Deep in the Neverwood

Willow speaks:

Local legend tells of an ancient Forest Guardian. One-eyed, white haired, gnarled like an old oak tree.

Some say it's Odin, long past his heyday. Come to Earth to spend his retirement in this sleepy little village, protecting its forest mantle as a kind of righteous hobby.

The local children say it's a witch, a spooky old crone guarding a boundary between the man-made and the wild.

The children are closer to being right. It's true enough: there is an old woman who fits the description. If you drop a gumwrapper in the woods, she'll be there, scowling at you with ice in her eye. Stood outside your field of vision but felt all the same, by the wise little hairs on the back of your neck. Her tattered clothes will be blowing about her frame in a wind that's not really there. She'll give you a thwack on the back of your legs with her walking stick and ask, "Who dragged you up, you little grot! Take that home with you!"

But they're all wrong. The Guardian isn't here to protect the forest. Not really. She (and it is a she, have no doubt about that) is here to protect us from it. I know this, because I was the first one she saved from the Nevergreen Trees.

Oh, the woods are tame enough. A superb playground for country children to play and explore. But within it, behind it, under it... there's something else. Something that pulses green and living, with a dead black heart.

It was me that found the letter on the kitchen table, explaining where she'd gone, and why, and the truth of how she'd found me years before.

I've been haunted by the tale ever since. How she dropped to her knees, pulled me from the mud and decay in the middle of the Neverglade. Encouraged me to breathe, brought me to her chest. Sister, mother, and midwife, all at once. Knelt there, kissing distance from death, covered in blood and fear and pain and exhaustion. Wrapped me up to keep me warm and protect me.

Me! An unknown baby of a stranger she'd never met. She only a child herself, remember. Could the mother who carried me in her belly have done any more, any better, any different, when she pulled me out into the light?

I've no memory of that mother, by the way. No one knows who she is, or how I came to be naked and dying in such an odd place. The authorities searched, but there was no trace of her. I suspect the Nevergreens took her, but I doubt anyone else believes it. I don't know if she chose a name for me. My sister-mother is the one who gave me my name: Willow. She always had a soft spot for trees.

I was distraught when she left, leaving that letter on the table. I was sure she'd never return. Our parents tried to comfort me. It'll be okay, they said. It's just a story. She's got an overactive imagination. She'll be back. They'll find her.

But days stretched into weeks and months and the lies dried up. Replaced by anguished whispers behind closed doors, never meant for my ears. We should've taken her to see someone, they said. Remember how she used to sleep on the floor of the nursery? Paranoia... Delusion... We failed her...

There were tears, and a funeral, and at last, they both dissolved and blew away like husks.

And then, one day, she came back. Older than she should have been, but I'd have known her anywhere. She settled into a tiny cottage close to the woods' edge and just like that, she'd always been there.

I see her sometimes. Pushing her trolley through the village. Selling newspapers on the corner by the bus stop. She sees me, too. Her face softens like butter, as if I'm tiny and pink again in her arms, seen through a blur of tears with her hair plastered to her head.

Every once in a while, a child from the village goes missing. Then, my sister stumps off to the forest bundled up in a thick coat, no matter the time of year. Her nondescript old dog will be with her, questing ahead with his nose. She may be gone hours, or days, but she always emerges, dog on one side, errant child on the other. Pink streaks in her hair, and new lines in her face.

I tell you all this, because I want you to know she's a good person. I don't know anyone braver, or fiercer. So no matter what you hear, or whether it fits with your own personal beliefs, please remember that. She's a good person, and if she didn't do what she does, everything would be so much worse. For all of us. She struck a bargain with the Nevergreen Trees, to protect the forest, and the magic, and all of us. Because who knows what might happen if that black heart were exposed? But most of all, to protect me, and our baby sister. I can't fault her for that, though the price may be high.

+

A girl's story:

I was still a child, technically, but not for much longer. I mean, I'd barely any time left of my legal childhood, but also, something happened to grow me up even quicker.

I went to my grandmother, crying. Maybe we all do, if it happens to us. I told her the trouble, through my snot and tears, and she patted my hand with hers. It was cool, dry and rustly like paper.

"Are you sure?" she asked. I pulled it out of my pocket and showed her. "Just that one?"

"I did more," I told her. "All looked the same."

"You followed the instructions?"

I nodded, biting my lip.

She asked me the hard question, then, and I crumpled into an even soggier mess to admit the answer.

She was little, my Gram. I was bigger than her by then. She put her bird arms around me, holding me up and cradling me as I were the little one.

"I think it'll be alright, love," she said. "I know what to do."

She pushed me upright, hands on my shoulders, her eyes hard on mine.

"Now listen," she said. "This is what we're going to do." She paused to pull a tissue from her sleeve, dry my cheeks with it, and push it into my hand. "There. You go home. You sit with this for a couple of days. And then, if you're still sure, you come back here after dinner. Got that? I'm going to help you."

I nodded. I could feel myself wobbling, starting at my lips and the dewdrops on my lower lids and spreading outward.

"We're Going To Sort This Out." She said it just like that, in italics, with those determined capital letters.

So I did just that. I went home. Pretended everything was OK. Inside, I worried at the problem, like a terrier with a bone.

Two days later, I went back. Gram made tea. Listened.

"Come on," she said, business-like, her palms pushing off from the doilies on her armrests. "I know someone who can help."

She bullied me into a thick coat, and I protested, laughing, because apart from the fact it was one of hers and therefore not something I'd have been seen dead in.... It was late Spring, and the weather was quite mild. She peered at me, the end of her finger waving under my nose like a sword.

"You mind me, girl," she said. "I know what's what. Put that on, and come with me."

The sun would set soon. We walked to the edge of the village, and I realised, as we closed in on the little cottage, where she was taking me. To the one-eyed old woman who sold newspapers and hung around the woods, screeching at kids for littering.

I balked. Maybe that's not all the old woman did. Nightmarish images wheeled through my mind. I might've been reassured to know I was right about what was going to happen, but completely wrong about how.

The crone answered the door, bundled up just like me, tucking a flask into her pocket and whistling. A grizzled dog appeared at her heels.

The two women exchanged hard nods, old biddies apparently capable of telepathy, and off we went up the path beside the tiny house. I glanced back; Gram was nowhere to be seen.

"You jest come along with me," the strange old woman said. "We're going for a walk, and it's no hike for an old lady."

I think my eyes goggled out of my head at that, but I didn't answer. On we went, into the woods, the old dog trotting at her heels.

"Now then," she said, leaning on a rickety stile and not looking at me. "We rest a minute. And I gotta ask you something."

I thought I knew what was coming, so I said, "Okay."

"Do you trust me?"

That wasn't what I'd expected, and I hesitated. Yes, I realised, with some surprise. I do, actually. So I said so.

"Good. This'll get... weird. But as long as one of us is with you," she gestured at the arthritic dog, who was standing staring at nothing as if waiting for a switch to be flipped, "...you'll be fine. Understand?"

Gulp. Nod.

"Right. How long?"

"F-five weeks. I think. Maybe six." My voice was a tremble.

Her face was blank, unreadable.

"Last question," she said, "and I think you know what I'm going to ask."

"YesI'msure," I told her in a rush. "Definitely sure."

"Good. If you change your mind, you tell me before you go in the Neverglade. Got it?"

The... what?

"Yes. OK."

She offered me the flask. "Jest a Soothe, is all. Mild. Calming, you know. Help you relax. Be easier."

I took a swig. It was unsweetened, a bit flowery. Not to my taste. I tried not to make a face.

She whistled to the dog, who whipped round, trembling all over and ears forward.

"Go on, boy," she said. "Go. Git."

He was off! I didn't think a creature so old could move so fast. She put her hand out for me, and we followed. "He'll be back for us," she said, her grip strong.

Twilight deepened around us, the dog looping back to check on us and zipping off again through the trees.

I started thinking there was something funky in that tea, because the trees started to look... strange. In the corner of my eye, I saw a tall, slender one waving her arms to the sky and dancing to music only she could hear. I shook my head, looked round, and she- it!- was stood still, moving only as much as reasonable before a gentle breeze. Yet, several minutes later, there she was again, on the other side of me, swaying with two others.

"It's not the tea," the woman said, her eye soft. "I see them, too. Aren't they beautiful?"

Darkness enveloped us, fear nibbled at me. The dog had disappeared some time ago, I noticed with concern. As if she caught the thought, she reassured me. "He's still about. He won't come with us for this next bit."

After a while, we stood on the edge of a clearing and certainty settled in my gut like lead. My pulse raced. This is it. It was very cold.

"You're going to have a little nap, there," she told me, pointing to the centre where evil-looking trees tapped wicked pincer-like branches together.

The hell I am, I thought.

"You have a kip," she said again, "and when you wake up, it's done."

That tea was still working on me, or maybe the magic of the forest was lubricating me, loosening something in me. It felt like a dream, like moving underwater.

"I'll take that coat. You'll want something warm and dry to put on after."

I unbuttoned it with mechanical fingers, and kept going, clothes, underthings...

She wrapped a cloth loosely around my face, covering my nose and mouth. "Keep this on, OK? That's important." I nodded, vision swimming.

"Right to the middle, now. Go. It's better if I wait here until it's done. The Nevergreens will accept you, but they won't like if I come too close yet."

It was like listening to her speak another language from a long way away.

Off I went, one foot after the other, wobbling and sinking to my knees in the middle of the glade. Those huge black trees looked even more menacing up close. The chittering increased, and I felt it... the excitement radiating off them.

~liedown!down!

Their voice was harsh, not-quite musical. Discordant. I obeyed.

~down!down!down!

My head felt even woollier, now. I was thinking, but I am down, I am, I am.

~giveittous!

Sinking into that fuzzy calmness, like sinking into a bed... With a soft, chilly mattress... Then I realised I was sinking, and panic flooded me.

Everything felt heavy and I couldn't get up. My throat was so much cotton, useless for screaming. Terror claimed me. Every muscle rigid, my breath coming in short gasps. I felt my eyes popping, as if scrabbling at the last thing I'd ever see: clacking branches biting at a freezing naked moon. Black soil claimed my vision from the outside in.

I lay there, suspended in long grisly moments. Hugged tight in a black, rotten womb. Something coiling around my ankles and wrists. It was getting harder to breathe. My fright still spinning each second out unbearably long... Roots tightening on my arms and legs... I could feel myself going, going...

She brought me here to d-

+

A firm grip on my arms pulled me out into the cold light. The old woman's voice was low, urgent.

"Can you walk?" She threw the ugly coat around my shoulders, took my hand and fair dragged me out of the Neverglade, those sharp black spines reaching for us all the way. We fled into the gentler silver-green forest.

When we were a good distance from that terrible place, she brushed the mud off my skin and helped me back into my clothes. I was shaking violently, my teeth chattering fit to break.

When I caught sight of her face, I don't think I managed to hide my shock. How deep the wrinkles carved in it! The generous blood freckles and streaks!

I sagged against a tree, clutching at it for support. She reached out and rubbed the trunk, absently as if to comfort it or apologise.

"You mind these trees, now, where your little one dances. You care for the forest, as hard as you can."

The dog appeared when she whistled, and led us home.

++++++++++++

Content warning: mention of unwanted pregnancy and abortion.