The Tangled Forest

by Marion Grace Woolley

  “I didn’t marry him though, and he married another, and then another. It doesn’t matter that I became a widow, it was still wrong.”

  My mother began to weep and I put my arm around her.

  She told me how the two of them had battled atop her whilst she dug her nails into the earth, trying to anchor herself to solid ground.

  “At one point I was completely turned around,” she said. “My two legs dangling out into nothingness.”

  Then she told me the weight lifted from her. The sound of a shrill shriek as the woodcutter’s wife plummeted to her death.

  “I swear to you, I looked over,” my mother said. “I swear, I watched her fall.”

  “What did you see?” I asked, taking her trembling hands in mine.

  “I saw her turn to paper.”

  “To paper?”

  “Yes. Her billowing skirts folded up and she turned to parchment. A single sheet rocking back and forth on the wind. There was writing on that sheet, but it was too far away to read.”

  “The story of her.”

  My mother nodded. “All her life, written out in words, floating to the valley floor like the stories your grandmother’s duchess wrote all those many long years ago. She passed into once upon a time.”

  *

  As my mother wrapped a towel about my body, I turned to her and told her that Grandmother had also passed into once upon a time.

  “I know,” my mother said. “I felt it.”

  “You felt it?”

  “She appeared at the window in a lightning strike.”

  “And you knew that she had passed?”

  My mother nodded. Passed seemed such a pleasant word for what had really happened. I did not ask whether she knew of the brutality, of the carved flesh and the spirals of blood on the wall. I did not wish my mother to know anything of that. I would pull my cloak over the truth to protect her, as I had my friend.

  “Come now,” my mother said. “We must pack. We cannot stay here after all that has happened. It would not be safe for us. We must travel east to the next kingdom. I shall find work as a scribe or a scullery maid, and you shall teach children their letters. Go fetch your things, for we must leave tonight.”

  “I cannot,” I said, steam rising from my wet skin.

  “Of course you can. Don’t be afraid. We shall make enough to—”

  “No, I mean I cannot leave this place.”

  “It is not safe for us.”

  “It will be safe for me.”

  “The Woman in the Woods?” my mother whispered.

  “She has made me an offer. She will give me her house and her herbs, and I can study undisturbed until I am a healer.”

  “And the price?”

  “To be hidden away from the world for ten years.”

  My mother raised her hand to her mouth and steeled herself. “Is it for her knowledge you stay?”

  “Yes, and more.”

  “The boy?”

  “The boy who is now a man.”

  “The man who has swallowed your heart.”

  She turned away from me and I placed my arms over her shoulders.

  “Come with me,” I told her. “Live in the forest with us.”

  “What would I do in the forest with no mother to visit, no friends to dance with in town, no memories except the bitter ones that grow like briar about my happy mood?” She turned back, taking my face in her hands. “My darling, I will be an old woman in ten years’ time. I have not endless seasons left to spend as you do.”

  “Then I shall pack for the East.”

  “No.” My mother shook her head. “You have loved that boy all your life, and I should not have separated you. He needed you more than you needed him back then, but I fear the roles have reversed. I loved your father once, and would have followed him over the Southern Seas had he but held out his hand. If you come with me, you will resent me every day of our lives.”

  “I cannot let you go.”

  “From the moment the cord is cut, we learn to let go, we mothers.”

  I smiled, unable to see through my tears.

  “When the snows of ten winters have melted, travel east and find me there if I have survived them.”

  Squeezing the breath from my mother, I put on my clothes and cloak and set out into the forest. I looked back once from the trees. To this day, I can close my eyes and see her standing in the window of our home, candles casting an ageless silhouette. I could have been returning home any night of my childhood. As long as I keep that memory, I always can.

  *

  I paused by the mighty oak and reached out to feel its strength.

  By the time I arrived at the cottage, the moon was midway in the sky and I knew that midnight approached. The witch sat on her bed beside my friend, who was recovered enough to follow her into the garden.

  “Are you sure this is where you wish to stay?” the Woman in the Woods asked me.

  “I am sure,” I replied, looking past her to my friend.

  Proudfoot came to my side, leaning against my calf and pushing up on his hind legs.

  “That is the first time I have heard him purr,” I said, kneeling to stroke him.

  “It is a form of farewell.”

  “Then he is going with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “But we may not?”

  “When one woman leaves, another comes to take her place. That is how it is, that is how it always will be. Someday, even you shall venture west, and when you do, you shall find me waiting.”

  “How many cottages are there?” I asked.

  “Oh, infinite. We are always travelling west, my child. We will never arrive there.”

  I smiled and shook my head before embracing her.

  With black cloak and black cat, the Woman in the Woods was soon lost to the dark.

  I turned back to my friend.

  “Ten turnings of the year,” I said. “Whatever shall we do with all that time?”

  He put this fingertips to his broken lip and winced.

  “Well,” he said, tasting the blood. “In summer we will laze beneath the oaks, in winter we will laze beside the fire, and in autumn we will race between the trees and I shall burry you in leaves. If the wind should ever howl, we will climb a crabapple and howl louder.”

  I laughed. “We will be as children again.”

  “We already are.”

  He came to me then, my dark-eyed silent boy who had been baptised by his father and risen a wolf. There was no shyness in me, for we knew each other naked.

  Alone beneath the faraway stars, we were the forest.

  Red & White

  For Mystery

  WHITE

  My mother once told me that snowflakes are the tears of God, each one shed for a separate sin. No two ever alike. Before she told me this, I woke in winter and all I saw was snow. All of it white, all of it bright, nothing distinguishable.

  My sister and I were the same.

  We look very different. I have hair the colour of honey, as morning light hits the hive. My sister’s hair is treacle-black and shiny as moleskin. Yet, because we are twins, born at the same hour, right on the cusp of daybreak, people think we are identical. Because we came from the same place, they assume we walk the same path towards the same destination. We are as snow to them, separate yet indistinguishable.

  Perhaps there was a time before the first tear fell, when all snowflakes formed in one image. Perhaps a time before sin, when there was nothing to divide them. This was so for my sister and me. There was a time when we were small, when we held the same thoughts and shared the same dreams. We even answered to each other’s name. I liked my porridge sweet, she liked hers salted – but we laughed at the same jokes, took pleasure in simple stories, and walked hand in hand, searching for meadow flowers to collect.

  I couldn’t say exactly when our worlds became two, but I had a strange dream once. I dreamt we were being born, my sister and me. We pushed and struggled against the flesh, one mome
nt afraid we might drown, the next thrust forward by small amounts, as though a slippery fist squeezed at our middle.

  Neither of us know which of us came first, but the midwife told my mother we were holding hands, our fingers interlaced like a single length of cloth. “Cut from the same fine fabric,” she whispered, as she sliced our cords with her knife.

  In my dream, the sun was just broaching the horizon. Those ancient hills rolled like waves of tar against its brilliant crown. But that was the thing, see. As I came towards the light, propelled forward into day, my sister fell backwards into night. They say we were born at the same hour on the same day, but a single day holds both sun and stars.

  All our lives we have lived with our mother in a cottage at the foot of the Bridling Hill, where the cool mountain stream meets the meadows. In winter, the world turns to crystal. The rocks shimmer like sugar, the stream freezes, catching bubbles beneath sheets of thick ice, the trees a tangle of fingers. In summer, the world is a blanket of green, spotted with yellow, purple, white and blue; the wildflowers of the fields. And always, behind the winter wind and above the skylark’s song, is the sound of water over smooth rock. A song that was sung long before we were in this world, and will continue long after we have left it.

  Far, far off in the distance, a dip in the hills hints at a secret pass. I have never been there, but the goatherds who come this way tell that it was once a path that led deep into the Western Woods, though the trees have grown so wild you would never find your way. They laugh as milk drips down their chins, and say that it’s thick as the parting between Old Cally’s legs, but I don’t understand what they mean. All I know is that our father came out of that pass, once upon a time.

  It seems strange to say out loud, but we never asked about our father, because we never knew we needed one. When we were very little, and knew nothing of the buck and hind, we assumed that all girls lived in a house with their mother. We knew few other people, and no little boys, so we thought perhaps there were only women, and little girls, and goatherds in this world. It was one strange night, in the depths of a snowstorm, that our mother huddled us beside the fire and began to speak. Her breath smelled sweet and her tongue was blue with sloe.

  “You need two people to make a child,” she told us. “One to sow the seed, the other to water it and nurture it until the plant grows. Only then will you find a baby beneath its branches.”

  “What kind of plant?” my sister asked.

  “One that grows far over the hills.”

  “You had to walk there every day to water it?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t your feet get sore?”

  My mother paused for a moment, taking a sip from her cup.

  “It was a long journey, and my feet got sore,” she replied. “But it was worth it, because I dearly wanted a child and now I have two.”

  My sister and I exchanged glances, lit with the satisfied smile of those who know they are loved.

  “So,” I said, understanding that there was something missing from this story. “Who sowed the seed?”

  My mother took a very long draught and placed the cup down by the hearth.

  “The man who sowed the seed, your father, came out of that pass through the hills. He was a trapper, walking the woods in search of deer and foxes. Only, he lost his way. He strayed across the flatland in search of shelter and directions. He found me lying in the long grass, and he lay down beside me.”

  “Why didn’t you sow the seed here? Then you wouldn’t have had to walk so far to water it.”

  My mother looked at me and slowly reached for her cup. “When you are older, you will understand.”

  “Where is our father now?” my sister asked.

  “He stayed for three summers. Every few months he would set out back through the pass in search of game. He’d return with what he caught: choice cuts for the pot and the softest furs which the goatherds would carry to market beside the castle walls. Then, one winter, a storm just like this descended. He was already out in the woods, far from home. I awaited his return for a week, a month, a year, then two.”

  “What happened to him?” I asked.

  “I do not know, but I assume the worst.”

  “Did you go looking for him?”

  “With two small daughters to feed? No. But I asked for news from every person passing. Farmers further up the hill sent a party on horseback, but returned with nothing to say.”

  We felt the heaviness of our mother’s heart and crawled closer, nestling ourselves under each arm. She pulled us to her and kissed the tops of our heads.

  “My beautiful flowers,” she whispered. “My roses white and red.”

  That night, whilst we lay in bed, my sister first spoke the idea. “If our father is out in those woods,” she said, “we should find him.”

  I kissed her brow and rested my chin atop her crown. My sister had always loved the grass beneath her feet and the sky wide above. She would live in the hills if she were allowed. But I preferred a warm hearth and fresh stew on the stove. I liked to wake in the morning, wrapped in goose down, to the scent of porridge in the pot. Of course I was curious about our father, but if he, a grown man, could not find his way home, what hope had two little girls of bringing him?

  My sister wriggled in her sleep, but it did not disturb me.

  RED

  It weren’t that first winter that I thought it. I’d always known there was something out there, waiting beyond the woods. My sister, she’s gooder than me, but not so smart. She sweeps the house and tends the fire, she bathes my cuts and scrapes when they need salting. She’s like our mother, but I never was.

  Me, I watched the hog mount the sow, and I knew you needed two. From the day I first opened my eyes, from the moment I saw past my sister and realised she weren’t my reflection, I knew we were missing a piece. ‘Less our mother were like a snail, I knew her snake had slithered off.

  When she told us that story about watering plants, I played along. I asked how far she had to walk and whether her feet got sore, knowing full well it were her belly that pained. Still, it was a funny thing to hear. That all those mornings when I woke before Snow, when I sat on the stoop with warm milk in my bowl, imagining those fingers of steam to be pointing to the pass – I wasn’t wrong. That voice which called to me, wasn’t wrong.

  I said to my sister we should go see, but I knew she never would. It weren’t as important to her as to me. So like our mother is Snow, and so much she loves me, that she doesn’t accept we’re not so same. But I know. I feel it deeply. I’m not like my mother, so am I like He? That’s the question needs answering. That’s something needs knowing before the grave, right?

  What lies out there in them Western Woods, that a man can walk out of them and walk back in, like a vanishing trick? If at Michaelmas the goatherd can pull a penny from my ear, can I not pull a farthing from the forest?

  Sometimes I roll in the night deliberate, elbowing my sister in the hopes she wakes. She never does, just holds me tighter. Nothing much I can do to make her share my frustration. I feel bad after and kiss her cheek. Cuddle her back. Whisper ‘Sweet dreams.’

  It were summer come and gone when he arrived.

  Our mother was so sick she had taken to her bed. Her health faded with the meadow flowers. By the time the snow came, her breath blossomed red against the pillow and she spoke untruths to herself in her sleep. We took it in turns, my sister and me, pressing a compress to her brow, cold from the stream and hot from the hearth.

  We watched in turns as she rolled and groaned beneath the sheets. We was almost women then, old enough to talk and reason, but still afraid of the dark. That’s why I never went down the hill by myself. Why I never ran into the woods. My sister and me, we shine on each other, like moon and sun. When we’re together the shadows can’t come chasing. If she wouldn’t go with me, I wouldn’t go t’all. I’d sit and wait and wonder whether he’d come a wandering back.

  So, that night when t
he knocking came, I was woman enough to open the door, but child enough to think it were him.

  Him, after all that time.

  Perhaps he’d heard our mother’s wails and come back to comfort her.

  Desperation breeds delusion. I flung open the door without looking out. I opened the arch and half the sky fell through, knocking me back with the strength of the wind. Winter opened her maw and blew out our fire.

  By the time I climbed to my feet, there was no one there. I wrapped my shawl about my face and stared until my eyes froze. Then I pushed closed the door, kicking the drifts with my foot. It were only once I’d pulled the cloth from my face that I noticed the smell.

  Turning into the blackness, my nose wrinkled and sniffed.

  It were as though someone had let in a wet dog. One of the goatherds’ hounds after a dip in the spring: wool grease and pond sludge.

  And panting.

  “Who’s there?” I whispered, afraid my father had drowned in the swamp, his geist returning from its grizzly grave.

  Something shifted beside the chimney. Two wide, yellow eyes like gold nuggets at the rainbow’s end.

  “Why, little girl.” A voice deep as the mountains are wide. “You opened the door and brought me in from the cold. I shan’t hurt you.”

  I struck a match to light a lamp, and told him to come forward a little.

  A long black snout, a wet fist for a nose, and teeth as curved as the crescent moon.

  I drew back, my shawl at my mouth to muffle my fear.

  “I’m hungry, though,” the creature spoke.

  His lazy eyes wandered to the bedroom door. It was open, and my sister lay sleeping across our mother’s chest, one hand draped over the edge.

  Carefully, I placed myself in his view.

  “We’ve got food,” I said. “What do you eat?”

  “I like meat,” he replied. Drool slipped from his lips to the wooden floor, a little steam rising as it froze. “Do you have a chicken?”