The Tangled Forest

by Marion Grace Woolley

  I spent my time baking shortbread with my mother. We sang and smiled at one another as I kept the secret both of us knew. No one came to visit, and the woods felt empty. There was no reason to lose my one comfort. Yet, every time she left to forage in the woods, or to visit Grandmother, my suspicions were aroused. Where did she truly walk? Who did she truly meet? Had she ever had cause to drink from the pennyroyal potion?

  When I did visit my grandmother, I would arrive after dark and leave before daybreak.

  “What is it, child?” she would ask. “Your heart seems heavy.”

  Instead of answering, I would reach for the bucket of rags and knot them. We drank tea, and sometimes gin, and sat and watched the stars fall.

  It was the last days of summer when I heard it.

  Thunk, thunk, thunk through the trees.

  The fallen leaves glittered amber and embers in the morning dew. Each time a bird took flight, a flurry of fresh sparks would tumble to the ground. Once again I wrapped my cloak about my shoulders and hugged myself tight, my breath as white as a winter meadow.

  Thunk, thunk, thunk.

  At first I thought to walk the other way.

  Then I stopped, weary of being alone. I had not seen the woodcutter’s son since the May Feast. I remembered his threat and the look of distain as he turned to walk away. I knew then that he spoke of his hurt. Perhaps I even understood it. Our kisses had been so deep, once upon a time. He had turned me weak at the knees and I know that I raised his manhood. Had it really been so wrong? I had followed my heart, said what I thought I believed, and my heart had led me here, to a solitary place without friends.

  Thunk, thunk, thunk.

  Would it be so bad to see him again? Would it be awful to know whether a vestige of our former affection remained? Could we meet with a smile once more?

  I decided to follow the sound of him.

  Thunk, thunk, thunk.

  Thunk, thunk, thunk.

  I came upon a clearing. There was a large pine resting lengthways across the glade, a woodcutter’s blade embedded in its side. The handle of the axe was wound in strips of red leather and decorated with beaded feathers. I went to run my fingers across it, surprised to see something so delicate on such a blunt instrument.

  The trunk was too high for me to sit atop, so I rested against it instead, admiring the way the autumn light spilt shadows from the trees. Silhouetted, the fluttering leaves looked like midnight moths against the earth.

  “Well now, who have we here?”

  His voice startled me, for I had been expecting the woodcutter’s son, not the woodcutter himself. Once the surprise wore off, I remembered that May Feast morn and did not know where to look.

  “I’m sorry. I thought I heard—”

  “My son,” he completed. “Yes, we do sound alike when we work.” He smiled to reveal his joke. “Very nice to meet you again—” He paused for my name and I told it. He repeated it and nodded as though he would never again forget. “Why have you not returned to see us?”

  “Your son and I are no longer courting.”

  He frowned, resting his hand on the handle of his axe. “He says so little to his parents. As, I suspect, you say so little to your mother. It is a shame. What did my son do to offend you?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “Ah, then you love another?” It was hard for me to answer that. I thought that I might have loved another once, but he did not love me back, so it seemed foolish to admit anything to this man who I did not know. “You shake your head, yet you blush.”

  “I must be getting home.”

  “Stay a while. Talk to me whilst I work.”

  I found a stump and sat myself down.

  “What do you wish to talk about?” I asked, feeling uncomfortable in his presence. I wondered whether he knew how bitterly his wife detested me, or how much money she paid to keep his planted seed from sprouting.

  “You know, you look much like your mother did at your age. She was also a beautiful girl.”

  “My mother says I look more like my father.”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “She says that to keep the memory of him alive, but your father’s jaw was square, whereas yours is sloped. He had solid shoulders, whereas yours droop gracefully.” He glanced towards me, though I felt his gaze fell lower than my shoulders. “Your father was a trapper. A rough man used to spending nights in the wild. You are a soft flower.”

  “I have slept in the wild many times,” I replied.

  “Oh, no doubt,” he laughed.

  “What else did you know of my father?” I asked, curious.

  “Not much. He wasn’t from around these parts. He came one summer, left one winter. That was that.”

  “Nobody knows where he went,” I said, and the woodcutter shrugged. “Do you think he will ever return?”

  “Unlikely. He’s probably shacked up with some warm piece of flesh in the next kingdom. He wandered far enough, and took his eyes roaming with him, so it stands to reason.”

  “Is that what you would have done?” I asked, unable to keep the hurt from my voice.

  He hefted his axe from the tree and began striking once again.

  Thunk, thunk, thunk.

  Thunk, thunk, thunk.

  I stood to leave and he stopped.

  “I saw you watching,” he said. For a moment, I did not understand what he meant. “I saw you watching that May morning in the woods, whilst I tended to your mother’s needs.” The thought revolted me and I turned my head away. He stepped forward, taking me beneath the chin and turning my eyes to his. “I think you liked what you saw.”

  “Get off me!” I said, pushing his hand from mine, only to find it wrapped around my wrist.

  Before I could draw breath, he yanked me forward and kissed me.

  I struggled back, but he held me fast.

  “That’s what your mother misses every night,” he said, with a sly smile.

  “Let go!” I screamed, my rage untamed.

  He did, and I fled.

  *

  Too angry to return to my mother’s house, I paced the woods until evening. When I arrived at Grandmother’s, I found her stewing lamb. The scent of rosemary replaced my anger with hunger for a short time, but once my bowl was empty my mind once again filled with disquietude.

  “Grandmother,” I began. “I need to tell you something.”

  I told my grandmother what I had seen that May morn, though not in as much detail as my dreams contained, and with no mention of my former forest friend. I also told her of my encounter with the woodcutter earlier that day. By the time I came to the end of my telling, tears salted my lips.

  “I don’t know what to do, Grandmother. I don’t know what to say. I thought never to tell anyone of what I had seen, and yet the burden becomes too heavy.”

  My grandmother looked grave.

  “You are right to tell me, child. Secrets drag us down to the depths if we don’t unburden ourselves of their load. The woodcutter is a fiend of a man to treat you thus. I must have words with him.”

  “About mother?”

  My grandmother let out a long sigh that whistled between her teeth.

  “Ah, my sweet. Your mother will do as she pleases. I always did. I blame myself some days. She, like me, always picked a rotten crop. When I first saw your grandfather, he was standing in the town square, dressed in blue brocade. Right there, beside the King, guarding him. I knew your grandfather was a cad the moment I set eyes on him. Too interested in his own reflection to care much for a wife and young babe. Yet I married him anyway, despite all that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I preferred to be bothered than bored, I suppose. Don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of suitors came calling. I was the handmaiden of a duchess, remember. Men of many heights and girths, bearded and smooth-faced. Yet in each of them I could see a predictable sort of future. I needed to make no trips to the fortune teller to know what I could already see. They were steady men,
and true. Your grandfather was a rascal. I saw that clear as crystal. Yet I couldn’t see beyond him. I couldn’t look at him and guess what his mood might be tomorrow, or the words that might come out of his mouth. He was changeable as the weather. Sometimes he would hold me all night and whisper the sweetest things. Sometimes he would drink himself stupid in the local brothel and make no apology.”

  “That sounds awful,” I protested.

  “It was and it wasn’t. It allowed me a certain freedom, you see. With those other men, the steadfast type, they were that way because their expectations were limited, and limited expectations are always limiting on the women they are holden to. You see, in a constant life, I would have had to be a constant sort of woman. A cook, a cleaner, a model mother to please all of those at court. With your grandfather, he lived up to few of my expectations, yet never asked me to live up to his, either. I could come and go as I pleased at all hours. I could say what I liked, see whomever I chose, go where I pleased. It would have been no marriage at all, if it weren’t for love. Gadabout he may have been, but he always came home eventually, and he always loved us, me and your mother.

  “Which is why it surprised me little when your mother took up with the woodcutter. He’s much like my man used to be, only without that abundance of love. The woodcutter is a cold, hard man with little regard for any, even his wife. I tried to tell my daughter this, but some things can’t be spoken of. A child, even a fully grown one, never listens to its mother. Not until it’s too late.

  “I thought for a while, perhaps her life might follow a different path. Your father was everything a man ought to be. He doted on your mother and you, and unlike most he was faithful and true. If he were here today, how different your mother might be.”

  “Are you sure that he was faithful and true?” I asked. “The woodcutter said perhaps he had gone to the next kingdom, to share another woman’s bed?”

  “Balderdash,” my grandmother spat. “Your father was taken by the snow, and I doubt he went willing.”

  “You suspect foul play?” My grandmother folded her arms across her shawl and bit back her lip. “Grandmother, tell me.”

  “Whispers and rumours are the downfall of many a person who should not have spoken. All I’m saying is, it always struck me funny, the attention that woodcutter paid your mother after your father’s death. That’s why she fell for him, see. All that sympathy and kindness. Flowers and doe-eyed looks.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That woodcutter was always sweet on your mother. They met in the woods when she was little and he used to pay her visits. I was sure he would propose before long, but then your father came wandering by. He set his traps to catch a fox and instead he caught your mother’s heart.”

  “And the woodcutter?”

  “He married some hapless halfwit from the town before the bells had stopped chiming for your mother.”

  “The halfwit bore him a son?”

  “And died in the process. A few moons later, he married his current wife. The way the woodcutter looked at your mother, was the way his new wife looked at him, ever since they were children. Perhaps she taught him the sympathy trick, how to turn up with parcels of fresh cooked food, how to pat a hand and say ‘there, there’. All the little ploys he used to purchase your mother’s heart after your father disappeared. Of course, her heart would not have been up for sale had he not been gone.”

  Each word she spoke was a pebble to be swallowed, weighing down my belly. Why was this the first time my grandmother had ever raised her suspicions with me? Why had I never realised what was right beneath my nose?

  “Be careful of that one,” my grandmother concluded, passing me her bottle of gin.

  11

  I stayed with my grandmother until the first snow fell.

  In order to think on what had been said, I needed to lose myself amongst friends. I warmed away the autumn chill beside the farrier’s forge. I tried on beautiful dresses and tied my hair with the seamstress’s ribbons. I licked icing from the baker’s éclairs and ran my hands through the skinner’s soft furs.

  The morning I woke to thick white flakes, I stoked my grandmother’s fire high and wrapped her in warm blankets as she slept. I pulled my cloak tight about me and set off into the snow. It had come down heavy in the night, and deep drifts were already forming in the ditches. Even the forest paths were white where the blizzard had blown between the branches.

  I loved the way my boots crunched the ice beneath my feet. It was a satisfying sound, like the slap of a skimming stone across a pond.

  As I walked, I started to get the strange feeling I was being watched.

  I stopped for a moment to listen. The woods were so silent that I could hear my own breath as it left my body in beautiful clouds. The branches above sifted their loads so that snow fell like icing sugar. I put out my tongue to catch the flakes.

  Walking on a little way, I once again stopped.

  “I know you’re there,” I said.

  Scuffing the tip of my boot against the icy path, I waited for my friend to show himself. Part of me had forgiven him, and part of me was still angry at him for his strange behaviour. I did not know which of those parts would win until he stood before me.

  “I shan’t wait all day,” I called.

  As I took my first step, a hand clamped around my mouth.

  I stumbled back as rough fists pushed me flat against the ground. The force of it winded me, my cheek pressed flush with the frozen mud. It felt as though the weight of the earth were at my back and I could hardly breathe.

  Cold air rushed against my skin as my cloak was torn from me.

  I heard the axe fall with each thrust.

  Thunk, thunk, thunk.

  *

  Moons rose and set.

  Fires blazed and turned to ash.

  When eventually I woke, I found myself on the witch’s bed. The air was thick with sage and my skin felt flushed. She rested beside me on a stool, wringing a cool cloth and dabbing it to my brow.

  “Don’t speak,” she told me. “You haven’t the strength.”

  In those first days I drifted in and out of dreams. Every time I found comfort, the earth drained beneath me like sand and I slipped through the hourglass into nightmare. I thrashed against the sheets until they knotted like rope. I must have called out a dozen times, yet I could not hear the sound of my own voice. I started to doubt whether I existed at all.

  Then I heard the witch’s voice.

  She began to sing, and she did not stop until I followed her song home.

  “How long have I been here?” I asked, my throat as chapped as my lips.

  “Four nights.”

  I tried to raise myself, but my body ached. The witch reached behind to pull my pillows higher, then helped me rest against them.

  “Where is my mother?”

  “At home, unknowing. Would you like me to send for her?”

  I shook my head. There was a sickness in my stomach when I thought of her face crumpled with grief.

  “You must eat,” the witch said.

  A fat round cauldron straddled the embers of the fire. I watched as she ladled stew into a wooden bowl and placed it in my lap. For a moment, I did not think I could eat. That sickness felt so strong. I wanted to pull the covers up over myself and sleep for a thousand years, until a forest of thorns grew up around me and no one remembered my name. Yet, once I took the first spoonful, I found I could not stop. I slurped and guzzled two full bowls and half a loaf of bread. I was ravenous. The simple act of eating wiped all thought from me. The sickness had turned to a gaping hole that I could not fill.

  “A third,” I said, pointing my finger to the pot.

  “Enough for now,” she replied, lifting the bowl from my lap and wiping my face with the cloth. “You can have more later, it’s going nowhere.”

  “More,” I demanded.

  “If you have more, all that you’ve eaten will come back up.”

  I slumped
against the pillows, turned my head and fell fast asleep.

  When I woke again, it was very early morning. Proudfoot was curled at my toes, purring in his sleep, and the witch was curled in the rocking chair, snoring in hers.

  Carefully, I pulled back the covers and made my way outside. The sun had not yet cleared the trees, and its pale yellow light seemed translucent. I raised a hand and turned it in front of my face, closing my eyes so that its shadow fluttered against me.

  My body ached, but not all of me. The ache was mostly inside. I took the hem of my night shirt and lifted it slowly. There was a dark blue bruise between my thighs, which matched the five on my wrist. I let the material fall.

  A song thrush landed in the tree opposite and opened its beak. It stared at me for a moment before flying off.

  “Come back,” I whispered. “I want to hear you sing.”

  Something moved in the woods and I drew back. My eyes searched the shadows but saw no one. The more I stared, the more it felt as though the forest stared back. A hundred thousand eyes could be out there, watching me, and I would never see their faces. Seeping cold entered my bones as my confidence drained away. Never in my life had I been afraid to walk the woods by myself.

  Back in the cottage, I huddled by the fire at the foot of the rocking chair. It was all I could do not to reach out and touch the witch’s foot for comfort.

  “Will there be a baby?” I asked, when eventually the witch woke.

  “No. I took care of that whilst you slept.”

  She stoked up the fire and heated the remains of the stew. It seemed my appetite had left me, and I managed no more than two spoons.

  “How did I get here?”

  “I found you, lying in the mud.”

  “Thank you,” I managed, remembering our row.