The Heart of the Thicket

10. Shrews Are Just Like Us

CHAPTER TEN

SHREWS ARE JUST LIKE US

The man plops me into the knothole of the tree, and I am faced with a lady shrew who scans me with animal eyes, making me think that she is just a critter and the man beyond is even more worthy of shivers and scorn than I thought.

Behind me, the wood sorrel, dandelions, and mushrooms from my pocket are placed into the cozy knothole, taking up much of the space. Then my wedding ring joins it all and I am of a size where it could fit around my middle with ease rather than my finger.

The shrew’s eyes drop into a glare, but not aimed at me. She watches the opening and, a few heartbeats later when her husband returns up the side of the tree in his animal form, she levels him with a look that could melt glass. Not just a shrew, then. She is furious.

While she berates him in a chorus of squeaks and hisses, I observe my surroundings and find the knothole much changed from how it appeared on the outside. It is not a bare hole filled with grass and droppings, but a little room with a table and chairs, probably carved by them in their human forms. At the table, tiny plates made of bone buttons are laid out.

The air in the tiny kitchen hangs thick with a scent similar to when I blanch greens in hot water. It is much more pleasant than how I imagined a nest of shrews would smell.

Neither creature appears concerned by nakedness, so I try not to be, but everything in my body cries out for me to cover up. The lady shrew pulls a few handfuls of flesh from the top of one of the mushrooms and appears to be near darting into a hall. This knothole is more home than hovel.

Trying to think past the many questions and terrors swimming through my every thought, I put myself in the proverbial shoes of this shrew-woman and try to think of how I would feel if Henry invited sudden guests for me to feed so close to supper time. I drop my chin to my chest and follow her.

“I am very sorry to impose, missus.” I assume she is a missus. It would be more rude to assume otherwise, given the circumstances. “Is there anything I can help with to make my being here easier on you?”

In a motion that appears far too human for a shrew, she waves me off as she enters a kitchen with a little stove bearing a small candle and a tiny pan atop it where she throws the handfuls of mushroom pieces she collected along with a few other ingredients. She is making a feast for the three of us. Being so small will mean I will have a full belly tonight. I hope the food grows with me if I ever return to my proper size or this will be for naught. Already, this feels like another notch of strange occurrences on a well-worn staff.

That Fallow has not intervened is reassuring, if annoying. I hope he is paying attention.

“Is there anything I can help with?” It is easier to ignore the pounding question of whether I will ever get back to my correct size again while pretending to be at ease.

She does not answer, leaving me to silent assurances I have no backing for. I will get to my right size again. I will survive this moment. Surviving my days minute by minute appears to be my new reality. The Thicket will make a fine actress of me.

“It smells wonderful, missus.”

It looks like she rolls her eyes at me but in the chatter and chirps meant only for herself, I swear I hear her say something like she’s glad I’m not screaming. After a brief pause, I know I hear the words, “Like the last one.”

“The last one? Does this happen often? What happened to her?” My voice rises in pitch with each word but the annoyed huff she makes silences me.

She motions to a seat at the little table where a plate is already set and, since my many questions only serve to alienate a potential ally, I swallow them away and sit. She serves me with tiny wooden spoons and my plate bears none of the food I brought. She must have made this before I arrived, leaving me to wonder who the mushrooms are for.

Her plate is set in the seat beside mine, though it seems she must finish her work with the mushrooms before she can join me to eat. It feels rude to start without her, so I wait, hunched to hide my body the best I can behind the table. It is more out of anxiety than modesty, I cannot stop thinking about how small my bones are, how easy they would be to snap at this size. Perhaps that is a silly thing to worry over in a warren with a rodent. I should be more concerned over what is in the food set before me than my bones snapping.

My now-tiny heart patters faster as the male shrew, the creature who has done this to me, enters the kitchen. His wife finishes loading the final plate and puts it in front of the seat across from me. It includes everything that is on mine and hers, but with the mushrooms she just cooked atop it all. Her eyes remain set in a glower made just for him.

“It smells delightful, dearest.” At last, the male shrew proves beyond a shadow of doubt to me that these shrews can speak. The mutterings of his wife were not born of my imagination, and her lack of words are a choice. It is strange to watch him manage with the mouth of a shrew. Forming the words does not come naturally to the beast. Without all the proper parts the words come across with a lisp, but they remain understandable .

Like when she waved me off, she shoos him with her tiny paws as if to say, Get on with it, so we can begin.

“Still not speaking to me, my sweet? Well, we will see how long it lasts this time.”

Beneath the table, she reaches toward me and holds my hand in her tiny, furred paw. I get the feeling that, though I feel out of my depth in a way I have never experienced before, there is a lot more going on here than I know. Her hand quivers like she is frightened. She is the first other female I’ve met in The Thicket that can speak. I squeeze her hand back to reassure her. I could use as many allies as I can scrounge up.

“Isn’t my wife a wonder, Odell?” The shrew’s lips do not move to speak this time and the words are clearer. It is all more magic afoot, I’m sure.

“She is, sir. You are both very kind to have me as a guest.” Despite my desire to play this game well, my words come across as a flat growl. If the creatures of this wood mean to harm me, they should get on with it. To have me over for dinner first seems cruel to a level the creature in the stream lacked. At least whatever stole me away through the water didn’t try to sell falsehoods. It was terrifying from start to finish.

If a shrew can appear pleased and wicked at once, the one before me manages. The lady shrew beside me grips my hand tighter and rolls a single finger with the other to urge him to hurry up and begin so we can. “She was my first, weren’t you, dearest? She was once so tall and mouthy as you, Odell. Now look.” My stomach does a wild flip, making dinner less appealing. She was once a human woman and he turned her into this. He could do the same to me. She was his first, too.One of a collection

There are others, like the one who kept screaming that the woman beside me grumbled about.

It would seem The Thicket is a place where women become lost more than others. A pervasive, thundering thought that has popped up throughout my day returns.

Mothers more than others.

He digs in and so does the woman beside me, giving me a look from the side of her beady, black eyes that says I should do the same. I follow suit with my single free hand, not wanting to insult anyone in this room any more than I have already. A lot has befallen me, but this man could apparently make me silent and furred. It is a fate I would avoid if I can.

Where in the hell is Fallow?

The first food on my plate is corn, much to my relief. Corn and steamed greens. A little bland, but delicious to my empty stomach. Swallowing my fear and frustration, I try once more to gain the good graces of my hostess. “Again, thank you. I had no plans for my own meal tonight beyond those mushrooms.”

She makes a small squeak. It sounds almost amused, but perhaps I am putting my own human twist on things that are simply shrews being what they are. The male shrew says nothing as he devours his meal, mushrooms and all, uncouth with his hands despite the tiny, carved cutlery beside his plate. I imagine the forsaken fork is more his once-human wife’s doing than his.

Through a mouthful, the male shrew asks, “Someone will catch you eventually. Mothers don’t last long in this place. Too much heart. You should go ahead and give up.” He eyes his wife. “That’s what you did, isn’t it?”

The shrew holding my hand tenses. She drops her head and seems frightened of this man. Maybe I should be more timid, but I’m not a very good actress. “I have never been good at doing what I am told.”

His eyes dart back to me with scorn, but also a gleam of excitement like he might enjoy proving me wrong. A shiver rolls down my spine and it’s a relief when he says no more for now.

Between bites, my mind drags to Fallow. I cannot help but wonder if he will save me from whatever is going to happen next if things go sideways. Maybe this man-shrew possesses a power Fallow can undo. A far worse option would be that this man isn’t going to kill me but turn me into one of his shrew wives, which wouldn’t necessarily stop The Keeper from his plans for me. My trust in Fallow is not so absolute as it could be, and that is probably for the best.

My attention is brought back to the table when the male shrew wheezes. Clutching his fuzzy throat, he reaches for his tiny water cup made from a hollowed-out acorn. In this bitty house filled with baubles like a scene of a children’s nursery story, I watch as the man-shrew’s eyes bulge from their sockets. He turns as close to blue as can be seen through his thick coat of brown fur. Falling to the side, he twitches and gasps, his body convulsing at the power of whatever has assailed him.

The mushrooms were poisonous.

To prove my hunch, the shrew-wife releases my hand and stands from her seat so quickly it topples over behind her. She claps and squeaks with glee at the successful murder of her husband. Rushing to the other side of the table, she inspects him where he lies, still laboring for breath as he vomits everything from his tiny stomach alongside more blood than it seems should fit inside his body. She pops up again, takes the knife made of carved wood from the table, and plunges it into the male shrew’s eye. He stills. Dead, at last.

Stomach wrenching from the bloody show, my fear rises like a flash flood and I am left wishing I had not scarfed my food down quite so fast. It is not that I am sad to see him go—though his loss does leave me naked and at the mercy of a shrew who has proven she will not shy away from violence—as much as it is that I have never seen anyone die quite like that before my eyes.

Lightheaded, I slump in my tiny seat and the she-shrew spins in a circle on all fours and turns to me. “It is good you did not eat those mushrooms. You are not a deer, girl!” She chirps merrily, still beside herself with joy. “I’ve been waiting to kill him for ages and then you came bearing just the poison I needed. He never lets me leave, you see. Oh, what a clot he was and now he’s finally dead!” My eyes are still glued to the form of the dead husband-shrew when the lady-shrew returns to my side and gives my shoulder a shake with her furry hand. “Snap out of it, Odell. It’s a good thing!”

Her accent is not one I recognize. If I had to guess, I imagine she is from some faraway place. It is almost British, but much faster and at times her words all push together, still English but hard to understand, nonetheless. It is strange how her lips do not move. Her words do not break up the air but rather hang in my mind, almost like I thought them. Perhaps I have. Maybe I am mad already.

Blinking fast to try to catch up to events, I sort through what little information I have and land on the dumbest question imaginable. Before I can think to save myself from embarrassment, it flies from my lips. “Were you his wife?”

I tear my eyes away from the body of the murdered shrew just in time to see her shake her head in disbelief. “Oh, Christ, you’re soft. If I’m his wife he was gonna make you his next one right quick. I started out just like you. I wandered into the woods one day and lost…” Her gaze grows distant before she shakes her head and huffs. “Well, it’s not terribly important what I lost! And now look at me. More pest than woman!”

She lost a child, or children, and she must know it. Her grief was clear to see for the instant she allowed and then it was hidden away. After a time, it is probably easier to pretend it never happened, so I won’t press her.

“He was going to make me a shrew?” I had already guessed as much, but to hear the threat in as many words has my feet itching to run despite having nowhere to go. Lifting my hands, I inspect them for fur or tiny claws and find no sign, to my immense relief. A shiver rolls through every inch of me, pebbling my skin with gooseflesh for how close I might’ve come to such a fate. Aside from the fact that I am very small and nude, I am just as I was an hour ago.

“You’ll find all sorts of magics in The Thicket, Odell. Most of us only get one kind.” She points to the corpse slumped on the floor. “He could turn people into shrews, so it’s what he did.”

Pinching my arm, I find, like so many times in the last day, that I am indeed awake in a world where men can turn themselves and others into shrews. “How long have you been a shrew?”

She shakes her head like she cannot believe I ask so many silly questions. It reminds me of my nanny growing up. “Long enough to know we need to ensure you don’t become one. Not if you’re to manage all you mean to accomplish.”

Her answer shifts my mind away from the murdered shrew back to The Thicket and all I do not know about why I am in it. “It sounds like you know more of my purpose than I do.”

Fallow said he took a shard of my soul because he was told to. It could be more than that if I am meant to accomplish anything beyond escape.

A thought pounds to the front of my mind, a tree with yellow leaves and my fear of leaving it is within the reach of my memory, but why is lost. “What is happening to me?”

With as close to a pitying look as a rodent can manage, she hops toward me and puts a hand on my shoulder. Her strange, high voice grows soft. “You need to save your daughter.”

Her words relight a candle that had been near sputtering in my mind. Anne. The rest of my soul and the homestead. Since this morning when the barrier vanished and everything around me became The Thicket, it has all been fading and I had not even realized.

Everyone forgets. Everyone gets lost.

“How do you know that when I don’t?”

The shrew slow-blinks at me and shrugs. “You did much carrying on. Most do. All of The Thicket whispers of mothers. Every so often we get a new one to watch.”

Her answer makes as much sense as anything else I have been faced with since arriving in this place, but it doesn’t help me. Panic, the likes of which I have rarely felt, swarms me like a cloud of stinging insects. I am forgetting Anne. If I forget her, she will have no chance.

“A new one to watch? Are you truly a mother? The other shrews in the other knotholes, the monsters in the rift, are they all mothers?”

“Hush!” Her lips lift, revealing tiny, pointed teeth that could do a great deal of damage to me at this size. “Don’t ask what you don’t wish to know.”

Not even her sharp teeth can deter me. “How many succeed?”

Closing her eyes to hide her barely contained grief, the shrew’s arms fall limp at her sides. She shakes her head. I know the answer she hesitates to speak aloud before she manages. “I’ve never seen it happen, but The Keeper has slept before, the borders of The Thicket were unguarded then. It could happen again.”

She is mighty hopeful for a woman who has been turned into a shrew and must know something I don’t to hold any belief in me.

“How can I ensure I remember Anne? I had almost forgotten!” Fear creeps into my body from the center of my spine. It reaches spindly fingers up into my chest and around my heart. This place is shrouded in a hellish and monstrous magic if it can make a mother forget her daughter.

She hums, her eyes darting to the dead shrew and back to me. “I’m afraid I don’t have any magic of my own to compete with The Thicket. I have already lost.” Her gaze grows distant and sad, her eyes pressing shut as she strains to recall something. Each heartbeat that passes in silence causes more weight to land atop my chest, suffocating me. She was a mother like me once and she no longer remembers. All that remains is the feeling that she should.

After a long time, she peers up at me again. “That will be up to you alone.”

That is not the answer I was hoping to hear. The spreading horror in my body is about to send my blood boiling into a mess when, from the back of my mind, there is a whisper of assurance. No words are spoken. A feeling of calm that, although my panic is justified, washes over me and cools my hot pot into something easier to manage. I do not know where such magic comes from and I do not dare trust it, but whatever it is, it helps. It would be foolish for me not to take all the help I am offered in this place.

Perhaps it is Fallow.

The shrew turns over her shoulder to peer at my wedding ring in the middle of the room beyond amongst the poison mushrooms and greens. “There is something else you meant to accomplish here, too, right? Beyond motherhood?”

“To find Henry.” This course, I never forgot. It is clearer in The Thicket than it was out of it. That my memory for that goal remains firmly intact while the goals of the world I came from are far away helps cement my belief that Henry is here. “I do not believe he is dead. I think he must be here.”

“He must have been a good man to capture your heart and attention as he has.” Her eyes stray to the dead shrew by her feet, and she shakes her head again. If she could, I think she’d cluck her tongue. The shrew leads me down the hall and back to the room that is open to the woods where it is now night. Her eyes remain transfixed on my wedding band. “I think I used to have a husband like that. He’s not here, though. I no longer remember anything about him. Maybe I made him up.”

She shrugs, as if the loss of her other life once upon a time is a small thing. I do not think I could ever shrug at the lost memories of Anne and Henry, but it could be that this creature—this mother—once felt the same.There is no telling how long she has been trapped here. Magic enough to turn her into a shrew and turn a knothole into a home exists here. My grief might be less acute or, at the very least, something I prefer not to dwell on, in a hundred years. Five-hundred. More.

Forgetting Anne is not an option. Fallow warned me of forgetting and growing lost. I cannot afford to let him be right.

Peering out, many trees are lit up just like this one. Each knothole has a little home and a shrew inside, watching us. A village of women who have been transformed by the now dead man. I suppose killing him did nothing toward breaking the spell over them.

“Will I be small forever?”

She points into the night where an owl watches with sleepy, yellow eyes. “Does it matter? You still have a digger with you.” Fallow blinks at me from inside the host animal. Perhaps Fallow is a ghost of some kind. Maybe a soul, as those exist with great importance here. He has to make, or take, bodies for himself. He doesn’t have one of his own, which I imagine was a terrifying thing to realize whenever and however it came to pass. “The Keeper needs you to be good and lost before you reach him. Your digger is still here, so you still have time.”

It is a struggle to fit her words into the narrative I’ve been building for myself in this place all day, but it does not matter. I know so little that the pieces I’ve been given leave mostly white space. My picture remains to be revealed.

Dropping my gaze to the distant forest floor, my dress and boots remain in a wrinkled heap, but the only way down would be to jump or climb on the bark. At this size, scaling the tree would be like attempting to climb a sheer mountain cliff. Not to mention I am naked and would get cut to ribbons.

“You stay here tonight. You brought the poison to me, so I owe you a night of relative safety.”

“I will not owe you for it?”

“I am not a fairy, Odell.”

She is not the first to remind me as much in this place. Stories of fairies are my only point of comparison to The Thicket. It’s as though I have fallen through a circle of stones or stepped beyond the veil. “I’ll help you because that’s what women do in times of struggle, and you’re in a state, that’s clear enough.”

I am not supposed to trust anyone, certainly not shrews I just witnessed murdering someone. He did deserve it, though. I’m pleased with my small, if accidental, part in his demise.

Sleeping in a cozy knothole; safe, small, and snug above the dangers of The Thicket… Even Fallow’s warning is not enough to turn me away from the offer. “It would be nice to re st with a full stomach, with your word that you have no more murder in you tonight.”

The bird that is Fallow cries from the branches outside, shifting from a high screech to a low hoot as he manipulates the owl into speaking, making both me and the shrew jump. “Bold of you.”

I cannot help but grin.

On our wedding night, when I finally got to have my way with him, Henry said those precise words. He repeated them every time I surprised him with a kiss for our whole marriage. My heart aches, but I smile anyway. I am bold. Enough to manage The Thicket. At the very least, I feel bold enough for it tonight, naked in a knothole with a murderous shrew.

She pads to the back of the room where there is a tiny bed covered in a blanket that might have once been a man’s pocket handkerchief. “You hop in and I’ll tuck in the covers. I need to tell the others before I join you. And I have a body to huck out the door!” She chirps, clapping her paws upon remembering the gruesome task she has set for herself.

Growing close to the blanket, I note the stitching along the edge. It is a familiar color, striking a chord in my mind as a thing that existed before I came here. The thread is yellow, the same color as the bonnets I made for Anne last summer. With trembling fingers, I lift the corner of the handkerchief, a large blanket to my current size, and find what I suspected.

H.S.

Henry’s initials. Embroidered by my hand.

“Doesn’t it have such a sunny color? Whoever hemmed it took their time. The stitching is finely done.”

The shrew knocks me back into time and place, though where I have found myself—the size I have found myself—feels more fiction than the past into which I wandered. “Do you know where this came from?”

She shoos me beneath the handkerchief with a shake of her furry head, not noticing how my hands quiver around the fabric. Maybe it is indistinguishable from how I have been shaking in fright for most of the evening.

“No. He brought all sorts of things.” She motions to the kitchen where the dead shrew lies in a puddle. “Collected them from all over The Thicket.” She hops back, landing on all fours. “Now I can’t ask him where it came from.”

I settle beneath Henry’s handkerchief, and the shrew makes good on her promise of tucking me in. It still smells a little like Henry. Loose pipe tobacco, sawdust, and earth. Perhaps the handkerchief was not dropped long ago.

It could be my imagination but having it near helps me feel so much safer. Henry always had that effect on me.

Drowsily, so close to sleep I wonder if I have not been drugged, my fingers slide along the fabric and relish in its familiar softness all over my body. It is cut from one of my old shifts. Stitched with thread for my baby’s bonnet. It lived every day inside my beloved husband’s pocket. “Can I keep it when I go? The handker—the blanket?”

“For the poison you brought into this house, you can take anything.”She chitters with joy yet again.

The more reminders of my family and home the better. Especially if every day I spend here feels so close to the brink of death as the last two have. I will get back to Anne and save her. All of the awful I have found in The Thicket will not be for nothing.

Pulling free a thread from the worn edge of the handkerchief draped over my body, I fold it into thirds, braid it, and tie it around my finger.

I can’t forget.

Safe in the knowledge that Henry was here in The Thicket, that he might still be here for me to find, combined with having a relatively safe place to rest, makes my eyelids heavy. “Fallow will not mind waiting for morning?”

My companion tonight is already pushing the body of the dead shrew across the space to drop him from the knothole entrance when she shakes her head at me. Her voice drifts across my sleepy mind with a gentle lilt. “Fallow is your slave for the time being.” In the night, an owl screeches and half the knotholes in the trees blow out their lights to hear a predator so close. The shrew before me only winks. “You carry a mother’s soul. No one can take it without your consent. You’ll do well to remember that.”

That does not seem right. I do not feel like the mistress of anything, and I gave no consent to be made so small or to be popped into a knothole.

Too tired to untie the knots tied by such a strange statement, I allow it to go unchallenged and drift into sleep.