17. Creatures of Discontent
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CREATURES OF DISCONTENT
It is not a far drop, not even long enough for me to scream, but the suddenness of it was plenty to make my mind believe I would not survive the fall. In my state, a missing stair could boast the same.
Clutching my heart, I drop onto my haunches and gasp for breath. “Almighty!”
Fallow would smirk or comment on my phrasing, but Roil shakes her head. The shimmering gold of her eyes flashes within the tendrils of smoke and mist that create her silhouette and remain visible longer this time to stare.
I find myself in yet another tunnel, the smell of wet limestone pervades the air, which is even colder than it had been in The Thicket above. Unlike the last time I was underground, though, this space is lit in a rainbow of light that radiates from a glass cabinet on the wall.
She approaches me and stepping away crosses my mind. Fear, built of all the other creatures I’ve met, makes my nerves stand on end, but I manage to keep my feet planted. She reaches out with a single finger and touches the top of my hand where it clutches my chest. When she pulls away, she removes a wisp of bright orange smoke. It floats in the air on the end of her pointer finger like a ribbon in the wind. Only now do I recognize the movement within her own gloomy silhouette to be much the same, only all black.
While staring at the orange light, she flashes to herself again. The short woman with dark hair and a round face stares at the ribbon she has plucked from my body. She remains long enough for me to note that a long, straight nose, a strong chin, and hair tied back in a braid make up the most obvious of her features. I have never seen anyone like her. It could be that she is from a land I do not know, but there is an ancient air surrounding her. I do not think people like her exist any longer.
Her dark brown eyes are filled with pity. “I remember the ordeal you are going through, Odell.” She blinks and is replaced with dark, dancing ribbons once more. “After is easier.”
With measured steps, she walks to a wall of stoppered bottles that are lit with glowing colors of every possible hue. With only a wave of her hand, one of the bottles uncorks itself and the orange ribbon drifts inside like she asked it nicely to do so and it obeyed. Once in the bottle, the smoke turns into something like orange sand and sprinkles to the bottom of the glass in a quiet rush.
I should be more concerned than I am. Maybe that’s what she stole from me. “Do I need what you just took? Give it back.”
“It is fear. Do not fret. Your emotions are a renewable resource. You will grow more.”
As my eyes adjust to the light, I scan the room made of earth. Upon closer inspection, it is more than the colorful bottles of glowing dust that light the space. The ceiling is hung with what appear to be tiny crystals set into the white limestone, clustered like stars, creating a light all their own. The entrance by which we came to be here from directly above, is nowhere to be seen.
Roil stands in front of a large cabinet with glass doors. Inside are many vials of too many sizes and shapes to count. Each one is labeled and has something different inside. She is a witch just as Fallow said. I do not think I wish to know what she means to do with my fear.
“Hm, that one is even better.” She crosses the space, taps my ear the same way she tapped my hand, and a sickly green colored ribbon of air appears.
“What did you just do?” Panic laces through every chord of my voice. It would seem my fear can grow at a rapid rate. It is more weed than crop.
Roil tucks what she stole into a jar in the case, unconcerned and unhurried by my tone. “Took your uncertainty.”
“Stop that!”
“Why? You have so much to spare and, like fear, you always make more. You are a creature of discontent.”
I wish to argue with her. To stomp my foot, cross my arms, and shout, ‘ Am not!’ but doing so would only be proving her right and, in contrast, a small part of me likes the description. A creature of discontent might manage what I am hoping to accomplish with a more certain step than skittish, exhausted yet determined Odell. That feels true regardless of how violating it is to be stolen from.
Roil might see the acceptance of her description because she approaches and circles. My hackles are raised by the realization that I now know how a dying animal feels when watched by vultures.
“Grief, fear, sadness. All your good feelings are buried beneath the bad. It is not a comment on virtue, Odell, to be wretched. You are going through a lot. Soon, all will be calm.”
It is hard to imagine a world where I could ever be calm in The Thicket. Docile and accepting of a horrible end for me and… and whoever it is I seek to save. I could end up like the shades I saw on my way to this place, empty and devoid of all hope. A shiver of horror rolls through me at the thought. “I came to you seeking a way to avoid that fate.”
“You are wise to call it fate. There is no reaching The Keeper before He deems you ready to meet Him. Even if you wish to somehow trick Him into letting you go, you will still be lost when you do it. He is the god of The Thicket.”
There it is. I knew it was coming. The choice that is not actually one at all. “Has anyone ever managed it before? To get out of here?”
“Not since I’ve been here. It is the power of my soul that keeps everyone trapped, though not by my will. He wields my soul as His weapon, but I grow dull and brittle. He needs a new mother to reach Him. So many get lost along their path.”
“How long has it been happening?” I am afraid to ask. Even having only seen her for a handful of heartbeats, I think she has been here since a time before people kept a reckoning.
Another flash and Roil stands before me with a distant gleam in her expressive eyes.
She has no idea, but she and I both know it has been a very long time. The witch is as lost as the digger. The digger is as lost as my child—the one who made me a mother with a mother’s soul. I cannot recall their face or their name, but knowing such a child exists bolsters my resolve.
Roil does not bottle my alarm. Perhaps she has plenty from the countless other unfortunate souls in this place. I cannot fall prey to it yet. “How did The Keeper come to be here? Is He where The Thicket began?”
Roil’s smile grows, and she touches my parted lips to tug free a golden ribbon made of sparkling light. My feelings dim, but only for a moment. They return the way a wave returns to shore.
The woman with a round face smiles at it. “Hope.” Her voice is different when in her true form. She is soft spoken and gentle. As fast as she appeared, she is smothered by Roil’s darkness again and her voice changes with it into something more exhausted and a little menacing. “Hope is something I don’t see often.”
Roil dips the glittering ribbon into the jar with a thought and it turns into liquid gold. While she admires it, I beg, “Please answer me. How did The Keeper come to be here?”
“The Keeper is where The Thicket begins and ends. When He moves, the pieces move. When He stops, they stop.”
She sounds bored, like she has had this same conversation time and again. When I think of all the mothers who hover in The Thicket above our heads, shades of their former selves, or those I have run into on my way to Roil, lost, captured, or tormented, I can guess that she has. Her disbelief in my ability will not stop me. “What if He dies?”
“You can’t kill a god, Odell Raleigh, no matter how mighty you believe yourself to be.” Gold circles flash to life in the dark silhouette and I get the feeling that she is considering taking a piece of my hubris for her collection.
“What if He sleeps, then?” I no longer believe anything about my escape from The Thicket will be easy, but perhaps it can be simple. It could be as simple as leaving while the guard snores at the gate.
She does not refute me right away this time and, just as Roil said they would, my emotions renew. Hope blooms in my chest. Roil cocks her head. I wish she had features I could read.
Distrust is a given in this place, an inescapable truth. She could be lying about any number of things and knows far more about me than I do of her. She would know how to tug at my heartstrings where I know nothing about hers if she even has any remaining to her after so long in the woods. So far as I can tell, she holds little stake in this game. To be used as a weapon against all these people who flock to her for years uncountable… a sword would need to grow very distant to survive it at all.
“What happens to The Thicket, you, and every other soul that wanders here when I succeed?”
One corner of the woman’s mouth tugs up before she is Roil once more. Each time I see her, my impression of her grows clearer. I think she was a wonderful mother once. She has the look of someone with comforting arms and a soft lap. Roil, in spite of her lack of physical presence, embodies nothing maternal at all. Filled with ribbons of mist and shadow in shades of grey, perhaps she feels nothing.
“You are confident, Odell.” Approaching, she reaches out to touch me and steal my belief in myself. I evade her touch, hopping back on my heels beyond her reach. Her arm drops to her side without a sound. “You are a quick study, too.”
Without having to approach, she flicks her shadowed hand through the air and a red orb of light is freed from the center of my chest. She makes a pleased sound. “Look at that.”
“Is that my hubris?”
The dark shape of her head moves back and forth. “It is far more rare. It has many names, I prefer blind trust.” Before I can think to question my seemingly trusting nature, Roil answers my first question. “When The Keeper sleeps, all that wanders The Thicket will be free to come and go as they please. The woods will become the woods. Pity those who wander off the path when The Keeper wakes.”
Her words of paths relight a memory.
“Anne. My daughter is Anne. Are there any ways to help me remember her? I keep losing her.”
There is a twist of panic to my voice as I beg the witch for answers. My hopelessness is so profound it knocks the air from my lungs and I double over, out of breath. Roil does not step forward to bottle any. I imagine hopelessness is something she has an abundance of without adding mine to the collection. My grief, like my fear and so many other negatives, are like biting flies. They exist in abundance. No one could ever smash or capture them fast enough to stop them from reproducing.
“Anne. My daughter’s name is Anne.” I whisper the words to myself again through tears then look up to meet the hidden gaze of Roil. “Can you help me remember it? Can anyone? Her name is Anne Raleigh, and she has her daddy’s nose and my hair, and she is sharp as a tack and I am losing her!”
The thought makes me want to throw things in a child-like fit of rage in the same way it did my first day here watching Anne play through a moment time and again, a shade of reality I could not touch or stop.
That Roil is one of the mothers lost in The Thicket, that her child is trapped somewhere in the same way mine is and has been since a time so ancient I can hardly fathom it makes me want to claw out of my skin.
“Would it unpause Anne? My daughter lives the same moment time and again in the space between my home and The Thicket. She would be released if He sleeps?”
“Everything would be. Even I would be free if I were so inclined.”
“Are you?”
She tilts her chin up like she must remind herself not to be forlorn over her fate. “I no longer think there is anything for me beyond the boundary of these woods. It has been ages beyond reckoning. Those who wander into The Thicket now are of a different breed and make than those who lived in the world when I wandered in. You and I only have a single human thing in common, Odell.”
She need not say what those things are aloud. We are mothers trapped in The Thicket.
Roil, in the same way she has felt many of my emotions, appears to sense my horror at our shared circumstances now. Her voice softens. “Escaping The Thicket is a matter of choice. We landed ourselves here fair and square. Our souls attracted The Keeper, our diggers had our permission.”
Perhaps Roil can read my thoughts. I can think of no other reason for how she can find the perfect means of dissuading what little hope I have. “I wish everyone would stop saying that. I never agreed to become lost in this place.”
She shakes her head and her true form shimmers into existence so fast I almost miss it. “Your fury will not serve you. Nor will any force of arms.” She sounds as though she knows something I do not, too, and I am frustrated with how she will not get on with telling me.
“Do you know how I get out of here or not?”
Though the creature of smoke and shadow before me does not need to breathe, she heaves a heavy sigh as she nods. “I do. All the mothers here do. We cannot explain it, though. It is an ancient magic. I can only tell you the same thing you have no doubt heard time and again. It is the only hint I’m allowed. A mother has choices in The Thicket. Your soul?—”
“Cannot be taken without my consent. Yes.” I growl the words, frustrated beyond belief that they keep being spoken to me like fact even when I have noticed no choices at all. Not any real ones. It is always a choice between disaster and the end of my road. At some point, all roads lead to The Keeper regardless of which I choose.They even lead there on His timeline.
“You are the most powerful thing in these woods, but you have the greatest weakness, too. You have a child, and because of her you have hope, so you would’ve chased that shade parading as your child for the rest of time, even knowing it wasn’t really her, just in case…” Her visage returns and her lips part like she has more to say, a secret answer to share, the thing that would see us all saved. She closes her lips around the words and Roil returns. Pressing a great deal of weight into each word, Roil reminds me yet again, “You. Have. Choices.”
Maybe guessing that I am about to release wrath that would do nothing but destroy everything in this sparse cavern, Roil changes direction on a course I cannot begin to guess at. “I cannot recall my child’s face.”
Her attempt at distraction works. Being in the presence of Roil is looking into my future. I cannot understand her plight yet, but I’ve come close enough to touch it and the possibility is crushing. It’s nearly impossible to look away.
She pauses, like in saying as much she might manage to imagine her child even after what must be lifetimes upon lifetimes of failure to do so. I watch her shoulders drop when it does not work.
“I do not know if I had one baby or twenty. I cannot remember their voice or if they were a boy or girl, or if they had straight teeth or brown eyes. I have no idea what happened to them. I have no place to picture them in. I only know that I grieve them with everything inside me every single day.” The shroud of grey falls away and the woman’s deep, brown eyes grow distant. “I wake up in the morning to the sound of my heart breaking as I remember again that they are gone from my side. That they are frozen somewhere waiting for me and I do not know how to return. Even if I did, they would be dust by now.”
“What does doing that to you—to us—gain for The Keeper?”
“The Keeper wants your soul for its ability to feel . That is why your soul is precious to Him. The soul of a mother is a soul that sacrifices, and He wants to collect the pieces of yours to strengthen the walls of The Thicket.” She sighs like it is a relief that I have asked a question she is allowed to voice a true answer for. “They are strongest when with their children, but even in longing they are the strongest thing here. They add pieces to the puzzle and their pain creates twisted magic where they walk. I cannot stop wanting my children back no matter how I try. I have spent more time than you know, more time than you can imagine, trying.”
And though she, and everyone else, keeps reminding me of my choices, I have no choice in this. I am a mother. Not for the first time in this strange conversation, we stand in silent companionship. We are two women from different times, places, and backgrounds. We have only one thing in common and there is solace in not being alone.
The bottle of golden hope floats through the air to hover in front of my eyes. Roil shakes her shadowed head. “I have dedicated human lifetimes to studying what we feel and why it matters. I know hope is the most powerful of them. It is a dangerous thing, though. Keeping hope close is worse than playing with fire.”
The horror of my fate was already enough to cripple me before meeting Roil. Now I stand in front of what lost truly looks like. She has wandered so long that she has no body. No memory. Yet, in the dark, emotionless threads that surround her, there are two golden blinks of hope.
I will not die when I make the choice ahead of me. Instead, my fate will be to wander. To grow lost.
I said you’ll forget them soon enough. Everyone does.
Fallow’s words bubble up from the depths of my memory with such ease I almost slip and say them aloud. I cannot allow such thoughts to take hold of me. I will not allow them to be true.
Losing hope would spell the end.
Bracing myself for a daunting task, I square my feet and stare down Roil and the future ahead of me like a bull about to charge before making the same demand I have twice already, if not in the same words. “Tell me! Fallow brought me here because you might help me. Whether you like him or not, he hasn’t led me astray yet. Tell me where to go so I might find The Keeper on my terms.”
Roil shakes her ghostly head and the bottled hope returns to the shelves. “There is one who might be powerful enough to send you to the center of The Thicket without The Keeper’s permission. He would be just as likely to drown you.”
Cold dread creeps up my spine and into my chest making it hard to breathe. I do not know the name for the creature, but I have faced it before, I think. The water here holds much to fear. To go to such a beast willingly would be madness, but madness might be what it takes. “Would drowning be worse than any other fate in store for me? If there is even the barest shred of hope, I will face whatever it is.”
Roil transforms into the woman with brown skin and dark eyes again. She is watching me like she understands me, but also like she is mourning my loss already. The grey ribbons of darkness float over Roil’s form, shrouding her from my sight. “You’re certain Skelt is the path you wish to take?”
Skelt. The creature has a name.
“I believe I have met Skelt before.”
Her smoke clears and the woman beneath stares at me wide eyed for an instant before she is swallowed by the black smog again. “And it released you?”
“Is that good? Unlikely?” In my world, everyone would be far more forthcoming with information. It is tiring that in The Thicket everything must be pressed.
“It has never happened that I know of. Those Skelt catches, he keeps for himself. Good is not the word I would choose, but perhaps he tires of The Keeper’s games.”
Like so many things in The Thicket, I can only make guesses at what the answer I’m given means. “Can Skelt get me to the The Keeper before I am lost?”
She nods and I get the feeling that my time with Roil is now coming to an end. “If it pleases Skelt, yes. The beast serves only itself. But it will be an ordeal. Skelt is not so kind as me.”
“Can you take me to it? Or must I find the nearest stream.”
Roil makes an amused huff, perhaps the most human she has sounded in our entire interaction. “I can send you. I am sure that was your digger’s intent.” She pauses like she hopes I might reconsider with the mention of Fallow. When I say nothing of changing my mind, she continues. “Aside from The Keeper, I am the only one who can. It is where I sent your digger. Is that the choice you wish to make?”
Her emphasis on the word choice gives me pause. The path to my inevitable end has been paved with choices, none of them fair or obvious. I have been given no information when I have come to forks in my road. If she laid an alternative route beneath my feet, I might take it out of fear of the creature that lurks in the water and the dark, but she hasn’t. Fallow brought me to Roil, so I will chase her only idea for now. It’s the path with a sign.
I hope I don’t regret it.
It helps that Fallow may be wherever I am asking to go. I do not know if he can stand against one such as Skelt if things go badly, but it seems clear it is where he would have me go next. Perhaps Skelt is the one in The Beneath that has an interest in seeing me succeed that Fallow mentioned. A shiver rolls through my body, but even as I struggle to find my bravery, I nod.
“Remember that you have a mother’s soul, Odell.” Her golden eyes flash within the swiveling darkness. “No one can take it without your consent.”
It is the same advice so many have given me. At least now I know it is meant to be cryptic so I can stop puzzling over it. I have choices and I am choosing Skelt. There is no one to blame but me if it goes terribly. “I will.”
Again, Roil sends the glass bottle filled with golden liquid toward me, her eyes flashing the same hopeful color. “Drink. You will need allyou can get when you land amongst the lost diggers. ”
I do not know what she means, but I do not need to.
Plucking the bottle from the air, I pull the cork free and down the hope like it is sherry at a Christmas party.
I no longer feel so afraid when all light vanishes, and I fall again. This time, alone.