by Julia Fine
Laura wanted to waste herself, spend weeks without a shower, let the hair grow on her legs, under her armpits. She wanted to make a jungle of her pubis, a dank, dark wood that shouted Keep away! This is mine, mine, mine, and here I will hide. Urizon suited Laura’s purpose perfectly.
So she read. She gardened. She took up oil painting, lugging her small easel to the village green, the forest, well aware she had no talent, but calmed by the ritual of brush against palette, against canvas, into water to rinse paint. She became a proficient baker, sending pies to the firehouse and cookies to the school. She played piano. The years went by, and she was happy.
Happiness, Laura had realized, was a matter of decision. If she told herself that rolling piecrust mattered, that the care with which she cut the phyllo flowers and stirred the fruit was more than herself in the kitchen, sweating in the heat, she could find pleasure in the simplest of actions. Weeding the lawn to let the shrubs breathe. Polishing the silver. If she slowed to watch the afternoon sun deluge the front parlor, closed her eyes while listening to an aria, smiled at the postman on his route, she could forget the self she might have been if she had not, that April night, gone to the party at the gallery, if she had not set down her small flute of champagne. That self departed was just one of so many selves lost. There was no need to mourn it.
By the time Peter Cothay came poking about the village, intent on proving the existence of a Blakely family curse, Laura had conquered her reclusion, resumed general hygiene. She was content, comfortable, missing only a companion to share in her comfort and contentment. The owners of the souvenir shop in the village directed Peter’s inquiries about the Blakelys to Urizon, and when Laura opened the front door to see him, wiping off his glasses, tucking in his shirt, fumbling through a speech about his research and his theory of her family, she knew that she would welcome him into her existence, that together they’d one day welcome a child.
THE AFTERNOON BEFORE her death, Laura had a headache. She lay down for half an hour in the library, shutting the blinds. Laura knew from her reading that early pregnancy was rife with headaches and nausea, swollen breasts. She thought herself twelve weeks along. In two days, she had a trip planned to the city for her first prenatal visit.
Of course it was too early to say, but Laura thought it was a girl. A little girl baby, fie on Peter’s fears, the silly rumors. She would give all of herself to the child regardless. She did not fear a stretched stomach, sagging breasts, as she once might have. She did not fear her own end, now that this newness had begun.
Peter would like an egg salad with his tea. She’d slice the crusts from the bread, use extra spice, as he preferred it. She would bring him his sandwich with a wink, a little smile, tell him Now you must interpret, here’s your clue. Laura imagined a fully formed child the size of a blueberry, wheedling for attention, sending a request for love up from the depths of her belly to her brain. Beaming, she shrugged off the headache.
To the kitchen, where the eggs had cooled, the teakettle whistled, where, through the thin-paned glass, she watched a robin make a meal of an earthworm, the oak leaves shiver with excitement, the tabby kitten mew.
Next, to the garden at the edge of the wood, to gather fresh parsley and dill.
Bending over, her knees sinking into the soil, Laura felt her vision double, then go dark. A deep pain, like forked lighting, pressed up through her pelvis. She felt a wetness at the back of her skirt, and took a long, deep breath, took a fistful of dirt. Were the trees moving, coming closer? When her sight returned, the edge of the wood seemed to waver, the trees stretching arms and gnarly fingers to grasp at her dress, their leaves whispering, Finally. Laura stood, unsteady, trying to remember the list of early symptoms she’d been told to expect. Maybe a bit of blood, but certainly not this much. She stumbled, herbs falling from her hand.
No! she thought. I’m finally happy. Finally strong. The wood rustled its agreement. It wanted its daughters to be happy. It had waited so long.
The forest seemed an open pair of arms, offering protection, offering to save the unborn child who even now she could feel being forced from her womb. Tears in her eyes, Laura accepted its embrace.
Strength comes from strength, Laura thought as she walked toward the tree line, her thighs slick with blood, offering her open palms.
THERE PETER FOUND her, at the edge of the wood. A lone root, wiry and thin, had curled into her abdomen, piercing her navel, and was ever so slowly pulling her closer to the boundary between estate and trees. Laura was smiling, not struggling, though Peter swore he’d heard her scream only moments before, a cry of pain that had sent him running from his office. He looked on a moment, frightened, and then grabbed his wife before the wood could take her, pulling her free of the forest, detaching her from the hungry vine. When he lifted her, a mass of black blood left an outline of her torso in the soil, frightening him further still. He couldn’t know that the forest had already taken a part of his unborn daughter—had splintered off a piece of the girl’s consciousness, and in the splitting left her with the curse of half life and half death. That, in doing so, the forest had saved her.
Peter cradled Laura, calling for help. He hoisted her onto his shoulders and into the house, bursting across the terrace, fumbling for the telephone once inside. Yet even then, he knew he was too late.
Too late in one sense, the forest understood. In another sense, all had been perfectly timed.
31
It is one thing to summon strength when in the company of others, quite another to maintain it alone. As soon as I passed under the bent tree, my body begged me not to continue: the air sucked out of me, each step forward warning Death, you walk to death. The forest itself was no consolation: rather than closing off the path behind me, the arched tree taunted me with a view of Marlowe and Alys framed beneath it when I paused, turned to look back. I decided that I would not look back.
I walked a long aisle, rows of trees on either side, until I reached the opening of what seemed to be a cave. Dark, deep, descending far under a hill of knotted roots and fallen branches. Teeming with a blackness that sucked up all sound, so that to enter would be to lose myself to the utmost. Death. I forced myself forward.
At first I thought that I had passed into the body of the forest, to its bloodstream. That somehow I had found my way into a woodland womb.
Peter had promised me that no one else remembered the time spent inside their mother either, those months of incubation, pulsing and warm. In those early days, we were all budding cells. So small, so nebulous, so utterly dependent, unscarred and unprepared for the bright, waiting world. I’d always thought myself disadvantaged to have had no such protection. I’d imagined others still carried the effects of their gestation, subconsciously attuned to what it meant to be alive in a way that I would never understand. I’d pitied myself. Was this what it was like to move through a living body?
Looking around, I was reminded of the images I’d seen in Peter’s books, great churches with intricately tiled walls, swirling patterns of mosaic made in reverence to heaven. Perhaps I was, despite appearance, climbing up this twisting maze to some sort of empyrean. For a moment, I was consoled. Then, as the pathway steepened, as the walls around me narrowed and the little light there’d been began to fade, I saw the skulls arranged to make a doorframe. They were cavern-eyed and jawless—to pass under their gateway was to let them eat me whole. I turned back to examine the decorations I’d thought fungus and realized that they, too, were bones, stacked together like firewood, making up the walls of the tunnel, the blunted ends their only visible parts. Suddenly light-headed, I bent down with my hands on top of my knees to try to take in a good breath. I imagined the air in here to be rife with spirits, felt I’d sucked them all inside me.
These bowels of the forest were damp and dark, and gave off a fertile stink much like the scent that I’d noticed on the women at Urizon. The only light shone weak ahead of me, filtering through in divots, dappled as if breaking in through
trees. The floor was made up of a sticky mud that sucked at the bottoms of my feet.
After several minutes of tromping, I came across a barrier made of smaller bones—little nibs of hands or feet—hanging as a beaded curtain might separate rooms of a house. From somewhere beyond came the overwhelming churning sound of the sea, the sort of noise heard listening to a seashell. I grimaced and pushed through the curtain, pretending I could not feel bones tickling my skin.
I arrived in a vast and echoing cavern, lit by a pale purple light. Its ceilings were patterned in bone, abstract, almost floral, each small piece of the body utilized with sweet precision and positioned in a keen and lovely way. A dais stood in the center, bone as well, I gathered. Six steps made of bones led to an osseous stage fused smooth. On it was a massive pile of wood and cartilage, a throne with arms of gnarled branches, bones braided through. It was flanked by great antlers.
And at the foot of the platform sat Matthew, cross-legged, his head bent in concentration, his brow furrowed and tight. He was fiddling with something in front of him, a puzzle-like contraption, propping it up and then letting out a frustrated huff when it collapsed. He did not respond to my arrival. Relieved, I went to him eager for our reunion, ready to demonstrate my newfound camaraderie with the trees, proud as a dog showing off a new trick. I’d almost reached him when a figure stepped out of the shadows, blocking my path. My shadowed double. Her eyes were whiteless dark.
Until she stood in front of me, I had not quite believed in her. Despite the many marvels I had witnessed, despite my own visions, Lucy’s explanation, Alys’s warning, despite telling myself, Yes, I understand, I am prepared, the sinking queerness in my stomach made it clear that I hadn’t, I wasn’t.
To look at her in front of me was like seeing Urizon shifted off of its foundation by ravenous trees, my father with flowers for eyes, my blood pooling onto the floor of Rafe’s prison. All my life she had been waiting, growing stronger, of me and not me, given form and feeling by the urges I’d repressed. Each breath the doctors fed me through a plastic tube aroused her. Each blade of grass I twirled between my fingers lent a charge to the defibrillator that would start her heart. Each animal I encountered with Coulton, each creature I commanded, pushed her forward, gave her strength. This girl was my own black-eyed shadow, manifestation of my darkness, taking everything I wanted but denied myself, growing bold as I grew ruthless, sustained by each life that I touched. Her hair was richer than mine, shinier and thicker. Her skin was brighter, her figure more fit. It was as if she had absorbed all my vitality, as if I, not she, was the shadow. I was afraid to speak, had no idea what I could tell her, but when I looked again at Matthew, I knew I must say something.
There was a vacancy in his expression that I had never seen before. His eyes held none of their usual thoughtfulness. His hands made the same motions, again and again, though it was clear that such action would not work. He still had not acknowledged me. He scared me.
“Let Matthew go.” I planted my voice low in my chest, hoping to sound older, more sure of myself. It came out as a croak. “Let him go and set him right. What have you done to him?”
My other self looked at me, her head cocked, mouth dancing to a grin.
“What have I done?” Her voice was velvety and rich. “You gave him to me, or don’t you remember?”
“I what?”
“When you touched him. You gave all of them to me.”
She was menacing in her stillness, as calm as Coulton, as sleek as a young fox. I felt lanky and awkward beside her. My skin itched. I scowled. As she spoke, she moved closer, shielding Matthew from my view.
“They are ours, really, both yours and mine,” she said. “The gifts you gave them were a gift you gave yourself. But you already know this.”
I shook my head, feigning denial. But I did know this. I did.
There was always, warned Peter, a price. Sometimes immediate, sometimes so long in its collection that we debtors might believe ourselves exempt. A princess promises her unconceived child to the fairy that frees her. A druidess curses a stolen tract of land. A little girl revives her father. And yet . . .
“You don’t own him,” I insisted. As I spoke, I considered my own trajectory, from my father to Matthew, to Coulton and Rafe. Even under their influence, I’d still been myself. “Even if you kill and bring him back, Matthew doesn’t just belong to you.”
“Yet here he is,” the black-eyed girl said simply.
“Then where are the others?” I asked in frustration. “All of the other bodies, other lives?”
My black-eyed shadow smiled and pointed to the left side of her chest, raised her arms up to the ceiling and spun a slow circle. The implication, then, they were here, with us—Mr. Abbott’s terrier a tinkling chandelier, Rafe a Corinthian column . . .
My shadow walked to where Matthew sat and placed a hand on his head. She licked her lips with a bloodless gray tongue, examining him as though he were a sort of barnyard pet, one she might raise and love and care for, and then eat without a second thought once suppertime arrived.
“I keep this one here because he is our favorite.” My shadow stroked Matthew’s temple. I felt the urge to lunge, push her hand off him, but held myself back.
“Then when he solves that puzzle, he can leave you?” I asked. I had in mind several old stories, other heroes given seemingly impossible tasks. There might be a trick to the game, the whole thing might be a riddle, and if we merely shifted angles, strategy would become clear.
My shadow laughed. “How silly,” she said to me. “How quaint.”
I walked over to Matthew and knelt down so I could see his puzzle’s pieces, determine what they were and how they might remain erect. It was difficult to get a good look, as Matthew’s hands moved fast about them, but when I finally did, I saw that they were merely little twigs, dried out and dirtied with stubborn bits of soil. There was no innate order to follow, no way to intuit their end goal. Still, Matthew’s fingers were raw from them, from struggling, repetition. The tips of his fingernails were black.
“What are the rules, then?” I asked of my shadow. “What is it that he has to do?”
She smiled, ran her finger along the curve of Matthew’s ear. “That he has to do?” she said to me. “Why, nothing.” I saw in her my own attempted coyness, magnified and cruel. My throat tightened.
“Then what’s the point? Why do you have him sit here? What does he think that he’s doing?”
My black-eyed shadow stepped away from Matthew, cocked her head. Her chin jutted out, and she looked at me, eyes searching, in an attempt to understand. Did she not know me? Just as she seemed strange to me, did I to her? Were my true feelings, desires, incomprehensible? I knew more of the world than she possibly could, and I thought that my experience might give me some advantage in setting Matthew free. I could trap her, trick her, beat her at her own game. Perhaps all that I loved was not yet lost.
My shadow sighed, and the expression on her face became not wondering but weary, full of all I knew but could not bring myself to speak. And I knew she had seen to the core of me. She was me. She loved me. I knew what she’d say next before she spoke.
“Life is not some riddle to be solved. The things that matter most cannot be won, cannot be tricked. They won’t be studied, never fully understood. There are no rules to things, you realize.”
“Except they told me . . . Lucy, Alys . . . they explained . . .”
“You think because you name it and you tell it, it becomes? A story is a present, tied with ribbon and a wish. Real things aren’t so easy. Choices not so black and white.”
“You mean to say I cannot stop you?”
“Stop me?” Her black eyes were indecipherable. “Why ever would you want to stop me?”
“Because you hurt them, when you took over the wood. You hurt everything. They told me so, the women at the house.”
“The house is gone.”
“And so the wood will claim the village? The city? The
world?” I struggled to make sense of what was happening, unable to fully comprehend the dissolution of the life that I had known. She spoke against my education, my faith in logic, in reason, in order. “You mean to say that we are bound by nothing? Breached by nothing?”
“Perhaps,” said my shadow. I grasped at my last thread of hope.
“And my mother?”
“Gone.” There was to be no reunion, no farewell. My mother was not waiting for me, chastened by belief, in any afterlife.
“My father?” Though the answer was clear, I had to ask the question.
“Gone.”
I felt very tired.
“If you let Matthew go,” I said softly to my shadow, “you can have me.”
I imagined Matthew running, just ahead of the widening forest, ever eluding its grasp by a few steps. Perhaps when he reached the sea he might escape it. Perhaps he never could. Still, whatever happened seemed preferable to capture in this cave of death, his mind gone, fingers bleeding. I’d at least have given him a chance.
“You can have me,” I whispered again. But you cannot give yourself to yourself, not as bargaining chip, not in sacrifice.
My black-eyed shadow smiled. “You’ve been taught,” she said, “not to take what you want. Taught to ask. To be deferent. To bargain.
“Come,” she said, “embrace me.”
I wanted nothing more.
I closed my eyes, I went to her, forgetting Matthew, Peter, my journey, my fear. I put my arms around her, and hers came tight around me, and together we tangled and twined. I dove into her darkness as if she were water, inhaled her scent, felt the pressure of her breasts. I readied myself for oblivion, waited for death.
32
A breeze passed over me. I shivered. When I opened my eyes, I was clutching myself, my own hands crossed around my chest. The light was different, richer, more direct. What had been bones were only trees, and trees I recognized. That oak was carved with villagers’ initials. That poplar had split years ago, its branches struck by lightning. The air was cool as it had been before I’d entered the strange forest. The sun was just cresting the canopy of trees.