The Forest of Hands and Teeth

by Carrie Ryan

  The sickness that cut through my generation only made new children more important. And with so few of us of marrying age the past few seasons it is what I have grown up expecting. That one day this fall someone like Harry would ask for me. Or that one of the other boys my age would take an interest. I have hoped that one day I could claim such a love for a man as my mother, who was willing to go into the Forest of Hands and Teeth after her Unconsecrated husband.

  Of course, Jed could choose to take me in and wait to see if someone speaks for me next year, give the rest of the families in town some time to get over the fact that both of my parents are now Unconsecrated. That our family has been touched by unending death. But it's clear that this is a choice he is unwilling to make.

  “There is still time,” I say. I can hear the hint of desperation in my voice, my need for him to take me in now that we are all that is left.

  “You belong with the Sisters,” he says, his voice devoid of emotion. “Good luck.” The pressure of his fingers on my arms pushes me away from the entrance to his home. Looking into his eyes, I think he actually does wish me luck.

  “And Beth?” I ask, seeking any excuse to remain with my brother for a moment longer. Hoping to rekindle the friendship we shared just a few weeks ago, have shared our entire lives.

  I watch as muscles ripple along his jaw, as his hand clenches on the doorframe. “She lost the child,” he says. He steps back into the house, the darkness inside cloaking his expression. “It was a boy,” he adds as he swings the door shut.

  I step forward, ready to push my way in. But then I hear the lock click and I pause, my hand reaching at the air. I want to grab him and hold him and mourn with him. I would have been an aunt, I think as I let my hand press against the warmth of the wooden door. I want to yell at Jed that I hurt too and that I am sorry and that I need him.

  But then I realize that he has his new family to mourn with. That somehow I'm no longer enough to comfort him. I'm only a reminder of our parents' deaths. I flex my fingers against the door, my nails digging into the wood, realizing just how fully alone I am.

  Struggling to keep my throat from burning, I let my hand drop and turn my back on the only home I have ever known. I look out at the familiar houses across the way. The vibrant summer gardens crumbling into dirt patches where three little girls hold hands and spin in circles, chanting out a rhyme. I know I should return to the Cathedral but I also know that once I join the Sisters my life will revolve around studying the Scripture and I will have little time for my own whims and desires. And so instead, I walk away from the cluster of small houses and skirt the edges of the fields, now harvested and prepared for winter, and I begin to climb the hill that hovers at the sunrise edge of our village.

  As a child growing up, I learned in my lessons from the Sisters that just before the Return They—who They were is long forgotten—knew what was coming. They knew that something had gone horribly wrong and that it was only a matter of time before the Unconsecrated swarmed everywhere.

  They still thought They could contain it. And so, even as the Unconsecrated infected the living and the pressure of the Return began to build, They were busy constructing fences. Infinitely long fences. Whether the fences were to keep the Unconsecrated out or the living in we no longer know. But the end result was our village, an enclave of hundreds of survivors in the middle of a vast Forest of Unconsecrated.

  There are various theories as to how our village came into existence in the middle of this Forest. The Cathedral and some of the other buildings clearly predate the Return and some people suggest that They carved this place out as a sanctuary. Others claim that we are a chosen people and that our ancestors were the best of their time and were sent here to survive. Who we are and why we are here has been lost to history, lost because our ancestors were too busy trying to survive to remember and pass on what they knew. What little remnants we once had—like my mother's picture of my many-greats-grandmother standing in the ocean—were destroyed in the fire when I was a child.

  We know of nothing beyond our village except the Forest, and nothing beyond the Forest at all.

  But at least They were smart enough to leave a stockpile of fencing material behind after They finished creating our little world. And so, after the village established itself, it began to beat back the Forest and expand. Little by little my ancestors hacked away pieces of the Forest and claimed it as their own, pushing the fence line until there was nothing left to build with.

  This hill was part of the last big push, the last big enclosure. Our ancestors felt it was important to have the high ground so that we could keep watch over the Forest. For a while there was a lookout tower at the top of the hill but now it has fallen into disrepair and is never used. But that doesn't stop me from climbing it so that for one last time before I go to the Sisters, I am at the highest point in our gated existence.

  I look out at the world below. To my right the fields stretch into the distance, dotted here and there with cows and sheep that have been turned out from the barns clustered at the farthest edge of the fence line. It doesn't matter if they stray toward the Forest— like all animals except humans, they cannot be infected by the Unconsecrated.

  To my left is the village itself. From up here the houses are even smaller, the Cathedral a hulking shape that dominates the sunset boundary, its graveyard all that stands between the large stone building and the fences lining the Forest. From here I can see the way the Cathedral has grown awkwardly, wings sprouting off the central sanctuary at strange angles.

  At the foot of the hill, on the side opposite the village, is a gate that leads to a path stretching deep into the Forest, a scar that runs through the trees. Though that path, and the mirror path that leads from the Cathedral side of the village, are also lined with fences, they are both forbidden by the Sisters and Guardians.

  The paths are useless strips of land covered in brambles, bushes and weeds. The gates blocking them have remained shut my entire life.

  No one remembers where the paths go. Some say they are there as escape routes, others say they are there so that we can travel deep into the Forest for wood. We only know that one points to the rising sun and the other to the setting sun. I am sure our ancestors knew where the paths led, but, just like almost everything else about the world before the Return, that knowledge has been lost.

  We are our own memory-keepers and we have failed ourselves. It is like that game we played in school as children. Sitting in a circle, one student whispers a phrase into another student's ear and the phrase is passed around until the last student in the circle repeats what she hears, only to find out it is nothing like what it is supposed to be.

  That is our life now.

  It is late afternoon by the time I climb down from the tower and walk back to the Cathedral. The Sisters have been expecting me.

  “So you have chosen to become one of us?” the eldest, Sister Tabitha, asks me. She stands facing me in front of the altar, flanked by two middle-aged Sisters.

  “I have no other choices,” I tell her, because it is the truth.

  She inhales sharply and I can see her lips tighten into a single line. She turns abruptly and walks through a door hidden behind a curtain near the pulpit. “Follow,” she tells, not asks me, and I do, the other two Sisters trailing be hind us.

  We wind along a hallway deeper into the Cathedral than I have ever been until we reach a large wooden door banded with metal. Sister Tabitha tugs the door open, picks up a candle from a table inside and leads us down a steep winding stone stairway. The air becomes colder, damper, and when we reach the bottom we are in a cavernous room that contains row upon row of empty shelves.

  But we don't stop. We cross the room and pause in a shadowy corner. I tell myself that I have nothing to fear in this strange place. That the Sisterhood has always protected the people of the village. And yet I cannot stop the chill that overtakes my body and seeps into my bones.

  Sister Tabitha pulls aside a curtain
, revealing a locked door. She pulls a key from a chain around her neck, opens the door and urges me forward. I follow her down another hallway—this one more like a tunnel, with stone walls and a dirt floor and a ceiling held up by thick wooden beams. More racks line the walls and every now and then I see a dusty bottle cradled in the shelves.

  “Did you know that long, long ago, centuries before the Return, this building used to belong to a plantation? Used to house a winery?” Sister Tabitha asks as we walk, our steps echoing around us. The flame of her candle flickers and she does not bother to wait for an answer because she knows we never learned about this in school.

  “What is now the Forest just outside our village used to be fields of grapes. For as far as the eye can see. Guardians tell us that they still encounter remnants of the vineyard, that they still find grapevines smothering the fences.”

  The tunnel curves to the left a bit. Every now and again we pass a door embedded in the stone. The wood is warped and scarred, with thick bolts driven into the walls. I pause by one, wanting to ask what lies beyond it, but I am thrust forward by the Sisters trailing behind me. I wonder why this history—the vineyard and this tunnel—has been kept a secret and why Sister Tabitha has chosen this moment to tell me.

  “They used to store the wine for fermentation under our Cathedral, but this is not where it was made,” Sister Tabitha continues. We finally reach a dead end and a set of wooden steps forced into the dirt and leading upward, and Sister Tabitha stops, turns toward me. I look behind her at a wooden door set in the ceiling at the top of the stairs.

  “The wine was made elsewhere,” she says, commanding my focus back on her. “They had to stomp on the grapes, which is messy and attracts bugs, and so they had a separate well house for that. They used this tunnel to transport and store their reserves. Eventually, when the soil failed, the winery was abandoned. The old wooden well house fell apart and collapsed. But the winery itself, our Cathedral, remained standing because it was made of stone.”

  Sister Tabitha climbs the stairs slowly, her body hunching as she nears the door in the ceiling. She uses three keys to unlock it and then comes back down, leaving it closed. “This is where the well house once stood,” she tells me, pushing me up the steps so that I almost trip. I crouch, my back against the rough wood door above me, its metal bands digging into my skin. I have known the Sisters to be stern before, doling out physical punishment when necessary during our lessons. But I've never known them like this, rough and distant and frightening.

  “Open it, Mary,” Sister Tabitha says. Her voice is terrifying with its low pitch and ominous tone and I realize that I have no other choice. I heave my body against the heavy wood until the door flips open, swinging wide and falling to the ground outside with a thump that rumbles around us.

  From behind I feel Sister Tabitha pushing against my legs so that I will lose my balance unless I climb through the opening, out of our little tunnel. I straighten and stretch, seeming to rise out of the ground, and then I feel a shove against my back. Suddenly I'm on my hands and knees in the fresh air, pine needles digging into my palms. I hear birds, I feel dry grass under my bare toes and I'm disoriented—confused— until the first moan begins. The sound falls and swells inside me—too close, too loud, too dangerously near.

  Instinctively I jump up and then crouch, my hands out in front of me. Ready to defend myself. I spin left and right, my surroundings passing in a blur. Frantically I turn back toward the hole I climbed out of, back to the safety of the underground tunnel, but Sister Tabitha is blocking my way.

  “What are you doing to me?” I shout. My voice is harsh and scratchy with fear, my words almost choking me as I gulp for air. I grope along the ground, searching with my fingers for a stick or a weapon or anything as the moans get louder, and then I hear a familiar clank. It is the sound of the Unconsecrated pulling at the fence.

  Looking around, I realize that I have come up in a small clearing far away from the village that is protected by a ring of fence twice as tall as I am. The Unconsecrated are beginning to swarm around me. Two steps in any direction and they could reach me through the metal links. Blood hammers through my body, panic clouding my vision, making my hands shake and pound with the rhythm of my heart.

  I try to look everywhere at once. And then Sister Tabitha stretches out her hand, a finger slipping out of her black tunic, to point past me toward the trees. I had not seen the gate but it is there—the same complicated set of gates that is used in the village when someone is damned into the Forest. All Sister Tabitha has to do is pull a rope that lies on the ground by her hand. The gate will open, she and the other Sisters will slip back down into their secret passage and I will be alone to face the Unconsecrated.

  “What are you doing?” I try to scream but my voice is too weak, too breathy. “Why are you doing this to me?” I hiccup as I try to draw in air. The Unconsecrated are so close. Everywhere I turn they are desperate for me, writhing against the fence.

  Tears pour from my eyes, drip from my chin. “Please,” I whisper, slipping back to my hands and knees, crawling toward Sister Tabitha, grasping at her black tunic. “Please don't leave me here.” I am like a child begging her mother.

  “There is always a choice, Mary,” Sister Tabitha says to me, standing with her feet braced against the steps, the lower half of her body still concealed belowground. “It is what makes us human, what separates us from them.”

  I look into her face, try to find a way to make this end. Her cheeks are red from the crisp air and her own fervor. There are lines at the corners of her eyes like relics, as if she once knew how to smile long ago.

  My shoulders slump. I am kneeling before Sister Tabitha. I drop my head to my chest, despondent. There is nothing I can do.

  She places both her hands on my head. “It is important for you to know this, Mary,” she tells me. “You must understand the importance of this choice you are making to become one of us. The Sisterhood is not something to be entered into lightly.”

  I keep my eyes on the ground, staring at the dully colored fall leaves as I nod. My body shakes and I cannot control my jerking muscles. The Unconsecrated claw desperately at the fence all around me. They can smell me here.

  “I must hear you say it, Mary.” Her hands slip through my hair and all I can think about is my mother and the choice she made.

  “I choose to join the Sisterhood,” I tell her, desperate to get out of the clearing.

  “Good,” Sister Tabitha says as she slides her hands from my head to a spot under my chin. Her grip is firm and almost painful. She tugs at me so that I am looking into her eyes, which are the dark gray green of the sky during a summer thunderstorm. “The next and only time you open your mouth to speak,” she says to me, “will be to praise our Lord.”

  It takes a moment for me to understand her words—that I am safe—and then I frantically nod, the sound of the Unconsecrated crawling under my skin. She steps aside and helps me back down the stairs. Mute, I follow her down the tunnel to the cavernous room, and as we climb the stairs back up into the Cathedral I wonder at the coldness I have seen in Sister Tabitha's eyes. How her gaze seemed to sear into my soul, the chill even now seeping through me where I had only ever known the warmth of the Sisterhood.

  We return to the Sanctuary of the Cathedral and the Sisters lead me down the hallway to the same room I occupied only this morning, the room with the view of the Forest and the Unconsecrated. There is now a desk under the window and a wardrobe in the corner with two black tunics hanging inside. A fire has been lit in the small stone hearth to keep the chill of impending winter away, but I cannot feel its warmth.

  Before leaving, Sister Tabitha thrusts the Scripture into my hands. “When you have read it five times, you may begin to earn your privileges,” she says.

  And then I am left alone again to contemplate my choices.

  The Scripture is a book more than a hand's width thick, its binding worn and cracked and its pages see-through thin with
crowded letters. I read at the table under the window when there is sun and when there is no sun I stare into the fire and remember my mother. I try to reconcile what I read in the Scripture with what I know about our life here and finally realize that there is no answer.

  My world feels so small now, the four walls of my room the only place I am allowed unsupervised. I miss standing on the hill, wind slipping past me, and staring at the horizon wondering what, if anything, is past the Forest. Some nights, as sleep pushes in around me, my mind wanders along the fence line, to the gate guarding the forbidden path. But even in my dreams I do not step through it.

  Weeks pass. As winter settles around us and the days get shorter I spend less time reading and more time thinking. I stare out my window at the stars at night and wonder if the Unconsecrated feel the change in temperature. I wonder if my mother is cold in the Forest.

  Midwinter my studies are interrupted one snowy afternoon when shouts and screams echo down the hallway outside my door. I run to the window and look out, wondering if the Unconsecrated have finally breached the fences and are swarming the village. But everything in my line of sight is calm and the siren is silent. I go to the door and press my ear against it, afraid. If something has gone wrong inside the building I might be safer in my little room. I remember then that the Cathedral is also our hospital, the Sisters the keepers of the knowledge of healing.

  The shouts turn into urgent voices, muffled so that I can't hear individual words. One man continues to scream, as if in pain, and I turn my back against the door and slide down until I am sitting on the floor.

  I put my hands against my ears but I can still hear the pain, the voices and the fear. And then there is silence so heavy that I almost drown in it.

  This night I don't sleep but instead lie under the covers listening to the Forest creaking and moaning, to the snow settling on our village and to the Sisters shuffling around, tending to their newest patient.