Back into the Woods
P rofessor Berry’s “sorcerer’s tower” stood like a crooked finger over the pond in the gardens behind the house.
Lala gazed into the pond where the ice had melted in spots due to a mild break in the winter weather.
Old, granular snow soaked through her trousers to her knees.
She liked to look into the pond because it wasn’t always the murky bottom that she saw, but a beautiful coral reef in some distant ocean.
Her perspective was as if looking up from the ocean bottom through the watery currents toward the surface where the sun shone.
Schools of fish sparkled like jewels as they glided and darted about in the wavery light.
She’d even seen a big toothy predator once that she learned was a shark after reading one of Professor Berry’s books that had survived the pirate ship.
Patiently she waited and watched, and was rewarded when her friend, Pearl, a merboy, swam into view.
He waved to her. He had told her that for him, it was like looking up from the bottom of a murky pond to see her.
It was all very disorienting and interesting.
She picked up her weighted ball and hurled it into the pond. It emerged into Pearl’s world and startled a crab. Pearl quickly found the ball and scooped it up and tossed it back. When it popped out of the pond, she almost fell in trying to catch it.
Back and forth they tossed the ball until Pearl indicated his mother was calling for him. She waved good-bye and the ocean, with its coral and fishes, vanished away, leaving an ordinary ornamental pond. She sighed in disappointment, but perhaps Pearl would play again tomorrow.
She stood and saw the sisters out on their constitutional along a path that circled the pond that Farnham had cleared for them.
“How is Pearl today?” Miss Bunch called.
“Good, but his mum called him away.”
“Well, then, come join us, dear. The day is lovely and the air is very fresh.”
“Too fresh, I’d say,” Miss Bay replied.
“You always say that, sister.”
“Because it is true. It can’t be healthy to inhale so much fresh air.”
“Then work on exhaling it.”
Lala skipped alongside them, now impervious to their sisterly squabbles because she knew it would not destroy the harmony of Seven Chimneys, and they would not turn her out.
“Letitia said you were a good helper during your penance,” Miss Bay told Lala, “bringing in the wood every morning and scrubbing floors.”
“I didn’t mind,” Lala replied. “I did a lot for my grandmum, too. And Letitia taught me to make tarts and cakes.”
“They were quite tasty,” Miss Bunch said.
They strolled past Professor Berry’s crooked tower. That is, the sisters strolled, and Lala galloped ahead to jump into a slushy mud puddle. Fortunately, the resulting splash did not reach the sisters.
“The wild child has returned,” Miss Bay said. “I’m telling you, too much fresh air. It’s plain unhealthy. And, I daresay Letitia won’t be pleased by the mud.”
“It’s all right,” Lala said. “I know how to launder my clothes, and I can scrub the floor.”
Lala did not observe the sisters nodding to one another in approval for she was busy prying a rock from the half-frozen mud to throw into the pond. It landed on decaying ice with a clack! and skittered along until it splashed into open water.
“Child,” said Miss Bunch, “during your penance, perhaps you had time to think over the reason for your punishment. What have you learned?”
“I learned that geese are really mean.”
“Oh!” The sisters nodded in understanding.
One of Lala’s duties had been to look after the Room of Geese.
“I also learned that Letitia still bakes and cooks naked before you come to breakfast. She rushes to dress before you can see her.”
“Uh,” Miss Bunch said, “that’s not exactly the kind of lesson learned that we’d in mind.”
“We have a naked cook,” Miss Bay said. “It is not proper.”
Lala rejoined them and said, “Oh, you mean the lesson I learned from punishment after I was naughty.”
“Yes,” Miss Bunch said.
Lala fell silent to give the question serious consideration.
“I have learned that it is mean to remove people’s mouths.
I learned that people are hurt when a part of them is taken away.
It hurt Letitia when she was made invisible.
It still hurts, I think, even though the spell is broken, because it’s like she lost a part of her life and it was terrible not being seen or heard.
I wouldn’t like it either after a while.
It would be fun at first, but only for a short time.
Letitia says that she tries to look forward and not at the past.”
Miss Bunch clapped in approval. “Yes, you have learned the lesson. It is cruel to do such things to people.”
“Does this mean we can have some sipping chocolate?” Lala asked.
“We had better,” Miss Bay said, “if we are to recover from all this fresh air.”
Lala made to run off toward the house, but Miss Bunch stopped her with a “Hold, child.”
Lala waited expectantly for the sisters to catch up with her.
“Has it occurred to you,” Miss Bunch said, “that you still possess something that belongs to another person, something that is important to that person’s existence?”
“I’m not a—” Lala stopped in her tracks. Her expression hardened. “It’s mine!”
“Now, now, you are not a stupid child,” Miss Bunch said. “Think about all you have learned. You took away the Fiori’s voice.”
“It’s mine. Grandmum said it was and she showed me how to take what was mine.”
“Lala, child, you were not born with that voice. The Fiori was.”
Lala backed away. “No! It’s mine and I’m not giving it back.” Then she tore off, pelting through puddles and snow. The sisters watched as she disappeared into the woods.
“That went well,” Miss Bay said.
“I thought we’d gotten through to her.”
“You rushed it.”
“We don’t have all the time in the world, do we?” Miss Bunch said. Then she sighed and asked, “What do you suppose happens now?”
“Either she joins the wolf pack and we never see her again,” Miss Bay replied, “or she runs off to train to become a torturer, or she will come to her proper senses.”
“Let us hope it’s the latter,” Miss Bunch said. “The other options do not bode well for anyone.”
“Nothing left to do but have a cup of tea,” said Miss Bay. “I do not have the heart for sipping chocolate now.”
“Nor do I.”
The disconsolate sisters slowly continued into the house, hoping to hear Lala’s footsteps come up behind them, but they did not.
L ala ran and ran through the woods until she could run no more. She didn’t often cry, not even when she was a baby, according to her grandmum. But now tears streamed down her cheeks as she gasped for air.
How dare they? The voice was hers. Grandmum had said so, and after Lala got it she could sing like a bird. She supposed she didn’t sing all that much, but she had a lovely voice for talking. Not that she talked much. She preferred to listen while others talked.
Still, it was her voice, and so she didn’t have to give it up. Worse was the feeling of betrayal by the sisters who suggested she should not have the voice, that she had stolen it.
She wailed, kicked rocks, and found a tree branch to beat on the ground in her anger.
Eventually, worn out, she sat beneath the shelter of a giant pine and shivered because she’d made her boy clothes all wet by the pond and night was falling, which meant it would get colder.
She collected wood and threw it into a pile, then withdrew a bit of string from her pocket, and with numb fingers, made a knot for fire.
The warmth of the blaze heartened her and reminded her of nights in the wilderness with Wolfie, but now Wolfie was not here, and in a fit of loneliness, she wept again.
· · ·
Over the days that followed, she wandered through the woods, looking for Wolfie, following footprints and the sound of howling. As she did so, she envisioned destroying all of Seven Chimneys to hurt the sisters as much as possible, and alternatively, returning and apologizing.
She missed her feather bed and the excellent meals Letitia prepared, the games the sisters liked to play, and, well, their company.
They’d been very good to her. They could have given her a much worse punishment when she’d taken their mouths away.
If she’d done something like that to her grandmum, she’d have been soundly switched.
Eventually she found Wolfie, but he was too busy with his new wolf friends to do more than say hello before bounding off with the pack. This brought even more tears.
She snuck back to Seven Chimneys, and while everyone was still asleep, entered through the kitchen door, which was never locked, and found apple tarts sitting out on the sideboard to cool overnight.
She stuffed one, and then another, and then another, in her mouth to quell the complaints of her empty belly.
She found a half loaf of the previous day’s bread in the breadbox and took it; then she went into the larder and filled a sack with cheese and leftover chicken, and, for good measure, grabbed a jar of strawberry preserves. Then she stole off to her big pine in the woods.
It was wrong to steal the food, but she rationalized if she hadn’t run away, she’d be eating it anyway. She enjoyed the food by her campfire, but when she finished, she missed the camaraderie she’d become accustomed to at Seven Chimneys. She spent another miserable night in the woods.
In the early morning, she snuck back into the house, this time finding her favorite cinnamon muffins, another half loaf of bread, and leftover mutton.
She also visited the pond to peer into the ocean.
Though she saw the beautiful corals and fish, Pearl never appeared.
She hurled the ball they played with as far away as she could in frustration.
Her days went on like this, snatching some food from the kitchen, including some dense chocolate cake that was pure ecstasy, checking the pond, then spending her days and nights in the woods. Alone.
Did they miss her? she wondered? Did they wonder if she was all right? Surely the meticulous Letitia had noticed food gone missing. She’d been baking so prolifically of late.
No, they hadn’t come looking for her; they hadn’t called her name. They didn’t care for her after all. She curled up before her little campfire to consider her options, whether it was to be repentance or revenge.