The Waking Forest

by Alyssa Wees

As we get ready to leave again, Rose hangs back.

  “I think I’ll stay here,” she says. “Someone has to be here in case she comes back, right?”

  “Good idea,” Dad says, and I volunteer to take the beach again, this time on my own.

  Closing the door, I look both ways before crossing the sand-brushed street, then kick my flip-flops off as I finally reach the open beach. Then I sprint, as fast as I can, my hair bouncing, snarling and sticking to my neck, Gabrielle huffing after me. It’s dark down by the water, but the darkness is uncontained, billowing from here to infinity. Ordinary.

  The wind flips up the hem of my dress as I run, soft fabric flapping around my hips. But I don’t care at all. Who is here to see me? Only a few stray stars, pale and burning. With only open space and open sky and open sea everywhere around me, I feel like I’m the only person in all of existence.

  As I run, trembling in this unobstructed stretch of space, I pretend that I am magic. I pretend I can conjure storm clouds with my hands and summon fires that don’t scorch my skin as I balance the flames on my palms. I pretend I can whisper words that will make the listener fall in love with me, only for a few minutes, only long enough for a slow dance and a quick kiss, a wistful sigh and a flushed goodbye.

  I pretend I can locate Renata with ease, calling on the wind to look for her and report back to me. That way, she would never be lost. She could wander anywhere, and we’d always know exactly where to find her.

  The sea races in. I stop so abruptly as it rushes to meet me that I slip on the soggy sand and fall backward. I scramble back on my hands and push myself to standing, cold water gushing around my feet, my knees, wetting my dress. Gabrielle stands a few yards back, well away from the waves. I start to call Renata’s name, quietly at first and then more loudly.

  When I turn back to look toward my house, I see trees instead, rising taller than they should, like a thousand giant bones stuck straight up in the ground.

  The woods are back.

  There’s no screaming this time. At least, not yet.

  I sprint—back up the beach, across the road, and behind the house. Gabrielle bites at my ankles, begging me to turn around, but I can’t. I can’t—or anyway I don’t want to, and right now that’s basically the same thing. I stop a dozen feet from the neat line of impossible trees, completely out of breath. I take a tiny step forward, and another and another.

  But.

  The trees don’t vanish. And they don’t collapse.

  Just when I’m close enough to touch them, afraid to go any farther, someone comes up next to me, so softly that I don’t hear her until she’s right there at my side. I turn, only slightly, absorbing her in pieces: sand like sugar crystals stuck to her knees, her shorts and shirt completely sodden, drops from her hair sliding down her arms. I’m afraid that if I stare directly at her, she’ll disappear.

  “Sorry I stabbed you,” Renata says. “I would say I didn’t mean to, but that would be a lie.” She presses her index finger lightly against my temple. Wake up, wake up, wake up. “I did mean to. I’m just sorry it hurt you. These things do, though. They hurt.”

  “That’s okay.” I wait for her to explain, reaching for my phone in my pocket to text the others that she’s okay, before I remember that my dress doesn’t have pockets and my phone is sitting somewhere inside the house behind us. Suddenly I’m anxious to get back, to get away from the woods that might disappear or crumble at any moment, before the screaming starts and doesn’t stop—but I’m also afraid that if I try to haul Renata home before she’s ready, she’ll resist and run away again.

  “Have you ever heard of calenture?” she says, lowering herself to sit cross-legged in the dewy grass. “Do you know what that is?”

  “No.” I drop down beside her and let my head fall forward onto the shivering steeple of my knees, the woods so close, so close that they could almost take her. “Where have you been? Everyone is freaking out.”

  “It’s an old-fashioned word for heatstroke,” she says, ignoring me. “It used to refer to sailors and the delirium that would sometimes sneak up on them. It made them see a green field of grass where the waves rolled endlessly in all directions. Confused, they’d fling themselves overboard and drown.”

  “That’s really sad.”

  “The sun and the sea don’t care who lives and who dies.”

  “What does this have to do with anything?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Renata blinks, laying her head on my shoulder. “It’s the same in the dark, most likely. Complete darkness, I mean, a form of calenture. If you stay in it too long, you become delirious, and start seeing a meadow where there is only water. A forest where there is only flat land. It’s almost like dreaming.”

  My heart starts to beat so fast, I feel it pulsing everywhere: in my stomach, my neck, my temples. “Wait, Renata, what do you mean? Have you seen a forest where there isn’t one?”

  She slowly shakes her head, and doesn’t speak.

  “Why are you doing this?” I roll my shoulder, shaking her off. Something is really, really wrong, but I don’t know what it is. The air is warm, but the wind blowing in from the woods is cold, and her voice—it’s somewhere in between, with a rhythm like the sweep of retreating waves, like foam and forgetting. “What’s gotten into you?”

  For a moment, she is silent. Then: “She’s not there, you know.”

  I finally turn to look at her, straight on. She’s just a darker shadow in the dark, a perfect silhouette. “What?”

  “The witch.” Impossibly, Renata nods toward the trees. “You’re always looking for her. But she’s not there. Not anymore.”

  Everything in me goes quiet at this. “How do you know about that?” I whisper. “I thought I dreamed her.”

  She smiles. Her teeth shine. “You did.”

  When I look to the forest, it’s gone.

  “You have to come find me, okay? I can’t stay here anymore, but I’ll be waiting for you. We all are.” Renata leans closer, and her sigh streams across my cheek. “Good night, Rhea. Good night.”

  “What do you mean, good—” I jump to my feet, intending to follow her, not keen to let her get away again. But she’s not there. Not beside me or behind me or anywhere else in the field. Gone, as quickly and completely as the woods.

  “Renata?” I call, spinning in circles, searching. “Where are you? Where’d you go?”

  The soft scrape left by her breath is fading fast from my skin, and when I stop and look down at the squishy grass, thinking to simply follow her path, there are no footprints. There is nothing, no imprint to indicate she’d ever been here at all. I should have snatched her and dragged her home while I had the chance.

  When I turn to the house, Dad’s car is in the driveway, and just seeing it parked there impels me up the back steps and through the door. I traverse those few yards more quickly than any other distance I’ve covered all day. Gabrielle follows, her tail bristled. I swing the door open with too much force; it glides on its hinges and hits the wall. I come around the corner into the kitchen. My family is gathered around the island—Mom and Dad, Rose and Raisa.

  No Renata.

  Dad says something, and they laugh. Mom and Raisa for real, but Rose—she tries. I can tell it’s only an attempt, because her mouth stretches and her lips part in imitation of a laugh, but she brings her hand up to swipe at her nose, like she’s trying to cover the false sound that’s slipped out, just a scratchy scuff of air. Her laugh, her true laugh, is like a bold step onto a fresh sheet of morning snow, the crack of its frozen crust beneath your boots. Short and sharp and revelatory, and so satisfying that you will want to hear it again and again and again.

  “Hello?” I say, unmoving in the archway separating the foyer from the kitchen. It seems like every single light in the room is on. Overbright and blinding.

  My sisters a
re facing me, on the other side of the island, but Mom and Dad twist around to look at me. Both of them smile, and that’s when I notice the ice cream in their hands, vanilla soft serve in waffle cones. Rose has mint chip in a cup with a plastic spoon, and Raisa holds the bent straw of a shake to the corner of her mouth.

  “We brought your favorite,” Mom says, and she pushes a paper cup across the countertop: chocolate, two scoops with star-shaped sprinkles. I take it slowly, still a little uneasy. I don’t see Renata, but she must be here. If she were still missing, they wouldn’t have stopped for ice cream.

  “We’re telling the story of how we met,” Dad says as I come up beside him.

  “Again,” says Raisa, chewing on the end of her straw to hide her smile. If Raisa is smiling, then they must have found Renata. Maybe she’s in the bathroom. I force myself to relax and listen.

  “I was just getting to the part where your mother becomes obsessed with my constellation tattoo,” Dad says, grinning. “My favorite part.”

  This tattoo is only one of several: an upside-down crown on the left side of his upper ribs; a pair of eyes on his left forearm, both of them wide open; and finally the one on his back that’s a series of small black dots, connected by a thin, faint line.

  He says the dots represent stars and the line forms the contours of a constellation. But it is no constellation that exists in our charted sky, and that is exactly what had my mother so captivated: an imaginary arrangement of stars.

  “He told me he’d made it up, but I still swear I’ve seen it before,” Mom tells us, and I glance down the hallway, wondering when Renata is coming back. “It seems so familiar. But I looked in every book in the library, and I never found a match.”

  Laughing, Dad hooks his arm around Mom’s neck, where her sole tattoo, a rose in full bloom, is inked at the nape. His elbow at her ear, he pulls her in close and kisses her forehead.

  “PDA!” Raisa shrieks, setting down her shake and slapping her hands over her eyes. “Make it stop!”

  But it does not stop; Mom hides her face in his neck, leaning in, and even her long black fishtail braid sways to the side to be closer to him.

  I stick my spoon into the ice cream so that it stands straight up. Dad continues, Mom wryly interrupts, and Raisa laughs and squeals. Only Rose says nothing, does nothing, stares at her ice cream as it slowly melts. She’s still wearing her black leotard and pale pink tights from ballet earlier. Something shifts, and I remember she told me, once, that the only time she feels truly awake is when she dances.

  It’s not that I forgot it, exactly, but staring at her now in the kitchen with Renata gone, it hits me. Not alive—awake.

  Wake.

  Wake up.

  Wake up, wake up, wake up.

  A stitch of pain snakes through the slit over my heart, and I bring my hand to my chest. Everyone is so cheerful that it’s easy to believe they found Renata. Where is she, though? If not in the bathroom, did she go straight upstairs to bed? She must be here somewhere, or else they wouldn’t be so calm.

  Without warning Gabrielle opens her mouth and sticks her teeth into my shin, fangs pinching skin. Not hard enough to bring blood to the surface, just a reviving little nip. I understand her meaning at once: Say something.

  “Your mom, being the woman I love,” Dad goes on, “went and—”

  “So you found her, then?” I interrupt. “I mean, she’s home. Right?”

  Dad pauses. “Who? What?”

  “Renata,” I say. “Is she upstairs, or gone at a friend’s?”

  Mom lifts her head from Dad’s shoulder. “Ren…Who?”

  “Your youngest daughter. Renata. Fourteen years old. My s-sister,” I say, choking on my own breath. I wrench my gaze away from their alarmed looks, their spines straightening, heads shaking. I look to Raisa, who shrugs, then to Rose. She stares at me, head tilted to the side. “Our sister. Renata. She was missing and you went to find her. And now you’re back with ice cream, so I just thought—I assumed she had just come back. Because otherwise you wouldn’t be so, so—happy.” I pause, but no one says anything. “Is this a joke?”

  “It wouldn’t be a very funny one if it were,” Raisa says. She’s not smiling anymore. No one is.

  “But—” I falter, and Gabrielle bites my leg again, harder this time. “Ow, Gabby, stop. Ray, you share a bedroom with her.”

  “What, that cupboard up there? There’s barely enough room for me and a few spiders, let alone me and another person.”

  I shiver, a tidal tremble beginning at the tip-top of my spine and spiraling down my shoulders and ribs, waist and hips and thighs, careening all the way to my knees.

  “Are you okay, Rhea?” Mom drops Dad’s arm and starts to drift toward the cabinet where she keeps the homemade remedies and medicines made from the things she grows in her garden. I know which one she’s thinking of as she reaches for the knob, the one made from various nectars and essences specifically for lessening panic and terror.

  “Yes, I’m—” is all I can manage.

  “Are you having a vision?” Dad says, wrapping a hand around my elbow, squeezing for reassurance. “What do you see?”

  “The usual,” I whisper, and it’s not a lie, not exactly; as soon as I say it, as soon as I think it, I look around at my family, and the skin of their chests bubbles and boils, dribbles off the slatted bones of their ribs, leaving gaps through which I can see each of their velvety hearts. “I dreamed I was dreaming and—”

  You’re always looking for her, but she’s not there.

  Not anymore.

  “Mom, I’m okay,” I say as she stands on tiptoe, fingers reaching toward the highest shelf. “I’m just going to go to bed now. I’m tired, that’s all.”

  They stare as I bolt out of the room, Gabrielle pattering after me, up the stairs and to the room Raisa shares—has always shared—with Renata.

  I survey the room, not quite daring to step inside. I can see all I need to from here, and what I see is this: nothing. Nothing at all.

  I mean, there are some things in the room. Raisa’s things—her twin bed, pushed into the far corner, the pink-and-orange tie-dyed comforter kicked into a mound at the foot, revealing electric-blue bedsheets stretched over the mattress. Shoes and bras and underwear scattered on the carpet, erupting from the open closet doors, clean clothes indistinguishable from the dirty; a tall dresser topped with the tarnished jewelry box from the attic; the window on the far wall open only an inch, admitting a shy breeze that tousles the pink curtains. Vintage movie posters tacked to the walls, and a desk with coffee cup stains on its wooden surface where another bed should be. Renata’s bed.

  Her bed, which was stacked with half a dozen fleece blankets because she was always cold, and lots of pillows because she liked to build a fort around herself at night. Her collection of scallops and whelks, corals and conches, mussels and mollusks arranged like a mural on top of her nightstand, a cut crystal bowl brimming with misshapen pinkish pearls.

  Her bed, her belongings—all of it is gone.

  I turn and run to my own room, just across the hall. I fumble for my phone on the nightstand. I hold it in both hands, clumsily swiping, jabbing the screen, but there’s not a single photograph with Renata in it, where once there were dozens, pictures of the entire family and some of just the two of us, her holding the camera while I grinned a grin that somehow, always, managed to look more like a grimace.

  I slump down on my bed, letting the phone slip out of my sweating palms. I’m shaking so hard, I couldn’t scream even if I wanted to.

  What are the chances that I would make a deal with the Darkness and Renata would vanish the very next day? What are the chances that I would feel an itch in my heart, and the next morning she would stab me in that exact same spot?

  I will take your curse away, he said, not I will take your family away. But he
shouldn’t be taking anything away yet because I haven’t even won the game. Is this some kind of punishment for letting an entire day go by without making a guess? What else does he have up his sleeve?

  And what if I guess and never get it right? What then?

  We both lose, and the game is over.

  I realize now I stand more to lose than just a game.

  “I am not afraid,” I whisper, alone in my room. “I am not. I am not, I am—”

  I am, though. I am afraid.

  Renata is gone, and no one remembers her.

  And I’m pretty sure this is my fault.

  The Witch and the Fox Who Is No Fox sat side by side on the dais, leaning against the base of her throne, a careful inch between them. The children were still hours away from arriving, and the first stars were just yawning awake, shaking themselves from dreams of glitter and dancing and dizziness. The Witch tucked her hands under her knees and did not look at her companion. He smiled at her anyway, and in a quiet, steady voice, he began his story.

  Once there was a girl, a girl whose name is forbidden now, and all her life she lived in a crystal castle overlooking the Second Sea to the north and the city to the west, where iron was built into the facades of the buildings and enchanted train tracks circled around them. It was from the ashes of an old stone castle that this new fortified city had been built, so that those who lived to the south in Graiae Forest, a thousand-acre wood, would not dare to visit, for it was said that the city’s iron weakened the forest dwellers’ magical abilities, keeping them at bay. And likewise, none from the city were allowed into the forest, for the danger posed by the sylphs and gray gorgons, the sprites and sphinxes and manticores, who lived inside.

  You see, her world was one in which magic rushed through the clay veins of the earth and some humans were born with two hearts, one inside the other, the smaller of them pulsing with magic. Their human hearts longed for the city, but their magical hearts yearned for the forest, and so this community belonged everywhere and nowhere at once. They were called the maculae.