Angel in the Woods

by Rachel Starr Thomson

  Something alerted Nora to our presence. She turned, and even from such a distance I thought I could see the quickening blue of her eyes. For a moment she seemed confused—andand then she broke into a radiant smile and began to hurry across the grass toward us.

  “Hawk?” she called when she was near, but her eyes were on Sarah.

  I didn’t know what to say. There had never been much use in flowery words with Nora. “I’ve brought my sister,” I told her. “Sarah.”

  Nora reached up and took Sarah’s hands with a smile. I knelt down, and Nora helped Sarah off my shoulder. “Welcome,” she told her, and impulsively put her arms around her and pressed Sarah’s motherless head to her breast.

  I knew in that moment that my old dream of falling wildly and instantly in love with some exotic beauty would never be realized, for I loved Nora; and it had happened slowly and prosaically. The boy I had been almost regretted it—an adventure I had yearned for was forever beyond my grasp. But the man I was becoming knew that the deepest and truest things in the world are not often won in whirlwind adventures. Nora started toward the house with her arm around Sarah’s shoulders, and as I watched them go, I felt my heart straining—surely it was so full that it could never be small or petty again.

  It seemed to me that there were eyes on me. I turned and saw a shadowy figure just beyond the treeline.

  I smiled, for I knew there was a smile on the Angel’s face.

  Part II

  Chapter 25

  retrospect

  The year that followed my return to the Castle was marked by change. Illyrica and the Poet were married on the rolling front lawn of the Castle, with Nora and the Giant as their attendants. They had a long train of little girls in befrilled dresses, flowers twined in their hair, to dance and skip about them. The woods had reached the crowning height of autumn glory. Illyrica, angelic in a golden gown, went to meet her husband down a grassy aisle jeweled with leaves of brilliant red, yellow, and orange. The older girls, Isabelle and Sarah among them, watched the proceedings with a shy delight that was nevertheless fierce. Perhaps, for the first time, they thought of their own futures. We missed the Pixie.

  As Illyrica reached the head of the aisle, she turned to hand her bouquet to Nora, and I saw the look that passed between them: love, joy, and the sadness of those who together say good-bye to their old lives. Illyrica turned and joined hands with the Poet, and an era ended. She was beautiful; white-gold hair curling down her back, blue eyes radiant. The thin white scars that twice marred her throat marked her as a treasure of great value—precious as only one can be who has nearly been lost.

  The Poet, for all his genius, proved to be of some practical use after all. He set himself to farming a little plot of land on the edge of the darkwood, near the town, and to raising a small flock of chickens. He and Illyrica settled into a cottage covered with vines, half a mile from the farmland and practically on top of the chickens.

  Winter came upon us, burying us seemingly away from the world. At first it was as it had been the year before. I stayed at the Castle, helping break ice and draw water, chop firewood, and fix anything the harshness of the season or the carelessness of girl-children saw fit to break. My sister was often by my side, with Isabelle generally at hers, my shadow trailed by a shadow. I was perfectly happy, for there in the Castle I could keep my eye on those things which mattered most to me: on the way Sarah was slowly becoming a real, warm human being, on the children as they laughed and played and grew, and on the way Nora lived out every moment of every day.

  But a month had not passed before this changed. The Giant summoned me out to the woods with him. Once more I was in training: learning, this time, how to stay hidden in a world of white, how to survive in a world of cold, and how to defend the Castle in winter. I learned quickly. How my pride had hindered me before, and I had not known it! Before winter was half-over the Giant began to leave me alone to guard the woods while he rested by the fire in the Castle. We fell into a routine, trading off every few days. Loath though I was to be away from Nora, I was glad to take the Giant’s place. I saw for the first time the grey in his hair and the lines in his face. I knew that his time sitting by the fire was doing him a world of good. Now and then, when the Giant felt that something was amiss, we both attended to the woods, roaming guardians over twice the land that one could cover.

  The Giant was not without cause for concern, for while the winter was quiet and uneventful for us, the outside world was not so fortunate. News came in on the snowy wind, often given to us by the Poet through his thick wool muffler. Late in the fall, a villager had been struck down by plague. Since then it had spread. Few families were unaffected. At the same time, the roving bands of thieves whom the Widow had declared so characteristic of her province were growing bolder. For the townspeople, that winter was a long struggle against death.

  When the struggle broke, the Pixie came back to us.

  It was a grey, rainy day in March. Nora was sitting at an upstairs window looking out on the dismal grey-green world, when she started up with a cry and ran for the door. I looked and saw what she had seen: a lone figure, wrapped in a tattered scarf with its ends blowing in the wind, unmistakable red-gold hair blowing with it. And something in her arms, wrapped tightly in a scarf, and clutched very closely to her.

  Nora and I met her together as she struggled up the hill. Her boots and stocking were covered in mud, the hem of her skirt past repair. She smiled when she saw us, but her eyes filled with tears. Nora embraced her the moment she reached her, and then leaned over and exclaimed at the bundle in the Pixie’s arms. It was a baby.

  The Pixie looked up and saw me. She smiled at the look on my face. “And you, Hawk!” she said. “Have you never seen a baby before? Come, old friend. Are you well?”

  “I am,” I stammered. “And you…”

  “Are home,” Nora cut in. “And you must come and dry out before another word is said.”

  The Pixie nodded. Her smile was weary. Nora took the baby from her, and the Pixie stumbled, as though, with her precious burden removed, she was free to collapse. I moved forward quickly and caught her arm. She leaned on me. I saw in an instant how thin and weak she was.

  She told us the story that night in front of the fire, after the children had been sent to bed. She had gone to live with a crofter and his wife, Kate, true friends she had long ago met in the marketplace in the town. They had lived there happily enough, though she was constantly weighed down with guilt and shame when she thought of the Castle. Often she missed it, but she would not come home—not until she had reached some peace within herself.

  Then the plague had come, and the crofter was struck down. Kate was the next to take ill. The Pixie had spent the winter vainly trying to nurse her friend back to health while caring for Kate’s little one. At last Kate died, and the Pixie found that she herself was ill. Racked by pain and fever, half-starved and alone, the Pixie lived only to keep the baby alive. She had succeeded, and when she was certain that she posed no risk to any healthy person, she had come home.

  Nora cried all through the story, and I sat with my fingers clenched tightly. I knew that Nora and I agreed—we should have been there. The Pixie, our Pixie, should not have been alone. Yet she had been… and somehow, it was for the best.

  “When I awoke from my illness,” the Pixie told us, “the old guilt was gone. Looking death in the face reminded me that life was waiting. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  She laughed, a low laugh that contained echoes of her girlhood. She looked down and traced the baby’s cheek in the firelight. A lump grew in my throat. I had witnessed a miracle, something that can only be compared to the change of a chrysalis. The Pixie, foolhardy girl who had so captured my imagination, had become a woman.

  Chapter 26

  a deep content

  Running its course near the Castle was a creek, its waters glistening in a perpetual twilight beneath the long drooping boughs of the weeping willows. Various members of the ga
ggle had taken to calling it “the river.” Nora’s bedtime stories had often featured rivers of late, some of them home to lovely water sprites; others wild and white, barring the way to far-off lands; one an ancient bard calling its lovely song over the stones in its path. The little ones were quite captured by these rivers, and naturally wanted one of their own.

  Our river was not an exciting place in itself, but at times its lovely green shadows deepened, and it suddenly became something uncanny: too still and ancient to belong to this world. Or so the Pixie told me. She often sat by the water, cradling the tiny one in her arms, and watching an old dream take shape beneath the willows: a boat. None of the children could remember whose idea the boat had first been. It seemed to have come upon them all at once, and stayed with remarkable tenacity.

  The boat was now in its third year. The first year, they had set out to build it with a vengeance. When several attempts had failed, they lost interest. The following spring, when the ice melted off the creek and the willows came out of their barren sleep, the passion returned. But that had been an unfortunate year, with enough rain in April to thoroughly drench the gaggle and their dreams, and send them off, sodden and muddy, to other pursuits. I had come that year, and with me renewed hope, but the Giant had whisked me into training in the woods.

  In the spring that the Pixie returned to us, the boat-dream once more came to life. This time, it was Sarah who orchestrated its revival. She and Isabelle were wandering by the creek one day when they found the remains of an old attempt, and Isabelle poured out the tragic story. Sarah, who of all the girls drank in Nora’s stories with all of her soul and strength, at once decided that the boat would sail—that it must.

  Sarah had a strong practical streak that aided, rather than thwarting, her determination. She came to me, Isabelle and three younger girls behind her, and announced their intent. “But they’ve tried to build it before and been a sad failure,” she told me. “I told them you would help us.”

  She said so in a tone of absolute confidence, but when I looked at her I saw a tiny note of uncertainty in her brown eyes. “You can build and carry things better than we can,” she said.

  I smiled and stood, stretching. “Of course I’ll help,” I said.

  We met Nora on the way out. She was on her hands and knees in the garden by the side of the Castle. She looked up and wiped sweat away from her eyes, streaking her brow with dirt, and smiled as the girls called to her in great excitement. “Nora, Nora, we’re going to build a boat and sail down the river!” She looked up at me, and I smiled and said, “That we are.”

  She looked back down and plunged a bulb into the dirt. “Be back in time for dinner,” she said, still smiling to herself in some enjoyment that I felt I was beginning to understand. There was a joy in involving myself in the concerns and desires of the little girls that I had never imagined—a rightness in loving them, and even in serving them. Nora had lived that way for years, and I knew now why she so loved it. I felt also a deep joy in knowing her, in being there to work alongside her though she did not care for me as I did for her. The life I had entered had become to me a deep content.

  By the bank of the creek, I helped the girls gather old logs and lash them together. We launched the boat that same afternoon, and it promptly sank. The look on Sarah’s face told me that the venture was far from over. Truth be told, I felt it keenly myself when the logs disappeared beneath the water. The girls splashed into the creek with yelps and laughter to fetch it, but it was waterlogged and too heavy for them. They straggled back to shore with their dresses soaked, looking up at me.

  “We’ll build another,” I said.

  Sarah stepped forward, ringing water from her petticoats. “Hawk,” she said, “you watched the shipwrights where we used to live. Can’t we build a boat like they did?”

  As a boy I had gone down to the villages by the sea and watched more than one old salt transform pieces of lumber into a seaworthy vessel. I could, I thought, build a rowboat—perhaps even something with a small sail on it. How difficult could it be?

  Into the work I plunged, always with Sarah helping wherever she could, and the other girls variously standing half-underfoot and taking orders from my little sister and me. Isabelle proved to have a good eye for what should be done next. She sometimes reminded me of what I had seen in the villages by suggesting this thing or that. What I had expected to be the work of an hour became the labour of weeks. We found a tree and chopped it down, transformed the wood into useable lumber, and learned by trial and error what tools we needed. Whenever we had a free moment, various of us would gather beneath the willows and work. Even Nora would sometimes leave her responsibilities and watch us, always with the little ones holding her hands or leaning over her shoulders.

  On the third day of every other week, Nora left the Castle altogether. She who had once lived every minute there now ventured out often—had been doing so for months. She went out to visit the most unlikely person imaginable: Genevieve Brawnlyn. The first time she announced her intention to go, I had tried my best to dissuade her. But Nora was determined, and the Angel approved. I had not returned to Brawnlyn House since the day I cut ties with the widow and her daughter. In my memory Genevieve seemed to be something inhuman—a malevolent creature of storm and ice. But the Pixie, before going away from us, had told Nora a little of Genevieve, and Nora’s heart had pitied her. Sometimes I thought Nora saw her as one of her rescued girls, only she hadn’t quite made it into the Castle’s fold, and so rescue had to go out to her.

  Knowing what I did of Genevieve, I expected that Nora would be repulsed. Surely the proudly beautiful young woman would not be pitied. But Nora went with the grace of a visiting noblewoman. She was, after all, mistress of a Castle. And Genevieve, as far as I could tell, received her as such. What they did or talked about I did not know; I knew that Nora often came back troubled, and a little grieved. And though she and I had become friends—with both the Pixie and Illyrica away from the Castle, Nora had grown to need me a little—we never spoke of her visits.

  Chapter 27

  the attack

  It was a cool evening late in May. I stood bent over my makeshift workbench by the creek, my short sleeves rolled up past my shoulders, sanding the uncooperative forebear of a rowboat plank. Wild apple trees were flowering in the woods nearby. A sudden breeze caught the blossoms up and carried them through the willow branches. White petals floated down around me, and I heard my name on the breeze. What young voice had called, I could not tell. I put my work down and waited.

  They came in a moment, stumbling over roots in their path: four of the girls, their faces flushed and happy. They had already swept Sarah up in their plans. She had been downstream, sewing together the various scraps of cloth Nora had given us for a sail.

  “Pixie says she will take us to see Illyrica if you will come, Hawk,” said the leader of the little ones. I set the uncooperative plank aside.

  “That sounds like a fine plan,” I answered. “Are we all here? Where’s Isabelle?”

  A voice came from the direction of the apple trees, and Isabelle’s dark head appeared on the other side of the creek. “Here,” she said. “I’ll go, too.” She turned and ran toward a narrower part of the creek, where she clambered across the stepping stones and joined the rest of the party.

  The smallest girls grabbed onto my hands, and together we made our way to the Castle lawn, where the Pixie stood waiting for us. She greeted us with a radiant smile. Little Katie, dressed in white with a bright blue kerchief tied around her blonde head, was playing in the grass at the Pixies feet. Isabelle ran forward, and at a nod from the baby’s guardian, scooped the little one up and balanced her on her hip.

  Through the woods we went, the girls laughing and chattering, the Pixie and I hushed by the beauty of the darkwood in late spring. Several times the Pixie looked back to see if Isabelle showed any sign of wanting to give the baby up, but no matter how Katie sagged on her hip, Isabelle seemed always ready t
o jostle her back up again and keep going.

  The day could not have been more pleasant, and so the walk seemed short. As we reached the cottage some of the girls broke out ahead out of the group, running and laughing, to see who would be first to knock on the old wooden door. The vines that covered the cottage were in bloom. The chickens were underfoot as ever. The girls needn’t have bothered to knock, for Illyrica appeared from behind the cottage, wiping her hands in her apron and smiling in welcome. She held out her hands to the girls, silently greeting each of them in turn, and then to the Pixie. I nodded my greeting and inquired after her husband.

  Illyrica turned her head and with her eyes indicated the path I should follow. As it was the way to the farm fields, I assumed I would find the Poet at work, carving his book of love into the earth—not with a pen but with a plough.

  I found him coming back, grimy with dirt and sweat, his old billowy sleeves torn and patched and torn again. He greeted me with an enormous smile and clapped me on the shoulder. “Glorious day, isn’t it?” he said.

  “It is,” I answered, and together we turned and walked back toward the cottage.

  “Have I told you about my newest composition?” he said. I shook my head, amused, and he carried on. “I have been all month wrestling with the plough, and it has been all month speaking to me. I am writing a long poem, more of a collection of poems, really. I call it Songs of the Field.” His face fell a little. “The title lacks poetry. I find it hard to capture all this in words.”

  “The title may lack poetry,” I said. “I am sure the book itself does not.”

  He brightened immediately. “Oh, no, no,” he said. “Of course it does not. I read them to my wife every night before the fire, and I think… I think she likes them.”