Willa of the Wood

by Robert Beatty

  As the jaetters on the ridge looked for a way down the wall of the ravine, Willa knew she had to help the panther. But how? It seemed as if something other than just the fallen tree was preventing the cat from pulling herself free. But what was it?

  The last thing Willa wanted to do was go back into the black swirling water and encounter whatever was lurking down there. But she had no choice. She sucked in a deep breath of air and plunged in headfirst.

  She knew immediately that she shouldn’t have done it. She could barely see through the cold murkiness of the water, and the undertow rushing between the logs was far more powerful than she expected. She tried to swim against it. She pumped her arms and kicked her legs and swam with all her strength. But it was useless. The current grabbed hold of her and slammed her against a submerged log, pinning her below the surface of the water. She couldn’t swim free. She couldn’t breathe.

  She was going to drown in seconds.

  Something brushed against her leg again. She reflexively squirmed away from it, but she couldn’t even take a breath. She had to get to the surface!

  Then she felt dozens of tiny hands against her calves and her thighs. Other hands were pressing against her side, trying to turn her body in line with the rush of the current. A lean body swam between her legs and another pushed against her ribs. She was being engulfed by furred attackers!

  Her mouth came up out of the water and she sucked in a powerful gasping breath. She pulled the air all the way in, letting it flow down into her grateful lungs, and grabbed one of the larger branches of the nearest tree so the current couldn’t pull her away.

  A small, furred, dark face popped up out of the water in front of her. It had long whiskers, a little black nose, and dark, sparkling eyes. The river otter chattered at her, and then went back under the water.

  Suddenly the water was filled with otters swimming all around her, rubbing against her, holding her, pushing her with their hands, shoving her with their shoulders against her body. She could see that some of the otters had been burned by the flames when the explosion destroyed their holt, but they seemed determined to help her.

  The same otter as before popped up in front of her again, scolding her with his chattering, as if he was irritated that she wasn’t following his instructions. And then finally, she understood.

  “But if I let go of this branch, I’m going to drown!” she told the otter in the old language.

  But it was no use talking to him. Let go, you foolish girl! Let go! he seemed to be chattering.

  There was a loud crack of timber and a jolting movement as the logjam began to shift. More water started pouring through the logs. It was the river’s will to keep moving, and the river was going to win. It was going to push and swirl and wash all these logs away, and her and the panther and the otters with them.

  Willa looked over at the trapped panther. She was barely hanging on. Her mouth was open, with its long, curved fangs, half in and half out of the water, and she was sinking deeper as the waters rose.

  Taking one final breath, and fully expecting the current to sweep her away to her death, Willa finally did what the otters wanted her to do: she let go of the branch.

  The otters immediately pushed in on her, twisting her body, showing her how to swim, how to dive, how to slip in between. You’re small like us, they seemed to be saying. You can’t fight the current. You can’t swim against it. You swim WITH it! You slip through it. You spin, you dive, you fly! Use the water’s power to propel you! You twist, you turn, gliding through as fast and slippery as a fish.

  With the otters pushing against her like she was one of their little pups, she was suddenly doing it; she was slipping through the water.

  The otter who had chattered at her on the surface led her deep into the dark, turbulent water beneath the tangle of submerged logs that were holding the panther’s hind legs. The water was swirling red, filled with the panther’s blood. And then she finally saw it: a steel trap had clamped onto the panther’s back foot, and it could not escape.

  Willa came up to the surface and took a gasp of air. “I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head to the panther. “I don’t think I can get that trap off your foot.”

  Glancing up toward the edge of the ravine, Willa saw the jaetters making their way down through the loose gravel. The jaetters were hollering as they came, brandishing their newly sharpened spears.

  The panther was being dragged under the water by the pull of the trap’s chain. As her head sunk deeper and deeper, the panther opened her yellow eyes and looked at Willa. There was something about those eyes, something knowing, something pleading with her. But what could she do? It was a steel trap held down by a massive tree!

  In a moment of careless sympathy, Willa reached out with both her hands and touched the panther’s face and head, as if to comfort her, to hold her there, to save her from being dragged under, but she knew it was no use.

  “I’m sorry!” Willa cried out as the panther’s head went all the way under the water.

  There was nothing she could do.

  The panther was gone.

  She was dead.

  Willa was sure of it.

  Then she saw her eyes. They were a foot under the water. But those yellow eyes were still open and they were staring up at her. She wasn’t giving up. She was holding her breath.

  You can do this! the eyes were telling her.

  With the otters chattering frantically and swimming all around her, Willa pulled in a lungful of air, then dove deep into the water. She swam down through the swirling darkness toward the steel trap. The otters swam with her, guiding her through the tangle of trunks and branches. She grabbed the jaws of the trap with her fingers and tried to pull it open, but the trap’s spring was far too strong. She pushed and pried and pulled, but it was no use.

  Remembering how Lorcan and the other guard had tried to free the padaran by pushing down on the levers on each side of the jaws, Willa grabbed the levers with her hands and pushed as hard as she could. But the levers didn’t move at all.

  Hoping to use the muscles of her legs, Willa swam up through the tight, twisting tangle of submerged branches, positioned herself with her feet on the trap’s levers, braced her back against a branch, and shoved her feet downward as hard as she could. But nothing happened. The levers didn’t budge. The jaws didn’t open. She just wasn’t strong enough, or she didn’t understand how the trap worked. She just couldn’t do it.

  The panther yanked and pulled her trapped leg like she understood exactly what Willa was trying to do for her, and was trying to help her do it. But it made no difference. The panther couldn’t get free. Everything was trapped in the logjam. The trees, the branches, the cat…

  Then Willa realized that these weren’t just old, dead sticks submerged beneath the water. The humans had toppled these trees into the river with their saws and their explosives. The trees were still alive. They were still struggling to survive. Their spirits were still strong!

  Willa swam down to the trap once more, but this time she didn’t touch the cold, metal pieces over which she had no sway. She put her hands on the surrounding branches and closed her eyes.

  She had practiced the kind of woodcraft she needed now when she was with her mamaw. But she had been in a healthy forest at the time, with her mamaw at her side, encouraging her, showing her the way. But now Willa was submerged in a logjammed river. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t speak. She could barely hold herself in one place under the water. But she had to try.

  She gripped the branches, reached deep down into her sylvan heart, and awoke the spirits of the drowning trees.

  As she infused them with her will, the branches of the trees began to twist and turn. They moved like fast-growing vines, winding through the murky water, furling themselves into and around the metal jaws of the trap.

  This time, the limbs of the trees weren’t moving of their own accord or because she’d asked them to. She was commanding them, controlling them, guid
ing them to grip the metal and pull.

  As she tightened her muscles and gritted her teeth, the branches slowly pulled the jaws of the trap apart.

  The panther pulled and pulled again. And then, finally, yanked her paw free.

  As the cat swam frantically toward the surface, her sharp claws raked across Willa’s thigh, tearing a painfully deep scratch into her leg.

  With her leg bleeding, Willa swam upward toward the light. She broke the surface of the water and took a much-needed breath. But Kearnin loomed above her and drove the point of his spear right at her face. The panther burst out of the water with a snarling roar, and slammed into the jaetter with her claws, knocking him away. Gredic, Ciderg, and a dozen other jaetters charged forward, attacking with their spears.

  The panther looked at Willa to make sure she was safe. Those bright yellow eyes were staring right at her.

  “Yes, go now, go!” Willa screamed at the panther. “Run!”

  Wounded and exhausted, but still filled with startling power, the freed panther bound straight up the steep slope of the ravine, then leapt into the forest and disappeared.

  Willa felt a flush of happiness as the panther dashed to safety.

  As all the jaetters surrounded her at the edge of the river, Gredic said, “We’ve got you now, Willa. There’s no place you can go.”

  But as the jaetters came forward, she let herself fall back into the river, right into the most powerful current. It swept her away instantly, hurtling her downstream with tremendous speed.

  The spear-boys might be able to catch a Faeran girl, but they’d never catch an otter.

  A long way downstream from the logjam and the jaetters, Willa crawled out of the river and collapsed to the ground, thankful to be out of the cold, rushing water.

  The rocks are strong, she thought, but the river wins. It turns. It tumbles. It chooses the path.

  As she lay on the bank, the sun gave her its warmth, the earth gave her its stillness, and the living trees held sway over the world once more.

  She felt a sense of quiet and safety beginning to return, at least here, at least for a little while.

  But her mind burned with memories of the devastation she’d escaped behind her, the earth torn apart and her mighty old friends crashing to the ground. She still felt the shake of the falling bodies in her bones, still heard the cracking limbs in her ears. The river had washed the sap from her hands, but the stench of the killing field lingered in her nose.

  It sickened her how the jagged-tooth steel blades had cut so savagely through the living trunks of the trees. She remembered how the loggers with the axes had cleaved the helpless branches. And the shouting men with the snapping whips had yanked at the leather-bound heads of the wild-eyed horses to drag the carcasses of the trees across the ground.

  The memories were aflame in her heart. But the worst memory of all were the birds, the hundreds of birds, their feathers torn and tattered, their wings twisted and broken, their bodies lying dead on the ground. A nest. A fox. A mantis. A fawn. A tree wasn’t a tree. It was a world. And the men with the iron beasts were killing them by the thousands.

  She didn’t understand the newcomers. What was in their souls to make them want to destroy the beauty and sustenance of the world in such a way? What kind of evil drove them? Whatever it was, it was clear that they had come for one purpose: to cut down the forest and take the bodies of the trees back to where they came from. And they didn’t care who or what they destroyed to do it.

  But as dark and frightening as the memories were, the forest around her now provided a warm, soft, green refuge, peaceful and serene. A gentle breeze flowed through the hemlocks, the birches, and the dogwood trees that grew along the river. And she could hear the buzzy murmur and tiny, clawlike feet of a nuthatch climbing up the bark of a nearby trunk. A small flock of chickadees whistled and cavorted in the branches above. It was as if the forest knew what she most needed at this moment, that the quiet whispers of the olden ways would soothe her woodland soul.

  When her mind turned to the panther, Willa smiled. Her heart swelled with pride. She’d actually saved the life of a black panther! Her mamaw would have been so pleased, and she would have wanted to hear all about it. In some ways, everything that had happened since she’d left Dead Hollow didn’t feel real yet, like she hadn’t truly experienced it, not until she’d told her mamaw all about it.

  Still thinking about her grandmother, and her sister, Alliw, long ago, Willa gathered goldenseal and witch hazel leaves from nearby, then bound the wounds on her leg where the panther had scratched her. She knew the cat hadn’t meant to hurt her. She’d just been trying to get to the surface. Even panthers had to breathe.

  As Willa worked on her leg, she remembered the cat’s striking yellow eyes staring at her from beneath the surface of the water. You can do this! the panther had been telling her. And she did do it.

  She just wished there had been more time. She could have helped the cat with her wounds, or sat with her for a little while, speaking with her in the old language the way she did with the wolves and the bears. But everything had happened so fast, and then she was gone. She kept wondering where the cat came from. Did she have a family of some kind, or was the panther on her own like she was?

  She couldn’t explain it, but she longed to see the cat again. She realized she was being foolish. That panther was a vicious predator. Given half a chance, she would have probably torn her to pieces and eaten her for lunch.

  But sitting there by the side of the river alone, Willa missed her all the same. There was a kind of camaraderie in the danger they had shared, the way they had worked together, the way they had helped each other. Willa knew that the jaetter Kearnin would have killed her with that spear if the panther hadn’t struck him down. The cat had moved so fast, faster than anything she’d ever seen. And it was for her. Not only had she saved a black panther, the black panther had saved her in return.

  She spent the next several hours combing the forest, looking for the panther’s tracks and trying to pick up her scent. Willa foraged along the way, eating the wild strawberries she found hiding beneath their white blossoms and the green sochan leaves growing along the little streams in the forest.

  Eventually, she returned to the bank of the river where she had begun. It was no use. The Ghost of the Forest had truly disappeared. Willa plopped down on the ground in disappointment.

  She knew that the truth was, she wasn’t just looking for the panther. The panther wasn’t what she longed for. She longed for her mamaw, and for her sister, for anyone. She wanted someone to talk to about what she’d seen, about what she’d done, about all the things that had happened.

  She hadn’t spoken with a living person in days. Her mamaw had been the last.

  Where was she going to find a new den, a new place to hang her cocoon and sleep her nights? Her grandmother had given her the knowledge and skills to survive in the forest, but where was she going to find a place for her heart to live? How was she going to live in the world so alone?

  She looked around at the forest, and then out across the water of the river, not sure where to go or what to do. Seeing the destruction of the forest had left her feeling so helpless, so small.

  The Cherokee families she’d seen earlier that day were long gone now. The wolves, the bears, they had their own kind, their own lives to live. She was truly alone.

  She stared into the river, letting the mesmerizing flow of the water wash over her mind. She wanted the motion of it to numb her, to sweep away the ache, to somehow blend her woeful spirit into the world.

  But even as she watched the flow of the river, she knew where it would lead her. In all that had happened over the last few days, in all the violence and conflict she had seen, one act of kindness stuck in her mind. She kept thinking about it, the unexpectedness of it. She couldn’t get free of it. She didn’t want it to be the answer. She didn’t want to take that path. It made no sense to her. But the whole time she was sitting there sta
ring into the water, a part of her already knew what she was going to do. All the streams in her heart were leading her back to that one place. That one moment. And it wasn’t far. All she had to do was follow the river.

  Willa crept up to the edge of the forest, wove herself into the leaves of the undergrowth, and gazed toward the wooden lair of the day-folk man who had shot her.

  The man was walking across the grass, his black-and-white dog following closely at his side. He wore a brown vest and a shirt with wrinkled sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and a wide-brimmed hat that shaded his eyes from the sun.

  She didn’t know all of the Eng-lish words the homesteaders used, but she was pretty sure that they called the lairs they lived in a “cabin” or a “house” depending on how they had cut up the bodies they had used to make it. They were crude words, and she didn’t like them in her mind. And she knew that the “barn” was where they kept their animals. Many of the homesteaders lived in small log cabins, but this man had built a house, a barn, and a third building she didn’t have a name for. And this was the building he was walking toward.

  He had covered the roof of the building with overlapping slices of dead trees and he’d pieced together the walls from stones he’d stolen from the river. But the oddest feature of the building was that it had a large wooden wheel on the side, with a thick central shaft, eight spokes, and what looked like rectangular wooden buckets hanging on the curve of the wheel. She couldn’t imagine what it was all for.

  The man walked over to a narrow channel that he’d dug in the ground to take water from the river, and then pulled on a lever that opened some sort of divider. The stolen water came gushing through a chute and splashed down onto the buckets. There was a deep groaning sound, and then—to her amazement—the wheel began to turn, the buckets filling at the top and then emptying at the bottom, with the water pouring into a small pond, and then continuing on through another channel back toward the river.