1
The taxi driver tells me we’re almost there, that it’s just a little further. I want to answer, to be polite, but I can’t find words. The social worker probably told him what happened, that I’m an orphan. Technically, I suppose that’s not true. But I’ve never met my mother. The thought of her makes me need to swallow hard.
Instead of speaking, I lean my head back against the seat and close my eyes, blocking out the wave upon wave of blinding green assaulting my senses. I never knew so many trees existed, let alone grew so close together. A wall of ultraviolet, stifling forest flashes past on each side, as if we’re driving through an undersea tunnel. Dad would have known the name of every different tree, but they all look the same to me.
My eyes snap open when the cab slows. It turns onto an unmarked forest path and rocks first one way and then the other as the wheels sink into potholes. I sit up straight and squint to see through the pattern of sun and shadow dappling the narrow road ahead. Trees loom on both sides, seeming to lean closer as we approach. It makes me shiver, how cocoon-like it feels, like a Venus fly trap ready to snap shut. Like the forest will reach into the car and pull me out, snakelike vines twisting around my helpless body, crooked roots dragging me into the ground to join Dad.
I take a shuddering breath and squeeze my eyes closed to force back the tears that threaten at the thought of him. Every time I think there can’t be any tears left in the world, especially not in me, I am proved wrong. I spent the last week in my room, sobbing until my throat was raw and my eyes felt like squeezed-out sponges.
Even Emmy, my best friend since I was five, could not console me. She came over every day last week, telling me I needed to get out of my room, that her mom would take us to the mall. Any other day, any other week, those words would work like magic. I used to think there was nothing that shopping couldn’t fix. Now I know better.
Ahead, a log seems to leap out of the dizzying pattern on the road, which has gotten progressively worse. Now, it’s not much more than a set of tire tracks through a narrow corridor of trees, grown up with a tangle of weeds. The driver sees the log at the last second, too, and he slams on the brakes. He curses under his breath as the cab rocks to a halt just before it would have smashed into the log lying across the trail that definitely no longer qualifies as a road.
The driver turns in his seat to look at me. “I’m sorry, honey, this is as far as I go,” he says. He has an honest-to-God toothpick in the corner of his mouth. I want to tell Emmy so bad it hurts, but even more, I want to tell Dad.
“Are—are you serious?” I ask, my fingers closing around the smooth honey-and-chocolate colored stone on the necklace Dad gave me when I was a kid. If I hadn’t promised him I’d never take it off as long as I live, I would have put it in the casket with him.
“I’m real sorry,” the driver says, looking pained. “But I can’t ruin this car. It’s what pays the bills. Can you call ahead, have somebody come meet you? I don’t want to leave you out here alone…”
He looks like he’s considering it, though. A dart of panic flickers through me at the thought of trekking through that shadowy passageway of looming trees. I pull out my phone, my hands shaking.
No service. Not a single bar of my signal shows.
I take a deep breath and stow my phone in my bag. “It’s okay,” I say. “I can walk in. They’re coming to meet me. You can go.”
I don’t know why I say that. Maybe I just don’t know how long I can keep it together without bawling my eyes out. Again. And I don’t really want to do it in front of this guilty-looking stranger. Maybe it’s that I don’t want to admit how scared I am, and if he’s gone, he can’t see it. Or maybe I just don’t know what else to do, and I don’t want to hold him up any longer. He’s already driven across an entire state of Oklahoma to get me here. I hope Dad had enough in savings to pay for the day of driving, that the state didn’t have to pay to ship me out here like a charity case.
“You sure about that?” the driver asks doubtfully.
“Yeah, of course,” I say, climbing out of the back seat and shrugging into my puffy white jacket. The goose down is too warm for the autumn afternoon, which is only mildly chilly, but I didn’t have room for it in my suitcase.
“How about I wait with you?” the taxi driver asks. He gets out and unloads my two suitcases from the trunk, all I had room to bring. I know I’m lucky. A lady at church got a foster kid once, and she said he came with nothing more than the clothes he was wearing. I think I would have died if I had to give away all my clothes. Emmy and I saved every penny of allowance, worked odd jobs, asked for money for Christmas instead of gifts—all to work on our wardrobes and buy makeup. When you’re planning a career as a model, looking the part is important.
My former excitement at the prospect of that future is absent now. When I was packing, I kept telling myself that I might want cute shoes in my new home. But even then, I didn’t believe it. Nothing seemed to matter anymore—it was like I couldn’t see the colors or fabrics. Without Dad, the world has become flat and grey.
“You don’t have to wait,” I tell the cab driver after an awkward few minutes of silence. “Really. I’ll be fine. They’ll be here any second.”
“I don’t know,” he says, rubbing at the back of his head. He turns to look down the shadowy trail, deeper into the woods.
I stifle a shriek.
On the log in front of the car, just inches from his bumper, stands a woman. A woman who appeared out of nowhere, out of thin air.
How long has she been standing there?
“Come along, then,” she says, looking down her nose at me. I don’t have to ask if her name is Talia to know she’s my mother. Her hair is a few shades darker than mine, burnished gold rather than white, but it falls in the same soft waves. Though her heart-shaped face is severe, the pointy chin and wide-set golden eyes are familiar. Unlike me, she has apparently never heard of fashion. And why would she, living out here in the middle of nowhere? She’s wearing a brown wool sweater that hides her shape, and a long green maxi skirt with brown hiking boots under it. When she steps off the log, I catch a glimpse of wool socks bunched above her boots.
I try to formulate a greeting, but nothing comes. In the past week, I’ve imagined a hundred scenarios, pictured everything from tearful embraces to unending, probing questions to doubts about my identity. I’ve wondered what she’s like, this mother who didn’t die in childbirth like Dad said, and what she’ll think of me. But none of it prepared me for this moment. It’s so…flat. So nothing.
She gestures impatiently, and I pick up my two suitcases, staggering under the weight as I stumble towards the log.
“You can go,” she says to the cab driver, flicking her wrist as if dismissing a dog.
I cast one last pleading glance over my shoulder at him, but he’s already getting into the cab. And he can’t take me back there, anyway, to my old life. My life isn’t there anymore.
As I struggle to drag one suitcase and then the other over the fallen log, my mother stands motionless, emptyhanded, regarding me with her cool gaze. I flash back to the moment Emmy asked if I wanted to move in with her. Now her charity seems more appealing than this mother I never knew existed.
This morning, I was going to wear the same ratty grey sweatpants and one of Dad’s comfy sweaters that I’d been wearing all week. But I got nervous at the last minute and put on a pair of designer jeans, a tight long-sleeved t-shirt, and a pair of ankle boots. Now I wonder if it’s too much. Obviously, I should have worn hiking boots instead of heels. But if my mother told the social workers that she lived in the middle of a freaking forest, they failed to convey the message.
Talia strides ahead, leaving me to drag my suitcases over the rutted path. Thorny weeds choke the trail and scratch at my jeans, and I turn my ankle when my heel hits a soft spot where the dirt crumbles. I’m out of breath within minutes, already hot inside my puffy jacket. I blow my hair off my forehead and stop to shake out my ar
ms.
As I reach for the handles of my suitcases again, a movement in the woods catches my eye. Dread lurches in my gut. But when I turn, it’s only a deer, watching me with its wise, wide eyes. After a moment, it resumes chewing the leaf hanging out of its mouth. I pause, captivated by its nearness, its serene beauty. I’m so close I can see each individual long, black eyelash on its deep brown eyes. Suddenly, its ears and tail shoot up, its eyes go wide, and it lets out a loud snort. It turns and bounds away, disappearing into the trees within seconds.
And there, standing twenty paces behind where the deer stood, is a crouching mountain lion. Adrenaline bursts through my chest, but I stand frozen, my body turning to liquid inside my skin. I open my mouth to scream, but all I manage is a pathetic, squeaky whisper. “Mother?”
When she doesn’t answer, I turn, calling out in a slightly higher, tremulous voice, “Mother?” But she has disappeared as suddenly as she appeared. The path ahead is completely empty.
*
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The Raven Queen: Fairy Tales of Horror (Villain Stories Book 1) Page 12