The Forest of Hands and Teeth (21 page)

What if the letters mean nothing? What if the path leads nowhere? What if we figure out the puzzle, what if we suddenly expect an end and we don't find one? It's enough that I know the paths are marked, enough that I know to look for Gabrielle's letters.

I wonder if maybe all paths lead to the Unconsecrated. If it's a fate that none of us can ever escape—as certain as death. I wonder if maybe I was right as a child, that there can be no such place as the ocean, no place too large to be untouched by the Return.

A
fter Beth is buried Harry and Travis come back down the path to where Cass and I sit in silence, watching Jacob nap with Argos, his bony shoulders rising and falling hypnotically. Harry announces that the plan is to retrace our steps while there is still a trace of light and camp at the last split in the fence, where the path is wider.

I let them go without me. Instead, I slip back toward the dead end and find Jed standing next to a mound of dirt. I can see the weight of his grief in the slump of his shoulders, the way his hands hang so limply by his sides as if there is no life left in them.

“It was the one in red that got her,” Jed says, his eyes fixed on the dirt that's even now settling into his dead wife's flesh. “She was too fast. Too much. Beth was …” He swallows. Stays silent.

“Beth was pregnant again,” he finally says. His voice cracks as he says this and I hesitate before walking to his side, before slipping his arm around my shoulder so that I can bear some of his grief.

For a moment I fear he'll rebuff me. But then he sags against me. I am the only thing holding him standing and I finally feel as if we are brother and sister again. The bonds forged when we were children too tight to break.

“Jed,” I say. And then I pause and take a deep breath. Afraid of harming the moment. “What happened to Beth? How did she get infected?”

A pebble slips down the mound of dirt at his feet and he releases me, bending down to pick it up. He rubs it between his finger and thumb. “We were on our way to the Cathedral,” he says. “We were going to tell Sister Tabitha that Beth was pregnant so that she could be blessed with the other mothers at the final Vows ceremony.”

My cheeks burn at the memory of what was to occur our final day.

He squints into the Forest. “We heard the siren and tucked ourselves into an empty cottage. I was trying to secure it when you ran by with Harry. I watched as you ran to the path and I realized that you had the right idea. That the path was the only way to survive. And I was so afraid for you, Mary.

“But Beth”—he shakes his head as he remembers—”she didn't want to go down the path. She was too terrified. She wanted to go to the platforms. Where she knew it would be safe. Just like we had always been told. She didn't understand what I was saying when I tried to tell her that the path was safe. That I had been down it before with the Guardians, securing it.”

He hoists his hand back as if to throw the pebble into the Forest but stops at the last moment. “I'm the one who pulled her along behind me. I'm the one who pulled her to the path when it started raining. I thought that if we waited until it got dark … that maybe we would be able to sneak past them all. We weren't but a few lengths from the cottage when the Fast One grabbed her. I thought the rain would help throw them off. Would give us the time we needed to make it. But not the Fast One. With the confusion of everyone screaming and yelling and fighting… I couldn't hear her coming. I pried her off Beth. And God help me, I threw her at another living person, hoping to keep Beth safe.”

I wrap my arms around my body, imagining what it must have been like for Jed. Imagining being responsible for the person I loved most becoming infected.

“There was nothing we could do then.” His voice is soft. Defeated. “The people on the platforms next to the cottage— the people we have known our whole life—they saw Beth get attacked. And they started to shoot arrows at her. They tried to kill her and so we couldn't go back. And the blood from her bite drew the slow Unconsecrated. We barely made it to the gate as it was.”

He fights to control his breathing, to contain his sobs, and I want nothing more than to cradle him to me. To wipe away his pain and misery like a mother with a son.

But I do not. I stand at the edge of Beth's grave and stare out into the Forest and wonder how it is that we are never truly prepared for death. How we can be always surrounded by it, reminded of it, knowing that one mistake can lead to infection. And yet when it comes we are not ready. We still have too many regrets.

“I had no choice,” he finally says, as if asking me for absolution. “I couldn't let her become one of them. Couldn't bear to think of her in the Forest.”

“I know,” I tell him, thinking about our mother and the choice she made, the choice I let her make.

“It was the hardest thing I have ever done.”

“I know,” I say again, at a loss for what else to tell him.

Jed nods, squeezes my shoulder and walks up the path to rejoin the others, who are setting up camp. I stay behind, contemplating my lie to Jed.

Because I do not accept the hand of God; I do not believe in divine intervention or predestination. I cannot believe that our paths are pre-chosen and that our lives have no will. That there is no such thing as choice.

The next morning the sun doesn't so much rise as seep around us, the air thick and heavy with moisture that coats our skin with sweat. Even though we must push on this morning, no one has made a move to leave the little clearing where we spent the last night. Cass takes a small sip from one of the water bladders and passes it along. It feels empty in my hands.

It has been three days since the breach. We are angry and terrified and miserable.

“We should go back,” Cass says.

Next to me Harry lets out a breath as if he's been holding it. Argos lies next to me, his head on my knee, his ribs protruding like waterbars as I slide my hand down his side. His tail thumps lethargically in the dirt.

“We don't have enough water to keep wandering aimlessly like this,” Cass continues. “We can't live without water and we can't hope to keep going and just pray that it rains again.”

The day has barely begun and already I feel as though I could wring enough sweat out of my shirt to fill one of the water bladders.

“Maybe we should scout for water,” Travis suggests.

“What we need to do is go back,” Cass responds. Her words are tightly coiled, as if she has played out this conversation in her head many times before.

“Cass, dear, I don't think …,” Travis says, and I feel my stomach clench at the word
dear.
I turn my head away from the group, staring out at the Unconsecrated that are gathered at the fence, trying to see beyond them into the Forest.

“I don't care what you think,” Cass says to him, cutting him off. I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing. I'm not used to this stern Cass. It feels unnatural, strange and for some reason suddenly very funny.

“What I care about is that we are almost out of water.” She stands and thrusts the empty bladder in his face, forcing him to lean back on his elbows. “We'll be out of food in a few days. What I care about is not wasting away out here in the Forest because we were too scared to go back to our village,” she says. She taps one foot on the ground vigorously, as if she can't control her own body.

“There is nothing to go back to,” Jed says, his voice the tone of finality.

“You don't know that,” Cass says. Her voice is growing higher-pitched, more desperate. “You can't know that. You only know that things were going badly when you left. You can't say that they didn't get better. That they weren't able to push back against the breach.”

Jed says nothing, his expression indicating that he has retreated back into his mind, back into his memories of Beth.

Cass begins to pace around us. “Aren't you able to see what's going to happen here? The way this will end? We will follow these paths until we're too weak to move and then we will die out here.” She waves her hands around as she speaks and she is so caught up in her own fervor that she doesn't see the tears in Jacob's eyes, that she is terrifying him.

“What is the point of wandering around out here like that?” she screams.

“There is something out there,” I finally say.

She laughs, her eyes wide and wicked. “What's out there, Mary? Do you mean your ocean?” She places her hands on her knees and bends over until her face is level with mine. “Can we drink the ocean, Mary? Will your precious ocean save us when we're dying here on this path?”

Straightening back up, she announces, “I am going back.” She looks around at us before adding, “And I'm taking Jacob with me.” She holds her hand out to him but he just whimpers and backs away—afraid of the insanity glinting in her eyes, afraid of the death he witnessed at the village.

Cass goes over to where Jacob sits and grasps his hand, pulls him to his feet, but he will not stand. His whimpers turn to full sobs that shake his little body but Cass won't let him go. Finally he cries out, “Ow, that hurts!” and Harry goes to her and pulls her away.

She whirls on Harry, grasps him by the upper arms. I can see where her fingers dig into the skin.

“Come with me,” she tells him, practically begs him. She's panting now, her whole body taut and trembling as if she would combust with the slightest breath. “Jacob can be ours. You and I. We can change all this. We can make it right—make all of it right. The way it should have been.” She speaks fast, her words falling into one another as if she will forget them or lose the will to say them at any moment.

None of us moves, none of us breathes as we watch Cass fall apart.

“Just think of it, Harry,” she says. Her voice is softer now. “It would be like it was before. When Travis was sick and it was just you and me.”

In this moment I'm reminded of Cass as a child. Of her white-yellow hair and her innocent eyes. How she would listen to me recount my mother's stories even though she never cared for them. She never understood about the world before the Return. Her life was always in the here and now. In the bliss of a village permanently protected from the Unconsecrated and anything else that may have once existed past the fences.

“What if we are the only ones left,” she says, turning to us all, waving her hand over us. “What if we are all that is left of the world? We can't let ourselves die. We can't be the end of everything.”

Harry looks around at us, his eyes wide, his cheeks flushed. His gaze lingers on me last, as if he's sending out a silent plea for help. As if somehow I know what to do.

“The paths are marked,” I finally say, looking down at my hands. “Down at the bottom, where they split. There is a bar of metal that's inscribed with letters. There were the same letters on the gate from our village. The same on the trunk we found.”

Harry's eyes widen and then he wrenches free of Cass and kneels at the point where the paths split and pushes aside the overgrown grass until he finds the little metal tag. He reads out the letters: “I-V and V-I-I.”

I fiddle with the dirty Binding rope still circling my wrist. I don't want to share with them the letters that Gabrielle left on the window for me. It's the last connection between us. The last secret we share. “These letters, they have to mean something,” I say instead. “I think that if we follow them we may be able to figure out an order to them. Figure out the pattern and where they lead.”

Cass growls low in her throat. “So what,” she says. “We followed one of those paths and it led us to a dead end; it led us nowhere. It's like we were told growing up—there is no end to the Forest of Hands and Teeth!”

“What if they lied to us?” Travis asks, his voice calm and measured. He looks at us each in turn. “Clearly they lied to us about the path. The Guardians placed supplies out here even when we were told the path was off-limits. Permanently off-limits. What if there is an end to the Forest?”

“We need to go back,” Cass says again. But this time her shoulders slump, her face slack with exhaustion and her voice empty. “Please,” she adds. She turns to Harry and says again, “Please.” But no one moves to join her and finally she turns and stumbles down the path away from us.