Into the Woods

by Kim Harrison

  Her mother always had stories to tell. Her parents had been among the first settlers to the valley, attracted to the fertile farmland in the lowlands, the tall trees in the hills, and the cool waters coming from them. But her mother had scared her this afternoon with a frantic story of a monster in the woods, one that would kill unless it was stopped.

  Resolute, she reached for the knob, hesitating when Meg asked, “Wasn’t the little girl scared?”

  “More scared than anything in the world,” her mother said confidently, “but she knew that to believe him would let him destroy everything she loved in the world, so the brave girl shoved him into the tree and said the magic words to make the tree swallow him up forever.”

  “And he couldn’t get out?” Meg asked, her voice earnest with admiration.

  “Not for years and years, love. And everyone lived happily for a time, driving the wolves away and not fearing the woods anymore. But trees grow old, rocks fall apart, and waters shift their course. Even so, you don’t have to worry. Stay out of the woods, and you’ll be safe. Promise me that you’ll stay out of the woods, Meg. You too, Em. Quickly now.”

  Lilly let her hand drop and she took a step back into the dark hall as the two little girls earnestly promised. Maybe it wasn’t that bad. Her mother’s stories were harmless. And they did help keep Meg out of the woods. Vengeful tree spirits weren’t real, but hunters often overlooked the Keep Out signs. Not to mention the holes that opened up into unknown caves beneath your feet. The woods were dangerous. Perhaps this was her mother’s way of keeping the ever-wandering Meg close to home. Her younger sister, Em, wasn’t so venturesome, but Meg . . .

  Head down, Lilly turned to go downstairs, shoes silent on the thin green runner as she left them to their bedtime ritual. Her worry trailed behind her like perfume, coloring her mood as she made her way down the narrow, steep stairs, working around the creaking boards so her mom wouldn’t know she’d been listening. Behind her, three voices—one old and featherly, two young and off-key—rose in a familiar, singsong chant.

  “Wraith by moonlight, hunter by day; Bond is sundered by sun’s first ray.

  “Blood is binding, blood is lure; Flesh is fragile, to blade’s sweet cure.

  “Sunder wraith from flesh ill-taken; And bind fey spirit to wood awakened.”

  Brow furrowing, Lilly looked up the dark stairway as her mother told Meg and Em that they were good girls and Meg giggled at the praise. She hadn’t realized her mother had taught them the fanciful, morbid rhyme. It was how her mother had once tucked her in, sandwiched in between her bedtime story and her prayers.

  Her mood worsened as the poem echoed in her mind and memories. Pace fast, she went into the brightly lit kitchen, snatching up a cloth to move the dishes from the drying rack to shelves. Pepper, their yellow lab, stood waiting at the door, her tail waving fitfully, and Lilly let her out. The dog’s nails scraped as she took the porch steps, and she was lost to the night, leaving only the jingling of the dog collar to show she was there.

  Still in the threshold, Lilly’s eyes went to the car bridge shimmering in the moonlight. Distressed, she let the screen door slam, agitated as she remembered Meg coming in this afternoon, hand on her arm and unhappy that her grandmother had pulled her out of the creek. Her mother had come in a few moments later, white-faced and distracted with her wild claim, going to her room for hours under the pretense of taking a nap brought on by too much sun, but she had heard her rummaging in her closet. Her room had looked unchanged when Lilly peeked in later.

  The creak of the three bottom stairs made her eyes narrow, and she slid the four plates away as her mother came in. Her fiery resolve vanishing, Lilly put her hand on the counter and dropped her head, trying to find a way to begin.

  “It’s my turn to put the dishes away,” her mother said, and the hint of challenge brought Lilly’s head up.

  “Mom.” Lilly blinked, taking in the change in her mother. She was still wearing the cotton sundress with the blue flowers and honeybees, her hair done up in a gray and black braid at the base of her neck. Suntanned, wiry arms were crossed over her chest, and her pale blue eyes looked defiant. She stood in the threshold of her kitchen, almost as old as the house itself, almost as much a part of the land as the creek and woods beyond it. Her incredible stories of danger, death, and temptation had always balanced her no-nonsense, vine-tight grip on the here and now that had kept her family intact through the sorrow and heartache that came with farming alone at the outskirts of nothing. But now, taken to this extreme . . . Lilly was scared.

  “I don’t care if you believe or not,” her mother said, coming to the point with a painful bluntness. “The girls need to be able to protect themselves. Especially Meg. She’s too close to becoming a woman.”

  Arguing was comfortable in its familiarity, and Lilly slumped. “Mom, I love that you tuck the girls in, but I’m the one they come piling into bed with when they get scared. Can’t you just read them Snow White?”

  Snatching the towel from her, her mother brushed past her to go to the sink. “Yes, a story of a murdering stepmother is so much better than a warning to not believe an attractive man who promises you can have him forever if you do him one small favor, no matter that it will damn your soul and set him free to wreak havoc on a world ill prepared to fight him anymore. No one believes. That’s why he will survive. That’s why he will kill again. He’s loose, Lilly. I couldn’t hold him.”

  “Mom . . . ‘Blood is binding, blood is lure’? You’re scaring the girls.”

  “I am not.”

  It was sullen, and Lilly came forward, hand out, pleading. “You’re scaring me.”

  Her mother pressed her lips together, determination etched in her every move. “I need to go see. Maybe the tree died. I should have kept a better watch, but I didn’t think he’d ever remain awake this long.”

  Fear slid through Lilly, fear that her mother was starting to lose her grip. “There is no tree spirit murdering men who chop down trees!”

  “He is out there!” Her mother pointed at the moonlight beyond the window, her loud voice shocking Lilly. “Meg heard him sing. Today in the creek. He can’t cross running water, but he can speak through it, and if the tree he was in has died . . . He could be out there right now, watching us, learning what we most want in the world.”

  Lilly watched her mother go pale. “Bittersweet,” the older woman whispered. “He didn’t like bittersweet. Do you remember what fencepost we saw it growing on last fall? I can tie some over the girls’ window. Maybe it will keep him out.”

  “That is enough!” Lilly exclaimed, then glanced at the stairs, worried Meg might hear and come down.

  “He’s out there!” her mother said virulently, eyes wild. “Meg is vulnerable. He hates men, but he is charmed by women and he knows what little girls want to believe. If we don’t find him and bind him, he’s going to hurt her. People are going to die! People you know and love!”

  Lilly jumped when her mother’s grip pinched her wrist. “Blood will bind him, but he needs it to become strong enough to be seen, so he’ll risk it,” she hissed, and Lilly recoiled. “I don’t want my grandchildren having to go through that hell! He’s so cruel, so beautiful.”

  Lilly watched her mother’s tired eyes fill, and she pulled her arm to herself when she let go.

  “My grandbaby,” her mother said, head down as she turned away. “He’s singing to her. She can hear him. I should have done better. I should have told you the truth, but I didn’t want you to have to believe!”

  “Mom?” Damn it, now she was crying. Frightened by the mood swings, she put a hand on her mom’s shoulder. “Mom, it’s just a story,” she said as the older woman took a tissue from a tiny pocket and hid her eyes. “It’s going to be okay. If you wouldn’t fill Meg’s head with stories of unicorns and evil witches, she wouldn’t make stuff like this up! Nothing is going to happen. Meg is fine! Em, too.”

  Still she cried, and Lilly’s thoughts spun full circle.
“Where’s your medicine?” she said suddenly. “Do you still have it?” Her mother hadn’t had a spell like this in twenty years. Not since Emily’s husband had died when clearing a windblown tree from a fence. The weight shifted when a limb was cut free, and the entire tree fell on him, killing him instantly.

  “It’s poison. I threw it out,” the older woman said, grasping her sleeve and drawing her to a halt. “I’m okay. You’re right. Meg is making the voices up.” Color high, her mother touched her face, smiling even through the last of her tears. “It’s just a story. You’re right. I’m a foolish old woman who’s had too much sun.”

  Hearing the lie, Lilly’s stomach clenched as she watched her mother set the drying cloth on the table and turn her back on her. “I’m tired,” her mother whispered, not meeting her eyes as she headed for the hallway. “I’m going to lie down.”

  “Mom?”

  Emily smiled tremulously again, hesitating in the threshold, one hand on the wood, the other clenched in a tight fist. “You have a good night, Lilly. I’ll see you in the morning. You’re right. It’s just a fanciful story of an old woman. I’ll gather the eggs in the morning. No need for you to get up early.”

  Lilly’s eyes narrowed, and for the second time that night, she crossed her arms over her chest, angry with her mother. She didn’t believe the sudden change of heart for a second. But still, worry lingered as she draped the cloth over the drying rack and turned out the light to better find Pepper ranging in the moonlight.

  Beyond the window, the creek shone, a moving, living ribbon of silver. Maybe she should call Kevin despite wanting to gouge his eyes out with a ice pick. Kevin was a prick, but his dad had grown up with her mother. Something had happened when her mother was fourteen, something that no one talked about and had never made the papers. It wasn’t a tree spirit, but maybe someone she trusted had raped her and she invented the drama to make it more bearable. Meg’s silly rhyme today might have brought it all back. Aging people remembered things from the past better than the present sometimes.

  Kevin’s dad would know. He’d been her mother’s best friend.

  TWO

  Though the rising sun was bright in the girls’ room, little Em was still asleep, and Lilly eased the door shut, smiling at the pout the four-year-old was wearing. Her smile faded quickly as she went downstairs, the air becoming cooler, but no less humid. It was going to be a scorcher of a day, and she was glad the hay had come in already, filling the barn where her art studio was with the scent of summer.

  The chance to lose herself in her work pulled at her, her restless sleep filled with images of honey-eyed wolves. She blamed her mother, and she slipped into the kitchen, seeing the basket of newly washed eggs next to the sink.

  It was quiet, even for a lonely farmhouse at the edge of nothing. The come-and-go squeak of the porch swing mixed with the ever-present crickets and bubbling creek, and she leaned on tiptoe over the sink to look out onto the porch. Meg was in the long swing, a half-melted Popsicle in her grip, Pepper sprawled out beneath her. The sun bathed her in its glow, and the nine-year-old girl in her shorts and straight brown hair looked wisely innocent—a small spot of quiet intelligence calmly swinging as if waiting for something to come up the road, something she wouldn’t share with her mother.

  “Good morning, Meg,” she said softly out the open window, holding the faded curtain aside so she could see her daughter’s blue-stained smile. “You’re up early. Where’s Gram? Still in the barn?”

  The creak of the long swing slowed, but didn’t stop. “She went for a walk in the woods.” Meg pulled her attention from the car bridge, twisting to pull her legs up under her as blue dripped from a bent knuckle.

  Meg’s words tightened through Lilly. She drew back in, her hand looking like her mother’s for the first time as it let go of the curtain. Her mother had said she was going to go into the woods to see if her dryad’s tree had decayed. This fantasy had gone on long enough.

  Brow furrowed, Lilly headed for the porch, her sneakers silent on the faded linoleum. The squeak and slam of the screen door shocked through her, and she forced a smile so as not to worry Meg. “She went into the woods?” she asked, coming to sit beside Meg and keep the swing moving. “What for?”

  Meg tilted her head, tongue reaching to get the threatening drop of blue. “She made me promise not to tell, but it’s okay. She knows Penny is a liar.”

  Damn it. Damn it all to hell. Lilly took a slow breath, feeling the heavy air settle deep into her lungs, making her thoughts scattered and her muscles unwilling to react. “How long ago was that, sweetheart?” she asked, trying to hide her anger.

  Meg shrugged, tilting her head to bite off one side of the last inch of blue ice.

  “Meghan Ann!” she snapped, and the little girl blinked, her cheeks bunched out against the spot of cold in her mouth. “How long!”

  Eyes wide, she crunched through the Popsicle. “The sun wasn’t over the trees yet,” she volunteered, her gaze never leaving her mom’s face as she ate the last chunk of sweet ice.

  Agitation drew her to her feet, the swing bumping the back of her legs and settling as she looked at the woods. “Less than half an hour,” she muttered, headed for the kitchen. Enough was enough. She was going to go find her, and then they were going to have a talk about fantasy and reality. Her mother was not crazy, and she was not losing touch with reality. But if she couldn’t be trusted to not run off to the woods chasing a fairy tale, then maybe things were worse than Lilly wanted to admit.

  A new fear joined her old ones as she grabbed her cell phone from her purse by the front door. She snatched her work boots from beside the back door, and her sun hat from the pegs. Em’s and Meg’s hats were hanging there beside hers, but her mother’s was gone.

  “Meg, watch Em for me, okay?” she said as she came out and sat on the rocker to kick her sneakers off. “I have to find Gram.”

  Her Popsicle gone, Meg slipped off the swing, the stick between her teeth. “Gram told me you were going to go after her. Can I watch TV?”

  Head down, Lilly shoved her feet into her boots. “Yes, but let Em pick the channel when she wakes up.”

  “She always picks baby shows,” Meg complained, leaning heavily on the armrest of the rocking chair as she bent in far enough to lift her toes from the old wood floor.

  “Make her a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast, okay?” Lilly said, fighting to keep her impatience in check. “And don’t leave the house. Lock the door when I leave, and don’t open it except for Mrs. Elliot. She’ll be here in an hour to pick up the bread for the church social. I should be back before then.”

  “Okay. She smells funny, though.”

  She smells like stale whisky, Lilly thought, then froze in the idea that she was making a mistake, like the mother in the fairy tales who leaves her children to go to town, telling them not to let the wolf in only to return to find them gone. Oh, for God’s sake, Lilly, it’s the twenty-first century. “Pick up the phone if it’s me.” She looked up from tying her boots, seeing Meg not listening to her. “Meg?”

  “Okay.” With a worrisome confidence, the girl leaned back to set her feet on the porch.

  Lilly stood, motions slowing as she put on her hat. A glance back at the kitchen tightened her anger. She was not going to take a jar of honey with her. She gave Meg a quick hug, then stomped determinedly down the four stairs, angry with her mom for making her do this.

  Heat rose like a wave from the dormant, burnt grass, her steps all but silent on the puffs of fine dirt as she took the path to the barn. Ticked, she powered up her cell phone, scrolling until she found Kevin’s number.

  But then she hesitated, pace slowing as the shade of the barn took her. The snap of her phone closing was loud, and she looked up as she tucked it away, the call unplaced as she remembered their last conversation. There was no need to get him involved. She knew where her mother was.

  Squinting, Lilly slowed to a stop at the edge of the woods, her shadow run
ning long behind her. The sharp dividing line between farm and woods was kept true by the yearly mowers, and seeing the understory laid bare and clean in the morning sun was eerie. The cooler air wafted out, shifting her hair like a lover, and she tucked a stray strand under her hat.

  The image of a beautiful, devious boy she’d never actually seen rose up unbidden. It was followed by the memory of countless hot summer nights when she would kneel at her bedroom window, arms on the sill as she gazed into the black woods, heart hammering as she imagined the fireflies were winking for her, telling her to come dance with them in a magical glen.

  Staring at the woods, Lilly’s breath came and went in a slow sound. She turned back once to reassure herself that Meg had gone inside with Pepper. The porch was empty. Woods lay on one side, the grassland and cultivated field on the other, the house that three generations of women shared in between—and the sun rose over it all like an angry god bent on restitution. “It’s just a story,” she whispered, but a niggling doubt tingled down to her clenched hands as she strode forward into the coolness.

  A single strand of spider silk brushed her, and she waved her hand, having forgotten that particular hazard of walking in the woods. There was no path, but she knew where she was going. It would be a simple task to walk a straight line until she found the creek and then following it upstream to the thicket-enclosed glen where her mother had told her never to go but of course she had.

  Almost without realizing it, she fell into a familiar rocking pace that both made good time and allowed for unexpected shifts of balance. The poem ran in her mind, her steps beating it deeper into her thoughts.

  Sunder wraith from flesh ill-taken; And bind fey spirit to wood awakened, over and over it came, again and again. She’d loved the magic of it when she was a child, but now it only made her mother sound crazy, that much closer to an unwilling move to a sterile, cold home with her most precious things arranged on a stark white counter, mementoes whose only purpose was to give well-meaning visitors something to coo and reminisce over.