The Yellow Wood

by The Yellow Wood (v5. 0) (epub)

  “What does Earl say?”

  “He doesn’t want her, either,” she declared, sending chills down my back.

  “That’s a terrible thing to say.”

  “A terrible thing to feel, too.”

  “What about the other kids?”

  “Alexandra.” She put her hand on my wrist in a gesture more threatening than affectionate, avoiding at all costs any contact with her daughter in the process. “If you don’t take her, we’re going to put her somewhere. Earl’s already looking into it.”

  My mind was reeling from the harshness of Emily’s words and the enormity of what she was proposing. I knew there were countless questions I should be asking. “What about custody and—”

  “We’ll sign over legal custody or give you guardianship or relinquish our rights so you can adopt her if that’s what you want. We’ll pay you child support—not much, I have to tell you, with eight other kids to support, not anywhere near what our insurance would pay an institution. But we’ll do what we can as long as we have to.”

  “You just want to be rid of her.”

  Emily’s face and body were rigid, her voice cold and strong. “This isn’t what I do. This is what you do.”

  “I can’t just—”

  She withdrew her hand and got to her feet. “So talk to Martin. Talk to your kids. Talk to your damn therapist. I don’t care, whatever you need to do to make your decision. We’ve made ours.”

  I brought up the idea to Martin by email, trying to make my case without pushing him into anything. He wasn’t as surprised as I’d thought he be, or as opposed as I’d both feared and hoped. Online and on the phone, we discussed practicalities and legalities like custody, insurance coverage, work schedules and child care options, sleeping arrangements and other household modifications. We went back and forth about how the dog would be with a baby, how Tara and Ramon would be, whether we were too old to be starting with another child, especially given that we’d never had a baby and never especially wanted one, how we would educate ourselves to parent a severely disabled child. We tried to help each other imagine how this would change our lives.

  In a family meeting via conference phone call, Tara said, “Will she be my baby sister?”

  I said, “Sort of,” at the same time Martin said, “Yes.”

  “Cool.”

  Ramon said, “Whatever,” and I could imagine his shrug. When he got off the phone Martin promised to try to talk to him some more, but neither of us was optimistic about that.

  I consulted with her doctor, got records and referrals. Martin gathered information online. We located paediatric specialists, PT and OT services, and parent support groups in our area. We prepared. But all of this had to do with how we would be Bella’s parents, not whether. There was never really any question that we’d take her. Of course we would.

  When I told Emily, she just nodded. When I told our father, he turned stony. I couldn’t tell our mother because she’d already gone home.

  So now I sit in the crisp slanted sunshine on Emily’s deck, holding my child, while the family gathering for which I am the excuse—more accurately, my imminent departure—goes on around me. Without me, really. Without Daddy, too. Where is he? I think of the cave and maybe should go in search of him there. But Bella is asleep in my arms. Bella, in my arms.

  Once past the boundary from yellow wood into cave, the time of day and season are of little note. Herpie’s three-curved S flickers at my feet. Notebooks, reference books, blue- and red-lidded plastic boxes labelled in code, jars and sandwich bags with concoctions and raw ingredients for concoctions, stones of various shapes—the place is familiar. Is a familiar. I sit here as I have sat countless times before.

  The difference is that now I am done. Nothing else can be asked of me.

  Extending my right arm, I grasp at random the first container with which my hand comes in contact, open and overturn it. From the odour and consistency I recognize an elixir I once thought might have a meritorious effect on Galen’s social activism, when in his mid-thirties I observed it to be flagging; I have saved it like so much else, for possible future use, but I have no use for it now. It makes a small, short-lived puddle.

  Reaching out again, I encounter a stack of books, take one off the top, and with no urge to read even the title, remove pages as many at a time as my arthritic fingers will handle. It is a short book, paperback, and its dismemberment does not take long.

  By leaning forward only slightly, I can reach one of the baby-wipe bins. With some effort I pry open its lid. The aromatic granular substance inside makes a scum on the surface of the damp spot where the spilled liquid has sunk into the ground.

  My eyes have shut. Both my hands reach out into the space contained by the cave, containing me and my life’s work. My left hand finds a row of jars. My right hand finds more books. One of each I bring into my lap, where I pour out the contents of the jar and tear out the contents of the book. Then my hands go back for more.

  This is in no way an act of violence. The rhythm of it is gentle, dreamy. Sad, perhaps, but with a deep sense of, if not peace, correctness. This is the finishing. I am finished.

  Everything I can reach from where I sit I destroy in this way, and then crawl and slide in a wider and deeper arc, closer to the opening into the yellow wood, deeper into the cave. Joints ache. Skin and flesh are abraded. I can feel the strain on internal organs—heart, lungs, intestines, brain. The floor of the cave is pocked and littered and scoured with what have long been the tools and evidence of my life and are now debris. Stretched out among it, Herpie is of no help at all.

  Earl yells that the chicken’s ready, and people head for him where he stands in barbecue smoke with long fork and spoon upraised. I watch this steady, taciturn man, wondering who he is and knowing I’ll never know, trying to imagine what I’ll tell Bella about him if she ever needs to know.

  I haven’t been able to talk to him about Bella. Whenever I approach him, he leaves the vicinity. I don’t know what to make of the fact that he can stand there in his silly barbecue apron swigging a beer and brushing sauce on chicken breasts. I keep thinking I have a responsibility to force the issue with him, but I don’t know how. I’m not hungry, and I don’t like barbecues.

  Various of Earl and Emily’s other children have come to say good-bye, maybe urged by their mother. They say good-bye to me, not in any noticeable way to their baby sister. Elizabeth gave me a small framed photo she’d taken of all of us when I first got here, before Mom came and left again, before Bella was born. Erin gave me her email address to give to her cousin Tara. Now it’s Evan. Sent by his mother for more napkins, he pauses on his way into the house to give me a solemn hug. Though it’s from the side and his little arms don’t touch the baby, I want to think it could be meant for both of us.

  Will takes the deck chair beside me, balancing a paper plate overloaded with food, including three ears of his homegrown sweet corn. “You’re not eating?”

  “I’m waiting till the crowd thins.”

  “Hah. You’ll starve that way. Let me get you something.”

  “No, Will, sit and talk to me.”

  “Well, here, at least take one of these.” He hands me a bright yellow ear of corn.

  Holding the corn by the end in one hand, the other being occupied with stroking Bella, I bite into it. Even without butter and salt it’s delicious, and with my mouth full I tell him so.

  “It’s kind of disappointing, actually. From my research on the web, I expected it to be a lot sweeter.”

  “Oh, Will, give it a rest.”

  “Can I hold her?”

  He’s her uncle. This is a perfectly natural and reasonable request, a sweet impulse. But I’m leery.

  At my hesitation, Will picks up his plate from where he’d set it on the deck and takes a messy bite of chicken. “Sorry. You’re right. I know she’s pretty fragile.”

  �
�Actually,” I say, taking yet another in what will no doubt be an infinite series of risks with this child, “she’s not all that fragile. You’ve had babies. You know what to do. Just support her head.”

  As fluidly as possible, I ease her out of the Snugli, kiss her in blessing or encouragement or Godspeed, and pass her over to Will. He holds her lightly, one big hand cupping her head as if it were a harvest from his garden, good but not good enough. Bella hasn’t reacted to the move.

  “Wow,” Will says softly, and I reply, “I know.”

  Amid the general hubbub, we sit for a time in a pocket of companionable silence.

  Then strangely rapid thumping punches out of the nearby yellow woods. A bass drum, I realize, and then I realize: Vaughn. Bella stirs fitfully. My head throbs. Will says, “Shit,” and gets to his feet. “Here, you better take her.”

  “What is that?” I slide the trembling baby into the Snugli on my chest, where my belly supports her and I can feel the skitter of her heart.

  Galen has already left by the gate in the high back fence; it bothers me that he didn’t shut it behind him. From her place beside her husband at the barbecue grill, Emily is visibly trying to decide what to do. As he steps down off the deck, Will tells me around a last hasty mouthful of sweet corn he’s grabbed for the road what I should already have known: “Something’s wrong with Dad.”

  I’ve had it with chasing through the damn woods after Daddy. I have better things to do now. I’ve always had better things to do. “Fuck it,” I snarl, not quite under my breath, and am mortified when Evan, on his delayed return trip from the house with napkins, points at me, and giggles and runs to tell his mom on me.

  Emily bends to listen to him, says something and tousles his hair. He runs off. Emily says something to Earl then makes her way out of the yard. She doesn’t shut the gate, either. The drumbeat goes on, rhythm and volume disturbingly irregular.

  I give up. Tossing the corn into the yard for the dogs, I hold Bella close as I scramble to my feet and hurry to join my sister and brothers.

  I feel them coming. Eyes closed, I see them at the place where the paths diverge, or converge, depending on one’s perspective. As the first of them reach the edge of the clearing, the arrhythmic drumbeat fills my ears, silly and stirring and sinister. Branches snap. The odour of decomposing yellow-leaf mulch rises from under their feet. Voles burrow wildly underneath. There is no sign of Herpie among them, for my children need no guide to find me here. The yellow wood is small, really. It will not be necessary for me to wait long.

  I snap off a branch and whack at tree trunks and rocks as we pass them. Nobody objects. “Daddy is a bastard,” I try, but the ugly chant doesn’t work anymore.

  Emily has fallen behind. She calls, “Hey, you guys, wait up,” but we don’t. Vaughn’s drumbeat is irregular, random, just whenever he feels like thumping—not at all like a heartbeat or a march, but it keeps us going.

  That, and Daddy.

  What is this place?

  I do not know where I am. Yet it seems I have been here many times before, making the disorientation doubly acute. Pain flashes in my chest and my extremities tingle.

  I do not know what this is I am holding in my hands. I have the sense that I have known what it is, but now I do not. It is an utterly alien object, with no name I can summon, no intent.

  It has heft and many separate pieces. It has rows of black marks on white background, a few x’s, many d’s, the rest in a strange coded script.

  I have begun the concentrated arm and shoulder and wrist movement required to fling the object away when its name and nature come to me: This is the book I have been writing all my life. Pulling handfuls of pages out of the box, I intend to hurl them, but they flutter and scatter and settle yellow in the ambient light.

  Nauseous and dizzy, I lower myself to a prone position, hoping to forestall an outright collapse. The floor of the cave is hard and dry to the touch but smells damp, smells yellow. The floor of the cave. The cave.

  I crawl on hands and knees until I cannot, then crawl on my belly, making little progress. Things fall. Things spill and break and crumple. What I had assumed was Herpie turns out to be only her moulted skin.

  But something is in my head. Alexandra. There she is.

  There he is.

  I’m not first in line, but I see him first and leave the path to push past my brothers, tearing through undergrowth and shielding Bella from scratching branches. Behind me Emily cries my name, cries “Bella!”

  Daddy’s lying at the entrance of his hideout, the top of his bald head grazed by a shaft of pale sunlight through the leaf canopy. Pieces of something white surround him—papers, I realize; pages. Something arcs between us and something viscous starts to move, seeping rather than flowing this time, warm rather than hot, and moving in both directions.

  When I lower myself beside him, awkwardly because of my own bulk and the fragile presence of Bella now between us, there’s no space for any of the rest of them, and I’m sorry for that, but only dimly. It’s not my fault. He set it up this way. Galen starts to orchestrate things, but his orders fizzle. Will breathes, “Shit.” Emily is weeping. Vaughn has gone off somewhere and given up the drum for a high sweet flute.

  The old chant still plays in my head. Daddy is a wizard—

  Here’s Bella, Daddy.

  The baby.

  Bella.

  Love her.

  I cannot love her. It is more than I can do. But you can.

  My father, thin and weak, and the smaller, stronger baby are in my arms. A serpentine ripple runs along my back. The substance he sends into me is only a trickle now, but I need every last drop.

  Love her. You must love her. I give it to you. My last gift.

  Yes. I will. I accept.

  Thank you, Daddy.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Melanie Tem’s work has received the Bram Stoker, International Horror Guild, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy Awards, and a nomination for the Shirley Jackson Award. She has published numerous short stories, eleven solo novels, two collaborative novels with Nancy Holder, and two collaborative novels and a short story collection with her husband Steve Rasnic Tem. She is also a published poet, an oral storyteller, and a playwright. Solo stories have recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Crimewave, and Interzone, and anthologies such as Black Wings and Dangerous Games.

  The Tems live in Denver, CO, where Melanie is executive director of a non-profit independent-living organization. They have four children and six grandchildren.

  COPYRIGHT

  Angels & Exiles © 2015 by Yves Meynard

  Cover artwork © 2015 by Vince Haig

  Interior design © 2015 by Jared Shapiro

  All rights reserved.

  Published by ChiZine Publications

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  EPub Edition FEBRUARY 2014 ISBN: 978-1-77148-309-4

  All rights reserved under all applicable International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen.

  No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

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  Edited by Stephanie Da Ponte

  Proofread by Sam Zucchi

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.

  Published with the generous assistance of the Ontario Arts Council.

  THE DEAD HAMLETS

  PETER ROMAN

  Something is rotten in the court of the faerie queen. A deadly spirit is killing off the faerie, and it has mysterious ties to Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet. The only one who can stop it is the immortal Cross, a charming rogue who also happens to be a drunk, a thief, and an angel killer. He is no friend of the faerie since they stole his daughter and made her one of their own. He encounters an eccentric and deadly cast of characters along the way: the real Witches of Macbeth, the undead playwright/demon hunter Christopher Marlowe, an eerie Alice from the Alice in Wonderland books, a deranged and magical scholar—and a very supernatural William Shakespeare. When Cross discovers a startling secret about the origins of Hamlet itself, he finds himself trapped in a ghost story even he may not be able to escape alive.

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