The Forest of Hands and Teeth (25 page)

I bring my hands to my cheeks, everything coming into focus for one brief moment. Maybe she escaped, maybe they're all out there, alone and searching. Maybe I'm the one meant to find them, to remember them, to carry them forward. I begin to pace, my mind tripping over itself. “I can get to the gates,” I say, my voice breathy and excited. “I can find her.”

“Who?” Travis asks me, his tone loud and firm as he grasps both my shoulders. “Who are you looking for?”

“Her,” I tell him, motioning to myself, to the dress I'm wearing.

“What are you talking about, Mary? You're not making any sense.” His grip keeps me from continuing my pacing but my feet tap against the floorboards, my toes digging into the wood with desire to move, to act on my need.

“Don't you see? Someone right now could be in our village, could be in one of our houses. They could find my clothes and think that I'm one of them, that I'm Unconsecrated, but I'm not. I'm here and they would never know.”

I pull my shoulders from his grasp and go back to pacing. I shove one hand into my hair and wave the other around as I think, trying to pull together the whirring thoughts in my head.

Who are we if not the stories we pass down? What happens when there's no one left to tell those stories? To hear them? Who will ever know that I existed? What if we are the only ones left—who will know our stories then? And what will happen to everyone else's stories? Who will remember those?

“There is no one at our village, Mary,” he says to me. “And the woman who used to live here, why does she matter? She's no longer here. If she made it out alive, she didn't come down our path.”

I snap my fingers. “You're right,” I say, every thought in my head somehow clear. “She must have moved on. She must have gone down the other path, she must have continued away from here.”

Travis shakes his head. “Mary.” He takes my arm again to stop me from pacing. “Tell me why this matters to you so much. Tell me why now, all of a sudden this is so important?”

My feet fall still and I look into his eyes. His impossibly beautiful, calm eyes. “Because no one will ever know about her. And that means that no one will ever know about me.” My voice is a whisper. “When they come to our village, who will know about me?”

“I know about you, Mary.” He places a hand on my cheek, trails one finger along my jaw, and I'm forced to close my eyes so that he doesn't read in my expression the words that ring in my head but that I can't say aloud. That it is not enough.

That I am terrified he is not enough.

My throat burns with tears as he pulls me against his chest. “I know about you, Mary,” he repeats, the vibrations of his voice trembling through my body. His lips are on my ear and as if he can read my mind he says, “Is life with me not enough, Mary?”

I am filled with emptiness as I nod my head because I cannot bear to tell him the truth. Even as he reads my mind, as he proves to me how well he knows me. Even though he already knows my answer. Because I'm still hoping that he can fill the emptiness and the longing and that tomorrow morning I can wake up in his arms and it will be enough.

I
have taken to spending most of my time up on the porch on the third floor, a place where Travis can't reach me because of his leg. I don't know what he does all day as I sit on the edge of the wooden boards, my legs dangling out in the air over the Unconsecrated below.

It's been a hot and dry summer, and every afternoon I wait for the rain that never comes.

I'm back to wearing my own clothes, all the dresses of the lady of this house folded neatly and packed into the trunk, the lid secured. When I walk through the attic space to get to my perch I try to avoid looking at those trunks stacked against the wall, but I always sneak a peek. I always wonder what other treasures are hidden inside.

I've promised Travis, if not out loud, that I won't take such risks again. That I won't do anything to endanger us both. That I'll try to be happy with our little life. And yet I can't stop my curiosity. I can't stop wondering what else I might find in those trunks.

And so one afternoon, when I can stand the boredom no longer, I slink through the attic and start to sift through their contents. The dresses I push aside, pausing only slightly to finger the softness of the fabric, the shininess of some of the buttons. There are more clothes—thick winter parkas, vests like the kind Gabrielle wore but in muted colors. I run my fingers over them and then force myself to set them aside as I begin to think about who must have worn these clothes.

I can't let myself think about the residents of this village and their lost stories.

At the bottom of one of the trunks I find a stack of books with cracked leather binding. I lift them out gently, flakes of leather crumbling as I maneuver them from their hiding place. I peel open the cover of the first book and run my fingers down the page. It's a photograph, yellowed around the edges, of a baby.

I've seen only one photograph in my life, the one that was lost to the fire in my village so many years ago, and I'm shocked again at how lifelike the image is. How the picture has captured an individual moment in life, frozen for all eternity. For strangers like me to wonder and ponder.

Carefully I turn the page to find more photos. Of a small room with the morning light slanting through the window. A young, unshaven man lounging on the bed, his hand hovering tenderly above the same baby from the picture before, now asleep in the covers.

Of a child sitting at a table, food smeared around her laughing face.

Of a child tentatively walking, her hand on a table, a faceless man behind her holding his hands out to catch her if she falls.

And then there are the photos taken outside. Of a child on a swing, a young woman watching from the side as the child flies high in the air. Of a child with pigtails, her cheeks puffed out, ready to blow on a cake studded with small thin candles.

Fascinated, I flip through the pages faster and faster, watching this child grow.

Until I come to one of a young girl with her long black hair wet around her shoulders. Her mother stands behind her, holding her in her arms. Around them the peaks of waves are eternally still, their soft whitecaps captured before the crash.

It is the ocean. Just like the picture of my many-greats-grandmother when she was a child. And for a moment my breath catches because the little girl in the picture looks just like me. And the mother resembles my mother.

Tears begin to choke off the air in my throat and my body shudders. Even as I see how this little girl could never be me: her limbs too long and gangly, the mother shorter and plumper than my own. But for a moment, for the heartbeat before my mind is able to discern these tiny differences, I'm lost in the idea of my mother and me and the ocean.

I flip through the rest of the book but the remaining pages are empty and bare. This is the last photo. A girl I have never met. Who existed before the Return. In the ocean safe with her mother.

Suddenly, the roof of the attic is too close. This house is not enough for me anymore. I know that this solitude will never settle through my bones and I realize that I still long for the ocean and it's not enough to just sit in this life and be safe.

My body aches with this realization and I shake my head as I try to convince myself that this cannot be true. That I am happy here with Travis. That this is what I have always wanted: safety and love.

The air is too thick around me, pressing me in and under, and I stumble to the door and out onto the ledge overlooking the others on their platform. I swipe at my eyes as the bright light nearly blinds me.

I spend the rest of the afternoon watching the others go about their day. Sometimes one of them will stop to wave at me and I will wave back, but more often they live their lives as if I am not there, hovering, examining it all.

Their house in the trees is cruder than the house Travis and I occupy, its walls made of rough logs, no glass in the windows. It sprawls over branches and it's difficult to tell where the tree ends and the house begins. A large porch surrounds it all, with wooden platforms and walkways spreading out into the surrounding trees to other houses and other platforms that form a grid over the village. It seems they have plenty of provisions, as I've seen them eating and laughing.

And while they have plenty of space if they want to spread out, it appears as though they prefer to stick together. All living under the same roof.

A happy family. Like the family in the photographs.

Harry and Jed pulled a table out from inside one day and they now eat their meals outside and I watch them throw their heads back with laughter. I watch the way Harry's hand has started to linger at Cass's waist. How he spends more time with Jacob, as if he were his own son.

Even though I can hear nothing from their world over the din of the Unconsecrated, it seems so much brighter and louder and fuller than mine. It makes my own house feel silent and empty.

It's not that Travis and I don't speak, for we do. It's just that it seems words have become unnecessary between us. We know at a glance, at a thought what the other desires. And so our world seems to have fallen silent.

We are each trying to determine the best way out of this house, out of this life. Wondering how we can reach the others and flee this village. Already my toes curl at the thought of walking down the path, searching for the next gate, the next village, the ocean. Looking for the woman who once lived in this house and telling her that someone still remembers her.

That her life holds meaning.

Late one morning I step out onto the porch, the boards already hot from the summer sun, and I see that Harry is standing at the end of his platform, the place closest to me. He waves to greet me and I wave back and then he spins his fingers in a circle as if to send me a message.

I raise my shoulders in a question, not understanding him. With his entire hand he draws a circle but still I'm lost. He continues the motions for a while and then gives up, his hands on his hips. Then he turns, his back to me, and looks over his shoulder. I do the same, keeping my eyes on him as I turn my back.

He shakes his head and I can see his shoulders lifting and falling as he laughs. Finally, he waves me away and goes back to join the others and I take my usual seat, feet dangling, and open a jar of fig preserves, spreading the sugary jam on fresh bread.

I kick my feet, letting the fresh air lift my skirt, and I contemplate the distance between our house and the fence. The distance between my porch and Harry's platform. The density of the Unconsecrated between us. And I look for ways to escape, my desire to continue searching for the ocean crawling at my skin as days slip past us.

I try not to think about the book full of photographs hidden in the trunk in the attic. I haven't mentioned them to Travis, afraid that he will think it's like the green dress all over again. That I'm somehow obsessed with the people who came before us and their stories.

I wonder if the girl in the picture knew what was coming. That the world would change so drastically. There's a part of me that wants to believe the photo was taken after the Return, that the mother and her daughter are still somehow safe enveloped in the waves of the ocean.

But there is no fear in their eyes. And no one lives after the Return without that fear. It's the fear of death always tugging at you. Always needing you, begging you.

To distract myself from such thoughts, I explore the village with my eyes. Wondering what it must be like to stroll along its streets, what it was like when it was full of life. Our house dominates the end of this street, with small but neat wooden dwellings stretching out from either side. Not too far away I can see the trade houses I noticed on our first day here, signs announcing wares for sale—clothing, food, services— swinging in the breeze, unharmed. It's an odd sight because in our village the Sisterhood provides everything and there's no need for trade.

But as much as I have searched I still cannot find any signs of God etched upon the buildings. Instead, Unconsecrated shuffle from houses, seep from shops. The whole scene is too surreal to comprehend, and so I look away, training my gaze back on Harry and Jed and Cass and Jacob.