A History of Wild Places(31)

But we stirred something loose in the trees. We awoke a disease that had been asleep.

And now we live in fear of something we can’t even see.

Levi will tell this story tonight; he will remind us of what’s at stake.

But my own mind rattles with other thoughts, with a memory: Travis Wren—whose truck Theo found down the road. He came through the forest, past the boundary, and he arrived at Pastoral. It wasn’t long ago, a year, two at most. He was in our home, secretly, hiding in the old sunroom, curtains drawn and grass growing up beneath the floorboards. A ghost we didn’t know we had.

And then he simply vanished.

Maybe he was sick. Maybe he brought it past our walls and then died. Maybe something else happened. Something I can’t pinpoint—something I can’t quite remember. And the not remembering is what’s unhinging the gears and cogs of my mind. Shaking me apart. Making my skin itch and burn, a piece of charcoal sizzling inside my rib cage.

I can feel the hole where the memories should be, gaping, bottomless.

I move quickly down the path, forcing my legs to move faster, tree limbs catching the strands of my hair, tugging at the blue-stitched hem of my dress. My hands wave out in front of me to keep myself on the path, to keep from veering off into the trees and getting lost.

Night creatures stir in the underbrush along the trail, woken by my footsteps, while an owl swoops low over the ground in search of prey, of rodents scampering across the moonlit soil. I can hear its wings, the slicing of air, the intensity of its eyes scanning the dark.

I hear it all.

But beyond this sound, in the distance, I hear something else—a biting, gnawing ache. I can hear the trees cracking, fissures twisting up their trunks, splintering apart. They are sick, bloated with disease.

The sound echoes over our valley, a warning that we are not safe: The rot is looking for a way in.

My legs break into a run.

I sprint all the way back to the farmhouse, panicked, feeling my way up to the porch and yanking open the screen door. Clumsy and hot with sweat, I dart up the stairs, taking them two at a time, my hands skimming along the wall until I find my room. I stumble inside and crawl into bed, pulling the thin summer blankets up over my head.

I am a little girl again. Afraid of the dark.

Afraid of the forest.

Of the things I can’t quite remember.





FOXES AND MUSEUMS


Excerpt from Book One in the Eloise and the Foxtail series Eloise lies awake for three nights in a row, waiting for the fox to return.

And when it does, peering in through her bedroom window, Eloise is ready. She springs from her big-girl bed, already in her red rain boots, and rushes out into the night. She chases the fox past the border of the lawn and into the trees beyond her family’s home.

But the fox is quick, disappearing into hollowed-out logs and through patches of wild boar nettles. Several times Eloise loses sight of him, but always catches a flash of his scarlet fur. She chases him over a river, where she sees her wild reflection staring back, hair a nest of knots and leaves. She follows him through a gully where bright yellow poppies have bloomed all at once, to a stump coated in pale blue snails, crawling and slithering over the dead wood.

Finally, she stops and shouts after the fox, “Why do you show me pointless things?”

The fox stares back at her, tail swishing in the air.

“I want to see the darkness that lives in these woods,” Eloise demands. She knows the fox is keeping secrets, refusing to show her what truly resides in the trees. The hidden passageways, the holes in the ground that lead to other lands. “Please?” she begs.

But the fox looks back at her and snarls, as if she is the thing to fear. And it scampers away through a thicket of willows. Leaving her alone in the trees, leaving her to find her own way home.





THEO


I promised Calla I would let it go.

But I sit at the edge of the bed, hands worrying the fabric of the bedspread, and my mind keeps straying over the memory of the truck parked at the edge of the road. Tires sagging, doors unlocked. Travis Wren walked away from it and never went back.

Beside me, Calla sleeps with her face pressed into the pillow, soft, sun-browned skin and dandelion fluff eyelashes—I love her, I’d do anything not to lose her, and yet… my mind won’t stop coiling and uncoiling, stuttering over the things that don’t make sense. Let it go, I repeat to myself.

Calla reaches across the sheets as if she’s reaching for me in her dreams, lulled by the sound of the wind against the walls of the house. I should leave and head to the gate, relieve Parker of his shift, but from my coat pocket, I pull out the photograph: the distorted image of a woman I see even when I close my eyes, even when I try to force it from my thoughts. I trace her forehead with my index finger, her cropped hair, a summer-blond. Someone you’d notice if you passed her out in the real world, someone you’d remember, not because she’s pretty, but because there is a darkness about her, a sadness.

Maggie St. James.

It’s a deceit, holding the photograph while my wife sleeps a foot away. It’s a deceit to the entire community, slipping well past our borders to find it. This truth welled like a bruise in my chest when Levi spoke of trust and community and how we’re stronger together. I have defied the very framework of our way of life. And for what? Because of an itching curiosity, because of a boredom I can’t explain, but is always there. Scratch scratch scratch. Like little mice clawing at my bones.