The White Forest (21 page)

I knew very well he could not protect me from anything in this house. No amount of physical strength would have an effect here. The cottage was only two rooms, the first serving as the common area, with a hearth and a wooden surface for the preparation of food; the second room, the smaller of the two, was for sleep. It was this room that disturbed me, for here I knew the witch had dreamed. The ceiling had fallen though and sunlight streamed through a gaping hole. There was a murmur in the house—not from any of the remaining furnishings, but seemingly from the air itself. It reminded me of my trip to the coast as a girl, the ebb and flow of the waves.

Nathan paused to look at me, and I smiled faintly. “There’s nothing to the place, really,” I said.

“You don’t feel any particular presence?”

“I don’t,” I said, deciding not to mention the ebb and flow of sound. If I did, Nathan would want to experience it, and I thought I’d better make sure of what it was before I connected him to it.

He walked ahead of me, picking his way over scraps on the floor. Weeds were growing up in the golden light, as if nature was working to furnish Mother Damnable’s home anew. I was thankful for those few plants. They created a baffle of sorts. If the undertow of the invisible sea became too strong, I could clutch onto the weeds and save myself from being pulled away. In the bedroom, Nathan
took off his jacket, handed it to me, and began looking through the rubble. “Seems as though something burned in here.”

He bent over, trying to dig what was apparently a blackened meat fork from where it was trapped between two floorboards. “If I can pry this loose,” he said, “perhaps you’ll be able to experience something from it.”

I barely listened to him. Instead, I was distracted by the cool of the breeze. The ebb and flow of sensations was not entirely unpleasant. Light streamed through the opening in the thatched roof and shadows played across one ruined wall. The shadows shifted and turned until they looked something like the moving grass and plants of an overgrown garden. I walked toward the shadows, becoming lost in their undulations, and gradually it seemed as though the wall itself was growing transparent. I was looking not at the wall but
through
it. And there I perceived the pale forest and the white stream of what Nathan called the Empyrean. I realized that in Mother Damnable’s cottage, only a thin membrane separated me from that place. I could see the surface of the membrane glistening in the half-light, inviting me to break through. The proposition excited me, made my flesh hot. I pressed my hand against the membrane, feeling its slipperiness. Pushing harder, I could feel a pressure building in my own chest. As I attempted to force my hand through the membrane, thinking I could perhaps find an entrance to the Empyrean here in the witch’s house, the pressure in my chest became a kind of pain. It felt as though I was trying to put a hole through myself. And it was then that Nathan put his hand on me. I was so startled by his touch that I jumped back, and the wall became nothing more than a wall once again.

“What was that?” Nathan asked. “I saw some sort of transparent gauze.”

“I don’t know what it was,” I said, irritated. “I didn’t have time to find out.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you’d discovered something?”

“I wasn’t sure—”

“Was it permeable?” he asked. “Could we pass through the gauze?”

“I don’t know, Nathan. I was only beginning to touch it when you startled me.”

“Bring it back,” he said.

“I can’t just bring it back. I don’t even know how I brought it to begin with. I told you, I wasn’t ready to show you.”

“Not ready?” he asked, his tone growing sharp. “I thought we were here to look at this place
together
.”

“You’re making me feel as though you’re using me, Nathan. As if I am a tool.”

I could feel the witch’s house surging around me. Its timbers developed something like a voice, and they were calling to me, not with language, but with music. Theirs was a terribly persuasive song. The timbers wanted me to lay Nathan low—to bring him down. A part of me wanted the same. He thought he could take what was not his.

“Make your own exploration,” he said. “See how far you get.” Nathan turned and left the bedroom.

“You said you wouldn’t leave me here alone,” I called after him.

He did not look back as he spoke to me again, saying, “I’ve realized you’re the sort of thing that wants to be alone, Jane Silverlake.” He abandoned me there—leaving for the war shortly after, still angry with me. Still feeling as though I would not let him in.

I fell to my knees that day in the witch’s house. I was alone and I longed for Maddy. I’d been foolish to go off without her. I began to weep so hard that I became confused. I experienced a waking dream in which an old woman in a red cloak came to my side and put her arms around me. She wore a filthy lace ruff around her neck, and her face was like that of the shriveled monkey that I now found in Father’s book. She told me they were all like that—those who came to take from me. “You mustn’t worry too much, child,” she whispered. “The young man will finish himself. Those like him always do.” And I allowed her to hold me, putting my face in her hair. She smelled of wildflowers and musk and had a drowsy warmth about her like summertime. She rocked me for what seemed like hours.

•   •   •

I didn’t realize how much I’d been affected by the events at the cottage until I tried to leave it and found I could not bear the sunlight outside. Dizzy, I lay down in the shade of an oak tree, far enough from the house that I could no longer hear the ebb and flow. And I remained there for an hour, unable to move, trying to let the silence of nature heal me. The vision in red had been Mother Damnable; I was quite sure of it. The witch loved me and wished to protect me, though I was not sure why.

•   •   •

Nathan was absent after the events at the cottage, preparing himself for the long journey to Malta. And despite my attempt to hide what we’d done, Maddy was all too aware of our trip to the Heath. She sat with me as I recovered, refusing to allow Miss Anne near me and instead keeping a cool towel pressed to my brow in an attempt to reduce the fever that invaded my body.

I was laid out on the couch in the Clock Parlor, as I didn’t like being in my bedroom when I was ill. The bed, with all its pillows and fluff, could feel too much like a coffin. Father appeared from time to time at the door, saying something disjointed about how I shouldn’t have gone out in the summer heat. “It’s far too easy to exhaust oneself out there, Jane. That scoundrel Nathan Ashe should have known better. Your mother, after all—your poor mother.”

“I’m fine, Father,” I said. “It’s only a spell. Nothing like what happened to Mother.”

Maddy read to me from a new translation of Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
that her own mother had deemed “disturbing filth” and put on a high shelf. Maddy spent a great deal of time reading the rape of Daphne, in which a girl sprite was transformed into a tree by her father so that she might avoid defilement from the god Apollo. The scene of transformation was particularly hideous, even by Ovidian standards, telling of the bark crawling up the poor girl’s legs and thighs while Apollo tried to violate her. Bark encased her stomach and breasts until finally her upraised arms became leafy branches and her
screams were nothing more than the creaking of the bowers. Even then the god did not relent. He tried to penetrate her still but found the girl to be entirely made of wood.

“You see, Jane,” she said, “a tree girl—just like your mother used to call you.”

“Is this supposed to be helpful?” I asked.

Maddy lowered the book. “Would you prefer something else, dear?”

“I’d think you might try reading something more peaceful. The state I’m in begs for that.”

Here she did look a bit apologetic. She assessed me with her violet-colored eyes and bit her lower lip. “Are you actually ill, Jane? Or are you acting this way because of something that happened on the Heath with Nathan? Between the two of you, I mean.”

I looked toward a pool of sunlight on the rug. “It wasn’t physical,” I said. “Or at least not in the way you’re thinking of it. He—Nathan—wanted to try another experiment. He was desperate for it.” I explained the events as clearly as I could remember them. It was wrong to have kept any of it from her. Maddy was like my shadow-self, and to hide information in such a manner was like walling off a part of my own consciousness. I even told her about the vision of the red woman that I’d taken to be Mother Damnable, making it clear I’d been hallucinating under duress (though I wasn’t entirely sure that was true).

“My mother actually met Mother Damnable when she was just a girl,” Maddy said. Her tone was light, as if the story mattered little, but my interest was quickly drawn. “The old witch apparently showed her something.”

“Showed her what?” I asked, feeling strong enough to actually sit up comfortably for the first time in three days.

“Oh,” she said, “I don’t know. Some kind of trick, I think. Mother never told exactly—or maybe she did, but I didn’t care enough to listen.”

I rested my head against the arm of the sofa and thought of the old woman’s arms around me and the lovely smell of her hair. I wondered if her tricks were anything like my own.

L
ate afternoon sunlight spilled through the tall windows of the library, and as I was putting Corydon Ulster’s letter in the fire, Miss Anne came to the door, fresh from shopping. She looked somewhat dissatisfied at the sight of me. “Would you like a cup of tea now, Jane?” she asked.

“No tea,” I said, “but come closer for a moment, Anne.” I was still feeling off balance from my memory of
Mother Damnable’s cottage.

After my experience there that fateful day, I’d gone to Mother’s dressing room, opened the wardrobe, and knelt before the oval portrait of the Lady of Flowers. For the first time in my life, I prayed—not to the Christian God, but to the woman in the painting who looked so much like my mother. I asked her to never let me see the Empyrean again. It had marred my relationship with Nathan, perhaps even set him against me. And it would likely do the same to my relationship with Maddy. The Empyrean had been poisoning me since I was a child, I knew this now. It was the emptiness that Mother had left in me, the emptiness that infected everyone around me. I prayed harder still, knowing the worst thing about the Empyrean was that even though I could see it was a void—a terrible white blankness that could ruin all my carefully built relationships—I secretly wanted more of it. Seeing the white forest so close at hand in Mother Damnable’s cottage had been almost too much. I wanted to feel the Empyrean consume me, to erase my name and my sex, erase my very identity and leave me a magnificent and shining absence.

As I prayed before the wardrobe, the Lady of Flowers stared back at me, her dark eyes so superior. She seemed to condemn me for my weakness. She wanted me to grow strong, so I didn’t fail her. So I didn’t fail everyone. The way she looked at me, like she knew everything and I knew nothing, enraged me. I stood and pulled the portrait from the back of the wardrobe, letting it fall to the floor. I leaned over it and pushed my hand through the Lady’s chest. I tore at the flowers on the canvas until all of it was in ruins. And then I lay there next to the broken frame, holding handfuls of the Lady and feeling the Empyrean slip away.

After that day, I did not see the white forest again for a time. My talent once gained became a kind of low hum in the background of life. But when Nathan disappeared, I could sense the forest’s return. The Empyrean was coming back, calling to me. It was there, just under the surface of things, and I wondered if I could access it once again.

•   •   •

“Closer, Miss Anne,” I said, as she was still some five feet from the fireplace in the library. The request seemed to frighten her, but she did as I asked, coming to stand directly before me.

“Hold out your arm,” I said to her, “and pull back the sleeve of your blouse.”

“Oh no, Jane. I don’t want—”

“Do it now, Anne, or I’ll tell Father you’ve been stealing silverware.”

She did as she was told, as I had long ago established myself as dominant in our relationship. I placed my hand on her bare skin. The library rang out around us. Books produced a particularly agonized tone.

“What do you feel?” I asked her.

“The demons, Jane,” she said breathlessly. “You know I feel them when you touch me.”

“There are no demons. How many times do I need to tell you that for you to understand?” She tried to pull away, but I wouldn’t allow it. I focused all my attentions on the objects, letting the great moaning of the room fill her like water fills a basin. Miss Anne began to cough, and flecks of spit appeared on her lips.

“Now what do you feel?” I asked.

“I feel everything,” she said. “The whole room is inside me.”

“And do you see a pale forest,” I said, “with an unmoving stream?”

“It’s there,” she replied, nearly hypnotized by her own fear. “It’s there behind the objects. A white forest. And there are demons in the trees. White demons making awful sounds and watching.”