Angel in the Woods

by Rachel Starr Thomson

  She bid us enter in low tones, her torch casting strange shadows on the flagstones as she closed the door behind us. Her eyes swept over both of us, and she addressed herself to me while looking at the Angel.

  “Your hands are bloody,” she said. “What happened?”

  The Angel grunted as he removed his cloak and laid it on the bench. “An intruder,” he said. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

  Nora cast another glance at me, but apparently she was satisfied with the Angel’s answer. I was not. I waited for him to give some nod to what I had done for him, but he said nothing. He merely finished removing his outdoor clothing and looked at me with his dark eyes.

  “Go off to bed, boy,” he said. “There is work to be done on the morrow.”

  I had many things I wanted to say, but I bit the words back and turned to go. I had not ascended three steps when I was seized with a sudden desire to see Nora again, to talk to her, to make something of myself in her eyes. I turned back and peered through the crack of the door to the hall. The Giant was still there. Nora was with him. His great arms were folded gently around her shoulders, and her head rested on his chest—like a child in her father’s embrace. He was speaking to her, but his words were no more to me than a low rumble. Once again I turned and began the slow trudge up to my room.

  I awoke late in the morning to the sound of running feet and chattering voices. Some of the gaggle had chosen the landing and stairs outside my door to set up a cascading doll village. The small window in my room revealed a dismal landscape, only half-visible through the slanting snow. The sky was slate grey and seemingly untinged by sunlight. Winter had come with missional passion and was saying its morning prayers upon us all, devoting itself to the task of burying the whole world under snow and wind and cloud.

  I paced beneath my window for a little while, sitting down at last in a high-backed wooden chair facing into the room. I felt strangely disquieted. I had grown accustomed to my forest den, but I knew that even that had been swallowed and transformed by the storm. I was not eager to face the house or anyone in it.

  I had not been sitting long before my stomach began to complain aloud of ill-treatment. I welcomed its discomfort at first as a general reflection of my mood, but hunger eventually got the better of me. I dressed and left the room, wading precariously through the gaggle and their dolls on my way to the kitchen. An iron pot sat simmering on the stove with the dregs of porridge left in it, growing stiff and yellow. The household, I gathered, had eaten. I helped myself to the porridge, bathing it in milk and brown sugar in an attempt to make the best of it, and ate by myself at the long wooden table with my feet propped impolitely up on the chair beside me.

  Nora whisked into the kitchen when I was nearly finished my breakfast, arms full of firewood, her hair tied up in a bun. She dropped the firewood into the bin beside the stove, cranked open the iron door, and tossed in a couple of logs, jabbing the whole mess with an iron poker that made sparks fly. Finished, she straightened up, wiped her hands on her apron, and looked at me with something akin to amusement in her eyes.

  “Spirit’s gone with the sun?” she asked. “The storm will end soon enough, believe me. And then there’ll be work for you, so be glad of your ease now.”

  The fairy queen was gone, replaced by the brusque house mother I had never warmed to. I was in no mood for condescension, and I am ashamed to say that I nearly answered her back. But just then two very little girls burst through the kitchen door, bounding and bubbling with noise. The smallest one catapulted herself straight at Nora. Nora caught the little thing up in her strong arms and held her close. She smiled as the child shyly hid her face in her neck. The other child was tugging at her apron, so Nora lowered herself down and listened, her face patient and open, a smile still playing on her lips. She balanced on her heels while the little one snuggled closer.

  For all that the wind howled outside, I thought that the heart of sunlight and fire-warmth had come into the kitchen and settled over Nora. No, she wasn’t a fairy queen… but for the first time in my life, I became aware that there was something deep inside woman that was more beautiful than magic could ever be. And, also for the first time in my life, I wondered how any young man could ever be hero enough to deserve to plumb the depths.

  Nora was right. There was work to be done. When after three days the storm ceased and the sun came out, I found myself neverendingly patching this bit of roof against the melting snow, and plugging that hole or crack against the cold wind, or clearing this or that path of snow—four back-breaking feet of it in the drifts—so that the girls could get where they needed to go.

  The sun had not been up one hour on that first day before Nora announced that my help was needed at the river. She dragged me out into the stinging cold of the morning, along with the Pixie and two of the older children, that I might shovel clear a large patch of ice. I then used the shovel to put a hole in the surface so the girls could gather water for the day in their metal buckets. And so little could I bear to be useless while they lugged pails of icy water back to the house, that I put down my shovel and used my back and arms to relieve the two older children of their burdens. The Pixie praised me for this in her laughing way, while Nora commented that once I had done this twice every day, I shouldn’t slop so much of the water on my legs—which would be better, both for the water and for my legs. It would be better also for the kitchen, which would soon begin to smell if my trousers needed to be hung over the stove to dry every morning. But I thought that her eyes were friendlier when she looked at me. The general unflappable calm about her was happy and not sullied by my presence.

  When the storm had been relegated to the memory of a week or two, the winter quieted down for a time. Much of the snow melted off. I had no time to be glad of the respite, for as soon as the landscape was navigable, the Angel led an expedition to the western edge of the woods. Twelve of us went to work with a vengeance, chopping and hacking at the trees until we had enough firewood, I thought, to melt the mountaintops. That is, the Angel and I chopped and hacked. The rest of the delegation, led by a splendidly pink-cheeked Pixie in her fur-trimmed coat of royal blue, stripped the trees of their branches and twigs and carted the wood back to the castle. They sang while they worked, and threw an inordinate number of snowballs, until enough snow had trickled down the back of my coat to make me think that article of apparel practically worthless.

  I inquired of the Pixie, on that first fine winter’s day, with the sun sparkling blindingly on the white lawns, whether the Poet’s genius also disqualified him from chopping wood. She seemed surprised at my question.

  “The Poet is a creature of the summer,” she told me. “He is not here now.”

  And indeed, I did not see him, not through all the long months of winter. His presence was now and then missed, especially as I sometimes wished for another of my sex to engage when Nora chased me out of the kitchen or the Pixie was particularly inexplicable, or when the giggling outside my door grew too much to bear and I stepped one too many times on the doll furniture strewn about the stairs and nearly broke my neck trying to get my balance again.

  The Angel was there every day, a great dark presence in the house, magnificent in his usual silence. The children loved him and would climb all over him whenever he sat down, but though he listened to them prattle away at him for hours, he rarely had anything to say in return. They did not seem to mind. The love in his eyes, surrounded by deep creases of laughter and care, was enough of an answer for them.

  Chapter 10

  furs

  Upon a midwinter’s descent to the cellar, in search of a middling sack of cocoa, it occured to me that the castle’s stores were running low. The dried things hanging from the low ceiling were nearly depleted; the vegetables buried in underground nooks just as sparse; flour, sugar, and molasses all dwindling. Porridge there was in abundance, but even the children had begun to revolt against its frequent appearances.

  I climbed the cramped stairway
back up to the kitchen, intending to inform Nora of this alarming development, but I found that her omniscience had not failed her. Her head was bent over a list on the kitchen table, which she rapidly scratched at with a quill and ink, making calculations. The Angel and the Pixie stood on either side of her, now and again making some suggestion, all three frowning as only those who are trying to manipulate numbers do frown. Half a dozen pots simmered on the iron stove behind them, making the room uncomfortably warm.

  “It will do,” Nora said at last, pushing herself back from the table. “If we sell them all, there is enough to tide us through the winter.”

  The Pixie laughed. “Well, don’t be too optimistic about it,” she said. “It’s a splendid haul, Nora, and you know it.”

  Nora looked at her friend placidly, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand and leaving a slight streak of ink across it. “It will do, as I said.”

  “It will more than do,” the Pixie declared, looking down at the paper again. “Let me do the haggling, and we’ll make a Christmas of it. See if we don’t.”

  I strode forward and laid the cocoa on the table, drawing attention from the three at last. “If there is haggling to be done,” I said, “leave it to me. I could haggle a man out of his only winter coat for less than he paid for it.”

  The Pixie laughed. “But can you haggle him into one, and out of his money?” she asked.

  “What are we selling? I asked, straining for a look at the paper. It was smudged and dirty, written upon in a broad hand that was difficult to make out, with Nora’s long narrow figures at the bottom.

  The Angel answered me. “Furs,” he said.

  Nora looked up at me. “Have you ever tried to sell anything?”

  “I told you,” I said. “I’m an expert.”

  “He’ll go with you,” the Angel decided. “He can be your protector.”

  “And I’ll do all the real work,” the Pixie said. “You know I sell more than anyone else. And buy more, too.”

  Nora’s face seemed to cloud a little. “I think you should stay home this year,” she said. “They’re getting to know you too well.”

  “What if they do?” the Pixie asked. “I have been cooped up here all winter.”

  “We all have,” Nora said. Her eyes flashed. Their obvious disagreement made me uncomfortable, especially as this hardly seemed like an isolated conversation.

  The Pixie flushed and looked away. “I know you think I attract too much attention,” she said. “But I can’t help that. And I can’t stay here all winter, Nora; you know I can’t.”

  In reply Nora simply looked at the Angel. His eyes were troubled as he regarded both of them. His answer was a long time in coming. He stood as he answered. “You will both go,” he said. He nodded in my direction. “And Hawk.”

  Nora opened her mouth again. “I would rather not—” she began.

  The Angel cut her off. “Go,” he said. “You’ll be needed.”

  Nora did not look up. “Yes, sir,” she said.

  The Angel left the kitchen. The Pixie followed, after a concerned glance at Nora.

  I cleared my throat. “Surely it isn’t that—”

  Nora stood abruptly. “Excuse me,” she said. She left me standing alone in the kitchen, sweating slightly in the heat of the overworked iron stove, and entirely at a loss for what to do with the cocoa.

  * * *

  I trekked out into the woods two days later, following the Angel’s footsteps through the snow. Together we journeyed deep into the forest’s embrace, down paths that had once been familiar but now were changed. Winter had entered the woods and made me once again a stranger in them. Beneath the cold and snow and deathly stillness, I knew that my woods still existed. My den was still under the roots of an old tree in another part of the forest. The birds and animals would return before long, or else they were still here—sleeping, waiting for spring to call them out again.

  I did not like the change, and I said nothing as we walked. Snowflakes drifted lightly down around us. The Angel looked over his shoulder at me. He smiled slightly through his great dark beard.

  “It has not changed,” he said. “The heart of the woods is the same in every season.”

  “I am inclined to dislike the seasons,” I said. “They make a foreigner of me, and I was at home here.”

  “Do you begrudge the woods their depth?” the Angel asked, looking ahead once again. His voice was clear in the still air. “Are you unhappy because there is more to them than you saw at first?”

  I looked up toward the treetops. “I thought I knew them,” I said. “It only took months.”

  “Here,” the Angel said, stopping abruptly before a tangle of small trees. Even without leaves, their small branches were laced so closely together as to make a nearly impenetrable screen. I stopped in confusion. We were in search of the Angel’s furhouse, and so I had expected to go to a part of the woods I had never visited before—after all, in my months in the woods I had never suspected the existence of such a place. But I had been here many times, or thought I had.

  The Angel paid no mind to my confusion. He reached into the thicket and pulled a heavy door open. I could see it now: grey and low to the ground was a rough-hewn hut. It was dark within, and I followed the Angel down a set of steps to the sunken floor. The walls stretched up nine feet on either side; high enough for the Angel to stand at his full height and look comfortable. He lit a candle, and the flames flickered and danced on the colours and textures of the furs that hung on the walls: fox red and badger black, beaver brown and rabbit grey.

  He looked at me with his eyes smiling. “When a thing is truly worth knowing,” he said, “you will find it takes a lifetime to know it.”

  Chapter 11

  in the town

  The Pixie, Nora, and I left the castle on a cold November morning, on a small horsecart heaped with furs. Nora relinquished the reins to me without too much trouble before we left. She nestled among the furs with the Pixie while I drove the cart over the frozen road through the woods. A thin layer of snow lay on the ground all around us, and the sun shone freely through the bare tree branches. I could see my breath in the air. With the leather reins in my hand and the rumble of the wheels on the earth, the clop of the shaggy pony’s hooves before me and the voices of Nora and the Pixie behind me, I thought it was a good morning to be alive.

  The woods were still and barren, but somewhere in their midst the Giant walked again, haunting the landscape. He had taken to patrolling the woods as soon as the snow had melted enough to encourage travelers. He returned to the castle when the weather grew fiercest, and wandered the forest when it gentled, but he did not ask me to accompany him. I wondered why, but I did not ask.

  We rode all morning, out from the woods and over the hills toward a town I had never seen. Nora directed me now and again, but she needn’t have. The pony knew where it wanted to go. We came at last over the crest of a high hill to see the town laid out before us, and both Nora and the Pixie climbed up from their places to lean over my shoulders and see the settlement that was at once familiar and foreign to them. I knew that they had been here before—Nora to trade and the Pixie to be curious and arouse curiosity—but their castle world was far removed from any such place. It was a large town, big enough to house both goodman and reprobate. The nobility of the province lived some way off, in a great house on lands far larger, if less wild and beautiful, than the lawns of the castle. The Pixie had learned as much by asking questions and by reading books in the library that gave some of the area’s history, and she was glad to share her knowledge with me.

  The town, it seemed, was located at a crossroads between various larger settlements, and so it made a fair resting place for tinkers, vagabonds, circuses, and all manner of passers-through. Its central location ensured it was not cut off from the rest of the world when the cold weather came, and so the town had made a habit, owing both to its number of visitors and to its number of wintering merchants, of holding a
market several times every month. It was a perfect place for the inhabitants of the castle to sell their wares. And so they had been doing, I gathered, for some years.

  The wide main street of the town was already buzzing with activity as we made our furred way into the midst of the market. Nora soon spotted an open place, and we pulled into it. The girls jumped off the cart and pulled handmade wooden stands out from beneath it, which they had collapsed and tied onto the wagon with stout twine.

  All around us the heady atmosphere of the town filled my senses. Coins and horse tack jangled, hooves and wheels stamped and creaked through the streets. Voices called from a thousand wooden cloaks and shawls and hoods and leather coats. I was overwhelmed by the sense of being out, of being among mankind again. Everything here seemed earthier, more real than anything at the castle. Here were men wearing muddy leather boots, with swords and tools strapped to their belts and worn gloves covering their hands. Here were voices of every pitch and tone, gruff and smooth, haughty and loud, shy and retiring, young and old. Here were hags and hagglers; wealthy men and beggars; voices raised in praise and in argument. I could smell beer and hot sausage, horse dung and rawhide. The air was vaporous with the breath of men and horses, and with smoke and steam from off the cooking fires where sausages, breads, and deep fried rolls of raisin dough filled the air with their scents.

  I was intoxicated by it all. I heard voices raised in anger and suddenly my heart was pounding. All my old instincts were awake, and I longed to join the fight and exchange a few good-natured blows. The Pixie, too, watched the passing crowds with a kind of hunger in her eyes. Only Nora seemed unaffected. She worked to get the furs in good display, and then almost immediately she was taking and counting money for them, arguing price in low, gentle tones with an old woman who did not look as though she could have afforded a bundle of rags. The old woman left with a grey fox fur, and I wondered what Nora had accepted for it.