by Julia Fine
“Don’t be silly,” I said, my tone optimistic, but brittle. “I’m sure we can get you out of here. I’ll find an axe. Or touch the right spot on the tree trunk. It could be a matter of a pressure point, pulling the right branch. Certainly something in a book you’ve read can tell us what to do? I can run back to the library right now. I’ll be so quick you’ll hardly know I’ve gone. What should I bring you?”
“Maisie,” said Peter, “all of the books would bring us to the same conclusion: I will stay here, and you will go help Matthew. You’ll finish this, go back to live a full life at Urizon.”
“But there is no life without you!” I could hear myself nearly shouting in frustration. This made no sense at all. We’d only just found one another, and now Peter was asking me to leave him. When was he ever so defeatist? How could he be so sure? “If you’re staying here, I’ll stay with you. Me and Marlowe. We’ll stay, too.”
“Nothing could sadden me more than to see you waste your potential.”
“No.”
“It would be worse than any death to see you sacrifice your future, have you end your journey here.”
“No.”
“I like to think I’ve taught you well, my dear. I trust you. You’ll take up the Cothay mantle, and I know you’ll do it proud.”
“No.”
“And what of Matthew? You’re the only one who can save him.”
He had me there. Must I choose between Matthew and Peter? I remembered standing in Mrs. Blott’s kitchen all those months ago, looking from one to the other. I’d wanted neither, in that moment. Now I knew I needed both.
“I’ll come back for you,” I promised, “when it’s over. When Matthew is safe and I’ve found my shadow double or whatever she is and—”
“Maisie,” said Peter, “the wood requires a sacrifice to enter. Let that sacrifice be me.”
“I can’t. I can’t do it. It’s not fair. I need you.”
“Are you afraid?” Peter asked the question simply, as if back home in the nursery-turned-lab, asking me how a sip of orange juice tasted on my tongue. As if I were five years old, with my tangly hair and my large, solemn eyes, fidgeting at the edge of my seat while he flipped through his notebook. Tart, you say? And also sweet?
Afraid? Of course I was afraid. But of what? Did I fear what waited for me, there in the shadows? More fearsome was the thought of continuing, of living on with no one to guide me, of being alone with my destruction, day after lengthening day.
“Don’t be afraid, my girl,” said Peter. “I am not afraid at all. You are a marvelous young woman, the best of my life’s work.”
These were the words that I had been waiting to hear all my life. I’d have given them up at once for his freedom.
The last words we had spoken at the cottage, I now barely remembered—that silly argument about Mrs. Blott’s cat. Peter had come in from the drizzle and I’d handed him a towel, sighing while I watched him wipe his glasses. Such a common gesture, so easy to follow, a stepping-stone from one memory to the next: Peter letting me petition for a governess when I was eight or nine, his denial taking on the slow rhythm of his shirtsleeve as he polished each lens; Peter’s laughter, coming inside from the cold, the glasses fogging; Peter telling me to fetch him his cleaning spray and cloth. Maisie, have you come in with my tea?
Already I felt these memories fading, as if each were a butterfly circling the glass garden of my mind, my every conscious recollection netting a specimen, setting it free into the greater world beyond. In ten years, what had once been a populous colony might boast only the shredded wing of scent, Peter’s deodorant and mint toothpaste, the dried caterpillar timbre of his speech. Already I was scheming to keep him. To lock the greenhouse door to be reopened at some later, easier date. Or would there always be some window, busted open? Would the memories escape from me, regardless? Would I always be a child, grasping my beloved so tightly that he crumbled in my fist?
“It’s time, Maisie,” said Peter. He held out his hand, five fingers stretching from a gap within the bark.
“I can’t do it.” I shook my head.
“Maisie, my darling, I love you.”
I almost echoed back: I love you, too. But I knew Peter—knew what he’d want from me—and so to show my love I followed his direction. Steeling myself, I reached out and took Peter’s bare hand in mine. It was warm, calloused, his knuckles scraped dry, his wedding ring firm upon a finger. My father’s hand—the pulse at the base of his thumb strong at first, and then nothing.
I closed my eyes.
30
The wood I found was not the shadow wood that I remembered. It was clear that we’d passed from one world to another, but no regiment of smooth-trunked trees greeted me, no sweet birdsong trilled. The smell of iron hung in the air. There was no daylight, though the temperature did suddenly shift warmer. Darkness here was heavier; no moon, no stars, broke through. When I took a step I tripped on an unexpected root, catching myself with both hands, yelping as my sore arm bore my weight. I crouched low, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, then checked the damage to myself and to the tree I’d just accosted. The edge of my bandage was muddied, but intact. The tree was still alive. Marlowe was still beside me, but I saw no sign of Peter.
Full fathom five thy father lies. Those are pearls that were his eyes. I could not remember the full verse, but I knew that it did not speak of a sorcerer—immortal—but the too-human traveler who’d been caught up in his storm. My father, too, had proven mere man. My entire body felt numb and cold and bloodless. I allowed myself a single shudder, then turned to Marlowe.
“If we wait until daylight,” I said, swallowing, attempting to formulate a plan, “we might have an easier time. But I don’t know if we have those hours to waste. I wonder what we should do . . .”
I did not have to wonder for long. Very faintly, from ahead of us, there came the sound of cracking branches, a slender figure moving through the trees. Marlowe nuzzled my hand, and moved to follow our mysterious companion. I stumbled after, almost running him over when he paused to try and catch the new direction of the sound. Even with my body stiff from recent abuse, my insides frozen from that final farewell to my father, I was more nimble than expected, my years of dodging furniture and avoiding plants having evolved into its own breed of grace. Able to touch what had long been forbidden, I used trees and rocks for balance, let my fingers brush past dangling branches, discovered the spongy softness of live moss. No heart beat in the tree trunks or crushed petals, but I felt a force fuse through them nonetheless, urging me on.
We followed the unknown figure quite some time, long enough for me to realize I was hungry, and berate myself for not bringing a snack. I thought of biscuits, hot soup. Mrs. Blott’s raspberry jam baked into sugar cookies, the buttery crust of her cheese pie. Peter’s forgotten dinner plates, greens limp and gravy congealing. Peter on my birthdays, eating cake with bright, fresh berries. Peter playing records. Peter lighting little candles, telling me to make a wish.
My only wish now was impossible: for things to return to what they had been. For us to all go back, to sit together in the library, cozy by the fire, and whisper about this very wood, this moment, as a distant, untold someday. A fairy tale. A dream.
“When you’re older,” Mrs. Blott and Peter had both told me, time and again, in response to my questions, my doubts, “you’ll understand.” So I’d willed myself older, barreling through the days I thought would stay the same forever. Now here I was, past them, no closer to wisdom, alone.
EVENTUALLY, THE DARKNESS around me dissolved into gray, misty morning. Marlowe and I emerged in a shallow clearing, large trees circling where we stood, the biggest one bent at the waist and reaching down to form an archway. The apparition I had followed stood in front of it: a girl in ragged cloth, blocking me from entering. She looked to be younger than me, maybe twelve or thirteen, though I knew she must be far older than Lucy, as old, perhaps, as the wood itself. Her eyes were very dar
k and round, like a beast’s, and her teeth, when she revealed them, were unusually sharp. I could not see past her through the tree-arch, but felt certain it would lead me where I needed to be.
I hesitated before moving closer to her.
Still reeling from my encounter with Peter, I had not yet paused to reflect on my less obvious loss, the one shield I had been armed with even stripped in Rafe’s prison: the power of my touch. Without the weapon of my body, at once my most loyal ally and most treacherous enemy, I was simply a girl, weak from injury, unprotected in a vast, enchanted wood. In my amazement at first touching unmarred tree bark, I’d forgotten my fallen defenses, how utterly normal I’d become. The thought struck me now in a full-bodied flood.
All my life I’d wanted to be normal. I’d thought that being normal would mean that I’d fit easily into the world. That might have been so were the world around me normal. However, in a twist of fate I’d swapped my own strangeness for this terrifying setting: a brambly pathway, a dark forest, my shadowed half, a creature even more macabre than me. It was the stuff of nightmares. I was never brave in my dreams: it always seemed more practical to will myself awake. That was not an option here. But some pragmatism in me knew that there was nothing to be gained from feeling frightened. My father’s final words returned to me: I love you. I donned these words as my new shield.
“Hello,” I said.
At this the girl came toward me, taking my chin in her small, dirty hand. I was taller than her, but the movement felt natural as she turned my face first one way, then the other, peering at my features like a buyer inspecting a horse. Her touch, though direct, held none of Matthew’s tenderness. Her hands were cold as Lucy’s, capable and firm. When she released me, I opened my mouth wide, as I’d done for Coulton during routine examinations, but she was not interested in dentistry, nor any other aspects of my body, not even the bandage that unraveled at my wrist. I waited a moment to see what she’d do before pulling it tighter and tucking the dangling bit back where it belonged. The girl stepped back.
“I’ve come for Matthew,” I said. She said nothing. I felt my pulse cut by the bandage, imagined the flow of dammed blood that would follow its release. “Matthew Hareven,” I repeated. “He’s here somewhere, and he shouldn’t be. Can you speak? Who are you? Do you know me?”
“I am Alys,” the girl said. I squinted at her, waiting for an explanation that did not come.
“May I go to Matthew?” I asked finally.
“You can,” said Alys. “She is waiting. She is everything you’ve cast aside, and you are everything she cannot be. You will come to an end, once together. The return to what once was, and what should be.”
I frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“You will go in alone,” said Alys, “and you will not both return.”
“Both me and Matthew, you mean?” I paused. “Or me and . . . my other?”
Alys did not answer. I stared at her, and, sensing my frustration, she continued. “My cousin’s prophecy has been fulfilled. Our family remembered. The fortress is finished. It is time.”
“The fortress?”
“Urizon. The house that stands on what was once our home.”
“What was once our home? My home, now, you must mean?” I saw how difficult it was for her to answer me, to cross the cavern of the thousands of years that fell between us so that I could understand. She was silent for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was soft.
“We should be free,” she said. “The old land, that closed house. It is a cage. It confines us.”
I nodded, trying to follow where she led me, trying to see. “But why now? Why is now the time? Why must it be me?”
“You were made to break the pattern. You were born of the wood but also of the world outside it. You are the connection between old and new, between death and life. Forever is too long. The forest knows. The forest needs you.”
“Who is this girl I’m meant to find? Why does she look like me? Why do you think I can stop her?”
“She’s your desires made flesh.”
“I don’t know what that means!”
Alys sighed. “She is your shadow. She indulges while you abstain. She takes while you give.”
I closed my eyes. “And if I don’t destroy her, this . . . shadow? If I don’t go after Matthew? If I abandon this task? What then?”
“The wood stretches farther. Faster. She eats and she grows strong.”
“And what of me?”
Alys did not answer.
I WOULD HAVE to go alone, I knew, into darkness. I’d leave Marlowe behind, and I would follow the dark forest path before me. I would find my other self. Though only now able to name her, I already understood her. I’d always known her: she’d been there in any urge I had not acted on, any temptation I’d pushed past. The Janus face of all the rules I’d followed, my precision and routines. I remembered Lucy’s words at Urizon: Peter Cothay? What a mess he’s made. Hiding your true purpose. Whatever awaited me under that archway was exactly what I’d hidden from, the darkness I had promised Peter that I would excise.
But none of my success in its avoidance had ever been my own. My good behavior was the result not of my self-restraint but of a forced extraction, a choice thrust upon me before I was born. I obeyed not because I possessed a preternatural self-control, some internal fortitude, but because my basic needs had been divided, my desires split in two. Mine was the poorer piece of girlhood, the forced smiles, the neatly crossed legs, the directives to sit straight, sit still, stop asking silly questions. As I’d acted through that sad charade of personhood, my other self had been in here, resisting. Allowing herself what she wanted.
To be whole again, to choose to give myself to death, desire, would irrevocably change me. No matter how she ended, if I walked through that archway, the girl I had been would be gone.
So, too, would she be if I did not go.
I knew it to be so but could not bring myself to speak, to step forward, to fully accept my fate. To join the women of the wood.
And then a cramp seized my gut, the dull pain of my womanhood churning, and with it I felt the weight of those who’d made me: my mother and her matriline, the Blakelys. The Cothays, the paternal line to whom I owed allegiance, though I knew so little of them, my many grandmothers and grandfathers, all lost so long ago. I was more than myself, and not just because the darkness I’d avoided had its own shape in the wood, or because I owed my powers to superstition or to science. However I had come to be, through prayer or spells or wishes, genetics or chemicals, deliberation or by chance, I was part of a long history that bound me to both endings and beginnings:
Mother Farrow, family by practice, if not blood, had led me cryptically, fancifully, to this knowledge. Those stories of girls in the wood, tales I’d assumed had been told to confine me, to warn me about life outside my cage, did not end at the close of their telling. Off went the naughty little girl to the forest, never to be seen again. Gone was the woodcutter’s wife. Cast from the village the harlot.
But they were not gone, they had stayed within the wood. If their time here was tragic, if the tale that began after Mother Farrow’s saw them equally frustrated, no freer than before, it was unfortunate, but not, I thought, proof that my failure was inevitable. They’d had no other options, and even the wood had not granted them a choice. They’d come to the wood desperate; I was here of my own volition. If I wanted to, I could easily turn back around and go. But I wanted to continue: it was my turn to know the forest, walk the path my tale would take.
Even the powerless can work to harness power. A forced hand can still clench into a fist. A girl commanded to marry, went an old story, had come to this wood, and with a rope around her neck snubbed both fiancé and father.
“I am ready,” I told Alys. She nodded, stepped aside, and I passed through.
A Fruit in Its Fecundity
Laura, 1990
On the final morning of Laura Cothay’s life, she boile
d two dozen eggs for an egg salad. It was fitting, she thought, a clever way to tell her husband without telling him. Peter appreciated riddles, he’d made a career of deciphering them. The week before they’d played a game of walking through the portraits of old Blakelys that hung just outside the ballroom: “The suicide,” she said, and Peter tried to guess the picture. The engineer, the poor old maid, the grandaunt accused of witchcraft. He’d done remarkably well, but Laura felt a bittersweetness at the ease of her reduction. Surely these relatives were more than their epithets; no person Laura’d ever met could easily be labeled just one thing. She and Peter had been married ten months. The year was 1990, and Laura was twenty-eight years old.
When Laura arrived from university eight years before, after choosing not to finish her degree, the villagers had said that she herself would likely end up as an old maid. Soon after her birth, Laura’s father had shut up the great house and moved to the city, bringing his wife and small daughter to Coeurs Crossing some summers, but generally keeping far from the estate where he’d been raised. His death had coincided with what Laura would later consider her “unfortunate episode” at school. She’d packed her bags without a word to her roommate, withdrawn her registration, and taken refuge at Urizon, which had loomed throughout her childhood as a force of isolation, hidden behind the curse she’d been told soiled the family name. Just the place for a young woman seeking silence, hoping to relearn her body, call it her own.
“The villagers are frightened of your family,” said Mr. Pepper, the sniffling solicitor still on retainer to handle her parents’ wills, the affairs of the house. “Really, they are frightened of the women. There’s little chance you’ll meet Prince Charming here.” He’d blown his large nose loudly with the handkerchief that Laura offered, afterward leaving it, crumpled and wet, on the carpet at the edge of the settee. Laura was middling pretty, but she had large breasts, yellow hair. “You’ll waste yourself in Coeurs Crossing,” said Mr. Pepper.