The Heart of the Thicket

11. To Hem a Handkerchief

CHAPTER ELEVEN

TO HEM A HANDKERCHIEF

The sun appears shrouded when birdsong wakes me in the morning. Beyond the knothole, it is hazy, like smoke hangs in the air. It might be that the trees block the light. The woods are dense here, more than I ever knew them to grow before entering this strange, new reality. The trees here grow so broad and close together that even their bases touch. In fact, I no longer recognize the woods from yesterday at all. Here I lie, where I fell asleep last night, but this forest appears far older and the many small houses in the knotholes beyond this spot are gone or have grown so tall as to be unrecognizable. From a branch in my line of sight, the owl that is Fallow blinks at me.

“What happened?”

Fallow doesn’t answer, but the shrew’s feet patter down the hall and into the room. “Good thing you weren’t out there last night, Odell. One never knows when a shift might come. That it followed you here speaks to The Keeper’s thoughts on you. He couldn’t see in here, though. Those shifts are blind as bats!” My mind is still catching up to a shift being a thing I should fear when she lifts the handkerchief-blanket off my body in a great sweeping motion. “You can be on your way safe and sound.”

“A shift?” I manage to stutter at last.

“I’m sure your digger will happily tell you all about it.”

“What are The Keeper’s thoughts on me if he sends a shift? I don’t know all you know.”

“I’m incapable of telling you more, Odell.” She appears remiss to admit it and I believe her. There is, apparently, magic enough to still her tongue, too.

Leaving me to shiver naked in the autumn air, she folds the fabric of the handkerchief with care and passes it to me. “You did me a kindness and I’ve done you one back. Now out with you. The Keeper wants you and I don’t want his eyes.” Glancing out to the strange, new woods around this tree, she shakes her head. “It’s going to take all day to catch up to the rest of them. What a mess. And that shift!” She shakes herself like a dog drying off and swipes at her eyes with her paws. “Good thing you missed seeing such a beast. You’d be a puddle. I’d have to mop you up. ”

For the first time since she murdered the man-shrew last night, I feel less than welcome. I do not know whether I want to know what a shift is or not since she fears it so greatly. “I am sorry I imposed. I will get out of your hair. I only… last night you mentioned my having a mother’s soul? That it cannot be taken without my consent. How did I get here in the first place, then?”

“You must have given that digger permission at some point. Those are the rules.” As I scan through the fuzzy memories of the time before I came to The Thicket for any interaction that could have been misconstrued or twisted into permission to take a piece of my soul, she ponders something. “I don’t remember who my digger was. For an instant, I knew it. I know that.”

She hums. We must both come up short.

“As for mother’s souls, why do you think The Keeper sends a shift after you? I can’t say it, but think, girl!”

A mother’s soul is powerful. It cannot be taken without my consent. The Keeper wants it or needs it, but he won’t come find me to get it. I can only assume Fallow doesn’t know how to get to The Keeper any more than I do, otherwise he would take me.

What had the water said when it took me. Maybe this one will walk where others grow lost.

“Does The Keeper need me lost first? Can he not contend with me until I forget so much?”

“A mother’s soul is the most powerful thing. Don’t give it away lightly and speak no more to me of it.” Just as she did last night, she grows silent at the mention of motherhood, her words trailing off into nothing. It is hard to tell, but I think she bites the inside of her cheek, and her fingers rise to her lips in thought. The air grows heavy around her, and her tiny, fuzzy shoulders shake. I think she would weep if she could.

Beyond the knothole, Fallow shifts his wings and glowers at her, making all the hair on the shrew’s body stand on end. On her hind legs once more like a character from a children’s picture book, she picks up my wedding band, which is heavy at our size, passes it to me, and pushes me toward the opening. “Good luck, Odell. I’ve given all the warnings I can risk. Thank you for the mushrooms.”

If I had a notebook and a pen to keep track of everything the creatures I meet here say to me, then maybe I would find some advantage. Warnings and wisdom are merging together and growing fuzzy. If they were all penned down, maybe I could make some sense of it and find answers to the mounting pile of questions.

I have only just gotten my wedding ring wrapped in Henry’s folded handkerchief when my words of gratitude are lost in a shriek of terror as Fallow swoops in, wraps his shiny, black talons around my middle, and takes flight. Clutching my two belongings to my chest, I clench my eyes shut and bellow, “Put me down!”

“Not here.” Like so many things in The Thicket that speak when they should not, I must suffice with only guesses, but it sounds like Fallow is frightened.His demeanor has remained controlled in the brief time I have known him, but the owl he inhabits shakes its head on the wing like it means to shake a bad feeling.

I take some solace in the belief that whatever chases us, it cannot catch us on the wind as we are. It is an unfounded belief. I have no idea what a shift is. For all I know, they fly on invisible wings.

The chill morning air bites at my bare skin. When I quake from it, Fallow lifts his leg closer to the white downy feathers of his body to help keep me warm. Funny that he would tuck me close so I don’t freeze but was more than happy to allow me to be shrunk to the size of a rodent last night, leaving me naked in the first place.

I wonder where the shift—be it monster or place—has put my clothing. Finding them once more may be a lost cause, but there are many reasons why I hope I do. They might help me stay rooted to home. Home and my purpose here, neither of which I can recall in this moment. It is like trying to imagine the face of someone I have not seen in a very long time.

For the first time, I notice a thread tied around the pointer finger of my right hand. Clenching my eyes shut, I try to recall why I tied it there. Right on the brink of my memory is a voice, a laugh, the way someone’s hair smells in the sunshine. They are just snippets, senseless, meaningless. My fingers curl in frustration. The whole picture is lost to me.

With warmth and peace, as much peace as can ever be found in The Thicket, the shrew’s words from last night and this morning bounce around inside my head, replacing the bare details I could glean from the thread about my finger. Fallow is your slave for the time being. He had not seemed happy that she told me as much. What she said about my soul, how it must be given away freely, sticks in my mind as well.After the shrew’s words, I struggle to quiet my demands for Fallow to fly directly to The Keeper before I grow too lost to accomplish my elusive purpose. I’m quieted by the fact that if it were so simple, or allowed, he probably would’ve done so already.

It seems there is a lot going on that no one is telling me, which is especially unfair since I am already at such a loss. The least my allies can be—if a murderous shrew and a creature made of nothing can be called allies—is forthright with information.

“Fallow, why do you not take me to The Keeper? Wouldn’t that be simpler than staying by me while I stumble into trouble?” Fallow does not answer my question, not even to put me off. “Do you have to answer me if I demand it of you?”

“Not here.”Though Fallow’s answer is familiar and rumbles forth, the sound created deep in the chest of the bird of prey he inhabits rather than through his beak, a snap in it holds my next question at bay.

I choose to not test my luck or my newfound power while he whizzes between the packed trees of The Thicket.

At long last, he lands and lays me gently in the fabric of my dress, which rests in a heap around my boots just as it did last night, but nowhere near where I left them. “How did they get so far away?”

“The shift.”

An instant after speaking, the owl shakes itself, ruffling its feathers and cocking its head in wide-eyed confusion. It flaps off into the distance, too afraid to even consider eating me, though I’m small enough to serve as its meal. Fallow builds himself up with leaves, insects, and twigs that fly into his form, creating the hollow body he seems to favor. It never becomes less unnerving to be face to face with him like this. An owl or squirrel has eyes I can gaze into. They are things I recognize. As he stands before me now, not a monster only for how I do not fear him, Fallow is like nothing else I have ever seen.

“How did you know where to find them?”

The moment his form is complete, he answers me, his voice like buzzing insects as they were when we first met. “The Thicket is made of pieces like a puzzle. They get moved around by the shifts. We just had to find our piece.”

Looking about myself, I find the familiar trees filled with shrews watching me from their knotholes as well as an empty space where the tree from last night used to be. The earth all around is overturned like it was just tilled, maggots and worms creep in and out of the exposed soil where the roots of my shrew’s tree appear to have been lifted from the earth by a giant. “I have caused a mess if she is stuck in a new piece on my account. No wonder she was so cross.”

Fallow’s form of woodland detritus stares in perplexed silence before realizing I mean the lady shrew from last night. “She will find her way. She might simply appear in place when the land finds her. There is a method to this madness.”

At the thought, I take a few strides away from the empty space my shrew’s tree once took up, not wanting to be crushed if it suddenly appears.

With a snap of his leafy fingers, sounding more like a rustle than a snap at all, I grow back to my typical size. Standing before him in the center of the woods at my full height and nude, I drop to collect my clothing and start putting it on at once, anxious under his gaze, though he has turned aside to grant me privacy. To distract myself from the lack of modest dress while I don my shift, I wonder aloud, “Can I ask why you do not take me to The Keeper now that we are here?”

“You can ask all you like. You already have.” He appears to remember himself and faces me once more, his eyeless sockets staring at me, unblinking. “It would be kinder for you to tell me what you meant to say yesterday when you called me misnamed. If you tell me what you think I should be, then I will answer another question of yours.” He shifts on his feet, a strong show of nerves to see on a creature made of wind and debris from the forest floor. “No tricks, though. Not like last time.”

“Why not? You could be tricking me right now. I think you must have tricked me into permission to take me, even.”

“If I tricked you into such a thing, it was not on purpose.” His empty eyes appear to soften, the leaves above them framing down like eyelids drifting toward defeat. His shoulders slump as if a great weight rests there even though he can bear no weight at all. If I dropped a stone on any part of him, it would fall straight to the earth. He appears so bereft. It must be terrible to be made of nothing at all, especially if he once had a body and lost it. If he ever did, remembering what it was like would be its own brand of torture.

I want my questions answered, though. His grief will not hold me at bay. “Your task is to bring me to The Keeper. Why do you hesitate?”

He straightens. “That is not my assigned task. I was sent by The Keeper to find a mother’s soul and I have found one. I am beholden to you until He collects. Those were my instructions. Bringing you to Him is beyond my ability without His permission. You must find Him yourself.” Met with my silence, he adds, “You speak with an awful lot of certainty for one who knows so little of where she has landed.”

“I did not land here.” He smirks because we did, in fact, land here. I was brought to this spot in the talons of an owl. “You know what I mean. I was not brought to these evil woods by accident. You brought me. Why should I believe you cannot or will not trick me? You said yourself I could trust nothing and no one. What if your job is to keep me wandering when I need to find The Keeper before I forget?”

I have already forgotten. Henry is here but there is a feeling in my body that is the same as when I march into a room to fetch something only to forget what it was I needed.

“Not even I know everything about The Thicket, Odell. I didn’t know what you would do once you got here. I didn’t know what you would be.”

“I am Odell… Darly. Just as I always have been.” I focus on tying my stockings back into place with nervous fingers. I drop to lace my worn boots, coming apart at the soles, back onto my feet. When I rise to lace my dress back into place, he reaches out to aid me in a way that feels familiar then, realizing his fingers made of air and dry leaves would be crushed in the task, pulls back.Last, I tuck the handkerchief wrapped around my wedding ring into my apron pocket.

Pausing to inspect myself, I note a spare thread clings to the pointer finger on my right hand and I shake it off into the dirt.

When I stand straight again and look up into the strange face of my digger, he is still watching me with a plea clear on his rustic features.The emotions of everything and everyone in this place are so hard to read. Even all that shrouds Fallow from me, though, cannot hide how his eyeless face is contorted into something like grief. “I can’t sort out why, but I don’t think you have always been Odell Darly no matter how you insist. If you told me, maybe I would remember the occasion on which you gave me permission for the reaping of your soul. I know I had it because I could bring no other here.”

The way he pleads makes me want to trust him. More than trust him, I want to comfort him. I cannot allow myself to do so. “I fear what may happen if I do. I have been told not to give anything away. I do not know the rules here, and you refuse to tell me. Even if you did, I could not believe you.”

I can hardly believe him when he states he had my permission to bring me here, either. He doesn’t appear to even recall it happening.

“With that logic, you may as well stand here until your death. There is nothing safe for you.”

“That is my point!”My shout frightens the curious shrews in the trees around us, but Fallow does not flinch. He steps closer to me, the leaves and twigs of his body rustling as he clenches his fists. The flies that drone around and within his form move faster, their buzzing becoming a chorus.

“Just tell me! How can it hurt to tell me a single thought in your head? What am I more like than a digger? What is your name? I have my own mysteries to solve. Tell me. I am begging you!” His raised voice transforms me into someone different. A childhood full of my bellowing father and my screeching mother has instilled a deep desire to stop such noise as quick as I can. I hate it. As I go still, Fallow takes a step back. “I’m sorry.”

I expected more drama. That perhaps he was going to hurt me or shout some more. Maybe he would dress me down, call me names, or make threats. His apology, I never could have foreseen that.

“A shepherd.” I answer him at last and he glances up from his feet at the sound of my voice. “You are more shepherd than digger. A shepherd keeps sheep safe until it is time for sheers or slaughter.”

He staggers and crosses his arms only for the leaves of his arms to press into those that form his middle. He drops them at his sides in a rustle of forest forage. “Oh.”

“Can you tell me why it matters that I think you more shepherd?”

Though I have given him what he wanted by answering, it is clear that whatever he had been hoping I would say, or perhaps whatever he had been waiting to happen when I did, has not come to pass. He remains downcast and defeated. “The task The Keeper gave me in procuring a mother’s soul, I thought it purposely impossible. So far as I knew, I had no such permission from anyone and, as monstrous and trapped as I’ve landed here, how would I ever gain it after? A mother’s soul cannot be taken without her consent. Then you happened by, and I had your permission. I don’t know how or why, but I had it. I could feel it. So, I took you. You were a price I had to pay. I have my own purposes in these woods and my own hopes of getting out. You would do the same in my shoes.”

My first instinct is to erupt in fury over what he has done, but he is right. I would sell Fallow to my own purpose. I feel as though I owe him, but why I need to get out of The Thicket is more important. Why I must get back to…

Anne. She is the one I had forgotten once again. I am growing lost faster than I had any reason to suspect.

In the pocket of my apron, I fondle my wedding ring and the handkerchief. Anne, Henry, and our home. It is a life that is slipping through my fingers like water being pulled from a stream for a drink. No matter how I try, more drips free.

“I wish I were shepherding you to a better end, Odell. You can trust me to keep you safe, but not to keep you from your fate. I am a hunter and you are my prey. That we are both unwilling participants in the game cannot be helped, but I am sorry for it.” His eyes cast down to his feet and pieces of him slide toward the ground like keeping himself a physical form is more than he can manage. “I am deeply sorry. I no longer remember who I’m meant to return to, but I know your life is a worthy trade. Any life but those I left would be.”

We are not hunter and hunted. I will not correct him aloud, but if he believes this game will end with his teeth around my neck, it will only be after I have had my share of his blood in return. We are alley cats circling. Two cocks in a ring. We share a love of those we struggle to remember. He is a tragedy just as I am. I believe his apology. I think he hoped my new term for him would shift a great and deep magic. It was not so.

Like the earth itself rails against such a confession, the forest quakes beneath my feet. Fallow’s empty eyes widen on an old instinct he no longer needs. The physical bits and bobs that make up his body drop to the forest floor like they have been poured from a bucket into a pile. The wind whispers in my ear, “Hide!”

I cannot remember the last time I hid in any serious way from anything. Every memory in my life that might serve my hiding in the woods from being hunted falls clean from my head. Until I can dig something up from the depths of my mind, I run.

A bumble bee buzzes near my ear and drops onto my shoulder as I take off at a sprint, the sole of my left boot flapping against the top, having given out at last. I do not dare take the time to check my shoulder, but I can imagine Fallow’s little head ducked low from the wind my pace creates.

He buzzes, “There!”

Fallow lifts from my shoulder and zips toward a crack in the rocky earth just wide enough for me to drop into if I do not mind scraping the tops of my thighs and breasts and, in this scenario, I do not.If a shift catches me, I’ll have no hope of reaching The Keeper before I am lost.

Not taking time to worry about what danger might be inside such a cave as this, I follow the bumble bee inside as fast as my body will allow. As soon as my shoulders clear the rocks on either side of the opening, I slip in like a letter into a slot and fall. After the days I have had and the terror that has built in my body during my brief flight, I expect to fall forever and die at the bottom of a mighty drop.

Five feet or less and I land on my feet in a damp cave. Lichen grows on the walls and a spring bubbles from the center of the ground by my feet, creating a small stream that flows down into the earth. The air is damp and the floor is slick like it is covered in slime I cannot see. The worn soles of my boots glide on it like ice.

A tunnel has formed around the little stream, large enough for me to walk into if I hunch over. Glancing up at the crack in the earth I came through and around myself for anything that might give me boost enough to climb back out the way I came, I realize with dread that following the small, damp tunnel into the depths of the earth is what I am going to have to do.There is no other way out unless Fallow can transform me into an insect alongside him.

The bumble bee that had been Fallow is nowhere to be seen. He has hidden me from whatever chased us above and now, I feel him watching me. He is invisible to my eye but I sense the strange connection I feel for him in the back of my mind. He is my grim reaper, shepherding me to my end, if in a roundabout way.

Again, I wish for paper and a quill. There is too much to take in to ever keep straight. Every pause and shout is a clue to getting out of here. I know it in my mother-bones but I can’t recall them in the right order. It’s more frustrating than anything I can remember feeling before in all my life. I want to kick the earth and scream about it. I am a shade of myself without my memories. They’re in there, hovering just beyond my reach.

I cannot outrun fate forever, but to remind me of Fallow’s warnings of not getting willingly caught, the light of day above me is blocked from view as a hulking creature stomps overhead. It is massive enough to test the earth and threaten the strength of the stone ceiling above me. Small flakes of lichen, a dusting of dirt, and loose stones rain down onto my head from the stone ceiling with each rumbling step from above. The monster does not kneel to peer down and search for me. All I see is the bottom of its great, scaled foot that is soft enough to form a seal over the opening I slipped down.

The nearness of such a beast is enough to send me scampering toward the pitch tunnel, but it is not enough to make me venture down it yet. Anything could be down there. It could be even more frightening than whatever the colossus above me is. My mind fills with images of my bones stuck between two tight stones for all eternity. Imagined stones become the teeth of whatever chased me down here all too quick.

The spring by my feet babbles, “I’m here.”

I’ve been in a cave like this one before. I remember it far more clearly than anything else from before entering The Thicket. The creature I met in the water there could have been of this place or, more frightening to ponder, it is here with me now.

With the thought, I inch further from the trickling water of the spring.

Fallow is shepherding me. The Keeper has an end in mind for me and it cannot be here in this cave. For such a thought to be comforting means my circumstances must be truly bleak.

Hand in my pocket, running the fabric of Henry’s handkerchief between my fingers, I take my first hesitant steps into the dark. “I should follow the tunnel?” There is no answer, but there is also no attempt to stop me. It’s as close to yes as can be expected, I suppose.

Beneath my feet, Fallow lives in the stream created by the spring. When I take a step into the dark, the water counts. “One.”

“One step? Are you counting my paces?”

Again, he doesn’t answer. His silence makes me want to jump into the stream and stomp my feet in Fallow. What might lurk in the water with him is a large part of what stops me. I allow my foot to fall a lot harder than necessary when I take my next step, releasing only a small fraction of my frustration.

“Two… three…”

The greatest thing the sound of his voice accomplishes is to halt the feeling that the dark will consume me whole. It brings no true relief, but it keeps my steps moving forward and my breath steady.

At thirteen steps, it is too dark to see and my breath hitches, my feet growing still no matter how I will them to move. The dark is something I believe all humans have some fear of. We are meant to be sleeping when the sun is gone. We lock our doors and hunker down by fires and lamps and only emerge when the sun crests over the side of the world.

The night, like this tunnel, it is a place where evil can stir, where nightmares come true.

That The Thicket is a place I wandered into in broad daylight is among the most terrifying things about it that I have discovered so far. It is a place anyone could happen upon and, so far as I can tell, grow so lost as I am, dark or not.

“A few steps more.” Fallow’s voice reminds me that I’m not floating in space all alone. I’m merely standing underground. It cannot be so frightening as it seems.

To keep my wits about me, I take a deep breath. Steadying my mind to keep it from rushing ahead to invent nightmares, I count each step with Fallow. My feet grow heavier and harder to slide along the stone as I move deeper. The air grows colder the farther I venture from light and life.

“Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen.” Counting only quells my terror enough to keep my feet moving one in front of the other. With my eyes shut, the silence closes in around me. The brook makes no sound of its own anymore. My footfalls and my own ragged breathing have grown dull, almost imperceptible to my ears. “Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty.”

I stop. There is no way I can take another step. Hopelessness crushes me with its weight and I fight the desire to crumple for how it drives me toward the ground. Why I am struggling in The Thicket at all is a mystery to me. My purpose for making any attempt to escape this dark end is beyond my reach. Tears leak from the corners of my clenched eyes.

I wonder if Fallow is even here. Gripping fear claws at my insides with the belief that there is nothing and no one beyond the darkness and silence of this strange place.

“Five more steps.”

Opening my eyes, I find myself so engulfed in darkness, my sight would never adjust. There is no light to adjust to. I step again and Fallow counts.

“Four more.”

“Four more and then what?” My voice trembles around my tears with such violence that, this time, I’m uncertain whether Fallow doesn’t answer because he chooses not to or because he cannot understand the question.

“It’s safe.”

“I can’t trust you.”

With each step, my eyelids grow heavier than I ever remember them being.

“One more.”

Hopelessness lifting, replaced wholly by fear, the urge to run back as I came is overpowering. My body tingles with unspent, frantic energy. Before I can turn tail and sprint back out of the cave, water rushes into my tattered boot, lifts my foot, and presses it down.

“Twenty-five. I’ll find you in the light.”

The floor rises to meet me, and I know no more.