In the Forest of Forgetting

by Theodora Goss

  “But the Thorn King and the May Queen were reconciled.”

  “Only by one of Pip’s wishes. The other—let me see if I remember. It was a fine wool shawl for Thimble so she would never be cold again.”

  “Weren’t there three? What was the third wish?”

  “Oh, that was the one Pip kept for herself. I don’t think my mother ever revealed it. Probably something to do with Jack Feather. She—I—was rather in love with him, you know.”

  The third wish had been about the electric bill, and it had come true several days later when the advance from the publisher arrived.

  Here it is, the room where she found Jack Feather’s wallet. Once, in Pip Meets the Thorn King, he allowed her to look into it. She saw herself, but considerably older, in a dress that sparkled like stars. Years later, she recognized it as the dress she would wear to the Daytime Emmys.

  And now what? Because there is the door, and after all the Carp did tell her, in Pip Says Goodbye, “You will come back some day.”

  But if she opens the door now, will she see the fields behind Payne House, which are mown for hay in September? That is the question around which everything revolves. Has she been a fool, to give up California, and the house with the pool, and a steady paycheck?

  “What happened, Pip?” her mother asked her, lying in the hospital bed, her head wrapped in the scarf without which it looked as fragile as an eggshell. “You were such an imaginative child. What made you care so much about money?”

  “You did,” she wanted to and could not say. And now she has taken that money out of the bank to buy Payne House.

  If she opens the door and sees only the unmown fields, it will have been for nothing. No, not nothing. There is Payne House, after all. And her memories. What will she do, now she is no longer Jessica Pendleton? Perhaps she will write, like her mother. There is a certain irony in that.

  The rain on the grass begins to soak through her shoes. She should remember not to wear city shoes in the country.

  But it’s no use standing here. That is, she has always told herself, the difference between her and her mother: she can face facts.

  Philippa grasps the doorknob, breathes in once, quickly, and opens the door.

  “I’ve been waiting forever and a day,” said Hyacinth, yawning. She had fallen sleep beneath an oak tree, and while she slept the squirrels who lived in the tree had made her a blanket of leaves.

  “I promised I would come back if I could,” said Pip, “and now I have.”

  “I’m as glad as can be,” said Hyacinth. “The Thorn King’s been so sad since you went away. When I tell him you’re back, he’ll prepare a feast just for you.”

  “Will Jack Feather be there?” asked Pip.

  “I don’t know,” said Hyacinth, looking uncomfortable. “He went away to the mountains, and hasn’t come back. I didn’t want to tell you yet, but—the May Queen’s disappeared! Jack Feather went to look for her with Jeremy Toad, and now they’ve disappeared too.”

  “Then we’ll have to go find them,” said Pip.

  —From Pip Returns to Fairyland, by Philippa Lawson

  LESSONS WITH MISS GRAY

  That summer, we were reporters: intrepid, like Molly McBride of the Charlotte Observer, who had ridden an elephant in the Barnum and Bailey circus, and gone up in a balloon at the Chicago World’s Fair, and whose stagecoach had been robbed by Black Bart himself. Although she had told him it would make for a better story, Black Bart had refused to take her purse: he would not rob a lady.

  We were sitting in the cottage at the bottom of the Beauforts’ garden, on the broken furniture that was kept there. Rose, on the green sofa with the torn upholstery, was chewing on her pencil and trying to decide whether her yak, on the journey she was undertaking through the Himalayas, was a noble animal of almost human intelligence, or a surly and unkempt beast that she could barely control. Emma, in an armchair with a sagging seat, was eating gingerbread and writing the society column, in which Ashton had acquired a number of Dukes and Duchesses. Justina, in another armchair, which did not match—but what was Justina doing there at all? She was two years older than we were, and a Balfour, of the Balfours who reminded you, as though you had forgotten, that Lord Balfour had been granted all of Balfour County by James I. And Justina was beautiful. We had been startled when she had approached us, in the gymnasium of the Ashton Ladies’ Academy, where all of us except Melody went to school, and said, “Are you writing a newspaper? I’d like to help.” There she was, sitting in the armchair, which was missing a leg and had to be propped on an apple crate. It leaned sideways like a sinking ship. She was writing in a script that was more elegant than any of ours—Rose’s page was covered with crossings out, and Emma’s with gingerbread crumbs—about Serenity Sage, who was, at that moment, trapped in the Caliph’s garden, surrounded by the scent of roses and aware that at any moment, the Caliph’s eunuchs might find her. She would always, afterward, associate the scent of roses with danger. How, Justina wondered, would Serenity escape? How would she get back to Rome, where the Cardinal, who had hired her, was waiting? Beside him, as he sat in a secret chamber beneath the cathedral, were a trunk filled with gold coins and his hostage: her lover, the revolutionary they called The Mask. We did not, of course, insist that everything in our newspaper be true. How boring that would have been. And Melody was sitting on the other end of the sofa, reading the Charlotte Observer, trying to imitate the advertising.

  “Soap as white as, as—” she said. “As soap.”

  “As the snows of the Himalayas,” said Rose, who had decided that her yak was surly, and the sunlight on the slopes blinding. But surely her guide, who was intrepid, would lead her to the fabled Forbidden Cities.

  “As milk,” said Emma. “I wish I had milk. Callie’s gingerbread is always dry.”

  “For goodness sake,” said Rose. “Can’t you think of anything other than food?”

  “As the moon, shining over the sullied streets of London,” said Melody, in the voice she used to recite poetry in school.

  “What do you know about London?” said Emma. “Make it the streets of Ashton.”

  “I don’t think they’re particularly sullied,” said Rose.

  “Not in front of your house, Miss Rose,” said Melody, in another voice altogether. Rose kicked her.

  “As the paper on which a lover has written his letter,” said Justina. Serenity Sage was sailing down the Tiber.

  “If he’s written the letter, it’s not going to be white,” said Emma. “Obviously.”

  And then we were silent, because no one said “obviously” to a Balfour, although Justina had not noticed. The Mask was about to take off his mask.

  “I don’t understand,” said Melody, in yet another voice, which made even Justina look up. “Lessons in witchcraft,” she read, “with Miss Emily Gray. Reasonable rates. And it’s right here in Ashton.”

  “Do you think it’s serious?” asked Emma. “Do you think she’s teaching real witchcraft? Not just the fake stuff, like Magical Seymour at the market in Brickleford, who pulls Indian-head pennies out of your ears?”

  “You’re getting crumbs everywhere,” said Rose, who was suddenly and inexplicably feeling critical. “Why shouldn’t it be real? You can’t put false advertising in a newspaper. My father told me that.”

  And suddenly we all knew, except Justina, who was realizing the Cardinal’s treachery, that we were no longer reporters. We were witches.

  “Where did you say she lived?” asked Melody. We were walking down Elm Street, in a part of town that Melody did not know as well as the rest of us.

  “There,” said Emma. We didn’t understand how Emma managed to know everything, at least about Ashton. Although her mother was a whirlpool of gossip: everything there was to know in Ashton made its way inevitably to her. She had more servants than the rest of us: Mrs. Spraight, the housekeeper, as well as the negro servants, Callie, who cooked, and Henry, who was both gardener and groom. Rose’s mother ma
de do with a negro housekeeper, Hannah, and Justina, who lived with her grandmother, old Mrs. Balfour, had only Zelia, a French mulatto who didn’t sleep in but came during the day to help out. And Melody—well, Melody was Hannah’s niece, and she had no servants at all. She lived with her aunt and her cousin Coralie, who taught at the negro school, across the train tracks. We didn’t know how she felt about this—we often didn’t know what Melody felt, and when we asked, she didn’t always answer.

  “Don’t you think it’s unfair that you have to go to that negro school, with only a dusty yard to play in? Don’t you think you should be able to go to the Ashton Ladies’ Academy, with us? Don’t you think—” And her face would shut, like a curtain. So we didn’t often ask.

  “The white house, with the roses growing on it,” said Emma. “It used to be the Randolph house. She was a witch too, Mrs. Randolph, at least that’s what I heard. She died, or her daughter died, or somebody, and afterward all the roses turned as red as blood.”

  “They’re pink,” said Melody.

  “Well, maybe they’ve faded. I mean, this was a long time ago, right?” Rose looked at the house. The white trim had been freshly painted, and at each window there were lace curtains. “Are we going in, or not?”

  “It looks perfectly respectable,” said Emma. “Not at all like a witch’s house.”

  “How do you know what a witch’s house looks like?” asked Melody.

  “Everyone knows what a witch’s house looks like,” said Rose. “I think you’re all scared. That’s why you’re not going in.”

  At that, we all walked up the path and to the front door, although Justina had forgotten where we were and had to be pulled. Justina often forgot where we were, or that the rest of us were there at all. Rose raised her hand to the knocker, which was shaped like a frog—the first sign we had seen that a witch might, indeed, be within—waited for a moment, then knocked.

  “Good afternoon,” said a woman in a gray dress, with white hair. She looked like your grandmother, the one who baked you gingerbread and knitted socks. Or like a schoolteacher, as proper as a handkerchief. Behind her stood a ghost.

  That summer, we each had a secret that we were keeping from the others.

  Rose’s secret was that she wanted to fly. She had books hidden under her bed, books on birds and balloons and gliders, on everything that flew. She read every story that she could find about flight—Icarus, and the Island of Laputa, and the stories of Mr. Verne. There was no reason to keep this a secret—the rest of us would not have particularly cared, although Melody might have said that if God intended us to fly, he would have given us wings. Her aunt had said that to a passing preacher, who had told the negro people to rise up, rise up, as equal children of God. And Justina might have looked even more absent than usual, with the words “away, away” singing through her head. But Rose would have been miserable if she had told: it was the only secret she had, and it gave her days, and especially nights, when she was exploring the surface of the moon, meaning. And what if her mother found out? Elizabeth Caldwell’s lips would thin into an elegant line, and Rose would see in her eyes the distance between their house with its peeling paint, beneath a locust tree that scattered its seedpods over the lawn each spring, and the house where her mother had grown up, in Boston. She would see the distance between herself and the girl who had grown up in that house, in lace dresses, playing the piano or embroidering on silk, a girl who had never been rude or disobedient. Who had never, so far as Rose knew, wanted to climb the Himalayas, or to fly.

  Justina’s secret was that her grandmother, the respectable Mrs. Balfour who, when she appeared in the Balfour pew at the Episcopal Church, resembled an ageing Queen Victoria, was going mad. Two nights ago, she had emptied the contents of her chamberpot over the mahogany suite in the parlor, spreading them over the antimacassars, over the Aubusson carpet. Justina had washed everything herself, so Zelia would not find out. And Zelia had apparently not found out, although the smell— She still had a bruise where her grandmother had gripped her arm and whispered, “Do you see the Devil, with his hooves like a goat’s and his tongue like a lizard’s? I can.” “Away, away” the words sang through her head, and she imagined herself as Serenity Sage, at the mercy of the Cardinal, but with a curved dagger she had stolen from the Caliph hidden in her garter. Then she would be away, away indeed, sailing across the Mediterranean, with the wind blowing her hair like a golden flag.

  Emma’s secret was that her mother had locked the pantry. Adeline Beaufort had been a Balfour—Emma was Justina’s second or third cousin—and no daughter of hers was going to be fat. For two weeks now she had been bribing Callie, with rings, hair ribbons, even the garnet necklace that her father had given her as a birthday present. That morning, she had traded a pair of earrings for gingerbread. Callie was terrified of Mrs. Beaufort. “Lordy, Emma, don’t tempt me again! She’ll have me whipped, like in the old slave days,” she had whispered. But she could not resist fine things, even if she had to keep them under a floorboard, as Emma could not resist her hunger. They were trapped, like a couple of magpies, fearful and desiring.

  Melody’s secret was that she wanted to go to college. There was a negro college in Atlanta that admitted women, the preacher had told her. So they could be teachers, for the betterment of the negro race. Because white teachers went to college, and why should only negro children be taught by high school graduates—if that? And Melody wanted to better the negro race. Sometimes she wondered if she should be with us at all, instead of with the other girls in her school—perhaps, as her aunt often said, she should stick with her own. But her own filled her with a sense of both loyalty and despair. Why couldn’t those girls look beyond Ashton, beyond the boys they would one day marry, and the families they would work for? And there was a streak of pragmatism in this, as in many of her actions, because the rest of us checked books out of the library for her, more books than even we read. She had never been told that colored folk could not enter the library, but colored folk never did, and what if she was told to leave? Then she would know she was not welcome, which was worse than suspecting she would not be. So every morning, after her chores were done and before school, when other girls were still ironing their dresses and curling their hair, she went to the houses of the wealthy negro families, of the Jeffersons, who traded tobacco and were, if the truth were told, the wealthiest family in Ashton, and the Beauforts, whose daughters were, as everyone knew, Emma’s fourth or fifth cousins, and cleaned. She put the money she earned, wrapped in an old set of her aunt’s drawers, in a hole at the back of her closet. For college.

  The ghost was, of course, a girl, and we all knew her, except Justina. She lived near the railroad tracks, by the abandoned tobacco factory that not even the Jeffersons used anymore, with her father. He was a drunkard. We did not know her name, but we could identify her without it. She was the ghost, the white girl, the albino: white hair, white face, and thin white hands sticking out from the sleeves of a dress that was too short, that she must have outgrown several years ago. Only her eyes, beneath her white eyebrows, had color, and those were a startling blue. Her feet were bare, and dirty.

  We knew that we weren’t supposed to play with her, because she was poor, and probably an idiot. What else could that lack of coloring mean, but idiocy? There was an asylum in Charlotte—her father should be persuaded to put her there, for her own good. But he was a drunkard, and could even Reverend Hewes persuade a drunkard? He rarely let her out. Look at the girl—did he remember to feed her? She looked like she lived on air. Adeline Beaufort and Elizabeth Caldwell agreed: it would be for her own good. Really a mercy, for such a creature.

  “Come inside, girls,” said Miss Gray. “But mind you wipe your feet. I won’t have dirt in the front hall.”

  It was certainly respectable. The parlor looked like the Beauforts’, but even more filled with what Emma later told us were bibelots or objets d’art: china shepherdesses guarding their china sheep; cranberry-colored vas
es filled with pink roses and sprays of honeysuckle; and painted boxes, on one of which Justina, who had studied French history that year, recognized Marie Antoinette. And there were cats. We did not notice them, initially—they had a way of being inconspicuous, which Miss Gray later told us was their own magic, a cat magic. But we would blink, and there would be a cat, on the sofa where we were about to sit, or on the mantel where we had just looked. “How they keep from knocking down all those—music boxes and whatnots, I don’t know,” Emma said afterward. But we didn’t say anything then. We didn’t know what to say.

  “Please sit down, girls.” We did so cautiously, trying to keep our knees away from the rickety tables, with their lace doilies and china dogs. Trying to remember that we were in a witch’s house. “I’ve made some lemonade, and Emma will be pleased to hear that I’ve baked walnut bars, and those cream horns she likes.” There was also an angel cake, like a white sponge, and a Devil’s Food cake covered with chocolate frosting, and a jelly roll with strawberry jelly, and meringues. We ate although Melody whispered that one should never, ever eat in a witch’s house. The ghost ate too, cutting her slice of angel cake into small pieces with the side of her fork and eating them slowly, one by one.

  “Another slice, Melody, Justina, Rose?” We did not wonder how she knew our names. She was a witch. It would have been stranger, wouldn’t it, if she hadn’t known? We shook our heads, except for Emma, who ate the last of the jelly roll.

  “Then it’s time to discuss your lessons. Please follow me into the laboratory.”

  It must have been a kitchen, once, but now the kitchen table was covered with a collection of objects in neat rows and piles: scissors; a mouse in a cage; balls of string, the sort used in gardens to tie up tomatoes; a kitchen scale; feathers, blue and green and yellow; spectacles, most of then cracked; a crystal ball; seashells; the bones of a small alligator, held together with wire; candles of various lengths; butterfly wings; a plait of hair that Rose thought must have come from a horse—she liked horses, because on their backs she felt as though she were flying; some fountain pens; a nest with three speckled eggs; and silver spoons. At least, that’s what we remembered afterward, when we tried to make a list. We sat around the table on what must have once been kitchen chairs, with uncomfortable wooden backs, while Miss Gray stood and lectured to us, exactly like Miss Harris in Rhetoric and Elocution.