The White Forest

by Adam McOmber

  “Your hair is a lovely color,” Maddy said. “Like burnished oak. We should brush it, don’t you think?”

  And so we did, sitting at the vanity in my bedroom. I had no idea that we would sit just that way for years to come.

  Maddy went through my wardrobe, searching for anything of color. She resorted to taking a red table covering from beneath the vase of flowers in the hall and fashioning a sort of wrap, which she put around my shoulders. She turned me toward the mirror. “I’m fond of paleness as much as the next girl, Jane,” she said. “It provides an air of dignity and interest, but I simply think you’ve taken it too far. You don’t look like a lily as much as like some phosphorescent plant growing in the gardens of the underworld.”

  It was true; my skin was nearly translucent. Even my lips had only the faintest pigment. “I rarely go walking,” I admitted as I admired the wrap. The color red suited me, and I wondered how many different types of table coverings were in the house and what sort of clothes my new friend could make from them.

  “My old friends in Mayfair and I would play at dressing up,” Maddy said. “They no longer speak to me, though.”

  “Why is that?” I asked, wondering again what mystery this girl held.

  “Because I suppose they weren’t really my friends to begin with,” she said. “You and I could be so much more for each other. We’ll assist one another in becoming women. I’m sure you have certain knowledge that would help even me.”

  I didn’t think I knew anything that would help Madeline Lee, and yet I agreed. There was a moment, some bit of fun on her part, when she grabbed my hand, and I braced for her reaction to the transference. I thought she’d spring back and call me a devil when the house started singing around her, but Maddy reacted only with a moment of blankness. She seemed to be no longer focusing on my dressing room but looking at some distant shape. Then she composed herself. “I had quite a spell,” she said, laughing. “I get a bit foggy sometimes, Jane.”

  “It was—” I started. I was ready to reveal my true nature because I already felt close to her.

  “A terrible spell,” she said. Was there a tone of warning in her voice?

  We slipped from Stoke Morrow into my father’s garden, a place where we would spend much of our time, as it was so isolated from the main house and any vigilant eye. The cold gods of Rome presided from their pedestals. Dionysus in a pair of stone antlers studied the two of us with interest as Maddy instructed me (the first of many instructions) on the components of an eighteenth-century “perfect garden.”

  “There must be an orangerie, which you have,” she said, approvingly, pointing to the greenhouse on our property where black branches of lemon trees pressed at steamed glass panes. “They are everywhere in France, you know. Beautiful glass houses where the citrus trees are kept. The smell is dazzling in midwinter. I’ve always thought I’d like to live in an orangerie and sit among the citrus groves in the sunlight all day.”

  “That’s lovely,” I said, still feeling shy.

  “And then of course there must be a menagerie,” she said. “I’ve been begging my father to purchase a few animals that I could tend. Imagine feeding a miniature Chinese deer from one’s own hand. Wouldn’t that be darling, Jane?”

  “I suppose it would.”

  “They have such tiny, gentle mouths. I’ve heard one can even teach them to kneel in one’s presence, as if they are at worship. I would feel like the goddess of the deer, you know.”

  We both laughed. It had been a long time since I’d felt such levity, and this was the moment I decided I should never let go of Madeline Lee. She acted as though she didn’t notice my admiration. Instead she went on with her lecture. “And then, of course, you need a folly—and though yours is lovely, there is more to life than Rome. Have you ever thought of including a ruined abbey or perhaps even a Tartar tent?”

  “I have no control over the folly,” I said. “It belongs to my father.”

  “Fathers,” she said. “They do have their follies.” She paused here, weighing a thought in her mind. “I might as well tell you, Jane. I don’t think you’re going to shun me like those other girls. You don’t seem the type. My father’s folly is that he makes pictures using a daguerreotype machine, or at least he did before he took ill. In Mayfair last year, he made pictures of nude women.”

  “Nude?” I asked.

  She nodded, solemnly. “Prostitutes, mostly. He took hundreds of such images. Perhaps he was too naive to know what would happen, but then again maybe in some way he wanted this. He always said that Mayfair and even the London Society of Art was full of arrogant philistines. And he was right, of course, the philistines judged him for his pictures. Father isn’t well, and he couldn’t properly defend himself against those fools. There was gossip that he’d caught his sickness from those lowborn women—that it’s some disease of the liver. I don’t believe that, but I suppose it doesn’t matter what I think. Here I am, and here is not such a bad place, is it, Jane? Tell me it’s not.”

  “The Heath?” I said, looking toward the southern woods. “I rarely venture out of my house. Father thinks it’s dangerous.” I didn’t tell Maddy of the black shale with the fissures that led into the earth where my mother had been poisoned. That was perhaps too singular a bit of information for such a sunny day.

  “Oh, but we must go walking!” she said. “That’s the whole point of the Heath, isn’t it? To take a lovely walk. Perhaps I can find us an appropriate escort to take us adventuring.”

  “Yes,” I said, wondering what kind of escort she could provide.

  Maddy nearly took my hand again but then seemed to think better of it. “It’s good to find a friend like you, Jane Silverlake, even in these wilds.”

  We stood at the tree line. Two girls, peering into the darkness together.

  • • •

  The arrival of our guide, Nathan Ashe, left me in a state of shock. I had not met anyone of his status before. Though my father did have some connection to society, he hadn’t made use of such connection for some time and tended to shy away from worldliness. Therefore, the son of a lord was barely within the range of my imagining—particularly a specimen such as Nathan, a pale and sinewy god in his own right with his rake of hair and his strong-looking neck. When he arrived in the Roman ruin, all of seventeen, emerging from the shadows of the southern woods, I felt oddly light in the head. It was as though one of Father’s statues had come to life. Nathan carried his father’s brass headed cane and wore a youthful suit. His manner was light and pleasant, and when Maddy said, “Jane Silverlake, meet Nathan Ashe,” and he kissed my gloved hand, I was worried less about blushing than fainting dead away.

  It occurred to me that he would never have come if it weren’t for Maddy. This knowledge stuck in my heart like a splinter—a constant irritation that would grow infected over time.

  Unlike Maddy, Nathan had been born in Hampstead Town, though I’d never before had the opportunity to meet him. I wasn’t quite certain how she had lured the young Mr. Ashe. Perhaps it was something as simple as her physical beauty, though I doubted it. Nathan’s river ran deeper. More likely it was her father’s scandalous reputation and her mother’s forays into occult phenomena, which she promised to discuss with him.

  I remember him speaking to me alone on the second or third walk when Madeline went off to pick wildflowers. I felt warm in his presence. He seemed to radiate heat, and though my father warned me that Lord Ashe’s son was another goat in the wilderness—a Pan looking for trouble—Nathan struck me as earnest. His eyes were kind and thoughtful, and there was intelligence in his face.

  “You and Maddy are of different natures,” he said, leaning on his cane.

  I knew silence would make me look foolish, so I forced myself to agree.

  “However did you find each other?” he asked. “Not at some cotillion, I’m guessing.”

  “Maddy found me,” I said. “She’s been working on my transformation.”

  He grinned,
running his fingers through his hair. “Don’t let her change you too much, Jane. Your difference makes you intriguing. You seem like, well, someone promising.”

  I thought about my talent and wished that he knew my secret.

  Even then, I wished he knew.

  • • •

  Upon returning to Stoke Morrow from my trip to La Dometa, I noticed the objects in Father’s collections had quieted to some degree. The button was no longer buzzing in my bedroom. There was still an insistence in the objects’ murmurings, though. I was still irritated with Maddy for not giving me the necklace, yet on some level, I understood her motive. The necklace was like the button—a private piece of Nathan Ashe that one would not part with easily.

  I went to the library, dropped my shawl on one of the wingback chairs, and rang the handbell that Father kept near his blotter. Miss Anne appeared promptly in her white apron and a steam-pressed blouse. Her frowsy gray hair was held back from her face with pins.

  “Do you know any servants from Ashe High House?” I asked.

  She wasn’t accustomed to personal questions, especially from me, and she paused for a moment, trying to come up with an appropriate answer. “No, miss. Domestics on the Heath don’t fraternize. It’s frowned upon.”

  I folded my hands and regarded her. “I’m well aware of the protocol, Anne. I’m asking whether you actually know anyone there.”

  Her eyelids fluttered nervously. “There was my mother’s sister. But she’s passed.”

  “Is there no one else?” I asked.

  “Honestly, there isn’t. Are you looking for information about Master Nathan?”

  “I want one of his possessions,” I said, “for something I am attempting. I’d like a domestic to bring one to Stoke Morrow for me.”

  A familiar look came over Miss Anne’s face—the look that said she considered me poorly raised despite her best efforts. “You wouldn’t ask someone to steal from Ashe High House, would you?”

  I glanced away. If she was going to be of no help, there was no point continuing the conversation.

  “If you’re simply wanting for one of Master Nathan’s possessions, I have something that will fit the bill.”

  I was startled by this bit of information. “How could you have something belonging to him?”

  “He gave it to me,” Miss Anne said. “Not too long ago. I’ll go and get it.”

  When she reappeared in the library, she was carrying a black leather Bible with a gold cross on the front. I recognized it as Nathan’s. The cover was brittle and one corner had broken off. The Bible made a low whistling sound, like a kettle beginning to boil.

  “He gave that to you?” I asked.

  “That’s right,” Miss Anne said. “It was the oddest thing. Happened not more than a month ago. You girls were upstairs getting ready, and Master Nathan was waiting in the parlor. He simply handed me the Bible and said he had no use for it anymore. I tried to argue, saying everyone had want of a Bible. But he said that wasn’t true for him. He thought I’d find some better use. And so I took it, but the fact that he gave it away left me worried. I’ve always liked Master Nathan—he’s so awfully regal and well appointed.”

  “Put the Bible on the desk, Anne,” I said, uninterested in hearing her opinions about Nathan.

  She put it down and slid it toward me, as if I was some hungry animal that might bite her hand.

  “That’s all,” I said. “You can go.”

  “May I have it back when you’re finished with it?” she said. “I feel so terrible about what’s happened. I’ve been praying for him, you know. Praying each and every day.”

  “I’m sure wherever he is, Nathan appreciates your prayers. Now close the door behind you.”

  Miss Anne did as I asked, and I sat for a moment, listening to the spitting and whistling of the Bible in front of me. I had no love for holy books after having been labeled a devil for most of my childhood, and I particularly feared what this one might reveal to me.

  Finally, I took the book into my hands, and in the next moment, I was once again in the dark of the painted forest. The scene unfurled before me—skeletal trees and a sky full of glittering glass stars. It was the same carefully decorated chamber I’d seen when I touched the button, and once again I heard the distant note of the hunter’s horn. Then a shadow shifted behind the false trees. It was the creature, terribly frightened and stumbling. I could feel its uncertainty as I willed the animal to come forward.

  Finally, the beast stepped into the light of the clearing, revealing itself in full. It was a great stag—muscular with powerful and woody antlers. I was in awe of its strength, and there was such intelligence in the stag’s eyes that I felt it might open its mouth and speak. The stag’s pelt was matted with blood about its neck and shoulders. I thought the hunters must have already harmed it.

  The animal looked as though it wanted my help, even though I sensed the hunters were far away. It took me a moment to realize there was someone else in the painted forest, someone who did not emerge from the tree line but who remained hidden and watched the stag. I strained to make out the figure, and finally I saw it was a woman.

  I could discern the outline of her long robe in the darkness, and her skin was moon-colored—so pale I thought she might be a dead thing. She swayed as she stared at the stag, utterly transfixed. Her eyes were like twin black skies, gleaming in the woods. And then she opened her mouth and made a high, eerie whistling sound, like wind blowing through a crack in a windowpane.

  At the sound, the stag bounded away, and the woman, if she could rightly be called a woman, gave chase. As she came close to the clearing, I saw her mantle was dark and red.

  I dropped the Bible from my hands, and the smell of Nathan Ashe was once again everywhere around me, so thick and cloying I found it hard to breathe. The book had fallen open to a specific page because the spine was broken, and I leaned down and saw that Nathan himself had scrawled over the Bible’s verses there in ink. I recognized his handwriting but not the message. He wrote: In the beginning was not the Word. In the beginning was She, Red Goddess, the Unnamed. Here before the world was made. Here after it is laid to ruin.

  I wondered if it was the Red Goddess who pursued the stag through the woods, and if so, what did she want from the poor, suffering beast?

  CHAPTER 6

  By week’s end, Maddy’s prediction had come true, and I’d received a summons to meet with Inspector Vidocq at his makeshift office, set up in the second-floor parlor at Ashe High House. It was on the very morning of the interview, while I was still in my dressing room, donning my gloves and steeling myself for the encounter, that something unexpected and unwanted occurred. It was an event which shook me enough that I wondered if I’d be able to navigate the upcoming interview at all. A knock came at my dressing room door, and when I answered it, I found Miss Anne standing in the hall looking rather flummoxed. “A messenger brought this for you, Jane,” she said, holding out an envelope that had been sealed with dark wax. “He says he’ll wait for your reply. I didn’t let him in the house. He’s . . . well, a rather ragged-looking fellow, and I was afraid he’d track dirt or something worse inside.”

  “Who would send me a message?” I said, more to myself than to Miss Anne. The fact was, I didn’t really have any acquaintances other than Maddy and Nathan. Even Father’s relations rarely spoke to me anymore.

  “I wouldn’t know,” Miss Anne replied. “But if the master is anything like his messenger, I doubt very much this could be anything good.”

  I broke the wax seal and found the letter within written in a florid script—a hand that I did not recognize.

  My Dear Miss Silverlake,

  Please accept my apology for not introducing myself at an earlier date. Now that I finally take up my pen, we are both involved in such desperate affairs that you will likely think me some opportunist. But I assure you, I have been making my way toward an audience with you for longer than you can know. In all honesty, I’ve been workin
g toward this meeting for most of my life—though I did not know your name or even if you existed.

  You are aware of my group in Southwark, I assume, and our failed attempts at reaching what religious men call transcendence. I assure you, this failure is not the product of a misguided philosophy as some would argue. We have failed, quite simply, because we lack the necessary means to achieve the outcome we seek.

  I believe all of that is about to change, Miss Silverlake, because of you. Before his disappearance, young Nathan Ashe told me a great deal about your nature and led me to believe that you may, in fact, be the key to my lifelong quest. I must admit I am somewhat concerned about the veracity of his claims, especially in light of recent events. Nathan Ashe was not precisely what any of us believed him to be. But I would very much like to meet with you and come to some deeper understanding of your situation.

  Please do not think I’m being mysterious here. I know I have a reputation for such a manner, but I assure you that I come to you in a spirit of sharing what I know. If what Nathan says is true, we may be able to help one another greatly. In fact, together we may be able to help the entire world. Send word with my boy as to when you would be willing to come and speak with me at the Temple of the Lamb in Southwark.

  In Earnestness,

  Ariston Day

  I lowered the letter to my side, all too aware that Miss Anne was watching me, waiting for me to speak. Sweat had broken out across my brow and the morning sun streaming through the bedroom window seemed all too bright. Ariston Day was writing to me about my nature, which meant that Nathan had not only spoken to him about the Empyrean but revealed my talent to him as well. I realized the hand I held the letter with was trembling, and I willed it to stop before Miss Anne noticed.