The rough hand of a tree brushed my face. I felt my skin tear along my jaw, and crack like a porcelain cup. Branches closed over my head. The only light leading me was from leaves and ferns themselves, the light plants produce like oxygen. Another tree clicked into place behind me, blocking the way back. I went to my knees. By scraping along the soft damp forest floor I got beneath the lowest, branch of the sentinel tree. My fingers touched grass and stones; I pulled myself into the clearing.
When I stood, my shirt was green with moss. The bandage was gone from my left hand. I could feel snapped twigs and dried, crumbling leaves in my hair. I tried to brush them away, off, but my hands could not move, my arms could not lift.
The trees jostled and whispered behind me. The blackness was edged and pierced by a thousand sharp silvery lights on leaf-edge and the curve of tendrils. The clearing was a dark circle with a darker circle at its center. I could, move, and went forward. I touched the ashes. They were warm. I smelled woodsmoke, and it was heavy and sweet. The dense forest behind and before me seemed to grow taut. I froze beside the warm ashes, bent forward over my knees and in total silence.
What will happen after she comes back? Rinn had asked me, and I felt a terror deeper than that of the first time in the woods. A high rustling whistling noise was coming toward me from where the leaf-light was strongest, a whispery sound of movement. My skin felt icy. The sound dragged toward me.
Then I saw her.
She was across the clearing, framed between two black birches. She was unchanged. If anything had touched my thin layer of cold skin, I would have cracked open, I would have shattered into a heap of white cold fragments. She began to move forward, her motion slow, unstoppable.
I called her name.
As she drew nearer the noise increased — that high whispery whistling scratched in my ears. Her mouth was open. I saw that her teeth were water-polished stones. Her face was an intricate pattern of leaves; her hands were rilled wood, tipped with thorns. She was made of bark and leaves.
I threw my hands back and felt smooth wood. Air lay in my lungs like water. I realized I was screaming only when I heard it.
“His eyes are open,” a voice said. I was looking at the open window above my desk, the curtains blowing and small papers lifting in the warm breeze. It was day. The air was its normal w, unperfumed. “His eyes are wide open.”
Another voice said, “Are you awake, Miles? Can you hear?”
I tried to speak, and a rush of sour fluid poured from my mouth.
The woman said, “He’ll live. Thanks to you.”
I sat up suddenly. I was in bed. It was still daytime. The telephone was ringing downstairs. “Don’t worry about it,” someone said. I turned to look; beside the door, her pale eyes reflectively on mine, the Tin Woodsman was closing a book. It was one I had given Zack. “That phone’s been going all night and morning, I guess. It’s Chief Hovre. He wants to talk to you about something. Was it an accident?” On the last sentence her tone changed, and her head tilted up. In her eyes I saw the fear of a complex betrayal.
“What happened?”
“You’re lucky you weren’t smoking. Pieces of you would probably be on top of Korte’s barn by now.”
“What happened?”
“Did you leave the gas on? On purpose?”
“What? What gas?”
“The gas in the kitchen, dummy. It was on most of the night. Mrs. Sunderson says you’re alive because you’re up here. I had to break a window in the kitchen.”
“How was it turned on?”
“That’s the big question, all right. Mrs. Sunderson says you were trying to kill yourself. She says she should have known.”
I rubbed my face. It was unscratched. The bandage was still on my left hand. “Pilot light,” I said.
“Blown out. Or gone out. Both of them. Boy. You should have smelled that kitchen. So sweet.”
“I think I smelled it up here,” I said. “I was sitting at my desk, and the next thing I knew I was lying on the floor. It was almost as though I left my body.”
“Well, if you didn’t do it, it must have happened by itself.” She seemed relieved. “There’s something wrong with this house. Just when you got home two nights ago, all the lights went on, all over the house.”
“You saw that too?”
“Sure, I was in my bedroom. And last night, they all went off at once. My dad says the wiring never was any good in this old house.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be keeping away from me?”
“I said I’d leave as soon as you were all right. See, I was the one who found you. Old man Hovre phoned our house. He said you weren’t answering your phone. He said he had important news for you. My dad was asleep, so I came over myself. It was all locked up, except for the porch. So I pushed up the window in the front bedroom downstairs, and that’s when I smelled the gas. I went around to the kitchen and broke a window. To let air in, Then I held my breath and climbed in and ran into the living room and pushed up the window. A little later I came up here. You were on the floor in the other room. I pushed open the window in there too. I thought I was going to be sick.”
“What time was this?”
“About six. This morning. Maybe earlier.”
“You were still up at six o’clock?” She tilted her head again. “I just got home. From a date. Anyhow, I just waited to see if you were alive, and then Mrs. Sunderson showed up. She went straight to the phone and called the police. She thought you did it on purpose. Tried to kill yourself. She’ll be back tomorrow, she says. If you want her today, you’re supposed to call her up, In the meantime, I told old man Hovre you’d call him when you felt better.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Thanks for saving my life, I guess I mean.”
She shrugged, then smiled. “If anyone did, it was old man Hovre. He was the one who called me. And if I hadn’t found you, Tuta Sunderson would have. Eventually. You weren’t ready to die.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“You were moving all over the place. And making noises. You knew who I was.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were saying my name. At least that’s what it sounded like.”
“Do you really think I tried to kill myself?”
“No. I really don’t.” She sounded surprised. She stood up and tucked the book beneath her elbow. “I think you’re too smart to do anything like that. Oh. I almost forgot. Zack says thanks for the books. He wants to see you again soon.”
I nodded.
“Are you sure you’re okay now?”
“I’m sure, Alison.”
At the door she paused and turned toward me. She opened her mouth, closed it, and then decided to speak after all. “I’m really happy you’re okay now.”
The telephone began to trill again. “Don’t worry about answering the phone,” I said. “Sooner or later I’ll get it. Polar Bears wants to invite me to dinner. And Alison — I’m very happy you were around.”
“Wait until we’re comfortable before you start asking the serious questions,” said Galen Hovre two nights later, cracking ice cubes from a tray into a bowl. My intuition had been at least partially correct. I was seated in a large overstuffed chair in Polar Bears’ living room, in that part of Arden where I had parked the Nash. Havre’s was a family house without a family. Newspapers several weeks old were piled on one of the chairs, and the red fabric of the couch had become greasy with age; the coffee table supported a rank of empty beer cans. Polar Bears’ pistol hung in its holster from the wing of an old chair. The green carpet showed several darker patches where he had apparently made half-hearted stabs at washing out stains. On end tables on either side of the couch, two big lamps with stands shaped like wildfowl cast murky yellowish light. The walls were dark brown — Havre’s wife, whoever she had been, had fought for unconventionality. On them hung two pictures not, I was willing to bet, of her choosing: a framed photograph of Polar Bears in plaid shirt and fisherman’s hat, holding up a string of trout, and a reproduction of Van Gogh’s sunflowers. “I generally have a little drink after dinner. Do you want bourbon, bourbon or bourbon?”