“Never forget that you are forever among your people,” her mamaw had told the two of them. “In the past, and in the present, and in the future to come.”
The marks of her and Alliw’s hands still remained, so small now compared to Willa’s living hands, like ghosts of who she and her sister had been. But Willa knew that she and Alliw were still together in their souls, for among the Faeran, who were always born in twins, the relationship between two twins was sacred. Twins always took care of each other, protected each other. There was no more noble deed than to support a twin, and no fouler crime than to forsake one. It was the bond that could not be broken.
Whenever she came down this tunnel, it was like she was walking into a different time, a time long, long ago when the Faeran and the world were one, and true kinship held the clan together.
Willa had lived here alone with her grandmother for as long as she could remember clearly in her mind. Everything else before was but a distant, clouded memory.
Her mother’s twin sister, who would have normally helped raise her with her parents, had died of oak wilt before Willa was born. Her father, Cillian, and her mother, Nea, were slain by the day-folk when she was six. And the humans murdered Alliw that same night.
She remembered her distraught, grief-stricken grandmother stumbling into their den, taking her up into her arms, and whispering in the old language. “Your sister and your parents have passed away, my child,” she had said. “You and I are all that’s left now, and we need to take care of each other. You’ll be my twin and I’ll be yours.”
Willa didn’t know that night what those words meant, what it meant for someone to “pass away,” and she didn’t understand how her life would change, but she learned in the shadowed days that followed. It felt like something had been torn away from her, bleeding and raw. She kept looking for a sister who wasn’t there. She kept trying to speak with a mother and a father who could no longer hear her. The anguish and loneliness she felt was one of her oldest and most powerful memories. For the rest of her life she had felt a dark hollowness in her soul, like something that should be there was missing.
She couldn’t remember her parents very well anymore, and she still didn’t understand how or where they had been killed, but the fleeting fragments of her life with her twin sister before she died haunted her like the sounds of children playing in the distance.
But her mamaw—her mother’s mother—had been with her all her life. Her mamaw had been her teacher in the days before her parents and sister died, and her mamaw had cared for her on her own every day since. She had taught her how to speak, how to blend, and how to find her way among the trees.
As Willa walked through the doorway into the den, she knew that no matter what happened, no matter how she felt, no matter what she had done, she could count on one thing: that her mamaw would be there waiting for her.
“Come here, child,” her grandmother whispered softly in the old language as Willa walked into their den. Her mamaw was a small, crumpled-up creature, unable to stand or walk, but Willa went to her immediately and wrapped her arms around her, knowing that she wasn’t nearly as frail as she appeared.
Her grandmother was 137 years old, one of the oldest Faeran in the clan, and one of the last remaining old-time woodwitches. She had the most beautiful dark skin, marbled with streaks of brown, black, and white, and she was heavily spotted around her cheeks and eyes. Her skin was wrinkled and textured not just with age, but years of weaving into her surroundings. The strands of her long, finely braided hair were mostly black but intertwined with gray, brown, red, and gold, as if she had inside her the essence of every person who had ever lived.
“Where have you been all night?” her mamaw asked gently, the edges of her voice frayed with love and relief and admonishment all at the same time.
“I’m sorry, I was trying, but I couldn’t get home, Mamaw,” Willa whispered in the old words as she held her.
She and her mamaw always spoke in the Faeran language when they were alone within the smooth, curving stone walls of their den, but they were careful to never speak it in front of other members of the clan. The padaran had forbidden the use of the old language decades before Willa was born, insisting that everyone learn the ways of day-folk for the survival of the lair. But Faeran was the first language Willa had learned to speak from her parents and grandparents at home. The Eng-lish words, and some of the Cherokee words, that came to her ears later in her life had always been a struggle for her, always twisting on her tongue, which had made it even more difficult to fit in with the other jaetters.
“You’re hurt,” her mamaw said as her small, trembling hands passed over Willa’s body. “Lie down here…” she whispered, patting the area beside her, and Willa immediately complied, laying herself in the cocoon of soft woven river cane that hung from the ceiling by vines.
When most of the members of the clan looked at her grandmother they saw a decrepit old woman who couldn’t walk, but Willa knew her grandmother had once been a distant wayfarer of the mountains, a consummate weaver who could disappear into any background in an instant, and a friend to many of the most sacred animals of the forest. She carried the lore of the forest inside her—in her old body, in her mind, in her dreaming soul—and Willa had always been as greedy for that knowledge as a sapling was for light.
When her grandmother told long and winding stories of the past, the other members of the clan—especially the young jaetters—turned away in boredom, or even scoffed at her, but Willa wanted to hear her mamaw’s stories. She wanted to be able to do what her mamaw had once done. She wanted to know what her mamaw knew.
But as Willa grew from sapling into tree, becoming stronger and stronger in her forest skills, her mamaw became weaker and weaker, her body sinking down to the ground like an old willow tree whose branches had become too weak for it to carry.
Most of the members of the clan ate the food that the foragers brought into the lair for them, but her mamaw had always foraged for her own food. When her mamaw could no longer go out into the forest and gather her own food, Willa went out and gathered it for her. When her mamaw lost the use of her legs, Willa made her a sling of woven reeds to keep her upright. When her mamaw’s hands trembled, Willa steadied them in her own.
“Tell me what happened to you,” her grandmother said as she examined Willa’s wounds.
But Willa went quiet.
Her mamaw had told her many times how dangerous the day-folk could be. “I know the padaran expects you to steal from them,” her mamaw had told her when she was ten, “but when you hear them coming, you must run. When you see them, you must hide. They are not of this world, so promise me that you will not go near them.”
The last thing Willa wanted to do now was to tell her mamaw where she’d gone and what she’d done. She lay like an injured fawn curled up quietly as her grandmother worked on her wounds.
Needing supplies, her mamaw used the strength of her arms to drag herself over to a small niche in the stone wall where light filtered down through round holes in the ceiling onto a number of leafy plants and small trees that she had planted there years before. She had been caring for the plants ever since. As she approached them, the plants reached upward, not just toward the light of the sun, but to her nurturing hands and her murmuring voice, moving back and forth between her open fingers as if the leaves were being caressed by a gentle breeze.
One of the plants was a miniature tree growing out of a small stone bowl. It had fine tendrils of roots growing into the dirt, a bent little trunk, and a spread of delicate branches above that were covered in tiny bright green leaves.
“Thank you, my friend,” her mamaw whispered as she carefully picked a single leaf from the tree and brought it over to Willa.
Willa had known this little tree all her life and had spoken with it many times. It had always been one of her closest friends. Her mamaw had told her that although it was small, this tree was more than six hundred years old and, in some ways, m
ore powerful than the entirety of the lair above. She said that she’d been protecting it, hiding it, keeping it small, until one day it could come out into the light of the world and grow up into what it was meant to be.
Her mamaw put the tiny leaf into her own mouth for a moment, then brought it out again, crushed it between her fingers, and began to apply it bit by bit to Willa’s wounds. The pain of the wound immediately began to subside. The lake of the bears had stanched the bleeding and saved her life, but now her mamaw continued the healing process.
This one room, this little den where she had grown up with her mamaw since her parents and sister died, was her protected place, her home. It was the one place that the outside world never came. It was the only place that she had ever felt truly safe and the only place she had ever felt truly loved.
But halfway through her work, her mamaw paused. Willa heard the sigh of her breath as she exhaled.
Willa winced a little as her grandmother’s fingers pried carefully into the wound and pulled out a tiny piece of metal the size of a small pebble.
It was a piece of lead shot.
Her grandmother frowned.
“Willa,” she said. “You must help me understand this. What am I seeing here? How were you hurt? Is there something you’re not telling me?”
As she drew in a breath to speak, a bout of shame filled Willa’s chest. “I was shot by a homesteader, Mamaw,” she said, her voice cracking as her lip trembled.
“Ah, child…” her mamaw said as she wrapped her arms around her. “But how is it possible this wound is already healing?”
“I asked the wolves for help,” Willa said.
“The wolves…” her mamaw said, her voice filled with a trace of respect.
“They took me to the lake of the bears.”
“I see,” her mamaw said, her eyebrows rising in surprise. “And the bears allowed…”
“The white bear was there, Mamaw, just like you said he was. He wasn’t pleased about the wolves, but he let me go down to the lake.”
“The white bear saved your life…” her mamaw said.
“And the wolf did as well. Her name is Luthien. We’ve become good friends.”
When Willa looked into her mamaw’s face, she could see the pride sparkling in her eyes, but then her grandmother’s expression turned far more serious.
“But there is still one thing I don’t understand,” her grandmother said. “How did the man with the killing-stick see you well enough in the forest to shoot you?”
Willa’s heart sank. This was one situation she couldn’t blend her way out of.
“Don’t tell me you went near one of their lairs…” her grandmother said, tilting her head and narrowing her eyes at her.
Willa didn’t want to answer, but the reddened color of her skin answered for her. There were times when color was a curse.
“I went inside!” Willa blurted desperately. “I had to!”
“I’ve told you before that it’s too dangerous!” her grandmother scolded her. Willa could see her mamaw moving her lips as she found the words. “You’re not you in there,” she said finally. “The old powers do not work in the lairs of the new ones. You know that!”
“I know I do,” Willa pleaded.
“Then why did you do it, Willa? Why?”
“I wanted to prove to the padaran what I could do, that I could steal something good!”
“Aw, child,” her grandmother said, shaking her head as she put her hand gently on Willa’s arm. “The padaran doesn’t deserve you.”
Willa frowned in confusion and looked at her. “But he’s the padaran.”
“Yes, but don’t let him control what’s in here,” her mamaw said, touching her fingers to Willa’s chest. “I know you’re trying to be part of the clan. That’s good. It’s an instinct of our people to stick together.”
“But what?” Willa pressed her. “What did I do wrong? I don’t understand.”
“There are many dangers outside the lair,” her mamaw said gravely, “but I’m afraid there are even more on the inside.”
“What do you mean, Mamaw?” Willa asked. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“The padaran is making changes in the lair,” her mamaw said.
“I saw a band of guards leaving this morning,” Willa said, “and I found a bird tangled in a net. Are the day-folk using the nets or our own people doing it? They’re not trying to actually hurt birds and animals, are they?”
“You know that it is not the Faeran way to hurt any of the animals of the forest,” her mamaw said.
Finally working up her courage, Willa decided to tell her grandmother everything she had seen. “On my way back home, when I was down in one of the abandoned parts of the lair, I saw human children in prison cells.”
Her grandmother stopped what she was doing and went very still, as if she was trying to absorb what Willa had just told her. “Human children…” her mamaw whispered, as if even saying the words out loud might bring the padaran’s guards rushing into the room.
“Why, Mamaw?” Willa asked. “Why are the guards imprisoning those humans?”
“I don’t know,” her mamaw said, “but I sense the decisions of a desperate mind.”
Whose desperate mind? Willa wondered. “The padaran wouldn’t order this, would he? The Faeran people don’t harm day-folk. We don’t harm anyone.”
“Very little happens in Dead Hollow that the padaran doesn’t control,” her mamaw said. “You must be very careful, Willa, especially now. Too many of our people have been dying. Sometimes even knowing something brings death.”
Willa was getting more and more frightened by her mamaw’s words, and the tone of her voice. Knowing brings death, Willa kept thinking.
“The clan is restless,” her mamaw warned.
“The foraging crews haven’t been collecting enough food for everyone,” Willa said. “They’re angry and miserable. I don’t understand why the padaran doesn’t let more people go out into the forest and forage on their own.”
“It is said to be too dangerous,” her mamaw said.
“But is it truly too dangerous to even go out and forage in the forest for food? I go out thieving every night, either with the other jaetters or on my own. Didn’t all the Faeran of old forage in the forest?”
“I’ve tried to teach you in the old ways, so that you wouldn’t be beholden to anyone,” her mamaw said. “But most of the members of our clan no longer have the skills to survive in the forest.”
Willa remembered what had happened with her friend Gillen, a fellow jaetter whom she often went out thieving with. Gillen was one of the toughest jaetters she knew, fast and strong. But one night Willa took Gillen out into the forest with her to forage for food. Willa found some blackberries and started eating them, but when she glanced over to Gillen, she saw that the girl had picked up a beautiful white mushroom instead. Willa leapt at her, pushed her fingers into her mouth, and pulled the mushroom out by force. “Spit it out! Spit it out!” she had screamed.
The mushroom Gillen had chosen had been a Death Cap. A single swallow would have killed her.
Willa looked at her mamaw. “Do you remember the time I took Gillen out foraging with me?”
“Gillen doesn’t have a mother to teach her,” her mamaw said.
“Or a grandmother,” Willa said, smiling at her mamaw.
“Or a grandmother,” her mamaw said, smiling in return.
“I taught Gillen how to tell the difference between the good ones and the bad ones in that particular patch,” Willa said. “But they were all growing in that same area and many of them looked very similar.”
“There is much to teach, isn’t there?” her mamaw said gently, and Willa had a feeling she wasn’t just talking about Gillen.
Willa had been learning from her mamaw all her life, but she knew there was still much for her to learn. Her grandmother had always been careful to only teach her what she thought she could truly understand and use wisely. “
A tree must grow to reach the sky,” she would often say.
Willa’s thoughts turned back to Gillen. Her friend lived in a distant part of the lair, where many of the jaetters slept huddled together in tight pockets, shivering together through the cold winter nights, generating the heat that kept them warm enough to survive. There is no I, only we.
“Did you and my parents ever live in the upper parts of the lair, Mamaw?” she asked.
“You and your parents and your sister lived down here in the labyrinth with me and many of the older families, including my own twin sister, and my husband, and many others who have passed.”
Her mamaw had warned her not to ask too many questions about how people had passed, especially her parents and sister, lest her heart become too entangled in things she couldn’t control, but she couldn’t help it. “Did the humans discover the Dead Hollow lair and attack it? Is that what happened? Is that how my sister and parents were killed?”
Her mamaw gazed at her but did not speak. It was as if her grandmother had no idea how she could possibly answer her question, as if she knew that the answer itself would lead to a series of consequences too awful to think about.
“Did you see it happen?” Willa whispered, her chest tightening as she leaned toward her mamaw. “What did the padaran and the guards do when the day-folk attacked? How did they defend the lair?”
“I did not see your parents and sister die, Willa,” her grandmother said.
“But you had to have been there…” Willa said.
“There was a gathering of the clan in the great hall that night,” her mamaw said. “And everyone was there. Your father was one of the most respected elders of the clan, a guardian of old ways. Immediately after the gathering, your mother, father, and sister left the lair through the main entrance that leads beneath the Watcher.”
Willa of the Wood Page 6