10. A Wind in the Woods
A Wind in the Woods
There was a woman in my village no one saw.
Hilla lived with her aging parents—two taciturn, broken, spiritless souls who never smiled and hardly exchanged a word with each other, much less with her. All her other siblings had moved out. And on. They had their own families now. Except she did not.
Hilla walked into the village every day, passing through High Street.
Each day, each week, each month, her shoulders slumped a little lower, her back dipping, curving like a crescent moon as her steps crunched over the ground.
I didn’t know her before, but I grew to know her as I grew to know so many in the village who had never caught my notice.
So many who had been of no consequence before drew my eye now.
Between rounds of hunting for my witch, I had time to study Hilla, watching her with fascination, as one might observe a firefly with its dying light trapped under a glass dome.
Hilla lived east of the village on her family farm. The threesome struggled to survive in the way we all did. Maybe more.
They worked their crops, no exception or grace given for the advanced age of Hilla’s parents.
After a long day in the field, daughter and mother toiled over their needlework late into the night, a candle flickering between them.
Hilla was especially skilled with a needle and thread, her fingers moving nimbly, a symphony of motion within the murky shadows of their meager home.
She would make her way into town on market days with her beautiful stitchwork in tow, selling her wares for a few paltry coins to help stave off the ever-looming starvation.
Such was life, and a burning reminder that nothing was guaranteed or owed to anyone. Not comfort or ease. Certainly not happiness.
But to be seen?
Should that not at least be one’s due? To exist in the eyes of others?
I became a bit of a voyeur, watching Hilla and seeing myself in her similar state of invisibility. Even unseen, she went on living, her heart pumping in the narrow cage of her chest. Hilla remained in the home of her birth, fixed like the spruce tree that grows strong even in winter.
I was drawn to her because I understood her. To a degree, I was her.
No one looked at her. No one called out a greeting or stopped to talk to her.
She carried on, day after day after day, a basket of laundry or kindling or bread or needlework balanced on her hip.
The contents of the basket changed, but she never did.
She remained the same. Eyes downcast. Lips set in a flat line.
Older than her thirty-six years. I knew everything about her—this creature seen by no one.
Only me . . . the unseen. The irony of that was a bitter swallow.
I thought about the names people called women like her. Spinster. Plain. Pitiful. Old maid. But even worse than that, even worse than those names was the absence of them. They called her nothing at all. She didn’t exist. A ghost among the living, she was invisible.
She is me.
Sometimes I sat with her in her house, feeling keenly in communion with her after a day spent fruitlessly searching and finding no evidence of a witch in the woods.
She ate in silence on the rough-hewn bench across from her stone-faced father and weary-eyed mother, their expressions as flat as a wind-dulled etching on a tombstone.
Not a word passed between the three of them that wasn’t empty, perfunctory, and I wondered if Hilla’s parents even saw her or if they were like everyone else.
Sometimes I tried to touch her, cover her hand with my own.
Even though she couldn’t possibly feel me.
Even though I couldn’t feel her. My hand always ended up on the bench between us.
I knew how it worked, but that didn’t stop me from trying.
This curse prevented me from touching or being touched.
And yet still I longed. Still I tried. Tried like a senseless animal beating its head against a cage in hopes of escape.
“I see you,” I said, even though she couldn’t hear me.
Sometimes she lifted her head, and a little spark of hope lit within me as it did when I was with Maretta.
Maybe in the silence of Hilla’s life, in the quiet where she existed, unheard, unseen, unappreciated, unremembered . . . she could hear me.
Nurturing that hope, I gave voice to her name. “Hilla?”
The loud slurps of her father swallowing the broth from his spoon filled the silence. Hilla said nothing.
I took my leave.
The late fall wind hit me the moment I stepped outside. I wore only a thin shawl. It might be time to don my winter wardrobe. I walked through the chill needles of air, exhaling upon arriving home and slipping inside the warmth of my house.
Da was in his chair by the fire, whittling a piece of wood as he puffed on his pipe. I sank down across from him and held out my hands to the fire.
The wood in Da’s hands was beginning to take the shape of a horse. Shards peppered the straw rug beneath him where he sat. I was certain it was for the grandchildren. It was unbelievable to consider that Henrik had children now, a boy and a girl, and I’d never met them.
I’d learned from one of Henrik’s letters that Da had left sitting out that they would be visiting with the children in the summer months.
It would be their first visit since they’d left.
I would finally get to see my niece and nephew, and I was excited at the prospect, even if it would be a wholly one-sided exchange.
Da sighed after a while, looking up from his craft and rubbing the bridge of his nose. His gaze fixed contemplatively on the flickering fire, and I wondered what he was thinking. If it was about me. Did he grieve for me still? Did he grieve for me as much as I grieved for myself? Did anyone?
Despite the fading day, I lifted up from my chair.
Wrapping myself in the wool blanket draped over the sofa—that magically reappeared arranged over the back again—I stepped out into the increasingly chilly night.
Tilting my face, I sniffed at the air. Winter was coming, ready to sink its teeth into the world.
I walked slowly, my steps steady and measured as I advanced on the trees, boots crunching over the ground. Pulling the blanket tighter around me, I eased into the woods.
My feet moved without thought, carrying me to the spot where it all began—and ended.
I stopped where the trees loomed high around me, the Crags a distant outline against the harvest sky.
I felt things here in this place where I had lost myself, this place where I’d felt seen, where I sensed a presence lurking, where furtive eyes tracked me.
Eyes that did not belong to any animal, but to something else.
Someone else. Some other creature that was not of the natural world but born of magic and spells and stardust.
“I know you’re there,” I breathed.
The air stirred in response, a wind surging, wrapping around me. Just me. The wind did not rustle the branches or leaves of nearby trees. It only coiled over my body, winding like a serpent.
I stilled, letting that gust of air work over me.
Emboldened, I flung out, “Why don’t you come out and face me?”
The wind grew in hunger, catching and tangling in my hair, pulling dark strands loose of the braid wound into a coronet on my head.
“What are you waiting for? Face me! You hear me? I won’t go away! Not until you show yourself! Either kill me or unbind me from this spell!”
The wind whipped violently then, pelting me with leaves and twigs and other debris. I jammed my eyes tightly to protect them from the flying detritus, but still I held my ground.
Until it stopped.
All at once the wind died.
Deflated, I opened my eyes, shoulders sinking in disappointment as I took in the calm and serene trees. Whatever I’d felt, whatever had been there, was gone now.