In the Forest of Forgetting

by Theodora Goss

  “Now isn’t that Justina all over?” said Emma, laughing. It was the first time, Rose realized, that she had heard her laugh all afternoon. After a pause, during which they sat in companionable silence, Emma continued, “Did you ever hear—”

  “No,” said Rose. “You?”

  “No.”

  It grew dim under the maple trees, and the air grew chill. Emma drew her shawl about her shoulders, and Rose put her hands into her jacket pockets. They sat thinking together, as we had so long ago, when we were children—wondering what had happened to Mouse.

  Emma heard the news first, at breakfast. Her mother had just said, “Would you like some butter on your toast? Or maybe some jam? You look so nice and thin in that dress. Is it the one Aunt Otway brought from Raleigh?” when Callie came into the morning room and said, “Judge Beaufort, come quick! There’s thieves in Ashton. They’ve gone and murdered Mrs. Balfour, and they’ll murder us too, Lord have mercy on our souls!”

  “What?” Emma’s father rose from the breakfast table. “Who told you this?”

  “Mrs. Balfour’s Zelia. She stayed just to tell me, then ran on back to help. She’s already called Dr. Bartlett, though she says he won’t be able to do anything for Mrs. Balfour, poor woman. Blood all over her, Zelia told me, like she sprung a leak. May she rest in the lap of the Lord.”

  “That’s enough. Tell Henry to get Mr. Caldwell and Reverend Hewes, and meet me there.” Then he was out the door.

  “You haven’t finished your boiled egg,” said Adeline Beaufort. “Emma? Emma, where are you?”

  We watched the events at the Balfour house, the largest house in Ashton, whose white columns leaned precariously left and right, from the top of a tulip poplar, the three of us—Emma, Rose, and Melody. We had looked for Mouse in the cottage, but she was nowhere to be found.

  “I heard it all from Coralie,” said Melody. “Henry’s her sweetheart—at least, one of them. He said the front door was open, and when they went in, they found Mrs. Balfour lying on the parlor floor, with a bullet through her heart. There was blood all over the carpet, and a whole pile of silver, teaspoons and other things, scattered on the floor beside her. They think she heard the thief, then came down with the pistol that General Balfour had used in the war and found him going through the silver. He must have taken it away from her and shot her with it.”

  “Gruesome,” said Emma. “Look, there’s the hearse driving up from Pickett’s Funeral Parlor.”

  “And they found Justina in a corner of the parlor, barely breathing, with marks around her neck. They think she must have come down too, and he must have tried to strangle her and left her for dead.” Not even our imaginations could picture the scene. Surely death was for people we did not know?

  Emma’s father came out, with Dr. Bartlett, Reverend Hewes, and Henry. We knew what they were carrying between them: Mrs. Balfour, draped in a black sheet, leaving the house where so many of her ancestors had died with more decorum.

  “If he had the pistol, why didn’t he just shoot Justina?” asked Rose. “It seems like a lot of trouble, strangling someone. Do you think they’ll let us see her?”

  “No,” said Emma. “Only Zelia can see her. That’s what Papa said—she’s just too sick. But why don’t we look—” and we knew what she was going to say. Why don’t we look in the mirror?

  The cottage was surrounded by men from the tobacco fields, who had been summoned to form a posse. “Stay away from here, girls,” said Judge Beaufort. “That thief’s been sleeping in our cottage—can you believe his nerve? We found a blanket and some food, even some books. We think it may be old Sitgreaves, the one with that idiot girl. He hasn’t been seen for a while. But it looks like he slept here last night. This time, we’ll send him to the prison in Charlotte, and that girl of his should have gone to the asylum long ago. I’ll make sure of it, when I find her. But until we catch him, don’t you go walking out by yourselves, do you hear?”

  We looked at each other in consternation, because—where was Mouse?

  “Miss Gray,” said Rose. “Let’s go talk to Miss Gray.”

  The roses had fallen from the La Reine and lay in a heap of pink petals on the grass. The garden seemed unusually still. Not even bees moved among the honeysuckle.

  “Something’s not right,” said Emma.

  “Nothing’s right today,” said Rose. “Who wants to knock?” No one volunteered, so she knocked with the brass frog, which was as polished as always. But no one answered. Instead, the door swung open. It had not been locked.

  The Randolph house was empty. The sofa in the parlor, where we had eaten with a witch for the first time, the table in the laboratory where we had sat, learning our lessons, all were gone. Even the cats, which had only been partially there, were wholly absent.

  “It was all here yesterday,” said Melody. “She was going to show us how to make dreams in an eggshell.”

  “I found something,” said Rose. It was a note, in correct Spencerian script, propped on the mantel. It said:

  Dear Emma, Rose, and Melody,

  Please stop the milk. Don’t forget to practice, and don’t worry. Sophia and I will take care of each other.

  Sincerely,

  Emily Gray

  We looked at each other, and finally Melody said what we were all thinking—“How did she know?” Because it was evident: Miss Gray had known what would happen.

  We went to Mrs. Balfour’s funeral. Even Melody sat in one of the back pews of the Episcopal Church, beside Hannah. The organist played “Lead, Kindly Light.” We ignored the sermon and stared at the back of Justina’s head, in the Balfour pew close to the chancel, and then at her face as she walked up the aisle behind the coffin. She was paler than we had ever seen her, as though she had become a statue of herself. In the churchyard, she watched her grandmother’s coffin being lowered into the ground, and when Reverend Hewes said “Dust to dust,” she opened her hand and dust fell down, into the grave, on top of the coffin. Then she placed her hand on her mouth and shrieked.

  We found her in the privet grove that had been planted around the grave of Emmeline Balfour, Beloved Wife and Mother. We didn’t know what to say.

  Justina looked at us with the still, pale face of a statue. She had never looked so beautiful, so like a Balfour. “I shot her,” she said. “She tried to strangle me—she said she saw the devil in my eyes. But I had Grandpa’s gun, I’d been carrying it in the pocket of my robe for weeks, and I shot her through the heart.” Then she half sat and half fell, at the same time, slowly, until she was sitting on the grass, leaning against the gravestone.

  “But the masked man—” said Rose.

  “And the silver—” said Emma.

  “That was Zelia,” she said. She looked at her hands as though she did not know what to do with them. “Zelia scattered the silver before she went to get Dr. Hewes. She told me to lie still, and that there’d been a thief. But there was no thief—only me!”

  We were silent, then Melody said, “She must have been going mad for a long time. You could have told us.”

  We heard the privet shake. “Don’t you pester her no more,” said Zelia. “Allons, ma fille. Your duty here is done.” She helped Justina up and put a shawl around her shoulders, then led her away. But just before they left the privet grove, Zelia turned back to us and said, “And don’t you forget to stop the milk!”

  The next day, as we hid behind an overgrown lilac in the Caldwells’ garden, Emma told us that Justina was gone. “To Italy, to find her father, I think. Papa saw her off on the train. Zelia was going with her.”

  Melody said, “I warned you about eating with witches. First Mouse and then Justina. It’s as though they’ve disappeared off the face of the earth.”

  “Italy’s not off the face of the earth,” said Emma.

  “It might as well be,” said Rose. “And it’s all her fault—Miss Gray’s. I wish she’d never come to Ashton.”

  Eventually, when it looked like the thief who had
killed Mrs. Balfour, whether or not it was old Sitgreaves, would never be found, we were allowed into the cottage again. The first thing we did was look into the mirror—it was the only mirror we could look in, all three of us, without arousing suspicion. “Show us Justina,” we said, and we saw her on the deck of a ship, looking out over the Atlantic, with the wind blowing her hair like a golden flag. But when we said “Show us Mouse and Miss Gray,” all we saw was a road through a forest of birches, with a low mist shifting and swirling beneath the light of a pale sun.

  We practiced, at first. But Emma’s mother decided it was time for her to come out into Ashton society, so she spent hours having dresses made and choosing cakes. Emma said that the latter made up, in chocolate, for the boredom of the former. And Melody said that she had to prepare for school, although she spent most of her time scribbling on bits of paper that she would not show us. Rose practiced the longest, and for the rest of that summer she could fly out of her bedroom window, which she did whenever she was sent to her room for punishment. But eventually we could no longer talk to birds, or turn gold into pebbles, or see the Battle of Waterloo in a mirror. We realized that we would never be witches. So the next summer, we became detectives.

  Table of Contents

  Introduction by Terri Windling

  The Rose In Twelve Petals

  Professor Berkowitz Stands on the Threshold

  The Rapid Advance of Sorrow

  Lily, With Clouds

  Miss Emily Gray

  In the Forest of Forgetting

  Sleeping with Bears

  Letters from Budapest

  The Wings of Meister Wilhelm

  Conrad

  A Statement in the Case

  Death Comes for Ervina

  The Belt

  Her Mother’s Ghosts

  Pip and the Fairies

  Lessons with Miss Gray