The Forest of Hands and Teeth

by Carrie Ryan

  Theirs is the word of God, not to be questioned. They are the ones to teach us in school, who tell us that we are all that is left of the world and that the time of the Return is behind us and unimportant in our new world. They are the ones who teach us not to second-guess their proclamations, not to second-guess our survival after the Return and the new world they have built for us.

  Sister Tabitha smiles in a way I imagine a mother would smile to indulge a child and his fancies. “We know enough.” She takes my arms and pulls me into Travis's old room with her. Her grip is firm but it does not hurt. She leads me to the window until we are standing in front of it looking out at the fence line and the Forest.

  “The exact cause of the Return may be shrouded in mystery, but we do know that they were trying to cheat God. Trying to cheat death. Trying to change His will.” She holds her hand out toward the Forest. As always the Unconsecrated pull at the links in the fence. “This is what happens when you go against God's will. This is His retribution. This is our penance.”

  She speaks with such authority and fervor. Her hand is a closed fist now and she pounds against the windowsill to make her point.

  “You must remember, Mary, that you live for God now. We all live for God. It is only through His grace that we survive.” She turns toward me with a fierce, almost frantic expression. “Remember where we came from, Mary. Where we all came from. Not the Garden of Eden, but the ashes of the Return. We are the survivors.” She grabs my shoulders now, shakes me. “We have to continue to survive. And I will allow nothing to jeopardize this.”

  Looking into her eyes I know that she will not hesitate to sacrifice me to the Forest if it means saving this village or even just saving her position within it. She is a zealot, she is so filled with the passion. For the first time I truly understand the world I live in. Not the world that is always on the edge, on the verge, living under the constant weight of the Forest. But the world beyond that, ruled over by the Sisterhood and their duty to protect and preserve us.

  It is in realizing this that I truly understand our fragility.

  Sister Tabitha is expecting me to say something but I don't know what to tell her. I don't know how to respond. She must understand what I now finally know—that I will never truly fit in here. As a Sister, as a wife, as a villager.

  The Sisters may have knowledge and power, but Sister Tabitha has made it clear that such things will never be within my reach. To her, I am not to be trusted because I didn't come to the Sisterhood willingly and because I ask too many questions and seek too many answers.

  I will never be admitted into the elite, I will never be told their secrets: why they have a tunnel into the Forest and what the rooms off the tunnel are used for. My duties here will never be more than tending the sick, cleaning the Sanctuary, reading the Scripture and praying for our souls.

  My life will never be my own.

  This is a terrifying revelation and I want nothing more than my mother, to run to her and bury myself in her arms, in her safety.

  But now my mother is a part of the world that Sister Tabitha is speaking about. She is part of what we fight against every day.

  As if she reads my mind she says, “You must find your place here, Mary. You must give yourself over to God and stop looking for something else.” She is leaning over me as she speaks so that I am forced to bend away from her hot breath as she rants on. “You think you want answers to your questions but you do not. And you will not. Because it is our sworn duty as Sisters to ensure that such questions are not asked. You must understand—there are no answers for you.”

  She traces one long finger down my cheek, her fingernail sharp against my skin. “You will be the end of us if you keep following this path! I can feel it, I can see it in you.”

  A spark of alarm sets fire inside me. Her words echoing loudly in my head, that I will be the end. It's like a puzzle piece clicking into place, a sudden understanding of why Sister Tabitha has been keeping me so close, why she doesn't even allow me to leave the Cathedral.

  “What are you asking me to do?” I whisper. I think of Cass and her blond braids and the way she smells like sunshine and the way she sobbed over Travis when he was hurt. I can't be the end of her, the end of such sweetness and light.

  “Stop looking for answers to questions you should not even be asking! Embrace your life here. Why do you think this village has survived while the rest of the world perished? Why do you think we have lived so long without a breach? Why do you think we are safe from the Unconsecrated? It is because we do not tempt God's wrath. We do not tempt the Unconsecrated. We do not take stupid risks, but rather dedicate ourselves to God and each other.” Her face is close, her eyes wide and white.

  “We have survived because the Sisterhood has done what was necessary. We keep order in the village.” She stares out the window at the unending view of the Forest. “Imagine this village without order.” She bangs her hand on the sill again. “Imagine people breaking vows and oaths. Stealing from each other. That was the world before the Return. And look at the result.” She tosses a hand toward the Forest and then turns, her eyes searing over me.

  “That is why you must leave Travis alone. I have watched the way you covet him. But he is not for you.”

  Everything around me seems to be crumbling, my knees weak and barely able to support my weight. I don't know what to say or how to respond and so I nod, the pain inside me too intense. She is asking me to give up the only thing I have left.

  She grips my shoulders, her long bony fingers digging through my tunic. “When you leave this room, you will rededicate yourself to the Sisterhood and to this village. To every person here and our continued survival. You will repent!”

  Her body heaves as she gasps for air, her teeth gritted and muscles straining. She takes a step away from me and turns to the window. For a moment in her reflection in the glass I think I see sorrow on her face, in the heaviness of her skin on her skull. “I know I must sound harsh, Mary,” she says, her voice suddenly calm again, measured. “That the rules of the Sisterhood are harsh. But what is a village without order? Without rules and people to enforce them?”

  She places a palm against the window, fingers splayed, and I see that she is shaking ever so slightly. “The Sisterhood carries a sacred burden. We carry it so that the villagers do not. So that we can forget what came before, can heal, become reborn without the weight of our sins before the Return.”

  My body burns—all this time we have been kept in the dark and the Sisters have known. “Why do you keep such secrets?” I ask. “Why not trust us?”

  She turns to me and for a moment her eyes see through me, as if looking back a long distance into herself. As if remembering. I see a ghost of a smile around her eyes, old laugh lines crinkling again faintly.

  I begin to realize that I may be pushing her too far. That I may be pushing her to toss me into the Forest to keep from revealing what I have learned: that the Sisterhood is keeping secrets from us all. I take a step back, but her voice stops me.

  “Your mother used to tell you stories about life before the Return,” she says. “But did she ever tell you of murder? Of the pain and anguish? The heresy and hypocrisy? Wars, deceit, selfishness? Of people allowing human beings to die of hunger outside in the cold when they had warmth and food? Even during the Return, when we were struggling to keep humanity alive, people turned on each other, attacked each other, stole from each other!

  “That is why we are here, how we survived—by cutting ourselves off. By letting the rest of humanity perish. Here, everyone is fed. Everyone is warm and safe and loved and cared for. We do that, Mary. It is the Sisterhood that has brought heaven to this hell. People always want to be trusted, but look where it gets them! I have trusted you and look at how you skulk around this place at night when you think I am not looking. Look at how you bend the rules for your own interest.

  “Even if it means harming your friend. You lust after Travis, you tempt him even though you have
known he was pledged to Cass. You place your own desires before those of your friend, before those of your community and God.” She pauses, seems to compose herself for a moment before continuing.

  “You think you want love, Mary. You think it is this beautiful gift that does nothing but fill you and make you whole. But you are wrong. Love can be cruel and ugly. It can become dark and cause the deepest pain. Just look at what it has done to your parents.” She places a hand over her chest as if she is clutching at her own heart. “Do you not understand that life in this village is not about love but about commitment?”

  I take another step back, my hands over my mouth. My cheeks flush. All this time she has known about me and Travis. “How do you know such things?” I ask. I think of all the nights I have crept through the Cathedral to Travis's room. Of all the times I thought I was alone, that I had escaped the scrutiny of Sister Tabitha. But she was only testing me. Seeing how far I was willing to twist her trust and my own loyalty.

  For a moment I don't think she will answer me. “It is not an easy life,” she says at last, “being one of the keepers of the knowledge of the Sisterhood. It is far easier to live in ignorance, like you. Do you not see that I am trying to save you? To keep you from pain and anguish? This is why you must repent. Because if you do not, you will take away any choices I have in dealing with you. And you know what your fate will be.”

  My heart pounds as I think of the tunnel under the Cathedral and the clearing in the Forest and I nod. Sister Tabitha tucks a strand of hair back from my face, her hand resting on my cheek the way my mother used to do. “I am trying to keep you safe, but you must help me. I can see now that it is no longer enough to keep you trapped here in the Cathedral. Maybe I was wrong to keep you from the village. Your solitude is over. You may leave this building. But remember that I will always be watching you.”

  She keeps her eyes locked on mine and it is impossible for me to look away. And then she turns, her long black tunic sweeping the floor, and leaves me by the window, closing the door behind her so that I am alone with the view of the Forest.

  Outside, pure white snow covers the trees and fence, blanketing the Unconsecrated. It is a bright clear day, the sun sparkling off the ice crystals. One of those days when you can't understand why there is such beauty in a world that is nothing but ugly.

  It is almost too much to bear.

  I wander to the bed and kneel by it the way I used to do when Travis was here. I press my face into his pillow, trying to smell him, trying to remember. It is a test to see if I can really give him up.

  I know that I never will. Even to save him. I am too selfish.

  Before I know it I am pummeling the pillow, ripping at the sheets, a low growl in my throat. I am about to wreak more destruction when I hear a soft knock.

  I freeze.

  I hear the knock again. It doesn't come from the door but from the wall. I crawl over the bed and place my ear against it. With one finger I tap back. “Hello?” I ask, my voice low.

  Part of me wonders if this is a trap set by Sister Tabitha to tempt me, to test whether I have taken her words to heart.

  “Who's there?” I hear from the other side.

  “Mary,” I respond. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Gabrielle,” she says. “I came through the gate. Where am I?”

  “You're in the Cathedral,” I tell her. My heart beats wild. I want to let her know she is safe but I can't be sure anymore. I have so many questions to ask her and I know that Sister Tabitha will be back at any moment and that if she catches me she will hand me over to the Forest.

  But there is one thing I must know first. “Are you well? Were you …” I struggle with the words: “Bitten? Infected?” I have to know if she made it through to the village without harm. If the path is safe.

  My uneven breath is so loud in my ears that I barely hear her response. “No,” she says. “No, I'm fine. I'm not Infected.”

  I let my forehead fall against the wall when she says it, relief washing through me for a reason I can't identify or explain.

  I open my mouth. I am about to ask her where she's from, if there is a world outside the Forest and what it's like, if there are other villages out there and are they safe. Has she ever seen the ocean and does she know why we're all here, why this happened and why we're trapped in this place.

  But instead I feel tears on my cheeks and I hear a scraping in the hallway. I leap off the bed and gather the sheets I had torn from the mattress earlier in my arms and I run to the door so that when it opens Sister Tabitha won't know I was at the wall, speaking to the girl on the other side.

  I duck out of the room quickly and go to the laundry, letting the steam from the boiling vats of water roll over me, making my skin glisten so that no one will know that it is tears on my cheeks rather than sweat.

  When I'm done washing the smell of Travis out of the sheets I slip into my heavy coat and gloves and sneak outside into the graveyard, down toward the fence line. In the depths of winter I am guaranteed solitude here; no one from the village dares stray too far from the warmth of their hearths, not even to honor the fallen. Here lie my ancestors, all except my father and mother, whose deaths are not marked with a tombstone because they are Unconsecrated.

  I glance back over my shoulder at the Cathedral, wondering if I will see Gabrielle at the window in the creeping darkness.

  She is there, standing by the curtains. I stop and look up at her and our eyes meet. My breath hitches—it is like looking at a reflection in the water. The same age, same dark hair, same questions in our eyes. She looks like she might be taller, willowier than me. And she's wearing a vest made of an unnatural red so bright and strange that it almost hurts my eyes. She raises a hand and places it against the window, her palm flat against the glass. I raise my own hand and begin to walk toward her but then I see her turn and look over her shoulder and then the curtains fall shut and she is gone.

  I scamper away and duck behind a gravestone angel, afraid of getting caught staring up at the Outsider's room when clearly her presence here is meant to be a secret. When I am sure the shadows of twilight will mask my movement, I walk to the gate guarding the pathway to Outside. I notice that the snow is smooth and undisturbed. There's no evidence that an Outsider was brought through this fence a few nights ago. Nothing to give away that an Outsider is among us.

  I circle around the dwelling houses, flapping my arms against my sides to keep warm, and wend my way to the village hill. I climb into the watchtower, the boards slick with ice. When I'm at the highest point in our village I look out at the Forest. I strain to see if I can find the edge of it, find where the rest of the world begins.

  But all I can see is darkness.

  My entire life has been about the world outside the fence line, has been about the Forest. Of course I have wondered if there's anything past the Forest, if anything else survived the Return or if my mother's stories were true and an entire world existed before the Return. We have never even known if there is a fence on the other side of the trees—if there is an end to it at all. Are we merely the yolk of an egg, the Forest the white of the egg, another fence the shell? Or does the Forest run forever, hemmed in by nothing but Unconsecrated? A part of me has imagined that there could be nothing else in our world but Forest.

  Forest and the Unconsecrated.

  I have wondered too about the ocean, about the Outside before. But it had never occurred to me to go and find out. To leave this village and the only life I have ever known. We are told growing up that there is nothing past the fences worth living for. That the world ended with the Return and we are the last bastion.

  But of course we are not. Gabrielle is proof of this. Even though the ground is covered with snow and I am standing on a tower on a hill being swept by the wind, I'm not cold. I am too excited to be cold. There is proof of life outside our fences. And I cannot help but wonder how this will change our lives.

  There is a world out there, out beyond us. And
now we are part of this world. It is terrifying and wonderful.

  I drum my fingers against the desk under the window in my room. I am impatient. I can't stop my foot from tapping against the floor. I keep my eyes on the fence line, looking for any sign of my mother. Doing this is the only thing that has kept my mind off the Outsider—Gabrielle—and from conjuring ways to sneak up to find her.

  After our recent confrontation I know that Sister Tabitha keeps watch over me and yet I can't stay still, can't stop my curiosity. In an attempt to avoid her detection I have slipped out the window and gone to stand underneath Gabrielle's room, hoping that I will figure out a way to climb the two stories and get inside. But the window is always dark, the curtains tightly drawn.

  Since that first day when she stood by the window in her strange red vest I haven't seen her again and I begin to worry if she is well. But I know she is still here in the Cathedral. I can see it in the way the Sisters whisper among themselves and eye those of us who are uninitiated into the inner sanctum. The air is tense here, like a cord pulled taut.

  I have grown reckless in my attempts to speak with Gabrielle and I know that I'm tempting Sister Tabitha's wrath if she finds out. But I can't help it. It is like a fever. Now that I'm no longer allowed to see Travis, Gabrielle is all I can think about.

  I've decided that it is worth Sister Tabitha and the Unconsecrated if I can at last find out what is past the Forest.

  A knock at the door startles me from my thoughts. It's a young Sister sent to bring me to see Sister Tabitha. She leads me back toward the Sanctuary in the heart of the Cathedral and through to another wing that is off-limits except to the most elite Sisters.

  I wonder if this is it. If these steps will be the last that I will take. If I am finally paying for my curiosity and stubbornness and impetuousness. I wonder if I will beg for Sister Tabitha's forgiveness when she leads me through the tunnel back toward the old well house and abandons me in the Forest.