The Forest of Hands and Teeth

Page 8

“Your mother used to tell you stories about life before the Return,” she says. “But did she ever tell you of murder? Of the pain and anguish? The heresy and hypocrisy? Wars, deceit, selfishness? Of people allowing human beings to die of hunger outside in the cold when they had warmth and food? Even during the Return, when we were struggling to keep humanity alive, people turned on each other, attacked each other, stole from each other!
“That is why we are here, how we survived—by cutting ourselves off. By letting the rest of humanity perish. Here, everyone is fed. Everyone is warm and safe and loved and cared for. We do that, Mary. It is the Sisterhood that has brought heaven to this hell. People always want to be trusted, but look where it gets them! I have trusted you and look at how you skulk around this place at night when you think I am not looking. Look at how you bend the rules for your own interest.
“Even if it means harming your friend. You lust after Travis, you tempt him even though you have known he was pledged to Cass. You place your own desires before those of your friend, before those of your community and God.” She pauses, seems to compose herself for a moment before continuing.
“You think you want love, Mary. You think it is this beautiful gift that does nothing but fill you and make you whole. But you are wrong. Love can be cruel and ugly. It can become dark and cause the deepest pain. Just look at what it has done to your parents.” She places a hand over her chest as if she is clutching at her own heart. “Do you not understand that life in this village is not about love but about commitment?”
I take another step back, my hands over my mouth. My cheeks flush. All this time she has known about me and Travis. “How do you know such things?” I ask. I think of all the nights I have crept through the Cathedral to Travis's room. Of all the times I thought I was alone, that I had escaped the scrutiny of Sister Tabitha. But she was only testing me. Seeing how far I was willing to twist her trust and my own loyalty.
For a moment I don't think she will answer me. “It is not an easy life,” she says at last, “being one of the keepers of the knowledge of the Sisterhood. It is far easier to live in ignorance, like you. Do you not see that I am trying to save you? To keep you from pain and anguish? This is why you must repent. Because if you do not, you will take away any choices I have in dealing with you. And you know what your fate will be.”
My heart pounds as I think of the tunnel under the Cathedral and the clearing in the Forest and I nod. Sister Tabitha tucks a strand of hair back from my face, her hand resting on my cheek the way my mother used to do. “I am trying to keep you safe, but you must help me. I can see now that it is no longer enough to keep you trapped here in the Cathedral. Maybe I was wrong to keep you from the village. Your solitude is over. You may leave this building. But remember that I will always be watching you.”
She keeps her eyes locked on mine and it is impossible for me to look away. And then she turns, her long black tunic sweeping the floor, and leaves me by the window, closing the door behind her so that I am alone with the view of the Forest.
Outside, pure white snow covers the trees and fence, blanketing the Unconsecrated. It is a bright clear day, the sun sparkling off the ice crystals. One of those days when you can't understand why there is such beauty in a world that is nothing but ugly.
It is almost too much to bear.
I wander to the bed and kneel by it the way I used to do when Travis was here. I press my face into his pillow, trying to smell him, trying to remember. It is a test to see if I can really give him up.
I know that I never will. Even to save him. I am too selfish.
Before I know it I am pummeling the pillow, ripping at the sheets, a low growl in my throat. I am about to wreak more destruction when I hear a soft knock.
I freeze.
I hear the knock again. It doesn't come from the door but from the wall. I crawl over the bed and place my ear against it. With one finger I tap back. “Hello?” I ask, my voice low.
Part of me wonders if this is a trap set by Sister Tabitha to tempt me, to test whether I have taken her words to heart.
“Who's there?” I hear from the other side.
“Mary,” I respond. “Who are you?”
“My name is Gabrielle,” she says. “I came through the gate. Where am I?”
“You're in the Cathedral,” I tell her. My heart beats wild. I want to let her know she is safe but I can't be sure anymore. I have so many questions to ask her and I know that Sister Tabitha will be back at any moment and that if she catches me she will hand me over to the Forest.
But there is one thing I must know first. “Are you well? Were you …” I struggle with the words: “Bitten? Infected?” I have to know if she made it through to the village without harm. If the path is safe.
My uneven breath is so loud in my ears that I barely hear her response. “No,” she says. “No, I'm fine. I'm not Infected.”
I let my forehead fall against the wall when she says it, relief washing through me for a reason I can't identify or explain.
I open my mouth. I am about to ask her where she's from, if there is a world outside the Forest and what it's like, if there are other villages out there and are they safe. Has she ever seen the ocean and does she know why we're all here, why this happened and why we're trapped in this place.
But instead I feel tears on my cheeks and I hear a scraping in the hallway. I leap off the bed and gather the sheets I had torn from the mattress earlier in my arms and I run to the door so that when it opens Sister Tabitha won't know I was at the wall, speaking to the girl on the other side.
I duck out of the room quickly and go to the laundry, letting the steam from the boiling vats of water roll over me, making my skin glisten so that no one will know that it is tears on my cheeks rather than sweat.
When I'm done washing the smell of Travis out of the sheets I slip into my heavy coat and gloves and sneak outside into the graveyard, down toward the fence line. In the depths of winter I am guaranteed solitude here; no one from the village dares stray too far from the warmth of their hearths, not even to honor the fallen. Here lie my ancestors, all except my father and mother, whose deaths are not marked with a tombstone because they are Unconsecrated.
I glance back over my shoulder at the Cathedral, wondering if I will see Gabrielle at the window in the creeping darkness.
She is there, standing by the curtains. I stop and look up at her and our eyes meet. My breath hitches—it is like looking at a reflection in the water. The same age, same dark hair, same questions in our eyes. She looks like she might be taller, willowier than me. And she's wearing a vest made of an unnatural red so bright and strange that it almost hurts my eyes. She raises a hand and places it against the window, her palm flat against the glass. I raise my own hand and begin to walk toward her but then I see her turn and look over her shoulder and then the curtains fall shut and she is gone.
I scamper away and duck behind a gravestone angel, afraid of getting caught staring up at the Outsider's room when clearly her presence here is meant to be a secret. When I am sure the shadows of twilight will mask my movement, I walk to the gate guarding the pathway to Outside. I notice that the snow is smooth and undisturbed. There's no evidence that an Outsider was brought through this fence a few nights ago. Nothing to give away that an Outsider is among us.
I circle around the dwelling houses, flapping my arms against my sides to keep warm, and wend my way to the village hill. I climb into the watchtower, the boards slick with ice. When I'm at the highest point in our village I look out at the Forest. I strain to see if I can find the edge of it, find where the rest of the world begins.
But all I can see is darkness.
My entire life has been about the world outside the fence line, has been about the Forest. Of course I have wondered if there's anything past the Forest, if anything else survived the Return or if my mother's stories were true and an entire world existed before the Return. We have never even known if there is a fence on the other side of the trees—if there is an end to it at all. Are we merely the yolk of an egg, the Forest the white of the egg, another fence the shell? Or does the Forest run forever, hemmed in by nothing but Unconsecrated? A part of me has imagined that there could be nothing else in our world but Forest.
Forest and the Unconsecrated.
I have wondered too about the ocean, about the Outside before. But it had never occurred to me to go and find out. To leave this village and the only life I have ever known. We are told growing up that there is nothing past the fences worth living for. That the world ended with the Return and we are the last bastion.
But of course we are not. Gabrielle is proof of this. Even though the ground is covered with snow and I am standing on a tower on a hill being swept by the wind, I'm not cold. I am too excited to be cold. There is proof of life outside our fences. And I cannot help but wonder how this will change our lives.
There is a world out there, out beyond us. And now we are part of this world. It is terrifying and wonderful.
Chapter 9
I drum my fingers against the desk under the window in my room. I am impatient. I can't stop my foot from tapping against the floor. I keep my eyes on the fence line, looking for any sign of my mother. Doing this is the only thing that has kept my mind off the Outsider—Gabrielle—and from conjuring ways to sneak up to find her.
After our recent confrontation I know that Sister Tabitha keeps watch over me and yet I can't stay still, can't stop my curiosity. In an attempt to avoid her detection I have slipped out the window and gone to stand underneath Gabrielle's room, hoping that I will figure out a way to climb the two stories and get inside. But the window is always dark, the curtains tightly drawn.
Since that first day when she stood by the window in her strange red vest I haven't seen her again and I begin to worry if she is well. But I know she is still here in the Cathedral. I can see it in the way the Sisters whisper among themselves and eye those of us who are uninitiated into the inner sanctum. The air is tense here, like a cord pulled taut.
I have grown reckless in my attempts to speak with Gabrielle and I know that I'm tempting Sister Tabitha's wrath if she finds out. But I can't help it. It is like a fever. Now that I'm no longer allowed to see Travis, Gabrielle is all I can think about.
I've decided that it is worth Sister Tabitha and the Unconsecrated if I can at last find out what is past the Forest.
A knock at the door startles me from my thoughts. It's a young Sister sent to bring me to see Sister Tabitha. She leads me back toward the Sanctuary in the heart of the Cathedral and through to another wing that is off-limits except to the most elite Sisters.
I wonder if this is it. If these steps will be the last that I will take. If I am finally paying for my curiosity and stubbornness and impetuousness. I wonder if I will beg for Sister Tabitha's forgiveness when she leads me through the tunnel back toward the old well house and abandons me in the Forest.
But Sister Tabitha is not alone when I enter her office, sharp sunlight stabbing my eyes as it pours through three large windows that overlook the village. Harry is there with her, his arms straight by his sides, hands clenched into fists. Travis is dead, I suddenly think. I was told he had turned for the worse and here is his brother looking solemn and sad and I almost sink to my knees.
“I have news,” Sister Tabitha tells me and I nod because my vocal cords are being eaten away with acid tears.
“Harry has spoken for you, Mary,” she tells me.
I whip my head around to face Harry. I can feel my eyebrows draw together with shock and anger. I cannot believe this could be the truth. Why would he speak for me now when he hadn't done so before, when it would have mattered and when I could have said yes and meant it? Back when I didn't know love and could have been happy with admiration and acceptance?
“But the Sisterhood,” I stammer. This cannot be happening.
“I have given him my blessing. So has your brother, Jed,” Sister Tabitha says. “You are needed more out there as a wife and mother than in here as a Sister.” Her sharp eyes bore into me. “We both know you are ill-suited for the Sisterhood.”
The world swirls around me and I have nothing to cling to in order to make it right. All I can think about is Travis and how it felt to press against his body that night. How can I ever be with his brother after that?
“You will marry at Brethlaw in the spring,” she continues. “With Travis and Cassandra,” she adds as if she doesn't know that she is breaking my heart.
“My duties to God…,” I begin to ask, even though I don't believe in God.
“Will be served by doing His will and making sure our village thrives through another generation,” she finishes.
She means having children with Harry. My stomach clenches at the thought of it. I think of his hand holding mine under the water the day that my mother was infected. I think about the way his flesh looked, puffy and white and wrong.
I open my mouth, ready to reject his courtship. But then I realize that doing so will tie my fate to the Sisterhood forever, will condemn me to a life inside these walls in service to God and Sister Tabitha.
My mind whirls, trying to determine which is the better choice, which the better fate: life as wife to Harry or life as a Sister. Neither one bringing me closer to Travis.
“Would you two like a moment alone together to speak?” she asks us.
I glance at Harry, not caring that pain and rage and desolation radiate from my body. He looks at me, his expression soft, his hands no longer fisted. It seems as if he's leaning forward, about to take a step closer to me. I feel my muscles tense and shake in response.
I am surprised that I don't growl like a wounded animal cornered by dogs. He starts to raise a hand—whether to beckon me or fend me off I don't know or care. Already I feel myself pulling away from him, putting physical space between us without taking a step.