Wildwood Whispers

by Willa Reece

  Both forefingers pricked, deeply enough to drip blood on the ground.

  I had gone down a list of instructions in the book many times. This was no different. And yet, it was. When Jacob had pricked my thumb, he’d barely drawn blood. The “injury” had been quick and slight. The pain fleeting. It had been the feel of his hot mouth and lips that had sensitized the sting. Causing it to throb for hours if not days afterward.

  I knew from the sketches I needed to make the blackberry thorns penetrate my skin seriously this time. Just as sketches had helped me test the seal on the blackberry preserves and spoon off the blackened foam on the yeast. What was a recipe, really, if it wasn’t a perfected ritual written down for others to follow? A treasured remembrance to help others learn the way to go.

  This pricking was to be my promise to the wildwood.

  In blood on the ground.

  I reached for the nearest vine or it reached for me. Night had fallen. Pitch black surrounded the halo of light created by the flashlight’s beam. All I knew for sure was that the vine was closer than I expected. And a larger thorn than I’d seen before came easily to my searching fingers. Before I could pause or feel trepidation, I pressed my forefingers into the thorn, each in turn. Pressed hard until the thorn penetrated deep into my skin. The pain was sharper than I expected. I cried out softly and Charm hummed, a strange sort of trill that sounded like encouragement.

  I released the vine and held my hands high. My fingers throbbed and I watched as droplets, driven by my thudding heartbeat, seeped from the pricks to trail down and fall. Beat by beat, the drops splashed into the loose soil of the earth I’d cultivated all summer.

  There was a sigh as the silent night woke up in a soft, cool breeze against my face.

  Did the wind cause the forest to stir or did the stirring forest cause the wind? I didn’t know. But I suspected the latter as I spoke words in an ancient tongue I didn’t know myself. I recognized their meaning even though the language was strange. As the garden absorbed the blood I’d given to the ground, the wildwood returned my promise, using my own lips to utter a reciprocal pledge to me.

  “Buanaich.”

  Abide, continue, and persevere.

  “Maille ri.”

  Together.

  Only then did I feel the tears on my cheeks. Not from pain. There was hardly any pain at all. I cried because I’d accepted the connection. I’d felt an echo of this relationship in the way I’d loved Sarah. That echo had called me here, to this place, to this life.

  I would live in the wildwood and the wildwood would live in me. And together we would help Lorelei.

  Twenty-Eight

  My cell phone buzzed at 11:00 p.m. Granny was dozing on the couch after being watchful for hours. The veggie soup I’d taken from the fridge and reheated had amounted to two cups’ worth and I’d urged Granny to drink most of one of them while I sipped the other. At the sound of my phone, she sat up and narrowed her eyes as I answered. If she had been at the top of her game, she probably could have intuited what the call was about before I could relay the message.

  “Get the downstairs bedroom ready,” Sadie said with no preamble. “Company’s coming.”

  Granny had already given me some spare furniture from the attic of her house in town. Just in case. At the time, I’d been happy to fill the empty room. Now, I knew why it might be needed. I’d set up the lower bedroom with an old single sleigh bed and a waterfall dresser with a wavy mirror that had seen better days. With pillows and bedclothes borrowed from Joyce, the bedroom was as ready as I could have made it for Granny or for anyone else.

  “Sadie says company’s coming. To have the bedroom ready,” I said after I’d thanked Sadie and disconnected the call.

  “Well, she could have told us something we didn’t know,” Granny grumbled, but all the watchful energy I’d seen in her the last few hours had gone. The near nap had rejuvenated her. She sat calmly as if she had settled into the idea of whatever was going to happen.

  Neither of us jumped when a thud came at the back door. I stood from the armchair and went to answer it, glad the wait was over. Granny did jump up from the couch when a baby’s cry sounded at the exact moment I slid back the lock and opened the door.

  “Lorelei,” I gasped, but I couldn’t say much more because the tattered figure had been leaning against the closed door. When it swung open, she fell forward, kept from hitting the floor only by me. I caught her with my whole body, grabbing her upper arms and cushioning the tiny bundle in her arms with my breasts. There was blood. So much fresh blood. It transferred from her and her bundle to me, smearing across my shirt.

  “Let’s get her inside,” Granny ordered. “Lorelei, we’re going to lay you down on a nice, warm bed. Don’t worry. We’re going to help you.”

  “Everything’s going to be all right,” I added. But my voice shook and I was trying to convince myself as much as the new mother. Beneath the blood, Lorelei’s face was paper white and her hair a damp tangle. Her clothes weren’t only stained with blood. They were also dirty and torn.

  “Good girl. You used your skirt to wrap the baby. The crying is good, honey. Strong lungs. Clear airway. You’ve done real good,” Granny crooned. She wrapped her arm around both the mother and the child on the opposite side and together we walked Lorelei into the bedroom. She couldn’t walk quickly and I could feel shivers wracking her frame. The part of her skirt she’d ripped to make a blanket for the newborn had left her legs bare all the way to her hips.

  I rushed forward and swept back the quilts, but I left the top sheet spread. Between the two layer of sheets and the mattress cover, the mattress would be protected.

  “Go and bring back a stack of clean towels and my basket of supplies. And turn the hot water on in the sink when you pass,” Granny ordered. The bathroom was directly across from the bedroom. Close enough that I would be able to clean Lorelei and the baby up comfortably while Granny assessed their conditions.

  By the time I came back to the bedroom with the towels, Granny had rolled up her sleeves and washed her hands and forearms. I followed her example after I set the towels within her reach.

  “Lorelei, I’m going to take a look below and make sure you’ve passed everything that needs to be passed. Then, we’re going to wash you up and I’ll pad you. Okay? I’ve done this many a time for women on this mountain and it looks like you handled most everything on your own,” Granny explained.

  “I bit the cord,” Lorelei said. I had wet a towel while Granny examined and washed Lorelei “down below.” I used my towel to gently wash her face. I’d never been present at a birth or closely after a birth before. My hands were shaking and my own face was wet. I’d always considered myself badass, but I’d never known anyone as badass as Lorelei.

  “You did right. You did right,” Granny said. She’d finished washing up Lorelei’s thighs and legs. She urged her to lift her hips and she placed a double layer of towels under her bottom before placing a padding made of rolled bandages between her legs. “There now. Clean and dry.”

  I took all the soiled towels into the bathroom and washed and rinsed them before putting them in the hamper for a later laundering. Granny followed me to wash her hands again. We both would need to change our clothes when we finished.

  “I’m going to check the baby now. Do you have a shirt or a nightgown that buttons in the front so Lorelei can attempt to feed the baby? She’s had a shock. The warmer we can keep her, the better,” Granny said.

  I ran upstairs to my bedroom to fetch a flannel pajama top that had been Sarah’s. I’d kept it even though it was too small for me. With its long sleeves and soft material, it would be perfect. I also brought back a soft fleece throw, which would be better for the baby than a ripped piece of bloody cotton.

  “A girl, and a perfect one at that,” Granny said. “Ten fingers. Ten toes. Healthy lungs. You did well, mother. You did well.”

  Granny had washed the baby off and disinfected and clipped the cord that Lorelei had
desperately bitten. The newborn kicked and cried on a towel at the foot of the bed while her mother looked down at her from her propped cushion of pillows.

  “I knew she was a girl. I dreamed about her. She told me to run away,” Lorelei said. I came to her with the pajama top and helped her shrug into it. Her shivers had stopped, but the flannel would help her even more.

  “It’s time to feed her,” Granny said. “She needs to be skin to skin with her mother.”

  Granny nodded to me and my throat closed tight and hot around a bubbling up of emotions I’d never experienced before. My arms refused to respond. I was stuck in place.

  “Pick her up and place her on her mother’s chest,” Granny instructed. “Nothing to it.”

  Of course, there was everything to it. I’d never touched a newborn baby. I’d definitely never placed one on its mother’s breast. Such a simple thing. Such a simply awesome thing. I couldn’t move.

  “You know, there’s nothing more qualifying than two willing hands. Lots to learn in this life. For sure. Lots to learn. But all you need to start is willing hands and a loving heart. Don’t scoff. I’m getting to know you. All piss and vinegar. Skin three feet thick. But you’ve got the hands and heart. You just haven’t learned to trust yourself with them yet,” Granny said.

  The wildwood was in me and I was in the wildwood. Rooted, strengthened, a part of the cycle.

  She leaned over and picked up the softly crying infant herself and all the air I didn’t know I was holding whooshed out of me. But before I could feel deflated, Granny placed the squirming baby in my hands. Instinctively, I brought her close to my chest. She snuggled in looking for nourishment and her need sent me hurrying to the bedside even as tears burned behind my eyes.

  “My baby girl,” Lorelei said. “My baby girl.”

  I awkwardly leaned and transferred the baby from my hands to her mother’s chest. Granny had followed me so it was her wrinkled, experienced hands that helped Lorelei position the baby’s mouth to suckle. Crying made way for eager snuffling sounds as the baby began to drink.

  “You did the right thing, Lorelei. That baby did not steer you wrong,” Granny said. “Never ignore your dreams.” She reached and pulled the pajama top closed around the back of the baby to keep out drafts from the room. We both pulled the quilts over Lorelei’s legs.

  Only then did I remember that Lorelei was a young runaway hiding from a man with very powerful friends in town.

  Granny brewed an herbal tisane for Lorelei to help her uterus contract and to help her milk come in. Right now, she said, the baby would be getting the rich yellow colostrum a mother’s body produced in the weeks prior to childbirth. But the steaming hot cup of steeped herbs would help in the production of nutrient-rich breast milk.

  “What if there’s a problem? Doesn’t she need medical attention?” I whispered in the kitchen.

  “Women used to always do this at home. Especially on this mountain. I doubt Lorelei would have been taken to a hospital if she’d gone into labor at the settlement,” Granny said. “But I’d prefer to have her checked out. Just to be sure. It isn’t safe to have her on the road tonight. Especially not when they’re looking for her. We’ll have to talk to the others. See what favors we can call in to get her down to Charlottesville or even Richmond.”

  “You’ve done this before,” I guessed. “You’ve helped Sect women escape.”

  Granny settled into the armchair. She looked tired and about fifty years older than she’d looked at the beginning of the evening. “It’s harder to get the women out. The babies are easier. They can blame miscarriage. Or even hide their pregnancy altogether. You’d be surprised how many of the Sect women know nothing about how their own bodies work. There aren’t very many older Sect women. They have a life expectancy closer to women who lived in earlier times. Poor health care. Multiple pregnancies. Bad nutrition and abusive living conditions. Lorelei was very smart to escape.”

  We’d washed up and changed our clothes, but I was suddenly reminded of Melody Ross’s bloody nightgown. The one she’d been wearing when Sarah had found her hanging in the black locust tree.

  The blood hadn’t been hers.

  And it had been very like the blood that had stained Granny’s dress and my shirt and jeans tonight.

  “Melody helped a Sect woman deliver a baby the night she was killed,” I said softly.

  “Never ignore your dreams.”

  “Melody stood against Reverend Moon and unlike the rest of us she made no secret of it,” Granny said. “We had no proof that he killed her. How could we? The sheriff is in Hartwell’s pocket and Hartwell stands with Moon.”

  The remedy book was on the counter. Granny hadn’t needed to refer to it. She’d had the tisane already made up in one of her pockets, but I had flipped to the page so I could read through the recipe. One day I might need to make it myself. Hands. Heart. I had those things. And, more importantly, I was finding myself more and more drawn to using them. To help. It was a simple drive. One I’d always had. With Granny, in Morgan’s Gap, with the help of the wildwood garden, I’d recognized that drive.

  When I’d held the newborn girl my small contributions to her warmth and safety had felt significant. Small mattered. I still grieved, but putting myself to work had softened my loss. The dreams had brought me closer to understanding Sarah and Melody. But they had also brought me closer to understanding myself.

  “Maybe Melody revealed her killer to us in other ways,” I said. I paged through the remedy book pointing to all the drawings of hearts and moons. “Mixed in with the other doodles and notes, the hearts and moons don’t stand out. But, if you look at all the hearts and moons throughout the book at the same time, you can tell they’ve all been drawn in charcoal pencil by the same hand,” I said. “Melody knew she’d been too bold against Moon. She was in trouble. And this was her way of passing on a silent warning to her daughter.”

  “But whoever killed her that night ripped the book to pieces,” Granny said. “It took me years to repair it. Sarah never saw it again after that morning.”

  “You sent her away. To keep her safe. But they found her. They didn’t give up looking and they found her,” I said. I moved around the counter to perch on the arm of the sofa across from the woman who had tried to save my friend.

  “They found you,” Granny said. “And I had sent Sarah to you. I didn’t want her to be alone after she’d lost her mother. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  I was glad I had already lowered myself to sit. Granny suddenly looked ancient, as if keeping all the secrets she’d kept for so long had sucked the living right out of her. She was more of a mummy than a wisewoman in that moment and I wasn’t prepared to hear what she was about to utter from her dry, parched lips.

  “You were born here. On this mountain. In this house. Melody delivered you. She was pregnant at the time herself. And the first breaths you took, you took against her belly, separated from Sarah by only her mother’s body,” Granny said. “I was here. I often came to help in those days when I was spry. And I’m the one who carried you down the mountain a week later, through the woods in a sling on my back. Your mother went back to the settlement. She claimed she’d miscarried. But, of course, your remains were never found.”

  “But Sarah was older than me. By a year,” I argued.

  “I changed your birth date. It was easy enough to do in those days when a hospital wasn’t involved in your birth,” Granny explained. “There are plenty of people who have left the mountain for work in the city. Folks who sign off on the papers we need when we need them. You were the older, more experienced sister Sarah needed when I had to send her away.”

  “How did you find me when you decided Sarah had to be sent away?” I asked. “You couldn’t have kept track of all the Sect women and babies you helped.”

  “We wrote nothing down in any way that someone else would understand. I keep my own recipes and remedies. I added a note or a doodle here and there to help me remember. Ever
y single birth. Every baby. As we all did. All the wisewomen on the mountain who refused to look the other way,” Granny said. “But I wasn’t as careful as I should have been before Melody’s murder. There were hospital visits. Too many people involved who might have been open to bribes. It wasn’t until Melody’s murder that I imagined the Sect babies might still be in danger even after we helped them leave the mountain. I hadn’t realized how far Moon would go to keep control and keep his world hidden from outsiders. He has eyes everywhere. Fanatic believers willing to do anything for a man they think is the mouth of God.” She had clasped her hands in her lap and she worried her fingers together as if her fingers were rosary beads and she was saying an unspoken prayer she’d said many times before.

  I had a mother. One who loved me enough to want to save me. From Reverend Moon and the horrible life a girl would have growing up shadowed by his perverse beliefs. She’d risked her life in the same way Lorelei had risked hers. Had she been as young? As vulnerable? As abused? What kind of life had she returned to after she’d sent me away? I’d never allowed myself the luxury of thinking about my birth parents. To survive, I’d had to focus on the present not the past. Even more so when Sarah had come into my life.

  I’d been born on the mountain. In the wildwood. My blood knew it. My heart knew it. And now my brain struggled to accept the truth—Sarah hadn’t bequeathed special abilities to me. There was every possibility that I had Ross ancestors of my own.

  “We’ll need to call Sadie. Tell her what’s happened here tonight. She and Joyce and Kara will tell the others. Together, we can decide what to do to help Lorelei. I don’t think it would be safe for her to go back. The way she talks, she was openly rebellious. And she’s been away too long. Moon involved the whole town and he’ll want to make an example of her,” Granny said.