The Forest's Son (3 page)

He was the one who figured out how to best keep their secret. The sisters found them — more than once — before he realized that if he totally suppressed everything, he vanished. As they sought — and felt —only him, and his strangeness, there was no thought of finding her among other sisters or distant blood of the sisters out here in the world. So she disappeared the moment her son did, and he makes sure he returns to that state every time there is a threat of revealing enough for the sisters to find them.

Which is where he is now.

There is no sense of the boy in him. He has the history, but none of the true knowledge. He senses the mother, but doesn't know why. He finds his mother’s nakedness some eccentricity, chalking it up to a modern version of pagan worship.

Once, in high school, he'd come home and asked her if she was Wiccan, as some of the girls at school had expressed an interest, and he was still trying to fit in at that point. She struggled to explain it's a perversion of connection with the mother, but she no longer tries to explain. He will not understand. Not yet, anyway. Not for a while, and then only for a few days, at most.

Her ears prick at the sound of a car. The exhaust system needs replacing, and soon, but Donovan won't have enough money. Grace will find a way to get it to her, for befriending her son, for staying with him even when things are so very strange in this seemingly normal world, for the things Donovan will lose in the end.

She mourns the feel of the air on her body even as she reaches for the loose dress she pulls over her head before the tires begin their crunch on the gravel driveway. Looking down, she sees mud caked on her feet from the dirt floor. Ah, well. Too late to do anything about that now.

Vance will shrug and hug her anyway. Donovan's eyes will widen, and she'll try to hide the smirk. And Grace will ask for help with the computer and beg Donovan to help her fill orders in exchange for the money she needs to help the poison-spewing metal beast that takes Vance away and brings him back safely each day run better.

And pretend that she and her son are normal.

~

Bożena floats on her back in the water; her hair, neither blonde nor brown, billowing at her side, creating a halo around her head that is nearly as wide as she is tall. Floating this way blocks the incessant chatter of her sisters, a blessing these days, when she can sense the unrest among them. Edyta seems to be at the center of much of the grumbling; as usual, she is sowing discontent.

It’s been decades since the last time they had any sign of Grażyna's son. There is always the chance that he is dead. That isn't enough for Edyta — to let things lie — she wants to hunt down Grażyna, to be sure there is no longer a threat, to "make sure" she says.

Bożena huffs and rolls from her back to her front, keeping her eyes open. The water is clear, and she stares at the pebbles on the bottom, smooth from the water washing over them. They sit motionless and allow the water to do whatever it will. She tries to do the same, and wishes Edyta would be more like the stones. Instead, she is
śliwa tarnin
a
— a pricker bush, always trying to poke at everything that might come near it.

She remains face-down in the water until she runs out of air, then tucks her legs under her and brings herself to her feet. Her hair is a long sheet down her back, and she pulls some in front to cover herself, although no modesty is required with her sisters. For whatever reason, today she wants privacy, for both her mind and her body. Being what she is, she gets neither.

She focuses her mind on calming thoughts, on what the tribe was like when Grażyna lived among them. Until she fled, Grażyna was as true as any other sister — certainly a better sister than she herself is. Even now, Bożena is willing to bet Grażyna keeps the sisters' ways, no matter where she might be living.

If her son still lives, odds are he has been raised peaceably, to use his powers for good, or to not use them at all. How else can the complete absence of his presence be explained? Either he is a docile being unwilling to bring harm to the sister or humans or he is dead. No matter which, the sisters need not be concerned with him, and certainly don't need to mount any sort of offensive as they have in the past. Each time they have, Grażyna has always been able to get away anyway, and it always draws attention.

Legend has always said any male would come back to assert his reign. Better he do so on their ground, where they have the advantage, than they go out into the human world again as they have done before. While some of the sisters are able to move about, most of them have grown more out of touch with the machines and the modern technology, and as the years pass, they look more and more out of place.

Even Bożena, with her too-long hair, would be far too obvious. With their height and their discomfort, the sisters stand out. Better not to draw attention. Better to wait.

She feels the prickles of Edyta withdraw somewhat, like a porcupine drawing back its quills. Edyta will wait for now, but who knows for how much longer. It has been so many years. Surely he must be nearly full-grown. Surely if he is going to return, it will be soon. What will that bring?

Bożena is afraid to wish for changes. There are things she would like — things she dare not even think of lest another sister like Edyta catch wind of them. An image flickers through her mind, but she casts it away like a leaf on the breeze. She has no time for wishing or dreaming or wondering what might come if Grażyna's son were to reappear and assert his dominion over the sisters. There is always work to be done. She had best go do it.

4: Cracks

Vance can feel someone he assumes is his mother before they’re even to the house: a connecting string that had been pulled too taut starting to relax. He has vague memories of a place they lived before this one: a small Colonial with warm wood trim and leaded glass in the doors that separated the rooms. The cut-glass door knobs always felt heavy in his hands and the gumwood trim warm with memories of those who'd lived there before.

But his mother hadn't been happy there. Snow covered the ground for months in the winter, and she couldn't grow much. It made her sad, and she spent a lot of the time crying. When he looked up planting zones one day to see if there was anything he could help with, he saw that south was better, that she could grow things longer. He showed her the zones on the computer, and the next thing he knew, they were here.

The high school is close to the house, but the college is farther. For a brief time, there were thoughts of a dorm room and college somewhere exotic, like New York City, but it was too far from his mother, and he can't imagine her without him. She seems so lost in the world: no family other than him, and no friends. Not that he has any besides Donovan, but at least he sees other people. He talks to the owners of the shops where his mother sells her herbs, to Donovan's family on the rare occasions she’s with them, to his professors. Even to fellow students during group projects. His mother has no one else.

He steps out of the car and imagines he can hear the trees welcoming him home. He'd mentioned it once to Donovan, but the look she gave him frightened him. If she decides he's insane, he'll have no friends left.

She says the house is creepy, back here in the woods where you can't even see neighboring houses, but it's comfortable and private. No one will ever notice if the local herbalist does her gardening sky-clad or whatever they're calling it these days. Back in high school, one of the few people who'd tried to befriend him asked if his mother was a nudist after they'd walked through the woods to find her out in the trees, naked as the day she was born. He hadn't known how to answer then, and he still doesn't.

Donovan, who’s taken a few psychology courses, claims his mother has problems with sensory processing and doesn't like the feeling of fabric against her skin. His mother thinks Donovan has no idea that she seldom wears clothes when she's alone, but sometimes she's too distracted to hear them come in. Vance has perfected the “re-enter with door slam
”
to get her dressed faster.

He knows better than Donovan's theories, though. There is more to his mother's little quirks than a simple label can answer for him, but she's not ready to give him those answers, so he has to wait. He just isn't sure what he's waiting for.

He walks inside without looking back, knowing somehow that Donovan will follow behind. Making enough noise on his first entry so his mother has time to pull on clothes if she didn't hear the car coming down the gravel driveway, he calls out a hello and walks upstairs to his bedroom. The route is a little more familiar than it might seem from leaving the house that morning, and Vance doesn't have to think twice about which way to go.

“Closet or video?
”
he asks Donovan without looking back.

“You don't ask me that,
”
she says. “You make me wait downstairs.”

He's already doing things incorrectly.

“Do you want to wait?”

Her face says she doesn't, but she backs down the stairs anyway. He watches her heading toward the kitchen, toward his mother. He continues on to his room. Video first.

With the door closed in case the information shouldn't be heard, he finds the video file and checks the date. Yesterday, which must mean a new file.

The screen fills with an image of himself. His hair is a wreck, and dark shadows circle his bloodshot eyes.

“Hey, dumbass,
”
video Vance begins.

“If you're watching this, it means you did something incredibly stupid, like start to remember. Or even worse, curiosity is getting you from the beginning. Stop doing that. Stop trying to get the answers. Every time you — well, I — start to remember, this has to happen all over again. It can't be good health-wise, and it's definitely not good Donovan-wise.

“In case you haven't noticed already, Donovan hates this. It's been getting worse each time. You don't see it yet, but I do. It's hard on her, having a best friend who forgets who you are all the time, but at least that part of it wears off pretty quickly. It's okay to remember that. It's the other stuff that's the problem.

“Donovan will always try to find out what's going on, and she’s getting more curious, and has less patience, each time. I have no idea how many of these videos there have been, but I know it's been a lot, and sometimes the same video is left behind. The video always says she's in danger, and Ma, too, if you remember. Worse if you remember and tell someone else.

“I want so badly to tell Dee.”

Vance watches himself choke up on-screen and squirms uncomfortably in his chair.

“You have no idea how hard it is, not telling her. She's here every day, asking questions. All she wants to do is help, but she can't. No one can.
Matka
knows this. You can see it in her eyes when she looks at Dee. You have to protect them both. Don't remember.”

Vance pauses the video.
Matka
. The word sounds familiar, but it's nothing he can ever remember calling his mother. He calls her “Ma
”
or sometimes “Mama
”
which Donovan teases him over, saying it’s old-fashioned and babyish. But that word,
Matka
, trips something in his chest. He starts the video again, hoping for more clues.

“If you ignore me and keep looking for answers anyway, like I — you — we — always seem to do, you'll know what you have to do. Another video is stored in a hidden directory on the hard drive that gives instructions. Only you'll know the password, and by then, you'll have remembered. The username is the name of your favorite stuffed animal.

“I'm begging you — really, myself here when you think about it — to listen, for once. I never do, but maybe this time, I will. It always seems like a mystery that's begging to be solved, and it bugs you, and you think you can fix it. Maybe there's something you missed all those other times before. Maybe everyone could have a normal life.

“It's just never going to happen. I know that before we started doing this, we were in danger all the time and we had to move. This keeps us safe, and everyone we love safe. It's not a lot of people, but for those few, please don't do it again. Or go ahead. Do it, for all I should care. One of these days, that damn machine will malfunction and fry my brains out or I'll OD on that medication. At least then all of this would be over.

“But maybe we could have a happy life if I'd just stop looking for answers. And maybe this is the video that gets me to stop doing that.”

The video ends. Vance drags the file over to the trash as quickly as he can and empties it. Danger. He puts them in danger. He puts them all in danger because he wants answers, then he hurts Donovan, and for what? For reasons he doesn't even know or understand.

Nothing makes sense. The move from the north was for growing seasons or was it fleeing from danger? Amnesia is to protect his mother and Donovan, but knowledge couldn't bring danger on its own, could it?

He’s trapped in a vise, afraid to move in any direction because something may tear loose. If he asks questions, he might bring everything down upon them. But if the answers would make him not seek more, then maybe asking questions is the right thing to do. Maybe the video is wrong, and he just needs answers to a few of the questions to be content. He won't try to find out more than that.

5: Closet

Donovan knows there’s a box hidden somewhere in Vance's closet. It calls to her whenever she's in the house, although she's never seen it. It's referenced in every video he’s shown her: a mystery box with instructions on how to use whatever is inside buried in a file hidden in a directory on Vance's laptop he can never access until he remembers enough, and by then, it's too late. By the time he remembers how to get to the file, she'll find him an empty shell again the next day.

He waxes and wanes like the moon: One day there’s nothing but black, then slowly a bright sliver appears. Each day it grows bigger and brighter until finally he’s there and whole and she thinks she could love this man. When he is everything, he reflects light — hers and everyone else’s around him -- and it's beautiful. It never lasts, though.

The secrets inside begin to chip away, taking him bit by bit until she knows it's coming. She may not ever know the exact day, but the twists and turns of her stomach alert her that he'll be gone again, a puppet left in his place, with her there to play Wizard of Oz and fill his straw head with a brain.

She wants to freeze time at the height of the cycle and see where things might go. They've been friends since high school, but this strangeness has always been between them, and the repeating cycle of being forgotten would be enough to make anyone else — anyone sane —run.

She remembers a time when she had other friends. Not a lot, but enough that she could decide to go to a movie on a Friday night and there would always be someone to go with. Once Vance moved here and she entered his orbit, everything shifted, and she found the rest of her life consumed little by little. Being his friend is one thing, but being his memory is a full-time job.

Grace drifts in from the kitchen, her feet dusty from the dirt floor in her greenhouse, and the full skirt of the tie-dyed gauze dress she wears fluttering behind her. Donovan thinks — not for the first time — that Vance's mother is not entirely of this earth. Donovan presses herself further into the pilled gray corduroy couch cushions and hopes Grace doesn't even notice her.

Naturally, because it's that kind of day, she's disappointed.

“I was hoping you'd stay.”

Grace never says hello. Conversations with her always seem to begin and end in the middle, as if they’re a constant flow she's stepping in and out of. Donovan is never sure whether they’re picking up where they left off the last time or the conversation simply continues in Grace's mind when she's not around.

“I need some help with the next order, and I hate to ask Vance all the time. Would you be willing to help with some of the invoicing work? And maybe a little in the greenhouse, too, if you have the time?”

Donovan nods, and Grace hums contentedly, this part of the conversation over for now. It will start up again — mid-stream — when Grace actually needs the work done. Or, more likely, when she wants to give Donovan the money to fix her car, which is probably what this is all about. She knows Grace wants to give her things, but Donovan can't bring herself to accept Grace’s charity, especially when she has no idea where the money comes from.

It might be one thing if Vance and his mother simply had more money than they should probably have from Grace's herb business, but when you add in the regularly disappearing memory, things get a bit … concerning. Donovan feels better at least doing whatever work Grace gives her for the money.

Pulling her feet up underneath her butt, she makes herself into a small ball on the couch, as if she can hide her thoughts inside if she can just get smaller. More pieces of the puzzle are there for her; she just needs to slide them into place. But there are no easy finds here, no flat edges to show you a frame to build against. If she puts them all in one place though, spreads them out and looks at them all at the same time, maybe some will begin to fit.

Grace and Vance only ever have one car between them, and it's always expensive. Unlike the furniture in the house, it's brand-new and cutting-edge. All-electric, the car charges off either the solar panel system or the wind-power system Vance and his mother have installed. She knows from Vance's incessant lecturing that the car can travel up to a hundred miles before it needs to be recharged, but he never drives it to campus; he insists his mother needs to have a car with her during the day, even though Grace rarely goes past their property line, much less anywhere she'd need a car.

She doesn't think about it much, but now that she's poking at everything, Donovan wonders why someone who rarely leaves the property always needs a car at her disposal. It's like Vance thinks his mother might need to flee at any moment and would need the car to do it. Put another check box in the "creepy possible place the money comes from" category.

Then there's the matter of Grace's accent. It's faint, but it's there. Donovan can't place its origin, and whenever she asks Vance, he tells her he can't hear it, and it's probably a natural result of them moving around so much. In his defense, Donovan can often hear slight nuances in his speech, but not nearly as noticeable as his mother's. Grace isn't from here, and Donovan is sure she'd grown up speaking another language entirely. Maybe Vance speaks the language as well, although she's never heard them speak anything other than English in her presence. There are times when she's sure Grace is translating in her head before she speaks, or rolling a word around in her mind, over and over, as if its meaning will become clear on the third —or tenth — pass.