The Door in the Forest

by Roderick Townley

  Between the seats, Daniel observed the silent girl in the front, with her cloth bag of belongings beside her. Her smudged dress, snub nose, and impossible hair gave her the look of a vagabond; but she had one prized possession at least, something in her lap she kept fingering. A toy? No, a necklace, he now saw. It looked like a cheap string of funny-shaped pearls.

  She rubbed them as she might a rosary, for luck and comfort. She could use a lot of both, he thought. Bouncing along, he found himself grateful for the racket the car was making—a “bucket of bolts,” the old lady had called it. It made the girl’s silence less awkward. Less audible, in a way. How long had she been like this? Daniel didn’t really remember her from when she’d lived here before.

  And how was it she hadn’t come to see her grandmother in all those years? The city was fifty miles away, far enough, but not one visit in six years?

  His reverie was interrupted by a startling sight. Up ahead, taking up most of the road, marched a company of soldiers led by a muddy staff car, several old Crossley military vehicles, and two armored trucks. Taking up the rear was a slow-moving, house-sized monster topped by a cannon barrel that protruded like a horn. The tank shimmered in its own heat waves while its great heart roared and metal treads clanked down the road. Daniel knew such things had been used in the Great War, which had ended back in 1918, five long years ago. Perhaps this weapon had been taken out of retirement and adapted for the little wars—the Uncertainties—that plagued his own land. But why would a tank be coming to Everwood, a nothing little farm town? Were they planning to shoot at cows?

  Grandma Byrdsong pulled her car to the side and yanked the emergency brake as the trucks rumbled past, and behind them the soldiers. Somehow, the men didn’t seem so impressive up close, and there were not as many as Daniel had thought. They looked weary and were not so much marching as trudging. More than one relied on a crutch.

  He looked to Bridey for an explanation. He assumed that, as the town’s one witch (something she neither admitted nor denied), she’d know everything. But she was gawking like a tourist.

  Emily, he realized with a start, was no longer in her seat, but huddled beneath the dashboard, with her skinny arms over her head. That’s right, he thought with a pang, she’s had run-ins with these people before. They arrested her mom.

  “It’s okay,” he said when the soldiers had passed. “They’re gone.”

  Emily didn’t answer. She stayed under the dashboard, and so did not see when Bridey turned off onto a narrow dirt road with a mane of brown grass running down the middle. She didn’t see the car climbing past elms and elderberry that ran leafy hands and scratchy fingernails along the roof and passenger side. Nor did she see the house emerging at the top in dilapidated grandeur, with circle drive and porticoed entrance; or the wild vegetable garden; or the big lilac tree that reached past the second floor; or the cats, some rumored to be feral, peering out from under the rotted porch.

  “Here we are,” called out Grandma Byrdsong, lurching to a stop. “Home sweet home.”

  Late that night, Emily was wakened by the wind, or was it a sound within the wind? It seemed like a high, soft moaning, more like a call than a moan.

  Her grandmother had given her the bedroom at the top of the house, the Four Seasons room, just below the widow’s walk. It was a small and private place, square as a box, with a window on each wall, inviting weather from all directions, and a different season from each side. Just now, the window on the summer side was shuddering in its loose frame.

  The house, once quite grand, was so full of creaks and groans it was hard to tell where any particular sound was coming from. Seen from the front, the dirty white columns and sagging Victorian trim gave the place the look of a failed wedding cake.

  Emily didn’t mind. After her days on the road, she was glad for any roof over her head, and this one, at least, didn’t leak. It helped to remember that this had been her mother’s room once. She lay listening in the darkness. The wind, yes, but there was something besides the wind. Quietly, as if not to frighten the sound away, she slipped from bed and padded barefoot into the hall.

  Nothing.

  Almost nothing.

  She noticed a round-topped door to her left. As a small child, she used to be frightened of it and never tried to get it open. Medieval-looking, heavy and darkly studded, it warned her away. That didn’t stop her now, though it took all her strength to pull the bolt on a rusty latch. As she’d hoped, stairs led to the widow’s walk on the roof of the house. Stepping outside, she was nearly blown off balance and grabbed on to the iron railing to steady herself. It was scary out here, exposed in all directions to the wild night wind, but exciting, too. Overhead, a quarter moon scythed through a tangle of clouds. Below lay the woods, like a coverlet, and in the midst of it a ribbon of blackness. She squinted, trying to make it out. Then the ribbon began to glint as the moon broke free of the clouds, and she realized she was looking at water, several streams surrounding a sort of island. Strange, she thought, an island in the middle of a forest. This was probably the only place in town that you could see it from. Her grandmother’s house stood on a rise of land, giving a view over the treetops.

  She heard it again, a faint call like a woman’s voice, and it was coming from the direction of the island. She strained to hear. The tall, vine-covered trees swayed like sad dancers. There! She heard it again. Could almost make out the words.

  Her breath caught in her throat. She had heard, had thought she’d heard, a voice calling Where are you? Where are you?

  The words were lost in the sighing of the trees.

  The whole island was moving, the curtain of vines swinging like long dresses. Just for a moment, the dresses swung aside, revealing a pale figure within the gloom. Was it an animal? Could it have been a woman? Too far away to tell.

  Emily stood leaning out over the rail, staring and staring, but the vines did not part again. Her throat ached with unshed tears and unsaid words.

  “Mama!” she cried out suddenly into the night. “I’m here! I’m here!”

  Daniel didn’t want to take her, but it was hard to argue about it. The girl had been here three days, had no friends, and appeared to be mute. What would it hurt to have her come along on one of his walks?

  It was no good to say that Wesley could just as easily take her. This was a school day for him, and there was even a quiz. Name two cities on the Baltic, that sort of thing. Excuses don’t come better than that.

  To sweeten the deal, Daniel’s mother made two bag lunches and added a couple of fresh-baked brownies wrapped in wax paper. Daniel stuffed everything in his backpack, along with some rope and other supplies for his secret cave.

  Well, secret. It wasn’t really secret and wasn’t much of a cave. It went back ten or twelve feet into the rocky hillside and had a narrow entrance formed by a couple of boulders that at some point, centuries ago, must have rolled against each other. Apparently, other kids had used this cave years before, leaving scratchings and designs on the back wall. Daniel liked to think the marks were ancient petroglyphs left by a long-dead civilization, but the illusion was hard to maintain when you saw MOLLY ♥ PETE and HOWIE IS A BIG FAT JERK.

  Sometimes he and Wesley built a fire there and camped out, but more often, Daniel went alone to think. He didn’t like the idea of taking a stranger with him, but somehow without knowing or even liking her, he trusted this girl. Trusted her silence. She wasn’t likely to spill any secrets.

  And he had to admit, she’d improved a lot since that first day. A bath and a few nights’ sleep had helped; and Grandma Byrdsong had managed to untangle that squirrel’s nest of hair. It was still a little on the wild side, but the curls were held firmly in place with a green velvet headband. Standing there in the yard, she looked almost like a regular person, in a simple blue dress with tiny flowers—sleeves to her forearms, and the cuffs fastened with pearl buttons.

  It was not a dress to go hiking in, but what would she know about that? She was
a city girl, unused to struggling through underbrush or keeping her footing on shale. During the whole time, she didn’t say a word.

  “Keep up, will you?” Daniel said, seeing her fall behind again. But then he regretted his tone. She was trying. It wasn’t her fault she was short and couldn’t keep up with his long-legged strides. And how could anybody hike in those shoes? “Come on,” he said more gently, “we’re almost there.”

  The hill steepened. Up ahead stood the laurel bushes and the boulders that hid the mouth of the cave. Daniel and his brother had always been careful to vary the way they approached the place, to avoid wearing a path in the hillside that others could see and follow. As a result, there was no easy way to go. Slippery leaves from last year covered unstable stones, and it wasn’t long before Emily let out a strangled cry and fell hard.

  “Hey,” said Daniel, crouching beside her. “Are you okay?” A red spot was visible on her dress near her knee. “Let’s take a look at that.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him.

  “Come on,” he said. “I’m not going to bite you.”

  She held the hem of her dress tightly around her ankles. No strange boy was going to look at her knee.

  “Have it your way.” He stood and pulled her to her feet. “We’ve got a first-aid kit in the cave. You can use that.”

  No words. No smile. No complaint, unless you count wincing. They continued on, at last reaching the entrance. He sat her down outside, by the fire pit, and handed her the first-aid kit and his canteen. “Sure you want to do this yourself?”

  She didn’t look at him.

  “Okay. Wash it out really well. Then you can put on the other stuff. I’ll be inside.”

  What a bother she was.

  He clicked on his flashlight and headed into the dark to straighten things up: tools, including his coiled rope, on one rock ledge; cans of brown bread and containers of dry food on another; bedrolls up on boards to keep out the damp. As always, he glanced at the “cave paintings” left by former generations of kids. Did they really think they’d fool anyone?

  Then came the sweeping out of spiders. That was the part he hated. Spiders gave him a serious case of the creeps.

  All this didn’t take long, so he counted slowly to twenty. Surely she’d had time enough by now; but when he went back out, she was still fiddling with the bandage. Tears stood in her eyes.

  “I see what’s the matter,” he said, kneeling. “You can’t hold the bandage and tie it at the same time. Right?”

  She had pulled the hem of her dress down when he appeared, but now, with a sullen look, she raised it a little so he could see.

  “Do you mind?” He pulled away the gauze pad. “Did you use the calendula lotion?”

  She looked puzzled.

  “Here, let me. It’ll sting.”

  Emily bit her underlip when he dabbed the lotion. He bandaged her snugly.

  “You okay?”

  Slowly she nodded. Her eyes even smiled a little, although her mouth did not.

  “Good,” he said. “Let’s eat.”

  His mother knew how to make a sandwich, and there was no resisting the brownies. Daniel watched Emily attack her food. Had anyone bothered to teach her manners?

  But there was something nice about having her here, someone besides his kid brother, who could never sit still and was always jabbering. Emily certainly didn’t jabber. She and Daniel sat on a ledge of rock with their feet hanging down and listened to the wind, which just now was making a magnificent ruckus.

  “Ever notice how the wind sounds different in different trees?” he said.

  She frowned, listening. Yes, the wind was clattering among the leathery sycamore leaves, gasping through aspens, moaning softly as it passed through the sieve of pines.

  They listened for minutes, not saying a word.

  “Pretty nice, huh? Want to explore some more? Are you okay to walk?”

  A nod.

  They headed cross-country, in the direction of the island. There was underbrush to fight through and stands of thorn-studded trees to get around, but eventually they found the path that led to a humped footbridge over a brook.

  Emily climbed the cross stays and straddled the bridge’s railing, her eyes eager. There it was, not twenty yards away, the island she’d seen from the top of her grandma’s house—part of it, anyway.

  “You look like you know this place,” said Daniel, squinting up at her where she sat.

  She wasn’t listening. She was staring at the wide, slow-moving stream, and beyond to a wall of foliage swaying gently like the breathing of some spellbound beast.

  “Look!” Daniel whispered excitedly. “He’s there!”

  Emily frowned. Then she saw it, the great blue heron with a fish hanging limply from its bill, and her face relaxed. She looked at Daniel and nodded.

  “I always think it’s good luck when I see him,” said Daniel.

  She pulled her breeze-blown hair away from her face.

  “Beautiful, is he not?” said a man’s voice just behind them.

  Daniel spun around, startled by the sight of a military uniform, with slashes of gold on the shoulders—the insignia of a captain. The man inside it was on the short side, but you could tell he was all gristle. He was lounging against the opposite railing, his arm draped around a post. His long, carelessly combed black hair (graying at the sideburns) gave him the look almost of a bandit, an effect heightened by the two hyphens of his mustache. It occurred to Daniel that there was something both casual and dangerous about him.

  The man launched himself upright. He nodded at the bird. “You don’t see creatures like that in the city. Rats maybe. You want him? I’ll shoot him for you.” Without a word, he unsnapped his holster and took out a heavy-looking pistol, aiming it carefully.

  Daniel stopped breathing. He seemed to lose the power of speech. How do you address an officer? How do you tell him that he must not, under any circumstance, do what he is about to do?

  The captain glanced from the bird to the boy, and from the boy to the stunned-looking girl. “No?” He lowered the pistol. “Okay. Probably no good to eat anyway.”

  What Daniel was most aware of, besides the flood of relief, was Emily’s hand gripping his shoulder hard enough to hurt.

  “Thank you,” Daniel managed to say.

  The captain pursed his lips, making his mustache bristle. “So,” he said, “you are one of those nice people who like to look at the beautiful thing and not shoot it.”

  It was still hard to speak, but, “Yes.”

  “I too like to look at the beautiful thing.” He flashed a bandit smile, revealing a black space where a dogtooth had been. “Unless I can eat it. Then watch out!” He chuckled at his own wit. “By the way, to let you know, my men will be staying here a few more days. The tents have been sufficient till now, but others will be coming, so we’ll be putting them up in farmhouses. I see the young lady is looking alarmed at this.”

  Her grip on Daniel’s shoulder was painfully tight.

  “Needn’t be, miss. We’ll be out of your hair in no time.” He looked them both over. “Well, my nature lovers,” he said, turning to stroll on, as if he had nothing better to do on a Tuesday afternoon, “it’s been a pleasure.”

  Daniel and Emily watched as he headed off down the path.

  “Oh!” he said, doing an off-balance pirouette to face them again. “Could you direct me to a person named Byrdsong?”

  Daniel felt his chest freeze up.

  The man looked from him to the girl. It wasn’t hard to read the fear on their faces, and their efforts to hide it. “You know the lady, then,” he said.

  Daniel nodded.

  “And she lives—where?”

  “I …”

  The man crossed his arms and smiled. “Come, now.”

  The impulse to lie was so strong that Daniel began to feel a headache stirring behind his eyes. He couldn’t do it. “I’m afraid to say.”

  “Afraid? Why?”


  “You might hurt her.”

  “And why would I do that?”

  The boy’s head was throbbing. “Because you’re a soldier and soldiers hurt people.”

  The captain rested his hands on his hips, as if to settle himself around this concept. “You have an odd idea about soldiers,” he said. “Is that what the people around here think?”

  Daniel was silent.

  “Well, do they?”

  A vein in Daniel’s forehead was pulsing. He mustn’t speak. “They hate you,” he blurted.

  “Do they really? Good heavens, we mustn’t have that! What about you, miss? Is that what you think, too?”

  “She can’t speak.”

  “You mean she’s mute?”

  “I think so.”

  The captain contemplated them as he might a mildly intriguing math problem. “Well,” he said, “I’ll just have to ask someone else, won’t I?” He flashed that gap-toothed smile. “Unless I just shoot you. Are you good to eat?”

  He laughed loudly, and started off again. Daniel watched until he disappeared.

  “Scary guy,” he said, more to himself than to Emily. “Hard to figure out. Maybe he’s not that bad.”

  Emily slid down from the railing. She looked Daniel in the eye. “Don’t trust him,” she said. Simple as that. Three clear words.

  “You can talk!”

  She turned and looked back at the heron, and the island behind.

  Daniel came up beside her. “Does anybody know you can talk?”

  She was silent, and Daniel wondered if she was done speaking, like some oracle that delivers a cryptic message and says no more. “Is it easier that way? People don’t ask a lot of questions if they think you can’t answer.”

  No answer. Each non-answer she gave was like another question.

  “But then why let me in on it?”