The Forest of Hands and Teeth

When I return my hands are red and raw from gathering the snow. I slowly approach the bed. The patient is calm now, and when he hears my shoes against the wooden floor he turns and I see who it is.



“Travis,” I gasp. My voice feels raw in my throat and I look around quickly to make sure that Sister Tabitha has not heard me speak. I have no doubt that she would send me into the Forest if she felt the need.



“Mary,” he whispers. “Oh, Mary.” He reaches out and grabs my hand and brings it toward his cheek such that I am pulled forward and I end up stumbling and falling onto my knees next to the bed. Some of the snow drifts out of the bowl and falls around the floor but his eyes are closed and he doesn't see the flakes melt into the scarred floorboards.



His cheek burns and I slide my hand up to his forehead, the way my mother used to do when Jed and I were sick as children. I think of all the times I have brushed against Travis accidentally while playing games in the fields or walking to our lessons, and yet somehow his skin feels different now. More grown-up. More like a man and less like a boy.



I pinch some snow out of my bowl and hold my hand in front of his mouth. His tongue slips along my fingers and I feel as if my skin is thawing for the first time in my life. Suddenly, he doesn't feel like my friend but like something more and I have to force myself to remember that he is not mine to desire. He sighs and I see his body relax back into the mattress.



“Please, Mary, more,” he asks, his eyes still closed. I nod and continue to feed him snow, his breath melting into my fingers, his body so hot and dehydrated and thirsty.



“It hurts, Mary,” he whispers. “My God, it hurts so terrible.”



The urge to comfort him with words wells up in me and I want to know what has happened to him so badly, but I'm afraid to ask and risk Sister Tabitha hearing me speak and sending me away from him, never letting me see him again. I press my forehead against his cheek, my cool skin against his, and we are like that when the door opens behind us and Sister Tabitha strides in, her face tightening into a scowl.



There is silence and then Travis says, “Thank you for the prayer, Mary. It's made me feel better,” and this causes Sister Tabitha's frown to soften a bit.



“Prayer is always the best medicine,” she says and then she comes to the bed and with a tenderness I never thought possible she pulls the sheet down from Travis's body in order to examine his wounds.



Blood has stained the strips of cloth tied around his left thigh but it's old and brown, which must be a good sign. Sister Tabitha has me hold his hands as she peels back the bandages and I steel myself to see what is underneath.



I have seen such horror and such grotesqueness that it never occurred to me that I would feel light-headed and weak-kneed when I saw Travis's injury. One couldn't grow up surrounded by the Forest and not see the most dreadful sights—the Unconsecrated with their hollow skin ripped and gaping from the wounds that caused the infection, their fingers cracked and broken from clawing at the fences, limbs attached by nothing more than gristle.



Travis grips my hands tightly, as if to comfort me rather than take comfort for himself. Midway down his thigh a garish red gash still oozes watery-looking blood. It is held together with rows of large, lopsided stitches. Sister Tabitha places her hands on each side of the gash and presses, causing Travis to whimper, his eyes rolling back in his head.



“There is no infection yet,” she says to me without looking up. “Which gives me hope.” She winds fresh strips of cloth back over the raw flesh. “But the break was bad and I do not know if we set it correctly so we will have to wait and see. One thing I do know”—she lifts the sheet back up to his chin and tucks it around him tightly—”is that Travis will be in this bed for the rest of winter at least and lucky to walk again. It is in God's hands now.”



“Can…” Travis hesitates, swallows, his face pale with sweat standing out on his forehead. “Can Mary come pray for me?” he asks.



Sister Tabitha looks long and hard at Travis and then at me, still holding his hands in mine. She nods once, a sharp movement that is over in a heartbeat. “She may. But for now she must return to her studies. And you should know, Travis, that she is not allowed to speak except in prayer, so please do not tempt her to do more than that.”



I look down at the way Travis's fingers curl around my own. I think back to the day months ago when his brother Harry and I held hands under the water and he asked me to the Harvest Celebration that now is long past. I remember how puffy and wrong Harry's skin looked then and how tough and calloused Travis's feels against my own soft skin.



I turn Travis's hand over and look at the lines that crisscross his flesh and I wonder at all I have lost since then.



I find myself in Travis's room every morning. I help Sister Tabitha clean his wound, which is still raw and red and has the Sisters concerned. They frown and murmur God's words when they pass by. Everyone is praying for his recovery. I want to know what happened to him but I keep silent as commanded. All I need to understand is that there was a severe break in the bone that punctured the skin and it's not healing the way it should.



More often than not Travis is buried in blankets when I see him, half delirious with heat and fever. Most of the time he doesn't recognize me. Other times he grabs at me and begs for water and to make it stop.



When I can, I kneel by his bed and I take his hands and fold them in mine and I lean close to his ear and whisper to him. I know I should be praying and that the Sisters believe fervently that prayer is the only thing that will save him, but I cannot do it.



I cannot entrust my friend's life to something I am so unsure of and that I am still so angry with for taking my family and leaving me here in this world.



And so instead I tell him of the things I do believe in, the things I know to be true only because of faith. I tell him the stories my mother used to tell me about life before the Return.



I tell him about the ocean.



I know that I'm in love with Travis at these moments. I can feel the way that I ache to make him whole again. How if I could drain out my own life and share it with him to make him better I would not hesitate to do so. And I don't understand how, day after day, I can come into this room and lean my face so close to his that my lips brush his cheeks and ears, and he hasn't gotten better.



When I'm not with Travis but alone in my own room I can't forget that day down by the stream, the day my mother became infected. I remember how Harry told me that Travis had chosen my best friend Cass and not me. Even though Cass hasn't been to the Cathedral to sit with Travis the way I have. Even though she doesn't deserve him the way I do, I remember that Travis is already pledged to another. That it is Cass he would be courting now if not for his broken leg. And knowing this fills me with rage and longing that twine so deeply inside me that I cannot distinguish the two and all I know is that I desire.



This is how I know I can never be a true servant of God, why I will never be able to give myself over to the Sisters. Because I love Travis too much to set him aside.



Chapter 6



I have been telling Travis about the ocean. He has fallen into a fevered sleep, his lips slack, but I continue to whisper into his dreams, trying to compel him to get well. As usual I kneel next to his bed, one hand smoothing back the hair from his forehead, and I am like this when the door opens behind me. Before I see who it is I say a quick “Amen” and pull myself to my feet, my cheeks flushed and my breath coming in soft little pants.



My eyes grow wide as I see who the visitors are: Cass and Harry followed by Sister Tabitha.



“Mary!” Cass calls out. She runs to me and throws her arms around me and I do the same to her, burying my face in her white-blonde hair. Even though it's the dead of winter she still smells like sunshine.



I can already feel the tears stinging my eyes and burning the back of my throat. It is the combination of having missed my best friend, of having missed physical contact and the betrayal of falling in love with Travis. For once I am glad that I'm not allowed to speak because I don't know what I would say to Cass, how I could explain why she has found me kneeling next to Travis, one hand in his hair.



“Oh, Mary, how is he doing?” She takes my place next to Travis, folding his hands into her own just as I have done. Even in his fever-induced sleep he leans his head toward hers.



I'm sure that he can smell the sunshine and that he craves it just as we all do. “Travis,” she calls out to him, her voice soft as a breath. “Travis.” She takes a hand and brushes it over his forehead and he groans softly. When she trails her hand down his cheek he presses his face against her.



Watching his reaction to her makes me ache so hard I can barely stand to watch. It is the same feeling as when I stood before my brother and he told me I had to go to the Sisterhood because no one had spoken for me. The same hollowness tunneling out from the center of my self.



For a moment I want to pull Cass away from the bed, away from Travis. I want to yell at him and tell him that she is not me and he should be responding to me that way. That I am the one who has been here since the beginning.



But I don't. Because I want to believe there is a reason that Cass hasn't come to visit since Travis was hurt. Because I know that she's delicate and that even this, even seeing him feverish and groaning, is almost too much for her to bear. Even though he is her intended, even though the four of us have grown up together and have been friends for as long as I can remember.



Between the two of us she has always been the weaker one and I have always felt the need to protect her. That she is even here at all is a testament to how much she cares for him, and realizing this makes me feel even more hollow and foolish for ever having thought myself in love with Travis.



She has his hand against her cheek now and is silent as tears stream out of her eyes. “How long has he been like this?” she asks me. “When will he be better? When will he wake up?”



I look to Sister Tabitha because I'm not allowed to speak and she steps forward, between me and Cass, and begins to answer her questions. I am relieved to have the burden of explanation lifted from my shoulders and I move away from the bed, away from Cass and Travis and Sister Tabitha, and give them privacy to speak.



“Hello, Mary,” Harry says. I have forgotten that he is even in the room, hovering along the wall by the door, and I nod back at him in greeting. His dark hair is longer than the last time I saw him, and is tucked behind his ears. It makes his cheekbones look sharp and severe. We are standing shoulder to shoulder and I feel my body flush with anger and shame at this boy who rejected me. “Sister Tabitha told us that you wouldn't be able to speak, that you had taken some sort of a vow, but I think Cass just forgot.”



I nod again. I don't know what I would say to him even if I could speak. Maybe ask him why he never spoke for me. Why he asked me to the Harvest Celebration on the morning my mother became infected but never said a word to me again until now. Never went to Jed and set his pledge for me. Why he has left me to this fate with the Sisterhood.



Maybe ask him what happened to Travis, what caused such an awful break in his leg and why he hasn't visited until now.



“Your brother is the one who found him,” he tells me, as if reading my mind. We are both looking at Cass hovering over Travis, Sister Tabitha perched on the edge of the bed explaining everything in low and gentle tones. It always surprises me how nurturing Sister Tabitha can be in the face of Travis's wounds.



“He is the one who brought him here,” he adds. “Beth was beside herself that she couldn't also come be with her brother. But the Sisters are afraid that any movement will cause her to lose the baby.” I swallow rapidly, trying to ease the burning in my throat. Jed was here that night. Was here just a few days ago. So near and yet he didn't come to see me. Didn't bother to tell me his wife was pregnant again.



I can't do anything but nod and try to keep my cheeks from catching fire from all the emotions warring inside me. It takes everything I have to clasp my hands placidly in front of my stomach.



Harry turns to face me but I keep my eyes looking forward. Like his brother, he is taller than I am and so he looks down at me when he speaks. “No one knows what happened, Mary, or where he was.” He hesitates. “Jed told us that he found Travis half delirious, dragging himself through the fields. But no one has been able to figure anything out.”



He searches my eyes as if I should know something, as if I hold the answers to his silent questions. I do nothing but return his gaze. Finally, he leans toward me ever so slightly. “Mary,” he says, his voice a low rumble so that the others in the room don't hear. “I'm sorry,” he finishes. “I just…” He looks down at the floor and then over my shoulder at his brother and Cass.



He opens his mouth to say more, but just then Travis's body on the bed shudders a bit as Cass lets go of his hand and stands. She is sniffling, her eyes are red and bloodshot and her entire face looks haggard, as if she is exhausted from the emotion of being so close to so much pain.



She is a different woman from the one who came in earlier.



“May I come back and visit with him again?” she asks.



The way that we're standing, it takes little movement for Sister Tabitha to look past Cass and meet my eyes briefly as she answers, “Of course you can. Mary prays for him daily. You may join her then. Perhaps with both of you entreating God, He will show mercy.”



I can feel Harry's eyes holding me, willing me to meet his gaze. But I don't want his apologies now. I don't want to explain why I have spent so much time at his brother's side.



Cass turns to me and places her hand on my cheek. “My Mary,” she says. “You are too good.”