“What’s going on here?” Martha asked the boy, Michael. A golden retriever was in the process of lying on his side near them, and Michael had dutifully taken up petting his tawny fur.
“This is where we live now, Martha,” said the boy.
“What? This whole time?”
“This whole time,” confirmed Michael.
“But you were made Unadoptable, like, three years ago!”
“Has it been so long?” asked the boy, musingly, as he patted the retriever’s belly.
“Do you live here, in this cottage?”
“We all do, Martha. We all live here. This is our home.”
Martha remained mystified. “Did you, like, build it?”
“No, we found it,” said Michael. He looked at Elsie and Rachel warmly. “Just like you have. And I see you’ve brought some friends with you.”
“Oh yeah,” Martha said. “This is Elsie and Rachel Mehlberg. They were there for only a week before they were made Unadoptable.”
The kids all murmured hellos to one another. Michael returned his warm gaze to Martha. “Martha Song,” he said, “I was wondering when you’d make it in here. I mean, not to be cruel—I know it’s a little hard at first—but I was sort of hoping that you’d be made Unadoptable sooner. I kinda missed you.”
Martha smiled. “Yeah, I missed you too, Michael.” She turned to Elsie and Rachel. “Michael and I ended up at the Unthank Home around the same time; we’d been really close since we were kids.” Looking back at the boy: “It broke my heart when you left. I cried for, like, three days straight.”
“I know, Martha,” he said. “It’s so good to see you again.”
Martha studied the boy for a moment before saying, “You don’t look any different. I mean, not a lick different.”
Michael only smiled. Turning to Elsie and Rachel, he said, “You’ll have to meet Carol.”
“Who’s Carol?” asked Martha.
“He’s kind of our father here. The patriarch of our big brood.” Michael stood up, and, opening the screen door to the cottage, he yelled the man’s name. “We’ve got a few more family members to welcome to the dale!”
While they waited for the man to come, Martha peppered Michael with questions. She, like Elsie and Rachel, was feeling deeply baffled by the afternoon’s events.
“When I came here,” the boy was telling, “I was as scared as you guys are. Believe me. All of us, it’s all the same. Unthank had me drink this weird pink cordial. It made me so sick. As soon as I crossed into the woods I was, like, puking my guts out. But once I’d gotten my bearings, I started wandering. I was intent on getting my freedom—I knew some kids in town who’d be willing to take me in, and needless to say, I was really excited to be freed of that terrible machine shop. But I found—like everyone else—that somewhere along the way I’d lost the twine that Unthank had given me. And no matter how much I wandered, I always seemed to end up in the same place. I started getting really scared; it was clear that I was caught up in some kind of weird maze. So instead of trying to get out, I just sort of focused my mind and started walking in. That’s the only way I can describe it. And eventually I came here, to this house. There were maybe a few other kids here—Unthank had only started the whole Unadoptable thing a few months before—and a whole lot of dogs.”
“Yeah—what’s up with the dogs?” asked Rachel, her hands still defensively folded at her chest. A black Lab was trying to lick her elbow.
“They’re neighborhood dogs, run away. This place is, like, the receptacle for lost dogs and cats who’ve wandered from their homes and into the Impassable Wilderness. We get a new one every few months or so.”
“Whoa,” murmured Elsie. She looked at her sister. “I wonder if Fortinbras is in here.” That had been the name of their tabby cat; he’d disappeared the summer before.
“You’re free to look. No promises. Anyway,” Michael continued, “Carol had been here all along. He’d come years before, and he’d found this house and kept it up. He took us in, all of us lost orphans, and made us a real home here. A better home than I ever had in the Outside, that’s for sure.”
A voice, warm and crackly, came from within the house. “Who’s tellin tales about me, eh?”
Michael, hearing the voice, beamed. “Here he is.”
The screen door swung open; a graying old man appeared at the doorway. A young girl stood at his arm and helped him walk onto the porch.
“Who’s here, Michael?” called out the old man. “Who’s come to join our family?”
The man’s face was pale and freckled with liver spots; deep wrinkles crisscrossed his brow and cheeks and made troughlike pockets below his eyes. It was his eyes, in fact, that caught Elsie’s attention. They seemed to be looking just beyond the girls’ heads, though his body was facing in their direction. On closer inspection, his eyes seemed to be painted on and lifeless, like the rolling eyes of a baby doll. She saw the girl at his elbow guide him to the middle of the porch until his feet were planted firmly on the wood planks. His hand pawed at the air, uncertain, until it found Michael’s shoulder, where it came to rest.
“He’s blind!” said Elsie, despite herself.
In any other circumstance, Rachel would’ve shushed her sister for being rude, but she, too, was captivated by the old man’s appearance.
The man laughed at the observation. “Eh, but who needs eyes when you’ve got thirty-five pair at yer disposal, eh? These”—here he waved his arm to gesture to the children in the yard—“these are my eyes.”
The two eyes currently resting in his sockets moved a little as he spoke, looking cockeyed across the heads of the three girls. Elsie realized they were made of wood; two blue irises had been painted, somewhat crudely, on their polished surfaces.
“But I’ve not introduced myself,” said the man. “Name’s Carol. Carol Grod. And I welcome you, castoffs and castaways, to our little family.” He swiveled to face Michael. “How many we got here?”
“Three, Carol,” said Michael. “Three girls. One of ’em I know pretty well. We were friends, back in the Outside. Her name’s Martha. And this is Elsie and Rachel.”
“Aha!” exclaimed the man. “Three! That’s quite the bumper crop. Ol’ Unthank must’ve had his hands full with you bunch.” Two dogs, a collie and a German shepherd, had run up to the old man and yipped at him playfully. Dropping his hand from Michael’s shoulder, he gave them each an affectionate pat. An orange-striped cat on the banister of the porch slunk away from the collected dogs. “Come closer, you three,” he said. “Let me see you.”
Obeying his command, Elsie, Rachel, and Martha stepped closer; the old man lifted his hand from petting the dog and touched each of their faces in sequence. When he arrived at Elsie’s face, he paused. A slight frown played across his face. “Who’s this one?” he asked.
“I’m Elsie,” she said.
His eyebrows lifted as he continued to rest his palm on her cheek. “Elsie, eh? What a beautiful name. And which is your sister?”
“She’s right here, next to me,” said Elsie. He shifted from Elsie and let his hand gently rest on Rachel’s cheek. His brow seemed to buckle a little under some deeper assessment. “Elsie and Rachel,” he said, his voice a low purr.
“Is something the matter, Carol?” asked Michael.
The old man’s demeanor abruptly changed. “No, no,” he said, his hand lifting from Rachel’s face. “Nothing at all.” He patted Rachel affectionately on the shoulder. “It’s good to meet you three. And welcome to our happy family. Whatever misfortunes have befallen us in our past are forgotten here; this is a place of salvation and solace. You can be happy here. Come,” he said, gesturing to the open door of the cottage. “Come in and we’ll show you around the place. Sandra’s made some lentil stew; you must be very hungry.”
And to be honest, they were that, very much.
Once they’d finished eating the hearty vegetable stew (Elsie hadn’t let up until every last morsel had been removed fro
m the bowl, with the aid of a spongy piece of sourdough bread), the three girls sat back in their chairs, reveling in the glow of their satiated hunger. Carol had sat with them, merrily laughing at the sounds of their eating. “Nice to hear appreciative eaters,” he said. The table cleared, Carol called for his pipe, which was dutifully brought by a young boy who’d been collecting vegetable scraps for the compost. As he packed it, he spoke in the direction of the three new arrivals.
“So, I suppose we’ll be needin to find you a job among us,” he said. “But don’t worry: We won’t be workin you like you’re used to. Everybody here works to their own ability. We’re not slave drivers. As long as the house is properly functioning, everybody’s happy.”
Michael, who sat next to Martha, intruded on the conversation with pride. “It really works,” he said. “Nobody has incentive to be lazy. We each contribute what we’re best at, whatever that may be.”
“Sandra makes a fine stew,” said Carol. “It’s a real passion of hers. She’s got a gift fer it. Likewise, Cynthia is a marvelous painter, that one. So she gets put to work providin the artwork you see around the house.”
Elsie, licking her lips of the last drops of the delicious stew, surveyed the walls of the house; each was veritably covered with oil landscapes, on canvas, set in makeshift tree-branch frames.
“Michael, Peter, and Cynthia are handy with a snare, so they’re out evenings and early mornings tracking game for the dinner table. And young Miles is a marvelous storyteller; he gets the young ones into bed early.” Carol puffed at his pipe, letting curlicues of smoke drift into the rafters of the cottage.
“It all fits very nicely; we’re a working family,” said Michael, tearing off a hunk of bread. Two younger girls were washing dishes in the basin; they sang as they worked, and their high, lilting voices rang through the house. “We’re content here,” he said. He then reached into his pocket and retrieved a little white clay pipe, and, borrowing some brown tobacco from Carol’s pouch, he packed it full and began to smoke it. This was met by looks of shock from the new arrivals. Michael checked their reactions with pride.
Martha was the first to comment. “What are you doing?”
Michael only shrugged. “We can do what we want here. No parents to bug us about what we should or shouldn’t do. It’s a dream!” He puffed at his pipe, shooting little circles of smoke into the air.
Rachel, who’d lapsed into silence after eating her fill, finally spoke up. “But what is this place?” she asked. “Why are you all here? Why are we all here?”
Swiveling his body to face Rachel, Carol leaned back in his chair. It let out an aching creak. “This is the Periphery, dear,” he said. “An ancient magic, woven into the trees by the old Mystics. It was built to keep folks like you and me out. And you might as well get used to it, ’cause we’re stuck here.”
Martha had let her spoon clatter from her fingers to the tabletop. She apologized for the noise before saying, “You said what? Magic?”
Carol tugged again at his pipe a few times before speaking. “Indeed. I can only tell you what I know. And I know this: When it was decided, some centuries ago, that the Wood and the Outside could no longer live in peaceful harmony, a Binding spell was placed on the ribbon of trees surrounding the Wood; so that every Outsider, when attempting to cross over, would be lost in a veritable maze of trees. Every turn would resemble the last, each square of land doubling itself into infinity. What’s more, time itself remains at a standstill, and while the sun sets and the moon rises and does so in its own patterns, the days never shift into the next.”
Michael smiled at Martha when this last thing was said. “Get it?” he said. “We never get old.”
The three girls were speechless as they tried to wrap their heads around the implication.
“That’s insane,” said Rachel.
“Indeed,” added Carol. “It’s as if we are all simply suspended in time here. Never feeling the ravages of the seasons’ turns.”
“How long have you been here?” asked Martha.
“Oh, years, I suppose. Though when the effects of time have no sway, one stops paying quite so much attention to its passage.”
“But how do you know so much about the … what did you call it … Periphery? And the Impassable Wilderness?” Rachel ventured.
“I had my moment,” said Carol. “I walked among them. The people of South Wood. And then I was discarded.”
“South Wood?” asked Elsie. “What’s that?”
“And why were you discarded?” This was from Rachel.
Carol laughed a craggy, wheezing laugh before taking a few puffs from his pipe and continuing. “Girls, so many questions. First, South Wood is the populous place, where the Mansion and the seat of government is. There’s a whole world there. And the entire place is bloomin with strange and magical things. Things that’d make your eyes pop out your skull. Anyhow: I was called up. From the Outside. And when they were done with me, they sent me away.”
“Sent you away?” This came from Rachel. She’d pushed her hair back from her face and was staring at the old man intently.
Carol grumbled and chewed at the tip of his pipe. “Yup. Sent me away. Won’t go into it; but somes in South Wood feel like this—the Periphery, mind—is as good a place as any to discard the old, used-up rubbish. Not bein of the Wood, mind, all’s it took was to throw me in here, and I was good as dead to them.”
Michael, his brow fretted, gave Elsie and Rachel a look that clearly discouraged them from delving any deeper.
“So’s anyway,” continued Carol. “Here I am. In my new home. In my purgatory. But least I got company. Must be two years now, when the first one came over. Little Edmund Carter. I was just sitting on the porch, talkin to the dogs—which were my only source of companionship and conversation at the time—when up he comes over the ridge. Been wanderin for days, I suppose. Some kids find us sooner than others. Took him in; gave him some food. We been growin as a family ever since.”
“But …,” began Elsie. “There has to be a way out. We can’t all be stuck here, forever?”
“Yeah,” said Rachel. “What about the people who’ve made it out—Unthank said something about them. Survivors of the Impassable Wilderness, he called them.”
“Well,” Carol said, shifting in his chair, “I ain’t never heard of that. Could be myth. Legend. Could be true, though, I s’pose. Though we spent a lot of time lookin for a way out, and we’re all here as witness to that not necessarily workin out, if you get my figure.”
Michael interjected, “And we’re happy here. You’ll come to see it that way, too. No rules. Do what you like. Sleep all day, if it’s what you want. Stay up late. Tell dirty jokes!” As if to punctuate the idea, Michael let loose a curse word, apropos of nothing, that made Elsie blush a deep violet.
Carol laughed. “Yes, I don’t cotton much to the idea of movin at this point. We’ve got a good thing here. In the Outside, I was a loner. In the Wood, among those strange peoples, I was ostracized. Here, I am a father to an ever-growin batch of good kids, all of ’em needin a place to live and some folks to call a family.”
Elsie, out of the corner of her eye, saw Martha slowly nod in agreement. Rachel had seen it too; she spoke up. “You mean, you’re all just going to stay here? Just like that?”
Michael shrugged. “As if we have a choice.” His pipe was making lazy strings of smoke curl into the air.
Rachel stanched a laugh. “You guys are crazy,” she said. Elsie glared at her. “And what about this magical world? All in here, in the I.W.?”
“It’s true,” said Michael.
“I think it’s a load of crap,” said Rachel.
“Why do you think you’re stuck here?” This was Carol, who was looking at Rachel in a way that might be described as “intently,” if it was possible for a blind man to do so. His wooden eyes lolled in his head as he turned.
“I don’t know,” said Rachel. “I’ve only been in here for a little bit. There ha
s to be a way out.”
“There’s no way out,” said Michael. “We know.”
“Yeah,” Martha interjected. “I’d be inclined to believe them.” She then reached into her back pocket and pulled out a large piece of paper that’d been folded into little squares. Carefully, she began to flatten it out, revealing a large hand-drawn map. The first corner to be revealed had handwriting on it that read: “Impassable Wilderness, conjecture.”
“That’s the map from Unthank’s office!” exclaimed Rachel.
“Uh-huh,” said Martha. “I stole it.” She looked at everyone present in a proud way.
“Michael,” said Carol, “what is this? What has the girl brought?”
“It’s a map,” Michael said as more of Martha’s bounty was revealed. “It’s … the Wood, all right. It’s got the mansion, just like you said. And there’s a big tree drawn on the north part.”
“See?” said Elsie to her sister. “He does know what he’s talking about.” She reached her hand across the table and touched one of Carol’s ancient knuckles. She felt an ingrained suspicion, long harbored, welling up in her stomach, like something she’d always known to be true was finally being confirmed to her. What’s more, she knew there was a clue to her brother’s disappearance, packed deep into Carol’s story. “Tell us more about this place.”
Carol smiled. He tapped out the remnant ash of his pipe into his hand, scattered it onto the knobby boards of the floor, and spoke. He told the girls about the Wood, about Wildwood and the North and South Wood. About the animals and the humans living among one another. About the Mystics. He told them what he knew, which was limited, but nonetheless was enough to upset the collected worldviews of the three girls in such a way that they would never see the world in the same light again.