2: Mother of Pearl

Ezra

Authors Note: This is just a content warning that there is an injury described in this chapter.

Don’t go into the forest, that’s what everyone had always said.

But I had to. I couldn’t explain why, I just needed to go in there. I knew I needed to.

I’d known people who had known people who disappeared in those woods. Went into that copse of trees that always seemed in bloom, always alive. Usually, it was during the harsh winter months, when fields were barren and game knew to chance hiding out in The Wilds rather than risk winding up as stew or leather shoes.

Some part of me knew that whatever lay hiding behind the tree line wouldn’t hurt me, though. The forest wouldn’t gobble me up like it had the others; the hunters, the fools, and the prideful older boys trying to impress the girls they were courting.

It was the perfect day for it. Ma was away midwifing for the Rileys and Pa was working on a big project somewhere up the mountain road. Neither would be back for a long time, and The Wilds were so insistent that day. It whistled for me like a Ma did at sundown, promising warmth and dinner—only it was morning, so maybe breakfast instead.

Our house was just next to the giant fields of rye that separated Dewbury, so it’d be easy for me to sneak out without nosy town-folk tattling on me.

I packed up a bag with some charcoal, my sketchbook, and some bread, just in case I got hungry. It had snowed a lot the night before, so I put on my good boots and my thick coat and the scarf Grammy knitted for me for my birthday. Then, on the way out the door, I put my lucky cap on because I was going to need all my luck if I was going to go into the most dangerous place out there.

But I wasn’t scared. I know I probably ought to have been, but I wasn’t. Something about it felt right. That’s all I could say on the subject.

I left home with my supplies and made my way to that giant rye field. The rye was always ready to harvest, even in the winter, but we weren’t supposed to take any of it. Ma says that rye belongs to the witches. So even when people are hungry and desperate, they don’t cut the rye and mill it into bread or hunt in the forest beyond it.

When I reached the field, I waited there for a while, looking across it. I thought that maybe if something bad was lurking over there in the forest I’d be able to see it and maybe try another day but, the tree line was so far away—too far.

I hitched my bag up on my shoulder and took a deep breath.

Then I took the first steps into the tall grasses.

They came up to about my waist, and they tickled in a way I wasn’t accustomed to in the fields belonging to the Maysels down the road. I let my hands drag against the swaying plants and felt a weird tingling like I’d touched some stinging nettle—only without the pain and itching. It set my heart to beating so loud that I could hear it in my ears.

As I got closer to the trees, the weather changed. The winter winds calmed down and a warm breeze took their place. By the time I reached the inside of the tree line, it felt like spring. Fresh, but balmy—and I’d started to sweat.

Still, I couldn’t think much about how warm I was, not with this forest around me.

The Wilds were…like no forest I’d ever seen. Not even in spring or summer. The ground was damper, the greens were greener, the smells were stronger. Even the ambient noises in the woods were louder. Birds singing trilling songs, the chittering of squirrels, the scurrying of little feet.

I looked up into the trees to see if I could find any of the creatures in question. Maybe I could stop and sketch them. When I did, I saw how massive the trees really were.

Pa told me once when I asked him about why we grew trees for lumber that it was ‘cause the trees in the forest were so old that cutting them down was a little sad to do. Pa said some of them were as old as Grammy.

These trees were so tall that they must have been twice Grammy’s age—maybe even three times! I heaved out a breath as I took it all in.

The heat of the forest finally got to me, though, so I took off my coat and my scarf before I sweat through them and near froze on my walk back home.

And then, in the periphery of my vision, I saw the flash of something—white as snow and just about my size. I started, heart going into my throat.

I turned to face it and saw her.

Ma had a hairpin in her things that she wore for funerals and weddings—she said they made the decorations on it out of mother-of-pearl. This girl looked like they carved her out of mother-of-pearl, too.

She was pale as a ghost with a light rosy blush like a doll’s. Her hair was just as white, tumbling down to her shoulders in wild curls. Her eyes were the most colorful thing about her, green on the outside with a bright flare of amber in the middle, like she had sunflowers in her eyes.

She looked as surprised to see me as I was to see her.

And then I looked down and saw her…

She was only wearing her underthings.

My face heated like I had a fever and I quickly looked away, because gentlemen didn’t look at girls when they were underdressed. I was going to offer her my coat because that was something gentlemen did, too. But the strange girl ran.

“W-Wait!!” I called after her, and then I was running too.

Maybe it wasn’t proper but, I wanted to ask her some questions. I wanted to see if she was a ghost or a witch, or maybe just a person who lived here and we all just thought no one lived here this whole time.

But lord, she was so quick. If she ever came to Dewbury, she’d beat all the kids when they raced and win every game of tag. She zigged and zagged through trees like she knew where each one would be. I realized as I noticed her bare feet that she might very well know every tree in the forest, after all.

I was worried I’d be lost at the end of this, but I was more worried I’d never see the pretty girl ever again. It felt like this was something I had to do—felt like she pulled me along on a string with her.

The woods vanished from around me. There was only her, getting smaller and smaller as she left me behind. I was so desperate, my heart felt like it was squeezing in my chest, I wanted to cry almost.

“W-Wait! Please!” I called.

The trees packed closer to us and I stumbled over them. I watched in awe as she leapt over dense networks of roots and running streams of water. She ran straight into a thicket of thin, young trees and they merely moved aside for her, like a crowd parting.

It was magic.

She was one of them. She was one of the witches of The Wilds.

I thought I should turn around and run back to where I came from right then, but my feet kept moving—kept chasing after her.

She bounded up the trunk of a great oak tree, and I followed her like a fool. Even in this, she was faster than anyone I’d ever seen. I was so focused that I paid no mind to how high up I was climbing. When I finally looked down to place my foot on a knot of wood, I saw how far I was from the black ground below me.

I panicked, and when I tried to scramble for safety, I lost my footing and plummeted.

The fall was so fast that I didn’t really register it. I heard the deafening crack of wood beneath me and wondered if the wood had punctured my lungs with how I struggled to breathe. And then I felt pain—hot, sharp pain exploding out of my right arm and found it hanging at a strange angle under my shirt sleeve and I realized that the crack I’d heard wasn’t wood at all, but my bone breaking in my body.

I let out a wild scream, hoping that somehow my Ma would hear it and come help me, come save me from this stupid forest and the stupid witch that made me fall so badly.

I hugged my arm to my chest. Blood seeped into my shirt as I wept. I couldn’t tell if the pressure was hurting or helping.

I couldn’t think of anything past the pain, not of being lost or getting home. Every thought was about that injury. That was until she finally spoke.

That bell-like voice cut through all the pain, and I looked up to see her staring down at me.

“Boy!” she called, unphased by the gore.

“What?” I sniffed.

“Why are you in The Wilds?”

The question surprised me—enough that I loosened the pressure on my arm. My broken bone moved, and I felt nauseous with the wave of pain that passed through me. I ground my teeth, eyes squeezing out a few tears that slid down my face and into my ears.

“Can you please get help? Please?” I begged.

“My sisters won’t help you.” She said.

Again, she seemed unbothered by how hurt I was. I kind of hated her for not caring, for not seeing how badly I needed the help. What if my cut got dirty, and I had to lose my arm? The Colonel said that’s how he lost his leg in the war.

I didn’t want to lose my arm—even if it wasn’t my drawing arm, I liked my arm.

She was climbing down from the tree. The canopies above me were spinning like a top.

“Why are you here?” she asked from the lowest branch, one I couldn’t even reach.

I sniffled as black edged my vision. Distantly, I heard her land near my head—I wondered if I’d throw up all over her pretty white shift. I tried to focus on the expanse of blue skies above me and breathe.

I don’t know how long had passed before I woke next, but I did wake again. The cold winter air woke me. Soft, familiar hands brushed hair out of my face—Mama’s hands. Mama came to help me in the forest.

“Ezra, Ezra wake up, sweet boy,” she begged, “Lord, he’s cold as death. Isiah, go get blankets.”

I opened my eyes and looked up to see my Ma looking down at me real pale. She heaved a shaky breath and patted my cheek a little.

“Oh, thank goodness, stay awake now, baby boy. Your father’s getting some blankets to warm you up. Why in the world did you come out here with no coat on?”

“No coat?” I croaked, my voice a shell of what it usually was. My mouth was so dry.

I did my best to wet it with my cottony tongue, swallowing with some effort. I looked around and realized I was lying on a fresh flurry of snow, rather than the warm damp mud I remembered laying in as I cradled my arm.

Sitting up, head spinning, I gasped.

“M-Ma!! My arm!!” I said, lifting it.

I braced for the pain to shoot through me, but it didn’t come.

My arm was completely fine—the only thing that kept me from thinking I’d dreamed all of it was the fact that my shirt still had blood on it—it soaked the arm of my shirt, frozen stiff now, and there was a cold stiffness over my heart too.

She looked at the blood and nodded, as if having already checked my arm and my chest to make sure I wasn’t hurt.

“Did you get in between some critter and its lunch?” she asked me.

I looked at her and had to think about what she was asking me, then I looked toward the forest.

The witch must have… healed me and gotten me back home somehow.

I was still staring at the forest when Pa came back and put a heavy wool blanket over my shoulders and rubbed some warmth into me.

“C’mon, Ez, let’s get you back inside and light a fire. Get some brandy in you.”

“You have to be more careful out by the field, Ezra. You know critters out here act strange, especially during this time of the year,” Ma said.

“Sorry mama, I wasn’t thinking,” I said arranging my features just guilty enough to be convincing. “I won’t go near the fields again.”

Except I would. I would go back into that forest the very next chance that I got to see that strange girl again. I’d made it out fine once… I was sure I could do it again.

Probably, anyway.