23. The Key
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE KEY
Hopelessness, a feeling I am growing even more familiar with, seeps into my body through my bones. I cannot recall when I have felt it before, but it is like an old friend. It is grief and loneliness. It is the knowledge that my needs do not come first, and neither do my feelings. It is sick children and dead husbands and missing mothers. It aches deep in my chest and vibrates with the call all mothers feel in their bones.
What now?
And the answer is I do not know but I must keep moving. There is no rest. Forging ahead is the only option for a mother’s soul, and I have one. It is the only thing left in my body that I know even when everything else is lost.
Tears stream down my face at the weight of my task and the horror that strikes my heart each time I think for even a moment that it might end. The only thing more frightening than never being allowed to give up is the thought of facing a day when I could. That would mean the inconceivable. It would be Roil’s life, waking each day knowing that someone, somewhere needs me more than any other on this earth and I am not there.It would mean losing what I am.
Locking eyes with The Keeper, He grins like a mischievous child, and I think He would be just as pleased by my escape as He would be by my failure. He is so ancient. Older than Roil. Older than Skelt. His age is clear in spite of His ever-shifting appearance. It ripples around Him the way heat moves the distant air on a hot summer day. I imagine the stories that play out before His eyes grow boring. He has seen it all twice over and would delight in something new.
“What are you, Keeper?”
The question comes to mind and flies from my lips before I can ponder whether or not it should. The man who was just sent away still hangs heavy on my mind, though his weight lessens with each passing breath. Soon, he will be as gone as the rest, as gone as my child, who remains only a distant flicker of light in my soul.
He shifts His head on His shoulders, tilting His chin in what might be pride. “I uphold the rules, move the pieces, and maintain The Thicket. ”
Through thick emotion, I correct The Keeper Of The Thicket. “That is your job, not what you are.”
“I am fate.”
“I have said no to fate before.” Though I have no memory of when or how, I know it to be true. Fate is a mighty thing to face let alone fight. It is mightier still when as broken inside as I feel, but I have ignored it before. I have been told no by grand powers beyond my comprehension and proven them wrong. Not-quite friends with sympathetic eyes once placated me with words like it is not meant to be.
Maybe it is just a matter of hubris. Having no memory, being lost and left to wander, perhaps it is making me believe myself grander than I am, but I stand by it with faith. Blind trust.
“I am a mother, and you cannot take that from me.” When my resolve falters, for I can no longer recall the face of my child or children, their father, their home, I remember that I have met one who has been here for time so vast it cannot be counted, and she is still a mother.“My fate was sealed on the day of my child’s birth. It is a task I undertook not yet knowing that I would be toiling away at it every day for the rest of my life, but motherhood is my fate. Whatever you have in store cannot take it.”
A memory stirs. The words of a shrew in a knothole. They were repeated by another I struggle now to recall. They were spoken by Roil and bellowed by Skelt. I cannot grasp them in their entirety before The Keeper places His staff on the ground. Just as I suspected when I first saw it, the roots at the base of the staff take to the soil, dig deep into the earth, and build a foundation on which the tree can stand and grow. He leaves it in His wake as He stalks toward me. Behind Him a massive tree reaches for the sky above. It changes from one variety to the next; poplar, cedar, oak, and pine as it sprawls toward the heavens.
“This is a valiant effort, but you have lost, Mother Odell. You think willing me away will set you free? Others have tried.”
Roil. The one other mother that made it so far as me.
My eyes remain fixated on the tree behind The Keeper. Wind in its branches echo with the voices of children. As its limbs reach skyward I hear them at play, chasing one another, calling to each other in languages uncounted that I do not know.
One stands out above the clammer. My child. Anne.
I know her again. I would like to think there would never be a time when I would not recognize her voice, that I would know it in madness, even in death, but I now know all too well that it is not true. The Thicket can steal it from me. The Keeper can make me wander in these woods until she is all but gone.
Without meaning to, I step toward the tree and the voice of Anne beckons me forward. “Mama! Come with me. Come see!”
A small voice of reason in the back of my mind reminds me that it is not so. She is somewhere else. This tree is the staff of a self-proclaimed god who wishes to keep me trapped.
It is bait.
But her voice calls, “Mama! I have missed you!”
The boughs of the tree open toward me like doors and, standing in the shade of a magnolia in bloom is Anne, my beautiful daughter, with her arms stretched wide. I run toward them even as my subconscious begs me to stop and think. She is all I have ever wanted in my life, my purpose is to keep her safe and she wants me, calls for me, and knows me.
Any chance is worth taking to hold her one more time.
The Keeper huffs from beside the tree he’s planted, unamused and disappointed. The spell breaks, for it is not the sound of one who is amused by my ability to thwart His plans. It is the bored sneer of a god who has seen this play before.
Inches from the outstretched arms of my daughter, I stop in my tracks and take a step back.
Staring into her eyes, I know the answer to the riddle of The Thicket. The pathways laid beneath my feet have been too dark to see the end of. This next step could mean never seeing Anne again. It could mean turning my back on her and the beautiful tree The Keeper has placed in front of me like a snare for a rabbit to get caught in.
I have choices.
All this time, I thought The Keeper the end of the road. I believed that if I got to Him, there would be no more paths, but no one said that. It is something I made up. Everyone has been warning me all along, and I was too single minded and afraid to see it. I could not trust anyone even when I wanted to, not in The Thicket.
So lost as I am, the only soul I know well enough to trust in this place is one I know inside and out. It is one I have seen fail countless times. A soul I know to be damaged goods in the most intimate of ways. I was present when it was beaten, terrified, and grieving. I have known it to lie, steal, and commit terrible sins. It does not believe in God as deeply as it should, and it only ever served the masters it chose.
Blind is not ignorance, though. It is faith.
It is a powerful soul. The most powerful in all The Thicket. No one can have it without my consent.
It is far simpler than I was making it, just as Roil said.
“I am not staying here with you, Keeper. You cannot have me. You cannot have my daughter.”
Anne turns to mist and floats into The Thicket, autumn light highlighting the vapor. My heart shatters to see her disappear before my eyes. This is my choice. My path. I hope it is the right one.
The voices of children fall silent. The tree shrivels back to the size of a staff and falls on its side.The Thicket is still and silent around me. I hear my blood pumping through my veins. My heart beats in a hopeful rhythm. It says I am alive and, so long as I live, I am a mother.
Turning with dread and hope weighing me into the earth at once, I find The Keeper watching me with a one-sided grin on His strange, shifting face. He yawns like a small child who has stayed up too late, words stretching as He settles deeper into His stone throne. “How do you intend to get home, Mother Odell?” His words no longer carry multitudes, and He speaks through a yawn.
I wonder if I am right. It cannot be so simple as choosing to hold out hope. “I suppose I will walk.”
He smiles in truth now. Throughout this meeting He has often smiled, but it always appeared like it belonged to someone else and He was borrowing it. Now it is true and almost kind as it reaches His eyes, which have drifted half-closed already.
No, it is not kindness that I see. Pride.
“Look at you and your interesting choices…” He motions with a lazy finger to the staff on the ground. “Do what feels right with the key to The Thicket. I’ll make a new one when I wake.”
The Keeper shifts deeper into the throne, His head draped over one arm and His knees the other. He is already asleep, His chest rising and falling in even breaths. Approaching the fallen staff, I wonder at it and what I should do with such a thing. It is a key, but I do not know which door it goes to or how to fit it inside a lock.
It is simpler than I am making it.
I lift the staff from the earth and snap it over my knee. When the new, green bark catches, I twist the two ends until it breaks and cast the two twigs apart.
Beneath my feet the pieces of the forest move, and I find myself in front of the walnut tree with Anne perched frozen in the branches.
To my right is Roil as she truly exists, standing before two small children, a girl with coarse, black waves like her mother and a boy with a shaved head save a few small, black braids mostly hidden beneath a scarf. They are crouched frozen where they inspect something too small for me to see. An insect, perhaps.
Beyond Roil and her children are other women of every possible color and dress I can imagine. A great, beastly creature stomps from the woods on hide legs and transforms into a woman with skin like obsidian who stands before a newborn babe in a basket. A shrew hops out from the underbrush and, in a blink, becomes a woman with frizzy blonde hair and freckles. She peers up into the branches of a tree I don’t know the variety of and cries the name Ronan.
From the woods, emaciated women, shrouds of black smoke, ghosts, and monsters emerge, transforming back into mothers the closer they come to the barrier that separates this world from the next.
Each mother stands blinking before frozen children, some fully grown and some so small as to have just been born.
A single step toward Anne feels too great a task. My heart pounds with fear that she will turn to smoke in my arms or that my hands will glide through her. Roil is braver than I. She makes the first move, approaches, and brushes her children’s cheeks with the tips of her fingers. Her children come to life, and I watch as her piece of the puzzle moves out of sight, back to her own time and place. In The Thicket, maybe everywhere, time collides.
More mothers do the same. All down the line, they step forward, embrace their children, and walk out of The Thicket and into a world that is not mine to inhabit.
The Keeper sleeps and, with Him, The Thicket. No one remains awake to guard the gates.
Steeling myself alongside so many others, I set my foot back into my time. Place and light change from shrouded, grey clouds to a sunny autumn morning. The trees that had been bare fill with golden, autumn leaves.The air moves with a gentle breeze that kisses my face, reminding me of how still everything had grown when I was lost. Birds renew their song and the air is sweet and crisp.
Anne drops a walnut from the branches into my hand. The basket of walnuts feels very heavy on my arm. Holding my head, I sway on my feet and am tired in a way I was not a few moments ago. My late night in the field must have gotten the better of me more than I anticipated. Usually, it is Anne who catches a cold in town, but this time it might be me.
“Darling girl, I feel a little weak. This should be plenty of walnuts for honey cornbread, don’t you think?”
Anne yawns, appearing to feel extra tired herself, and peers down into my full basket. “Yes.” Putting her arms out for me, I reach up and pluck her from the low boughs of the black walnut tree. “We are breaking our own rule, Mama.”
Plopping Anne onto her feet, she takes my hand and starts for the edge of the woods. We pass through the line of trees and step into the fields beyond. “Which rule is that?”
“We are off the paths.”
Right. Fear built over a lifetime fills my chest and then fades, for all is well. I am being silly and allowing superstition to get the better of me. “You are right. Next we come, let us stay by the road.”
“Alright, Mama.”
She abandons my hands to skip ahead, and I move to follow her when a man’s shout startles us both from our course. “Odell!”
Bearing none of my disbelief, Anne turns and charges right back for the trees. “Daddy!”
Henry stands waiting for her with arms outstretched, but his eyes are on me. “My girls!” He lifts Anne and spins her in a circle, which gives me a chance to catch up and place him back in the world of the living beside me.
I always knew he was not dead.
Dropping the basket of walnuts, I charge at him behind Anne and, catching him, he holds me close with our girl tucked between us. Everything feels right with the world for the first time in longer than I know.
“Henry, where have you been?” Tears fall down my face, and I choke on the question.
Pressing a kiss to my temple, he shakes his head. “You would never believe me.”
Safe in his arms, our daughter between us, on the land he cleared for us, it does not matter that I would.
The End