The Woodlands

He lay me down gently, kissing me on the forehead. I felt numb with no senses, like there was a barrier between me and the outside world. He rolled my shirt up and pulled it over my head. The cotton stuck to my skin. Carefully, he used his hands to peel it away from my stomach and chest, push, pry, rip. A faint copper scent stung my nose. He stood me up, removed my boots and trousers, dunking everything in the shallow pond he had brought us to. I sat there. Blank. Cold. Watching the water change from clear to pink and then clear again as it washed away. Washed her away.

He soaked a cloth in water, and begun carefully wiping the rust-colored blood from my body. I didn’t care anymore. I let him touch me, lifting my arms, turning my head, pulling my hair back and cleaning my neck. He did it all slowly and deliberately. There was no charge in his touch. This was a kindness to one who was broken.

When he was done, he wrapped me in the blanket and propped me up against a tree trunk like a wooden puppet. I watched, disco

He gathered me up, in only my underclothes and a blanket, and slung my wet uniform over his shoulder, taking me back into the sunlight.

The world was grey. The color washed away, dripping down the sides of the trees like it was soaking back into the earth. I moved through the world but not in it.

We kept walking, leaving it all behind.

We walked through the darkness for miles. When the light started to show at the end, I took up my initial position, clinging to the rails. I didn’t want the light on me. It burned my eyes. Coward, coward, coward, the light screamed, balancing a slant over my face. You couldn’t save her.

From then on, he carried me as much as his strength would allow and, after his arms trembled under my weight, he held my hand and led me like a child. I followed him. I let him carry me. The fight in me was gone.

He talked as he walked but I didn’t listen. I couldn’t hear him from behind the wall. Occasionally a baby’s cries would punch through, but only for a second before it closed over, enveloping me in buffered sounds.

I wanted to speak but the words were buried. With her. If I could have cried or talked about it, maybe I would have healed faster. But nothing came.

I kept expecting her arm to link in mine, to hear her voice telling me to snap out of it. She believed things would work out. She was wrong.

I walked, ate, and slept, but that was all. My eyes focused on something far away. Just over the hill, just behind a tree, never on what was in front of me, or who was walking beside me.

At night I slept by the fire, my body warm but shaking uncontrollably. Closing my eyes brought on nightmares soaked in blood. He lay with me, holding my arms down to stop me from hurting myself. He spoke but all I could hear was calming whispers. No words.

I tried to recede to the point where nothing could reach me, but something was always tugging, pulling at my shirt, trying to drag me back into the light. But without her, the light was dull, insipid, lying over the forest like a silty blanket.

For weeks, I stayed inside myself. Joseph tried to coax me out, but even he stopped trying after a while. On the twenty-third day, I heard words. My head rose above the waves of my grief and I heard them talking.

Apella was cooing to the child.

“You’ll make a wonderful mother to little Gabriel,” a stuttering voice said lovingly. Gabriel?

I kicked my feet, trying to keep my head above water a little longer.

“Thank you, darling, you will make a wonderful father too.” Apella’s sweet voice was like a booming bell, reverberating and hurting my ears.

“His name is Hessa,” I said, my voice a tiny crackle.

Everyone stared. Apella sheltered the child in her arms, like she thought I was going to hurt him. I wasn’t going to hurt him. The couple was sitting, cradling the child under a tree. It was a spring sapling that was bending and swaying in the breeze, making shushing noises as the leaves grazed each other. Apella was holding a bottle full of grey liquid, which the baby was sucking. My head fractured as I thought of our grey milkshakes.

The trees were no longer grey, the color returning slowly. Green leaves touched by sunlight. I moved towards the couple on my hands and knees, aware that Joseph was behind me, shadowing my movements. I sat back on my heels and gently folded the grey blanket they had wrapped him in away from his face. He had springy, black hair, caramel-colored skin, and big blue eyes. He looked just like her and nothing like her at the same time. He was definitely All Kind. But it was there, that light had passed to the child. It shone in and around him, protecting him, a

“Let her hold him,” he said quietly but with force. Deshi was standing next to Joseph, looming over Apella with a stern look on his face. They both knew I would never hurt the child. I think Apella knew it too—that wasn’t the reason she didn’t want me to hold him.

Apella gently handed the bundle to me, uttering “careful,” as she let go of the child painfully slow. I peered at his face, pulling one of his arms out of the blanket and letting him wrap his fingers around my own. That touch wrapped around me like a bright white chain, binding me light as a feather but strong. I knew this child was mine. I was his family now.

“Hessa,” I whispered as I traced his tiny lips with my finger. I turned to Apella and Alexei’s pleading faces. I did not relish the disappointment I was about to bestow upon them. “You know you can’t keep him,” I said plainly, not meaning to repeat the words I had spoken to Clara back when we were underground. After everything she had done, what she had kept from us, this was not Apella’s redemption. She was not his family and had no place in his life. I knew now why Clara had named me her sister.

Apella didn’t speak. For the first time, that perfect facade contorted as she burst into tears. It lasted all of thirty seconds, then she patted her tears, straightened her clothes, and walked away. Alexei followed.

I held the child, not overcome by the decision I had made. It was simple. It was fact. It was the easiest thing I had ever done. I felt two distinct hands on my shoulders.

“Welcome back, zombie,” Deshi said with a grin. He looked tired and thin.

“I’m sorry,” I said, without looking away from Hessa. “I’m sorry it took me so long.”

“Don’t be sorry. We’re just glad you’re back,” Joseph said, smiling. “So you’re a mother now.” There was a hopeful glint at the end of his sentence and I knew what he was thinking, but I wasn’t sure this changed anything.

“No. Not a mother, an aunt,” I said, already feeling something absolute solidifying inside me, love. Joseph shrugged, seeming to accept that was all I could manage for now. He ran his hands through my hair and tied it back with a piece of twine, my skin buzzing from that barest touch.

“Thank you,” I said, feeling a bubble of that liquid gold pushing through my veins. I looked at his earnest eyes, green with flecks of gold, and wondered if he would always be this patient with me. If I pushed him away now—would he come back? I held out my free hand for him to hold, which he took eagerly but gently. It was an uphill battle and the gold rose and receded, not quite able to push past the pain.

“Are you all right?” Joseph asked. I looked down at Hessa. The baby blinked uncomfortably as drops of water hit his perfect little face. I thought it was rain at first, quickly realizing they were tears. For the first time since I had watched my sister slip away, I cried. I rocked the child and let it all out. I saw her face as she left me; I saw her face in her son. But it was not painful to see him. It was comforting. She would always be here with us, in him. The boys sat back and let me go until I could cry no more, my face red and salty.