Four days passed quickly with no sign of Peter, although every night I dreamed him in the forest. I dreamed his face in the gnarly bark of trees, his body bolstered by tangling vines. I dreamed a sapling oak tree had come thrusting from his breastbone, its trunk his heart, its roots his arteries and veins. In the dream I knelt beside him and I grasped his trembling hand, and it was my touch that set free the sapling, sent it towering, erupting, far past where my eyes could see. I would awake and reassure myself a dream recurred did not mean a reality. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that a seed had sprouted through me since I’d entered that strange shadow forest, that its trees were now entangling my mind, becoming an obsession. I couldn’t shake the feeling that my father was in danger, and that I somehow was its cause.
In the mornings, despite fog or cold weather, Matthew would leave before the sun had risen fully to go jogging. Cup of tea in hand, I watched him through the window, his hair held with a sweatband, leaning down to stretch his calves on the veranda. He’d then plod grunting and huffing off down the main road, to return an hour later, wet and flushed.
“Where do you go?” I asked him.
“No place in particular.”
“Then why bother going?”
“It clears my head.”
Shaking mine, I did not press the question. Activity, to me, was endeavored for effect. I participated in experiments so Peter could be paid after publishing his studies. I read books so I could have some understanding of the world outside my door, so that I might, upon reshelving them, gaze proudly at the empire I’d conquered. Even the myths that I delighted in hearing served a practical purpose, teaching me how to behave, while at the same time showing me a sordid history that helped me take comfort in the relative stability of my present. I did not yet understand ritual for its own sake, as a way of making meaning.
While Matthew was gone, I searched our bookshelves, poring through fairy tales and histories of our village, none of which led me any closer to the purpose of the spirals and the map. I hoped to find some record of the Blakelys, my mother’s family, whose names Peter had written next to mine. He’d always been reluctant to discuss them, claiming that we had no information, with my mother gone there was no way to answer my questions. I’d long suspected this was deflection, and now I knew for sure he had been hiding his own knowledge of my heritage.
From the library I could watch for Matthew’s return. I was growing to appreciate his presence at Urizon. He was useful around the house: quick to start the fire, good with Marlowe, exceptionally tidy. As my first contemporary, I found him infinitely interesting to watch. He had a habit of tugging at his hair when he was thinking, of chewing on his pencil while studying, of crinkling his eyes when he laughed, which he did easily and often. Matthew was a better cook than me, and in the evenings I would sit at the kitchen table while he conjured dinner out of what we had left in the pantry.
“How do you know how to do that?” I gestured toward the large pot that bubbled on the stove.
“What? Make pasta?” Matthew smiled. “The directions are right there on the box.”
“All of it. The setting up and cleaning up and planning. All the things that Mrs. Blott would do for Peter and me. Did she teach you?”
“Well, when you’re one of seven kids, you get used to taking care of the others.” He rummaged in the cupboard for a potholder.
“Seven!”
“I know,” said Matthew with a smile. “I say that to my mother all the time.”
“Seven brothers and sisters.” I couldn’t imagine having even one.
“Well, six. I’m number seven. Or I guess I’m number two—there’s my older brother, me, then all the others.” Matthew took the pot of pasta from the stove and a rush of steam obscured him as he drained it.
“They must miss you, now that you’re away at school.”
Matthew shrugged. “Maybe a little.”
I found myself missing him when he was gone during the day. I told myself it wasn’t him precisely, but human company—an ear other than Marlowe’s to discuss the day’s events and plan tomorrow. Still, each time I heard a noise from the front yard I looked up from my research, hoping that Matthew had returned. Often, the sound was just a car barreling by on its way into town, though twice I spotted a man on a motorbike, parked outside our front gate, staring up at Urizon. At first sighting, I ignored him, assuming him enamored with the beauty of our large estate, the structure of the house. When he appeared again the next day, this time turning off the engine, climbing down off his bike, I thought he must need some assistance. I bookmarked my page and left the library, stepping out our side door, ready to offer what guidance I could. By the time I reached the front lawn, my thin blanket shielding me from the breeze, my slippers wet with dew, the man was gone. The only sign he hadn’t been imagined was the faint whiff of exhaust that lingered at the edge of the drive. Prior to Peter’s disappearance and my journey through the wood, this stranger might have consumed me. I might have spent hours dissecting his intentions, imagining he’d come to kidnap or to rescue me, to steal Urizon’s meager treasures. Now that I was mired in an actual mystery, I barely paid him mind, dismissing him as a curious tourist—it was not uncommon for a few a year to make their way to our estate, much to Peter’s chagrin and my excitement—while focusing my attention on the more pressing questions at hand.
Had my father actually gone to find me? If so, did he believe this map held some vital clue? After all, it was focused on the forest where he had last seen me, and he’d written my name across the bottom. But then why wouldn’t he have taken it with him? And in the back of my mind the niggling question: Had he left me here on purpose? Now that Mrs. Blott was gone, was Peter afraid to be alone with me, tired of caring for me, ready to resume the life he’d led before I was born? This last thought crept up on me regularly. Each time I brushed it away, trying to convince myself that it was ridiculous while fearing it to be true.
On the day of our departure, Matthew skipped his morning exercise to sit for an exam, reciting absurd combinations of letters and numbers as he packed up his study sheets and laced his boots. I was to have myself ready upon his return, an instruction repeated the night prior, and again as he was walking out the door. He need not have worried—I was eager to begin our search. When he pulled into the drive some hours later, I was quickly out the back door and clambering over textbooks, clearing room for myself in the front seat of his car, and for Marlowe in the back seat just behind me.
“Are you sure you should be so close to the . . .” Matthew gestured toward his leather valise, twisting almost fully around to move it over. “Oh,” he said, “I think the seats are leather, too.”
“They aren’t,” I said snippily, “they’re just an imitation. But even if they were I would be fine.”
I knew I should not take offense at questions asked in my best interest, and it was only this past year that I’d discovered it was safe to touch a hide, so long as it was tanned. Under controlled conditions I had stroked a strip of leather, and upon its failure to react, became rather too ambitious. The Blakelys had amassed a great deal of taxidermy, which I next suggested that we try, not realizing that some amateur artisan had done a shoddy job with the animals’ preservation, and quickly learning that a hollowed, chemicalized beast was no more domesticated than its organ-endowed brother, breaking a Blakely family heirloom, and begging the question, said Peter, of what made up a soul. None of this seemed fit to share with Matthew in the moment.