The Forest of Hands and Teeth

The next day my eyes burn from lack of sleep. I trace the sun as it creeps across my floor, paying attention to nothing else but the light slipping slowly away from me. Someone brings in food and a jug of water but I don't bother with either. Later, Sister Tabitha comes and says she is there to check on me but I know she's there to judge my mental state. To see if I have broken under the weight of my parents' deaths. The day continues like this: food, Sister Tabitha, water, Sister Tabitha and so on and so on.



A small part of me craves to rebel, to break free of this room. To run and grieve with my brother. But I am too exhausted, my body unwilling to move. Here I'm warm and fed and alone and don't have to answer anyone's accusing questions or stares. I don't have to explain why my mother was alone, why I was not with her.



Instead, I can spend the between time remembering. I lie on the floor with my eyes closed and body limp, trying to feel my mother's hands in my hair as I repeat the stories she used to tell me over and over again in my mind. I refuse to forget any details and I am terrified that I already have. I go over each story again—seemingly impossible stories about oceans and buildings that soared into the heavens and men who touched the moon. I want them to beingrained in my head, to become a part of me that I cannot lose as I have lost my parents.



My brother doesn't visit and I hear no news of him from the Sisters. I wonder if he thinks of me. I want to be angry at him, to revel in any emotion other than shock and pain, but I understand that this is the way he grieves.



And finally, after a week has passed, Sister Tabitha comes to me and hands me a black tunic to change into and says that I am free to go and that I should thank God for the strength He has given me to move forward with my life.



I nod, unwilling to tell her now that God does not enter into it, and walk slowly back to my family's house where just weeks before we lived together happy and safe. My brother's house now that my mother has passed away and he, as the only son, has inherited. I can't help but ache inside as I approach, knowing my mother is not there. Will never be there. I think about all of the memories trapped in the rough log walls, all of the warmth and laughter and dreams.



I feel as if I can almost see these things leaking out, slipping away into the sunlight. As if the house is cleansing itself of our history. Forgetting my mother and her stories and our childhood. Without thinking, I place a hand against the wall to the right of the door. As with every building in our village there is a line of Scripture there, carved into the wood by the Sisterhood. It is our habit and duty to press a hand against these words every time we cross a threshold, to remind us of God and His words.



I wait for them to calm me, to infuse me with light and grace. But it does not come, does not fill the hollow ache inside me. I wonder if I will ever feel whole again now that I no longer believe in God.



The wood under my fingertips is smooth from generations of villagers pressing their hands in this one spot. This one spot my mother will never touch again.



As if he knew I would be coming today my brother opens the door, causing me to yank my hand from the Scripture verse. Seeing him fills me with memories and fresh pain. He doesn't allow me inside and I wonder if Beth can overhear us talking.



I am surprised at my skittishness around my own brother. Once, he and I were friends and shared everything. But he was always my father's son and I my mother's daughter. Losing our father to the Unconsecrated was too much for him and I have watched him harden over the past months. He has thrown himself into his role as Guardian, rapidly rising several notches in their ranks. I twist my fingers together in front of me as I search his face for the tenderness I once knew but all I find is sharp edges.



“Why did you let her go?” he asks me. He holds a hand over his eyes to block out the sun coming over my shoulder, and his stance reminds me of the way our mother would stand and scan the Forest looking for our father.



I have expected this question and yet I still don't know what he wants to hear. “It was her choice,” I tell him.



He spits on the ground near my feet and some of the spit catches in the short black hairs on his chin. “It was not her choice.” His voice is strained and even and I know that he would prefer to be yelling but does not want to cause a scene in the village. “She was insane, she was sick.”



I can feel his rage and pain wash over me and I want to take his emotions onto myself, to help him carry this burden. But my own feelings are too much, they swirl and overwhelm me such that I am helpless to comfort my brother.



“I couldn't kill her, Jed. I couldn't let them do that.” I resist the urge to look down at my hands as I speak.



“What do you think throwing her to the Unconsecrated was, Mary?” He reaches out and grabs my shoulder so hard that his fingers dig in around the bone. “Don't you realize that I will have to kill her now? When I'm out on patrol, what do you think will happen if I see her? Do you think I can let her go on”—he waves his hand past me, past the fields and toward the fence line—”like that? That is not life. That is not natural. It is sick and horrid and evil and I can't believe you would do this to me. That you would make me be the one to kill our mother because you weren't strong enough to do it.”



I see now that he wanted me to be the one to kill her so that he wouldn't have to make his own choice.



“I'm sorry, Jed,” I say, because I don't know how else to make it right between us. He is a Guardian, one of the few whose only duty is to protect the village, to mend the fence line, to kill the Infected. I don't know how to force him to see that it was her choice and not mine. That in making that choice she must have known that it could come to her own son having to kill her later. I don't know how to make him understand that sometimes love and devotion can overpower a person to the point where she wants to join her spouse in the Forest. Even if it means throwing everything else in life away.



I move forward to give him a hug but he keeps his arm stiff, his hand still on my shoulder so that I cannot come any closer.



“I am the man of the house now, Mary,” he tells me.



I try a smile, to remind him that he will always be my brother. “That doesn't mean you can't hug your own sister,” I tell him.



He doesn't laugh as I hoped. “I hear you are to join the Sisterhood,” he says. His words hit me like a slap. I don't know what I was expecting—anger, pain, regret, but not for him to turn me away. Not for him to cast me out and leave me to the Sisters before I've even had a chance to speak with him. To plead my case. This is why he didn't come to me at the Cathedral—in his mind I already belonged to them, I was already a Sister.



A part of me always knew that it would come to this, that this scene was inevitable in our lives. Walking toward the house today I knew somehow that I would not even be allowed inside to gather my mother's meager belongings. Jed would take it all.



“No one has spoken for you, Mary. No one has asked for you. No one will be courting you this winter.” His fingers still bite into my arm.



“But Harry,” I say, gesturing uselessly over my shoulder toward the hill that hides the stream where only a week ago Harry asked me to the Harvest Celebration. I struggle to remember if I ever answered him.



Jed begins to shake his head even before I can sort through the confused roar in my mind. I open my mouth but he cuts me off.



“He did not ask for you, Mary.”



I stare at him, feeling as if everything that I ever was is draining out of my body and leaving me. In my village an unmarried woman has three choices. She may live with her family; a man may speak for her, court her through the winter and marry her in the spring ceremonies; or she may join the Sisterhood. Our village has been isolated since soon after the Return and while we have grown strong and populous over the years, it is still imperative that every healthy young man and woman wed and breed if possible.



The sickness that cut through my generation only made new children more important. And with so few of us of marrying age the past few seasons it is what I have grown up expecting. That one day this fall someone like Harry would ask for me. Or that one of the other boys my age would take an interest. I have hoped that one day I could claim such a love for a man as my mother, who was willing to go into the Forest of Hands and Teeth after her Unconsecrated husband.



Of course, Jed could choose to take me in and wait to see if someone speaks for me next year, give the rest of the families in town some time to get over the fact that both of my parents are now Unconsecrated. That our family has been touched by unending death. But it's clear that this is a choice he is unwilling to make.



“There is still time,” I say. I can hear the hint of desperation in my voice, my need for him to take me in now that we are all that is left.



“You belong with the Sisters,” he says, his voice devoid of emotion. “Good luck.” The pressure of his fingers on my arms pushes me away from the entrance to his home. Looking into his eyes, I think he actually does wish me luck.



“And Beth?” I ask, seeking any excuse to remain with my brother for a moment longer. Hoping to rekindle the friendship we shared just a few weeks ago, have shared our entire lives.



I watch as muscles ripple along his jaw, as his hand clenches on the doorframe. “She lost the child,” he says. He steps back into the house, the darkness inside cloaking his expression. “It was a boy,” he adds as he swings the door shut.



I step forward, ready to push my way in. But then I hear the lock click and I pause, my hand reaching at the air. I want to grab him and hold him and mourn with him. I would have been an aunt, I think as I let my hand press against the warmth of the wooden door. I want to yell at Jed that I hurt too and that I am sorry and that I need him.



But then I realize that he has his new family to mourn with. That somehow I'm no longer enough to comfort him. I'm only a reminder of our parents' deaths. I flex my fingers against the door, my nails digging into the wood, realizing just how fully alone I am.



Struggling to keep my throat from burning, I let my hand drop and turn my back on the only home I have ever known. I look out at the familiar houses across the way. The vibrant summer gardens crumbling into dirt patches where three little girls hold hands and spin in circles, chanting out a rhyme. I know I should return to the Cathedral but I also know that once I join the Sisters my life will revolve around studying the Scripture and I will have little time for my own whims and desires. And so instead, I walk away from the cluster of small houses and skirt the edges of the fields, now harvested and prepared for winter, and I begin to climb the hill that hovers at the sunrise edge of our village.



As a child growing up, I learned in my lessons from the Sisters that just before the Return They—who They were is long forgotten—knew what was coming. They knew that something had gone horribly wrong and that it was only a matter of time before the Unconsecrated swarmed everywhere.



They still thought They could contain it. And so, even as the Unconsecrated infected the living and the pressure of the Return began to build, They were busy constructing fences. Infinitely long fences. Whether the fences were to keep the Unconsecrated out or the living in we no longer know. But the end result was our village, an enclave of hundreds of survivors in the middle of a vast Forest of Unconsecrated.



There are various theories as to how our village came into existence in the middle of this Forest. The Cathedral and some of the other buildings clearly predate the Return and some people suggest that They carved this place out as a sanctuary. Others claim that we are a chosen people and that our ancestors were the best of their time and were sent here to survive. Who we are and why we are here has been lost to history, lost because our ancestors were too busy trying to survive to remember and pass on what they knew. What little remnants we once had—like my mother's picture of my many-greats-grandmother standing in the ocean—were destroyed in the fire when I was a child.



We know of nothing beyond our village except the Forest, and nothing beyond the Forest at all.



But at least They were smart enough to leave a stockpile of fencing material behind after They finished creating our little world. And so, after the village established itself, it began to beat back the Forest and expand. Little by little my ancestors hacked away pieces of the Forest and claimed it as their own, pushing the fence line until there was nothing left to build with.



This hill was part of the last big push, the last big enclosure. Our ancestors felt it was important to have the high ground so that we could keep watch over the Forest. For a while there was a lookout tower at the top of the hill but now it has fallen into disrepair and is never used. But that doesn't stop me from climbing it so that for one last time before I go to the Sisters, I am at the highest point in our gated existence.



I look out at the world below. To my right the fields stretch into the distance, dotted here and there with cows and sheep that have been turned out from the barns clustered at the farthest edge of the fence line. It doesn't matter if they stray toward the Forest— like all animals except humans, they cannot be infected by the Unconsecrated.



To my left is the village itself. From up here the houses are even smaller, the Cathedral a hulking shape that dominates the sunset boundary, its graveyard all that stands between the large stone building and the fences lining the Forest. From here I can see the way the Cathedral has grown awkwardly, wings sprouting off the central sanctuary at strange angles.



At the foot of the hill, on the side opposite the village, is a gate that leads to a path stretching deep into the Forest, a scar that runs through the trees. Though that path, and the mirror path that leads from the Cathedral side of the village, are also lined with fences, they are both forbidden by the Sisters and Guardians.