The Forest's Son

by Aleo, Cyndy

  Bożena nods, trying to buy a bit of time while she thinks of what she can possibly say to him.

  “I mean you and the tribe no harm, you know,” he says. “I was just tired of hiding what I am. And my mother was tired as well. It was no kind of life."

  “Will you — will you stay now?”

  “Here? I'm not sure. Is that something you'd want? That the sisters would want?”

  Bożena is taken aback. He’s more powerful than all the sisters combined. That he would even ask is something she hadn't considered. He can do whatever he likes.

  “I don't know where I belong,” he says. “Obviously, I'm not human, but Donovan is. I don't think she’ll want to stay here, but I'm not sure I can go back to my old life now.”

  “Do you want to rule us?” Bożena asks.

  He shakes his head.

  “I never wanted that. I just wanted my mother to be happy. And for both of us to belong. And now, for Donovan to be safe.”

  Bożena nods.

  “If you would like to stay, I think we would like that. We have been taught wrong, obviously, and we would like to learn more. About you, and about humans, and maybe, about whether males should …”

  “I need to talk to Donovan first. When she heals some.”

  Bożena smiles and bows to him. She says nothing more before leaving the hut and heading to Janina's. So much is different. She’s still a little frightened of him, but even more, she is curious. She hopes the human girl heals quickly.

  Kocham Cię: Jakub

  Time moves too quickly and yet not quickly enough. He refuses to leave Donovan for more than the few minutes it takes to relieve himself outside, so the sisters go to the hotel and get the rest of their things and take care of checking them out.

  It's Bożena who presents herself as a relation, referring to a family crisis and smoothing things over. She and Janina bring all the luggage to the hut, and Jakub's heart breaks when he sees the things his mother had packed. Very little of her luggage is filled with clothes. Instead, she’d filled the space with mementos of their life together, and things she thought he might need. She had been that sure that this is where her journey would end.

  He wishes he could have her back, just for a few moments. He wants to thank her for all the years she kept him safe. For her incredible sacrifice, both in terms of giving her life by dying but also by leaving her sisters in a way that would give him a chance. Mostly, he wants to thank her for giving him Donovan. Without her, he'd be lost in this strange world. Dee is the one link to his past that makes him remember who he is.

  Bożena asks him to destroy Edyta's bayonet he same day the sisters complete their spiritual cleansing of the dead sisters' huts so those huts could be reoccupied. He does, and feels safer when he climbs into bed with Donovan to sleep that night, knowing the weapons of man are gone from the sister's overall peaceful existence. He and Donovan had offered the hut back to Bożena, but she declined, saying she prefers to claim one of the newly cleansed cabins as her own.

  He wants nothing more than to continue this peaceful life here, with Donovan.

  IV: Leaving

  40: Suitability

  If he'd felt safe when he went to sleep that night, he feels something entirely different when he wakes in the dark hours. His first thoughts are of sex; he is aroused, and sweating.

  He’s not sure how long it's been going on, but Donovan is grinding against him in her sleep and his hand automatically moves to her thigh, pulling it up higher against him to encourage her movements. He closes his eyes again and moans at the sweet torture, sliding his hand under the fabric of her nightgown to stroke her skin. He's helpless to resist her. As strong as he’s been in the daylight, in the dark, with her writhing against him, it's impossible to turn her away. His fingers clench tighter on her thigh, and he's amazed at how incredibly hot her skin feels under his hand.

  Hot.

  Her thigh is hot.

  His eyes pop open, and all thoughts of sex flee his mind. Her skin should feel warm and soft, not hot and dry like this. She's not interested in sex; something’s wrong with her. He moves her hair to feel her forehead and finds her hair soaked. Running his hands quickly over the rest of her, he notes that most of her nightgown is as well.

  This can't be happening.

  Before he's even aware of what he's doing, he's out of bed and at the door of the hut, screaming for the sisters — anyone — to help him. He wants to run from hut to hut, but he's terrified, and afraid to leave Donovan alone even for the time it would take to run to the next hut.

  Rushing back to the bed, he only hopes someone has heard and will come running. He yanks off Donovan’s nightgown and gropes for a bowl of water he'd brought in earlier to wash up with. Dammit, he's been so careful to boil then cool the water she's been cleaning herself with, but everything his mother taught him, everything he knows about medicine at all, says this has to be infection.

  Agnieszka is the first one into the hut, and she lights the candles in the room from her own she brought with her as she enters.

  “Jakub, we heard you yelling. Is something wrong?”

  “Fever. Donovan has a fever. It has to be infection.”

  Agnieszka approaches the bed, and now, with Agnieszka's candlelight, he can see he's right: Donovan's face is red and angry around her jaw. As careful as he's been, infection has set in, and they're here in the forest with no antibiotics.

  He starts calculating: How fast can he run? How long will it take to carry her out of here? Did Bożena and Janina think to return the rental car when they checked them out of the hotel? Where is a hospital? Is his cell phone even charged enough to get GPS directions? Did the rental car have built-in GPS instead?

  He's in motion, still formulating his plan, and about to lift Donovan when Agnieszka stops him.

  “Jakub, we can help her. Just be calm. Wet a cloth with water and cool her and I'll help the others get what they need so we don't have to move her.”

  He doesn't want to trust her, but he isn't sure how long it will take to get Donovan to a hospital, either. His rational mind tells him that his mother knew so much about herbs and alternate forms of healing; she had to have learned it here. Panic tells him to run. Logic tells him he needs to let the sisters do whatever it is they do, if they even know how to treat humans.

  Without knowing if he'd even have a car once they are out of the forest, he does exactly as Agnieszka says, dipping one of his clean t-shirts in the water and wiping Donovan's feverish body down with it.

  He isn't sure if it's minutes or hours before the hut is bustling with sisters, much as the other hut had when they'd first stitched Donovan's wounds. One sister has a cup filled with something she pours into Donovan's mouth. Another lances the angry, red swelling on her face before he can grab her arm to stop her. A third has him up and out of the hut before he realizes it, and he vomits noisily. All that yellow liquid seeping out after the sister had lanced Donovan's face: How long has the infection raged? How could he have been so blind?

  Worst of all, how much more will Donovan suffer for his hubris? Why can't he bear the brunt of it instead? He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and takes a step to go back inside, but Bożena stops him. Now that he has his wits about him, he can see she was the sister who rushed him outside.

  “Let them do what needs to be done. It upsets you more to watch than it does to be away from her, and right now she doesn't know whether you are there or not with the fever.”

  He knows she's right, but it doesn't make him feel any better.

  “I promised I'd keep her safe, and all I do is bring her into more danger,” he says.

  Bożena laughs.

  “You think quite a lot of yourself, don't you? As if you control all the fates of the world. Infection happens even here, Jakub, even to the sisters, which is why we have ways in which to treat it. You take responsibility for everything, even the things well beyond your control. Let go of some of it, and realize that life simpl
y happens and you have to experience it as it does.”

  He glares at her and begins pacing outside the door she’s blocking. He’s an angry bear now, wanting nothing more than to get back to Donovan's side, but it's clear the sisters — or at least Bożena — are going to keep him from her. He has been relegated to the role of “useless male” now.

  Bożena chuckles under her breath, but doesn't move from her post, and he eventually gives up his pacing, first standing and glaring over her shoulder trying to see what the sisters are doing to Donovan, and then finally giving in, slumping against the hut and dozing.

  The sun is already rising high into the sky when Bożena shakes his shoulder to wake him.

  “Her fever is broken. You can go back in. She needs to rest for a bit now, but she’s been asking for you. Try not to show her how frightened you were. She'll only worry for you instead of concentrating on healing.”

  He nods and grasps her shoulder in a gesture of both apology and thanks before going back in. He needs to see for himself that Donovan is okay.

  41: Need

  Donovan feels boneless. She’s surrounded by Dziwozony, and no matter how many times she asks for Jakub, all they do is cluck at her, and still he doesn't appear. She alternately burns and freezes and begs for Jakub. Sometimes, she's convinced that all of this has been a dream, and she’s actually back home in her apartment. Everything has been the product of her imagination.

  She’ll wake up in the morning to find Vance has forgotten her all over again, and she’s caught in the never-ending cycle of being in love with someone who can't love her back because he's always forgetting who she is.

  At some point, a sharp pain slices through the side of her face, cutting her all over again, and she’s back in the hut with Grace dying in a pool of blood on top of her. Everything is nightmare, but she's sure of Grace’s death.

  The weight of Grace's body on hers is real. The burning of her face is real as well, but she also remembers the comfort and safety she'd felt in Jakub's arms. Why isn't he with her now?

  But after the sharp pain comes sweet relief and someone applying burning hot cloths. Infection, she thinks. I have an infection and they’re trying to help me. But where did Jakub go? Wasn't he just here with me?

  She knows people are trying to help her, but she fights them. They keep applying hot cloths to her face, and wiping the rest of her sweat-soaked body repeatedly with cool ones. She tries to pull herself free, to leave the bed, to run to find Jakub, but the women are so much bigger than she is. She never gets more than an arm free before she’s their prisoner again.

  Crying, begging, and threatening are doing her no good: They ignore everything. The women don't care if she's burning up or freezing cold; they splash water over her all the same and pour foul-tasting things down her throat. No matter how many times she asks for Jakub, they don't answer her.

  Donovan isn't sure if the torture goes on for hours or days, but finally, when she’s so exhausted she can’t keep her eyes open any longer, they let her go. One of them rolls her from side to side first, and when they leave her alone in the bed, she feels cool, dry linens beneath her. For all their avoidance of clothes, they do seem to like decent bedding, or at least it seems like it wherever she is now.

  They clean her one more time and wash her hair before dressing her in clean clothes and covering her. One more time she asks for Jakub, but she can manage no more than a whisper. Someone — Janina? Bożena? — whispers in her ear that she'll send him in shortly, but Donovan can't keep her eyes open to wait for him.

  She tries to stay awake for him, but she feels herself drifting off into unconsciousness. Just as she's nearly under, she feels a dip in the bed and warm arms gather her up. She doesn't need to open her eyes to know it's him, and she sighs.

  His voice breaks as he chants the same word over and over again: “Przepraszam, przepraszam.” The word sounds pretty, but his voice sounds sad, and she moves her arm so her fingers can stroke his cheek before she finally drifts off to sleep.

  42: Knowing

  Bożena watches Jakub and his human after the other sisters have left. She tells herself she’s just making sure Donovan's fever has truly broken, but she knows she’s watching Jakub's heart as it breaks. Without the directness of him broadcasting his feelings, she can still tell what he’s thinking: This world is not safe for a human girl.

  When he ran to the doorway of the hut and screamed for the sisters, he was thinking of all the trappings of his former human life: of cars and doctors and hospitals and medicines. No matter how much Grażyna taught him, it was not enough, for he thinks the knowledge applies only to their world, and not to the human world as well.

  Bożena vows to explain him later in the day, but she knows he won't believe her. She can see he has already resolved to cut his heart out and send the human girl away from him. He’ll stay here because he feels he has no place in her world anymore, and he’ll die by inches missing her because he feels it's the right thing to do.

  Maybe this is the monster the legends spoke of: not that males would destroy life, but destroy love. Maybe all the legends meant was that males were destined to go out into the human world, breed with human women, and tear their own hearts out as well as those of the women they mate with.

  Bożena stands in the shadows and watches him as he passes his fingers over every inch of Donovan's body, as if the fever could be hiding in a square inch the sisters had missed and is lying in wait to steal the girl's life away from him. His hands slide under the girl's nightgown, through her hair, and press along the newly-opened wound, double-checking the hours of work the sisters have put in. The whole while he resorts to the tongue of his birth, not the one he shares with the girl, babbling apologies Bożena knows Donovan can’t hear in her sleep.

  When she can no longer bear Jakub's self-inflicted penance, Bożena turns away and walks back to the hut she's claimed as her own. The irony isn’t lost on her that she took up residence in Edyta's former home: living in the home of the one who hated her most feels like some sort of sign. Cleansed or not, each time she crosses the doorway, she hopes for some clue from the dead woman, some hint of where the sisters went wrong.

  She’s glad there are no sisters currently with child, because the issue of any future male children hasn't been decided, and Bożena has asked the others to think on it, but not bring it to any sort of vote yet. They need time to adjust to everything that’s happened, as well as time to adjust to the presence of Jakub, and to learn about him. She isn't even sure he knows the full extent of the power he has, and it needs to be studied and tested before any decisions can be made about the future of male babies.

  She settles into her own bed for a few hours of sleep before she attends to her own duties for the day and wonders what Grażyna would do if she were alive. What advice would she give to her son?

  Bożena feels a responsibility to her sister, to somehow make things right for Jakub, but she has no feeling for what her sister might have done. She knows only that the relationship with the human girl had been encouraged, for whatever reason. Grażyna had to have wanted them together for some reason, but Bożena doesn't know why or how to solve things. She can see what he will do, but not how to stop him.

  Soon, she, too, is too tired to think anymore, and she falls asleep and dreams she is searching for Grażyna in a netherworld, calling out questions for which she never receives answers.

  43: Farewell

  It’s impossible to spend another second in the bed with Donovan next to him without wanting to give in to his feelings and keep her here in the forest with him, so Jakub finds himself in a very cold stream in the afternoon under the guise of bathing. He realizes he's taking the forest equivalent of a cold shower, but his options are limited here, where creature comforts such as running water and coffee shops and antibiotics are unheard of. He wishes at least some of them were. It would make this so much easier for him — and for Donovan, he thinks.

  It takes a few minut
es for the frigid water to bring clarity to his mind, because his first reaction is to hurl himself back out of the stream and rush back to the warm bed he’s just left. Donovan is injured, he tells himself. She's undoubtedly weak after her fever. And beyond all that, he has to send her back. Last night has proven to him that she can’t stay here. Human lives are fragile, and the Dziwozony lack everything she needs to stay alive.

  Not once has she complained about how primitive it is compared to where they’ve come from, but he makes a mental list of all the things that would have helped last night: a doctor, a hospital, a thermometer, medications. Even simple pills that would have been kept in a medicine cabinet back in her apartment were things he'd need to trek hours for here in the forest. Last night, it had been something as simple as a fever that could have killed her. If he’s selfish and tries to keep her here, it could be so much worse: cancer, or …

  His eyes prick and burn at the thought of Donovan dying in childbirth. But then his mind wanders to an image of Donovan round and glowing, carrying his child, then Donovan sweaty and panting and sliding under him doing things that would lead to her being round and glowing carrying his child. He ducks under the surface, hoping the icy water distracts him from both of his body's reactions: one making him hard, the other making his eyes threaten to overflow. He can’t keep her. He has to send her back.

  He resurfaces only when his breath runs out, and he shakes his head to clear the water from his eyes. When he opens them, he thinks he must be hallucinating, because she’s there, on the bank, naked as any of the Dziwozony.

  So many words bubble up, and he opens his mouth only to find he can’t speak any of them.

  “It looks like it’s freezing in there. Is it cold?”