Forest of Whispers

by Jennifer Murgia

  Chapter 16

  Rune

  I am far from the boundaries of my home, but I am not far away enough yet, and though my muscles burn for rest, I will not stop.

  “Please, Sacred Mother, please give me the strength to keep on.”

  I follow the stream weaving along the ground. It widens and narrows in places I have trouble following, twisting away from my feet as I shuffle behind its course, sometimes disappearing altogether. When that happens, I panic. I force myself to stand still and will it to come back to me. It always listens.

  Until now.

  The stream has vanished. It has faded into the deep, dark ground, and I cannot find where it surfaces again. I drop to my hands and knees, clawing at the earth, feeling the damp moss to see if my fingers drip with excess moisture. Perhaps the water has gone too far under for me to follow. Perhaps I am truly on my own. It hurts to pull myself to my feet, but I manage, and stand peering into the thick copse of trees that surrounds me, listening for the sound of trickling water. There is nothing but silence.

  The forest is so dreadfully dark here as I pace, but I can see the large circular arc my footsteps have traced. It reminds me of the circle Matilde cast the night she told me about my mother. She asked the elements to guard me. Will they still do so, or have they left me?

  I create a starting point with my eye, then begin walking to the left of it. Widdershins. The last thing I need is negative energy entering the circle. When I am through, I step inside, tracing a line in the dirt to close myself within.

  I have nothing to offer the Sacred Mother, but hope the acorn will do. I pull it from the bag, placing it on a rock in the center of the circle, in a sliver of pale moonlight that cuts between the branches. I doubt very much the little acorn will do anything substantial, but if it is meant to nourish then I figure it might be of some value to give it up.

  From my pocket, I pull out the remaining treasures I’d found by the cottage. I hold the little brown button up to the sky. “This is all I have to offer you—please accept it. May this button bind me to the earth and keep me steady. May this spoon carve a path for me to find safety.”

  I don’t know what else to say, and fear I am not doing a very good job at my first witch circle. My voice sounds silly and trite. I feel very foolish holding the button and spoon. Even the acorn looks pathetic as I peer down at it from between my extended arms.

  I am a witch, I am a witch, I am a witch, I think to myself.

  I wait a few moments. Nothing happens. There is no spark of light. No feeling of tremendous warmth like the other night when Matilde invoked Fire. Maybe that’s where I went wrong. Fire spoke to me that night, but I have no fire here, and no means to make one. Defeated, I settle myself to the ground, sulking.

  “The Sacred Mother won’t help me,” I whisper out loud, hearing how my voice grates against the night. It echoes and surrounds me like a pulse that is much too loud for the stillness. “She’s turned away from me.”

  You will never be alone, daughter of mine…

  I am tempted to answer her, but that would mean I am accepting her, and I can’t yet. I’ve grown up fearing her, much like I still do. When the air circles and stirs behind me, I know it’s her. Dry leaves take flight and gather around me, rising into a tower, then falling to the ground just outside the circle. Even the wind will not enter it. I must have done something wrong.

  “Why won’t you let me be?” I ask into the darkness. “Why must it be now that you follow me?”

  You need me, daughter…

  “I will never need you.”

  Ah, but you do…

  The walk has been so terribly exhausting and lonely—it’s no wonder I am fighting with the voices inside my head. Strange—after living in the forest my entire life, it is here, alone, that my senses have become heightened. I can hear and feel more keenly than I ever have before. This is no longer the Black Forest I know. This is a strange new world waiting to engulf me, and I don’t know if I am ready for it.

  I kick at the ground and break the circle.

  The tree boughs above me reach for one another, creating a thick impenetrable fence much denser than the hedge near the village. There is no wind, and I should be curious how the trees move without it, but I am sore. I am weary. It seems my legs will no longer cooperate with the rest of my body. Then there is a sound at my feet, and I am stunned to find the little stream has returned. It is no wider than my arm, and barely a trickle that seems content enough to disappear beneath the thick root of a tree just a few yards in front of me. I look behind me at my makeshift altar. The button and spoon are gone. Even the acorn.

  Tired, I look up and rub my eyes. The wide trunk is gnarled in such a way it appears to have steps carved into it. I know I am seeing things that are not quite real or explainable, but I am in the Black Forest, and I have just made a bargain with the Sacred Mother. I am a witch.

  I mutter a thank you to remain in the Mother’s good graces and climb the trunk to a strange, flat platform made of wide branches. It is layered with fine needles that are soft to the touch, not prickly or pointy, and I settle myself upon them, resting within the crook of the great tree. Here I am completely hidden from the ground below, if someone were to come looking for me. I pray that if someone is searching, they’ll assume I died in the fire that consumed the cottage. Where else would I be? Realistically, would a girl my age run off into the forest at nightfall? This forest? And would anyone really come after me?

  My hand reaches out to separate the boughs, and I peek out into the vast darkness. Nothing that resembles a lantern or torch comes my way—nothing bobbing with light, no shouts from trackers. I am safe. For now. But for how long, I have no idea.

  And then the tears come in waves, beginning in my chest, heaving their way up to my throat where they become stuck. I curl in on myself, missing Matilde, seeing her execution as vividly in my mind as if I were in the square watching it all over again. “I am a terrible girl,” I say to myself. I half-hope I fall out of the tree. I half-hope the villagers come find me and whisk me away.

  I deserve nothing less.

  Chapter 17

  Laurentz

  Last evening, after my father left the table, I wandered outside. I found myself at the mouth of the forest, looking intently on the ground for moss. All I could find were dead pine needles, brown lichen, and wild fern. At one point during the night I sat up in my bed and stared at my arm. I know the thorns had scraped it. I’d felt their sting. There’d been blood to prove it, yet there is no mark. It leaves me without explanation. Was the moss’ cure medicinal, or was it more than that? Was this the work of a witch, such as the bishop had warned me of? Had I indeed been bewitched by Rune?

  I suppose I invited these thoughts, for I did not heed my father’s request. I did not pray. It isn’t that I didn’t believe God would hear my petition, but that my father told me to do it. As punishment, I’d spent the entire night looking for answers to the strange healing, seeing Rune’s haunting eyes every time I tried.

  When I awoke and ventured downstairs, Cook could barely speak. A timid boy, elbow-deep in brick dust as he scoured the stove irons, was the only person who could tell me what had happened. He’d just come from Pyrmont an hour before, sent to ask if all was well, but no one had answered the hail. Through her sobs, I caught enough to understand that Cook’s last remaining family, a cousin, had been a servant there. Last night she had not been weeping for my stepmother, who still clings to life this morning.

  This is why I am here, saddled atop my horse overlooking the river at the foot of Eltz’s land. My back is to the forest, something I have been told not to allow. I know I must go into the forest again, that I must make my way through the shadows and eerie pockets of cold, damp air to the village surrounded by the fence of green.

  Let my father think I do this to honor his wish and appease the bishop, that I will warn this humble village of an imminent threat. The real reason is simple. I want to find Rune. I want a
nswers. I want to see her do something else that will send chills up my spine and astound me. I want to look deep into her eyes and know that she holds something over me, a spell perhaps, and that what she is capable of isn’t a figment of my imagination. Then, I want to bring her back to Eltz with me, her basket overflowing with herbs and stalks and a great big pile of spongy green moss. I will ask her to heal my stepmother. I will prove that the bishop is wrong, that what cannot be explained is not always a sign of evil. Eltz will have its protection against the Plague, and in the end, I will have won the respect of my father.

  Chapter 18

  Rune

  The night did not swallow me whole, much to my disappointment.

  My face aches from crying. My jaw is stiff from clenching my teeth together. I do not need to peer into the flowing stream beneath the tree to see how red and swollen my eyes are. Last night was a nightmare, but still, I made it through. I am here. I am whole. The villagers did not follow me into the forest, and after all the terrible things I’d done, the Sacred Mother watched over me, and for that I am grateful.

  I climb down from my woodland shelter and look around. It didn’t rain during the night, yet the stream has indeed grown larger, making me wonder if magick forces were at work while I slept. Had I been purposely led to this spot to prevent me from wandering further away? The Black Forest is so disorienting, even during the day, that I surely would have walked in circles, perhaps even finding my way back to the village and into the arms of my enemies.

  Strange, too, is that the ground is void of my footprints. The circle is gone, and I shudder, knowing well that which I do not understand is at work here. I feel it in the air, hear it in the trees. It waits for me to understand it, to welcome it, to beckon it. For the first time I wonder how long it will take me…or if I have, in fact, already begun to do so.

  I drop to my knees and lean over the cool, glistening water, avoiding my reflection. The water is cold and satisfying on my parched tongue and it fills me so that I don’t feel the empty space in my stomach. But I do make a mistake. It is one I cannot help. I open my eyes. Instead of looking at my face, I am staring back at another over my shoulder. She is gray and ghostlike, and the trees behind her show through her skin, as if she is nothing but a pane of glass.

  I react, slipping from the loose pebbles that line the narrow bank and into the icy water up to my knees. When I look again, he is standing there. Not her.

  “It’s seems I am pulling you out of trouble again,” Laurentz says to me.

  He waits for an answer, and the pit of my stomach flutters. I cannot believe he is here. I am glad he is, yet I can’t help feeling something else, and I stare at his hand, unsure if it is wise to take it and allow myself to be pulled from the stream. I don’t like needing someone else’s help, and honestly, I’m afraid. If he was able to find me so easily, will others come as well?

  “You’re far from home this morning,” he tells me, ignoring the stretch of uncomfortable silence that pressures me to answer him. I bite the inside of my cheek. I don’t have to tell him anything. I don’t know him. I can’t trust him, or anyone.

  I nod toward the gold braid cording that adorns his uniform. “And you’re dressed far too elegantly for a jaunt through the woods,” I say in return.

  He looks down at his chest, then back at me. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

  I’ve never seen these colors, nor the crest emblazoned upon his sash. It is a golden stag, and I wonder what it means. He looks devastatingly handsome, but in an official sort of way, and I wonder if he has anything to do with the men who took Matilde to the village square the night before. With all my heart, I don’t want him to be. I want him to be the nice boy who helped me escape the clutches of the hedge, not a part of something so cruel.

  I wring out the hem of my dress. It will take a while to dry. The sun doesn’t seem to last very long over the forest, but it is something I’m used to.

  “What did you say?” I ask, continuing to watch the steady trickle that falls from my skirt to the ground.

  Laurentz has been looking around, but turns to me with a confused expression on his face. “I didn’t speak.”

  “Yes, you did. You were wondering what I’m gathering today.”

  He takes a slow step in my direction, then pauses. “I’ve been quiet this entire time. I was…”

  “You were what?” I ask him. My hand swipes at a loose hair that has fallen across my eye. I stand upright and look at him questioningly.

  “I was wondering to myself what could have brought you so far away from the village. That perhaps the moss you used on my arm grows here. But I didn’t say it. I thought it.”

  A strange smile creeps to the corner of my mouth, and I laugh a little at this. But my laugh is a nervous one, and he knows it. I can’t pretend this into something else. What can I say to make him believe I made a mistake, that I heard a bird call and not his thoughts?

  But I did. I must have. It was as clear as all the other times he’s spoken to me; his voice has a silken quality to it. Nothing in the forest can replicate it. I shrug my shoulders convincingly. “Then it must have been my own thoughts I heard.”

  But I hear him again, and now, I watch him out of the corner of my eye because I am alarmed to the point of shaking. His lips don’t move. They don’t open; they don’t even twitch so that he might be projecting his voice out to me, pretending not to speak when he really is. He must wonder why I am here. I have no basket, and the ground does not appear to be very fruitful.

  I take a deep breath, astonished at what is happening between us. I can’t help staring at his uniform because I am too afraid to look into his eyes. All I can think of is how he doesn’t fit here. He is too formal to be standing in the forest with me. He is too perfect to blend in with the wild while I stand in a dirty, damp dress, my eyes swollen from my tears. We are as different as two worlds. But what is stranger still is how he doesn’t appear to notice it as I do. In fact, he appears to be amused, even curious.

  “You can hear me, can’t you?”

  His eyes light up at this preposterous, impossible idea, as he walks toward me. “Tell me you can hear what I’m thinking.” It is clear this is amazing to him, while to me, it is practically horrifying. How will I talk my way out of it? Is this what he came for—proof that I am different? Proof that I am a witch’s daughter, and maybe even a witch myself? Instantly my heart clenches.

  Instead of grasping my wrists like I expect, he cautiously reaches out and lets his fingertips slide gently across my cheek. The eyes I look up into are soft, and then he asks, “Who are you?”

  Who am I? Who am I? Echoes in my head. Do I even know? His mind is quiet while he waits, letting in another familiar voice, my mother’s.

  You know who you are…

  I know my name is Rune. I grew up in the Black Forest, beyond the border of Württemberg. I was raised by Matilde, an old healing woman who peddled fortunes. I am the daughter of a woman who gave me away, who was then burned at the stake for being a witch.

  Do I tell him this? Is there more to my story? Isn’t this enough?

  There is one thing I know for certain, and that is I feel so very alive at this moment as he touches my face and looks into my eyes. I am real. I am alive. My heartbeat tells me so, and it is beating so fast right now that I can’t think straight.

  Laurentz drops his hand and rolls up his sleeve without taking his eyes from mine. I break the gaze and look down, seeing the skin I healed with the moss is exposed.

  “I’ve tried over and over again to come up with a logical explanation, and I simply can’t,” he whispers. “How did you do this? How can you hear what I’m thinking?”

  “I don’t know,” I whisper back.

  His face is so close to mine that it is nearly impossible to breathe. It seems the forest is covered in a veil that muffles the usual woodland sounds, as if it too waits for something magickal to happen. I have never felt my knees go weak before, except for when Rolf told
me what the mushrooms had done to his horse, and when Matilde was taken away. Never have I felt this way because of someone looking at me.

  “It’s true then,” Laurentz says softly. “You’ve bewitched me.”

  And then the spell is broken. I back away tensely, disturbed by what he has just said.

  “I haven’t bewitched you. I haven’t bewitched anyone. You don’t know who I am,” I whisper back defensively, and then ask, “Why are you here?”

  I look at his face, and for a moment I feel terrible for destroying the unexplainable magick felt between us. But I won’t allow myself be blinded by a feeling I don’t understand, not when it’s crucial that I keep myself safe. I don’t know who to trust. I want to trust Laurentz. I want to feel what I just did moments ago, again and again. It was so beautiful, so warm. I felt happy. But I don’t know what the future holds for me. I am not a part of the world he belongs to. I am not even sure how I fit into the world that is meant to be mine.

  He too seems to feel something is changed now. He holds himself straighter, stiffer, as if I’ve offended him. I watch as he rolls his sleeve back over his strong forearm, and I wish I had the courage to tell him what he wants to know. I wish I could tell him who my mother was, who I think I am. What would he say if I told him I hear her voice? That she wants to help me become like her? That the reason she’s come back for me is because she wants me to destroy the village for what they did to her? Oh, yes, that would make him stay with me forever, wouldn’t it?

  “I’m on my way to the village. A favor to the bishop,” Laurentz tells me.

  My heart sinks. Now I know I must be careful around him. I can’t help seeing the bishop in my mind, as he watched from the arched bridge and ordered the men to dunk Matilde over and over until she drowned.

  “It’s all right, Rune. I’m not contagious. I’ve only come to warn the others about the Plague.”

  He’s mistaken my step back as indication that I know something terrible is possible. He still believes I live in the village, that he’s doing me a favor by warning me, not that I am putting distance between us because he has anything to do with the terrible man who took Matilde away from me.