The Waking Forest

by Alyssa Wees

  Even though I’m determined not to let him catch me off guard this time, his voice floats and twists like steam so that I don’t know where it’s coming from. When he speaks, I press my spine against the wall so hard, it hurts.

  “Rhea Ravenna, you have returned.”

  Again he uses my name like a spell, an incantation somewhere between sinister and sacred, demonic and divine.

  “Who are you? What are you?” I lift my chin and take a long, steady inhale. “Why couldn’t we see you, when my sisters and I came earlier? Was it you, tugging on my hair?”

  “You can tell yourself it wasn’t me, if it comforts you to do so. Pretend it was one of your sisters,” he says, and I feel the blade of his grin. I want him to answer my other questions, but he says nothing more.

  “Where are you?” I say, disoriented.

  “On the dresser,” he says. “Don’t worry. There are whole worlds between us.”

  I can’t even begin to guess what he means by that, so I file it away for now. “You know,” I say, “I don’t think it’s fair that you know my name but I don’t know yours. I don’t even know anything about you.”

  He sighs. “Oh, my sky, your name has been stuck in my throat for so long. You are an itch in my heart, an itch I have never been able to scratch.”

  As he speaks, I feel it too. An itch. Not an ordinary twinge, not a sting of discomfort wriggling on dry skin. This itch has teeth, and it started as a seed I did not know was planted. A seed that is now, as his words water it, a sprout. A biting bud of tiny canines, crooked and corroded.

  I put a hand to my chest and scratch my nails across my sternum, even though it doesn’t help. “An itch you couldn’t scratch—until now?”

  “No. I can never scratch it, Rhea Ravenna, and that is the point.”

  “Stop.” I drop my hands. “Stop saying my name like that.”

  A pause. “Like what?”

  “Like—like you know something I don’t.”

  He grins. “But I do know something you don’t. Haven’t you been listening?”

  “Yes, and you haven’t said even one thing that makes any sense.”

  “You want to know my name?”

  I nod, eager, even though he can’t see.

  He says, “I propose that we play a game, you and I.”

  “A game.” I exhale. “What kind of game?”

  “A guessing game, of course.” A pause. “You like games, don’t you? Puzzles and riddles and rhymes.”

  My heart itches, twitches, beats even faster. “What are the rules?”

  The dresser creaks. Sways, as if a weight has been lifted. The Darkness stands, only a foot away. I know, because the space before me, around me, feels steadily warmer. And when he speaks, his voice is louder, nearer.

  He says, “I will give you three tries to guess my name.”

  “What?” I almost laugh out loud. “What are you, Rumpelstiltskin?”

  He isn’t the least amused. “Rumpel—what? I don’t know what this means.”

  “You’ve never heard of Rumpelstiltskin? Where are you even from?”

  “The same place as you.”

  “And what place would that be? Wonderland?”

  “I suppose there’s wonder, and there’s land,” he says wryly. “But I would not call it wonderland, no.”

  “That’s not what I— Never mind.” I chew my cheek, thinking. Is he actually serious about this? He wants me to guess his name? I mean, that doesn’t seem so unreasonable—for a fairy tale, for a dream.

  “Only three guesses?” I ask. “What happens if all my guesses are wrong?”

  “Then we both lose.” His voice is hard now, and I hear him grinding his jaw. “We both lose, and the game is over.”

  I know I should keep to the questions I came here to ask, but I’m not quite sure how to steer the conversation back around. And maybe playing his stupid game is the only way I’ll get answers anyway. “Will you give me any clues?”

  “Yes. In fact, I’ll tell you a story.”

  “A story?” I say, and Renata’s voice, breathless, crawls like a spider through the back of my brain: The princess had magic and the others didn’t….But then she escaped by falling into a sleeping spell. The end.

  Now that I think about it, the way she said it was strange. Did Renata mean that the princess escaped, and that was the end of the story? Or did Ren mean that falling into a sleeping spell was how the princess escaped the end—the end of her life, the end of the world, the end of the story itself? But how is it possible to avoid your own end?

  I shake my head. “I don’t want to hear a story.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t be so quick to refuse if I were you. It might be the only thing to help you remember.”

  It’s so, so hot in this tiny room that he suddenly feels so, so close. Leaning over me.

  I am not afraid, I am not afraid, I am not, not, not.

  “All right, and if I guess correctly?” I raise my chin, staring at the Darkness, staring at nothing. “If I win? Will you show me your face?”

  “If you win, I will give you a gift.” He whispers now, and it is I who lean closer this time. So close I can feel the heat leave his lips. “If you win, I will take your curse away.”

  I let out a breath, a breath sharp and fast, somewhere between a stuttering sigh and a fracturing cry. And for a second the unnatural darkness surrounding him disperses, just enough that I can see the figure of a tall, thin boy—barely more than a silhouette. Jarred, my gaze falls down to the scream of blue veins beneath the blanched skin of his forearms, then up to the line of his jaw tensing as he jerks away from me, stepping backward to the center of the room. He knows I can see him—not well, not well at all, but I’m not supposed to see. I’m not allowed a glimpse, not yet.

  Then the darkness swoops back in and congeals, glomming together around him, thicker and blacker than ever. Both of us are silent for a long while, trying to recapture what we let loose. What just happened? I don’t think either of us knows; he seems as surprised as I am.

  “So you know? You know about my curse?” I say, half eager, half terrified. “You know about my visions?”

  The darkness undulates, dips and eddies, but does not disband. Not again. The boy’s guard is up, and I will not breach it a second time. Not tonight, anyway. “Are you willing to play?” he asks.

  I wrap my arms around my waist, trembling. “What do you know about my visions? Do you know what they mean? Do you know why I see things that aren’t there?”

  “You will only know that, my sky, when you know my name.”

  “Why do you call me that? Sky? And how do I know you’re even real?” I’m almost shouting now, but I don’t care. I stand, scrambling toward the door. “How do I know you can do what you say?”

  “Will you play?” he hisses. “Yes, or no, Rhea Ravenna? Yes. Or. No?”

  “Yes,” I snap, in a voice that could crack the sunlit sky in half, a straight clean break bleeding black and clotting with tiny tinsel stars. “Yes, I’ll play. I’ll play and I’ll win, and then—then I will know who and what you are.”

  I find the doorknob with my fingers, and as I do, the nameless boy veiled in shadow whispers: “Ah, but you are wrong. You are wrong, Rhea Ravenna. By the end, when you win, you will know who and what you are.”

  I wrench the door open and descend, hands on the wall to steady myself. Clawing, clambering. At the bottom, I trip to my knees. It doesn’t hurt, not as much as the malevolent itch still raging in my heart. I shudder, and shield my eyes with the backs of my hands in the sudden sphere of pale light, crushing after the density of the darkness.

  Gabrielle is there, waiting for me, her eyes bright with anger. She wanted to come with me, to protect me. She’ll forgive me soon enough, I know, but now she bites at my legs. Hard enough to hurt b
ut not to break the skin. She nips once at my knee and then starts toward the bedroom. She stops in the doorway. Come on.

  I stand and follow. As I grasp for sleep, curled in bed with my back to Rose, Gabrielle beside me, a song skitters through my mind, over and over and over. Slow at first—and then fast, faster, fastest.

  It goes like this:

  I will take your curse away.

  Away, away, away.

  Your curse, my sky, my sky, my sky.

  Your curse is mine, is mine, is mine.

  Yours to give and mine to take.

  I will take your curse away.

  And all you have to do, my sky,

  Is say my name, my name, my name.

  The crescent moon snuck away to nap behind a cloud, and its snores were like milk splashing in a cup, and the Fox Who Is No Fox did not come. The Witch walked back and forth across the glade, silent, her heart stiff inside her. Her feet ached, her knees popped, but the Witch of Wishes did not stop pacing.

  The foxes’ howls wilted to a whisper and then to a rasp and then to nothing. But still the Witch did not stop pacing.

  Only when he glided into the glade, his lips so red that it hurt to look at them, did the Witch stop.

  She faced him, and held out her hand, hoping he would not notice how her fingers trembled with relief. She had been afraid he would not come back again, after she’d sent him away.

  “Dance with me,” she said.

  He said nothing.

  “Please?” she asked more sweetly.

  “I do not know how,” he said.

  “Then I will show you,” she said.

  The Fox Who Is No Fox stepped toward her, edging almost sideways, as if approaching a spooked animal. The Witch waited.

  Finally they joined hands, and their fingers fit together, bone wrapped around bone, skin touching skin. He could feel her pulse, but it was much too slow for someone who had spent so much time pacing. The pulse of someone a breath away from death.

  “I can still give you what you wish for,” he said. “I can—”

  “I wish for nothing,” she said, quiet and fierce. “Nothing but that you dance with me. Will you or won’t you?”

  “I will,” he said, and they began.

  Their steps made the music and their respirations set the rhythm, accelerating, accompanied by the creamy clatter of the moon’s sleep-snuffles as the shadow sun simmered, and the faint, hoarse crying of the foxes, the patter of the foxes’ paws as they circled. Sometimes when the Witch danced, she was sinuous, delicate, merely skimming the earth as though intent to fly away.

  But this was different. Feet stamping, smacking the ground, arms swooping, reaching, their hands breaking apart and coming together again. Whirling, knees bent, head back, spine twisted. Flushed cheeks and runaway breath, pulverizing their fears beneath their cramped, cut-up feet.

  The Fox Who Is No Fox had said he did not know how to dance, but that didn’t matter. His body knew; his legs and hips and shoulders knew. His heart knew. At first he followed the Witch’s movements, but when he finally forgot that he did not know how to dance, he harmonized his steps with hers, moving around her and with her: he was the punctuation in her sentences, the knot at the end of her thread, the clasp on the chain of her necklace. She could exist without him, dance on her own, quite well, in fact—but it was he who brought her back around to herself, somehow. Transformed her line into a circle.

  Only when the sun sagged sideways, yawning yellow light, did the Fox Who Is No Fox retract his hands. “It is time for me to go,” he said.

  The Witch stopped. It was so, so silent in the Woods, and it hurt. It hurt to be so still. The world ached, and she did too. The foxes were asleep now.

  The Witch stared at the Fox Who Is No Fox, her lips parted and her eyes stretched wide. Her hair was a perfect mess. “What is the story about?” she said.

  He bit the inside of his cheek. Three times, hard. She saw his skin pucker. He was so pale, he was almost transparent, unreal. Fading.

  “What?” he said.

  “The fairy story that is no fairy story.” Her voice was overbright and dizzy, a destructive dizziness not unlike a child’s desire to demolish a castle they’ve just built in the sand, before someone else comes along and smashes it. Nothing lasts. The Witch knew that—but sometimes we can have a say in the way we fall apart. She said, “What is it about?”

  Slowly he smiled. “Do you wish me to—”

  “Just follow me.” The Witch turned and walked into her castle, suppressing the urge to skip. Her stomach wriggled with the slightest hint of hunger, but there was nothing for her to eat. Tonight she would feast on a story, and nothing more than that.

  I wake up with a song in my head, a tune but no lyrics. Something about a sky, and a name.

  Then, all at once, I remember.

  The Darkness, grinning. And a game. A game to guess his name.

  But before I have too much time to think about it, I hear a low muttering coming from my closet on the far side of the room. My heart clenches.

  Is it him?

  I rise, slowly, glancing at the empty bed next to mine and wondering how long I’ve slept. Gabrielle tries to grab my shirt between her teeth, to stop me. I shush her, tiptoeing across the room as the noise grows louder. Placing my palm on the knob, I throw the door open.

  I’m so relieved, I laugh. But the sound withers and comes out as a cry instead. Renata is crouched in the corner, teetering on her toes, thighs to chest, pricking her fingertip with a sewing needle. Blood on the carpet, three drops. And from her throbbing throat, a cold whisper that burgeons and steams into a hot, searing screech, “Wake up, wake up. Wake up wake up wakeupwakeupwakeupwakeup wake up!”

  “Ren? What are you—”

  When she looks up and sees me, she lunges. It happens so fast: the scrabble of skin and nails, tumbling backward, my tailbone banging the floor, my tiny sister on top of me. A nightmare mess of limbs and the quiet of concentration as we tussle and I try and fail to flip her off me. I gasp at the sudden jab of the needle in my chest, not too deep but deep enough to pierce the skin, the horizontal drag of its tip across my sternum.

  “Wake up,” she says, thick sticky tears in her wide-open eyes. She has the fever-sweat sheen of someone set on stopping the shoreward shove of the sea, once and for all and forever.

  And then it’s finished; she scrambles sideways, crab-crawling away. She stands, staring down at me, and I blink up at her, wheezing. I touch the line she’s carved into my chest. There’s barely any blood, but it still stings.

  “I dreamed I was dreaming,” she says, the needle nested in her fist, the porcelain parts of her eyes cracked with dead-end veins. “And I finally woke up. I woke up in the dream, from the dream, just for a second. And it felt like rust on the rim of my heart. Creeping over my skin. Like blisters, and it hurt. It hurt a lot, actually.”

  She makes a sound as she leaves the room, somewhere between a cough and a cackle. I stay there on the floor, stunned. I’m not sure how long I lie there. Long enough that my heart sags against my ribs and the cut scabs over. Long enough that Rose comes into the room and says, “Have you seen Ren? It’s been a while since anyone saw her. And we found her phone stuffed under her mattress, as usual. We tried Cadence’s house to see if she was there, but I guess those two haven’t been friends for a while now. Did you know—”

  Too quickly, I jerk upward, and the blood drains from my head. For a moment my vision is completely obscured by popping speckles of black and gray.

  “What happened to your chest?” Rose kneels before me, inspecting.

  “I was attacked.” I press the heels of my hands to my temples, steadying myself as the world wobbles. “At least, I think. I’m not really sure, actually.”

  Without another word, she leaves me and goes to the
bathroom, then brings back a half-empty tube of antibiotic ointment. She squeezes some onto her finger and dabs at the thread-thin slash.

  “Start from the beginning,” she says, and I recount everything that has happened since I woke up.

  Raisa appears in the doorway just as I finish. “Hey! What did you do to Ren?”

  “Nothing!”

  “You upset her!”

  “No, she attacked me unprovoked.” I point at my chest. “Look at what she did to me.”

  “Well, you better find her,” Raisa says, eyeing the scratch over my heart. “Anyone check her hiding places?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Let’s look,” Rose says before Raisa can launch more accusations at me. Rose’s cheeks are colorless and slightly shiny, appearing almost icy. “Mom is starting to panic.”

  For now, it seems that figuring out the boy’s name is going to have to wait. I get dressed quickly before meeting the rest of my family downstairs, where we silently slip into our shoes, grab our purses and keys, and swirl out the door like water down a drain.

  The entire afternoon is spent searching the shoreline, Rose and I each traversing in opposite directions while Raisa rides her bike to the lighthouse, and Mom and Dad drive downtown to circle the streets, to check outside the cemetery. Gabrielle follows me, and I taste the caustic cream of anticipation foaming at the tip of her tongue just as surely as she feels the tangling of my veins into a bloody bouquet. Before long, she’s panting from the heat and I’m exhausted. I meet the others back at the house.

  “We’ll find her,” Dad says, kissing Mom on the cheek as she bustles around the kitchen where we stand, preparing sandwiches for dinner before we start back out again. “We always do.”

  Together, we eat quickly, quietly. Right now food is fuel and nothing more. We are not allowed to enjoy it without Renata here too.