings, a piece it had let go and was now luring home. It whispered to me: Come.

  The running was marvelous, air exploding through me in long, lovely bursts, sweet-smelling trees spilling past me. I laughed, and Marlowe barked, and as our shimmering enchantress danced across the trees ahead, I felt myself to be eternal.

  And then I tripped upon a thick tree root, a giant’s finger extended in punishment. The clear sky clouded over. I lurched forward and caught myself with the palms of my hands, feeling the forest floor scrape mean across my wrists. I was bleeding. When I looked up, there was Rafe, silent and watching me. With him were Matthew, Ginny from the auto repair shop, Mrs. Blott. Mother Farrow was there, and the solicitor, and the man from the hotel, and little Colette and her sisters. Almost every living person I had ever encountered had planted him or herself in a line like garden flowers and was staring at me, brows bent, disapproving.

  And my blood mixed with the earth’s blood, the soil, and that dust-dry so
il turned fertile.

  I lay there on the forest floor, the heels of my hands, my wrists, speckled with burgundy. I looked at them, held them proffered out together as if waiting to be bound, and the blood crawled slowly down my palms out to my fingers, in teardrops to the ground.

  Then, finally, Peter, his hair mussed, his glasses askew. He knelt with me, his back to the watchers, my judges, the crowd. He wrapped my wrists in a cold, clean bandage. Up high, above the trees, from the slight corner of an eye, I saw the shimmering thing glint over branches, turn and take flight across the sky.

  I AWOKE IN a small, damp room to the slicing blades of a gray plastic fan, face creaking one way then the other, watching me like a passing driver taking in the thrill of an accident. In one corner sat a simple metal cot. In another an old toilet bowl, missing its cover. My body ached. I was alone. My wrists were bound with cold metal.

  As fear increased my heart rate I could feel myself weaken, and I tried to take slow, calming breaths.

  “Rafe?” I called. “Peter?”

  Nothing.

  “Well, then,” I said, trying to hold my voice steady.

  I stretched out to examine my body. My stockings were gone. I felt exhausted and sore, angry and throbbing both inside and out. My arms and legs were swirled with various bruises, yellow-green and purple, no longer fresh. At the joint of my right arm was a thick wad of cotton, held to my skin with strips of tape. It smarted when I flexed, and with trepidation I wriggled off the wrap to find the cause: a swollen pink mark upon the vein.