Once there was a great empire to the south that wanted our country in its fold. (Country being, here, a very loose term for the land and the spattering of native tribes that nursed it. This was centuries ago; before the rise of modern cities, before men sailed across the sea.) As one of the northernmost settlements, the land that would, in time, become our village was spared the greedy empire’s initial rapes and pillages. Those who lived there were left mostly to themselves. Of course, this could not last. Eventually the empire sent its troops to take the land and civilize its people. Some fought, many surrendered, even more were killed.
At this point in the story, the history books revered the brave soldiers who crushed one final pocket of resistance. Led, it is said, by a brother and a sister, one of the stronger forest cults would not submit. They used guerrilla tactics and crude weaponry in an attempt to hold back their would-be oppressors. They caused enough of a to-do to be remembered in their conquerors’ books, but could not halt the tide of what those books called progress.
The southern troops were stronger, in number and in weaponry and skill, and they thoroughly routed the rebels. The siblings were captured and taken to their enemy’s camp, rumored to have rested on the spot where Urizon would be built centuries later. The sister was tortured, kept prisoner, used most foully, until she escaped one spring morning right from under the empire’s eyes. The brother was sent south and made to fight. This was a common enough punishment in those times. These were the days when crowds would gather at arenas to watch gladiatorial combat, cheering as men battled to the death. Mother Farrow claimed the brother became a champion fighter, the most ferocious, the most cunning, of thousands. She told me this with pride, smacking her tongue against toothless old gums.
Looking down at the dog, contemplating my own situation, I reasoned myself a sort of gladiator: imprisoned, ripped from my home to be thrown into a slapdash arena with no choice but to fight to the death. There was no reason to feel guilty about what I had done. Did the gladiator wonder what became of the subjects of his triumph? He did not. That brother, I was sure, had killed countless wild animals. He’d killed men. His only thought his own survival, the brief burst of his victory, no matter its price.
MY SPOILS INCREASED. There passed a stream of weeks of orchestrated killings. Days of dodging bites and blows that brought me to exhaustion, a repetition that stripped me of any lingering sympathy toward the animals I killed. And with each death, these beasts renewed me: I absorbed their will to live, their instinct to fight. They reminded me an outside world existed, a world to which I was determined to return.
In my readings as a child, I’d been enamored by the Greco-Roman god Charon, the ferryman who ushered souls across the river that divided the land of the living from that of the dead. I’d seen him as an ancient compatriot, the god in whose image I’d been made. To pay Charon for passage from one harbor to the next, coins were placed upon the eyes of corpses, hidden under their tongues. I saw each animal I met as my own payment to old Charon, who would surely love a life force more than coin, and might ferry me from this living death to the realm of life outside. It was, I knew, when I let myself think back to who I’d been before my capture, a weak justification for my actions. But in my collusion with death I’d had my first true taste of agency, of power. I’d discovered that I liked it.
There was a moment before the final moment—as each animal looked at me, aware that it was breathing its last breath—that felt like being known for who I truly was. A me that I had always been, but hidden. A fire that I had refused to acknowledge was slowly being stoked, a hunger that I’d long tried to ignore could not be sated.
Toymaker and Child
In his new home, this soaring elder, Peter has much time to reflect. He can sense the tree’s disdain for its visitor: unlike its roots’ fungi, whose fibers suck nutrients but offer protection in return, Peter’s presence offers no advantage. Out, the tree whispers in a tongue not known to man, though Peter feels its fibers fighting against him. A new verse to add to the song of its desire: More light. Taller. Wider. Out. The elder feels each tear in the fabric of its trunk and tries to heal the fissures, pressing Peter tighter, forcing him to contort his body, knocking his glasses, which Helen had rescued from the forest floor, out of his reach.
In a way, Peter thinks, this penitentiary is an honor. He remembers the great wizard Merlin trapped in his own ancient oak tree, and for a moment feels his chest swell with pride. What would his colleagues say, those venerated academics that had doubted the fusion of folklore and science, if they saw him here now? He’d always believed he was destined for greatness, for discovery. Peter had dreamed—
His shoulders sag, unable to continue the pretense. He cannot lie to himself any longer. This is penance.
Above him, around him, the elder dreams of soil. Dreams of glassy, glinting snow. Dreams of its own greatness—taller, wider, more light. It knows nothing of self-sabotage, regret, or restitution.
Peter knows that his behaviors warrant this punishment. Stuck here alone, Peter has no escape from the accusations flung at him by the stranger his daughter has become. Her words reverberate, sticking to the walls of his mind, rankling. What more suitable fate for a man who has tried to own a body—for now Peter acknowledges the tests, the rules he imposed on his daughter, as such—than the confinement of his own? This is the natural conclusion of his studies, a clever response from the forest and the women that it breeds, the women who have taken his daughter. He wonders what they have done to her.
He has a sudden vision of Maisie as a young girl—how she’d tug at his hand, those gardening gloves floppy around her tiny wrists, and lead him to an object of her childhood fascination: a tree with a twisted trunk, a squirrel without a tail, an old arrowhead. She’d looked up at him with such innocence, such trust. She’d been so helpless, unaware of her burgeoning power. She had needed him. And what had he seen when he looked at her? What had Peter needed? A testing site? A key?
If she ever returns to the clearing, what Maisie has become will look at him with her strange, altered eyes; her girlhood gone, and with it all small wonders. Whatever Maisie had been, what she might have been, Peter believes he has ruined. He presses his forehead against the wall of wood and cries for all that they have lost.
23
I made my offerings—a whining chipmunk, a house cat with a large, puffed tail, a little lamb. I ate all that Coulton offered me to regain my strength. I paced my small room, planning, preparing for whatever might come next, hoping for some chance at escape.
I guessed it had been three weeks since my encounter with the first beast, and I’d just finished battling a monstrous red fox. The thing was evil, vicious as a bull shark, its skinny body scurrying and scratching until I finally touched the white tip of its tail. Coulton had shuffled into my compartment to remove the body. Once he’d bagged the fox, he nodded his usual, silent goodbye, and I thought myself alone for the evening.
But on this particular night, the door opened shortly after Coulton had left. I sat straight up from my cot, body tense, to see Rafe in the doorframe. I’d given up on him weeks ago, yet there he was in front of me, dressed in his white jumpsuit, fully covered but for his face, which grinned rakishly, charming as ever. His audacity infuriated me.
“May I?” Rafe asked me, hand extended toward my blankets. Like an animal I recoiled from him instinctively. “Maisie,” Rafe said.
At first I thought to freeze him out, refuse to look his way, ignore what explanation he provided. But my current situation was unchanging. Perhaps I could use this encounter to my advantage. I turned around.
“What do you want?” I said softly.
A smile played carefully across his lips. “I know that you’re angry with me.”
I blinked at him.