The White Forest (37 page)

“Keep walking,” he said. “The wall surrounds everything. You’ll run into it eventually. That’s how we found it.”

Maddy put her shawl over him. Though it was not cold in the Empyrean, I was glad for her gesture. It didn’t seem right to just leave him there to die.

“We have to move quickly,” I said to her. “Whatever work Day is doing, he can’t be allowed to finish.”

•   •   •

Maddy and I made our way through the trees, trying to keep our skirts from catching on roots and bracken. No matter how far we walked, we seemed to make no progress. The landscape of the Empyrean
was all the same—white trees and the odd glowing flowers. We didn’t reach the wall. There seemed to
be
no wall.

Evening came, making me realize that the sky wasn’t so much a sky as some kind of membrane that emitted light like the tulips. The membrane shifted its color to a dull painted dusk.

“Look there,” Maddy said, pointing to a red coat in the underbrush.

We approached and found a Fetch who hadn’t been as lucky as Alexander. The boy was nearly beheaded—a grisly piece of his spine protruded from his neck. There was another boy some ten yards away, hanging upside down from a tree over a pool of his own blood. He’d been drained like a slain deer.

Maddy turned her head. “Jane, how could Ariston Day do these things? These were his followers.”

I thought of ancient priests and the rituals of sacrifice—the things men would do in an attempt to please their gods. Yet Ariston Day did not comprehend the gods of the Empyrean. He was slaughtering blindly, hoping for an answer to his prayer.

•   •   •

Maddy was the first to slow, one hand on the trunk of a tree, peering ahead into the dim forest. “Jane, I . . . how far have we traveled?”

“It seems like miles,” I said. “But there’s no true way of knowing. Space in the Empyrean feels different.”

“How large can it be—this
forest
?”

I sensed that question was unanswerable, and I think Maddy knew this herself, as she did not press a second time. We rested at the base of a tree with thick roots that spread over the ground. There was the same absence of smell even when we were so close to the tree’s bark.

“Go to sleep,” I said. “I’ll keep watch.”

“Jane, when I told you I didn’t think you were human, I didn’t mean—”

“You meant it,” I said. “We should speak the truth to each other here. And I don’t even know if I
want
to be human anymore after all that’s happened.”

“Don’t say that,” she said. “We’ll make our way back to London, find a way to carry on.”

“Do you really believe that, Maddy?” I stared into the forest around us. “I’ve feared coming to this place all my life. I suppose because I knew that when I arrived, there would be no way to go back.” I turned my attention to her again. “I’ll find a way for you to return. You and Pascal, if he’s here.”

“You’ll come with us,” she said, taking my hand. “We’ll find Nathan and we’ll all go together.”

I pulled my hand gently away and said, “When you took me from my hiding place at Stoke Morrow so many years ago, I thought I’d fallen into some dream. I didn’t believe life could be so good. Now I realize I was right all along. I’m awake, Maddy. Now I’m awake.”

She looked at me, searching, and I wondered how my face looked to her at that moment. It felt like an impenetrable surface. I was an idol and my skin was all of stone.

“Go to sleep,” I said. “Dream of London.”

A
fter Maddy closed her eyes, I watched the sky, wondering whether false stars would appear as night descended. But soon enough, I realized there would be no stars in the Empyrean. No painted moon. This was not some storied forest or sacred grove. It was neither a Heaven nor a Hell. We’d fallen into a secret place that was not earth or anything like it. As the woman in the Hall of the Red Star had said, this was the beautiful Unmade, the opposite of creation. In terms of Ariston Day’s spiritual archaeology, this place (if it could be called a place at all) predated man and his religions. It was the pale beginning, a sprawling hush.

The evening sky, like the flowers, pulsed with a gentle and electric light, allowing me to see the spaces among the white trees. Ariston Day was out there somewhere, scrambling like a rat in the wall—the skin which surrounded and contained this place. He was an intruder who did not belong in this secret domain. I knew I had to find him before he could finish his work, before he could destroy the boundary between earth and Empyrean.

•   •   •

I was careful not to wake Maddy as I stood. I left her there in the heart of the white forest, turning back only once to look at her. The woman who’d been my friend for so many years was like a discarded doll, curled there among the roots of the tree. She was exhausted, having fought so hard to win Nathan back. My guilt and my anger were gone. After everything we’d done to each other, I knew her life would be better without me. I only hoped that I could get her safely back to London. She was still young. Years would pass, and this place would begin to seem as though she’d dreamed it. Even I might seem a vision from a dream—a shade dressed in red that appeared from time to time on the ridge of the Heath to stare down at her.

It was as I walked into the phosphorescent dark and pondered Maddy’s future that I began to hear movement among the trees. Perhaps the presence of my old friend had been preventing me from truly opening my senses to the Empyrean. Maddy was the physical reminder of the girl I’d been.

Leaves rustled, and I saw the shadows of tall, long-limbed creatures appear. Like the forest, the creatures came into focus slowly, and I found I was not afraid. These were the white apes—the same that Nathan had seen on Malta, the ones I’d dreamed of after the death of my mother. Father said the gods were like animals, and he could not have known how correct he was. These were the old gods that had disappeared long ago, perhaps before even man had learned to write his history down, but they still hovered at the edge of human memory like the Red Goddess herself. They were striding creatures, some six feet in height with rough, whitish fur and pale orblike eyes that seemed electric—the color of the evening.

The white apes did not seem to notice me—or perhaps I simply did not surprise them. Was it possible they were already accustomed to my presence? I counted fifteen such creatures in my proximity alone, and I wondered how many more populated the forest. The tall god-apes continued their striding, restless perhaps because their home had been infiltrated. I found that I could sense their thoughts, just as I’d once sensed the souls of objects. I extended my talent
toward them, and it felt as though I was running my hands over smooth marble.

The apes paused in their striding. They shuddered as I used my talent to stroke their thoughts, as if the act gave them pleasure. They knew me, and they called me by a name—speaking it in unison. I understood that the word they used could be loosely translated to mean “silence.” But it was part of a lost vocabulary, some ancient tongue, and the translation was imprecise. The word meant more than “silence.” It was also “home” and “peace” and “eternity.” It was both the name of the apes’ deity and the name for the place that surrounded them now. And in the music of this ineffable sound I saw the lineage of the goddess—all the avatars who spanned the course of history. These dark-eyed women ranged beyond number, and they were bathed in the deep glow of red starlight. The women were poised, waiting. They watched me with interest, wondering how I might proceed. I understood them to be my predecessors, echoes of the original goddess—each a piece of the Unnamed’s primordial soul. And I was the next in their line.

Beyond these female figures, I saw a churning chaos—a sea of light that was both the beginning and the ending of all things. The music of the spheres rang out from this fiery realm, calling to me, charging every atom in my body. I allowed myself to be drawn toward that place of burning light, gliding over the avatars, who raised their faces to watch my passage.

It was in the glow of that great primordium that I saw something astonishing—a final vision: a vast and wild image of myself. Yet this image was not a mirror. What I saw in the chaos was Jane, the Goddess. Jane, the Queen. She was perhaps my future, an Über-Jane, as magnificent a woman as I had ever looked upon. I floated closer to her, and when her gaze fell upon me, I saw that her eyes were entirely white, like the bleached stone of an ancient ruin.

The goddess hovered there in amniotic suspension. Concentric rings rippled out from her body. She wore a mantle of crimson that expanded and contracted like a living organism, and woven in her hair were white lilies and oak blossoms. When she spread her arms,
the mantle opened, and I saw that she was not made of flesh. Her skin was something finer—a substance that could neither wither nor die. Her body was composed of the same imperishable material as the trees of the Empyrean.

Somehow she
was
the Empyrean. Her body was the trees and the pale river and the flowers that burned. She was the silencing of souls, the pure one. The aether. And like this place, the goddess was eternal.

She extended her hand toward me.

I felt grateful and blessed. I reached out, feeling a thrill of excitement, wanting nothing more than to touch her perfect form. If I did, I knew I could forget all of my earthly sorrows, all of my pain. Everything that had happened with Maddy and Nathan would be swept away.

And just as the tips of our fingers were about to brush, I heard someone crying in the distance—a boy who was hurt. It was likely one of the Fetches, calling out for help as he was dying. Ariston Day was still murdering his followers in hopes of finding a spot in his so-called Paradise. I thought of Maddy alone in the forest. I thought of Pascal and even of Alexander. This wasn’t a place for any of them—for any human being. I had to send them all away. To save them and save London.

The goddess did not care for any of them. She was alone in her aerie forever.

I drew my hand back, and the goddess closed, like a great eye, folding in upon herself, as visions do when they are ignored. And I felt such horror when I saw her go. I’d given up everything—lost my future to save the past.

•   •   •

I returned my attention to the god-apes, hoping to draw some further secret from them or even to bring the goddess back. I continued to touch their smooth thoughts, trying to access further memories, trying to find an edge to grab hold of. But there were no edges. The
smooth interior of the apes went on forever. The more questions I posed, the more impenetrable the surfaces seemed. It was then I realized that not only was the smoothness
inside
of the apes, but it was outside too. I looked around, and there through the trees, I saw the wall that Alexander had described. I was stunned by its sudden manifestation. If it was made of stone, it was a single stone, unbroken by seam or mortar. I could not see the height of it because the trees blocked my view, but my sense was that the wall was a looming edifice that nearly scraped the false sky.

I pushed my way through the edge of the white forest and stood with my body touching the wall, feeling its cool surface with my hands. Like the trees and flowers, the wall did not seem quite real and was made of no substance that I recognized. I thought of how Alexander had called it a membrane or a skin, and I began to make my way along the perimeter, pressing myself against the smooth surface. At times, the space between trees and wall was so narrow I could hardly fit. All the while, the god-apes watched me with their strange and luminous eyes. Nathan had written that the white ape he encountered on Malta had eyes like dark holes bored into its skull, but here in the Empyrean, all the creatures’ eyes were bright hollows filled with the same electric light that pulsed in the flowers and the sky.

I searched for some difference or seam in the surface of the wall—a door or a gate, some entry. And yet, I could not find that difference. I could only feel the wall ahead and the trees at my back. The sensation of being pressed against the wall drew me to a moment in my history, when Nathan, Maddy, and I lay on the stone floor of the ruin in my father’s Roman folly. Our arms and legs were spread, as if making snow angels. We did not speak; instead, we closed our eyes, and in that moment we were a single soul, falling through time. We could not be separated from one another. None of us would ever be lost. Nothing came to an end.

Thinking of that impossible and long-ago time, I closed my eyes and guided myself along the wall only by touch, and after a few minutes of doing so, my palm tracked through something wet.
Instead of being pleased by this discovery of a change in texture, I was disgusted. The wall had been violated. Nothing was meant to remain here. And yet, I felt the substance left behind—tacky and wet. I wiped my hand on my dress. In the luminescent darkness of the Empyrean night, there was no true color, but from its smell, I knew the stuff. The smell was of a butcher shop. Blood had been spilled on the wall.

The blood ran in a smeary line, as if someone had been dragged, leaving this trail behind. And then I found the body crumpled on the ground. It was the tall freckled boy who’d given me the tour of the inner forest, the one who’d likely cut open Corydon Ulster’s face. His red coat was torn, and there was an ugly wound in his chest. Unlike Alexander, this boy was dead, eyes rolled up in his skull, mouth open in final pain. Another of Day’s sacrifices. The wound appeared fresh, and the body was still warm. I wondered if this was the boy I’d heard screaming while I was communing with the goddess. If so, Ariston Day had to be close at hand.