The White Forest

by Adam McOmber

  “Madeline,” I called in a voice that was loud and hard. The sound of it seemed to echo off the white sky.

  She looked startled and before I could speak another word, she was moving toward the cover of the white trees.

  “Don’t you dare,” I called to her.

  She did not stop. If anything, she ran faster.

  I stood and followed her into the woods, watching as her purple dress flickered among the white trunks. I found I could move more easily in the Empyrean, as if I owned the space. I called Maddy’s name again, but still she did not slow. I wove among the trees that were not trees at all. They were like bones. The Empyrean was some vast body.

  I caught Maddy by a ribbon trailing from her purple gown, and she fell, face-first, into one of the white trees. She screamed, clutching at the bark and then turning to claw at me. I took both her wrists and held them. There was no transference in the white forest, for there was nothing to transfer. But I drew strength from the trees themselves and held her down.

  “This was so foolish,” I said. “I worked so hard to protect you.”

  “Where is Nathan?” she spat.

  “Nathan?” I said, outraged at the ridiculousness of her question. This had all gone well beyond Nathan. “Let me look, Maddy. Let me see if I can find him.” I turned my head from side to side and called out his name. “It looks as though Nathan’s not here,” I said caustically. “Is it possible that Ariston Day misguided you?”

  “Let me go, Jane,” she screamed.

  With all my force, I shook her against the white tree, knocking the back of her skull against the bark. “Do you know what I am?” I said.

  “I do,” she said. “He told me.”

  “Then you should be bowing your head.”

  She did not bow. She looked at me defiantly. “Where is the Crystal Palace? Where is London? What have you done with everything?”

  “I did this?” I asked, incredulous. “Maddy, are you going to listen to me or do I have to thrash you against this tree again?”

  She grew quiet, ceasing her struggle. “Just tell me where everyone has gone,” she said. “Is London no more?”

  “You assume I know more than I actually do,” I said. “I’ve been trying to tell you that.” I gazed into the white forest. The space among the trees was eerie, as if pregnant with some unseen force. “London exists. But I certainly don’t know how to get back there. What did Ariston Day tell you would happen?”

  She drew a breath. “He said the electricity from the Great Illumination would augment your talent. He said it would keep the door open long enough so all of us could pass through and look for Nathan.”

  “And how did he know such a thing?”

  “He’s had meetings with William Crookes of the queen’s Society for Psychical Research. Mr. Crookes used electricity with his mediums to great effect. One woman was said to be able to produce a full-bodied apparition when she was augmented with electricity.”

  “More human experiments,” I said. “That’s charming, Maddy.”

  “What are we going to do, Jane?”

  “We’re going to clean up the mess that you and Ariston Day have made,” I said. “But I’m in charge here. You’ll do everything I say. Do you understand?”

  She nodded. “Will we find Nathan?”

  “If you ask me that again, I will strangle you.”

  “Yes, Jane.”

  “We’re going to walk,” I said. “Go quietly. I believe I know what things live in these woods, and you wouldn’t want to meet them.”

  • • •

  We made our way through the white trees; Maddy went first because I no longer trusted her to walk behind me. My rage had subsided, but I felt the connection between us was torn. She was no longer a sister. I had no sisters. Nathan was right. I was the kind of thing that walked alone.

  Maddy glanced back nervously, perhaps checking whether I was about to transform into a blazing goddess and take my rightful seat in this weird atmosphere. But I remained myself, still tattered and bleeding. Unlike walking on the Heath, there were no paths by which to travel, and edging through the trees made our traversing slow. Though there was a great deal of flora in the Empyrean, we saw literally no fauna. No insects or birds. Everything was terribly pristine. Untouched and impossible.

  “What pollinates the flowers?” Maddy asked. “There must be some sort of insect here at least. It can’t all just be plants.”

  “They only look like plants,” I said.

  She bent over to smell one of the glowing oversize flowers. “You’re right. There is no scent,” she said. “And it’s as though I’m not seeing any of them clearly. I can’t quite focus my eyes.”

  I could see the Empyrean clearly enough. In fact, the more time I spent there, the more its images resolved in front of me. Every piece of foliage was becoming articulated.

  “You shouldn’t have brought us here, Maddy,” I said, calmly now. “I don’t really know what any of it means. And we’re no closer to finding Nathan now than we were in London. In fact, we may be further away.” I turned to look at her. “Why didn’t you simply tell me you were carrying Nathan’s child?”

  She paused for a moment and then said, “Because this was my problem, Jane. For once, something was my very own, and it had nothing to do with your godforsaken talent. Finally, there was something between just Nathan and me—something normal. A child.”

  “Yes,” I said agreeing. “And I am so far from normal.”

  “You’re like a tidal wave,” she said, “that picks up everything in its path and drags it along. We’re all at the mercy of your currents. Ariston Day says that no part of you is even human.”

  This pierced me. “Do you believe him, Maddy? You, of all people.”

  She turned to look at me, remorseful yet determined. “You said it yourself. These plants, which look so very much like plants, are in fact not. You look so much like a girl, but—”

  “Yes,” I said grimly. “I am not.”

  “I’m sorry, Jane.”

  “Don’t say that when you don’t mean it. I’m tired of talking in circles with you.”

  “But you must understand why I used the gun,” she said. “For once, I wanted to be in control of my own fate.”

  “And look where that’s gotten you,” I said. “You’re in the false forest—perhaps for eternity.”

  “No,” she said, hastening her step.

  “It’s not going to help you to run away,” I called. “Haven’t you learned that yet?”

  When she stopped short, I knew she’d discovered something—even before I saw the red coat spread beneath the tree.

  The Fetch was bleeding from an ugly wound in his neck, turning the red of his coat an even darker shade. The skin around the wound looked as though it had been torn by a dull blade, splaying the flesh. Maddy recognized him before I did—his rough American face was badly bruised. “Alexander,” she said, kneeling at his side. “What’s happened to you?”

  His lips were chapped and white, and his eyes searched the sunless sky. “Ariston Day,” he whispered.

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  Alexander made a gurgling cough. “Things weren’t going according to plan and he became—violent.”

  “Did he do this to you, Alexander?”

  “Jane,” he said, as if seeing me for the first time. There was blood on his teeth when he smiled. “The Great Doorway. Bringer of the Paradise.”

  “You can see well enough Day was wrong about all that,” I said. “He didn’t understand what it meant to open the door.”

  “He still doesn’t,” Alexander said, “and now it seems the door wasn’t enough. He needs to bring the wall down.”

  “The wall?” I asked.

  Alexander took a wheezing breath. “The wall . . . the membrane . . . the skin. I don’t know what to call it. It’s what encloses this place, holds it away from earth. Day is making sacrifices in the woods. He says we’ve displeased the gods of the Empyrean a
nd the only thing that’s left is blood sacrifice. That’s what these coats were meant to represent all along. We Fetches wear our blood on the outside, and he’s bleeding every one of us he finds.”

  “Can you stand?” Maddy asked. “Can you come with us?”

  “I think I’d better lie here,” Alexander said. He coughed again. “Pascal isn’t with you?”

  “He isn’t,” I said. “We’ve found only you.”

  “I was terrible to him,” Alexander said. “I treated him so badly, and for what? Feeble transcendence?”

  “Pascal wants to talk to you,” I said, “He believes you aren’t lost, and I hope he’s right.”

  Alexander grimaced. “If you see him, tell him I cared for him. Tell him I forgot myself when I pushed him away. I’m Sleep and he’s Death. He knew his purpose all along.”

  I bent down and squeezed his hand. “You’ll tell him, Alexander, when you see him again. Now, can you explain to us exactly what Ariston Day is attempting?”

  “There’s a wall,” Alexander said. “The wall that separates the Empyrean from our world. Day believes he can bring the wall down now that he’s inside. Believes he can unite the two halves and bring about the unmaking. He doesn’t want a doorway anymore, you see. He wants it all to be of one piece. He intends to let this Paradise spill out into London like a disease. We thought we might live in something beautiful. But now that I’ve seen it, I know the Empyrean will bring blight. It will undo everything I love.”

  “How will he bring down the wall?” I asked.

  Alexander shifted in the white grass. “He thinks the gods will do his bidding if they’re sated. And there’s something inside the wall—a mechanism that will help him bring it down, a machine.”

  “Where is it?” Maddy asked. “Where is the wall, Alexander?”

  “Keep walking,” he said. “The wall surrounds everything. You’ll run into it eventually. That’s how we found it.”

  Maddy put her shawl over him. Though it was not cold in the Empyrean, I was glad for her gesture. It didn’t seem right to just leave him there to die.

  “We have to move quickly,” I said to her. “Whatever work Day is doing, he can’t be allowed to finish.”

  • • •

  Maddy and I made our way through the trees, trying to keep our skirts from catching on roots and bracken. No matter how far we walked, we seemed to make no progress. The landscape of the Empyrean was all the same—white trees and the odd glowing flowers. We didn’t reach the wall. There seemed to be no wall.

  Evening came, making me realize that the sky wasn’t so much a sky as some kind of membrane that emitted light like the tulips. The membrane shifted its color to a dull painted dusk.

  “Look there,” Maddy said, pointing to a red coat in the underbrush.

  We approached and found a Fetch who hadn’t been as lucky as Alexander. The boy was nearly beheaded—a grisly piece of his spine protruded from his neck. There was another boy some ten yards away, hanging upside down from a tree over a pool of his own blood. He’d been drained like a slain deer.

  Maddy turned her head. “Jane, how could Ariston Day do these things? These were his followers.”

  I thought of ancient priests and the rituals of sacrifice—the things men would do in an attempt to please their gods. Yet Ariston Day did not comprehend the gods of the Empyrean. He was slaughtering blindly, hoping for an answer to his prayer.

  • • •

  Maddy was the first to slow, one hand on the trunk of a tree, peering ahead into the dim forest. “Jane, I . . . how far have we traveled?”

  “It seems like miles,” I said. “But there’s no true way of knowing. Space in the Empyrean feels different.”

  “How large can it be—this forest?”

  I sensed that question was unanswerable, and I think Maddy knew this herself, as she did not press a second time. We rested at the base of a tree with thick roots that spread over the ground. There was the same absence of smell even when we were so close to the tree’s bark.

  “Go to sleep,” I said. “I’ll keep watch.”

  “Jane, when I told you I didn’t think you were human, I didn’t mean—”

  “You meant it,” I said. “We should speak the truth to each other here. And I don’t even know if I want to be human anymore after all that’s happened.”

  “Don’t say that,” she said. “We’ll make our way back to London, find a way to carry on.”

  “Do you really believe that, Maddy?” I stared into the forest around us. “I’ve feared coming to this place all my life. I suppose because I knew that when I arrived, there would be no way to go back.” I turned my attention to her again. “I’ll find a way for you to return. You and Pascal, if he’s here.”

  “You’ll come with us,” she said, taking my hand. “We’ll find Nathan and we’ll all go together.”

  I pulled my hand gently away and said, “When you took me from my hiding place at Stoke Morrow so many years ago, I thought I’d fallen into some dream. I didn’t believe life could be so good. Now I realize I was right all along. I’m awake, Maddy. Now I’m awake.”

  She looked at me, searching, and I wondered how my face looked to her at that moment. It felt like an impenetrable surface. I was an idol and my skin was all of stone.

  “Go to sleep,” I said. “Dream of London.”

  CHAPTER 32

  After Maddy closed her eyes, I watched the sky, wondering whether false stars would appear as night descended. But soon enough, I realized there would be no stars in the Empyrean. No painted moon. This was not some storied forest or sacred grove. It was neither a Heaven nor a Hell. We’d fallen into a secret place that was not earth or anything like it. As the woman in the Hall of the Red Star had said, this was the beautiful Unmade, the opposite of creation. In terms of Ariston Day’s spiritual archaeology, this place (if it could be called a place at all) predated man and his religions. It was the pale beginning, a sprawling hush.

  The evening sky, like the flowers, pulsed with a gentle and electric light, allowing me to see the spaces among the white trees. Ariston Day was out there somewhere, scrambling like a rat in the wall—the skin which surrounded and contained this place. He was an intruder who did not belong in this secret domain. I knew I had to find him before he could finish his work, before he could destroy the boundary between earth and Empyrean.

  • • •

  I was careful not to wake Maddy as I stood. I left her there in the heart of the white forest, turning back only once to look at her. The woman who’d been my friend for so many years was like a discarded doll, curled there among the roots of the tree. She was exhausted, having fought so hard to win Nathan back. My guilt and my anger were gone. After everything we’d done to each other, I knew her life would be better without me. I only hoped that I could get her safely back to London. She was still young. Years would pass, and this place would begin to seem as though she’d dreamed it. Even I might seem a vision from a dream—a shade dressed in red that appeared from time to time on the ridge of the Heath to stare down at her.

  It was as I walked into the phosphorescent dark and pondered Maddy’s future that I began to hear movement among the trees. Perhaps the presence of my old friend had been preventing me from truly opening my senses to the Empyrean. Maddy was the physical reminder of the girl I’d been.

  Leaves rustled, and I saw the shadows of tall, long-limbed creatures appear. Like the forest, the creatures came into focus slowly, and I found I was not afraid. These were the white apes—the same that Nathan had seen on Malta, the ones I’d dreamed of after the death of my mother. Father said the gods were like animals, and he could not have known how correct he was. These were the old gods that had disappeared long ago, perhaps before even man had learned to write his history down, but they still hovered at the edge of human memory like the Red Goddess herself. They were striding creatures, some six feet in height with rough, whitish fur and pale orblike eyes that seemed electric—the color of th
e evening.

  The white apes did not seem to notice me—or perhaps I simply did not surprise them. Was it possible they were already accustomed to my presence? I counted fifteen such creatures in my proximity alone, and I wondered how many more populated the forest. The tall god-apes continued their striding, restless perhaps because their home had been infiltrated. I found that I could sense their thoughts, just as I’d once sensed the souls of objects. I extended my talent toward them, and it felt as though I was running my hands over smooth marble.

  The apes paused in their striding. They shuddered as I used my talent to stroke their thoughts, as if the act gave them pleasure. They knew me, and they called me by a name—speaking it in unison. I understood that the word they used could be loosely translated to mean “silence.” But it was part of a lost vocabulary, some ancient tongue, and the translation was imprecise. The word meant more than “silence.” It was also “home” and “peace” and “eternity.” It was both the name of the apes’ deity and the name for the place that surrounded them now. And in the music of this ineffable sound I saw the lineage of the goddess—all the avatars who spanned the course of history. These dark-eyed women ranged beyond number, and they were bathed in the deep glow of red starlight. The women were poised, waiting. They watched me with interest, wondering how I might proceed. I understood them to be my predecessors, echoes of the original goddess—each a piece of the Unnamed’s primordial soul. And I was the next in their line.

  Beyond these female figures, I saw a churning chaos—a sea of light that was both the beginning and the ending of all things. The music of the spheres rang out from this fiery realm, calling to me, charging every atom in my body. I allowed myself to be drawn toward that place of burning light, gliding over the avatars, who raised their faces to watch my passage.