The Forest of Hands and Teeth (14 page)

When I escape from the basement I see the dullest shade of pink breaking over the horizon outside the windows. I sneak back to my room and change into my tunic. I light a fire, tossing my dirty nightdress into the rising flames. After tomorrow I will no longer need it anyway.

I stand in front of the open window by my desk, letting the chill spring morning air wash over me, cleanse the scent of must and old wine from my body. I stare past the graveyard at the fences, allowing my eyes to blur until the Forest is nothing but a smudge of fresh green, the Unconsecrated dull specks, the fence nonexistent.

Nothing in life is clear to me anymore. Nothing makes sense and I don't know how to make it right.

Tonight is my Binding with Harry. Today is the last chance for Travis to claim me. The celebrations will start up again this afternoon. But for now my time is my own and I sneak from the Cathedral and skirt around the edge of the waking village until I am back on the hill.

Instead of looking to the Forest, to the edge of my world, today I look down on the village. At the cottages and houses that huddle against the earth starting at the bottom of the hill and spreading toward the Cathedral on the other side of the village. The Cathedral is a hulking shape, its wings spreading out like arms. Behind the Cathedral is the familiar sight of the graveyard and the small drop to the stream where Harry and I held hands the day my mother became infected. Dotted throughout are the platforms set into the trees, stocked and ready for our refuge if there is ever a breach.

The fence surrounds all of it, tall intertwining links forever keeping us safe. I think about how fragile those fences are, how vines like to snake around them during the summer causing endless work for the Guardians who are always on patrol, always repairing and mending.

It astonishes me how something so delicate, like lace metal, keeps us trapped in this world. Unhampered by the Unconsecrated, but also by our dreams. The sun slips across the sky, for a brief moment glinting off the fences protecting the path beyond the gate by the Cathedral.

I spend the morning thinking about how together Travis and I can make it all right. And I continue to pace at the top of the hill, waiting for Travis to come claim me, time slipping around me like water over a rock.

When it is time to prepare for the Binding ceremony that night I sit on the bed in the small cottage near the Cathedral that will become Harry's and mine once our union is completed tomorrow. My hands lie limp in my lap as I realize that Travis may never come for me after all.

A knock on the door triggers my heart and it pounds hard in my chest. I stand, hoping it's Travis. Knowing that this is our last chance. That once the Binding begins I will have to give myself to Harry or cancel the ceremony.

And canceling the ceremony means throwing myself on the mercy of the Sisters. Begging them to allow me to rejoin their ranks even if it means being nothing more than their servant. A woman in our village is not given a second chance at marriage.

I smooth my hands over the white fabric that drapes down my legs. My hands shake as I reach for the door. My stomach tenses, my whole body flooding with fear and hope and joy.

The light outside the door is the blinding last gasp of the day, and for a moment I think it's Travis and that my life has finally fallen into place. That I finally understand where I belong in this world.

And then I hear the rustle of skirts as Sister Tabitha steps through the doorway and stalks to the middle of the room. She turns to face me, looks me up and down with her sharp eyes.

“I have come to prepare you for the Binding,” she says. “To give you the blessing of the Sisterhood.”

I want to crumple right there, to fall into myself until I am nothing more than a heap of emptiness on the floor. My head feels light, my vision blurry. My throat burns to scream and cry. But I refuse to allow Sister Tabitha to see any of this and so I raise my chin, close the door and steady myself by placing a hand against the wall.

We are alone in the little one-room cottage that will house Harry and me, until we have children and need more space. The thought of children with Harry falls like a stone inside my stomach.

In the last few days I had already begun to imagine what Travis's and my children would look like, how their tiny hands would curl around my finger. I had already dreamed an entire life between Travis and me. And now that was the only life that we would ever lead together—the one in my dreams.

Sister Tabitha and I stand facing each other, our backs rigid until she smiles just a little, releasing a breath as if on a laugh.

She shakes her head. “There are things we must accept in this world, Mary. Things that may not make sense to us now, but that we must adhere to. That we must keep sacred if we hope to persevere.”

She walks over to the narrow bed and sets a basket down on the white quilt. As she continues to speak she starts to unpack its contents. “Take for example the Unconsecrated. We do not understand them. We only know they hunger. But we know to leave them be. No one in this village even bothers to question their existence anymore, although I am sure our ancestors wasted a lot of time doing so.”

She sets down a delicate-looking white braided rope and then pulls the Scripture from the basket. She winds the rope around the book as she continues with her speech.

“It is the same with marriage. Our ancestors knew that in order to survive we had to persevere. They knew to keep strong bloodlines. That creating each new generation was the most important task beyond keeping the village safe and fed.”

She brings the bound Scripture to the small table on my side of the room and sets it down. Then she turns to the fireplace and stirs the embers while adding small strips of dry wood until the logs begin to crackle.

The flames eat at the bark, curling it into red-rimmed tendrils but the heat cannot penetrate me, cannot warm me. “There is something you need to know about your mother, Mary,” she says, kneeling by the hearth. “You should know that she lost children.”

I
fight to keep my face passive, swallowing my gasp of shock. I can only think of my brother and me when we were young, sitting by my mother and father in front of the fire. I hear the lullaby that my mother used to sing to us at night.

I am at war with myself. At once desperately needing to know more and detesting myself for giving in to Sister Tabitha. For giving her what she wants, which is my obedience to her will. To her superiority.

“When” is all that I say. I swallow, clear my throat. “When did my mother …” I can't finish, fearful of bridging this gap between my mother's life and my own.

“Before you,” she tells me. “And after you.” I can't see her eyes but I wonder if there is sympathy there. If she is sad for the babies that my mother lost and if she feels futile that she couldn't stop it even though she is the healer among us.

For a moment it is as though Sister Tabitha and I are connected through my mother's grief.

She rises and then turns to me. “Many, many times. So much that it seemed you were never supposed to have been born.”

Any sympathy I may have had for Sister Tabitha shatters; the sound of my mother's moans the day she turned comes screaming into my ears. It washes over me until I feel nauseated and unable to stay in this room, to be near this woman.

But still I stand my ground, unwilling to let her see the effect she's had on me. She walks back over to the table and lays her hands on the Scripture. Then she comes to stand before me.

Her eyes meet mine as she reaches down and grasps my right hand. She then unwinds the rope from the Scripture and wraps it around my wrist as she goes. Each time she completes a circle she knots the rope in a complicated pattern, forcing me to repeat Vows Of Fidelity. Three times we repeat this, three circles of rope, three knots, three vows.

With each twist, each tether, each word, I feel myself falling farther from Travis and I must bite my lip to keep from weeping.

“You are a Bound woman now, Mary. And you have a duty to your husband, to God and this village. It is time to own up to that duty, Mary. It is time you stopped playing by the fences. There is nothing out there. Your mother found that out the hard way and you would think that you would have learned your lesson from her.”

I try to yank my arm back but she keeps a tight hold on my wrist.

“I have done everything that I know how to do for you, Mary. I have taught you of our Lord. But you were not happy. I procured you a husband. But you are not happy. What will it take, Mary? Will it take the destruction of this village before you will find happiness? Before you will be content with the life you have been given?”

Her eyes are a summer thunderstorm. Sweat pricks my skin and trickles down my back, seeping through the thin material of my gown.

I can feel her breath on my cheek and I try to lean away from her but the wall keeps me from moving.

“Pray to God, Mary.” She continues, “Pray that He will bring you mercy and that He will give you a child, a way to love outside yourself.” She shakes her head as she speaks, her voice now a whisper. “It is what your mother did, Mary. How do you think she ended up with you?”

I want to slap her, I want to rail against her body with all the fury and pain and hate inside me, eating away at me. But I can't. Because suddenly, it's not Sister Tabitha I despise, but myself. Never has it occurred to me that my mother had any difficulty conceiving me. Never did I question the ease with which I assumed I had entered her life.

I am struck with the knowledge of my own selfishness. That this woman in front of me knows more about my mother than I ever did or ever will. All of the stories my mother passed down to me flood into my head at once. Never did I wonder why my mother told me these stories. Never did I wonder what these tales meant to her.

Never did I wonder what my mother believed. What sort of life my mother lived at my age. So acutely do I miss her at this moment that I want to crawl into myself with shame and longing.

Sister Tabitha is about to say more when we both hear a knock at the door. My heart skids. Travis, I think. He has finally come for me. My face is so close to Sister Tabitha's that I can see the sweat as it escapes her skin. For a moment I wonder if she can hear what I'm thinking, if she can feel the way my body tingles in anticipation. She smiles again, barely, and then leans back. Harry enters the room and I want to weep when I see him there, his cheeks pink from the evening air, his hair damp and starting to curl over his ears.

I look past him out the door into the dusk of evening, hoping to catch a glimpse of Travis, hoping he's out there waiting just at the edge. My eyes search every shadow but there's nothing—the world is empty. And then with a click the door falls shut.

In his arms Harry carries a squirming black dog that doesn't look older than a year, its body just growing into its paws. The dog tumbles to the floor and runs in a few circles and then comes and wiggles over my feet, its tail sweeping items off a low table nearby. “A wedding present for you, Mary,” he says, dipping his face a bit as if embarrassed.

I want to smile. I want to thank him. But in my mind I'm still looking past the door, waiting for Travis.

Harry holds out his left arm. Sister Tabitha takes it and, leaving a length of slack between us, wraps the other end of the rope around his wrist three times, completing the same series of complicated knots and vows that she had performed with me.

Keeping her hand around the middle of the rope that joins us, Sister Tabitha recites an old prayer from the Scripture. When she's done she says, “You are now Bound,” and then she walks to the bed and pulls a long blade from the basket she had brought with her earlier. She sets it on the table, next to the Scripture. “This is your last chance to renounce each other. Your last chance to sever the ties between you. Tomorrow you take your final Vows of Eternal Constancy.” And then she slips from the cottage, leaving us alone.

Harry turns toward me and I keep my eyes on the awkward-looking dog, who has curled up by the fire and is gnawing on a thin log he pulled from a pile stacked next to the hearth. Harry reaches out and plucks something from my cheek and holds it out for me to see, but I can't tell what it is.