But all that was lost as Christian Burr focused on the bank statements beneath the genealogy reports. For a moment his brain refused to process what he was seeing. The number seemed to be a mistake. Eight million dollars? How was that possible? Arthur Burr had been a builder, overseeing construction of a good number of the houses in town, and had certainly been comfortable enough, although Christian had never really bothered to understand the details of his business. He had never imagined that his grandfather had been this successful.
My God. He let out a sigh, then a small whoop. This changed everything. Everything.
Only then did he turn to the letter.
My dear boy, where to begin? There are secrets that you must understand. I am gone, and yet I remain, a tree that has lost its leaves but still stands tall and rooted to the ground. Now I must provide Braille for a blind man. So, to begin, riddle number one:
What bends without breaking,
gives shelter without roof and walls,
warms after death,
sighs without breath?
Forgive me for my wordplay, but that is my nature. It is too easy to be handed the answers before you begin. There is power in the journey and the discovery.
I remember your father’s awakening after you were born. He was born blind too, much to my chagrin. I could not travel to your home (I never traveled in that way, do you remember this?) and so I met you when your parents came to visit when you were three months old. Your father said the light of stars was held in your eyes, that he saw this when you came from the womb. He was right, and yet he was wrong; it is not just the light of the stars, but the sun and moon and all that is holy about this world. That is what is kept within you, within all of us.
That light is passed, one to the next. And once every few generations, it is allowed to shine forth. It is your job to assist with the transition.
I have rules for you. You must rebuild this home, and once it is rebuilt, you must live here with your family for the rest of your life and never leave. You must allow the children access to the woods at any time, no matter how dangerous that may appear, and accept without hesitation whatever happens as a result.
You must become, my dear boy, a steward of the blood.
Once you have settled here you can never leave Glen Ridge again.
That may seem harsh, but I think you will find everything you need at your fingertips, and more. If you do this, the account I have set up for you is accessible; if you do not, Mr. Talbot will remove that access permanently.
One last riddle for you:
Reaching stiffly for the sky,
I bare my fingers when it’s cold.
In warmth I wear an emerald glove,
And in between I dress in gold.
Find the answers, and you will see the light.
BY NOW THE boy had likely seen the details contained within the envelope. Talbot had hoped to watch Christian’s reaction and gauge how to proceed from there. But plans change, of course, and Rodney had already decided that it was time to move things along a bit more quickly.
Talbot walked through the woods as the bite of arthritis began to fade away, feet settling exactly where they needed to in order to avoid the thorns and nettles catching on his fine suit, shoes never once falling prey to mud or stones that would have scuffed the polish. He had been trained in the ways of the woods. He had learned many, many things over the long years.
When Arthur Burr had first settled in town as a young man, before everyone’s perspectives had changed, he had been ridiculed for being different. Arthur had been much like his lovely great-granddaughter. Back then they’d called a man like Arthur “slow-witted” and “addled.” Now they might say “autistic.” None of the terms were right, of course.
Things had certainly changed, all right. Talbot smiled. He’d been a child when they met seemingly by chance in these very same woods. Back in those days he had never even dreamed of owning a suit. He’d had exactly two pair of pants and neither had been owned by him the first time around. He let his fingers drift across the leaves of the closest tree, a birch with peeling bark that looked like flaking, mummified flesh. The wind sighed around him and several wasps buzzed nearby. He did not fear the wasps, never had and likely never would. Arthur had shown him a great number of secrets over the years, and he understood the woods better than most could ever comprehend.
Things rustled through the trees, and then came the soft, careful padding of a wolf. He waited patiently for the animal to come closer. The beast was a large one, old and scarred. It looked at him with clear, intelligent eyes, and he looked back. “It’s been a while since I saw you, hasn’t it?” The wolf brushed itself along his hand, and he rubbed his fingers through the thick fur. The winter coat hadn’t completely fallen away yet, but it would soon enough. He tugged a soft tuft of shedding fur from the animal’s flank and let it drift away in the wind.
“Arthur knew your name, didn’t he? Your real name, I mean. Of course he did.” The wolf gave no response save to nuzzle his hand.
Arthur had shared a great number of his secrets, but not all of them. It wasn’t a matter of friendship; it was a matter of keeping the trust of others. With the right names, a man could very well make demands of the creatures of the wild. If a man knew the right words, the right way to go about it.
That was why he never feared the wasps. He’d learned the right words to deal with them a very long time ago. Arthur had taught him that and many other things.
He thought of the man’s smile, the simple, carefree actions that had caused so many people to think that Arthur was deranged. What was the word that people used that made them both laugh so often? Bedazzled. That was the one. As if the world around him was simply too much for him to comprehend.
He closed his eyes and looked at the world the way Arthur had shown him so long ago. It was a very different world indeed. With his eyes closed and his sight open, he stood and walked, and the wolf walked with him.
He covered the distance—almost a mile—with ease. And finally, although it took some time, he found the right spot.
Despite his advanced years, he crouched close to the ground and then leaned back against the coarse bark of the gigantic tree, resting the side of his face against the wood. The wind sighed across him, a gentle caress that made him think of the red-haired beauty both he and Arthur had loved so dearly. In the long run, she had chosen Arthur, had borne him a son. That was all right. There had been a time when the love he felt for her was reciprocated, and he had never held much of a grudge for her choices and couldn’t have held a grudge against Arthur had his life depended on it.
Nearly two hours passed before he let himself rise from where he’d been squatting. Most would have been in agony from sitting in one place, in so awkward a pose, for as long as he had. Rodney Taylor was not most people.
The wolf was long gone. Where it had been, the ground was cold to his touch. That was all right. He had not been napping. Nor had he been lost in dreams. He had been doing as Arthur had asked.
He allowed a tight, small smile. There was warmth, and a little sadness too. Soon he would have to depart from Arthur’s well-laid plans. It was regretful, but necessary. But not yet.
“Now for the next part of this. Time for awakenings, I think.”
The words he whispered were not known to many humans. But those words were heard, and very clearly at that.
Soon the wind picked up, and the clouds began to gather.
Rodney made it back to his car before the storm came in earnest. Of course, he’d planned it that way. It was a storm that he’d designed.
THE STORM CAME up through the valley, turning the mountaintop into a shadowy, cloud-shrouded beast and tossing the leaves of trees with a sound like a long, drawn-out hiss. The sky lowered overhead, icy-gray sheets of rain visible in the distance as the old farmhouse seemed to huddle in the foothills.
Christian Burr was still sitting in the dining room and lost in thought, the contents of the
envelope strewn across the table and his grandfather’s letter in his hands, when he heard shouting.
He went to the front porch. Susan’s voice cut through the wind like a knife, high and full of panic. Sammy. Money and riddles forgotten for the moment, Burr shoved the letter in his pocket and leaped down the steps. Susan was standing near the edge of the small pond, hands cupped to her face, screaming into the growing wind. But it wasn’t Sam she was calling for; the boy stood clutching his mother’s leg.
Susan spied Burr, scooped up Sam into her arms, and ran to her husband. “Lisa’s gone,” she said breathlessly, spots of red on her otherwise pale cheeks. “I got distracted near the water, turned my back, and . . .” She shook her head. “I can’t find her anywhere.”
Burr scanned the immediate surroundings, his eyes moving over their old Subaru wagon and its empty backseat, the house, the ragged lawn. There weren’t many places to hide. Unless . . .
He turned to the wood’s edge, a chill creeping over him. The trees ran in a thick line, but a faint, worn path led through the tall grass. Could Lisa have been tempted to explore there? Anything was possible.
“The storm,” Susan said. “Chris, please . . . you have to get her back before it hits.”
He nodded. “Take Sammy and get in the house,” he said. “She couldn’t have gone very far.”
Burr didn’t wait for an answer. The wind grew even fiercer, with a smell like ozone and mud as he ducked his head and ran through the grass, following the path toward the forest. At the edge of the trees he paused; in the soft dirt there he could clearly make out a partial shoeprint.
Lisa had gone into the woods.
Burr glanced back at the house. Susan and Sammy were nowhere to be seen; hopefully they had listened to him and made it inside. The storm seemed to race through the valley, more clouds boiling up and bursting with rain. It had come up so fast. He had only minutes before it would be upon him.
Burr entered the woods.
Inside the first line of trees, the wind was softer, buffeted by the thick canopy of leaves. It was even darker in here, and he moved forward cautiously, calling out Lisa’s name with no response. The path appeared to continue on, faint but visible, meandering left and right around trunks and clumps of brambles. The air smelled of rich earth and decay, along with something else he couldn’t place. He had a sense of things lurking beyond the edges of his sight, watching him, and he quickly grew claustrophobic and disoriented. He turned, looked behind him, the path suddenly gone; where had he entered the woods? It should only have been twenty or thirty feet away, but instead he saw nothing but branches and leaves.
Burr called out for his daughter again, pushing forward through the gloom. Now he could have sworn he heard whispers, too soft for him to make out any words. Perhaps it was the wind in the treetops.
Your grandfather is buried somewhere in here. Burr stopped short, heart pounding. A notion that had seemed quaint, if a bit odd, now felt more unsettling. He could be walking over Arthur’s grave right now.
“Lisa!” Burr shouted. “This isn’t funny. Come out, right now!”
No answer. He pushed through heavy branches, feeling blind in the growing dark, a twig snapping back across his face and making him wince. But nothing was there except more branches, more leaves.
Movement came from the left.
He stepped forward again and almost stumbled over something. Burr crouched to find a pair of girl’s sneakers, half hidden in old leaves. A few steps farther on he found a shirt, and then a pair of jeans.
Thunder cracked the sky, rumbling through the valley and sounding slightly muffled through the trees. Wetness dripped from above onto Burr’s head as the first raindrops began to fall.
Then he heard Lisa scream.
THE WORLD HAD changed.
Lisa Burr had felt it as soon as she stepped through the forest wall. The barrier that had hidden things from her fell away as if she were shedding an old skin, and she felt everything click into place. She had suddenly awakened from a terrible dream. The forest was still thick, but she could see everything clearly in a way that transcended sight. It was not “sight” as she had known before, but something more, something deeper that incorporated her very essence.
She was still aware of the sounds, colors, smells, and tastes that normally assaulted her senses, and yet she understood each and every one of them and their places in the world around her in a way she never had before. It was like magic, and along with it came a great sense of satisfaction, a purpose that had been denied her for the first fifteen years of her young life.
The forest was speaking a language, one that she finally understood.
The human clothing she wore felt terribly constrictive. She took off her shoes. The soil beneath her feet gave off a rich chocolate hue wherever it was most fertile. Leaves above her head passed knowledge along through a sound like whispers in the dark, and the drops of rain that had begun to patter down sang of their journey from the heavens as they quenched the parched roots below. A fox barked a warning as she moved, a bitter scent from the creature’s glands wafting out as a red cloud; without thinking, she responded, soothing the animal’s fears with a hum that began low in her belly and sounded like the buzz of bees.
Lisa removed her shirt, then her jeans, repulsed by the toxic, chemical smell of them. The fox came forward and nuzzled her hand. Almost immediately, she sensed movement all around her. Other animals emerged from their hiding places, one by one: three squirrels chattered about her appearance as they darted down a thick pine branch; a deer came picking his way on spindly legs; a porcupine waddled forward, spines down in a gesture of acceptance.
Others came behind them, dozens, hundreds; the woods were full of them, and Lisa could feel them all calling to her, welcoming her to their domain.
She stepped forward into their embrace, her entire body tingling fiercely. The falling rain caressed and nourished her as it sang, roots of plants and trees digging into the soil and drinking deeply, pulsing with new life. Animals that had nuzzled at her suddenly parted as one, and another padded forward silently on giant paws; a wolf, its shoulders nearly taller than her own waist. She sensed both its power and its acceptance of her, the knowledge that she was completely safe here but also that this creature expected something important from her.
She let the wolf lead her forward through the woods, her feet finding the right path without thought, avoiding sharp objects with ease. At some point she sensed her father pierce the barrier of the trees behind her, heard him calling to her, but she did not hesitate. Several animals slipped away, circling back, but most of them continued along with her, a massive and nearly silent march through the woods like a somber parade, meant to bear testament to something she could not quite grasp. Not yet.
Lisa slipped through undergrowth and branches like a ghost as they went deeper into the forest. Finally the thick trees gave way to a circular clearing. In its center stood a massive tree, its naked branches stretching toward the dark sky. Rain clouds had lowered themselves until they appeared to nearly touch the bony, wooden fingers, and the tree’s gnarled, rough bark glistened wetly. There was almost no light, but Lisa had no need of it; she could see everything far beyond the limits of her eyes.
The rain washed away the last of the chemical stink that had permeated her skin, and she stood naked and whole, spreading her arms wide like the tree, embracing the world around her.
She was shocked when another human form stepped out from the shadows. She recognized him as the man who had come to visit her father in the big car, but she had not sensed him standing there, even though she had felt everything else around her.
“K noze,” the old man said. “Hodnej.” The huge wolf padded across the clearing to stand at his side. “Welcome, “ he said, smiling at Lisa. He spoke without saying a word aloud, and yet she understood him clearly. “Blahopøejeme k promoci! It is time for you to awaken, Lisa Burian.”
CHRISTIAN BURR STUMBLED through the thick tre
es, pushing away the branches that stung his face. The scream had been Lisa’s, he was sure of it; who else would be out here in the storm? His heart pounded with fear, body charged with adrenaline as he tried to keep going in the right direction. It was nearly impossible. Everything in the forest served only to confuse him, the sounds of dripping rain, the shadows that seemed to dance and change as he moved, the grasping branches. He could become lost out here very easily, he realized, with the forest stretching on for miles.
With that thought came the memory of his grandfather’s stories about the Leshy, the legendary Slavic forest creature that protected the forest and confused travelers who were ignorant enough to trespass on his lands. A Leshy could appear to be an ordinary human but could take any living form, his grandfather had said, from the smallest insect to the largest animal. It could protect crops and livestock in exchange for tribute and worship, and if a human befriended one, he could be taught the secrets of magic.
But a Leshy could also make you disappear forever if you did not obey its wishes.
Why had he thought of that? He hadn’t remembered those stories since he was a boy, but now they seemed fresh in his consciousness. Burr pushed on, listening for any signs of his daughter. His mind kept worrying at the details of his grandfather’s bizarre letter and set of instructions, and the riddles it had contained:
What bends without breaking,
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