In the House in the Dark of the Woods

by Laird Hunt

  Chapter 12

  After my scrubbing, I slept deeply the rest of the evening and when I woke in the night I thought first not of Eliza and her family and my own, who seemed far away, nor of lovers with hearts like bloody palaces, nor of creamy paper and scratching quills, but of the mirror and what I had said after I looked into it. Soon enough these things—hearts and paper and lost families and the carved mirror—came to seem one in my mind, and presently I lit the candle Eliza had left by my bed, shut my eyes, took up the mirror, opened my eyes, and looked into it. I waited for a hundred count then spoke, but this time I said only what my eyes confirmed was there before me, a face, handsome for all that: a pair of eyes set good and deep in their sockets, a nose that hadn’t yet been broken, still-fair teeth, and an unbruised mouth.

  Now, my room was connected by a short stretch of hallway to Eliza’s, and after I had unsuccessfully played the game without her once more, it took my fancy to surprise her as she slept and ask her again to play or, if still she wouldn’t, at least to explain why the game did not work when I was alone. So up I stood, leaving my candle behind, and stepped out into the hallway. My feet called up a lively creaking from the floor, and I thought sure my surprise would be spoiled and half turned to go back to my bed. As I did, though, I heard a moan, just a slip of a sound from the front room, and thought Eliza must be there. I was about to step down the hallway and toward it when, coming from the direction of Eliza’s room, I heard the self-same moan. Far from pretty did it sound to my ears that second time.

  I am dreaming, I thought, and should go straight to my bed and hide under its pillow, for, like quills, dreams can mark you, dreams can stripe your back. Still, I have never been strong at heeding counsel, especially not from myself. My heart beat hard as I went down the hallway and peeped around the corner. There I saw Eliza, sweet Eliza, crouched naked with her back to me in the bathing tub. The room was dim and cold, although the embers of the fire beside her were glowing still, and even a damp log would have brought it speedily back to full brightness. I wondered if the door to the great dark world was open but my eyes could not see far enough through the gloom to tell. I was about to speak, to ask her why it was so cold, to offer to reawaken the fire, when the fancy took me to place my ear on Eliza’s back. I would listen to her heart, as she had to mine; I would feel its warmth and count its rooms. So I crept forward, cleared away my hair, and put my ear to her back.

  What did I hear? Very little. A faint pulsing, a fly’s tongue, a frog’s breath. It was like an empty cupboard, a larder bare. Eliza didn’t move when I touched her. She was warm and her skin before my open eyes curved in a blur and glistened like the bowl of a spoon in the ember light. I decided that to hear so little I must have wrongly placed my ear—that somehow I was listening not to her heart but to the small bones of her back—and thought to move it when I heard again the little moan from behind Eliza’s door. “What could that be? Do you hear it too, Eliza?” I said to my friend’s fine back and to her neck and to her damp locks, but she did not answer, did not move her head or lift her arm. So after a time I turned away from her and left the front room and walked down the hallway, which seemed now twice as long.

  The door to Eliza’s room was not latched and I pushed it open easily. Fearing what I might find, for how could I not, I tightened my jaw and slowly, slowly peered in. At first I could not credit what I saw. There on her back lay Eliza, eyes closed, face turned toward me, lit by a candle like the one I had in my own little room. She wore a gown of simple cloth, open at the neck, and her chest rose and fell, fell and rose. I am dreaming sure, I thought. So what can it matter? It will mark me as it likes, this dream, whether I wish it to or not. I went forward slowly and stood at Eliza’s side and peered at her face and, by and by, let my ear, still damp from the first Eliza, sink slowly to this one’s chest. Here I am closer to the heart, I thought as I listened, but once again I heard nothing. Or nothing’s dearest friend. Perhaps the sound an owl makes as it lifts from a branch or the faint scrape a finger draws when it’s pulled across a palm. I moved away and the silence deepened into all its small sounds. The rising and falling of Eliza’s gentle breathing. The creaking of the house, the crackling and curling of the night. Presently, I heard the moan again and then another sound. I thought it must be some branch brushing its leafy tips against the side of the house, but then I realized it was weeping. I stood and went to the little window of Eliza’s room and looked outside and saw her sitting on a stool. She was hunched over with her face in her hands. Beyond her I could see the pigs in their pen, lined up together as before, each lifting one foot and then the other, as if there were music or the mud beneath them were a drum. I tapped at the window to see if Eliza would turn but neither she nor the pigs seemed to hear me. “Why is she crying? Why are you crying?” I asked the Eliza lying on the bed.

  I suppose I would have stayed and tried to put more questions to this Eliza as I had tried to put questions to the other, or pried open the window and called outside, or stepped quietly away and crept back to my room, but then like a bell struck soft but true came the moan again. It came in a chorus this time, from the front room and outside the window, yes, but now also from other places: from down in the root cellar under the wood plank of the floor where Eliza did her scratching, from the ceiling boards, from the chimney shaft, from the walls, even from my own room. Who is moaning in my room? I thought. Is it me or is it Eliza? Only here I was and here was she. The moaning stopped. “Eliza,” I said. But she did not move at the sound of my voice any more than the Eliza in the front room had. “Eliza,” I said again, more loudly, and though the shape in the bed before me stayed silent, the moan sounded alone once more.

  It came from farther down the hall, from a room I had not yet entered. I took Eliza’s candle with me for there was no light or very little by this door. I stood before it for what felt like a long time. At last I pulled at the latch and held up the candle and there lay Eliza curled on the floor. A smell of wet and burning both came toward me. Her eyes were open. She was looking at me.

  “You should go and rest now, Goody,” she said.

  I did not move. “Where are you?” I asked.

  “In the house in the dark of the woods.”

  “Then I’ve found you.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve seen three of you this night and heard a dozen more.”

  “Only a dozen?”

  “There may have been others.”

  “You can see me, you can hear me, you could reach out your hand and touch me if you cared to. I am where you are, Goody.”

  “I have heard your heart,” I said.

  “Was it loud or soft?”

  “Soft.”

  “Ah.”

  For a moment, her gaze left mine. The room was deeper than I had realized and to see what she saw at that moment I would have had to turn eyes and head and body all.

  “You should go now, Goody. Go and sleep. It’s so late,” she said.

  “Let me help you.”

  “You would help me?”

  “It’s I who’ll carry you this time,” I said. “We’ll heat fresh water. The tub is there. We’ll take you away from here and put you in a fine warm bath.” I shivered even before I had finished saying this for I had forgotten that she was already there, already in the front room, already in her bed, already under the floorboards and writing on her barrel and in the chimney and in the rafters and sitting on her stool in the yard, and in the ash of the fireplace long since dead. Sometimes at home, when it was fearsome cold and even a strong fire could not help us, my husband would say a prayer and curl himself around me and I would say a prayer and curl myself around our boy and he would say nothing and by and by we would become almost warm.

  “I would try and hear your heart one more time,” I said.

  “Then come and lie beside me, Goody.”

  I stepped into the room and gave a gasp for the floor was icy cold. Again the chorus of moans sounded. But much lo
uder. They hurt my ears. Eliza was gazing into the farthest reaches of the little room. I looked and could see a misting in the air and a slight buckling of the floor. “What is it, Eliza?” I whispered as I lay down beside her. “Quiet now,” she said. The moans were all around.

  Chapter 13

  Once, when my mother was away from the house, a traveling troupe came to our door and blew on a horn and beat a drum and asked if we would like a play. My father gave them a coin to make one for us. The troupe’s leader, a juggler, said for the size of the coin my father had given there could be no play, only a trick or two to tease a smile. I remember a woman who swallowed a sword and another who stood on one hand as her bright dresses fell down upon her face. It was the final trick, though—for the making of which the juggler turned our empty rain barrel on its side and leaped upon it—that returned to me as I lay half wrapped in chilly sleep in my closet the morning after my deep-night journeys around the house. For some moments after he had first found his balance, the juggler rolled the barrel forward, saying he was an angel, and rolled it back, saying he was a devil, and because he stood tall and calm as a statue when he was an angel, and crouched and pulled faces when he was a devil, and seemed always on the point of falling to his doom but never quite did, we began to laugh. “Angel, angel, angel,” the juggler said, standing tall. “Devil, devil, devil,” he growled as he crouched and grinned and winked. At some point he began to say, “Devil, devil, devil,” when he was standing up and rolling forward and “Angel, angel, angel,” when he was crouched and rolling backward. From then on he changed it back and forth until we were all a-jumble with devils and angels, and my father and I were laughing so hard we had to lie down on the ground. Lying there in my room, caught between the dark of sleep and the light of wake and thinking of that juggler on our rain barrel all those years before, I wasn’t sure which way I should turn and what I would be and find when I got there. So when Eliza came sweeping in and said cheerfully that I must rise and go out into the world of birds and breezes again, I was slow to respond. “How could I live yet lie abed so long?” Eliza asked me as she inspected my feet. I was clean now and my feet much healed and the place where we could play more games and live like sisters was just outside her door. She spoke then of her gardens and the great water that lay beyond them, and it was this that woke me, that pushed the night aside and made me think to move. There is a magic in wanting to see a thing that has been marvelously described and it seemed to me I could see those gardens and that water that Eliza spoke of like they were floating by the bed. There was the cow and there was its clean stall and there were the sheep and goats she said she kept beside it in separate pens. There was the goose she plucked her quills from and rows of new plants and powerful, fragrant herbs peeking up out of the fresh-turned earth. More than once as Eliza spoke ever more excitedly, I rubbed idly at my linens and thought to touch good dirt with my fingertips or cup clear water with my palms.

  “You won’t need your lost shoes to walk on that soft earth, my darling,” she said, and as she said it the blanket of my strange dreams fell full away from me and I could feel the clumps and grains of that softness clearly, for I had always loved to worry sun-warmed soil with my toes.

  Later that morning, then, with Eliza’s gardens and great water before me and the long, dark dreams behind, I balanced on the barrel of my full waking and went into the front room, where I ate all that I saw of cheese and dried apple and sausage. I ate and ate until I laughed aloud at my own ravening and at my own strange fancies of tubs and silent hearts and cold, hard floors. There was a story to write and tell. A woman went walking in the woods and took a bath! I was laughing as loud as Captain Jane when I heard a knock on the front door and laughing when I answered. There before me stood a little girl dressed all in marigold yellow. Her hair was long and dark and she held a pretty, curving piece of jet-black bark in her hands.

  “Eliza is not here this moment, young one, though she can’t be far. Shall I call her?” I said.

  The little girl peered up at me, then smiled shyly and shook her head. I saw when she did this that she had somehow caught a bright-blue beetle in her hair. It was hanging by her ear like a long-armed monkey I once saw come off one of the ships of my youth. I started to lift my hand to brush it away for her but the little blue thing dropped of its own accord, landing first on the girl’s foot then crawling off across the yard.

  “Where have you come from, young one?” I said. “Do you live in the forest? Haven’t I seen you playing in the woods before? Didn’t I see you bobbling about Captain Jane just the other evening in the dark?”

  The little girl smiled and shrugged. As she did, the robin I had met in the woods before flew out of the trees and landed on the ground beside us and snatched up the blue beetle and swallowed it. Then he began to peck at some pieces of spilled corn.

  “I know this little robin!” I said. “We met in the woods. Do you know this cheeky bird?”

  The little girl smiled the prettiest smile in answer while the robin gave out a happy chirp, for he had found a fat worm. We watched and the robin set to tugging the worm he had found thick and glistening from the ground. When he had it up and into his beak, the little girl turned back to me and held out the piece of bark.

  “Is this for Eliza? Did you find it in the forest? Shall I give it to her?”

  The little girl just smiled. Such small white teeth. Such pretty lips. Fine for smiling and frowning both. For whispering what she liked. For eating what she would. I took the bark, held it up to the light. It glittered and glistened. Was smooth on its inside and rough on its out. I brought it to my nose for a sniff, found there an aroma of cinnamon or some other fair spice grown up out of the earth and gathered and sold to tease the noses of us born half the world away. It had a rounded crack large enough to see through at its middle. I put my eye to it and looked down at the little girl and grinned. She grinned back. Through the black bark she seemed to have grown smaller and paler, as if she were made of moon and fed on night and were set to fly away, and the little robin on the ground next to her grew larger and not so pretty and looked at me with a strange and hungry gaze.

  “What tree do you think this comes from, child?” I asked as I pulled the bark quickly from my eye, for I did not recognize it, though I knew many trees.

  I was not surprised of course when she didn’t answer, only gave a curtsy, neat as you like, her grin gone, and peered up at me, her own sweet size again, just her shy smile and the little robin gaming to find more worms in the ground beside her. After she had looked quietly and sweetly at me, she turned and, with the robin following close behind, ran off into the trees.

  I watched her run, then stepped full outside, breathed in the fresh air, cast my way about for a moment, then found Eliza behind the house with the pigs. I opened my mouth to greet her then stopped when I saw that she was talking to them. She spoke for a time then paused and cocked her ear as if she were taking a turn at listening, listening with great interest to the grunts and squeals they made. I stood at the edge of the house with my hand shading my eyes against a red glare coming through the trees and thought it must be a thing most curious to live alone in a wood and that I might come to hold like concourse with my animals if ever I did. I moved my hand to brush away a fly or scratch my nose, I can’t remember which, and one of the pigs looked over, then back at Eliza, and gave a grunt.

  “Here you are, up and out walking in the daylight on your own!” said Eliza. She stood up from her squat and came striding so quickly that I flinched a little, fearing, of all things, though just for a moment, that she meant to strike me. All she did, though, was lay a pretty hand on each of my shoulders and look me over and tell me my color was much better, that soon I would be shiny as an autumn apple and twice as firm. After she said this she gave me another kiss. Straight again on the mouth. Then told me I shouldn’t think anything of a kiss like that, that a kiss like that was the custom for all in her country off away in the mountains. I told he
r I wasn’t troubled, though I suppose I was. Such kisses had certainly not been the custom where I had done my growing by the sea. The pigs behind her squealed at something, and we both turned to look, and I told her I hoped she wasn’t thinking of killing another one of them on my behalf.

  “Oh, we have meat enough for now. If we grow hungry for fresh cuts, we can kill a sheep or a goat or beg a brace of quails from Captain Jane or Granny Someone,” she said.

  “Or we could get them ourselves,” I said.

  She didn’t answer this, just turned away from the pigs and looked at me.

  “Now, what is that you are holding?” she asked.

  “You’ve had a visitor,” I answered.

  “Have I?”

  “The handsomest little girl. She left this for you.”

  I held out the bark. Eliza wouldn’t take it.

  “You can look through it,” I said. “It smells clean and fresh and grown far off.”

  “I know all about that child. Lately her visits have become rare.”

  “Won’t you take it?”

  “You keep it.”

  I shrugged and tucked it away, for Eliza seemed vexed by the very sight of it. Her face had gone red and her breathing had changed. Her eyes had gone smaller and her lips had pursed. She gave out a sigh that sounded as if it had traveled from the very bottom of the cave of her lungs after I had tucked the little thing away into one of my pockets. Eliza’s hands went up to my shoulders and she squeezed them.

  “Anyway, we’ll leave these pigs to grow and fatten properly,” she said. “I’ve just been telling them that. That they must grow fat for us. There is nothing quite so cheery in this world as a great fat pig!”

  She hugged me then. Pressed me hard in her arms. I could feel the black bark against my leg as she did. I worried that it might break and shifted so it would bear less of her weight. As we stood there, heart pressing heart, the past night returned to me, but out in the sunshine in Eliza’s welcoming arms it soon felt far indeed away. When Eliza had finished with her hugging she stepped back, adjusted her hair, and beamed.