Forest of Whispers

by Jennifer Murgia

  “Please, just one more bite.” The voice carries across the stale air to my ears.

  I’ve made it to the back of the house where the light filters through broken boards in the roof, speckling the bare room. A scraggly woman sits in the corner encouraging someone I still cannot see. She seems intent on holding a distorted brown lump to the other person’s mouth. Still concealed, I shift my weight and lean against an object that seems sound enough to support me so I can crane my neck. A second woman lies upon a pile of blankets and rags. She will not part her lips to taste what the other woman offers, but instead moans and turns away, holding her stomach in agony.

  “You must try and eat it, you must. It will make you and the infant stronger.”

  What I’ve heard shocks me and my eyes scour every inch of the sickly woman’s figure. She is as thin as bone, and in the dim light she appears gray and sunken. If this woman is indeed carrying a child inside her, then there is no chance either of them will survive. I think of my stepmother lying in her chamber, knowing she is being doted on and being given more nourishment than this poor woman has probably ingested in an entire year. My fingers rake through my hair as I wonder why on earth I’ve allowed myself to walk into this person’s home, uninvited, and witness what could very well be another human being’s last moments.

  “Anna, please,” the older woman begins again. “It’s from the forest. The forest, Anna. Surely it is charmed and will help you.”

  The younger woman seems to brighten at this, and her right eye opens slightly, focusing on the little morsel that I can now see is the shape of a fluted mushroom. Her eye is drawn past the little meal, where the sun moves and reveals me. Our eyes widen at the same exact moment.

  “Stop!” I step forward, startling them both. The older one lets out a shrill scream, but not loud enough for anyone from outside to come running, for which I’m glad.

  I reach for her hand and take the little mushroom from her fingers. I may not be one to venture out beyond the castle very much, but I do know a poisonous mushroom when I see one.

  “She hasn’t eaten any yet, has she?” I ask the older woman as I try and look over her shoulder to the younger one for any sign of poisoning. Not that it will do any good—the younger one she calls Anna is already so pale and weak, I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to tell just by looking at her.

  The old woman stares at me, her mouth wide in what I cannot tell is fear or relief, but the shock passes quickly and she lunges at me for the precious dinner I’ve taken from her.

  “Thief! There’s a thief!” she cries louder, and this time, I’m sure someone has heard her. I’ve only moments to try to redeem myself before the bailiff comes barging in and carts me off to the stocks.

  “Stop! You don’t understand! This won’t help her; it will kill her!”

  The woman continues to pry my fingers apart, paying no mind to what I’ve said. She’s desperate, and I can only imagine what she’s gone through to get this tiny piece of food. There doesn’t seem to be any way to make her stop and listen. But Anna’s heard me, and she uses every bit of strength she has to pull herself up to her elbows, where she grabs the grubby ends of the older woman’s dress.

  “Mama, listen to him.” Her voice is barely there, just enough to stop the commotion, and I am flexing my fingers around the spongy mushroom that is no longer being wrestled from my grasp.

  “It’s true. I know you’re hungry, but you can’t eat this.” I hold the mushroom up to make my point. “This isn’t a Chanterelle. It looks a great deal like one, but trust me, this will do great harm if either of you eat it.”

  The woman slumps next to Anna, weary over the ordeal. How long has it been since either of them have eaten?

  She buries her face in her apron.

  “It’s an easy mistake to make,” I offer, pocketing the mushroom to prevent further harm, “especially when you’re hungry.”

  She rests a frail hand upon Anna’s arm. “These eyes of mine fail me all too often. I am desperate for us. If you had a husband to provide for you, I wouldn’t worry,” she says to Anna, which brings a weary sadness to the younger woman’s eyes. “I only wanted to believe in the magick for a little while.”

  “Magick? Mama, you don’t make sense.”

  “The girl told me the mushroom came from the forest,” then the woman lowers her voice, “near the cottage.”

  “Did you say ‘cottage?’” I interrupt, and the look on their faces is more than fear.

  “Who are you?” the woman asks me. She rises to her feet, but I can’t tell if she’s about to attack me again or not.

  “Forgive me, my name is Laurentz. I’m traveling through your village, and I heard cries coming from your home. I never meant to intrude.”

  The old woman nods a subtle gesture of forgiveness. This surprises and relieves me, and I stop looking over my shoulder in expectation that I’ll be removed from her house.

  “But what of this cottage?” I continue. “Is it the small cottage just outside the village?”

  The look in Anna’s eyes is soon guarded, revealing to me that I shouldn’t know of what goes on in the woods just outside their home. I’m a traveler, after all, and certainly not a familiar face.

  I watch the older woman’s expression change. “The very one. It’s the only cottage in the forest. No one else would live there but Matilde, and that girl.”

  “Girl?” My interest is piqued, and suddenly, the back of my neck tingles with excitement. Perhaps there was a reason I was drawn to step inside this decrepit building. The smell surrounding me is unbearable. It is thick and heavy, but I can’t seem to excuse myself to be on my way, not with the mention of the cottage and the possibility that the girl they speak of is the very one I’d met today.

  The older woman eyes me curiously, and then seems pleased to tell me what I apparently don’t know.

  “The cottage has been there for years. If you’re brave enough, you’ll go there,” she adds cryptically.

  “And what might I go there for?” I ask. The bishop’s words nag at the back of my mind, but it is the woman’s reason I want to hear now.

  “To know things, of course,” she tells me. “To know whom you will love, or if you’ll become rich.”

  At this I can see she eyes my clothing, and I realize I am more than an outsider to this village. She is wondering who I am, where I’ve come from, why I ask what I do, and why I do not know these things already. I can’t help thinking how Eltz is so different from this place. The people here are dirty and starving, protected by a wall of green that is so deceiving. Then there is the seemingly lonesome cottage that sits away from it all, protected by stories to keep everyone away. Only a few who are eager to know the future cross the hedge for the chance to believe in something unreal. The girl who crossed the hedge today was surreal. Is Rune part of the illusion? I certainly felt under a spell the moment I looked into her face.

  “Who exactly is Matilde?” I ask.

  Anna clears her throat. “She’s the crone who lives there.”

  “In my day,” the older woman interrupts, “they called someone like her a Hedge Witch.”

  “Hedge Witch?”

  “Mmm,” she nods, reaching for an unlit pipe she stuffs into her near-toothless mouth. “She lives beyond the border to the village, some say beyond the border to the Other World.”

  “Mama!” Anna whispers harshly.

  The older woman turns to her, “It’s all right. No one else can hear us.”

  “But can we trust him?” Anna asks, her voice low and strained, and as soon as she does, she appears nervous.

  “He just saved your life! Of course we can!” She turns back to me, “I was the fool who traded the handkerchief for the mushroom.”

  Handkerchief.

  My neck is sweating and I swipe it with the palm of my

  hand.

  “Are you all right, sir?” she asks me.

  Am I?

  The bishop’s words are tumbling towar
d me like a stampede. It took only moments for me to become caught up in searching for a girl I never laid eyes on until today—one so beautiful, and interesting, and peculiar, with a skill I had never seen before…

  Now, all I can think of is where I am, where I’m sitting, surrounded by filth and contagion. Pyrmont has most likely fallen by now. Eltz is next, and all I do is sit here. If I stay any longer, then surely I will be the one to carry the infection back with me. I will be responsible.

  What have I done?

  I watch the old woman slowly remove her pipe from her mouth. She holds it midair and assesses me, causing me to reach into my pocket and drop a number of coins into her hand. “Please, go on,” I say.

  “You’ve met the little thief, haven’t you? The pretty thief who tried to kill my daughter?”

  “Mama, you don’t know that,” Anna whispers from her thin little bed.

  “But all the same, she could have.” She turns her eyes to me and tilts her head, “You have, haven’t you?”

  I try not to touch my arm where Rune healed the deep scrape from the thorns. I don’t want to bring any more attention to myself, or to her. Something tells me it will not do either of us any good. I swallow hard and stand, because as soon as I can, I will leave this place, where the living are as good as dead.

  “I didn’t recognize her before.” The old woman’s face is lost in thought as she holds the pipe between her trembling, aged fingers. “Something about her face, her hair.”

  Rune’s face materializes in my thoughts—quiet, ethereal. Had I really been face to face with a witch? My instincts tell me no, but from my conversation with the bishop, and now this bitter old woman, I begin to wonder.

  The old woman stares at me as a devilish grin spreads across her sunken cheeks. “The forest looks dead,” she says. “But mark my words, it is very much alive. Today is the day the Hedge Witch conjures, for you and I have both been bewitched.”

  Chapter 8

  Rune

  When I return home my eye immediately notes the small patch of deadly mushrooms, and as I step closer to it, the sickness I felt earlier washes over me again. How could I have been so stupid? “Goddess, forgive me,” I whisper, then I pull the entire cluster from the ground and look beneath the tops. If I’d only taken the time to see how they lack the blunt veins of true Chanterelles, I would have known what they were. I toss them behind the thick Hemlock, kicking dead needles over them to bury the mistake beneath, and open the door to the cottage.

  I am prepared to tell Matilde of the misery I’ve caused in the short while I’ve been gone, but change my mind when I see her sitting alone at the table. Her head is in her hands and the rune stones are scattered about. Something is not right.

  “What happened here?” I ask. “Why are the stones everywhere?” I squat down and begin to collect them from the floor, waiting for her to answer me, but she doesn’t.

  There is no sign of the distraught woman as I look around the otherwise tidy room. Matilde runs a hand through her hair, smoothing the shorter gray strands back into place. “I gave her a cup of Chamomile to settle her and sent her on her way.”

  The face of the fortune-hungry visitor is still vivid in my mind. It was hardly a cup of tea she was after, yet I bite my tongue.

  “And what of her pain, her ailment?”

  “She has no ailment, at least not that I can help with.”

  I’m confused. Surely the woman suffers from something. What else would have brought her to us today? Like earlier, Matilde is distracted, and I can’t help feel the weight of the butcher’s words ringing over and over again in my head. I need to tell her. I must. But now, it seems, I can’t.

  I try to change the subject. “Was she pleased with her fortune?”

  I gently lay the gathered stones on top of the table. When she doesn’t answer, I open my mouth to ask again, but the look she shoots me stops my words instantly.

  “Her pain is in her heart.”

  “But you’ve always helped with—”

  She grabs my hand fiercely, stopping what I am about to say.

  “She has darker intentions than merely finding love.”

  With my free hand I lay the last stone beside the others and pretend all is normal.

  “Why were you in the village today, Rune?”

  It doesn’t surprise me that she already knows. I can never hide anything from her. I am trembling, fearing I’ll spill it all, and she will be so upset with me. It is no use to lie, either; she will surely find me out. It was bad enough I defied her and spoke back like an unruly child. It’s unacceptable that I tricked an old woman out of something she worked very hard on, something she intended to sell for money, or medicine.

  But no, I had to come along and talk her into trading it for a basket of murderous mushrooms.

  Murder, I think to myself. That’s what it has come to. That’s what I’ve done.

  I suddenly feel very ill again.

  Regardless of the wrong I’ve done today, I’ve committed a greater offense. I’m sure I’ve angered the Sacred Mother. Something Matilde has taught me never to do.

  The Sacred Mother will forgive you, child.

  I pale at the voice that whispers gently in my ear, knowing it is the very one that spoke to me in the village, at the stream. Matilde gathers the stones I’ve just collected into a heap and spreads them with her palm, completely unaware that something, someone, has touched me. Matilde, of all people, has not heard the voice, and that frightens me. From her skirt Matilde pulls a small knife. I recognize it as the one we use to cut herbs and flowers, only she brings it dangerously close to my open hand. Before I can ask, she slices a steady line across my palm. It beads at first, then wells into a river of deep red.

  “Mutti, what is this about?” I try to pull my hand to my side, wanting to cradle away the pain. She is never rough with me, and now she is squeezing my hand so tight it hurts. “Mutti, please! I’m sorry! I’ll tell you!”

  She does not free my hand, but rakes it over the stones. There is a searing heat beneath it that at first I believe is the combination of the deep gash and her grip, but I realize it’s much more than that.

  The stones are calling to me.

  “You don’t need the runes to tell you what happened today! I promise I’ll tell you.”

  My hand grabs a stone, and I drop it onto the cloth. She doesn’t bother to hide the etched symbol it holds, and I stare at the crude drawing of a triangle with a square inside and a straight line beneath it. From one of my earliest lessons, I know it is the rune that symbolizes Home.

  My hand burns to choose another, and I reluctantly reach, choosing the one that is a stick with a triangle at the base of it. It represents a Woman, only I cannot take the time to wonder if it’s symbolic of me or Matilde, as my hand is grabbed again.

  More stones follow; the more the casting continues, the more my hand burns with the urgency of what the runes have to tell. The stone of Disordered Thoughts, the stone of Protection, the stone of a Man, the stone of War. The last stone—the rune of Poison—is chosen and laid upon the table with the others in an order I cannot follow. At long last, the runes no longer call to me.

  This isn’t the same casting Matilde used on the cloaked woman earlier this morning, nor is it one she has ever used in teaching me the Old Ways. Instead, it’s intricate and confusing, and the symbols could be extremely volatile, depending on how Matilde interprets them. Right now, she is saying absolutely nothing.

  My hand is left throbbing. I can’t help staring at the etching that depicts Poison, and feel a sob form inside my chest. I am afraid to ask what this means. I am afraid to look at Matilde and see the answer on her face.

  Minutes go by, and still Matilde reveals nothing to me. Is my fortune that horrible she can’t speak of it? Does she regret the promise she made sixteen years ago? I’ve been nothing but a burden to her. She should have been left to live in peace in her little cottage in the woods. She’s worked hard to sustain us, to
protect us, while I’ve only ever been another mouth to feed, a person to worry over. The anger I feel over my birth mother wanting to hide me away like this comes in a wave. Did my own mother know the stones would someday reveal I’d be a terrible burden, or worse?

  When I can no longer stand it, Matilde faces me with those soft gray eyes of hers and smiles that wonderful smile that’s always felt like home. The sobs release and I fall into her arms, and she holds me tight.

  “There, there, Schätzchen. It’s all right. Everything will be all right.”

  I want to tell her I’m a horrid girl and she has every right to be angry with me, but the only sound that escapes me is a whimper.

  “Come, my lovey. Dry your eyes. The moon is rising and I’ve something to show you.”

  “But the stones…”

  “Leave them. They will still be here when we return, and when we do, I will tell you who you are.”

  I lean upright and feel dizzy.

  Tell me who I am? She didn’t say, “I will tell you what the stones say.”

  No, she said something very, very different.

  I don’t ask this time, even though I want to more than anything. Instead, I rise to my feet, and although I am trembling, I follow Matilde outside into the night beneath the light of the full moon.

  Chapter 9

  Rune

  “Come this way, Rune.”

  I follow Matilde’s voice as it leads me out into the darkness, away from the reassuring warmth of the little cottage. For her age she walks briskly, and I find I’m the one lagging behind, my feet stumbling over roots and arms scraped by burrs. It’s hard to see so I focus on the bobbing flame of the thick candle she carries, but the further we walk, the darker it seems. The moon peeks in and out through the treetops, making everything around me appear thick and wobbly. Things that shouldn’t frighten me play tricks on my mind. What should be solid shifts and bends in the splattered light, and I begin to think that the stories that come from this place may hold a strange and terrifying truth.