The Forest of Hands and Teeth

by Carrie Ryan

  We echo Sister Tabitha as she leads us through our Troth. And just as we pledge ourselves to each other, promising to vow eternity at the end of the week, I feel Travis's fingers brush mine. I grab for his hand but there is nothing but air.

  I am now Harry's betrothed and he leads me down from the dais and out of the shadow of the Cathedral and into the sunlight. We are surrounded by well-wishers and I can no longer see Travis in the crowd.

  I have lost him for good.

  The week of Brethlaw is a dizzying haze. At every event the four of us are guests of honor, set apart from the rest of the village, put on display. We are shuffled from affair to affair. Dinners to mark the import of the occasion. Solitary prayer sessions to prepare our souls for their impending commitment.

  Other than the Troth, Binding and Vows of Eternal Constancy, the biggest event of Brethlaw is the christening. Each baby is brought before the Sisters and Guardians, is passed around the people of the village. These children belong to all of us, the Sisters say, they are our future.

  Four children born of last year's marriages are christened and I can't help but watch as Jed and Beth try to sneak from the edge of the crowd. I wonder if the pain of losing their child this fall is too much to bear.

  Finally, in the middle of the week, I find myself alone and I rip the flowers from my hair. I am tired of the villagers, tired of Harry and the Sisters and the Guardians and the well-wishers.

  I am tired of the happiness. And so I go to the old lookout tower on the hill, the one place where I'm sure to find solitude.

  But when I arrive there's already someone there and I'm about to turn back when I recognize the figure sitting against the tower. It's Travis. I feel a flutter inside me. It has never occurred to me that he would come to this place, that anyone but me ever came to this place.

  It's been so long since we have been alone together that I can only stare at him, my eyes hungry. For a moment I consider turning and heading back, of leaving him here and pushing aside temptation. He is not mine, cannot be mine, and it's too painful to be near him and know the finality of our situation.

  But before I can move Travis holds a hand out to me and says, “Mary, come pray with me.”

  His words are my undoing. I run, tripping over my tunic and crawling and scraping at the ground until I am at his side, my hands on his chest, my breath coming out in pants.

  “Oh, Mary,” he says, thrusting his hand into my hair and cupping my head. He pulls my face to his, across everything that has been separating us. I need him with an urgency that I cannot escape.

  He stops my head just as our lips are about to touch, to finally learn home. He is panting and I can only breathe the air from his lungs. We stay like this for what seems like eternity, unable to commit to each other, to bridge everything between us.

  “Mary,” he whispers. I can feel the movement of his lips.

  I am waiting for him to push me away and tell me that we cannot do this. That I am not his to take and that he will not betray his brother. I thrust my head into the crook of his shoulder, pressing my forehead against his neck.

  It's a warm day and he's sweating and I press my mouth against his skin, tasting his salt on my lips. I want to melt into him, to forget every barrier between us and it is everything I can do to suck in air and sit here and not press myself harder against him.

  He's not mine but Cass's and I know I should turn away, leave this place. But I'm not strong enough to do so. Just this last time I want to revel in his essence, to wrap it around me like a memory.

  For a while we sit like this. Me splayed over his lap, clutching at him, feeling everything inside me open. I realize that I am happy. Travis's hand strays back to my hair and I relax against him, releasing the last of my hesitation.

  It is a perfect spring day. The birds have come back to our village, the snow has turned to mud and the sun is bright and soft and warm. A breeze covers us and the sound through the trees reminds me of my mother's stories of the ocean.

  “Times like this, it's hard to believe that we aren't the only people in the world. Just the two of us on this hill,” Travis tells me. I smile.

  He continues, “But then other times I think that we can't be the only people in the world. This village, I mean. That there must be more out there, something beyond the Forest.”

  I try to pull my head back so that I can look Travis in the eyes. It's as if he has spoken my heart, found his way into my dreams. I thought I was alone in my belief in life outside the Forest. With a gentle pressure from his hand he keeps my head against his shoulder and my heart pounds through his words.

  “You are not the only one who was raised with stories,” he tells me and I hold my breath, waiting for more. “And they just make me think that there has to be more out there. That this can't be it. We can't be it. There must be more to life than this village and its edicts.”

  His voice is tight, as if he too feels the binds keeping us apart from each other. He places a finger under my chin and raises my gaze to his. “Don't you sense it, Mary? That there's more? That this life here is not enough?”

  Tears spring to my eyes and my blood seems to sing. I look toward the fence line as if I could look toward our future. It is far enough away that I can't see individual Unconsecrated, just a mob of them pulling at the chain links. As the wind shifts I can hear their moans carried up the hill.

  I am about to tell him about Gabrielle—proof that there is more—when a flash of red darts from the trees and my heart skips a beat, my breath catches. I sit ramrod straight now, every sense attuned to the Forest.

  “What's wrong?” Travis asks, also sitting up, a hand on my back.

  I think I'm hallucinating but then I see the flash again. An unnatural bright red against the shadows of pine trees. I stand, forgetting the calm, the happiness I just felt, and stumble down the hill, tripping over roots and rocks and not caring. I can barely contain myself as I approach the fence stretching across the base of the hill, pulling back just in time to keep my distance so that I don't risk being bitten and infected.

  The red flashes again and then comes near me. She is at the fence now, with the others. And it's clear from looking at her that she is Unconsecrated. Her limbs don't work as if of one body and her skin stretches tight over her frame, as if the bones on her face could punch through at any moment.

  But the red of her puffy vest is still vibrant and strange and I know that it's her. It's the Outsider. Gabrielle.

  I want to link my own fingers through the fence. Travis hobbles behind me and pulls me back.

  “What are you doing?” he demands, his voice a hiss as he sucks in breath. He walks with a cane and a limp and it suddenly occurs to me just how much of a struggle it must have been for him to make it down the hill after me so quickly.

  Gabrielle darts around the other Unconsecrated. She's like them but somehow different. Sleeker. Faster. She thrashes against the metal links with a speed and voracity that I have never seen before. I stand with Travis on our side of the fence, not knowing what to feel, what to do.

  “Never do that again,” Travis says into my ear, his arms wrapping around my shoulders, pulling me against him.

  I want nothing more than to let go, to let him envelop me and take me in and protect me. My entire body shakes with each heartbeat, my hands tremble. “She was the one in the room next to you,” I say, pointing to Gabrielle. “The Outsider that came to the village that night I was in your room.” Heat crawls up my cheeks as I remember the feel of his body under mine.

  We watch as the girl in the red vest pulls against the links in the fence, desperate for us. There is something so wrong with her—neither of us has ever seen an Unconsecrated like this.

  “She spoke to me through the wall one day,” I tell him. “After you were moved and I went looking for you. She told me her name was Gabrielle.” My throat burns and I swallow sobs that threaten to break free. I can't believe what has happened to this girl who dared wander the paths of th
e Forest, who dared enter our village.

  Tears slip down my face and I turn toward Travis. “Did she tell you anything?” I whisper. “Did she tell you where she came from? Why she came to the village?”

  “Oh, Mary,” he says.

  And then his lips fall on mine and I am silent.

  I remember the wonder of my almost first kiss with him that night so long ago. It was the night that Gabrielle had come through the gate. Back before either of us knew anything about the Outside and cared only about the two of us in that room. How my heart pounded and my body felt on the verge of anything and everything. I have had kisses since then. Friendly kisses. All from Harry. All during our abbreviated courtship. I have never kissed anyone but Harry.

  But this kiss with Travis—it's like waking up and being born and realizing what life is and can be. I drown in him, waves pulling me under and spinning me around as if I am nothing. Worthless, but everything.

  The sound of the fence shuddering under Gabrielle's assault pulls us apart. He keeps his forehead against mine.

  “We should tell someone,” I say.

  He nods.

  “About her,” I add.

  He smiles. “That too,” he says. I can't help but smile as well.

  Like the bulbs buried dormant in the ground, I feel as though I am finally unfurling. Warming. Joy blooming inside me, expanding throughout my body. I have pushed aside the horror of finding Gabrielle turned Unconsecrated, pushed it deep down inside myself so that it doesn't rot the joy of this moment.

  “I'm faster than you are,” I say to him. “I'll run tell the Guardians. They'll want to know.” I hesitate. I think about my promises to Cass and Sister Tabitha and Harry and myself. I think about what upholding such promises means, of all that I will be giving up. I have tried to abide by the rules of the village, by the edicts of the Sisterhood, and they have brought nothing but confusion and mystery and lies and pain.

  I thought I could let Travis go. I thought I could live with contentment. But that was before he told me he believed in a world outside the fences. Before I realized that he was raised with stories of something greater beyond us, of something more.

  Standing here facing Travis, tasting him on my lips, I decide to throw everything else away. I will face the wrath of Cass and Harry and Sister Tabitha with Travis by my side. “Will you come for me?”

  I know I am asking him to betray his brother, to upset the balance of the village, and hurt my best friend. But none of that matters to me anymore. I am willing to throw it all away for him.

  He smiles, brushes a finger over my lips like a promise and, with the sound of Gabrielle tearing at the fence fading behind me, I turn back to the village to fetch the Guardians.

  For the past two days since we spoke on the hill I have waited for Travis to come for me. I pace my small stone room in the Cathedral, straining to hear his voice echo down the hallway, but am met with silence. Any time that I'm finally alone and can break away from the endless chores and festivities, I run to the hill. Hoping to find him there. Hoping he has figured out a way for us to be together.

  But every time I find nothing but the wind in the trees. The moans of the Unconsecrated floating up from the Forest. The Guardians have increased their patrols of the fence and I sit and watch as they pace back and forth, peering into the Forest searching for Gabrielle.

  Sometimes I see Jed there among them and I want to run to him and tell him everything I know about Gabrielle. Tell him that she came from the Outside. But I keep silent because the Guardians serve the Sisters and I'm afraid Jed would not keep my secret. That Sister Tabitha would find out I knew about Gabrielle and would throw me to the Forest.

  Harry, who is apprentice to the Guardians now, tells me that the Fast One, as they are calling her, has disappeared into the Forest. That at times she will come and thrash against the fences and she is so fierce that the Guardians have been unable to kill her.

  Her existence has dampened Edenmass. Some villagers worry that the Unconsecrated are changing, adapting, and that the Fast One is evidence of a new breed that will kill us all.

  The Guild of Guardians and the Sisters try to calm the swelling panic, telling us that the fast Unconsecrated are not new. At one of our events Sister Tabitha stands, flanked by the two highest-ranking Guardians. The villagers spread out before her, their hands tight on their children, their eyes darting toward the fences. The air is thick with their fear and I can feel my muscles tense with the strain of it all.

  “Knowledge of the fast Unconsecrated has passed down through the Sisterhood since the Return,” she says, standing straight with her arms by her sides, the long black tunic whipping around her ankles in the afternoon wind. “The Fast Ones are fierce and rare and devastating. They have always existed and God has blessed this village not to be bothered by them.” She sneaks a glance at me as she says this, as if I am somehow to blame for the presence of Gabrielle.

  “We do not know what causes them to be different, what causes them to be fast. But we do know that they burn themselves out quickly, ripping their bodies apart, and that soon everything will return to normal. The Guardians have doubled their patrols and have pulled men from the fields to assist with the village watches. This threat will end soon, either by the Guardians killing the Fast One or by the Fast One burning out.

  “Until such time, our only option is to continue our prayers to God and ask for His forgiveness and blessing.”

  Sister Tabitha leads us all in prayer and steps from the dais to allow the Edenmass and Brethlaw celebrations to continue. But I can see on everyone's faces that they are unsure and afraid of this new breed of Unconsecrated. The dancing becomes listless. The celebrations end early. People shutter their houses at night, preparing for the worst.

  I can't help but wonder what other information they are keeping from us. What secrets the Sisters have locked in their Cathedral. What they know about the creature that was Gabrielle, once a girl like me.

  My thoughts constantly turn to the day Sister Tabitha marched me down the underground tunnel and into the clearing in the Forest. Could the same thing have happened to Gabrielle? I want to run to Sister Tabitha and ask her what she has done, ask her how this happened. At first I stay silent because I'm terrified of becoming like Gabrielle and then other worries begin pounding in the back of my head: was there something I could have done to save her? Could I have spoken out? Searched harder? Was I responsible for her fate?

  Finally, my curiosity becomes too much and I must know what happened—what caused her to turn into such a fast and powerful creature, unlike any Unconsecrated I have ever known.

  In the few days remaining before my Binding to Harry, I begin to slink around the Cathedral as I go about my chores. Stopping outside closed doors, listening in on conversations between the elder Sisters, the ones I assume are the keepers of the secrets.

  But I learn nothing of importance. In frustration, time slipping out before me, I begin to explore areas that are off-limits. I test the boundaries of the Sisterhood, of the Cathedral. Knowing that if I am caught I too could be thrown into the Forest to follow in Gabrielle's footsteps.

  But I don't care about my recklessness. Because each day that passes is another day that Travis doesn't come for me. That I become more desperate to understand what has happened. That I must know everything: why we are here, who the Sisters are, what caused the Return.

  Questions that we have never been allowed to ponder. That we have been forbidden to pursue.

  I am ripe with these thoughts rolling through my head. As I kneel at services or attend Brethlaw celebrations, I feel rebellious trying to find a way around the Sisters, contemplating how to sneak past them. How to gain entrance to the forbidden sanctums of the Cathedral.

  And yet when my final night alone comes, the night before my Binding ceremony with Harry, I am no closer to the truth. I have found nothing to connect the Sisters to Gabrielle's return. I have found nothing to show their complicity. I sit on the edge
of my bed, my dressing gown clutched tight in my fists, and stare out the open window. Looking toward the Forest and wondering if I have it all wrong—if my questions have been for nothing.

  Wondering if the Sisters are right and theirs is the only path. Theirs the only truth. Ours, the only village left in the world. Wondering if my mother was wrong and there is no ocean.

  I clench my teeth, wanting to cry out with frustration and confusion. How am I supposed to understand it all?

  My legs burn with anticipation and I jump from the bed and pace the room. Around me the Cathedral is quietly settling in for the night. My mind wars against itself, commanding me out of my room for one final search then ordering me to stay put. To not tempt fate and the wrath of the Sisters and to wait for Travis to come and claim me as he promised.

  But then I think of Gabrielle out there tearing herself against the fences. I wonder if my mother is out there as well. If she somehow knows the answers I seek now that she is on the other side.

  I don't bother to light my candle as I slip from the room. I don't bother to listen at doors as I make my way through the Cathedral, sliding along walls until I am sneaking down the dusty steps into the basement. In my mind I am following Sister Tabitha, remembering the day she brought me down here to a place I never knew existed to teach me about choices. I am remembering how I learned for the first time that the Sisterhood has been keeping secrets.

  The air grows colder, danker as I reach the bottom of the stairs and slide my bare feet along the uneven stones of the floor. There's no light and I fumble to strike my flint to light my candle. Its weak flame barely illuminates my trembling hand and the light dies off quickly in the thick darkness around me.

  With my free hand I feel for the empty shelves that, as Sister Tabitha explained, used to hold wine bottles and barrels for fermentation. I hear a scuttle of sharp nails over old wood and I freeze, a tingle creeping at the edge of my hairline.

  When all I can hear is the wisp of my own breath I continue to feel my way through the room until, with the crack of my toe against the wall, I find the corner farthest from the stairs. I sweep aside the heavy curtain hiding the door, crawling behind it as dust coats my mouth and nose. And finally, I feel the rough wooden boards that make up the door leading to the tunnel that will take me to the Forest.