What Should Be Wild

by Julia Fine

  Still, I was my father’s daughter, and I could not stanch his influence rising within me—his need to understand, despite the bitter cost of knowledge, his will to find out facts, with no regard for food or rest. I knelt to collect Peter’s remaining papers, scattered at Imogen’s feet, with the thought that I might get a sense of him and what he would advise me to do: a memory of his hand on the pen, a recollected smell. There was nothing.

  The fire crackled. I felt the women’s eyes on my lowered head, my back. I had to say something. I positioned the last of Peter’s papers into an orderly stack. Now that I knew Lucy was not actually my mother, my shyness had abated. I stood and peered around Imogen to find her.

  “What do you mean, misunderstanding?” I asked slowly. “The matter of motherhood should be perfectly clear.”

  Lucy stepped out from where she’d been corralled and reached for my hand. I snapped it back.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “My daughter—”

  “I said, don’t.” If she had been a usual life I would have touched her, silenced her, left her there with hardly any guilt and gone to curl under the quilt in my bedroom. “Just tell me what you meant,” I said. “Quickly. No more games.”

  Mary, silent all this while and still maintaining her watch by the west library entrance, smirked at the lot of us. Lucy seemed shocked. I supposed she was not used to being spoken to in this manner. She opened her mouth twice, closed it both times, and crinkled her forehead in thought. Finally, she spoke.

  “It was I who found you—the true half of you, in the wood,” she said. “I who wanted you. True, I did not birth you, but in this, I am a mother as surely as any who did.”

  “Found me?” I asked.

  “Dug you up from the oak tree.” I saw Lucy’s long-nailed fingers twitch toward mine.

  I guffawed. It was an odd, cryptic answer.

  Imogen agreed. “You must tell her the full story,” she said, frowning.

  So they did.

  ONCE UPON A time seven women lived hidden in the forest, trapped by rescue, separate from the world. After centuries of sameness these women discovered a child, a small woodland savior buried under an old oak. They tended to her, loved her. When they first entered the wood, the women had all passed through a veil that marked their old lives from the new, a veil that held them in eternal stagnation. This girl was different. She had grown out of the oak in this strange forest—she was of the forest, unlike the others, and continued to grow while the others did not. She looked like me. She grew as I grew. She was also tied to the world outside through me. These women in the wood saw she was different, a break in the pattern of their entrapment. They had come to believe that someday she’d possess the power to set them free.

  But although she was a Blakely—the last of their line—this girl was foreign to them. Frightening. The seven women realized they could not tame her. She was ravenous, and fed on the creatures of the wood. She made the wood ravenous, spilling outside its former borders. Some of the women had given themselves to the black-eyed girl willingly. These three in front of me had escaped, but they still felt her hunger. They could not flee far enough; they knew she would come for them. The girl would not heed them, but they thought she might heed me.

  “For the longest time,” said Lucy, “we thought that she’d not only set us free from the forest but defend us from the evils of this house, from those within it who had harmed us.”

  “Not all,” corrected Imogen. “Not all of us thought she would help us.”

  Lucy ignored her. “But it’s you, my dearest, you who have the power. Your fates are intertwined—I don’t know how I didn’t recognize it sooner. You can break the spell that’s bound us all.”

  IN MOMENTS OF shock one is advised to be seated, to breathe slowly, maintain whatever calm one can. I had always found it odd that this advice made no mention of the calm that asserts itself without maintenance, settles like a frost over the windows of old knowledge, and obfuscates the former view from the new.

  I was very calm. I sat on the chaise longue and curled my hands to fists. The stories made sense now—the tales of Blakely’s curse, of women missing. Here were my ancestors, in front of me: the women whose portraits I’d studied.

  Lucy stood before me, flanked by Mary and Imogen. The fire popped behind them as if nothing had changed, not the house, not my history, when, in fact, we’d all been born anew.

  “Are you surprised?” Lucy asked me. “Are you pleased?”

  I was neither.

  I had always had the sense that I did not belong entirely to myself, that because of my affliction I owed something to the forces that had made me. A year ago, I promptly would have honored any debt. But now, I had grown tired of obligations.

  “I don’t know why you’ve dared to call yourself my mother.”

  “My darling,” said Lucy, “I’m the one who found you—”

  “You aren’t a parent. And you’ve made no effort to help me find mine.”

  “What, Peter Cothay? What a mess he’s made of all of this, hiding your true purpose, hiding you here. Telling you not to touch things, encouraging your fears, poking his nose where it doesn’t belong—”

  “Be. Quiet.” I had never heard myself so cold, so powerful.

  Both Mary and Imogen pulled back from Lucy, trying to dissociate themselves from the source of my anger. I wondered how I must appear to them, to elicit such fear.

  Lucy herself produced a burst of nervous laughter. She opened her mouth, forced a smile, then wisely gave up any rebuttal. Her lips trembled. I did not think she was scared of me, unable, as I was, to resort to my usual weapon, armed with her two human associates to my rogue canine one. Lucy was taller than me, stronger, my arm was still bandaged; I’d be no match if we two were to fight. But she needed me, I realized. She could not hurt me. Doing so would gain her nothing, and she had everything to lose.

  “Why are you burning our library?”

  Lucy nodded, apparently pleased with the question. “There’s only one book we need. The rest are useless. They belong to my brother.”

  “They belong to me.” I frowned at her. “What is this book you want?”

  “An old book, very old—the binding almost fully broken, the paper wrinkly and brown. It has three spirals on the cover, or what passes for the cover. We haven’t found it yet. Before I left here I hid it under a floorboard, but somebody has moved it. Your father, no doubt. Do you know where it might be?”

  “No.” I glared at her, no interest in another old book, another riddle or quest. “And you’ll stop burning the rest. You’re destroying my home. You’re ruining everything.”

  How badly I wanted to believe this: that Lucy had been impetus for everything, that Lucy was to blame. It was easy to cast her as villain, to say it was she who’d fomented my father’s disappearance, my capture, the destruction of the house. That she was responsible for my own defilement, the curse that had kept me confined. I wanted to blame her selfish scheming for the pain I’d caused, the horrors I’d inflicted. I wanted her evil to exonerate my own. I knew that it couldn’t, and this recognition strengthened my hatred.

  Although unable to destroy Lucy and her companions with my touch, I still might find another tactic. Those bookshelves were quite heavy. The fire was hot. I took a step toward the ancient iron poker.

  Unexpectedly, Imogen came toward me, speaking as if she had read my thoughts. “Destroy us if you must,” she said, “but know about the wood before you do.”

  “If I never see the wood again,” I said, fully aware that that same wood grew up all around me, thrust its branches through what once had been my home, “I never hear of it again, I never smell it . . .”

  “Your young man is there, now. So is your father.”

  I froze.

  “Peter? He did go after me! He’s been there . . . Why didn’t you tell me at once? Why didn’t he come with you?”

  “He’s trapped inside a tree.”

 
“He’s—what? And, wait—what did you say, my young man? What, you couldn’t mean . . . Matthew?”

  Imogen nodded.

  “Matthew Hareven? Impossible. I saw him not an hour ago. How could he be . . . How could you even know?”

  “Just because we’ve crossed the old threshold, taken shelter in this house, does not mean that the forest has unleashed us.” Imogen looked to the library windows, which had once boasted a wide view of the drive, Urizon’s gardens, the lawns, but were now covered over by weeds.

  “You can see Matthew?” I asked her. “What’s he doing? Is he hurt?”

  “He will be,” said Imogen, kneeling. She took my hands in her cold ones and looked up at me. She was about to speak, but then her eyes widened with shock. She released a stunted gasp and dropped my hands, pressing her own to the wide mound of her stomach.

  “What?” said Lucy, darting forward. “What did you see?”

  “I didn’t . . .” Imogen’s right hand fluttered toward me, her left planted firmly on the lower side of her belly.

  “Matthew,” I insisted. “Is he in danger?”

  “He will be, if you do nothing to stop her,” Mary broke in. “He needs you. We all need you.”

  What did I need, in that moment? To hide under the covers, to pinch myself and hope that I would wake from this worsening nightmare. I needed my mother, or Mrs. Blott or Mother Farrow, someone who loved me not for my peculiar powers, not as a last piece of a centuries-old puzzle, but as myself, in spite of everything. I needed Peter, who had used me, yes, but who, when it most mattered, had gone to find me in the wood. I needed Matthew, who had done the same.

  In front of me, Imogen let out a cry. Her eyes were wet, her fingers grasping. I let her clasp my wrist, upon which she released a sudden moan. A gush of liquid flooded from beneath her dress, staining it, darkening the carpet.

  “The baby!” Lucy took Imogen’s elbow, eyes incredulous. I twisted away from Imogen, her labored breathing, Lucy’s hovering, Mary’s nose flared with fear and surprise. Imogen howled, and the others tried to lay her on the settee, wiping sweat from her brow. I left them in the library. I went into the wood.

  Merciless and Wild

  Go on ahead, Matthew had said, go on, I’ll meet you at Urizon. Matthew, who could balance any chemical equation, did not know how to balance his regard for Maisie Cothay with his fears. He wanted her to know that he trusted her. How many times could he question her choices before she saw him as a captor, as her domineering father, or worse, another Coulton or Rafe? How better to show himself an ally than allowing her to forge her own way?

  As soon as he turned around, watched through the rearview mirror as she scrambled over fallen trees, he knew he had been foolish. Better to leave the car and join her, bring her to the cottage with him later, make a plan. Better to risk her wrath than her safety, better to have kept her near.

  Was the unease he felt, the danger that he sensed, actual danger, or was it only love acknowledged? The object of his love made tender, appearing softer than she really was, appearing vulnerable in having made him vulnerable. Matthew remembered holding his newborn baby brothers and sisters, watching them take their first steps, their first stumbles, knowing that they must stumble alone. So it was, he thought, with Maisie. Yet he worried for her, missed her. He’d returned the car to his aunt’s cottage and turned immediately back toward Urizon. Decided to take the shortcut, through the wood.

  WHEN KATHRYN’S SLACK body falls still over Matthew’s, her pretty nose fits like a key into the small space above his sternum, locking him, restricting his air. He gags, nudges and tries to wake her. When he cannot, he removes her, and shudders. He fumbles to fasten his trousers, to pull himself from Kathryn’s limp arms. His face is ashen.

  He notices the black-eyed girl.

  “Maisie?” Matthew distances himself from the body, sliding back against the bulge of a tree root and pulling his head into his hands. His shoulders quiver, the edges of his narrow ears flush. He inhales and counts slowly, hold and release, a pattern to make meaning of each breath.

  “I didn’t . . . ,” he says finally. “I thought we said I’d meet you at the house.” With each word his chest tightens, with shame, then anger, and finally fear. His fingers twist at his temple, scratch the nape of his neck.

  The black-eyed girl says nothing.

  “I can only . . . I apologize . . . you finding me in such . . . we haven’t said it yet, I mean, not outright, haven’t fully, but I thought you’d . . . I’d agreed that if we . . . I don’t know what happened. What I was thinking.”

  Matthew is crying now, the black-eyed girl realizes, a drop of water gathering at the edge of an eye, traveling his cheek. “I want you to know,” he pleads fervently, “what happened, there. I wasn’t . . . I was not myself.”

  His tears sit like stars, fat and glistening. The black-eyed girl reaches out to catch one: brushes her hand against his cheekbone, pulls the water to her tongue.

  Matthew stiffens.

  “Maisie? What—Who are you?” he whispers.

  The black-eyed girl strokes his cheek, harvesting a teardrop, pressing her finger to his forehead, gently traveling down the bridge of his nose to reach his lips. She takes Matthew’s mind, helps the wood empty his troubles. She welcomes him across the border. Says, “Hush.”

  Part

  VI

  29

  Forward only, never back. Do not, in your mind, keep a tally of past horrors. Do not question decisions that cannot be unmade, dwell on actions that cannot be undone. The power to equivocate is no power at all, and that you’ve ever thought it to be is your weakness.

  RETURNING TO THE shadow forest proved more complicated than the woodland women led me to believe. I killed several trees, and brought them back when they did not make me an entrance. I knelt in supplication, asked for mercy at the top of my voice. I debated going back to the house and asking Lucy for instructions, looking for the old book she had mentioned, but the thought of Urizon unbridled—overcome by the wilderness I’d found upon my homecoming—was too much to fathom. Eventually I saw nothing else to do but follow Marlowe through the wood until he sat down, expectant, at the foot of a wide-spanning elder.

  Marlowe had opened the forest before, after burying Mrs. Blott’s shinbone. Perhaps I needed a similar sacrifice, a gift for the wood. Marlowe had brought it a piece of a body. What had I to give? A bit of fingernail? An offering of blood?

  I was prepared to unwrap my bandage and reopen my wound when a thought struck me, and I rifled through the pocket of my jacket. There, as I had suddenly been certain it would be, nestled up against the stitching, was the blade of grass I’d plucked my first time through the shadow forest. Even after all these months, it was still green.

  I knelt and dug a shallow hole in the dirt at the base of the elder, careful not to brush against its roots. I kissed my blade of grass, set it on the ground, covered it with a layer of displaced soil. I closed my eyes, reached out to Marlowe, and took a deep breath. I opened them to find that nothing had happened.

  Frustrated, I kicked at the dirt I’d displaced, which then blew up in a gust against the tree. A sneeze that I recognized came from somewhere deep within the elder’s twisted trunk. A voice grumbled, as if recently awakened.

  “Peter?” I whispered, incredulous.

  “Maisie.” It was his voice, wry, tinged with humor. “Forgive me, darling, I suppose I’d drifted off. It’s fine to see you, though I fear we’re in a spot.”

  I wanted to laugh, so familiar was his diction, so expected his response. Could he see me? If I looked straight on ahead, I saw the elder. And yet . . . If I turned to just the right angle, I could find my father, trapped within the trunk.

  “Peter? Is that really you?”

  “Maisie, my girl,” said Peter, “I’m here.”

  And then I laughed aloud, startling Marlowe, and had to restrain myself from clinging to a tree branch. The weight of what was waiting in the wood fell away. The p
ressure of the past few months, my overwhelming emptiness and fear, all seemed to fade in Peter’s presence.

  “You don’t know how much I’ve missed you.” My words tumbled out, and in a rush I told him everything: the spiral paths, my double, falling into Rafe’s trap and fighting out of it, the resurrected horses, Matthew’s capture. Like a lapsed Catholic returning to confession, I named my sins—even the sparrow I’d let loose at age eleven—and knew my father could pardon them.

  “I’m so sorry for all of it—the day I ran from Mrs. Blott’s house, the cat. All those years when I was angry. You were right, and now it’s my fault that you’re in here, that it all—”

  “Maisie,” Peter stopped me, “don’t apologize, my darling. There was no way to know. None of us could have known.”

  “Known what?” I frowned. “Known all this? That there really was a curse? That I came from it?”

  “Any of it, darling. What had happened, what will happen.” I climbed up on a root to see my father’s eyes, strange and squinting without glasses, and was shocked to find that they were filled with tears.

  “Well, I know what’s going to happen,” I said. I had found Peter quickly, and was confident the rest of my journey would fare equally well. Peter was here to protect me, and with his blessing, I knew I was invincible. “We’ll get you out of this tree, go rescue Matthew, stop the shadow girl, and go home.”

  “No, my dear. We won’t,” said Peter, his voice softer than usual, tinged with regret.

  “But we can! I know we can.”

  “You can, Maisie. And you will. But you’ll do so without me.”

  I’d spent sixteen years obeying Peter’s instructions, trusting his assertions. Even while I knew him flawed in myriad small ways, he had always stood heroic in his brilliance—both parent and deity at once as he plotted my life’s course and steered me straight. Now he spoke with the same certainty he might when insisting it was long past my bedtime, that I could not join the villagers in celebration, that the soup I was about to slurp was far too hot.