The Forest of Hands and Teeth

  His thumb glides over the pulse in my wrist and then I feel his body stiffen. His fingers trace along the rope still tied to me, frayed and dingy now. It's the rope that bound Harry and me together the night before.

  Travis's hand slips away from mine. I feel its absence the way it must feel to lose a limb. Desperate, the ghost of its presence still taunting me.

  I want to turn to him, to talk to him. But I can't force the words from my mouth with Harry standing so close. With our village dying before us.

  “Do you think we should go help them?” Harry asks.

  Out of the corner of my eye I can see his hand clenching and unclenching from the ax he brought from our cottage. His voice is flooded with the same hopelessness we all feel.

  None of us moves. Instead, we simply stand and stare. Unable to fully comprehend what is happening. That the world we have always known is crumbling.

  That such a thing would occur must have been inevitable and yet none of us ever believed it would happen. Never really thought it could happen. Of course we have known breaches and have lived always with the threat of the Unconsecrated. But it's been generations since the Return. We were surviving. Our village is a testament to life constantly surrounded by the threat of death.

  And now that is gone. Everyone we have ever known, the only place we have ever been, every possession: gone.

  Soon enough the dead shuffle through the village and one by one they approach the gate. As if we are the last of the living for them to hunger after. While the day wears on we stand and watch the Unconsecrated gather on the other side, watch as they push against the fencing. Listen to the shouts of the survivors as they try in vain to beat them back, as they fight from the platforms to recapture the village.

  I begin to recognize those clawing at the gates. Some of them are—were—my neighbors. Were my friends and classmates. Some were their parents. Fresh blood still stains their clothes, in some cases drips from their mouths.

  I wonder about those left on the platforms, fighting against these newly turned Unconsecrated. I wonder if they realize that by pulling the ladders up in their panic, they have only added to the chaos, only added more victims for the Unconsecrated to turn. Only created more enemies—hundreds of them.

  After a while it becomes too much for Cass to bear and she breaks away from our group, goes to Jacob, who has been lying comatose on the ground, and pulls him into her lap. I can hear her singing lullabies, humming where she forgets the words.

  In some small way it's a comfort to hear her voice. To be reminded that there can be normalcy. Even as everything else in our world slips away.

  “I worry about the latch on the gate holding,” Harry says as the sun begins to slip away at the end of the day. “It wasn't meant to keep back the Unconsecrated. Only to guard this path.”

  I shudder as I look at the metal latch that is all that protects us from the ravenous horde. I look at the fence on either side of us, at how it's wide here but narrows as it leads away from the village. Its links are red with rust and vines twine through them. Because the path is off-limits, the fences have never been cared for and I wonder how many Unconsecrated pushing against it would bring it down.

  “We should go down the path some,” Travis says. “Far enough that they lose interest and turn back toward the village. Stop pressing against the gate. Maybe …” He trails off and then seems to find his voice again. “Maybe during the night they can fight them off. Regain control of the village.” No one responds and it is as if he is compelled to add, “We should at least give them the night; see what it looks like in the morning.”

  Harry nods, his hand still gripping the ax, his shoulders tense.

  I say nothing. I can't trust my emotions, the tingle that vibrates up my arms and legs. I turn to look down the trail, the others still concentrating on the gate and Cass's attention fully on Jacob. I take a few steps, at once scared and thrilled.

  The path here is overgrown and brambles tug at my skirt so that I have to fight against them with every step.

  Behind me I can hear Travis and Harry arguing about food and weapons. About whether the village would be able to repel the breach or if the path is our only hope.

  I am silent as I walk away from the village. Far enough away so that I am not a draw to the Unconsecrated at the gate. As the path begins to narrow I stretch my arms out wide and almost scrape the links of the fence with my fingertips. Here the Forest is clear of Unconsecrated and for a moment I imagine I can hear a bird chirp in the distance.

  Finally, I make my own decision: I will give them the night to see if the village repels the breach. But then I will go down this path. Alone if I have to.

  Sometime during the night it begins to rain. Taking Travis's advice, we've moved our little group down the path, and here it is too narrow for us to huddle together against the cold and the wet. Travis and Harry sit next to each other, Harry closest to the gate since he is the only one with a weapon.

  I sit at the other end of the line, Argos with his head on my knee as I tug at his ears and press my hand against his smooth fur. Cass is between us with Jacob curled tightly in her lap. Her hair is scraggly, pulling from its braid to create a halo around her face in the darkness. Jacob drifted into limp-limbed sleep some time ago but Cass continues to rock and hum, as much for her own comfort as his.

  Travis and Harry continue to murmur together, Travis's light head tilted toward Harry's dark one as they whisper, trying to determine what to do next. The rain throws off the Unconsecrated's ability to sense us—the air heavy with water, our scent dulled. Some have wandered away from the fence on either side, slipping back into the Forest. It's a welcome reprieve from the crushing sound of their moans, even though if the wind changes I can still hear the last gasps of the battle in the village just down the path.

  The Unconsecrated are a determined foe that never sleeps. I know that the villagers must take advantage of the rain for their attack—the scent of human flesh deadened in the water-soaked air making it harder for the Unconsecrated to find them.

  Every now and then Harry or Travis will raise his voice and the Unconsecrated will stir out in the Forest. Each time Cass hisses for them to be quiet and once, when one of the Unconsecrated curls his fingers through the fence behind her, rust flakes drifting to the ground, she begins to whimper.

  I want to place my arm around her but the space here is too narrow, our bodies too awkwardly arranged with Jacob in her lap.

  “There is an end to the Forest, Cass,” I tell her, trying to comfort her. “There's an Outside—there's more out there.”

  “So what?” she says, her voice quivering.

  “Don't you want to know what's on the other side?” I ask her. “To see the ocean? To know that there is more? To find a place that isn't touched by all this?” I wave my arms at a thin Unconsecrated man scraping at the fence but the night is so dark I doubt she can see me.

  “The ocean has always been your dream, Mary, not mine.” She pauses for a moment and suddenly I feel a hand on my cheek. I flinch, not expecting it, but she keeps her chilled flesh against me. The rain has caused her fingertips to wrinkle.

  “It's the only way for us to make it,” I say. “For Jacob to have a chance at a life.”

  “Our place is in the village. Jacob's place is with his parents,” she says.

  I want to shake her but instead keep my fingers in the fur of Argos's back.

  “Don't you see? Everything has changed,” I say. “Jacob's parents may not have even survived. Nothing will be the same.”

  She moves her hand from my cheek to cover my mouth. “I don't want to hear such things,” she says, her voice even and serious. “Don't you see that believing the village is gone means that everyone we have ever known is dead? I won't give up that easily on them. And neither should you.”

  Her hand slips from my face. I can hear as she resettles the boy in her lap, hear him groan and then fall back into dreamless sleep. The rain barely dribbles now. Ano
ther Unconsecrated has joined the first at the fence next to us, summoned by the moans. It's too dark to see anything but I can hear them scrabbling against the metal. Hear their desperation.

  I wonder who those hands belonged to. Which of those hands once stroked the head of a sick child, once touched the lips of a loved one, once clasped together in prayer. I wonder if any of those hands belong to my mother.

  “Going down that path would kill us all, Mary,” Cass says. “You're selfish to want to sacrifice all of us for your own whims.”

  Her words echo, crashing through my body. For a moment I imagine going back to the village to help beat back the breach. Of returning to the cottage with Harry and continuing our lives, finishing the ceremony, bearing his children instead of Travis's.

  Trying to be content.

  “Cass,” I whisper. Water slips down my face and into my mouth. “We're already dead. We're surrounded by it every day. And we shuffle along in our lives just like they shuffle along in theirs. It's inevitable that it invade our lives someday the way it invaded our village this morning. We aren't part of any cycle of life, Cass.”

  She doesn't respond. Once I would have told Cass everything about Gabrielle. I would have shared my fears that the Sisters brought this destruction down on us all. I would have told Cass that I had proof of a world beyond the Forest.

  But instead I stay silent. I peer out into the darkness, down the path that leads away from the village. Where Gabrielle came from. I place my hand against the damp ground, wondering if maybe Gabrielle paused here before entering the village. I wonder what made her choose to come down the path and if she started out alone or whether she had companions that died or left her along the way.

  I want to tell Cass about Gabrielle so that she can feel the same hope I do. But I'm afraid that Cass will only speak aloud the dark fears that seep through my thoughts: that Gabrielle's story is not one of hope and that none of us can expect a happy ending.

  I tug at the knots of the Binding rope on my wrist, twisting them, fraying the ends, trying to loosen them. But they hold tight.

  I want to know why Travis and Cass don't still wear their Binding ropes. If they ever wore them. It is the rule of Brethlaw that once the bride and groom are bound with the rope they are not to undo the Bindings until after the final vow ceremony is complete. Until they are bound in the eyes of God—bound spiritually so that the physical bonds are no longer necessary.

  I know that it's reasonable to believe that, like Harry and me, Cass and Travis cut the rope so that they could escape from the breach more easily. But the thought, the mere idea that they may have never been bound eats away at me. That they may have refused the ceremony with Sister Tabitha, or that one of them may have cut the rope during the night, simmers in my veins.

  I pull my knees up to my chest and place my forehead against the wet fabric of my skirt, squeezing my eyes shut. It feels as if my heart is about to explode as I wonder if Travis and Cass were ever Bound. As I wonder if I have ruined any chance for Travis and me to be together because I didn't wait for him until the end.

  Because I chose to Bind myself to Harry. Because I gave up on Travis. On love.

  I want to weep and laugh at the same time but instead I clench my teeth.

  I try not to let the idea of the outside world tingle through my veins. But I cannot help it. On the edge of sleep, when my thoughts are no longer my own but controlled of their own volition, the sound of the ocean comes to me: the rustling of leaves of a hundred thousand trees that surround me, pulsing with the wind as the waves crash over my head. Pulling me under. Tossing my body as if it has no need of bones.

  Every night I drown and every morning I wake up struggling to breathe.

  I wake to chaos. Voices shouting, Cass screaming, Argos barking. I thrash my legs, try to stand, and stumble a few steps until I'm brought up short by the fence. Cold fingers slip against my skin and I shriek and fall back until I'm huddled in the middle of the narrow path.

  Cass holds Jacob behind her as she points toward the village. “They're coming,” she says, and in the murky fog I can see Harry standing with his legs spread, his ax held tight in his hands. Travis stands behind him, a thick branch his weapon. Argos crouches low and growls, ready to attack. The fences lining the path tower over them both, the predawn light slanting through the links casting crisscross shadows over all of us.

  We can hear the shuffling of feet growing close. I reach out and take Cass's hand and she squeezes mine so tight in return that I can feel the bones grinding against one another.

  “We should go farther away where it is safe,” I say as I tug her. “So long as it isn't the Fast One, we can outpace them.”

  But before we can get too far I hear Harry shout and then he's running, the ax slipping from his fingers. Travis limps along after him and then, from around the corner, I see two figures coming toward us—a man and a woman.

  Harry takes the woman in his arms and that's when I realize it's my brother and his wife. I run back down the path toward them, stopping a few arm's lengths from where Harry and Travis surround their sister, blocking me from my brother.

  Jed steps aside and faces me. “Hello, Jed,” I say, approaching him as if I were the prodigal child, not him. I see him glance at the dingy white braided rope still dangling from my wrist and then his eyes search my face. For a moment I'm afraid he will say nothing but then he opens his arms and I am finally hugging my brother who has been gone from my life for so long. I can't help but think about the bond of friendship we used to have and how much I have missed him.

  I step back and Jed slips a protective arm around his wife. She pulls a damp and grungy shawl tighter around her shoulders and leans her head against my brother, her frizzy brown hair falling loose from its bandana.

  “The village is gone,” he says. We huddle as close together as possible on the narrow path. Beth at one end, leaning against my brother, then Harry and Travis and then Cass, Jacob and I at the other end. The fences hem us in on either side, making me feel slightly trapped, forcing me to breathe deeply to keep calm.

  “Too many have turned,” Jed continues. “It's no longer safe on the ground.” He pulls Beth against him, using his hand to guide her head down to his shoulder. “We took the chance in the rain to come after you. This path was our only hope.”

  Beth shudders at his words and it seems to pass from her bones to mine.

  “But how can that be?” Harry asks. “The Guardians are trained for this.”

  Jed's jaw clenches. “The Guardians train to repair fences, to repel a breach of slow and unwieldy Unconsecrated. It was the Fast One,” he tells us. “The one with the strange red clothing. She was too much. She came too quickly, killed too many. Then the dead turned and even though they were slow, they were too many. It was too much for the Guardians. For all of us.”

  “But aren't they still fighting?” Harry asks. I can feel the frustration rolling from his shoulders. His hands clench as if searching for the ax to wield.

  Jed just drops his head to his chest, brushes a soft kiss on his wife's forehead as tears drip down her face.

  I feel the breath leave my body; my stomach burns with the knowledge that this is truly it. That our village is no more. It's as if everyone has had large weights dropped onto them. Their shoulders sag. Their legs buckle.

  A hundred faces flicker across my mind: teachers, friends, Sisters, Guardians, neighbors. They are all Unconsecrated. Beth, Harry and Travis's parents: gone. Cass will never be hugged by her mother again. Jacob will never play with his sister.

  I think about how it felt to lose first my father and then my mother. Of the crushing pain. And I can tell from the faces around me that such reality is beginning to settle in, become comprehensible to the others.

  Jacob doesn't seem to understand, his expression puzzled as he glances from face to face.

  Around us the Unconsecrated continue to moan, continue to paw at the fences. Harry clears his throat, grasps Jed by the ar
m. “Are you sure?”

  “It's gone” is all that Jed says. “There is no going back.”

  I can see how Harry's jaw tightens and I remember that look so well from our childhood when he used to watch the older boys tussle and play at being Guardians. I know he wonders if his presence in the village would have made a difference—if he is a coward for escaping through the gate.

  “The path is our only option, then,” Travis says. He glances at all of us, and I can't help but think that his gaze lingers on mine more than the others.

  The rest of us are silent and then Harry speaks. “We have some food that Mary and I brought from the village. And two bladders of water. We took them when we heard the sirens yesterday morning.”

  “But will it be enough?” Cass asks. She has pressed Jacob's head against her chest and covered his ears so that he doesn't hear our conversation.

  “There are food and weapons on the path,” Jed says. His voice is calm and even.

  Harry is the first to respond. “How? Why would … ? I don't understand,” he finally says.

  Jed takes a deep breath. “The Sisterhood. Since the beginning, since after the Return, they have instructed the Guardians to shore up the path. To keep supplies out here in the event of a breach. It wasn't unforeseen that this could happen. That we would be forced from the village. The Guardians prepared for such an event.”

  “But I'm a Guardian and I knew nothing about this.”

  “You're an apprentice to the Guardians,” Jed says.

  Harry's cheeks flash red. “My father was the chief of the Guardians and he said nothing of this!” Harry is shouting now, agitating the Unconsecrated that press against the fence on either side and causing their moans to intensify.