The Heart of the Thicket

4. Time Stands Still

CHAPTER FOUR

TIME STANDS STILL

My anguished wails shift to sobs until nothing is left but panting breaths.

The longer I screamed and railed against being locked inside of the woods, the more my grief changed. At first it was for Anne and for the pieces of my soul I must keep with her, if Fallow spoke true. To be parted from her, even when she will not know the difference, aches in my body in a new and terrifying way. With each beat of my heart, I am reminded that I must somehow fix this and I do not know how.

After mourning Anne, I shouted obscenities at the heavens for the sake of myself. I knew the dangers of the woods. I lacked details, but I knew. They were there yesterday when Anne saw the lights. They were in the forefront in my mind when I woke. Every instinct in my body meant to safekeep Anne alerted me to the fact that we should not venture into the woods, and I ignored them.

I put her here. If I had trusted the signs, stayed on the path, and kept tighter rein on her, this would not have happened. True or not, I feel it. Perfection is impossible and yet it is always the standard to which I will hold myself to in the case of Anne.

This is my fault.

Around me, the conversation plays out again. “Mama, are you alright?”

Over and over. It is driving me mad.

Every unfair thing in my life has gotten a turn to be the center of my rage and grief. My mother who was never satisfied with me. My father who was absent. The preacher who would like to see me at church more often. Mr. Cavender who seeks to marry me.

The ghostly apparition of me walks right through me, lifting her arms and pulling Anne from the tree.

Now that I have spilled tears for almost every hurt, a final round comes knocking at the backside of my eyes with a reminder. Henry vanished into these woods. He grew up on this land and knew how to be safe in the wilds of Appalachia among the creatures and plants. He knew what paths the bears walk and what plants could and could not be eaten. It never made any sense that he would die in the woods.

No body was ever recovered.

Henry could be stuck in here with me.

It is the first thought powerful enough to drag me to my feet since Fallow vanished into the air.

Wrapping my shawl tight about my shoulders, I take a final look back at Anne where she is looped before turning to walk along the tree line. I keep a hand on the invisible barrier just in case I find a weakness in it and to keep from getting lost. Each time I have to lift my hand to circumvent an obstacle, panic stops my heart until I find the barrier again, like if I release it for too long I will disappear into The Thicket for good. Fallow said it was a choice, but he also said not to trust him.

If I follow the barrier long enough, I will reach the ruts of the road that lead to town. I cannot get lost in whatever this is if I always remain close to what I know. The Thicket seems like the type of place that would be on a path leading deeper in the woods than I have ever dared venture. I do not intend to dare now.

There are times when this in between place appears very familiar. They are the woods they always have been but sometimes the air changes with the trees. It is an unobtrusive and nigh imperceptible change in the world that reminds me time and again that I am not anywhere as familiar as it sometimes appears. When I blink, I sometimes see glimpses of animals I’ve never seen before. I hear their foreign calls. From the corner of my eyes, I spot trees which cannot possibly exist here in the woods of Tennessee, their leaves reaching and waxy, hung with vines and fruit, or filled with thick needles like those that grow in the faraway north. The air grows so chill it is easy to see my breath, or so heavy with moisture it is stifling. Then I blink or turn my head and I am right back in Tennessee, surrounded by oaks, ashes, and maples. The air is the same pleasant, autumn air I woke up to this morning.

The Thicket, it seems, is a bigger place than the woods between my home and the town. Either that, or I am going insane.

The woods are enough to keep me marching toward the road. To distract myself from fear too deep to escape, I think of Henry.

I like to think he would be smart enough to do the same as I am. Fallow said we all forget, but maybe that happens in The Thicket. Surely, Henry would not have made such a choice as to go deeper. He would remain by the wall. It has been more than half a year since he disappeared, though. That is a long time to languish in a prison between places.

Perhaps The Thicket is where I will find him.

The thought has me turning my feet toward the center of the woods rather than the road almost without awareness. If I still have a soul at all, it tugs me that way, cementing the thought in my mind that I will only find Henry if I go into The Thicket.

Getting back to Anne, rescuing her from her frozen state, must be my first priority. Shame settles deep in my guts the way a bird hunkers down during a thunderstorm for how I wish that it weren’t the case in this moment. It’s shame over the same variety of small resentments as when I wish to have the last of something and must give it to Anne instead. Motherhood is constant sacrifice. I detest that Henry is on the altar today.

Digging my heels in against what feels like magic tugging on my reins, I continue my route toward the road. At the very least, I must search every inch of the woods I know before I dare step foot into the woods I do not. That only makes sense. In a world where very little does, I should stick to the first rule of the woods, the one Henry taught me when he first brought me here and the one I have drilled into Anne since she first learned to toddle.

Stay on the paths. Follow nothing but the paths.

I had thought it was just so one would never get lost. If I ever lost track of Anne, I believed I could rest assured in the knowledge that I need only search the pathways. I never thought that wandering off them might be how one meets creatures like Fallow.

Gooseflesh rises on my arms at the thought of the monster who called himself my friend. Such a thing as him should not exist and yet he stood there and spoke to me. He said he would be around and the reminder hastens my pace, the hair on the back of my neck standing on end. He could be watching me now, and I would be none the wiser.

It could be that his watching me is a good thing. Perhaps he is more guardian than devil. Since I have no way to know, I land on the side of his advice. Trust nothing and no one.

Picking up my pace, I form my hand into a fist and start knocking on the barrier, expecting it to make a sound like when one taps on a pane of glass. I am dismayed to find that, just as it is like looking through crisp, autumn air, my tapping makes no sound. It is like I am knocking on the wind. Strangely, I wish I had a physical cage I could interact with more.

Soon enough, I arrive at the road that I traveled with Dolly and Anne just yesterday. When I step out of the woods and into the deep ruts wagon wheels cut into the rock-hard clay, I am jarred in the same way as when I expect a glass to be filled with water, but I find milk instead. I had been expecting to be barred from the road in the same way I was from the fields. The rules of this prison are murky.

Stalwart in my refusal to accept this new and horrifying reality, I turn toward my home, take a deep breath, and start toward it only to walk face first into the same wall that has been keeping me penned for hours.

Backing up a few paces, I run at the barrier full force and crash my shoulder into an unforgiving, perfectly smooth, invisible stone. Crying out in pain, I stagger back, glare at the air, and shriek, “Open! Damn you!”

Before I can approach again to kick it, Fallow’s familiar voice rustles through the crunchy autumn leaves by my feet, “Broken toes.”

His voice sends a shiver up my spine. He is watching and, for whatever reason, he cares about the state of me.

Rather than kicking the walls of my prison, I stomp on the leaves beneath my feet and, I swear to God, they laugh at me.

Just as I am about to embarrass myself by shouting at the air for making fun of me, a light catches my attention. It bobs in front of the barrier a moment, seeming to ask if I am looking. It knocks into the barrier once, twice, three times and then bounds ahead out of the woods and down the road to my home.

There is a thrill in the air like the way everything feels dangerous before a thunderstorm.

A common grackle hops into the road and crackles at me the way the pesty birds tend to do. I step back, not liking the way the creature has approached me when a common bird would flit away. It shakes its head and hops again. In a shrill, high pitched eke of sound, the bird cries “Don’t.”

It is Fallow. He is in the bird.

Side stepping the grackle, I lift my hand to the barrier and find it gone. My hand drops into the open air and nothing is stopping me from venturing home. Perhaps doing so will lift the curse. Maybe I only need to get home so Anne and the shade of me can collide once more. All will be well.

I run ahead, half-convinced that if I can just get home, I will find Anne asleep in our bed. We can start the day over again and make different choices. Perhaps this has all been a terrible dream and I’ll awake by the hearth.

The bird hops and squawks again, jumping into my path. “Don’t. Don’t.”

Determined not to trust anyone but myself, I lift my foot, a bad feeling making my skin feel too small for my body. The bird flies off in a loud, panicked flap of wings and Fallow starts dragging dust toward himself to make a body like the one he created earlier. He frightens me, and I am already sick and tired of feeling afraid. I do not wait for him to be present in a physical form to try and stop me. He wants me to go deeper into The Thicket.

Something has come and given me what I want.

I march toward home, hoping that when I left the woods, I would feel a shift in myself the way I did when I wound up there. A small part of me thought I might fly right back into my body and forget this whole mess.

Nothing changes, save the scenery, as I step out from the shadow of the trees and into the fields that surround the home Henry built for us. Fallow gives up on making himself into anything and instead follows me in the same silent, invisible way he has been all day. I know he is present now because he keeps hopping into the world around me. The scraping of my boots in the clay seems to say,‘ Turn back’ and it feels like his doing. The words speed up and match my steps when I attempt to outrun him.

Giving up on subtlety, he runs up behind me, his somewhat-breathy voice informing me of something I am already beginning to guess at. “There is nothing for you on this road. You are still in the rift. Go back.”

The rift. That is what this hell is called.

His voice is the wind blowing between a door left slightly ajar. I imagine it is a voice that is difficult to make work and his determination to do so gives me pause. Already, I fear him less and trust him more if only because he is becoming a familiar thing. It is a dangerous game, knowing nothing. My mother would remind me to be careful of the friends one makes when no one else is around.

“I will see that for myself.”

“You’re still trapped.”

“I am not.” That he sounds so nervous makes me uncertain of my defiance. The woods at my back are less daunting when faced with the potential of this being worse. The lead on my heart that Anne was born pulling tugs at me.

“This is not your time.”

His words bring my gait to a standstill. “That creature moved time? The light? Impossible.”

“It’s a simple thing for some. You’re between the world and The Thicket. The rift. All time exists at once. You are a baby in your mother’s womb, and an old woman dying in her bed in this moment. What house might you see on the road ahead? Will it be there at all? Whatever it is matters little, save for how it might hurt and frighten you.”

The eyeless shade in front of me built of wind, dust, and pebbles cannot watch me, yet I get the distinct feeling of being observed like a bug under a glass. There is a presence to him and right now it begs with the sound of a storm coming, the howling breeze colliding with the walls of a home. “Go back. See nothing.”

I will go regardless of what he says because I cannot ignore a chance at escape when it is right in front of me. I mean to prove it by restarting my march, but my feet remain in place, burdened by nerves.

“Why do you care whether I am hurt or frightened?”

Fallow’s expressions are almost impossible to make out with his face being made of floating bits of powdered, red clay from the path beneath my feet, but I swear his brows furrow like he is not even sure why he does not wish for me to go down this path. “I can prove to you that what I say is true without you torturing yourself further.”

“You told me I could not trust you.” Turning over my shoulder, I stare up the hill. If I crest it, my home will be in view, if it is there to find.

“Don’t turn your back on creatures of The Thicket.” He warns, not a threat but a reminder.

“I cannot trust you.”

“You can’t.” If wind could sound regretful, he does. “In this, though, you really should.”

I turn on my heel and march up the hill. Fallow follows me, his steps silent and weightless.

Henry used to warn me when I was inventing catastrophes. I would imagine scenarios that would only ever occur if a hundred pieces fell into horrible and exact places. The odds of any of them were often minuscule and, even if they were not, even if they did come to pass, there was never a damn thing I could do about them. I just tortured myself by keeping myself awake to worry over imaginary problems with no solutions and often did not even know I was doing it.

He never laughed at me when I brought up wildfires, tornadoes, or flash floods. He would remind me that none were happening at the moment and that, if they did, he would protect me.

Some of those catastrophes are a matter of motherhood. When it was Anne I fretted over, he would say, “You cannot protect Anne from everything,” and I would always dare him, “Try me.”

That is the determined feeling that pushes my feet up the hill even knowing it changes nothing and might only lead to heartache. I must know if I can get to Anne and fix all of this.I must be brave enough to walk down every potential path until she is freed.

When I crest the hill, I’m braced for all manner of horrors.

Scanning the land in every direction, maybe I have grown lost for a moment before finding several recognizable landmarks. The crag of stones behind where the chicken coop once was and the tumbling creek in the distance where it has dug into the rock remains. The fields that I had to harvest before winter are bare. The barn is a slightly raised pile of earth covered in wildflowers and grasses that don’t fit the season I stand in. The longer I look, the more is true of the house. The grass is greener around the edge of where the house once stood, like the logs that once protected my family now only serve to better the soil.

I blink and the house stands once more, but it is empty and in disrepair. The glass in the windows is shattered and the land around is overgrown. The barn leans over, rotting. In front of it stands a woman hunched with age and a man in his middle age stands tall and broad beside her. He bears some small resemblance to Henry as he pats her hand. Ahead of me on the road is a black, metal contraption. A massive carriage with no horses that hums with life as waves of heat move the air out its back.

Before my eyes, my vision shifts to the woods as they were when Henry and I arrived. The road beneath my feet remains unchanged, but I know it wasn’t here in this time. Henry and I wandered into this meadow. He cleared the trees and used them to build our home, the coop, and the barn. The massive cottonwoods we kept growing by the bank of the creek are different shapes and sizes than these trees. The land is slow to change when I’m not caught in the trap of The Thicket. The trees should be familiar.

There isn’t anything frightening about the space around me. There are no predators or storms that might harm me. Still, my skin grows damp with sweat, making me itch all over. My dress feels too tight on my back and too close to my neck. Claustrophobia creeps into my mind and the desire to rip at my clothes and hair is almost impossible to deny. Like an animal before a tornado, I can feel the danger but can do nothing about it except struggle to contain my panic.

I do not dare blink again. Facing away from the meadow, through the translucent body of Fallow, I see Henry with his sickle marching into the lush field of wheat we planted last summer. Behind him are some of the hired hands who slept in our barn, who we kept fed in exchange for their labor. They were good boys. Henry turns to blow me a kiss. I remember this day and with all my heart I wish I could be back in it. Tears sting my eyes and glide down my cheeks with how much I wish the time between now and then could all be a terrible dream.

Swinging again, I stand in the doorway of our home, a younger Anne on my hip. I catch Henry’s kiss out of the air and grin.

Swallowing hard to clear the lump in my throat, I squeak, “I cannot go there, can I? The house?”

Fallow shakes his head at the same moment I reach out and touch the invisible wall separating the road and the land.Fallow was right, there is a special kind of horror in being able to see my goal and remain unable to reach it. To know I’m not even in the same realm. Like a wild bird caught in a cage, I thrash against the wall, banging the flats of my hands against my prison. Fallow’s form moves through me with the barest brush of air and fall of silt as he attempts to keep me from hurting myself, dusting my dress with dried clay and pulverized leaves .

Screaming, not in terror but in fury, fearful of what I might see if I remain any longer, I run back down the hill. Behind me, Anne’s laugh floats on the breeze as she waves goodbye to her father. Tears sting my eyes for a hundred reasons but mostly grief over time lost and people I may never see again.

This is a catastrophe even I could never have been so imaginative as to cook up. If I had told this scenario to Henry, he might have given in at last and agreed with my mother that I was mad. She thought it was because I would abandon her wealth and my dowry for Henry. The truth is that I have a whole world inside my head and it is filled with?—

“Odell?”

“Hush!”

There is a small shushing sound as the grit that made up Fallow drops back to the earth just as I stand on the edge of the woods. Ahead, I see myself on Dolly, Anne tucked against my chest. She points off into the trees and, even though I cannot hear her at this distance, I know she points at lights that only she can see, but to my eyes they aren’t lights now. Two figures, a man and and a woman, stand in shadow and watch her.

Stepping back into the shade of the woods, the specters of Anne and I vanish on the road ahead, as do the silhouettes of those in the woods, and I am alone again. Faltering, my back lands against the barrier, solid once more, between me and the plains.

Part of my heart yearns to run for the walnut tree to ensure Anne is still looped there, but most of me knows it would bring little solace. I am stuck in this rift and my daughter may as well not exist until I figure out how to escape and return her to the world. Hopelessness pours into me like molten lead and keeps me in place.

Soon, I will find the strength to try the next thing, whatever it may be, but not yet. I need a moment to take in the new horrors I have experienced.