“Silas.” He had come up behind me.
“Stop!” I said. “I know! I’m not thinking straight!”
“Look at Pony over there. Turn around.”
It took a second for his words to reach me, for I was too engulfed in my own sadness to hear them. But when I realized what he was saying, I looked over at Pony. He was not where I had left him. He had drifted a couple of hundred feet upwind of us and was now standing in the middle of a large patch of shrubs, head up, ears alert, black tail swishing. Looking into the Woods.
4
I WALKED OVER SLOWLY, CAREFUL not to startle him. I did not want to divert his attention from whatever he was looking at. He didn’t so much as flinch as I approached.
I followed his gaze and saw, between two of the meanest-looking ironwoods you’ve ever seen, a narrow opening in the thicket. It was shaped like a man-sized crack in a wall.
“Well, look at that!” I cried to Mittenwool. “You see? Pony did lead me to the trail, just like I thought he would!”
He sighed. “Well, what do me and my long empty arms know about anything, anyway?”
“Oh, come on, I didn’t mean anything by that.”
He hunched his shoulders, tucked both his hands into his coat pockets, and sulked away.
“Fine, be a sorehead!” I called out after him. “Fact is, I was right. He brought me here like I said he would. Isn’t that right, Pony?”
I was standing in front of Pony when I said this, my face more or less level with his, and out of the blue, he pushed his muzzle ever so gently into the crook of my neck. Again, I was unfamiliar with horses, or their ways and habits, so I had not expected this gesture of affection. If Mule had pushed his nose into me, it would have been to nip me, for he was a grumpy old coot. But Pony was nothing like Mule.
I held Pony’s gaze a few seconds, slightly dumbstruck by him, and then carefully pulled myself up into the saddle. I was still inexpert in this maneuver, but he held steady for me as I scrambled up.
“Are you really going to do this, Silas?” Mittenwool asked incredulously.
He was standing in back of me, so I turned to answer. The sun was setting directly behind him. It almost looked like rays of light were coming through his body.
“I told you,” I answered. “I feel it in my bones. Can’t explain it more than that.”
He rolled his shoulders, defeated.
“You know half your face is covered in blood, right?” he pointed out.
I looked down at my bloodied hands. I could only imagine what my face looked like, but I made no attempt to wipe it. “Are you coming with me or not?”
He took a deep breath. “I told you I would.”
I smiled gratefully, to which he responded with another unhappy shrug. Then I nudged Pony with my heels to get him going. Not that I needed to. He knew to go. And where to go. Cautiously, slowly, he stepped through the thicket, and then nosed his way into the crack in the wall of ironwoods. It was only a sliver, big enough for a small boy atop a small horse. I pictured Pa, being as tall as he was, on that giant charger of a horse, having to bend down at the waist to get beyond it.
Then we were inside the Woods, and it was dark.
The trail, if it could even be called a trail, was a shallow rut winding through the trees. The branches intertwined just above me like long bony fingers clasped in prayer. They reminded me of the vaulted ceiling in the only church I’d ever been inside, in Boneville, which Pa had taken me to once after I’d professed a mild curiosity about the “man of sorrows.” One visit was all I needed, which suited Pa fine, as he was not a believer. I was not a disbeliever.
The farther I went inside, the more my heart started racing. My cheeks felt flushed. The air was thick and smelled of musk and damp earth. I was feeling unsteady.
“How are you doing there, Silas?” Mittenwool called out from behind me. I knew he could tell I was getting anxious, just like I could tell he was no longer miffed at me.
“I’m fine,” I said, trying to control my breathing.
“You’re doing real good.”
“It just got so cold all of a sudden.”
“Is your coat buttoned?”
“I said I’m fine!” I found it irritating, the way he fussed over me sometimes.
“All right. Steady on,” he replied calmly. This was a phrase of Pa’s.
I buttoned my coat. “I’m sorry about before. The empty arms remark.”
“Don’t worry about it. Just focus on the task at hand.”
I nodded, too shaky to say anything else. Even though I felt cold to the bone, I was sweating now. My teeth were chattering. My heart was racing.
Steady on, I dared myself, cupping my hands over my mouth to keep them warm.
“Fare thee well,” Mittenwool started singing softly. “I must be gone and leave you for a while…”
This was a tune he used to sing to me when I was little and couldn’t fall asleep.
“Stop it,” I whispered, embarrassed. But then, “No, keep going.”
“But wherever I go, I will return, if I go ten thousand miles.”
He hummed the next verse, so softly it melded with the sound of Pony’s hoofbeats and the din of the Woods. It was like a sound from far away, and it soothed me, I must admit. It was a great comfort, truth be told, having Mittenwool there with me. I resolved to be less impatient with him.
About a stone’s throw from where we’d entered, the trail opened up around a smooth slab of rock, which rose at an angle off the ground. I prodded Pony to climb it, and when he was at the highest point he could get to, I stood tippy-toed in the stirrups to look all around me.
“Do you see anything?” Mittenwool asked.
I shook my head. By now, my skin was gooseflesh. My hands were trembling.
Mittenwool climbed up next to me. “Why don’t you call for him one last time, and then we’ll go home?”
“Paaaaaaaa!” I shouted in the damp air.
My call was met with the startled cry of a multitude of invisible forest creatures, cawing and shrieking in reply. I could feel, though not see, the rush of small movements in the branches all around, like a wind slapping through them. When it settled, I waited for a more familiar sound to come to me. Silas, I’m over here, son. Come here. But nothing came.
I shouted several more times, and each time heard the same mix of loudness and silence.
There was only the faintest light to see by now. The air was blue and the trees were black. Maybe in the summer, when the branches were full of leaves, one could say the forest was green. But right now there were no other colors in the world, as far as my eyes could tell, but blue and black.
“Come on now. You’ve done all you can do,” said Mittenwool. “We should head back, before it’s too dark to find the trail out.”
“I know,” I answered softly. He was right. I knew he was. But even so, I found myself unable to move right then, to turn Pony around and go home.
I had been feeling quivery this whole time, my heart pulsing inside my ears, but it was getting louder now, that thumping sound. It was like a drumbeat. Boom. Boom. Coming from inside me. A quickening. Mixing with the buzz of the Woods I’d been hearing all along. The murmur of invisible forest creatures, and the rattling of branches, and Pony’s tail whisking, and the hum of insects, and the squishy sound of hooves on uncertain ground. It felt like these noises were rushing into me, coursing into my ears like a river. And suddenly, the memory of what I had heard last time all those years ago, when I was with Pa and got so scared, came flooding back to me. For I was hearing it again now.
A rumbling. Whispers and moans, everywhere around me. That is what I had heard back then. The hushed roar of voices.
But this time, I steeled my nerves against what I told myself
were the delusions of my mind. My own grand imagination at work, as Pa phrased it once. They are not voices, I thought, only the sounds of the forest.
Yet, for all I tried to listen for those forest sounds now, it was only strange utterances that I heard, the wisps and mumbling of words rising and falling in the air. Closing in on me. Like they were carried on a fog. The air was so thick with words, I felt like I could choke on them. Like they would pour into my throat and into my nostrils. Deluge my ears. Liquefy my bones.
“Silas, we need to go now!” yelled Mittenwool.
“Yes!” I cried, and tried to turn Pony around. But I could feel his muscles tensing under my legs, resisting me. His ears started twitching madly. He tossed his head and took some cautious steps backward down the rock. I pulled hard on the reins, for I was truly frightened now, and wanted to turn and get us out of the Woods as fast as possible. But this impulse only startled him, or it could be that he was hearing what I was hearing. Whatever it was, something caused Pony to suddenly rear. And then he bolted off the rock, his tail up, neck forward, and took off at full gallop. Left and right he threaded through the trees, me holding on to his mane for dear life, folded over his neck to keep my head from getting sliced off by the tangle of branches above me. My face got whipped and scratched anyway.
I don’t know how long Pony ran buck wild like this. Was it ten minutes or an hour? A few thousand feet or ten thousand miles? When he finally slowed, his coat drenched in sweat, I remained low against him. I did not lift my face from his neck. My fingers stayed entwined in his mane. He was panting fitfully, and so was I, and I could feel his heart beating under my left leg. Who knows how much more time passed before he came to a full stop, but even then it took me a while to open my eyes.
I had no idea where we were. At this point, I could barely tell the difference between up and down. From where I was looking, the whole world was bent sideways. We had reached a clearing of some sort, encircled by sleek bare trees that looked like maypoles. It had gone dark now. Not pitch-black yet, but everything was shadows. Still, at least it was quiet here. That much I noted at once. There were no muffled voices. No words hanging in the air to drown me.
“Mittenwool?” I called out softly, for I could not feel him near me. I sat up then to look around, but I saw no trace of him.
I have stated that Mittenwool has been my companion for as long as I can remember, but I don’t mean to imply that he is by my side at all times. He has always come and gone, willy-nilly, as he pleases. Hours will go by when I don’t see him. Sometimes, a whole day will have passed without me catching sight of him. But by nightfall, he always comes back. I’ll see him walking nearby, or sitting on the chair in my room, whistling or cracking some joke or other, keeping me company until I fall asleep. So I was accustomed to his absences. But right now, in the middle of these diabolical Woods, the idea that he was not nearby filled me with a panic that I cannot describe. For the first time in my life, it occurred to me that maybe I could lose Mittenwool. Or maybe he could lose me. I did not know the rules of our existence together.
“Mittenwool!” I cried out. “Where are you? Can you hear me? Please come!”
I heard the snap of a branch and turned around. There, at the foot of the clearing, a barrel-shaped old man with a snow-white beard was pointing a shiny silver pistol right at me.
“What in blazes?” said the old man, surprised at the sight of me.
“Don’t shoot, please!” I cried, my hands in the air. “I’m only a child.”
“I can see that. What are you doing here?”
“I’m lost.”
“Where’d you come from?”
“Boneville.”
“Who is Mittenwool?”
“I’m looking for my pa.”
“Mittenwool is your pa?”
“I’m lost! Please help me.”
The old man looked confused. He sighed. I heard in that sound a kind of irritation, like he regretted finding me. He holstered his gun.
“You shouldn’t be out here all by yourself, kid,” he said gruffly. “A boy your size. There are panthers in these Woods that would rip your belly out and lick your bones dry faster than you could know. Best get off your horse and follow me. I have a camp set up about a hundred yards from here. Hurry up now. I was about to start a fire.”
That is how I made the acquaintance of Enoch Farmer.
5
WHEN EVENTS ARE BEYOND REASON, one tends not to ask a lot of questions. I climbed off Pony, led him by the reins, and followed the old man out of the clearing through a tight cluster of trees.
“Grab any big sticks you can find as you’re walking,” he instructed me, not looking back. “Avoid poplar, though. Makes an awful black smoke. We need tinder, too, so try to pick up some softwoods. Careful not to prick yourself. They’re sharp as needles.”
He kept walking, me following about five paces behind him, until we reached a little stream, no wider than I could jump across. On the other side of it was a small glade with a cluster of maple trees dotted with red buds. These bordered a clearing on which were piled a mess of burnt logs and ashes from previous campfires. I dumped the sticks and branches I had picked up onto the slab, and then led Pony to a tumbled maple about a dozen feet away. This is where the old man’s horse, a gloomy brown mare with close-set eyes, was tied to a branch. The moment we approached, the mare bared her teeth at us, like a mean dog would, but Pony paid her no mind at all. He simply flicked his tail, not deigning any further reply, as I tied him a few feet away.
When I returned to the little clearing, the old man was standing by the wood mound, poking at the pile of timber.
“Did you bring any matches?” he asked, not looking up.
“Yes, sir.” I pulled the box of matches from my satchel.
“You ever start a fire before?”
“In a firebox. But not out in the open like this, no.”
“If you can’t start a fire out here, kid, you’re as good as dead.” He sat down wearily, rubbing his knuckles into his back. “I’ll show you how to do it. What’s your name?”
“Silas Bird.”
“I’m Enoch Farmer,” he said. “Did you bring anything to eat, Silas Bird?”
“Just some salted meat and bread.”
“I was chasing down a rabbit when you got in my way,” he said sharply, kicking off his boots. “But I’m too tired to go back out hunting again.”
“You can have some of my food.”
He smiled kindly at that. “Well, thank you, Silas Bird. That’s a funny name.” His beard was like a short white broom hanging off his face. “So, Silas Bird, why don’t you get a little fire going while I rest my aching back here, and we’ll make a stew of that salted meat? Then you can tell me what the dickens you’re doing out here in the middle of nowhere. Sound good to you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Wipe your face, by the way. It’s covered in something.”
“Yes, sir,” I answered, spitting into my palm to clear my face of the blood that had dried there earlier.
“Is that blood? You get hurt or something?”
“No, sir.”
He rubbed his hands together, watching me warily, and then showed me how to make a fire, how to stack the wood, where to light the tinder. He didn’t talk as much as grunt all his words. I soon learned he was the kind of man who belched and farted and cursed freely. Very different from Pa.
I got the fire going, and then he had me strip some bark off an ironwood and curl it into a kind of bowl, which I used to boil water. We put the salted meat inside it and made a nice stew of it, which I sopped up with the bread. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was.
He lit his pipe and regarded me curiously as I ate. The bowl was still half full when I offered it to him, but he waved it away.
> “I’m not that hungry after all,” he said gruffly. “You go on and finish it up.”
“Thank you.”
“So,” he said once I was sated, “I think it’s time you tell me your story, Silas Bird. How the hellabaloo did you end up here in the middle of these Woods?”
The fire warmed me. The food softened me. I had not had a chance to think too much about my situation until now, so absorbed was I by the tasks at hand, so when he engaged me with something like camaraderie, I felt my emotions untether. I pretended I was wiping my eyes because of the sparks and smoke coming from the fire, but it was the day’s events catching up to me. I told him what had happened up until that point. How three riders had taken Pa in the night. How Pony had come back for me, which I took as a sign to look for Pa. How I ended up in the Woods. And how I was lost. The end.
Mr. Farmer nodded and took it all in, as if he were inhaling my story along with the pipe. Billowy gusts of smoke came out of his nostrils, like tendrils. His fingers, curled around the pipe, were thick and gnarled.
“So these riders,” he finally said, “they came out of the blue, just like that? Your pa never saw them before? Had no run-ins with them before?”
“No, sir.”
“What’s your pa do for a living?”
“He’s a boot-maker by trade, but now he’s a collodiotypist.”
“A collodio-what?”
“A type of photographer.”
“Like a Daguerrean?”
“Yes.”
“What’s his name?”
“Martin Bird.”
Mr. Farmer twisted his beard, like he was digesting the name. “So, who is this Mittenwool you were calling out for?”
I had not mentioned Mittenwool in any of my explanations. I guess I was hoping he would have forgotten my calling out the name before. I looked down and didn’t answer.
“Look, son,” said Mr. Farmer. “You’re in a heap of trouble, out here by yourself. It’s sheer luck your ending up in this neck of the Woods instead of the Bog. That swampland will eat you alive. If I hadn’t found you, I don’t know what would’ve happened to you, frankly. So I don’t mind bringing you out of the Woods tomorrow morning, even though it’s out of my way. But you got to level with me here, Silas Bird. Did you come here alone, or is there someone else out there who I should know about?”
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