Willa of the Wood

by Robert Beatty

  Willa moved forward through the broken tumble of giant rocks until she was no more than a few steps from Hialeah, then slowly revealed herself, trying not to startle her.

  Hialeah’s face immediately lit up. “You made it!” she said as she moved toward her. It startled Willa when Hialeah wrapped her arms around her and pulled her close. Willa couldn’t help but smile. Hialeah was probably her same age, but taller and stronger than her, and there was something invigorating about her embrace. It was a strange and glorious feeling to be held by this bold human girl, to feel the arms of her friendship around her.

  “Thank you for saving me and my brothers,” Hialeah said.

  “You’re welcome,” Willa said happily.

  When they separated, Hialeah looked Willa over more closely, checking the bandage on her neck.

  “The cut…” Hialeah said in astonishment, “…and your other wounds…They’re almost healed.”

  “I got a little help from an old friend,” Willa said.

  “You came back!” Iska said enthusiastically as he crawled out of the cave, holding his little brother by the hand.

  “Sshh! We’re supposed to be hiding!” Hialeah scolded him.

  “It’s all right now,” Iska insisted. “Willa’s here! She’ll protect us!”

  “I don’t know if I can protect anyone—” Willa started to say, but following his sister’s lead, Iska leapt at Willa and embraced her, wrapping both his arms around her. “During the night, we decided we weren’t going to leave this cave until you got here.”

  Willa frowned and looked at him. “I told you that we wouldn’t see each other again, that you should go home without me,” she said in confusion.

  “We saw the flames during the night,” Iska said. “We knew something bad happened.”

  “We were worried about you,” Hialeah said.

  “I knew she’d make it,” Iska said proudly and defiantly.

  “No you didn’t,” Hialeah contradicted him. “You were fretting about her all night. We all were. Even Inali was asking about you.”

  Willa was glad to see her friends were all right, and she was happy to see their smiling faces, but she knew they had a long way to go before they were home.

  And she also knew that it was those same smiling faces that were going to change everything when the three children came back into their father’s life.

  She felt as if her time with Nathaniel had been as rare and ethereal as the soft glow of the blue ghost fireflies on a long, dark night, but his reunion with his real children would be like the rise of the sun. The faint magic that had warmed Nathaniel’s wounded heart for a little while would fade into nothingness in the brightness of the coming day.

  And she knew that with his children sleeping at night down the hall once more, the man Nathaniel would no longer have a need for a strange, night-spirit creature to be hanging in a woven cocoon from the ceiling in his room.

  She knew all of this, and it filled her with a wilting sadness, but she tried to stay strong in her heart, clinging to the idea that she had this one good thing in her life.

  “I’ll tell you the way home from here,” Willa said. “The journey is long and difficult, but just keep following this creek until it meets the river, and then follow the river down into the valley.”

  “But we don’t know the way,” Iska said with a sudden firmness that surprised her.

  “If you follow the river, you won’t get lost,” Willa said.

  She knew she couldn’t go with them. The pain would be too great. It was their home, not hers. The man Nathaniel was their father, not her father. She knew she couldn’t bear to see them together as a family as she had once been with Nathaniel. And she couldn’t bear to say good-bye to him again.

  “But what if someone attacks us along the way?” Hialeah said, seeming to join in with her brother’s sudden and bewildering stubbornness.

  “The night-spirits have been scattered,” Willa said. “I don’t think any of the guards and jaetters will be coming down here.”

  “But they might,” Iska said. “They might be scouring the river, looking for easy prey.”

  “They might be very angry about what happened last night and want revenge on any humans they find,” Hialeah joined in.

  “If they find us, they’ll kill us!” Iska insisted, nodding his head vigorously. “You’ve got to come with us, Willa.”

  “I’m sorry, Iska, I can’t,” Willa said.

  The expression on Iska’s face dropped in disappointment. “Why not?” he asked, his voice shaking with emotion.

  “Your father has been missing all of you terribly…” she began uncertainly, looking at Iska, Hialeah, and Inali. “But when he sees the three of you…”

  Her words dwindled off. She knew she didn’t have an answer that she could explain to them. But as they all stared at her with their determined eyes, she could see they weren’t going to give up.

  “All right,” she said finally. “I’ll take you down the river into the valley. I’ll get you home, and then we’ll say good-bye.”

  It would have normally been a four-hour journey down into the valley, moving along the narrow edge of the river and climbing over the larger rocks, but with the three humans, it took much longer. Despite his initial enthusiasm, Iska struggled to keep up. And although Hialeah did not complain about carrying Inali mile after mile, Willa could see the girl was struggling.

  “I’ll take him,” Willa said, gathering Inali into her arms, and the little human clung to her like a baby possum to his momma’s fur. When she moved too fast or leapt to a particularly distant rock, Inali gripped her extra tight and whispered “Don’t let me go” in her ear.

  The children made too much noise when they traveled. They talked loud. They walked loud. They breathed loud. And their monotone skin stuck out so conspicuously in the forest that it was a wonder that this species had ever survived their journeys through the world. She was sure that every predator in the area was going to hear their heavy, tromping feet and see their bright faces and arms.

  But on the other side of it, she liked how as soon as she took Inali into her arms, Hialeah began helping Iska up the steeper climbs, and sometimes Iska helped her in return, brother and sister, making their way home. Humans weren’t always born as twins like Faeran were, but the bond was there. She could see it.

  As they traveled home, they came upon a pack of jaetters with sharpened spears scavenging along the bank of the river. Willa ducked down behind a rock with Inali and pulled Iska toward her. “Shh,” she whispered to Inali, touching his lips with her finger. Hialeah quickly pinned herself behind a pine tree. Smart girl, Willa thought. She’s learning quick.

  Another time they saw a group of six loggers with axes and picks trudging along a path through the forest. Just keep walking, Willa told the men in her mind, as she and the children hunkered down in the bushes beside the trail.

  Working together over the next few hours, they hid and they snuck, they ran and they climbed, until the spruce and firs of the mountain slopes began to give way to the leafy trees of the valley.

  Finally, she and the three children came to the pools of reflecting water that lay in the stones along the bank of the river. Willa remembered looking into these pools and seeing her face turn to stars on the night she was shot.

  “We’re here,” she said softly to the others, not quite able to keep the sadness from creeping into her voice.

  “She’s right, this is our part of the river!” Iska said excitedly, seeming not to notice her solemn tone. “These are our rocks! We’re almost home!”

  As he said these words, Willa’s heart filled with a slow and quiet sorrow. She knew she would soon be parting from her companions and on her own again.

  They approached the house from the same direction Willa had that first night she came to fill her satchel. She remembered worrying about the possibility of a vicious dog and violent men with killing-sticks. And she remembered studying the day-folk lair made from
murdered trees and stones broken from the bones of the river.

  It felt so different now.

  Other than the den she had shared with her mamaw, this was the only place where she had ever felt like she belonged.

  She knew she shouldn’t approach the house. She knew that it was going to hurt. But she kept walking, Iska on one side and Hialeah on the other, and Inali in her arms.

  The house came into view.

  She just wanted to get one last glimpse of the man named Nathaniel, and then she would go.

  But as she scanned the house and the barn and the mill, she did not see him. He didn’t appear to be outside. And the house looked quiet and still.

  Too quiet and too still.

  The empty porch.

  The closed door.

  The shut-up windows.

  The dark rooms.

  There was something about it that made her certain that the house was empty, and that he wasn’t just gone. He was gone for good.

  Iska and Hialeah didn’t seem to notice any of this. Willa set Inali down. Then the three children ran together happily and noisily across the grass, up the steps, and banged through the front door into the house.

  Willa watched and listened.

  “He’s not here!” Iska said as he ran through the house, looking in the kitchen and the other rooms.

  “He’s gone,” Hialeah said, her voice filled with confusion and disappointment.

  As Willa stepped through the front door into the main room of the house, she glanced at the spot where Nathaniel kept his rifle. The rifle was gone, along with the knapsack he used for long journeys.

  Iska dashed up the stairs, ran from room to room, and then called down to them. “He’s not up here either! It looks like he’s taken his clothes.”

  Willa looked at the mantel over the fireplace. The photograph of the family that had been there was gone.

  He hadn’t just gone hunting. And he hadn’t gone into town for supplies. He had left for good.

  “Why did he leave?” Hialeah said, her voice on the edge of breaking down.

  Willa shook her head. This can’t be, she thought. He can’t be gone. I can still smell him.

  “Where did he go?” Iska asked.

  “He hasn’t been gone long,” Willa said. “I think we just missed him.”

  “We need to go after him,” Hialeah said. Willa could tell that she was exhausted, but she wasn’t going to give up.

  “But we don’t even know which way he went!” Iska cried in despair. Willa knew that it wasn’t like him to lose hope, but the disappearance of his father after all this time was more than he could bear.

  “Don’t worry,” Willa said, touching his arm. “He can’t have gotten far. There’s one place I know he’ll stop before he leaves here. We’ll pick up his scent there and track him. And don’t worry—he leaves big footprints.”

  Willa led them outside and across the grass of the front yard. Hialeah walked stoically beside her, carrying Inali in her arms, but Willa could tell by her quietness and the stern look on her face that she was worried. She was the older sister, the protector, the one who knew what to do, but she was seconds from tears.

  As they walked through the sourwood trees and entered the meadow, Willa saw Nathaniel at the far end.

  He was standing over the graves, his gun and his knapsack slung over his shoulder, his head hanging low, saying his last prayers and his last good-bye. It appeared he was leaving what was once his life, and setting out on a new journey, perhaps never to return. There had been too much loss here, too much pain. He had given up hope. And now he was going to leave the world, the mountains, the forests, all that he had once loved.

  “Papa!” Iska shouted as he ran toward his father.

  Hialeah ran quickly behind him, still carrying her little brother.

  Hearing Iska’s shouts, Nathaniel closed his eyes very hard, as if he could not believe what he was hearing. It was as if he thought his mind was playing cruel tricks on him. He clenched his eyes shut, blocking out the pain.

  But as Iska ran toward him and kept shouting, Nathaniel finally opened his eyes and turned.

  A look of shock covered his face. His face shifted as if he wouldn’t allow himself to believe what he was seeing. He was standing on the graves of his children, but his children were running toward him.

  And then, all at once, he seemed to give way. Nathaniel set down his rifle and supplies, and fell to his knees as his children dove into his arms, shouting and talking and carrying on. He wrapped himself around them and pulled them close. The children were ragged, dirty, scratched, and bruised, but they were here, and they were full of joy.

  The man Nathaniel began to sob with tears of relief and gratitude. He held his children tight as he cried and kissed them, quickly and repeatedly, one after another, cupping their faces in his hands and looking at them, then pulling them close again.

  “You’re alive! I can’t believe it!” he was muttering. “Thank God, you’re alive!”

  Iska talked rapidly and excitedly, telling his father about everything they’d been through, how he was captured, how he had survived in the prison, how Willa had fed him cookies, and how they had worked together to escape. The stoic Hialeah didn’t say a word at first, but as soon as her father looked at her and gently asked how she was doing, she broke down and wept in his arms.

  Through all of this, Willa remained standing where she was. In the forest at the edge of the meadow. Very still. Her eyes watching it all. Her heart beating hard in her chest. She did not step into the meadow. The meadow was not hers anymore. The meadow was Nathaniel’s and his family’s. It was the resting place of family lost and the embraces of family found, but it was not hers.

  She looked up at the Great Mountain, with the mist clearing from its rounded peak. The mountain knew. The mountain had been watching all along, and it was still watching, still with her, and the mountain knew.

  As she turned and looked at the humans again, she saw that Nathaniel finally had what he most wanted in the world. He had finally found his children.

  She breathed in long, slow, deep breaths, ragged and unsteady, waves of emotion pouring through her, churning up inside her, but as she watched them, she couldn’t help but feel something building inside her, just seeing them together, filled with such happiness and joy. She felt a great swelling in her heart, almost a sense of pride, a sense that she had done something worthwhile. And that was all she could cling to: that she had done what she had set out to do.

  Finally, she turned and walked away, silent and invisible, into the forest in the same way she had come.

  As she walked back to the river, she said good-bye to everyone in her mind.

  She said good-bye to Gredic and the other jaetters, and the survivors of her clan who would find a new way without her.

  She said good-bye to her mother and her father, who had passed away so long ago.

  She said good-bye to her little twin sister, Alliw, who she’d played with as a child and lived now in the ancient stone of Dead Hollow.

  She said good-bye to her mamaw, who had given her all that she had become and all that she would ever be, who had nurtured her and cared for her, from a seed into a tree.

  She said good-bye to the boy Iska, who had spoken to her through the door of his prison cell; and his little brother, Inali, whom she had carried in her arms; and his bold sister, Hialeah, who had led her brothers down through the valley during the night to their hiding spot in the cave beside the river.

  And, wiping tears from her eyes as she walked away, she said good-bye to the man Nathaniel, who on a frightening night, after losing everything he cared for, had shown her a single moment of kindness. And started it all.

  Suddenly a large hand gripped her shoulder and turned her around quite forcefully.

  Startled, Willa looked up to see Nathaniel’s bright blue eyes staring down at her. He and the three children surrounded her, all looking at her.

  “Where do you thin
k you’re going?” Nathaniel asked.

  “I—I—” she stuttered.

  “How is all this possible, Willa?” he demanded in amazement. “How did you do all this?”

  Willa thought about the how and the when and the why she had done what she had done.

  Then she looked up at Nathaniel and said, “I just wanted to do one kind thing.”

  As Nathaniel looked at her, his brows furrowed, his eyes narrowed, and he pursed his lips, as if he was struggling to understand her. “But where are you going now?” he asked, his voice filled with sadness.

  “I don’t know,” she said softly.

  Nathaniel shook his head as if he was frustrated with her answer. He knelt down on one knee in front of her, held her gently by the shoulders, and looked into her eyes. “Do you understand what happened, Willa? You just vanished. After the loggers attacked, you just left. I thought you had gone for good. I thought you left me. I couldn’t stand it anymore. There was nothing left here for me but memories and pain.”

  Willa listened to his story in shock. She could hear the strain in his voice. She had no idea what he had been going through since she had left.

  “But now,” Nathaniel continued, his voice softening, “with the children back…and with you…Willa, please don’t leave. You’re part of my family. I love you.”

  “We all love you!” Iska said, touching her shoulders.

  “Stay with us,” Hialeah said, grasping her hand. “You can sleep in my room if you want.”

  “Or you can sleep in the tree if you want. You can sleep wherever you want to,” Nathaniel said. “It doesn’t matter. Just stay.”

  Too stunned to talk, Willa gazed around at their expectant faces. Was this actually happening? Or had she fallen asleep under the log after being scorned by her clan, and all this was a dream?