Wildwood Whispers

by Willa Reece

  Twenty-Five

  I fell asleep with the glass orb in my hands. No one was there to see me try to privately sense the vibe of the man who had bought it. But when I woke to the sound of pounding on the cabin’s back door, the orb fell to the rug and rolled several feet before it came to a stop like an embarrassing accusation in the middle of the floor. I could only be glad the carpet had cushioned its impact for several seconds before the pounding that had woken me resumed.

  Charm was nowhere to be seen. He often disappeared. I never knew if he was traveling unseen behind the walls or under the floor or if he truly blinked out of existence to traverse some fairy pathways I couldn’t imagine.

  There was only me to answer the door so I walked softly, barefooted and clothed in only a summer-weight nightgown because I’d yet to shop for autumn clothes. But I didn’t open the door until I’d peeked through the curtained window at the back of the house. The yard was empty under the stars. The forest was dark. And there was a Sect woman on my back porch.

  I was afraid, but I wasn’t nearly as afraid as she was. She was weeping. I was close enough to hear her through the door now and her sobs were horrible because they were gut wrenching but also so, so quiet, as if she knew better than to voice her pain.

  When I opened the door, she fell back as if she regretted knocking. But she didn’t run away, although she looked like she desperately wanted to. She was crying and panting and I suspected she’d run all the way here from the other side of the mountain. Her kerchief was missing. Her hair was a wild tangle around her face and her cheeks were smeared with dirt and tears.

  Like the Sect women I’d seen in town, she was pregnant. Very pregnant. If Granny had been giving Sect women the same pills she’d been giving Violet Morgan, none had been dispensed to this particular Sect woman in time.

  “Come in. Let me help you,” I said. “Are you in labor?”

  “No. No. Not yet. Soon. Very soon I think,” the woman gasped. She allowed me to put my arm around her and lead her into the house. I helped her lower herself down onto Charm’s armchair and I covered her with an afghan throw I’d washed by hand and dried in the sun. She gripped the soft crochet to her chest and huddled under it as if she wished she could disappear. Something her large belly wouldn’t allow her to do even if the throw had been twice as large.

  “I’ll put the kettle on,” I said. There were soothing things I could brew for her that wouldn’t harm the baby. There were things I wouldn’t brew for her now that might have helped if she’d come to me months ago. She was too far along for those.

  While I waited for the water to boil, I fetched clean washcloths and a towel from the hall closet. I filled a dishpan with hot, sudsy water and took it to her. I didn’t ask permission to wash her legs and arms and face. I did it because it needed to be done. She calmed while I washed. This was a caring language between two people that anyone could understand, but especially between two women. I washed the dirt away and in doing so I helped her gather her courage and dry her tears.

  “I can’t have this baby in that place. I thought I could, but I won’t. They can’t make me. I’d rather die,” she said. Her breathing had slowed. Her words carried the weight of conviction in every syllable. I knew this girl. I knew her because I knew myself.

  The kettle whistled and I went to pour the water into a waiting cup. Nothing but wild spearmint leaves for now. I wanted to revive her enough for us to decide what to do. If the Sect came after her, the only weapon I had in the cabin was the old Louisville Slugger I’d borrowed from Granny’s umbrella stand.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Lorelei.”

  Her calmer voice sounded even younger than she looked. She drained the cup down to the dregs. I didn’t look at the leaves. I didn’t believe in divination. I never would. The future couldn’t be foretold because our actions had to influence every second of every day. It was changeable. I had to believe that. Or my future would seem as hopeless as my past.

  “There used to be a woman who lived here. I’ve heard the whispers. About women who pretended they’d lost their babies, but the babies lived and were sent away. For a better life. Off the mountain,” she said.

  “Life isn’t perfect off the mountain,” I said.

  “Anywhere away from Reverend Moon is better,” Lorelei said. It sounded like she might start crying again.

  “So you ran away,” I guessed. She didn’t have a bag or even a coat. I’d been lucky to have those things when I’d run. I’d been lucky to not have to run alone.

  “I couldn’t make it all the way to town. And someone I know came here today. Saw the cabin wasn’t empty anymore,” Lorelei said. But then she froze. She’d calmed enough to notice her surroundings. Her hand grew suddenly slack and the cup fell from her fingers. I followed the direction of her attention. Her eyes were riveted on the photographs on the table. “One of them,” she said. She stood so fast I fell back. The cup dropped off the afghan. Unlike the sphere, it hit bare floor to the side of the carpet and shattered.

  “Who? That’s Tom and Lu. One of who?” I stood, being careful to avoid the bits and pieces of broken cup, but Lorelei had already backed away from my outstretched hands.

  “Them,” she said, all calm lost. Tears were streaming down the face I’d washed clean.

  “No one will hurt you here, Lorelei. I won’t let them,” I said. Some of the bruises I’d seen made me reluctant to restrain her. By the time I thought I’d better grab her, she had already rushed to the back door and opened it. “Wait. Rest here at least until morning. Don’t go back into the woods at night.”

  Her arm slipped through my fingers and she ran surprisingly light-footed and quick. The pale blue of her dress was ghostly in the moonlight and soon disappeared in the thick growth of trees. I didn’t think. I didn’t even pause to shut the door. I ran after her. Without a flashlight. I ran into the mysterious, sentient wildwood even Granny said no one would ever understand.

  The daytime forest can be shadowed and deep. When you’re used to city streets, the tangle of tree and vine and the thick obfuscation of leaves can seem impossibly strange to navigate. Even in daylight, wilderness is changeable. A path can become a quagmire after a sudden rain or a dead end after a wind-felled tree—even worse is the off-path snarl of undergrowth and untamed branches.

  But the nighttime forest is another world entirely. My worn path was surrounded by a cool velvet mystery, hazy and indistinct in the darkness. I jogged after the pregnant woman, my way illuminated only by starlight and a half-eaten moon winking between clouds, until the soft blackness my eyes could barely penetrate was ripped by the intrusion of sharp branches.

  Lorelei had left the path. I followed. I could hear her for a while, crashing through the same growth that had me in its grip. My legs and arms were caught by briar and bramble with every step. My face was wet. It was either frustration or blood, I couldn’t tell. There was definitely the sting of scratches on my cheeks and hands.

  “Stop. Just stop. You’re hurting yourself. Don’t move,” Jacob ordered. I froze because he’d startled me and then because he was right. He came out of nowhere like he always did. But of course it was more of an entrance in the middle of the blackest night. I barely saw a flash of eye and teeth. The rest of him was shadow, moving shadow, graceful shadow, but only shadow all the same.

  “There was a Sect girl. I was trying to help her, but she ran away,” I explained.

  “So you followed her because two people lost in the wildwood at midnight are better than one,” Jacob said.

  “I’m not lost. I’m stuck. Two different things,” I said. Jacob was shadowing around my legs and ankles now, pulling vines away from my skin, and I was acutely aware of my ridiculous nightgown and bare feet.

  “I didn’t have time to stop for shoes,” I said. It might have been stupid, but even now if I could have seen well enough to pursue Lorelei I would have continued after her, bare feet and all. She was in trouble. The kind of trou
ble I could feel in the shiver of empathetic horror down my spine.

  “I think I’ve gotten you free from the briars. I’m going to pick you up. Because I’m wearing boots. And you could seriously damage your feet in the dark out here. Best-case scenario, a rock slices your sole. Worst case, you step on a copperhead. It hasn’t gotten cold enough to discount that possibility yet.” Jacob had already scooped me up. So easily. Too easily. I didn’t have time to come up with a sane argument as to why I should walk back under my own power even with no shoes and scratched all to pieces. Because being cradled in his arms felt too safe, too sane, and I couldn’t process those two feelings at the same time. Maybe because I’d never felt that way before.

  “You must be hurt or tired or both,” Jacob said. “I was braced for a fist or a fuck-you.” There was laughter in his voice. In the pitch black, against my wild hair, I could feel the vibration of a chuckle he didn’t quite allow to escape.

  As soon as his boots hit the grass of the backyard, I wrenched myself down. I used too much force considering he easily let me go. I ended up stumbling forward like an awkward, half-naked zombie girl. I slowed my galumph on the porch and opened the door. I didn’t slam it in his face, although I was tempted. The light of the living room lamps illuminated him in the open door. He wasn’t exactly smiling, but his mouth was quirked.

  The light also revealed that Jacob was scratched too. All along one side of his face.

  Had the graceful man who seemed perfectly a part of the wildwood and at ease among all its vegetation been scratched when he’d helped me escape from the briar patch? I hadn’t seen or felt it happen. He’d seemed perfectly calm and in control of every vine as he’d peeled it away from my skin. Even harder to believe that he’d run into a branch when he was coming to help me. I’d seen how he moved among the trees in daylight. Would he really be that awkward at night?

  Jacob came through the door and shut it behind him. He slid the bolt into place with a firm snick.

  “A Sect woman woke me up banging on the door. I let her in. She’s very pregnant; it looked like she could go into labor at any time,” I explained. “But something frightened her and she ran before I could do anything for her.”

  “That explains the nightgown and your bare feet,” Jacob said.

  I looked down at myself and wished I hadn’t. Besides the scratches, my feet were filthy. Streaks of dirt, moistened from the night’s damp, painted my legs and stained the edges of my gown. My thin gown.

  More than my teeth clicking together indicated I was cold.

  “You’re freezing. Let me help you,” Jacob said.

  He didn’t wait for me to reject his offer. He grabbed me by the hand and pulled me down the hall to the bathroom. He pressed my shoulder to urge me to sit on the toilet and I watched, shivering, while he turned on the hot water tap in the tub.

  I was completely out of my comfort zone. One of the reasons I liked being Granny’s apprentice was because, as the helper, I didn’t have to accept anyone tending me. I didn’t like feeling weak or needy. Never had. But I turned to place my legs over into the nearby tub when Jacob pointed.

  He took the washcloth he’d found under the bathroom sink and wet it in the now steaming water. I watched, mesmerized, as he took the lavender soap from its dish and worked it into a lather with the wet cloth.

  This was not even slightly okay.

  Jacob didn’t intend to be sensual. If anything, the expression on his face was exasperated concern—thin lips, furrowed forehead. But, as he washed and rinsed my feet and legs, everything changed. His lips softened. His brow eased. His eyebrows arched as if he found himself in the middle of a moment he hadn’t expected or planned.

  Like my pricked finger in his mouth.

  I reached for the washcloth exactly as he released it. He straightened and stepped back and his damp hand went to his hair to push it back from his face. In the bathroom light, the scratches looked angry and painful, but he had been worried about me. And somehow the flash of tattooed tree at his wrist said I should understand.

  “I’ll finish up,” I said, releasing him from the suddenly awkward ministrations. He nodded and left the bathroom and I finished with much rougher and efficient scrubbing. I rejected the urge to continue the gentle swipes my body had interpreted as caresses. Something about Jacob’s scratches was bothering me. If I ruled out the idea that he’d been as clumsy as I had been in the dark forest, then I had to accept they might have been caused by… fingernails?

  Jacob was standing near the woodstove when I came out of the bathroom. I ignored him as I went over to pick up the pieces of broken china on the floor. Or I tried to. I was still shaky and awkward. As I tossed the shattered cup in the trash, I managed to slice a finger. I bit my lip to keep from hissing and went to the sink to wash off my hand, quietly wrapping a paper towel to catch the blood. When I turned back around, Jacob was in the middle of the rug with the glass sphere in his hand.

  Suddenly, I remembered holding the sphere before the Sect woman came to the door. Trying to connect to whatever it was that Sadie had felt when she’d touched the glass. My cheeks heated and the rush of blood made the scratches tingle and sting again. I hid my embarrassment by shuffling through several drawers to find an old cookie tin full of first aid supplies I’d seen when I’d first moved in.

  “Why did she run away from you after you let her inside?” Jacob asked.

  I opened the first aid kit awkwardly with one hand and the crook of my opposite elbow. Jacob took pity on my one-handed operation when I tried to open the adhesive bandage I’d chosen. He walked over, placed the orb on the counter and reached to take the bandage from my good hand. With two hands, he easily ripped it open. I held my breath while he wound the bandage around my cut finger. We were practically holding hands while the poor Sect woman was out there, somewhere, frightened and alone.

  When he was finished, he stepped away, waiting expectantly for me to answer his question.

  “She was upset. I thought I’d calmed her down, but she freaked out again when she saw the photographs on the coffee table. I couldn’t stop her, so I followed her. She ran off the path. I got lost, and then tangled. That’s where you came in,” I said. “You must have seen or heard her too…”

  “No. I didn’t. You must have been much louder than she was. I only heard you,” Jacob said.

  “Those briars were painful,” I said to excuse what must have been excessive shouting. “Then again, your face looks worse than mine feels,” I said.

  Jacob raised his hand to the injury on his right cheek as if he hadn’t noticed the four wide scratches that welled with thickening blood. His eyes met mine, fast, and their usual mossy secrets had gone hard. There was no way his scratches had been made by briars. He knew that I knew it. I could see the scratches on my arms and legs. They were fine and thin and already drying.

  “Must have been a branch when I was rushing over to help you in the dark.” He slowly lowered his hand. I was alone in an isolated cabin with a man who had just lied to me. The knowledge made my chest tighten and a cool wash of adrenaline flow down my spine.

  “What were you doing in the forest at night?”

  It was a stupid question. Not because I didn’t need to know the answer, but because I needed to pretend I hadn’t noticed anything unusual about him being in the woods behind my cabin at midnight.

  “Ginseng poachers work at night sometimes. They’re easier to spot when headlamps give them away,” Jacob explained. His eyes had gone soft again. Scientist at work. Nothing to see here.

  I reached for the glass sphere and turned to hang it back above the kitchen window, using the move to cover my concern. Unfortunately, this time when I touched the sphere I felt a strange electric jolt run up my arm and then spread as an arc of barely perceptible energy throughout my entire body. I paused, but for only a second. It took every bit of subterfuge I’d learned as a kid to cover my reaction.

  Sadie couldn’t have felt such a strong shock ever
y time she touched the sphere. What if Jacob had transferred even more of his emotion and energy to the glass just now because he was feeling more tension than he should be if he was telling the truth?

  I turned from the sink to discover he had followed me into the kitchen area. He reached above my head to steady the globe that was spinning from the quickness of my move to hang it and get it out of my tingling hands.

  This close I could get an even better look at the scratches on his face. And I could very clearly imagine them being caused by a woman’s defensive hand.

  “You shouldn’t have opened your door to a stranger in the middle of the night.” Jacob’s face had softened. His eyes tracked over my face. Stupid to think I could completely hide my reaction to the globe from him.

  It was automatic to look up at him. As it must have been automatic for him to lean over me to speak. I could see the vivid scratches on his face. Could easily imagine how they got there. But as always there was a voice deep down inside whispering that I trusted him even if he had secrets he couldn’t share with me.

  “I’m not here to hide behind bolted doors. We’re supposed to help people. It’s what we do,” I said. My jaw was clenched. But I wasn’t angry. There was a tension in me I couldn’t identify. One that was uniquely tied to this man who was currently standing between me and the woman I needed to help.

  There were whispers telling me to stay near him. Or to get even nearer. But I’d listened to less trusting instincts too often in the past. And those instincts were more like a shout. I stepped forward and for a second experienced full-body contact with Jacob before he allowed himself to be pushed out of the way by my forward momentum.

  “Someone murdered Melody Ross. She’ll never be able to help anyone, ever again,” Jacob said to my back as I headed to the front door.