A History of Wild Places(85)

I shake my head. “Faye, some part of you must know that something isn’t right here. There are lies built into the walls of this place; we just can’t see them.” My chest grows tight and heavy, and I suddenly want to be free of the birthing hut. “Some part of you must know that we have to try and save the child.”

Because what if it were my baby who was sick, but no one was willing to risk leaving the valley to help her? We need to do this—we need to try.

“Okay,” a voice says. But it isn’t Faye’s, it’s Colette’s, her small hand clamping around my wrist. “When do we leave?”

“Now.” I swallow, realizing the seriousness of what we’re about to do. “We’ll meet Theo and Calla on the road. But I just need to do something first—gather your things and I’ll come right back for you.”

This isn’t part of the plan. Calla and Theo and I never discussed this, but it’s something I must do before we leave, one last moment of defiance to prove to him that I don’t love him anymore. I want him to know that I’m leaving, and I’m not coming back.

I slip out of the birthing hut, and into the trees.

We are betraying the foundation of everything we’ve built here by leaving. We are breaking with the principles of everything Levi has taught us. He would have us believe that we will be infected with the pox if we go over the boundary, but if I’m the one who’s been carving the wounds into the trees, then maybe they’re not sick at all: no illness weeping from their fleshy white centers, no elm pox congealing in the air between the trees, waiting to infect those passing through.

I’m no longer sure if there is danger in the woods at all.

Or only the danger that lives in corrupt men’s hearts.

I hurry through the dark. No turning back. This is the only way to save Colette, to save the baby.

And myself.



* * *




The sky is a muted shade of twilight as the sun dips beyond the pines. I can’t see it, not exactly, but I can feel its delicate azure quality against my skin.

I stay back in the trees, where I won’t be seen. Still, my stomach tightens into itself the closer I get to Levi’s house, until I am made of knots and twisted fibers, just like the sage bundles that hang from the trees.

It’s early evening. Levi and Alice are surely still somewhere within the community, but I am quiet as I sneak up to the back door and turn the knob, slipping inside.

If Levi catches me, I doubt he’ll believe whatever lie I tell—not now, after everything that’s happened. There is a part of him that fears me—and always has. He knew I would betray him someday, that he would lose control, and he was right. A fury boils up inside me, embers that smoldered for too long, and now have been set ablaze.

The house is quiet—vacant. I’m sure of it.

Even if he and Alice were asleep—which they wouldn’t be at this evening hour—I would hear their breathing through the walls, the weight of them lying in bed, and the pressure through the floorboards. The house would tell me if they were here.

I hurry through the kitchen into the living room. I touch the walls only a few times, to be certain of where I am, but otherwise I move without need for markers. I know this house nearly as well as my own.

Inside the pocket of my skirt, I pull out the dried daffodil.

I plucked it from between the pages of the dictionary in my bedroom before I left the farmhouse. At first, I thought maybe I would take it with me, the one thing of value I didn’t want to leave behind, but as I strode up the path toward the birthing hut, I realized it wasn’t that at all. I needed to give the flower back. At one time, it meant something to me, the first thing Levi gave me when we were young and clear-eyed with our hands always woven together, our mouths pressed as one.

But now, the delicate white petals only remind me of what Levi has done: broken me. So I will leave the dried daffodil behind, placed in his house, a symbol that I am leaving and never coming back. That I don’t love him anymore.

My fingers trail along the edge of the couch, considering where to leave the flower. Maybe I should climb the stairs and place it on his pillow, where Alice would see it when they slid into bed, a tiny perfect daffodil pressed flat, left for them to find. She would ask questions, she would demand to know who left it.

But somewhere in my gut, I know it doesn’t matter what Alice thinks, if she leaves him or not. Because I’m leaving and not coming back.

I walk to the fireplace and feel the wood mantel, a good place to set it, a fitting place. He might not notice it tonight, it might take him a day or two, but that would give us time to get far away from Pastoral before he realizes the truth.

I’m about to place the daffodil on the mantel, when I hear the back door off the kitchen swing open. Levi’s returned. And he’s not alone, there’s another voice—his wife. I can smell her clove and sugar-sweet scent.

I freeze, a stone sinking into my gut—but I need to move, get out of here before they see me. I drop to the floor and scramble behind one of the chairs.

Alice whispers something I can’t make out, then laughs. She doesn’t know the awful, traitorous things he’s done to me. That someday he might do to her. But hearing them together, causes a new rage to simmer up into my throat. I want to cry, I want to wail from some primal part inside myself. But most of all, I want to hurt him.