Willa of the Wood

by Robert Beatty

  After a long time lying on the ground with Nathaniel and Scout, Willa rose, and she pulled Nathaniel slowly up onto his feet. She put her shoulder under his arm and they limped back to the house in silence.

  As he slumped down, bloody and wounded, into his bed, she tried to say gentle words to him that might soothe him, that might help him through the pain of his loss, but she knew that her words meant nothing. Nathaniel had suffered too much. He’d lost his wife, his children, and now his dog.

  She wanted to tell him that she’d seen Iska alive, to give him hope, to give him something he could cling to. But she knew she couldn’t. Not at this moment. Not like this. After all the time that had passed, Iska was probably dead by now. She couldn’t hurt Nathaniel with this new uncertainty, this new pain, the agony of knowing that he might have been able save his son if he’d only known where he was.

  As she thought about what to do, she went out and gathered seal berries and herbs from the forest. When she returned, she applied poultices to his bloody cuts and bruises, trying to help him in any way she could.

  He lay in the bed without moving, his eyes glazed with hopelessness.

  She wondered again whether she should tell him about what she had seen in the prison. She knew it wasn’t right to hide what she knew from him. But if she told him about seeing Iska in the night-spirt lair, he’d drag his bleeding, damaged body up onto his feet, grab his rifle, and head up the mountain to find his son. It would be impossible to stop him. He’d go with or without her. But there was no way he could make it up through the ravines and ridges to Dead Hollow. And she couldn’t bear the thought of him collapsing in exhaustion and lying dead and alone among the rocks. She couldn’t bear the thought of the jaetters getting hold of him the way they had her grandmother.

  But as she wet a rag and cleaned the dirt and blood from the wound on Nathaniel’s head, she was already beginning to see what she must do.

  She didn’t want to do it. She didn’t want to leave. She didn’t want to go back up there to that dark place. She knew she was probably going to die. And if, by some thread of strength, Iska was still alive, and by the grace of the Great Mountain she managed to get him back to his father, then she knew what would happen next. And it would break her heart.

  From what she’d seen and experienced all her life in the withered lair of Dead Hollow, love was a rare and tenuous thing, families small and fragile and dying. Love was a thing that shattered. It was a thing that could not last.

  She had finally found in Nathaniel a place for her heart to live. And it felt like a shaded, magical forest dell unlike any other. But if she succeeded in returning Iska to him, and maybe even his other children if they were still alive, then she knew everything would change. Nathaniel would have his real family back, his human family, the family he’d been searching for and yearning for. The family he truly loved. His need for her and her strange night-spirit ways would fade away like mist from the top of the mountain, all around her in one moment, then drifting away in the next, as if the Great Mountain was saying, You’ve had enough now, little one. It’s time for you to go… And she knew it was a pain she could not bear.

  But despite what was going to happen, she knew in her heart that she had to go.

  Nathaniel lay in his bed, broken and wounded, body and soul, mourning not just his dog Scout but his beloved wife and children. Willa knew that one way or another, whether she lived or died up on the mountain, whether she succeeded or failed, this would be the last time she would ever see him, the last time she would ever touch his shoulder with her hand, or hear his voice.

  As the man Nathaniel’s eyes finally drifted shut and he fell into a troubled sleep, she wanted to say Thank you to him, thank you for all that he had done for her, for the kindness he’d shown her that first night in the barn and every day they’d been together since. And she wanted to say how sorry she was about everything that had happened, what had come before, and what had come after.

  But as she turned and went downstairs, she couldn’t find a way to say any of these words, or express any of these feelings, in the new language or the old. And although he had taught her some of the Eng-lish letters, she did not yet know how to write the sounds of feelings on the skin of trees.

  So she walked outside alone, made her way across the grass, and disappeared into the forest.

  It was just the way she had come.

  Willa followed the edge of the river like she had many times before, but traveling upstream now, against the flow of fate, against the flow of time, back toward the world she came from.

  She made her way high up into the mountains, through the darkening forest as the mist rose up into the moonlit trees and the owls took wing.

  Hours later, she finally came to the rocky gorge that led into Dead Hollow.

  The Watcher—the weathered carcass of the upside-down tree wedged between the narrow walls of the ravine—loomed over the path, a black guardian against the enemies of the clan.

  And tonight, that’s me, she thought.

  She had told herself that she’d never come back to this dark and wretched place. But here she was again. She wanted to turn away, to skulk back down the mountain and slip quietly into her soft cocoon hanging in Nathaniel’s room. She wanted to go back to Scout and pet his ears, and run and play with him in the soaring groves of trees. But she knew she couldn’t. Her life with Nathaniel and Scout had been destroyed by four symbols on a piece of wood and a logger’s gun.

  She had no choice now. She knew what she had to do. But she felt the weight of it in the pit of her stomach as she watched bands of jaetters and guards moving in and out of the entrance of the Dead Hollow lair like hornets around a nest.

  It struck her how the members of her clan always ventured out of the lair in groups. There is no I, only we. But when she had been a thieving jaetter she liked to go out on her own, to use her own skills and make her own decisions. She hadn’t even realized at the time how much that had set her apart from the others, how infuriating and incomprehensible it had been to Gredic, and how suspicious it had seemed to the padaran.

  Now there is an I, she thought. I, the woodwitch, the weaver, the jaetter, the thief. Move without a sound, steal without a trace. That’s what I’m going to do, steal without a trace, just like old times.

  But as she gazed at the Watcher, she knew if she walked in through the front entrance of the lair they’d swarm her and kill her on sight.

  And she suspected that the prison guards had probably found the crack in the stone she had used the last time. They were probably guarding it or had blocked it off. It was no use to her now.

  This time, she needed a different way in. Something small. Something quiet. And something that would reserve her strength for the battles to come. One of the things she had learned as a jaetter was that nights of thieving were long and filled with many perils.

  She pulled back into the forest and headed for a nearby stream to find some help.

  A short time later, she crept through the dripping understory of the blackened trees that grew along the back walls of the lair. The shuffling, tail-dragging movement of her new allies followed just behind her.

  When she finally came to the spot that she thought was nearest to the prison, she whispered “Here” in the old language, touching her fingers to the base of the wall.

  The two beavers moved forward and started chewing, chomp after chomp with their sharp, strong teeth, cutting their way through the thick layers of interwoven sticks.

  Three of the beaver colony’s young kits, and two of the adults, had been trapped and killed by the jaetters for the bounty on their fur since she had last visited the colony. It seemed impossible, but the Faeran of the Dead Hollow clan, who had once lived in harmony with all living things, had become their gravest enemy.

  “Thank you, my friends,” she whispered when they finished boring a small hole through the wall for her to fit through. “It’s going to get bad from here on, so you better get back to your
lodge. Stay safe.”

  As she crawled on her hands and knees through the dark, slimy hole, her stomach tightened. She loathed the smell of it, the closed-in feeling of it. But how could she have stayed with Nathaniel knowing what she knew? How could she abandon Iska to the night-spirit guards if he was still alive? He was Nathaniel’s son!

  She crawled through several feet of densely layered sticks, then finally made it through to the other side.

  She slowly peeked her head out and looked around. The hole hadn’t brought her directly into the prison but into one of the lower tunnels of the lair. She checked one way and then the other for any signs of the guards. For now, her path looked clear.

  Move without a sound. Steal without a trace, she thought again as she crept carefully out of the hole and crouched down to the floor.

  She stayed very still, listening for the faintest sounds in the distance, her quills oscillating, ready to detect the slightest movement coming in her direction. Every sense in her body was tuned to the take.

  She dashed up the tunnel quickly and quietly, scanning ahead. She reached one turn and then another, making her way toward the prison.

  It was hard to imagine that the boy Iska had survived very long in the cruel conditions she had seen him in. The prison guards had seemed determined to make sure he wouldn’t last. The small hole they had crammed him into hadn’t been much larger than his curled body, and the guards hadn’t even been feeding him.

  It seemed even less likely that his brother and sister had survived. She’d seen no signs of them at all.

  But she had no choice now. For Nathaniel’s sake, one way or another, whether they were alive or dead, she had to figure out what had happened to them, or Nathaniel would drive himself insane searching up and down the river for their bodies.

  If she could somehow find Iska in the prison and escape with him, it would be the greatest take a jaetter had ever achieved, to steal a human being right out from under the noses of the night-spirit clan.

  She came to a corridor where she could hear the sounds of footsteps and voices just ahead. She stayed close to the wall, and moved slowly forward.

  As she peered around the corner, a guard ran toward her, spear in hand. She threw herself to the wall, wove herself in, and disappeared just as the guard ran past her.

  Before she could even take a breath, two more guards came down the corridor dragging a screaming human girl behind them. The girl flailed her body in wild, jerking motions, lurching one way and then the other, trying to escape the guards, but the guards had clamped onto her wrists with their bony hands and would not let her go.

  “What’s wrong with this one?” the larger of the two guards asked, as they dragged the girl down the corridor.

  “It keeps trying to escape,” the other guard said. “Lorcan said that it wasn’t cooperating, so we should throw it into the abyss.”

  Willa watched in horror as they pulled the screaming girl away.

  They were taking her toward the labyrinth where they would heave her into the black void of the bottomless pit and she would never be seen again.

  Willa’s fists tightened and her jaw clenched. A desperate need to help the girl welled up inside her. But she didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t leap out in front of the guards and suddenly overpower them. She felt so helpless.

  Get what you came for, she told herself fiercely, trying to focus her mind. Find your take and go.

  She moved deeper into the prison, sneaking unseen and unheard from shadow to shadow, blending here and darting there. She soon found herself surrounded by wailing, captured children crammed into prison cells up and down the corridor, guards shouting at them through the lattices in the cell doors. Some of the children were wounded and weak, others strong and defiant and fighting back. But what struck her was that the humans were still here—and at least some of them were still alive.

  It seemed as if the guards were holding the various prisoners in different types of cells, feeding some extravagantly and starving others, talking to certain children in kind words, but then isolating the others in total darkness. She couldn’t figure out why the guards were doing all this. But somehow, it felt strangely familiar to her. There was something about it that reminded her too keenly of her own nightmares.

  Just get what you came for, she told herself again, and tried to continue on. You’re a thief. Find your take and go.

  Deeper down in the prison, where there were no guards, she followed a long, winding tunnel with dozens of cells no larger than holes for curled-up bodies. Little human fingers reached out through the lattices of woven sticks as she went by. She tried to push her way through the dark, nightmarish confusion, but the sounds and smells were unbearable.

  Finally, she came to the cell she was looking for, where she had fed Iska the cookies.

  She crouched down and peered into the darkness of the hole. The body of a young, dark-haired boy lay crumpled on the floor.

  “Wake up,” Willa whispered into the cell.

  But the boy did not reply.

  “Iska, wake up!” she whispered again, louder this time.

  But the boy in the cell did not move.

  She looked up the corridor, knowing that a guard could come running in her direction at any moment, and then she turned back to the cell.

  “Iska, it’s me, it’s Willa,” she said. “You’ve got to get up. We’ve got to go!”

  But still the crumpled shape in the cell did not move.

  She felt her world starting to close in, the heat rising to her face, and it was getting more and more difficult to breathe.

  Her hand trembled as she reached slowly into the darkness of the cell to touch the body.

  “Iska…” she said again as she put her hand on the boy’s shoulder. But he did not respond.

  She shook him to rouse him, to make sure he was all right.

  But still he did not move.

  She reached over and put her hand on his bare arm.

  His skin was cold.

  Too cold.

  She swallowed hard, and then she slowly withdrew her hand.

  She peered through the lattice of sticks, trying to get a different view of the boy lying on the floor in the cell. She had to see his face to be sure.

  It looks like him…But the hair…Maybe the hair isn’t right…It’s dark brown, not jet-black like Iska’s had been.

  When she finally found an angle where she could see some of the boy’s face, she realized that it wasn’t him. She didn’t know who this poor, dead boy had been, but he wasn’t Iska.

  But whoever he had been, he didn’t belong here on the floor of this cell. There had to be someone out there looking for him, someone who loved him, someone like Nathaniel or her mamaw, someone who had been a part of his life, and he a part of theirs.

  She looked down the corridor, her heart so overwhelmed with emotion that she couldn’t stir herself to move.

  The only thing that brought her back was that none of this made sense. Why are they treating the various prisoners so differently? Why are they taking care of some but not others? What are they doing to them? What is the purpose of all this?

  As the questions raced through her mind, she remembered something from years before. She and Gredic were lying bloody and beaten on the forest floor on the first night of their initiation as jaetters.

  She realized that the guards weren’t treating some of the prisoners well and others badly. They were treating them all badly at first—breaking them down—then slowly feeding them and taking care of them, making them more and more dependent and obedient.

  They’re initiating them, Willa thought in horror. They’re adopting these children into the clan and turning them into jaetters.

  And she knew the reason why. She had seen it all her life, in the crumbling ceiling of the great hall, in the echoing corridors and empty dens, in the stories her mamaw had told her of the many years past. The Dead Hollow clan was dying. There had been fewer young ones born every yea
r.

  When the padaran took her into his rooms behind the throne, she had seen the fear in the depths of his mind and the lengths to which he would go to save the clan. He had adopted the tools and weapons of the humans. He had taken on their language. He had even started killing the animals of the forest, something no Faeran of old would ever do. But even with all the changes he had made, the clan continued to wither year after year.

  She could see now that the padaran had ordered the night-spirit guards to capture these human children for a purpose. If children weren’t being born, they’d be stolen, brought up in the ways of the clan, and grafted into the jaetter life by force. The padaran would train them just as he had trained her and Gredic and the others—with food and care, and threat and violence, all in careful measure, until they were faithful servants of the clan. There is no I, only we. She hadn’t had a choice about whether she was part of the Dead Hollow lair. She hadn’t had a choice about whether she wanted to be a jaetter. And neither would they.

  But looking now at the body of the dead boy lying in the cell, she knew that some of these children weren’t going to make it. They were going to die here. The guards would drag their bodies to the labyrinth and throw them into the black abyss.

  Hopelessness welled up inside her. She looked down the corridor of cells. How could she ever find Iska in all of this? How did she know he wasn’t already dead and gone?

  Gathering up her strength, she moved down to the next cell and peered in.

  “Iska?” she whispered, but without hope. A little girl groaned and looked up at her with pleading eyes. Willa felt a pang in her heart, but she knew she couldn’t help the girl. There were just too many of them.

  Get what you came for, Willa, she told herself again. Get your take and go.

  She pushed herself on to the next cell.