The Forest of Hands and Teeth
Page 6

All I can think about is that I can still smell Travis on her hands, and it is almost my undoing.
When Cass and Harry have left, Sister Tabitha escorts me back to my room. “You have finished reading the Scripture through five times.” It isn't a question and while I have no problem lying to her by omission I cannot lie directly to her face, and so I nod.
“Then your vow of silence is over.”
“Yes,” I respond, language feeling strange in my mouth after so many weeks of silence. My voice feels loud and harsh to my ears, which have grown accustomed to soft whispers against Travis's cheeks.
“You will advance to the next stage of your studies soon. For now, you will help Cass through this ordeal and continue to pray for Travis.”
I nod. Because even though I am allowed to speak now does not mean that I want to do so. The ability to speak comes with the burden of explaining myself to Cass.
Because I am weak I don't tell Cass that my vow of silence has been lifted. Instead, I sit in a chair near the window as she kneels next to Travis's bed, her lips moving in prayer. Travis's fever hasn't broken and he is rarely awake, though he often groans in pain and thrashes on the bed. After a few visits like this I can see that she is weary and exhausted and lost, and so I go and kneel next to her and wrap her in my arms. She collapses against me in tears.
On the seventh day Cass doesn't come to sit with Travis and I begin to worry that something has happened to her. But then Harry comes in her place and tells me that it has become too much for her to bear, seeing Travis in so much pain.
He does not stay. He does not ask how I am doing or how Travis is doing. Instead, he stands in the doorway to Travis's room a moment, looking at me as I sit in my chair by the window watching his brother sleep peacefully.
“You love him,” he says to me. I try to find accusation in his voice but I cannot.
“You did not speak for me,” I respond.
His eyes flare for just a moment and then his gaze shifts away from me as he looks out the window. I want him to tell me why. Instead, he says, “I'm sorry, Mary,” and turns and leaves, his eyes skimming over me before he closes the door behind him.
I slide out of my chair and crawl over to Travis, pulling myself up to kneel by the bed. It has been too long since I've been the one in this position. For the past few days it's been Cass here and Travis has slowly been getting better, the redness around his scar receding. But he has yet to fully wake up instead of sliding in and out of restless sleep, his mind seemingly blurred with pain.
I clutch at him and begin to sob. I sob for my lost family, for betraying my best friend, for not having been spoken for and for falling in love with Travis so deeply. I sob because my life is nothing like I imagined it would be. I sob for the way we all live and for the Unconsecrated and the Forest of Hands and Teeth and the Sisters and the Guardians. And for me and for Travis and his broken leg and the thought that he may never recover or if he does he may never walk right again and how tomorrow I start my next stage of studies and I am afraid that I won't be allowed to come see Travis anymore.
I sob because this is not a life. This is not the way life should be and because I don't know how to fix any of it.
My tears soak into the pillow. Travis's cheek and neck and hair are wet now but I cannot stop and I go on until I am heaving, trying to suck air into my lungs as my body convulses.
And then I feel a hand on my head and I look up. It's Travis and he is awake. For a moment I wonder if he's confused as to what I'm doing here instead of Cass. It's Cass who had been keeping vigil by his bed and it's Cass to whom he responds.
But then he whispers, “It will be okay, Mary.” He pulls my head down to his chest and he wraps both his arms around me and all I can think is why can't life just stop here and now and leave us be in this moment.
Instead, I hear a shuffle at the door and I look up and it is Sister Tabitha and she is bringing Travis his supper. She raises an eyebrow at my appearance: disheveled and raw. I stand and step away from the bed and wipe at my face with my sleeve.
Travis is back asleep, his body limp, his arms by his side, and I am left to wonder if I just imagined the whole thing.
Sister Tabitha says nothing as I leave the room and run back down through the maze of the Cathedral to the sanctuary of my own solace. But a few hours later she's there at my door and she tells me that my new studies will take up all my day and so I will no longer have the time to go and pray for Travis.
I spend the night sitting at my desk with the window open, the frigid air blowing over my numb body. I look to the Forest, to the fence line, and I wonder about my mother and father. Is their life any easier now? Is there fear in the Unconsecrated? Is there loss and love and pain and longing? Wouldn't a life without so much agony be easier?
Chapter 7
Sister Tabitha is correct: with my new studies there is no time to visit Travis during the day. Instead, the Cathedral's needs dominate my time. In the mornings I sweep the snow away from the walks, and I dust the pews and arrange the books for services. I make the sacred candles for the altar, chanting the special prayers for each layer of wax. I cook the meals and clean the dishes. But I'm not allowed outside the Cathedral walls. I can't go to the well or to the stream or to the fields.
And so I don't see anyone from the village unless they come to the Cathedral.
Throughout the next weeks Cass and Harry come to sit with Travis. Sometimes they are together and sometimes alone. It is terrible of me, but I hide when I see Cass approach. I just can't stand to face her knowing that she is the one Travis has chosen and I can't bear to think that even though he said my name that night that he may have meant Cass instead.
When I can stand it no longer I creep out of my bed at night and wrap my quilt around my shoulders. I slip out of my room and down the hallway back toward the center of the Cathedral. Through the years the village has added wings to the building, halls that twist away from the main Sanctuary at odd angles, some intersecting and some not. My little room is part of the old structure, built of stone rather than wood, dank and dark. Most Sisters choose to live elsewhere in the Cathedral, in the newer rooms facing the village, preferring not to overlook the cemetery and the Forest. Perhaps Sister Tabitha meant my room as a punishment, meant to enforce my isolation. But I haven't protested—I prefer the silence and solitude of my empty hall.
As I near the Sanctuary, the ceiling soars into blackness, the room opening to reveal rows of pews. I press myself against the wall so that the Sisters keeping night vigil cannot see me. I pause to watch them as they kneel with their heads tilted toward each other, candlelight casting shadows around their faces. They are whispering furiously and I assume they are praying until one of them hisses and says in a low tone, “It is the way that it has been and will be and the Sisters will not allow you to presume otherwise. You must not think such things, let alone speak them.”
Without thinking, I sneak closer in the darkness, trying to hear more. But then Sister Tabitha sweeps into the Sanctuary and I scurry away. Silently, I slip through a door, down a hall and up the narrow stairs and down another hall until I am pressing my hand against Travis's door. My breath comes in pants, my body tingling that I have escaped Sister Tabitha's notice and found my way to Travis. I slowly turn the knob.
There is a candle on the table by his bed and it flickers as the door opens and the draft from the hallway sweeps through the room. I close the door quickly. He is propped up on pillows and facing me, as if he's been waiting.
It takes a moment to realize that he is awake. He holds out a hand to me. It's shaking ever so slightly. “Mary, come pray for me,” he says and I run to the side of the bed and kneel down and bury my head against him.
The stench of sickness is gone and his face is no longer pale and sweaty. He places his fingers under my chin and I know that my skin is slick with tears. “Pray for me, Mary,” he says.
“I… I can't,” I tell him. “I don't know any prayers.”
“Tell me the one about the ocean,” he says and I laugh. He smiles and slides gingerly back down on the bed and I lean in and begin to whisper into his ear. His hand is tight around mine and I can't help but allow my heart to beat faster than it ever has before.
I've come to Travis's room every night for the past week, repeating for him the stories that my mother used to tell me. I am exhausted but deliriously happy. At night we are in our own universe, we belong only to each other, as if we have thrown off every other obligation.
Tonight my body pulses with awareness as I kneel by his bed, our fingers intertwined. We've been sharing each other's breath for what seems like weeks now even though it's only been a few moments. It's as if there is infinity between our lips and we will never actually touch. Like math, where dividing by half can last for eternity.
My lips almost brush his and I forget about Cass and Harry and Jed and our village. At night, here in this room, it is only Travis and me and our first kiss.
It is in this moment that I realize something isn't right. Perhaps a shift in the drafts around the room, maybe my ears popping as a door somewhere is opened, but I pull back a bit and meet Travis's eyes. I can see that he also feels the difference.
“Shhhh,” I say, placing a finger between our lips, surprised there is space between us for even a finger. I strain to hear more and then there are feet—many feet—coming up the steps and starting down the hall. I rear up in panic and Travis flings back the covers and takes my body and slides me over his and pushes me between him and the wall, pulling the blanket over us both.
I hold my breath and wait.
There are whispers in the hallway as a group of people shuffle past the door. Then the door to our room opens, the hinges groaning faintly, and sweat breaks out all over my body. Travis's heart beats in the moments that mine does not and I know that whoever is at the door must hear our combined percussion. From my position I can't tell what Travis is doing but he breathes deep and even as if he is asleep. I squeeze my eyes shut and berate myself for taking this risk.
I hear the person at the door take a step into the room. “Travis?” she asks, as if testing to see if he is awake. I bite my lip, recognizing Sister Tabitha's voice. Travis doesn't move, doesn't react.
Finally, the door closes with a click, the bolt of the lock sliding into place, the sound muffled by the covers. We wait. Travis pulls the sheets down, crisp clean air flowing back into my lungs, but I do not move from my position.
The walls are thin up in this hallway and we hear people begin to move around in the room next door. There is a scrape of furniture on the floor and then someone hisses, as if to make the noise stop.
Travis and I stare into each other's eyes. All we can hear is mumbling, the cadence of voices rising and falling, over lapping and rapid. “Do you think someone is hurt like you were?” I whisper.
He shakes his head. “I would think we'd be able to hear them if they were in pain.”
I shrug. Maybe they fainted.
“Why would they lock me in if it was just someone hurt?” he breathes.
Turning my head back, I place my ear against the wall. I hear a sudden and sharp rebuke, uttered in harsh tones— “No, we will not tell them until the time is right. You keep your mouth shut about this”—and then whoever was speaking must have moved away from the other side of the wall and the voices fall back to murmurs.
While I'm puzzling over what's going on, I suddenly realize that I am lying in bed with Travis, my body squeezed between him and the wall, our combined warmth enveloping us both. His breath shifts ever so slightly, heavier now, laced with longing, as if he has realized the same thing.
Every inch of my skin is instantly awake, the hairs on my body searching for movement, as if they are antennae. Travis is lying on his back and my back is against the wall so that I am facing him.
My hand has been resting on his chest and something inside me urges me to press my fingers against his skin, to press my body against his. My breath comes out shaking. Everything, all of this, is almost too much to bear.
“I should probably leave in case they come to check on you again,” I say, and he swallows and nods his head. I can hear the way the air enters and leaves his lungs, as if it is an effort for him to breathe.
I begin to slide back across his body. Before I hadn't paid attention because of the adrenaline, the fear of getting caught. But this time everything inside me understands what is going on here in this bed. Mindful of his healing thigh, I slip one leg over his hips, leveraging myself against the wall until I am kneeling, hovering over him with a leg on either side of him.
He closes his eyes and leans his head back into the pillow, his lips slightly parted as though in pain. Startled, I lean down to him to whisper, “Am I hurting you?”
His eyes still closed, he shakes his head back and forth and reaches his hands up and places them on my hips, his hands so large on my skin, holding me in place for a heartbeat, the two of us almost one as we press against each other from hip to chin. My mind swirls with the knowledge that my nearness affects him, that I am not the only one who feels this heat.
There is a thump in the room next door and I quickly finish slithering over Travis and slip to the floor, ready to wedge myself under the bed if necessary.
Keeping my head cocked to the wall to listen for change in the movement in the next room, I scurry to the door and test the knob. Locked. There's no way I will be able to open it.
Travis is now propped up in his bed, leaning back on his elbows. By the moonlight I can see that his face is flushed with heat.
I will have to climb out the window. I cross the room and struggle against the sash until the window is open enough for me to fit through. Cold air invades my thin nightgown, fighting with the residual heat from Travis's bed, and I pull the quilt that I brought with me tight around my shoulders. Thankfully it's been a heavy winter and there is a substantial snowdrift below to catch my two-story jump. I'm about to make my escape when I hear my name.