A History of Wild Places(70)

“Where did you get it?” His voice is flat and measured, giving nothing away.

I draw the photo back so only I can see it. “I found it.”

“Where?” This question comes as a punctuation in the air.

Beyond the border, I think. Down the road until I could no longer see Pastoral behind me. Much farther than Ash or Turk trekked. Deep, deep into the woods.

But Levi looks at me like he already knows, or he suspects. And we stare at one another, looking for the lies, looking for the cracks in the other person.

“Do you know who she is?” I ask.

Levi’s right eye squints nearly closed and he shifts his jaw back into place. “Should I?”

“Her name is Maggie St. James.”

He blows out a breath, almost as if he’s relieved. Or again, it might just be the alcohol making his gestures seem like they have meaning when they don’t.

“There’s no one in Pastoral with that name,” he answers, turning his attention away from me. “You know that.”

Across the way, at the Mabon tree, Alice and a small group of women have finished tying lengths of dyed fabric to the lowest limbs of the tree, and now they stand in a circle around the trunk, each holding the end of a fabric strip, singing softly as they begin to weave in and out through one another, wrapping the trunk of the Mabon tree in a crosshatch pattern. It’s a way to bind the marriage of Alice and Levi, to brand it into the tree. The same tree where only days ago, two men’s necks were snapped.

“Maybe she passed through here years ago,” I say.

“We haven’t had anyone new come to Pastoral in over ten years,” Levi reminds me. Not since Cooper died and the forest became unsafe.

I nod, looking down at the photograph in my hand, at the half-image of a woman who is screaming at me with her visible eye. Begging me for something—to find her. “But what if this woman did come here,” I press. “Maybe she snuck in and then something happened to her.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.” I turn the photo over and read her name handwritten in black ink on the back. “I think a man came looking for her, too. A man named Travis Wren.”

Levi juts out his lower jaw then slides it back. “Why do you think that?”

“I found a notebook in our house, in the sunroom. It was written by a man named Travis Wren.” I hadn’t planned on telling Levi about the notebook, it felt like something I needed to keep secret, but now I find myself wanting to convince him, make him understand that two people are missing. And it’s better—less risky—to tell him about the notebook than about the truck I found down the road. Than to admit that I went over the perimeter.

“And you think that man was in your house?”

“I do,” I answer.

“And this Maggie St. James also?”

“Maybe.”

He brings the mug to his lips, but it’s empty. He shakes his head. “If those people were here in Pastoral, if they were in your house, we would know.” He looks up at me, unblinking, mouth pulled into a strange curve. And there, in the subtle twitch of his eyes, I can see that he’s trying to maintain control—of his temper, of me.

At the Mabon tree, the women are just finishing binding the tree with fabric, and their singing slows to a stop. They fold their arms around Alice now, protecting her—a show that they will always be with her, even as she enters this new marriage and her role as a wife. Then the women break apart, smiling, laughing at some private shared joke.

“Travis could have snuck into the house at night, slept in the sunroom, and we wouldn’t have known.”

“And the woman?”

I shake my head, turning the photograph away. “I don’t know—I’m not sure where she was. But I think they were both here, in Pastoral, and we need to find them, we can’t just—” My words break off. I sound manic, out of breath.

“You need to let it go,” he says gently, like a parent consoling a child who’s had a bad dream. Just go back to sleep and everything will be fine by morning. He clears his throat, then adds, “My eyes are sore from crying, my lungs are sore from coughing, my knees are sore from kneeling, and my heart is sore from believing. If you are sore and tired, then come into these woods and sleep.”

It’s a quote from Cooper, our founder, and I suspect Levi speaks it now as a reminder. He thinks I’ve forgotten why we’re here, or maybe he thinks I’ve forgotten who he is: our leader. I’ve pushed him too far, and I can see the strain now cut into his forehead.

He sets his empty mug in the grass at his feet, swaying as he rights himself. “It’s late,” he says finally, patting a hand on my shoulder, and nodding.

He takes a few steps forward, then staggers away along the edge of the trees so he won’t be seen and disappears into the dark.

I watch the place where he vanished, a thread of knowing weaving itself tighter and tighter until it feels like my mind will snap. It wasn’t what he said exactly, it’s the way his eyes cut slantwise over to me, the thick rasp of his breathing. He might be drunk, but it’s more than that.

Levi is lying.



* * *




I stand on the porch of Levi’s home, concealed in shadows, my shoulder pressed against the log exterior.