Into the Woods: Tales from the Hollows and Beyond(131)
Author: Kim Harrison

"Yeah, you’d better run!" Lilly shouted at the surrounding trees. "You hit my mom; I’m going to pound you, you little thug!"

"He got away . . ." her mother lamented. "The tree died. The spell broke. And he got away!"

Lilly brought her gaze back from the empty trees, the heat in the air turning to steam in her lungs. It was hard to breathe, and she recoiled at the dead, decapitated chicken at the base of the tree. Horror took her, becoming shock when her mother slowly rose, wiping the blood and feathers stuck to her hand on a corner of her tied-up dress. Askew in the dirt and scree was one of her butcher knives. Blood is binding, blood is lure; Flesh is fragile, to blade’s sweet cure.

What by sweet Jesus was her mother doing?

"Mom?" The imprint of a hand shown bright red on her mom’s face, and Lilly wavered, the blood rushing out of her head. There was a dead chicken on the ground. There was a knife in the dirt. Blood stained her mother’s hands. "What are you doing? My God, did you butcher a chicken out here?"

Tears still slipping down her wrinkled face, her mother turned her lips in, biting them as if to keep from sobbing. "I can’t make it stick a second time," she said, her eyes on the woods as if they still held the wolves of her childhood. "He doesn’t trust me, and even if I could, the tree has died. Nothing can hold him in dead wood. Nothing."

Scared, Lilly shook her mom’s shoulder. "Do you know that boy? Mom, who was that?"

But her mother just stood there, tears spilling over one by one, turning her beautiful. "You saw him? Lilly, I’m so sorry. I never should have told you about him, but I thought he was gone forever. That you knew his name made it easier for him to force his way in, to make you see him."

Her mother’s eyes suddenly rose in a new thought, and she gripped Lilly’s arm tightly. "Where’s Meg?"

Her fear struck Lilly, and she shoved aside and buried it under logic. But still the fear seeped up like water. "She’s at home. You think I’m going to bring her out here? Why did you kill one of our chickens?" Blood is binding, blood is lure. My mother is crazy.

"You left her alone?" Snatching up the knife, her mother strode to a large rock embedded into the soil. Using it as a stepping-stone, she laboriously lifted herself up onto it, and hopped a tentative, uneasy path through the briars. "He will twist her with one smile, and that’s assuming he’s not already gotten her outside in the moonlight! How could you leave her alone? I told you he was free. I told you-"

"Shut up! Just shut up!" Lilly shouted, the heat of the sun pounding on her. The echo of her anger and frustration came back to her from the surrounding trees as she stood in the rocky ground beside the dead pine tree and watched her mother jump from rock to rock as if she was ten. "There is no forest ghost. You are sick, Mom. Give me that knife!"

Like a wild thing, she crossed the three stones that separated them and wrestled the knife from her mother and threw it beside the dead chicken, the blood already soaked into the ground. "We are going home, and you are never going to talk about this again unless it is with a psychologist. You understand me?"

"Take your hand off me this instant, Lilly Ann."

Her mother’s voice was cold, and Lilly found her grip empty as her mother yanked away. The older woman stood straight and unbowed upon the next rock, her hair waving about her and her lips pressed tight. "I am not crazy," she said, clearly angry. "You saw him. Don’t deny it. You saw him and he spoke to you. What did he say?"

Lilly hesitated, scared at the change. "You didn’t hear him? He was right there."

Eyes squinting mistrustfully, Emily shook her head. "Penn is the protector of the woods, born from the first tree’s cry of pain from the woodsman’s ax. He appears as a mirage to those who believe in him, as real as you allow him to be, as beautiful as you imagine, in the form of your choosing. He is everything, he is death. He can take over the bodies of wolves and men, though the blood needed to do so is enough to kill a man. He survives the ages by taking refuge in the trees he protects. It is his saving grace. It is his downfall. His greatest desire is to have a soul again, and he will lie to get it. I was able to protect you from him, Lilly, but he no longer believes in me." Her jaw clenched, and she lifted her head proudly. "I’m old. He doesn’t love me anymore." Her mother shivered, becoming scared again. "We need to get home."

Lilly’s heart pounded as she followed her mother to the edge of the brambles, catching every thorn, every briar that her mother avoided. Threads from spiders brushed against her, shimmering in the sun as they ballooned on the still, stagnant air. Lilly brushed them aside as she walked, but her mother accepted them in grace, whispering thanks as if each one was a benediction.

Getting home sounded like a good idea.

THREE

T he porch swing squeaked in time with the waving of her makeshift fan, and realizing it, Lilly set the magazine touting fall bulbs aside. The evening was stifling, and even the slight motion to make the rocker move seemed extraordinary. Her mother on the larger porch swing seemed unaffected in her sundress, but Lilly pulled at her shirt, trying to cool off.

Out on the grass, Meg and Em jumped and ran in erratic spurts, catching fireflies and imprisoning them in a jar for a nightlight. Their shouts echoed against the black woods, and Lilly shivered. Okay, so she had seen a honey-eyed boy with brown, dirt-smeared feet. There was an explanation. Entire families lived in the hills like aborigines, never coming down. Maybe that’s where the boy had come from. That he had slapped her mother made her angry, but the dead chicken had her scared, scared enough to keep her silent.

"You stay out of that creek!" her mother shouted, and Lilly glanced at her, angry that she couldn’t be like everyone else’s mom. Why did everything have to be twice as hard for her?

"Trapping him in a tree again will be difficult," the old woman said, rocking, still rocking, her old woman hands quiet in her lap. "I dared him to show me how he did it the last time, and I sealed him in place, but he’s wise to it now. He won’t believe me a second time. He can’t cross moving water, and he can’t move through rock, but I doubt I can trick him into an open sarcophagus. We might have to burn the woods if I can’t think of something."

Lilly was silent, her anger growing as she thought of the phone in her pocket. She was going to make an appointment with the doctor tomorrow as soon as they opened. She wanted to know what her options were. Fortunately the house was already in her name. If it was only her, she wouldn’t be as concerned, but Em and Meg shouldn’t have to deal with this.