Darkwood
Authors: M. E. Breen
M. E. BREEN
For my mother, brave in battle
Men spread their sails to winds unknown to sailors,
The pines came down their mountain-sides, to revel
And leap in the deep waters, and the ground,
Free, once, to everyone, like air and sunshine,
Was stepped off by surveyors. The rich earth,
Good giver of all the bounty of the harvest,
Was asked for more; they dug into her vitals,
Pried out the wealth a kinder lord had hidden
In Stygian shadow, all that precious metal,
The root of evil. They found the guilt of iron,
And gold, more guilty still. And War came forth
That uses both to fight with; bloody hands
Brandished the clashing weapons. Men lived on plunder.
âOvid,
Metamorphoses
The sun sets so quickly in Howland that the people who live there have no word for evening. One minute the sky is blue or cloud gray, the next minute it is black, as though someone has thrown a heavy blanket over the earth. Nowhere is the sky darker or the night longer than Dour County, a hatchet-shaped region on Howland's western border. A swift river runs through Dour County. Slippery cliffs overhang the river. An icy sea roils off the coast. But worse than these is the forest that grows to the north. No roads mark the forest and no human footprints. Like the dark, it has lives of its own.
“Nonsense! After seven centuries, you think the moon is going to show its face for you? Come away from there now and set the table.”
Annie Trewitt took a small step back from the window. She had seen pictures of the moon in books, copied from older pictures in older books, copied from the oldest books of all. There
were the skinny crescent moons, the half-shadow moons, the regular full moons. And then there were the Howler moons, round and orange and edible looking, even on the page.
“I told you, come away!” Aunt Prim shoved a stack of clean dishes into Annie's hands and reached past her to fasten the shutters. “If it's the kinderstalk you're peeping after they'd better be worth a whipping.” She paused dramatically. “He
will
catch you one of these days.”
Annie followed her aunt's gaze over to the chair where her uncle was enjoying his third nap of the day. Drool snaked in a clear line from the corner of his mouth to the collar of his shirt. Around one finger he wore a battered tin cup like a ring, a little residue of whisky at the bottom.
Annie set three bowls on the table, three spoons, and three cups. A fourth set of dishes sat on the shelf, untouched. The insides of the bowls had been scrubbed to a smooth gray finish, exactly the color of the porridge that filled them at every meal. She poured milk from an ewer into each of the cups, careful first to spoon the cream into a separate dish for her uncle's dessert.
Aunt Prim's voice sounded close at her ear. “Mind your uncle well tonight, hear me, girl?”
Annie nodded, but Aunt Prim crowded closer, her lips nearly touching Annie's cheek. She smelled of cotton, milk, and dust.
“Do you hear me, girl? Do you hear me warning you?”
“Yes, Aunt Prim, I hear you.”
“And you can't say I didn't warn you, can you?”
“No, I can't say you didn't warn me.”
“Swear to it, then.”
Swear to it? Annie glanced sharply at her aunt. She looked herselfâlong and dry and pointed, like a rib boneâand also not herself. Her eyes were bright, and a little frizz of hair stood up around her face.
“Do you swear?” Aunt Prim repeated, but before Annie could swear, or pretend to swear, Uncle Jock woke up.
Waking took a long time for a man as big as Uncle Jock: first the feet twitched, then the knees, then the hands, and finally the long chin lifted off the chest. He sniffed the air.
“Come to table, dear,” Aunt Prim said. “You know you don't like your supper cold.”
If waking was slow, standing was slower. Annie had plenty of time to scoop porridge from the big iron cooking pot into each bowl, then add pickled vegetables and salt pork from the jars her aunt had replenished that day in the shed. Uncle Jock's bowl was twice the size of the others and Annie filled it to the brim. She heard the floorboards creak and then he was standing beside her, massive as a mountain that had torn itself up from the ground. But he was solid, not fat; he could move fast enough when he wanted.
“Jane came past today,” Aunt Prim said as they took their seats. “The Woeforts' new cow was taken last night. That's not more than a stone's throw from here.”
Uncle Jock grunted.
“They'd just finished the fence around the barn, too. Twelve feet high, Jane said, spiked all along the top. Not so
much as a hoof left in the yard.” Her eyes slid over to her husband. He was digging at something in his ear with the long dirty nail of his pinkie finger. “Something
was
left behind, however.”
Uncle Jock stopped digging. Aunt Prim smiled and took up her spoon.
“Well?”
Aunt Prim nibbled her oats.
“
Well
?” Uncle Jock banged the table with his fist. Porridge slopped over the side of his bowl.
Aunt Prim leaned forward. A pulse beat at the base of her throat. “A tuft of hair.”
“A tuft of ⦠what color was it?”
“What
color
?”
“Yes, woman! What color?”
Aunt Prim frowned, all coyness gone. “That's odd, you know, I thought Janie must be joking when she said it, but now ⦔
“
What color!
”
“White! She said it was white.”
Uncle Jock became very still. From the corner of her eye, Annie could see his lips puff in and out. After a moment he picked up his spoon and began to shovel porridge into his mouth. Annie had managed only a few bites when he pushed his empty bowl away, stretched, and let out a tremendous belch.
“Primmy my gal, I'm still as hungry as a bear.”
Aunt Prim raised her eyebrows.
“And do you know what I fancy, my very own Primrose?”
Aunt Prim raised her eyebrows a notch farther.
“Haddock.”
Annie's heart sank. Aunt Prim's mouth, which was long without being wide, flattened even more. But all she said was, “Girl, go down the hall and get your uncle some fish.”
Aunt Prim stored the fish with the dry goods in a shed off the back of the house. What she called the hall was really just a pile of boards slapped together and nailed at the top into a triangular crawl space. All the farms in Dour County were built like this, the sheds and outhouses connected to the main buildings through closed walkways or tunnels. No one kept more food indoors than was needed for a single day, and those foolish enough to try raising livestock built their barns as far from the main house as possible.
Annie squatted down to unbolt the door to the passage. An ax hung over the door and she caught her reflection in the polished blade: dark eyebrows, blank face. Aunt Prim handed her a single match from the tin matchbox.
The bare ground felt cold and foreign under her palms. Even with the light spilling in from the main room, the darkness of the passage shocked her; it seemed she wasn't moving through the dark so much as being swallowed by it. Every few feet she paused, listening. It was odd, what Aunt Prim had said about the white fur. Everyone knew that kinderstalk were black. Black to match the night. She shivered. They kept a lantern in the shed, of course, but the light from the house never reached quite far enough, and Annie spent a moment in awful, fumbling darkness before she heard the match strike.
Though she hated getting there, the shed itself she liked.
The walls began a few feet below ground, which made it cool in summer and warm, or at least not frigid, in winter. Bags filled with oats sagged against each other and against bins of salt, onions, and lard. There was a barrel full of the misshapen potatoes that still grew, somehow, in the blighted yard. Thin strips of fish hung drying from the rafters, next to bunches of sage and rosemary. As the fish dried they shed scales that coated the floor in a stinking, shimmering dust.
Annie chose a big piece of fish for her uncle, then two smaller ones, wrapping them carefully in a scrap of cloth before tucking them into one of the many pockets of her dress. The dress she was wearing was two years old and ridiculously small, but Annie refused to give it up. Page had made it for her, sewing by lamplight in the swallowing darkness while Annie slept beside her. The dress had dozens of pockets: some wide and flat for long-stemmed plants, some narrow and deep for rocks or shells. There were obvious pockets, and then inside the obvious pockets there were secret ones. There were pockets in the lining of the dress that only Annie could ever get to, pockets in the armpits, pockets in the hem. The dress was so perfect for her, for her habits of observing and collecting and hiding, that at first she had hated it. How could Page know her so well? What was the point of a secret compartment if Page only had to look at her to guess what was in it? Then Page died, and Annie had worn the dress every day since.