What Should Be Wild

by Julia Fine

  The wood, which in memory abided by the main road, waiting to run rampant until out of travelers’ sights, had become greedy in my absence. The road between my home and Mrs. Blott’s had fully changed. Weeds burst, luscious, from the gravel. Fallen branches made barricades. Twice Matthew stopped, got out to move them, but it was soon apparent that he’d need more than his own strength to clear a straight path for the car.

  “I can walk the rest,” I told him. “You should go back and park at the cottage.”

  He looked concerned, made signs of protest, but I swore that I was strong enough. That I needed a moment of solitude, I had to clear my head. As I spoke these words to Matthew, I believed them.

  “Are you sure?” he asked me. “Truly?”

  I said that I was. I would be fine. Coulton was gone, Rafe was gone, there was no one left to hurt me.

  Matthew took a deep breath and scratched at the hair above his ear. He would see to the cottage, he said finally, clean up a bit, then join me. I thanked him, and watched him maneuver the car until it was facing the direction from which we’d come. He gave me a somber, single-fingered salute, and pulled away.

  As soon as he was out of sight, I realized I’d made the wrong decision. The quiet of the empty road was an odd sort of quiet, the breeze was the wrong sort of breeze. The forest, I thought suddenly, was watching me, and whispering.

  Still, I kept on to Urizon.

  I’D ASSUMED MY home would be the same it always had been, the ivy perhaps thicker, the garden overgrown. I’d left in late spring, the drunken landscape thick with fog and dreamlike, as I imagined those moments leading up to one’s birth, the misty passages we travel before coming into color, into light. In spring, the gardens smelled mildewed and spongy. Trees offered up yellow buds of leaves.

  Then there was Urizon in the summer, when I would sweat through my long sleeves and roll them to my elbows without consequence, spend all day out in my sand plot lazing in the heat while the old stone walls faded and baked. It was summer I’d been gone for, the whole of it, all the long days and blazing suns, the late, rainless thunders with their arduous crackling lights. My first full season not at home.

  Now it was autumn, Urizon’s lawn bleached, the forest behind it orange-red. Some trees had already shed their leaves, and their bare branches made a latticework for the light to pass through, laying shadows like doilies against the building’s facade. An eastern turret pierced the sky, bloodying the late afternoon sun as it descended.

  There were more trees than I remembered on the property, encroaching on the house. The ivy was thicker, and the garden appeared eerily overgrown. I could not find the stone bench that had sat beside the pillars marking the estate’s entrance. The wood seemed to have eaten it, as it had the front drive. Though spread wide, the house’s stance now seemed squat against the exorbitance grown up around it, its closed rooms useless as a paralyzed appendage. It should have been locked up and empty, but lights shone through the ivy covering the windows. The front door hung open. Black smoke rose from a chimney on the west side of the house.

  For a moment I was certain this was Peter, home and waiting for me. My body folded into itself with relief, and I smiled. Then I remembered that we did not use the front door, that the foyer had been sheeted and dark for as long as I’d known. The day swirled dizzy.

  I heard a rustling in the dry leaves that blanketed the yard and jumped back, fully alert, but it was only my dear Marlowe come to greet me. I laughed at my panic. Marlowe, at least, had not changed in my absence: his coat remained glossy, his body was strong. Joyous, I tripped toward him, my arms spread like wings, and pressed my forehead to his chest, absorbed his heat into my lonely fingers. Marlowe’s tail, wagging furiously, got caught up in some brambles, and he gave me a generous wet kiss once I released him. Then he was off through the tangled lawn, into the house. I rose to follow.

  To enter the house, I had to climb overgrown bushes, finagle through flower beds, step over upturned benches that vines bolted to the floor. At one point I lifted my skirt and a twig tore my stocking, leaving a gash in the fabric and a bare slice of skin that I could not help but hit against the plants I passed, their patterns inverting, dead leaves turning green. There were so many that it seemed a pointless task to go correct them. I struggled to imagine the storm that wreaked such havoc on the yard, the winds that had cast trees at such odd angles, the strength of the sun that had encouraged such cancerous growth.

  I climbed the three steps that led up to Urizon’s front entrance, surprised that after decades of disuse it had been possible for someone to open the door, that its hinges had not rusted, that weather had not painted it into another wall. I stepped through and turned to pull it shut behind me, but found it would not close. A barberry was rooted in the jamb, growing deep, its trunk firmly planted, branches fanning waxy fruit. I touched it with a finger, waited and watched as it shriveled and died. After several firm pushes, the iron door closed over its withered remains.

  “There,” I said to myself, pleased to have imposed a bit of order. It was a small victory, and yet I felt better equipped to deal with whatever had taken up residence in the rest of the house. I expected a vagrant, a nest of squirrels, some runaway child from the village. There was no way to prepare for what lay before me.

  Tree roots had burst up through the tiles in the kitchen. Drifts of dirt covered the appliances, pots had been knocked from their shelves. Jars of jam were smashed against the table, their glass jeweled in clusters, fruit red as precious gems. The refrigerator sat overturned, its innards rotting, and I plugged my nose against its smell.

  I gazed upon it all with a fascinated detachment, assuming that I must be sleeping. The changes that had come upon the house would soon resolve into the home I’d always known, just as the strange women at the river all those months ago had turned into young girls at play.

  “Peter?” I whispered, shutting my eyes when I reached his study door, squeezing my fingernails into my palms in an effort to will myself awake. I took a breath and pushed the door open.

  The stump of a hollowed tree, teeming with insects, soft with age, had burst up through his desk. Books were thrown from the shelves by the vines that had replaced them, the closet where he’d kept his robe and slippers was filled with swarms of cicadas. Reeling back, I crushed a spent exoskeleton under my boot, and the crunch it made punctured my panic. The horror of my situation finally filled me. I vomited the lunch I’d shared with Matthew onto the remains of my father’s correspondence.

  I called for Marlowe, who did not heed me. For the second time that day, recalling the singed horses, I smelled burning. The smoke I’d seen outside Urizon had come from the chimney of the library fireplace. I crept down the hall and pushed open the door, my heart racing.

  There they were—the intruders. Three strange women gathered at the far side of the room. One, tall and pale and bony, faced the fire—its paper-fed flames flaring yellower, hotter—one, older and pinch-faced, stood guard at the far door. The last, young and pretty and visibly pregnant, sat on the overstuffed red chaise longue I had so often curled up on, my own favorite spot to sit daydreaming, reading my books, nestling under my blankets with Marlowe. Now my dog was splayed out by the fireplace, belly angled to its warmth, his eyes closed and his breathing slow and steady. He seemed relaxed and vulnerable, as if only his masters moved inside the house. In the past, his comfort would have appeased me. Four months prior I would have immediately let down my guard.

  Now, I stood back by the east entrance, the women before me so absorbed in their task that they failed to notice my arrival. As in Peter’s office, most of the library books had been pushed to the floor, vines and branches breaking through the wooden backings of the bookshelves to topple them. The tall woman ripped pages out at random, from histories and treatises on science, from my old picture books and glossy tomes of replicated art. A portrait had been pulled from the wall and fully ravaged, the canvas torn so that only the bottommost oil-drawn b
utton of the model’s brown morning suit remained, but I thought it the painting of my great-grandfather, John Blakely, that had hung in the hall by the ballroom. On the carpet near Marlowe sat a large pile of laminated papers, unusual symbols, drawings and maps, which I recognized as years of Peter’s work.

  If ever there would be a time for caution, it was now, myself a stranger in the home that had so altered in my absence. I might have run, telephoned Matthew, might have hid, prepared to fight. I might have done anything other than what I found myself doing next, giving in to my emotion. But I was no longer afraid to exercise my talents; I knew I could protect myself if needed. My father was still missing, and these papers were my only clue to his whereabouts. If I did not act, they, along with centuries of Blakely collections, would be gone.

  “What are you doing?” I shouted, rushing forward, reaching down to gather as many manuscripts as I could hold, stumbling on a stump hidden under the carpet.

  None of the women turned in my direction. Not even Marlowe acknowledged my outburst. The tall one who’d been supplying the fire with pages continued to do so, not shying from the popping of its blaze or the foul smell of the plastic as it burned.

  “Stop it!” I stepped over Marlowe, intending to stop her myself if she would not comply. The woman simply crouched lower, moved closer to the fire, and ripped another page of Peter’s notes.

  Thinking only of saving my father’s small legacy, I grabbed the woman’s wrist with the pads of my fingers. I expected her to crumple, drop the papers, and fall forward, into flames. Instead, she clasped my hand in both her own. She turned toward me.

  “Maisie,” she whispered. Her lips were a peculiar sort of blue. Her hands were very cold, much colder, I thought, than living hands should be.

  “How do you know my name?” I pulled back. Her face was familiar, but I could not quite place it, summoned only a few notes of some forgotten tune.

  “I’m your mother,” she said. “And I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Insatiable Hunger

  Kathryn watches Matthew Hareven as he hurries through the forest. She positions herself a little ways behind him, following silently, suppressing a smile. Hundreds of years of education have prepared her for this conquest, this final confession. The veil hiding the forest has lowered. The black-eyed girl stalks her own prey between the trees. Kathryn knows she is nearing her end.

  When Matthew stops to get his bearings, Kathryn steps across the boundary of true forest and false. Matthew is startled by her shabby dress, her certainty. The accent of her speech, both foreign and familiar at once.

  “Have you lost your way?” Kathryn asks him. Matthew is clever, senses something is not right. But he has lost his way, and he knows that to refuse help at this hour would be unwise. The light, once it begins to fade, goes quickly. Creatures more dangerous than a pretty young woman make their home here in this wood. And on the other side is Maisie—alone, waiting.

  “I may be lost,” he confesses. “If you could point me toward the Blakely estate, I’d be forever in your debt.”

  “Oh,” says Kathryn, smiling. “I can do much more than that.”

  He blinks at her, the confusion that descends upon all the men who enter the shadow forest threatening to overtake him. He tries to fight the tide of it, blinking hard to beat back the hazy waves. Then his shoulders loosen, his jaw relaxes. He smiles, and lets Kathryn take his hand.

  THE BLACK-EYED GIRL waits until Kathryn has hidden Matthew under a tangle of ivy, nuzzled him, straddled him, coaxed him close to climax, before moving toward the pair. Matthew’s eyes are closed, but Kathryn sees her. She pauses to acknowledge the arrival with a nod.

  “Mine.” The black-eyed girl mouths the word, tasting its shape, listening to the suck of her own saliva as it pools behind her teeth.

  Kathryn consents. She presses herself farther, sends Matthew deeper, lifts her small chin up in blessing to the sky.

  In the midst of her pleasure, Kathryn summons the thought she has buried, the words she prepared so long ago to declare proudly at the block, before the pyre; the defiance that she swallowed with the creaking of the iron door the morning one fate spared her and another took its place; the thought she hated, and then loved herself for branding into her brain: I am not sorry. I would do it all again.

  A Sisyphean task, desire’s fulfillment: content that will not sour with time and with touch. A spring that will not spoil in summer’s heat.

  The black-eyed girl cracks Kathryn’s neck quickly, suspending her, forever, in her joy.

  28

  If my mother were alive, had, as foretold by Mother Farrow, been constantly watching me, why had she taken so long to appear? Where had she been when, as a child, curled fetal on my four-post bed, I pressed my palms against my neck, my chest, my burgeoning hips, aware that no one else would? When, months ago, I made eyes at Rafe, lapping up each drop of his poison? If she truly cared, why had I seen no sign of her while I was held by Coulton? What use was she if she’d abandoned me during my hour of greatest need?

  And yet—

  I had lost so much; I felt it right I should gain something. My time imprisoned had not fully turned me. Despite all my experience, I was still disposed to trust. Despite childhood indoctrination, despite betrayal, despite torture—it was the sort of anomaly that made me feel there was something greater than reason that guided me. Peter would have said that behaviors are determined by principles, theories. That the difference between Theory of God and Theory of Not God was actually quite slim, each a slightly different lens through which to choose to view the world. One a shade lighter, the other negligibly darker—what mattered was that both were held up to the eye and used to filter our experience. It was easier to change the lens than to remove the vehicle of understanding, easier to adjust my sense of how I fit into the world than reconceive of the world entirely.

  Maybe life was gentler than my previous conceptions had allowed me to believe. Maybe my mother had spent all these years invisibly beside me, ready to step in if she was needed, but allowing me to first learn from my mistakes. Maybe it was she who had inspired my escape, who could absolve me. Maybe she’d been captured in the forest all this time, could leave its confines only now that some boundary had been broken. This was something to ask her, if I could conquer my sudden shyness. One of so many, many things.

  There she was. Sixteen years gone. Come back for me.

  “There, there,” she said, taking me into her arms, stroking my hair.

  A mother who was not only alive, but could hold me. A mother I did not repulse. A mother I had not killed. My chest began to spasm with deep hiccups.

  “Coward,” hissed one of the remaining two women, who I had quite forgotten in my mother’s embrace. I looked past my mother’s shoulder to see her. She was beady-eyed, older, with a strong scent of the animal about her. In fact, I realized that my mother was emitting a less-than-choice odor as well, and as I recovered my composure I found myself trying not to gag as she tucked me to her rank, dirt-stained breast. I was no rose myself, still stank of sweat and blood and horses, but this was nothing compared to the aroma of my mother. I was torn between the wonderful new touch of her, and her stench.

  I pulled away but kept hold of her hands, marveling at their marble smoothness, their unearthly chill. From this angle I could see her more clearly, and was startled to find that she looked nothing like me. She was porcelain-skinned and veiny, her nose was peaked, her nostrils high and thin. Her lips were the color of crushed blueberries, chapped purple with small white whorls of flesh. Her hair was black and very straight.

  I felt I recognized her, and yet she looked nothing like the pictures of my mother I had seen in Peter’s albums, a rosy woman, large-breasted and happy.

  I fought to create reason around this discrepancy. I supposed this was what death would do.

  I was awkward. “Shall I call you . . . Peter, my father, has me call him . . . Peter. Shall I call you Laura?”

  The
older, hissing woman laughed unkindly. The third, between the other two in age—solemn-faced and sad-eyed, perhaps seven months laden with child—opened her mouth but did not speak.

  My mother petted my wrist. “Why, no, my dear.” Her fingernails were long and tickled my flesh. “My name is Lucy.”

  THE ROOM SEEMED to slip one way, then the other, as if the house was balanced on a fulcrum point that had suddenly shifted. I yanked my hands away from the woman and whistled for Marlowe, who awoke to stand beside me, lending me strength.

  “Who are you?” I managed, my fingers gripping Marlowe’s coat, shivering despite the dry heat of the fire. I glared at the strangers surrounding us. “Why are you burning our library? What are you doing in my house?” Turning to face the blue-lipped, long-nailed woman who had lied to me: “And how dare you pretend to be my mother?”

  “Not pretending,” she said at once, backing away from me slightly. “A simple misunderstanding. I’ll explain.”

  The oldest woman sucked her teeth and smiled. The third stepped forward and said, “Lucy, that’s enough.” She positioned herself to block the others from my view, sending the shadow of her swollen stomach across the empty bookshelves. “I’m Imogen,” she told me. “These are Lucy and Mary. We’ve come from the wood because we need your help.” She bowed her head as if in supplication, and tendrils of dirty brown hair grazed her cheek. “There is a danger in the forest,” she continued, looking up at me, “a creature that will kill us. A creature that means this place harm.”

  I stared at her, my lower lip fat with incredulity, withholding a laugh. I was finally home after a miserable few months. My father was missing, perhaps dead. My house was destroyed. An impostor had posed as my mother. I felt, in that moment, too tired and spent to fight my own slew of battles, never mind one for these women from the wood. I wanted only to tidy a small space for myself, make a hot cup of tea, and fall asleep.