Willa of the Wood

by Robert Beatty

  Feeling more confident than ever, she searched the top of the dresser for more valuables. She noticed a closed black book with a long red tassel hanging down from the pages. The book had a short, single-word title that she could not read. Sitting on the book there was a gold ring. She picked up the ring and held it up in the moonlight that shone through the window. It was one of the most beautiful day-folk things she had ever seen. What is this gleaming thing for? she wondered. What is its magic?

  Noticing a glint of light out of the corner of her eye, she looked over toward the bed. The sleeping man wore an identical gold ring on the third finger of his left hand.

  She knew she should take the gold ring from the dresser and run as fast as she could. Take it and leave! she told herself. It had to be the most valuable thing in the lair, and it would definitely be the most valuable thing she’d ever brought back in her satchel. She could imagine the padaran’s snarling grin as she set the shining gold ring in his awaiting hands. “This is a good take, girl,” he’d rasp in pleasure, all the other jaetters ducking and sniveling around him, their jealousy writhing through them like poison as they snapped and hissed at her.

  But as she held the golden ring in her hand, a sickening feeling crept through her. She tried to convince herself that taking one of the rings wasn’t breaking her rule of halves, but there was something in her that felt strangely uncertain. Sometimes, two things weren’t just two things; they were a pair, and a pair was a thing. Half wasn’t always half, she thought. Sometimes half was whole.

  She didn’t know what the rings were for or what they meant, but it seemed wrong to take one, to separate it from the other—like tearing a wing from a swallowtail butterfly and telling herself it could still fly.

  Before she could change her mind, she reluctantly set the ring back on top of the book where she’d found it, and crept out of the room of the snoring man and his dim-nosed, deaf dog.

  She moved quickly toward the next room, determined to stay focused.

  The next room was draped with dresses. Her heart quickened at the thought that she was going to see a day-folk girl up close. The girl’s scent hung in the air, but there was no little girl sleeping in the room’s bed. The fact that it was the middle of the night and the girl was gone seemed very strange. But Willa went over to the girl’s dresser and took a shiny bracelet, a silver hairpin, several velvet ribbons, a tiny porcelain doll, and a locket.

  As Willa darted down to the next room, it smelled immediately of boy. She knew it was a day-folk boy, but it was boy all the same. On a breezy day she could smell boys from across a meadow, whether they were day-folk or night. But the boy’s bed was empty as well, the covers twisted onto the floor.

  Willa’s brows furrowed. Where did the boy go? And where is the little sister-girl who should have been in the previous room? And why is the man sleeping with his killing-stick on his bed?

  Get what you came for, she told herself, shaking her head and continuing on. They were the words she used whenever she became ensnared in the bewildering details of the day-folk’s lives. Get what you came for and go, Willa.

  She hurriedly searched the boy’s room for valuables.

  The first thing she found looked like a large leather glove made for a giant hand. The boy’s hand must be grotesquely deformed and misshapen, she thought. Beside the glove lay a white ball and a stout, wooden walking stick of some sort. The boy’s legs must be crooked as well. She felt a little sorry for the poor, crippled creature, but she stuffed half of his coin collection and half of his Cherokee arrowheads into her satchel and dashed down the hall toward the fourth and final room. Get what you came for.

  But then her ear twitched and the quills on the back of her neck stood on end.

  The snoring had stopped.

  The man had awoken.

  She heard the muffled sound of movement, covers being pulled back. She felt the vibration as his feet hit the floor.

  “Get on up, boy,” the man whispered urgently to his dog. “They’re back!”

  Willa exploded into motion. She sprinted down the length of the hallway, racing for the top of the stairs.

  The man charged out of his bedroom with his killing-stick. Willa flashed by him, nothing but a dark streak.

  He must have been as startled by her as she was by him, because he lurched back in surprise. She dove headlong down the darkened stairway, her feet barely touching the steps.

  But the startled man raised his weapon and aimed blindly into the darkness.

  A flash lit the air on fire, and the sound of it shook the world.

  The blast struck her in the back. The force of it knocked her careening forward. She slammed into the wall at the turn in the stairway and tumbled down the rest of the stairs like a raccoon shot from a tree.

  The lead shot ripped through her tunic and riddled her shoulder blade and arm, white-hot lightning piercing through her body as she crashed onto the floor at the bottom of the stairway.

  The enraged man and his growling dog were charging down the stairway to finish her off.

  Get up, she told herself, trying to find her way through the pain. Get up, Willa. You’ve got to run!

  Willa lay crumpled on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, her right leg bent badly beneath her left, her arm twisted under the weight of her body. Her head lay flat against the boards, blood dripping down into her eyes as she gazed out at the dead furniture and murdered walls of the shadowed lair. She could see through her eyes, and she could hear the wheeze of the air moving in and out of her lungs, but she couldn’t get her arms and legs to move. The only thing she could feel was the pain of the blast radiating through her shaking body. She lay helpless, stunned, and bleeding on the floor.

  She felt the man’s footsteps coming down the stairs behind her. His dog tore out in front of him, a blazing burst of growling teeth. The beast clamped onto her calf with its fangs, sending sharp bolts of new pain shooting through her limbs, jolting her alive. She spun around, screaming, and struck out with a quick jerking motion. The dog pulled back, trying to drag her with its teeth, but she wrested herself free. The snarling beast lunged in for a second bite, but Willa darted away.

  The dog chased her, gnashing its teeth behind her as she scurried across the eating room floor. She dove through the dog door, scrambled across the porch, and ran, fleeing out into the night, desperate to reach the safety of the forest.

  The man threw open the door and charged out, aiming his killing-stick into the darkness. Another shot exploded the world, shattering the night with a flash of light and a deafening roar, as Willa scrambled away.

  “Get him, boy! Get him!” the man shouted, as the dog flew off the porch after her. “I’m going to kill you this time!” he screamed at her.

  She knew that she’d been moving so fast through the darkness of his lair that he hadn’t truly seen her, but he was angry, far angrier than she expected from a race of beings who were supposedly so rich that they didn’t need most of their belongings.

  Get to the trees, get to the trees, she thought frantically as she stumbled across the grass toward the forest. But she felt dizzy and disoriented, filled with nothing but pain and panic. Her head throbbed. When that first blast hit her, it had slammed her against the wall and then tumbled her down the stairs. Now the blood was oozing from her head down into her eyes, blurring her vision.

  Running nearly blind, she ducked into the first cover she came to. She scrambled into a small, closed-in place, gasping for breath, and hoping the dog would pass her by.

  All she wanted to do was close her eyes against the pain and curl up into a little ball, but she knew if she withered here she’d die. She wiped the blood from her eyes and tried to look around her. Had she crawled into a hollow log? Maybe she’d been lucky enough to find a fox den.

  But then she smelled something. And it wasn’t fox.

  It was goat.

  Her heart sank. She’d made it only as far as the homesteader’s barn.

  As sh
e scuttled out of the pen, the startled goats ran bleating out into the yard and the chickens flew up in a squawking explosion of feathers. Get to the forest! her mind kept telling her, but she knew it was too late. She could hear the man and his dog charging toward the building. She scurried deeper into the shadows of the barn and hunkered down to hide.

  A debilitating fear gripped her chest. “If they ever catch you alone in their world, they will kill you, Willa,” the padaran had told her. “They cut down trees and burn with fire. They killed your sister and your parents!”

  The barn door creaked slowly open.

  The flickering light of the lantern entered first and then the gleaming double barrels of the killing-stick. The man came in slowly and cautiously. The day-folk were oddly blind at night. He held up his lantern, straining to see in the dim light, his weapon pointed in front of him.

  Willa lay crumpled, curled up on the floor in the corner, wounded and bleeding, panting with an exhaustion so all-consuming that she couldn’t move—like a fawn that had been shot through her heart and lay on the ground breathing her last breaths. Willa had the power of the forest animals within her, but none of her powers worked in this unnatural place.

  She could tell by the man’s careful movement that he couldn’t quite make out what type of man or beast he’d shot in the darkness and cornered in his barn. It wasn’t until he raised his lantern and peered at her at close range that he got his first good look at her.

  She could just imagine what she must look like to him lying in the dirt like a trapped animal in the corner of his barn, shaking with fear, her greenish arms and legs pulled up to her chest, her chest moving up and down with fast, ragged breaths, and the blood dripping down her face between her emerald eyes.

  When the man finally saw her, and she lifted her eyes and looked at him, his expression changed from grim determination to utter astonishment. The viciousness that had consumed him moments before disappeared as he tried to comprehend what he was seeing. She saw him realize, in the light of his lantern, that the thing he’d trapped in his barn wasn’t a man or a beast.

  “Wha…” he began to ask in confusion. “What are you?”

  She could hear in the tremor of his voice the realization that he had shot some kind of strange little forest creature—not just a creature, but a girl. She didn’t know what he was expecting, what type of enemy he thought had invaded his lair in the dead of night, but it was not this, it was not her.

  Willa looked down the double barrels of the killing-stick pointed at her. This man could shoot her again right here and now and end it all. All he had to do was pull the trigger. Or he could strangle her with his bare hands or strike her in the head with a shovel. Without the powers of the forest, she could not defend herself from him. She was helpless. But as she looked into his face she saw something that she did not think was possible in a day-folk man: kindness.

  “I…I don’t understand,” he said in bewilderment. “Where did you come from? Who are you?”

  I’m Willa, she thought, but she did not answer his question out loud. The padaran had brought the Eng-lish sounds into their clan long before she was born, and she knew the sounds well enough to understand him. But whether she was using the old language or the new, Willa spoke to trees, not the men who killed them. How could day ever comprehend night? How could darkness ever know light? How could she say her name to a man such as this?

  “Just hold on…” he said gently, watching her with steady eyes as he knelt beside her trembling body. He set the killing-stick and the lantern down onto the dirt floor of the barn. All the anger and fear that had consumed him moments before seemed to have disappeared from him now.

  So wickedly fast these humans seemed to change their spirit.

  “I’m going to take a look at the wound…” he said as he pulled a white cloth from his pocket and moved toward her as though he was going to try to stanch the bleeding.

  But he was human. She knew she could not trust him.

  She stayed perfectly still. She didn’t move in any way as his hand came closer and closer.

  Her heart pounded in her chest. The moment he touched her, she sprang to her feet. Startled, he pulled back in surprise. She darted past him. The dog snapped at her but missed.

  With her last burst of dying energy, she dashed through the doorway of the barn and out into the darkness. She ran across the grass. The moment she reached the edge of the forest, she blended into the night and disappeared.

  The last thing she had heard him say as he grabbed his lantern and his killing-stick was, “Come on, boy. We’re going after her.”

  Willa knew that the darkness of the forest would hinder the man and his dog for a few minutes, but not for long. The human would come trudging through the forest, lighting the way with his box of captured flame and carrying his killing metal, as all day-folk did. But what she was most worried about was the dog’s speed through the underbrush and its powerful sense of smell, which she knew was akin to her own. She had foolishly scoffed at the dog when it had been fast asleep, but now that it had tasted her blood, it would be unstoppable. She had been hunted by dogs before. They were simple beasts, but relentless on a scent. She picked up a handful of dirt, raised it to her mouth, and filled it with her breath. Then she cast it wide behind her, dispersing the scent of the direction she’d taken.

  She stumbled deeper into the forest, pushing through the spasms of pain from the lead shot that had struck the back of her shoulder and arm. She crunched leaves and broke small sticks beneath her treading feet, making noise that she wouldn’t normally make, but she had to move fast. She had to escape.

  Finally, she came to the reflecting pools at the rocky edge of the river. She didn’t have the strength to climb up into the cradling arms of the trees and cross over the top as she had before, and she was far too weak to wade through the rapids, but she had to cross the water somehow to throw the dog off her trail. The dirt she’d cast behind her would confuse it for a little while, but when the dog came to the river it would run up and down the shoreline with blind, sniffing persistence until it found her scent again.

  In the far distance behind her, she could hear the sound of the man’s tromping feet coming in her direction.

  She spotted the faint line of a deer trail that ran along the bank of the river. She knew that deer never crossed or even waded into fast-moving water, so she followed the trail hoping it would take her to what she needed.

  When she reached a shallow riffle running over the small, rounded stones of the riverbed, she knew it was her only chance. She immediately started to cross, but even here the river dragged at her angrily, the white water bunching up like mountains around her knees, pulling at her, trying to drag her in. She fought against it, tried to keep pushing through it. But she finally lost her balance and collapsed down into the river, beset with pain, and the cold power of the water took hold of her and swept her away.

  She kicked and she sputtered, gasping for air in the churning water, terrified that she was going to drown, but then the current pulled her quickly forward and slammed her against a rock. She grabbed hold. The raging water immediately wanted to tear her away, to pull her down into its darkest holes, but she gritted her teeth and held on to the cold, hard surface of the rock. She clung to it. Climb it, Willa! she told herself. Climb it!

  She reached up her hand, found a crevice with her fingers, and pulled, dragging herself slowly out of the river.

  The back of her shoulder throbbed. Her right arm, and that whole side of her body, felt numb, like all the blood had seeped out of it into the churning dark waters of the greedy river. She crouched down in between the large, jagged, broken boulders that crowded the river’s edge and asked for their protection. The cracked, moss-covered rocks towered over her head, making caves between them where she could hide. She had always loved the feeling of climbing among rocks like these, and it gave her comfort to rest among them now, but she knew she couldn’t stay here. The rush of the river was d
rowning out many sounds, but she knew that the man and his dog were still coming, still on her trail, and they would find her here. She had to keep going, but she was exhausted and bleeding.

  Her lair and her clan were miles and miles up through the mountains beyond her reach. She could find no help from there.

  But she could not let herself give up. She needed to find a way to escape.

  She had lived in the forest all her life, and she had taken pride in helping the animals who needed her care. But she realized that this time, she was the one who needed help, or she was going to die.

  She lifted her head, tilted her face toward the gleaming moon, and began to howl. It was a pitiful, soft little sound at first. She was weak, and not used to making any noise, especially when enemies were on her trail. But soon she pulled the pain of her wounds into her throat and she let out a long, plaintive howl. She howled in the way she had been taught, not by her mother who’d been killed years before, or even by her grandmother who’d raised her, but by a mother she’d befriended the winter before.

  As the sound of her howl went out into the night air, she could imagine it drawing in predators from miles around, sharp-clawed creatures ready to prey on the weak and wounded thing she had become. And she could imagine the tracking dog and killing man raising their heads toward the sound and knowing they were getting close.

  At first, all she could hear was the relentless, rushing voice of the river, but then she heard a faint sound in the distance. She stepped out from among the rocks toward the forest, cupped her hands behind her ears, and listened again.

  There, she thought, very far away. It was another howl.

  She howled again.

  The returning howl sounded much closer now. Whatever it was, it was moving fast, coming at a run. Her heart began to thump in her chest. Even though she was the one who had started the howl, she couldn’t help her legs from shaking. There was a part of her that was telling her that she had made a mistake, that she should run now, scurry quickly away, or duck back down into the rocks and hide.