For years he saw his child as an experiment. Maisie did not make much noise, or take up much space in the house. She was excellent research. The case study Peter published was met with wide acclaim, touted as the first of its kind in its amalgam of folklore and science, if occasionally scorned by certain colleagues who thought it an unserious pursuit. But Peter was quite serious. He took note of the little girl’s development, tested her limits. He watched the wood, waiting for a sign that the child was an extension of its power, might hold the answers to the Blakely family curse. Some days he would forget to feed her, to dispose of soiled diapers. He would find himself chastised by Mrs. Blott, scolded for thoughtlessness, even called cruel.
But time bred love. His regard for his daughter had grown. He wanted, now, to be a set of armor, to replace her heart with his. He might have been a better father, might have dandled her or whatnot on his knee, but there was this: if he could, Peter Cothay would stretch himself around his only child like a membrane, so that the dark parts of the world would never find her, so that she would always be the full golden yolk of a hen’s egg before it breaks.
HE WAS SURPRISED to find his study in a state of disarray. Not that Peter saw himself a paragon of organization, but the sloppy way the papers had been piled, the displacement of the dust on the desk—someone had been there. His suspicion was confirmed when he opened the file drawer and saw only a dusting of mouse droppings where should have been his working copy of his map.
Peter knew at once who’d taken it. Rafe’s letter of apology, read and reread, still sat crumpled in the pocket of his jacket.
Rafe, who had written him years ago asking for patronage, needing a mentor. Rafe, who believed Peter’s theories when others had laughed. Rafe, who’d seen only hand-drawn copies of the symbols in the book Peter had found under the floorboards after Laura’s death, before Maisie burst from within her. Rafe, who said he’d come up with the proper translations.
“Blood,” Rafe had insisted, blue eyes eager, seated across from Peter in that roadside café. “There’s absolutely no question. The symbol means blood.”
“It could mean lifeblood.” Peter shook his head, turning the paper so that he could see it more clearly. “It could mean roots, or family.”
“No.” Rafe had pounded his fist on the Formica table, attracting the attention of the tired-looking woman at the counter. Peter gave him a stern look, and Rafe continued with his voice considerably lower. “It’s clearly blood—a sacrifice of blood.”
“But how can it be actual blood? A body of blood that keeps living? That’s impossible. My boy, the runes mean family. A sacrifice of family. A family that continues even after the wood has been opened, the sacrifice made.”
“No, it has to be blood,” Rafe pressed. “Look at this symbol of a body here, these lines leading into the forest. The knife slitting the palms, the two palms pressed together. It’s the only explanation. Blood explains why it’s so difficult, why it takes so long. You have to calculate the time it takes for the blood to replenish in the body—use iron supplements, folic acid—it may have been impossible hundreds of years ago, but not with all the medical advances we have now.”
Peter had listened for another few minutes, then come up with some nonsense about a class to teach, a paper to grade. He’d hurried home to Maisie, unperturbed by Rafe’s adamancy until the next day, when Mrs. Blott had brought the mail in from town.
Peter remembered Rafe’s words, scrawled onto a sheet of notebook paper, stuffed hastily into the envelope:
Cothay, I’m right about the blood, where it should come from. I know you are the Toymaker. You know that to open that forest we will need blood from the Child.
Peter had thrown the scrap of paper in the fire, watched its edges blacken, the flames lick the words away. After that, he could have sworn some of his old notebooks were missing, the ones with the notes he’d eventually turn to published studies, the ones that tied his daughter to the subject of his work. Was that how Rafe knew? Because he’d stolen the evidence, somehow snuck into the house?
Peter put the work first, always. Pursuit of knowledge was the goal, at the cost of all else. He’d respected Rafe because Rafe was the same: could spend hours bent over a manuscript, neglecting meals, mothers’ birthdays, pretty girls. Peter had seen himself in Rafe, and thus he knew the boy was capable of going to the furthest ends, would justify each action, no matter who it hurt, as a sacrifice to knowledge. It was only now he realized that fatherhood had changed him. He’d found a limit to who he was willing to hurt, to what he was willing to give. Somehow, without warning, a love had crept up on Peter Cothay, a love he had never imagined.
ON HIS WAY into the wood, walking down the last terrace, Peter paused at the plot that had been turnips back when Laura was alive to tend the gardens, the plot that he’d transformed for his daughter, digging out years of rocks and old roots, their spindly anchors stretching deeper than he ever knew they could. Yanking them free, he’d remembered the rubbery blue cord that connected the last vestige of his wife to his new daughter. The odd curving scissors, their blades like the beak of a bird, gleaming in the fluorescence of the delivery room. Laura on the operating table, her upper body covered by a thin paper sheet. The nurses could not close her eyes, so they had kept the body covered by a series of paper sheets that wilted in the warm damp of the hospital room, its climate curated and stifling. Peter could not resist raising the sheet once when he was alone with Laura and her strange, swelling stomach. His wife had not withered—her skin was cold but bright. Fingernails the same length, freshly manicured. That splotch of pink polish on her left index finger still boasting the whorl of his thumbprint—Careful, she’d said, laughing, they haven’t dried yet. Now I’ll have to do it over. A physician’s assistant found him there, staring. She ushered Peter out. He had not looked again.
PETER KNELT BY the sandbox, a recent rain making his digging difficult and slow. Despite his dirtied shirt cuffs, the scrape of wet sand on his hands, he did not stop until he’d found the soggy edge of a plastic bag, explored its borders to feel for the flimsy cover of a book.
It was still there, where he had hidden it, weeks earlier. The book that had saved him after Laura’s death, when he’d thought himself lost, peeking out from a floorboard in what would become Maisie’s nursery. The book with its promises, its cryptic instructions, its symbols and ambiguous translations. Rafe had not stolen it, which meant he must have been stymied. Without the book’s instructions, Rafe could not have gone further in his quest to harvest blood. He could not know how or where or when—he must have given up. Peter reburied the manuscript quickly, relieved.
There’d been a day, a winter morning, on which Maisie—maybe six years old—had rushed up to the nursery, abandoning an intricate performance with her dolls to do his work. She’d looked up at him, so trusting, chatting while he readied a scalpel, a swab of antiseptic, a vial with which to collect her blood. The instruments gleamed in the pale light that reflected off the snow outside, and in his gloved hands they’d felt so cold. A sacrifice of blood, he’d thought, picturing the runes in the book—a knife held to a palm, a prostrate body—while watching his daughter’s small, heart-shaped mouth, the freckles scattered across her cheeks, the bit of sleep still scabbing the corner of an eye.
“Go back and play, dear,” he’d told her.
Her face fell. “I thought that we were going to play together.”
“We will, darling. Soon. But the plans that I had for today . . . We’ll reschedule.”
They had not rescheduled this particular experiment, the harvest of her blood. Blood, a word with so many meanings, so many uses, so many goals. As Peter’s love for Maisie deepened, his understanding deepened with it, and he saw that blood meant more than the mere fluids of the body. Peter was his daughter’s blood, just as surely as the cruor that ran though her. Now that he knew love’s dual brand of pain and satisfaction, Peter knew that the sacrifice the book asked for could not be simple bloodshed, the slicing of a palm, no matter how Rafe made the case.
Peter would have to bring himself, a sacrifice of family, to the forest to complete the ancient ritual. He’d go inside, he’d find his girl. He’d save her.
The Shimmering Thing