Willa of the Wood

by Robert Beatty

  Willa climbed down into the gorge on the backside of the lair where few Faeran ever crept. She found the spot that her mamaw had told her about, where three large rocks had crashed down from the wall of the ravine and left a small triangular hole that looked like nothing more than a crack in the stone.

  Getting down onto her hands and knees, she crawled inside. The crack became so tight that she had to get down onto her shoulder and wiggle her way along like a centipede.

  When she finally reached the other side, she crawled out of the stone crack and found herself hunched in a small room enclosed with walls of twisting, wet, rotting sticks. She wrinkled her mouth in revulsion at the dank stench of decaying branches that filled the air. Putrid sludge dripped from the ceiling.

  This area of the lair had been abandoned for decades, and had been strictly forbidden by the padaran, too dangerous for members of the clan to enter.

  Anxious to get out of this wretched part of the lair, she followed a narrow tunnel. It turned, and then turned again, until she came to a split that led off into several different directions. She picked the one that led upward, and kept moving. She had to get home to her mamaw.

  The inside of the Dead Hollow lair consisted of a maze of woven-stick tunnels, black and sticky from years of use, that wound through the gullet of the gorge into the small, darkened rooms and secluded caves of her people. It had once been home to many thousands of Faeran, but now only a few hundred remained, and there were many dark and empty places like this one left behind, old storage areas and dens where Faeran once lived, filled with nothing but the echoes of those who had come before. The tunnels of the lair connected one to the other like wormholes twisting and writhing through the earth.

  As Willa tried to navigate her way back home, the wound on her shoulder began to throb. A wave of dizziness passed through her, and she nearly toppled to the floor. She clutched the wall to catch her balance and rest. When she touched her hand to the wound on her back, her fingers came back bright and slippery with fresh blood. Thanks to the healing lake of the bears, she felt a dull ache rather than a sharp pain, but her wound was bleeding again. If she couldn’t find her way through these old tunnels, she was going to die here and no one would ever know. She had to continue on.

  She came to a place where the tunnel split into three different directions, and she wasn’t sure which way to go. She sniffed the air of each tunnel. In the tunnel on the left, she thought she could smell the distant scents of her clan. She hoped it led upward toward the more active parts of the lair. But then she heard a disturbing whimpering sound coming from the tunnel that led down to the right.

  She stopped and stayed quiet as she tried to identify the sound. It wasn’t the wind howling wraithlike through the empty tunnels like it sometimes did. It sounded more like a wounded animal.

  When she heard the sound again, fear seeped into her body. She wiped her dry lips with the back of her hand. There was something down that tunnel. She could smell it.

  She wanted to go in the opposite direction. She wanted to get home. She had to get home. But the sound…

  It wasn’t a whimpering animal.

  She heard it again.

  It was a voice.

  She took a few uncertain steps into the tunnel and cupped her hands behind her ears to focus the sound.

  She heard something dragging across the woven-stick floor.

  Then she heard something breathing.

  Her chest began to rise and fall more heavily, pulling air into her lungs.

  She tilted her head and sniffed. The smell was oddly familiar.

  But it did not belong here.

  Not here.

  Her palms began to sweat.

  It was the smell of a human.

  How is that possible? she thought in confusion. That can’t be.

  She took a few more steps down the tunnel toward the noises she had heard. There were woven-stick doors on each side, with thorny vines binding them shut so that whatever was inside could not get out.

  As she peered through the lattice of sticks, she realized that there wasn’t an actual room on the other side of each door, but a small enclosure, some sort of prison cell.

  Then she saw. Crammed into the hole—closed in by impenetrable, woven-stick walls—was a small Cherokee boy, about ten years old, staring out at her with wide, pleading eyes.

  This human boy should not be here, Willa thought. The Faeran people did not attack humans. They did not capture humans and hold them prisoner.

  She wanted to turn away from this. She wanted to run. She wasn’t supposed to be here. This was the forbidden part of the lair. If the padaran’s guards caught her here, she’d be in even worse trouble than she already was. And the wound on her back ached. Her arms and legs and her whole body felt weak and clammy from the loss of blood.

  But she stayed perfectly still for several seconds, just trying to breathe, trying to understand, as the Cherokee boy’s dark brown eyes stared out at her.

  Why is there a human here? she thought. What are they doing with it?

  She could see its little brown hands clinging to the door of sticks that imprisoned it. And as she peered deeper into its hole, she saw that it was thin and dirty and bleeding.

  She felt the stab of a strange and unpleasant emotion twisting in her gut, but she quickly hardened her mind. If it had been an animal or a Faeran in this cell, she would have been right to feel sorry for it, but it wasn’t. It was a human. Enemy of the clan. Murderer of her people. It wasn’t a him. It was an it. And she was forbidden to have anything to do with it.

  “Can you help me?” it whispered in a weak and desperate voice, wiping the long black hair from its face.

  She stepped back, startled. She knew that the Cherokee spoke the Eng-lish words as well as their own, but the sound of its voice frightened her. She could hear the weakness, the fear, the starvation of it. She could hear it all. And she didn’t want to hear it.

  “Do you have food?” it asked.

  The creature is starving, she thought in revulsion. It was as if someone had captured a wild bobcat and put it in a cage. No matter what you did with the bobcat, it was still a bobcat. It needed meat to survive.

  Out in the world, down in the valleys of the day-folk, where she made her nightly takes, it would never even occur to her to help a human boy, to actually feed one. They were tree-killers. How could she help such a beastly little creature?

  She could not give this boy food. She didn’t have any human food to give it. She had never seen or heard of her people taking prisoners, but the padaran and his guards must have captured this human and put it here for a reason, something important to the clan. It would be an act of great disobedience to feed it without permission.

  She knew all this! And she had no food. It was impossible.

  “I’ll eat anything,” the boy begged her. “I’m just so hungry. Please!”

  “Shut your mouth,” she ordered it, her mind darting from one thought to another, trying to make sense of what was happening.

  And then she remembered.

  There was something in her satchel.

  She looked down the corridor, first one way and then the other.

  This must be some sort of prison, she thought, hidden down here in the old part of the lair. But if it’s a prison, there must be guards…

  She thought the guards might come down the corridor at any moment and find her here. And they’d punish her for her disobedience against the clan. They’d lock her in one of these slimy holes and bind the door shut like they had with the boy. She could not help this boy! It was impossible. Get what you came for, Willa, she told herself angrily. Get yourself home.

  But it was no use. She knelt down on the floor.

  “You must stay quiet!” she told the boy as she opened her satchel.

  Watching her hands, the boy nodded obediently.

  As its little fingers grasped the sticks that imprisoned it, she could see the brown under the fingernails where it
had tried to scratch its way out. She could smell the sweat of its body and the blood of its wounds.

  She reached into her satchel and pulled out one of the lumps she had stolen from the lair of the man. She pushed the crumbly food through the lattice of sticks that separated her from the boy.

  The boy took the lump gratefully and shoved it in its mouth.

  She fed it another lump, and it ate the lump even more quickly than the first one, for it had learned to trust her, to take whatever she gave it.

  “These are so good, thank you,” it said as it chomped the next lump down.

  “Do not speak to me,” she said fiercely, her face flaring with red as she suddenly remembered what a foolish thing she was doing.

  The startled boy pulled back into its cell. “Why am I here?” he asked. “Why have you taken me?”

  Willa’s eyes widened in surprise.

  “I haven’t taken you!” she said.

  And as soon as she said the words, she felt so out of place, so disobedient, to be defiantly separating herself from the clan in this way. There is no I, only we. There was the clan. There was the us and the them. There was no I. I was a person alone. I was an impossibility. I was something that shriveled alone and died. Only through the cooperation of the clan did a Faeran survive.

  But she had said it, and she had said it strong. “I haven’t taken you,” she had said.

  She knew she was part of the clan, but she wanted nothing to do with this. You run from humans. You hide from them. You steal from them. But you don’t hurt them. You don’t do this to them.

  “If you’re not one of them, then who are you?” the boy asked.

  The question struck her mind like a blow. Who are you? It was the second time a human had asked her that question.

  “My name is Willa,” she said, unsure why she was allowing herself to talk to the human at all.

  The Cherokee boy pressed its face against the lattice of sticks that formed the little window in the door. And now she could see it studying her, looking at the dirt on her arms and legs, and the smears of dried blood on her face.

  “You look like you might be pretty hungry, too,” it said. “You should eat some of the cookies.”

  “You eat them,” she said, pushing the last two through the sticks at it. “I will have food soon enough when I get back home.”

  “Thank you,” it said as it gratefully ate the last two lumps. “My name’s Iska. What’s going to happen to me? Why am I here? Please help m—”

  The sound of approaching footsteps interrupted the boy’s words. Willa jumped to her feet. The prison guards were coming.

  The two guards spotted her in front of the boy’s cell as they came around the corner. They were tall, gangly Faeran with grim, grayish faces, muscled arms and chests, and sharpened wooden spears.

  “What are you doing down here?” one shouted at Willa. “Stop there!”

  To disobey the commands of one of the padaran’s guards was a great offense against the clan, but she was a rabbit under the claws of a swooping hawk. She fled, tearing down the corridor in the only direction she could go, deeper into the prison, every muscle in her body snapping with fear, her lungs sucking in air at a frantic pace.

  The outraged guards chased after her, determined to catch her, to stab her with their spears. They’d drag her in shame before the padaran for her disobedience, or shove her into one of their black cells.

  As she whipped around a corner, she heard the footfalls of the guards behind her, felt the vibration of their pounding, running steps on the woven-stick floor.

  She threw herself against the wall and pinned herself flat. Her whole body buzzing, she closed her eyes and tried to blend into the wall.

  Stay still, she told herself as she forced her heart to a slow and steady beat. Just stay still.

  I am the wall, I am the wall, she repeated in her mind, and prayed that it would be enough.

  As she quieted her heart and held her breath, the guards ran past her, one brushing by her so close that she felt the movement of the air on her cheek.

  “What was that girl doing down here?” one of the guards asked the other as they ran by, his voice so loud in her quiet mind that it felt like it could knock her from the wall.

  “Did you see her face?” the other asked.

  “It looked like one of the jaetter girls.”

  “We’ve got to tell the padaran.”

  As the sound of the guards faded into the distance, Willa pulled in a much-needed breath and stepped away from the wall.

  She immediately headed in the opposite direction from the guards, anxious to get out of the prison. But as she made her way up the corridor, she passed many cell doors and caught glimpses of faces in the woven-stick walls. They were strange white faces with blue eyes and brown eyes looking out at her as she passed, their spidery white fingers clinging to the sticks that bound them. Many more day-folk boys and girls had been trapped in tiny, dark prison holes. The faces were dirty with filth and gaunt with hunger. Some of them were bloody or disfigured by wounds. Her stomach churned with tight, twisting confusion as she pushed herself on.

  She ran back up the tunnel in the direction she had come, desperate to get out of the prison and find her way up to the areas where she and the other members of the clan were allowed to be. She should have never entered the forbidden parts of the lair.

  When she finally reached an active tunnel, her heart filled with gratitude. Most of the tunnels of Dead Hollow were empty and abandoned, but some were still used frequently by those few Faeran who still remained.

  She spotted two Faeran adults walking ahead of her, both of them carrying bushels of leafy food gathered by the clan. She tried to look like a normal member of the clan going about her business, but it was difficult.

  “Slow yourself down,” one said to Willa as she hurried by with her head lowered.

  Her mind kept trying to make sense of what she’d seen in the prison behind her, but she knew she had to block it out. It didn’t belong to her. It didn’t involve her. They were prisoners of the clan. They were humans. They were the enemy. Whatever was happening down there must be something the padaran wanted to be happening. She wasn’t even supposed to be down there. And she vowed she’d never go into that horrible place again.

  As she hurried through the tunnels of the lair, with other Faeran passing her this way and that, she kept to herself and she did not stop.

  She longed to get home to her den, to her mamaw, just to see her, to fall into her gentle arms and her soothing words, to come back to the one person in the world who truly loved her.

  But she knew that wouldn’t be the end of it. A heaviness loomed in her chest, a dark sense of foreboding like she’d never felt before. She’d done too much this time. She hadn’t meant to, but she’d seen too much. She’d been so disobedient in so many ways against the laws of the clan and the will of the padaran that she had no idea what was going to happen to her, except that it was going to be bad.

  When Willa finally came to the tunnel that sloped down into the area of the lair she shared with her grandmother, a warm and gentle sense of relief poured through her body.

  What she’d seen in the prison still haunted her, but the immediacy of her fear and confusion began to fade as she followed the familiar path home.

  The walls on the way to her den weren’t woven sticks like the rest of Dead Hollow, but a labyrinth of stone tunnels that had been bored and sculpted smooth by the flow of an ancient river.

  Some of the tunnels led to small caves, others to dead ends. One of the tunnels, which her mamaw had warned her about many times, led to a drop-off into a black abyss. Some members of the clan believed that the dark hole of the abyss was the mouth of an ancient creature of the earth. Others believed that it was a bottomless pit that went on forever. She and her sister, Alliw, used to sneak away, crawl to the edge, and peer down into the hole. One time they dropped a rock into the darkness and waited. But they never heard it hit the botto
m. The truth was, no one truly knew what was down there.

  There were many pits and dangers in the labyrinth, but Willa knew the maze of winding, interconnecting stone tunnels better than anyone, because it was the only way to her den.

  At long last, she came to the familiar tunnel close to home where the roof was permeated with smooth, round holes. River water had once poured through the holes, but now shafts of sunlight came filtering down instead, dappling the stone at her feet like rays of light shining through the leaves of great trees and touching the forest floor. This part of the labyrinth had once been inhabited by Faeran of old, and of all the places in the lair, these were the tunnels where she felt most at home.

  The stone walls were covered with the charcoal drawings and colored paintings of the people who had lived here thousands of years before. On one wall were many sticklike figures with their arms and legs outstretched, swimming in rivers that were dry ravines now. Another wall showed crowds of people looking up in awe at a blazing sun blocked by a round shape, with stars and planets visible in the background. On a third wall, there were Faeran men and women and children standing among tall trees as they gazed upon herds of large, horned animals that no longer existed in the world.

  But the most striking painting of all depicted what looked like a river that flowed along the length of one of the tunnel walls, but instead of curving lines of water, the River of Souls consisted of thousands of handprints, some large, some small, some put there a thousand years before, and others more recent.

  “It’s good to see you, sister,” Willa whispered as she leaned down and pressed her open hands onto the two smallest and most recent pair of handprints on the wall. When she closed her eyes, she had a perfect memory of when she and Alliw were just five years old, her mamaw covering their hands with red paint, one sister’s left hand and the other sister’s right, and then, as if they had a single body, pressing their hands side by side into the ancient river of time.