Into the Woods

by Kim Harrison

  Sunder wraith from flesh ill-taken. What the hell did that mean? But there was no meaning to be found, and Lilly forced herself out of step, trying to get rid of it.

  But slowly her pace slipped back as the peace of the woods crept into her bones. The memory of being here as a child suffocated her anger: looking for mushrooms with her mother, the excitement of finding the forest lilies that she was named for, the dark depths of moss-rimmed pools of water that might vanish unexpectedly when a hole opened up and drained the water away through the caverns that riddled the hills. The woods had been a playground, potentially threatening, but feeling safe.

  From almost under her feet, a grouse exploded into flight, shrieking its fear and making Lilly stop short with a gasp. Barely she caught her cry. She wanted to laugh, but the sound never came. The sound of water running came from up ahead. And chanting.

  Lilly frowned as she recognized her mother’s voice. She walked faster, anger making her misstep and almost twist her ankle when her foot rolled on a log. The creek gave her no cheerful chatter to warn her, and she found it with a shocking abruptness, almost walking right off the edge. Pulling up short, she blinked. If the creek looked drained at the house, it looked positively minuscule here, the once full-force flow now reduced until the tops of rocks that might never touch the bottom of a boat showed dry. The tall edges of the watercourse looked like raw wounds, and the once-loud chatter of the water was a bare hint. Fish as long as her arm lay in deeper puddles, their gills pumping as they struggled to survive another day in the hopes of rain.

  A huge, glacier-dropped rock sat in the middle of the stream. The water had gouged a deeper hole before it, but rocks with dry tops showed to either side of the huge monolith her mother used to jump from, skinny-dipping before her fourteenth birthday when everything had changed. A tree grew at the center of the rock, finding enough soil over the ages to somehow survive.

  “I know you can hear me, Penn. I’ve given you enough blood for a week. Show yourself!” her mother’s voice rang out, and Lilly’s attention jerked to the right.

  Frowning, she ran from the stream, dodging around trees that bent over the creek as if to hide it from the sun. The ground slowly began to rise, the soil became dryer, and the trees were spaced farther apart, looking almost twisted. Who was her mother talking to? The squirrels? Almost she hoped so, for if she was shouting at a tree, Lilly was going to check her into the retirement home just outside of town.

  “Mom,” she whispered as she hauled herself up a rill and looked down into a shallow glen. The soil here was broken rock, not giving enough purchase for anything but grass and brambles apart from the very center where a pine tree eked out a living, its branches dead or dying as it stretched out its limbs as if desperately trying to touch its neighbors for help. Thorny berry bushes made an almost impenetrable fence, but her mother had gotten through somehow, and the old woman knelt at the base of the pine tree, her sun hat askew on the ground and her hair undone.

  Lilly’s brow furrowed. Pissed, she pushed forward to find a way through the bushes. She took a breath to shout at her mom, wincing and drawing back when she walked through an entire spiderweb, backpedaling and brushing at her face.

  Shuddering, she stopped, her lips parting when she looked up and she saw her mother wasn’t alone. The muscles in her face went slack, and she squinted, taking a step forward and snapping another web. The bright sun made it hard to see, but there was a long-limbed boy standing over her mother, his hands on his hips and the sun turning his shoulder-length, tousled hair to a flaming copper.

  A thousand stories over a thousand summer nights passed through her mind. Her heart pounded, and she took another step, anger filling her as her mother began to cry, kneeling at his feet. “You!” she shouted, unwilling to believe. “Get the hell away from my mother!”

  The boy looked up, his astonishment becoming a devilish smile. “Your daughter can see me, Em. How delightful,” he said, and the sound of his whispery voice shocked Lilly to a halt. Something in her fluttered. Something older screamed out a warning. He was perfect, but only death was that beautiful. “I don’t love you anymore,” he said, bending close over her mother. “But you knew that. Perhaps your daughter? Your . . . granddaughters?”

  Lilly jerked from her stupor as her mother surged to her feet, rocking like a drunken ship. “You stay away from my girls!” she shouted. “I swear I will scorch every tree on the hill to ash if you so much as whisper in Meg’s ear again! Stay out of her mind, you hear me!”

  Frantic, Lilly paced the edge, looking for the way in.

  “No. I don’t.” The beautiful boy touched her mother’s face, and Lilly burned at the sound of heartache her mother made. “You were so beautiful, Em. Now you’re dried up and withered. Beauty gone. You’re not good for anything now.”

  “Mom!” Lilly cried as her mother tried to slap him and the boy darted back, laughing.

  “Wraith by moonlight, hunter by day; Bond is sundered by sun’s first ray!” her mother shouted, and the boy lightly danced forward, gleefully kissing her on her withered cheek.

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

  “The tree no longer holds me, Em,” he said, reaching up to pull himself into the broken, needleless branches. “The wood is dead, and you can’t bind me to it. I am free. And I will have the blood of your blood as my own for your penance.”

  “Sunder wraith from flesh ill-taken; And bind fey spirit to wood awakened!” Lilly’s mother cried out, and the boy dropped to the rocky earth. Lilly watched, the thorns pressing into her as he looked at her mother in disdain and then reached out and slapped her.

  Lilly sucked in her breath as the sound of his hand meeting her cheek cracked through her. “Get away from my mother, you son of a bitch!”

  “Oh, if only,” the boy said. Without thought, Lilly pushed into the brambles, tiny thorns biting her as the canes locked as if to bar her. Fire pricked from a hundred wounds, and she cried out in impatience as she stomped forward, trying to crush the thorns under her feet and make a way.

  “Leave my mother alone!” she cried out as she shoved her way through, only to get her foot snared and fall forward. The ground slammed into her, and she struggled for air, the breath knocked out of her. But then she froze as the boy was suddenly right in front of her, his feet even with her eyes. They were a rich brown with pale white nails, and she gasped when he fell to the earth before her to stare at her. Amber eyes flecked with gold arrested her attention, and everything in the world vanished. Behind him, she could hear her mother crying.

  “You’re Lilly,” the boy said, and Lilly could say nothing. His hair was like spun copper, glinting in the sun, and she sucked in her breath when he reached to touch her hair.

  “Did your mother ever tell you that we picked out your name together? Ten years before you were even born. It was my idea. I do so like the forest flowers.”

  Lilly wedged an arm under her to get up. Thorns drove into her, and she looked down, hissing at the sudden pain. “Mom!” she called out as she finally got up, but the boy was gone. “Mom, are you okay?”

  Brushing pieces of cane and leaves off her, she stumbled onto the rocky circle. “Mom?”

  The questionable shade of the dying tree chilled her, and Lilly put a hand to her mother’s shoulder as she knelt, feeling it shake. Still her mother didn’t look up.

  “Yeah, you’d better run!” Lilly shouted at the surrounding trees. “You hit my mom; I’m going to pound you, you little thug!”

  “He got away . . .” her mother lamented. “The tree died. The spell broke. And he got away!”

  Lilly brought her gaze back from the empty trees, the heat in the air turning to steam in her lungs. It was hard to breathe, and she recoiled at the dead, decapitated chicken at the base of the tree. Horror took her, becoming shock when her mother slowly rose, wiping the blood and feathers stuck to her hand on a corner of her tied-up dress. Askew in the dirt and scree
was one of her butcher knives. Blood is binding, blood is lure; Flesh is fragile, to blade’s sweet cure.

  What by sweet Jesus was her mother doing?

  “Mom?” The imprint of a hand shown bright red on her mom’s face, and Lilly wavered, the blood rushing out of her head. There was a dead chicken on the ground. There was a knife in the dirt. Blood stained her mother’s hands. “What are you doing? My God, did you butcher a chicken out here?”

  Tears still slipping down her wrinkled face, her mother turned her lips in, biting them as if to keep from sobbing. “I can’t make it stick a second time,” she said, her eyes on the woods as if they still held the wolves of her childhood. “He doesn’t trust me, and even if I could, the tree has died. Nothing can hold him in dead wood. Nothing.”

  Scared, Lilly shook her mom’s shoulder. “Do you know that boy? Mom, who was that?”

  But her mother just stood there, tears spilling over one by one, turning her beautiful. “You saw him? Lilly, I’m so sorry. I never should have told you about him, but I thought he was gone forever. That you knew his name made it easier for him to force his way in, to make you see him.”

  Her mother’s eyes suddenly rose in a new thought, and she gripped Lilly’s arm tightly. “Where’s Meg?”

  Her fear struck Lilly, and she shoved aside and buried it under logic. But still the fear seeped up like water. “She’s at home. You think I’m going to bring her out here? Why did you kill one of our chickens?” Blood is binding, blood is lure. My mother is crazy.

  “You left her alone?” Snatching up the knife, her mother strode to a large rock embedded into the soil. Using it as a stepping-stone, she laboriously lifted herself up onto it, and hopped a tentative, uneasy path through the briars. “He will twist her with one smile, and that’s assuming he’s not already gotten her outside in the moonlight! How could you leave her alone? I told you he was free. I told you—”

  “Shut up! Just shut up!” Lilly shouted, the heat of the sun pounding on her. The echo of her anger and frustration came back to her from the surrounding trees as she stood in the rocky ground beside the dead pine tree and watched her mother jump from rock to rock as if she was ten. “There is no forest ghost. You are sick, Mom. Give me that knife!”

  Like a wild thing, she crossed the three stones that separated them and wrestled the knife from her mother and threw it beside the dead chicken, the blood already soaked into the ground. “We are going home, and you are never going to talk about this again unless it is with a psychologist. You understand me?”

  “Take your hand off me this instant, Lilly Ann.”

  Her mother’s voice was cold, and Lilly found her grip empty as her mother yanked away. The older woman stood straight and unbowed upon the next rock, her hair waving about her and her lips pressed tight. “I am not crazy,” she said, clearly angry. “You saw him. Don’t deny it. You saw him and he spoke to you. What did he say?”

  Lilly hesitated, scared at the change. “You didn’t hear him? He was right there.”

  Eyes squinting mistrustfully, Emily shook her head. “Penn is the protector of the woods, born from the first tree’s cry of pain from the woodsman’s ax. He appears as a mirage to those who believe in him, as real as you allow him to be, as beautiful as you imagine, in the form of your choosing. He is everything, he is death. He can take over the bodies of wolves and men, though the blood needed to do so is enough to kill a man. He survives the ages by taking refuge in the trees he protects. It is his saving grace. It is his downfall. His greatest desire is to have a soul again, and he will lie to get it. I was able to protect you from him, Lilly, but he no longer believes in me.” Her jaw clenched, and she lifted her head proudly. “I’m old. He doesn’t love me anymore.” Her mother shivered, becoming scared again. “We need to get home.”

  Lilly’s heart pounded as she followed her mother to the edge of the brambles, catching every thorn, every briar that her mother avoided. Threads from spiders brushed against her, shimmering in the sun as they ballooned on the still, stagnant air. Lilly brushed them aside as she walked, but her mother accepted them in grace, whispering thanks as if each one was a benediction.

  Getting home sounded like a good idea.

  THREE

  T he porch swing squeaked in time with the waving of her makeshift fan, and realizing it, Lilly set the magazine touting fall bulbs aside. The evening was stifling, and even the slight motion to make the rocker move seemed extraordinary. Her mother on the larger porch swing seemed unaffected in her sundress, but Lilly pulled at her shirt, trying to cool off.

  Out on the grass, Meg and Em jumped and ran in erratic spurts, catching fireflies and imprisoning them in a jar for a nightlight. Their shouts echoed against the black woods, and Lilly shivered. Okay, so she had seen a honey-eyed boy with brown, dirt-smeared feet. There was an explanation. Entire families lived in the hills like aborigines, never coming down. Maybe that’s where the boy had come from. That he had slapped her mother made her angry, but the dead chicken had her scared, scared enough to keep her silent.

  “You stay out of that creek!” her mother shouted, and Lilly glanced at her, angry that she couldn’t be like everyone else’s mom. Why did everything have to be twice as hard for her?

  “Trapping him in a tree again will be difficult,” the old woman said, rocking, still rocking, her old woman hands quiet in her lap. “I dared him to show me how he did it the last time, and I sealed him in place, but he’s wise to it now. He won’t believe me a second time. He can’t cross moving water, and he can’t move through rock, but I doubt I can trick him into an open sarcophagus. We might have to burn the woods if I can’t think of something.”

  Lilly was silent, her anger growing as she thought of the phone in her pocket. She was going to make an appointment with the doctor tomorrow as soon as they opened. She wanted to know what her options were. Fortunately the house was already in her name. If it was only her, she wouldn’t be as concerned, but Em and Meg shouldn’t have to deal with this.

  “A chicken has enough blood to make him visible for a week,” her mother said, and Lilly ignored her, watching the girls jumping for the insects. “Too bad the river is so low. I’d be tempted to have David bring his bobcat over and cut a trench around the house. Take down the car bridge. It would put us on an island so he can’t reach them. Not with no tree roots to make a bridge for him.”

  Lilly’s jaw clenched, and she forced herself to take a sip of her tea, the ice long melted and the glass dripping from the bottom. Her mother was delusional. And yet . . . the color of Penn’s eyes wouldn’t leave her, amber and gold like honey dripping from the comb. There was no way she could have imagined it, but the idea that he was real was even more unlikely.

  “He could still cross the water if he took possession of a wolf, but what are the chances of any wolves still being in the forest?” her mother said, shocking Lilly from her thoughts.

  “I’m sure they’re gone,” Lilly said lightly, humoring her. “I’ve not seen a wolf in ages.”

  The creaking of the swing stopped, and her mother’s brow furrowed. “You’ve never seen a wolf, ever. I don’t care if you believe me or not, Lilly, but I will not be humored.”

  Lilly warmed, jaw clenched to keep herself from saying something she’d regret later.

  “You were there,” the woman said, her voice holding anger. “And still you don’t believe? You saw him in your mind, and still you turn a blind eye?”

  Lilly glanced at the girls, their dark shadows halfway to the barn. “I saw you kill a chicken under a tree, Mom. I want you to come with me and talk to Doctor Sarson. We can get this sorted out. Get you back on your meds.”

  Her mother’s eyes narrowed, and she started the swing into motion. “Perhaps it’s my fault. I made you safe, but in doing so, I put the girls at risk. Meg will be his target. She’s young, but she’s the one who will listen, believe. Your daughter will believe everything he tells her, and it will destroy her, you, me, the town. People will
die.”

  Anger flared. “Stop it!” Lilly hissed, resentment tightening her gut. “Stop it now. Not another word, or I take you into emergency tonight!”

  Huffing, her mother turned away. “I knew you were timid, Lilly, but I didn’t raise you to be a fool.”

  Lilly stood, knowing her mother would call her bluff. “Meg! Emily! Time to come in!”

  From the cooling field, Meg groaned dramatically. “Just one more firefly?” she shouted, and seeing it would tick her mother off, Lilly nodded. “One more, then upstairs to take your baths.”

  Delighted, Meg high-fived her sister, and the two ran to a beckoning green light.

  “The woods are still mine,” the old woman grumbled. “I’m going to log it out and burn it.”

  Sighing, Lilly put her arms over her chest as she watched Meg and Em huddle together over their latest catch.

  “You can lock me in the old ladies home after that,” her mom finished. “I won’t care then.”

  “Mom . . .”

  But her mother stood, her expression stubborn and her motions jerky as she strode to the screen door. “I’ll see to the girls’ baths.”

  “No stories,” Lilly demanded, frowning when her mother let the screen door slam. From inside, lights turned on one by one as she made her way upstairs. Her shoulders slumping, Lilly sat down where her mother had been, feeling the weight of the last few days heavy on her. From the porch steps, Pepper raised her head, not knowing who to follow.

  The girls had gone quiet, knowing that they were up until she noticed them. At a loss for what to do, Lilly took her cell phone from a pocket, weighing it in her hand as if it might hold the answer. Eying the whispering girls, she punched in a familiar number. Anger crept up her spine as it rang, and she took a quick breath as the line clicked open.