The Tangled Forest

by Marion Grace Woolley

High up on the platform, I could see my friend. His flesh looked strong, but wounded. Purple boot prints patterned the side of his ribs, and blood flowed freely from a gash to his chest.

  “Drown him!” I heard again.

  My fear turned to rage. How terrified my friend must have been as a child, to have his own father pin him down and try to separate him from his life. I wanted to take whoever had shouted and hold his face underwater until he ceased to kick.

  A strange sensation took hold.

  As those murderous thoughts drifted through my mind, I felt, just for one moment, as though I floated underwater. The very air was thick. It took effort to suck it in and blow it out. My back prickled like goosegrass, an energy stuck to my skin.

  I had no time to think on it. A turnip flew through the air and caught my friend exactly where he bled. His head hung low on is breast. The woodcutter’s son was strutting like a feathered cock, crowing insolence and heartbreak. He painted a scene in which I had lured his father to the woods so that my friend could feast. He repeated childhood stories of a beast, half-man, half-wolf, who transformed by the light of the full moon and sought out children in their sleep. There was no hope of talking reason anymore.

  Despair spread like mildew. What was I supposed to do? How could I free him? A girl with no weight to her bones, not even a blade—

  Slinking back through shadow, I returned to my cell and routed through the hay.

  “For protection,” I whispered, taking the skinner’s bone-handled knife in my hand.

  I took the loaf the baker had offered me, and began stuffing it into my mouth. My appetite had returned full force, and I would need my strength. I said a prayer over the candle as I tied my bruised hand with the seamstress’s kerchief. Finally, I took the farrier’s horseshoe and hooked it through the band of my skirt.

  Pulling the hood of my cloak high, I stepped into the throng.

  “Little miss. Little miss,” a man in the crowd spoke, trying to halt me by placing his hand on my shoulder.

  I shrugged him off and kept walking.

  Trying not to look up, lest the height of the scaffold should cause me to shrink, I mounted its steps and stood in full view.

  “Booo!” the crowd called. “Booo!”

  An egg shattered against my neck, staining the red of my cloak.

  “There she is!” another cried, a turnip bouncing off the planks by my feet.

  “Hang the witch!” the chant began. “Hang the witch and her hound from hell!”

  My woodland friend looked far from a fire-breathing monster. They had placed a collar of rope about his neck, and he could hardly turn his head to see me.

  “Courage, do not fail me now,” I prayed, as the first drop of rain landed against my cheek, tracing its way like a tear.

  As the woodcutter’s son came towards me, I reached for the horseshoe.

  “For luck,” I repeated, slipping my bandaged hand inside its solid curve.

  The iron connected with the woodcutter’s jaw and I heard bone crack.

  He yowled like a birthing cat, staggering for a moment before landing on his rump.

  Running to my friend through a hail of rotting fruit, I took the skinner’s knife and sliced the cord. I wanted my friend to be that hound from hell. I wanted him to breathe fire, grow claws and fangs as sharp as glass. I wanted him to tear down our enemies and cut a path to the forest.

  As he leaned heavy against me, I knew that they had beaten him too badly.

  The woodcutter’s son was climbing to his feet and reaching for his axe.

  We were lost.

  In the silence of that knowledge, the world seemed to slow. Every drop of rain from the sky splintered as it hit the wood. Tiny slivers of water flew apart, each reflecting the light of the moon; each singing a song of the cackling brook.

  The air was thick once more.

  How had it all come to this?

  How had a life of a thousand summer days turned to nightfall so soon?

  I knelt down by my friend and pulled my cloak over him.

  My friend looked up at me through fist-plumped eyes. He spoke my name and told me to run, to break for the trees and leave him behind.

  “Wherever we go, we go together,” I told him.

  A journey of such strange discovery as Death, should not be taken alone.

  “You simple slut,” the woodcutter’s son laughed. He was enjoying watching me kneel in my puddle of misery. “What would your grandmother think of you now, protecting the man who tore her apart?”

  “He didn’t do it,” I said. “You did—”

  At that moment thunder cracked open the sky, washing away my words in its deluge.

  The torches of the townspeople began to go out, one by one, extinguished. The scent of charred wood wound its acrid spell across my tongue. Every word that came to my lips tasted bitter. I wanted to talk until all the venom inside me was purged. I wanted to draw out the serpent and let it strangle the woodcutter’s son where he stood.

  With the rain heavy enough to deafen, and wet enough to drown, many of the townspeople moved away, seeking shelter beneath the eaves of nearby houses, or in the warmth of the tavern, but the woodcutter’s son held his ground.

  “You should have married me when I made my offer,” the woodcutter said. “You should have lain with me in the midsummer woods and whispered all those sweet things a good girl should. I would have been kind to you. I would have taken care of you.”

  I did not reply, allowing the water to run from my chin.

  Somewhere in the depths of my cloak was the knife.

  Could I do it? Could I rise swiftly enough, and strike hard enough to place my dagger between his ribs? Could I make him pay for the lies he told, for the life of my grandmother, for the bruising of my friend?

  He crouched before me and took my face in his hands, pinching my cheeks tight.

  “What a black day it was when first I saw your face,” he told me. “I should never have gone to cut wood in that part of the forest. I should have listened to my stepmother’s stories of the wicked sprites which live there.”

  “I am not wicked,” I replied.

  “You live amongst witches and werewolves. You count them among your friends. And as for your mother? A common whore. Wickedness runs through your veins sure enough. It is my duty to protect these people from you.”

  As he rose to his feet, I knew my end was coming.

  There on the sodden floor of the gallows, my friend and I would meet our maker. I tried to think what I might say to a being who had thrust such cruelty on delicate creatures, but my mind was a blank.

  The raindrops slowed. Each watery jewel shattering into a hundred, million pieces as it met the shiny leather of the woodcutter’s boot. The pieces tinkled as they parted, as though calling their goodbyes. Would my own soul separate thus?

  I placed my hand over my friend’s wet paw. I could feel him pressed against me like a nesting bird. This gave me strength. I would be strong for him, as he had been strong for my mother and me.

  And I would not die with my eyes to the dirt.

  I raised them up, catching the milk-white of the woodcutter’s throat as he lifted his axe high above his head.

  High, high above his head.

  *

  Premonition is a funny thing.

  You know what is coming, yet still it surprises you.

  The purest white light drawn down from the sky. The light of the moon itself, burning with unholy fire. Perhaps it is a snake. The sky sister of the earthly black viper, with a venomous bite that knocks a man’s life clean from his body?

  Sparks flew from the axe, reflecting back on themselves in the flat of the blade, so that for just one fleeting moment, they each had a twin.

  The scent of charred wood turned to charred meat.

  Time caught up with itself. I pulled my friend to his feet even before the woodcutter left his. Few people remained in the square, but those who did stood back as a second bolt and a third s
mashed the cobbles beneath them.

  My friend found the strength to run and as we ran we were transformed. Our legs became strong, our feet sure upon the wet earth. Our breath came in panting clouds of steam, our very life drawn from the forest and returning to it in a cycle of pure connection.

  We ran and we ran until we fell down on top of one another. My heart pounded and my chest heaved. I rolled against him, pulling myself up to look at his broken face. Rain drummed the canopy above and cold curled through my wet clothes to tell me I was not yet safe.

  I did not care.

  Death could wait a while longer whilst I looked upon my friend.

  His damaged hand came up to stroke my cheek.

  “Do not die,” I told him. “Not now that we are free.”

  “We will not be free for long,” came his reply.

  I traced his bottom lip with one finger, careful to avoid the split. My wolf in the woods, my temptation and my trust.

  I placed my lips softly against his.

  “Your kisses taste of gingerbread,” he said.

  Wind swept down the path, blowing my cloak about us.

  “I know where we are,” I said, staring up at the fork in the road.

  Something in the way the wind sang through the silver birch caused me sorrow.

  You must choose, the Soul Singers said. You must choose which path to take.

  I felt my friend shift beside me, pulling himself up on his elbows.

  “You must go on ahead,” he told me. “Your mother is waiting.”

  “You would not make it that far,” I replied, looking at the patch of red growing ever wider at his breast. “Your bones need healing.”

  “I will make it home from here, and so must you. The woodcutter is gone, his son and his wife—”

  “My grandmother is gone.”

  He wiped grief from my cheek with his thumb.

  “They will call it witchcraft, what happened. They will say you called lightning from the sky to save me.”

  “If I return to my mother, they will seek me out. They will never leave her in peace.”

  “You could leave this place. Journey to another kingdom and start anew.”

  I stood, shakily staring in both directions at once. One path led to my childhood, to warm baths by the fire, to cookies and milk and my mother. The other led into the wild wood, where the witch lived, and where my friend would find shelter from the men who wished to hunt him down.

  “I will see you safe, and then I will return to my mother,” I said.

  His former strength fled, he leaned against me as we limped along that ancient path. I began to feel drowsy, but I knew that it was not the witch’s charm but the exertion of the hour. The woods seemed interminably dense, the roots rising to trip us and the vines twisting down like gaoler’s chains to bind our wrists.

  When the witch’s cottage finally came into view I was so relieved I almost wept. I took my friend’s arm from about my neck and rested him against the cottage wall.

  “Something is not right,” I whispered.

  Inside, the cottage looked pristine. The floor had been scrubbed and there wasn’t a book or a jar on it. All of the shelves had been dusted. Even the books that held up the table had been neatly aligned, spine to spine. The cottage usually smelled of baking and herbs, but the door had been opened to air it. Now all it smelled of was winter.

  I called the witch’s name over and over, but she did not answer.

  “Something has happened to her,” I said, taking off my cloak and wrapping it about my friend for warmth. “There are only a few logs on the fire, it needs stoking. Let’s get you by the heat.”

  He allowed me to lead him inside.

  I took a metal cauldron from the pantry and began slicing vegetables. My friend needed a fire, he needed rest, and he needed food. I would tend to him until morning, then go to my mother.

  When I went to fetch water from the well, I heard a twig snap. What I thought to be a deer or a fox stepped from the woods as the witch.

  “Where have you been?” I asked, running to take the bundle of firewood from her arms. “I thought something had happened to you!”

  A branch fell to the floor. She stooped to retrieve it and as she straightened, I saw that her red hair was whiter than before. Over the years I had known her, it was as though the colour bled out, like fine cloth left on the line one too many summers.

  We took the wood back to her cottage and I used the drier pieces to stoke the fire.

  When I had finished my chores and my friend was laid out on the bed, sleeping, I realised that the witch had gone. I found her in the garden, standing beside the well.

  “Thank you,” I said, approaching.

  “For what?”

  “Thank you for the key, for releasing me. Also, I suspect, for the lightning.”

  She was silent a long time. “And thank you, for not allowing them to take my boy.”

  “We protect each other, we people of the forest.”

  She smiled at this and turned to me.

  “I am going away,” she told me.

  “I think I knew that, your cottage is so clean. When will you return?”

  “I will not return.”

  Our silence was as deep as the well.

  “I am going to set a spell,” she said. “Where I go, my boy cannot follow. To protect him, I will draw a veil over this place for a decade. When it lifts, the townsfolk will have forgotten there ever was a woman living in the woods.”

  “What about the sick, and the women who need ridding?”

  “They will have to make do by themselves. Unless—”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless you would consent to learn?”

  “How, if you are to leave?”

  “Those books in there,” she said, raising her chin towards the cottage. “They have a special power. They talk, you know. They can instruct you by day and whisper in your dreams. All that they know will soon become yours.”

  “You mean for me to live here?”

  “With my boy, yes. I would keep you both safe.”

  “I think I would like that,” I said.

  “You think now, but you must know by midnight.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The journey I must take starts tonight. I can no more put it off than force the sun back behind the eastern hills. On the stroke of midnight, I take my first step into the Western Woods. As I go, I will pull the veil down about me to seal this place off from all others. Either you will be behind that veil, or on the other side. If you have not returned by then, you may not return for ten years.”

  “And once behind the veil?”

  “You cannot leave.”

  “Please don’t do this.”

  “I have no choice. I sail on the outgoing tide, and I would save those I love in my wake.”

  14

  I ran from her house like a startled hare, my cloak a banner behind me.

  “Mother!” I called, tumbling through the door to my home.

  Calling my name, my mother came from the kitchen to hold me tighter than she had since I was born.

  “Where have you been?” she asked, holding me back to see my mud-stained face. “You’re shivering!”

  She took me to the fire and boiled warm water for a bath. I stripped my clothes and lowered myself in, feeling the warmth permeate every pore. My mother emptied her earthenware jug about my shoulders and loosened my hair. As she brushed it out, she asked me, “Who turned your cloak red?”

  I found I could not answer.

  “It is okay,” she said, soaping the ends of my tresses. “I know where they found the dye.”

  “Who told you?”

  I was shivering hard, but not from the cold.

  “When the woodcutter’s wife told me of the blood on the road and of the wicked lies your grandmother told, I knew they were not lies.”

  “I am sorry, mother.”

  “Don’t you ever be sorry for anything. I am
glad. I am glad that he is dead and that you are alive. I am glad he suffered for his crime against you, against us, and I am glad that you had a friend strong enough to protect you.”

  I asked my mother what had happened to the woodcutter’s wife and she spoke of the previous night, when I ran to the town to find my grandmother. She spoke of how my friend had been brave and courageous. How she had not known it was him at first, for she had not seen him since he was a boy.

  She told me she had once been back to the Woman in the Woods, six moons after grandmother took the boy to her. She had gone to reassure herself that she had done the right thing. That the Woman in the Woods would care for him. She told me she had half a mind to bring him back to live with us, but when she saw how devoted he was to the witch, she hadn’t the heart.

  “He didn’t look at me once,” she said. “Just went about his business, filling the kettle with water and fetching firewood. It was as though he no longer remembered who I was. The witch made a big show, asking him to bring the sugar from the row of labelled jars on the shelf, letting me know he could read.”

  I felt sad when she told me this, realising how very close we’d come to growing up together. How the Woman in the Woods, who I loved like a second grandmother, had stolen him away from me, and given him back.

  “I saw the red bead about his neck,” my mother continued. “I knew that he had taken it from your game, and I did not say a thing. When I returned home, I bathed, scrubbing my skin raw with soap, for I suspected you might smell him on me and pine as a pup does for its litter on the first night away.

  “That’s how I knew, see. That’s how I knew it was him. There I was, my head halfway over the ledge, that harpy screaming in my face, when all of a sudden someone was on top of us. I cried out, convinced we were all about to go over the ledge, when I caught a glint of red glass.

  “Her torch went over first, extinguished by the sudden rush of air. She struggled all the time, kicking me and thrusting back her elbows into my chest. Perhaps it sounds funny, but I welcomed the pain. I felt as though I deserved it. My child, what I did was wrong. We were both of us wrong. Perhaps if I’d married the woodcutter before your father came, things would have been different. But I wouldn’t have had you, so I wouldn’t change time for all the gold in the castle coffers.