One of the men groans—Turk—and he sounds like an animal, gritting through an awful kind of pain.
His wife lets out a shrieking cry.
I can’t see where Levi has pressed the blade into Turk, but I imagine it’s punctured his forearm or maybe his hand, a place where the flesh is thin and pale, easily cut. Levi takes a step back, the only footsteps against the earth, and there are gasps from the group, heads shaking, hands worrying together. A chill coils down the length of my spine, landing in my toes.
If blood, ripe red, poured from the wound, there would be no gasps of shock from the others. Instead, they are seeing something unnatural. Something that isn’t right.
I swallow, trying to slow my breathing, my heartbeat, so that my ears can pick out each sound.
Levi walks to Ash, suspended several steps from Turk, and he performs the same test—pushing the blade into Ash’s skin. But Ash does not moan in pain, he doesn’t make a sound, although I hear his heartbeat quicken in his chest.
The response from the group is the same. Several women begin to cry in earnest, and someone mutters, “no, no,” like they can’t believe the sight before them. People begin writhing in their seats, disgusted or frightened.
I cannot see the wounds in Ash and Turk’s flesh, but I can imagine what’s pouring from their veins: mud, thick and black, infected.
“We had hoped the ground would draw out the illness,” Levi says, his voice carrying out over the crowd, to the trees where I stand. “But their blood pours from the flesh black as death. The pox has taken hold inside them.”
More crying erupts from the group, along with a muttering unease, a restlessness that reminds me of the goats in Henry’s barn when they startle and begin stamping the ground, wanting to run.
“This is what we fear,” Levi declares. “This is the illness we work so hard to keep outside our valley.”
“No!” Marisol cries out suddenly. I can almost hear the tears dropping from her cheeks and falling to the earth, salt returning to salt. Someone near her coos softly in her ear—a worthless effort. Because it’s obvious how this will go, the end this gathering will arrive at.
My heart climbs up my throat and I feel like I suddenly can’t breathe, too many sobs are clotting the air—the group whimpering and shifting in their seats, the noise like static, like a growing roar.
“It’s not true,” a voice—low and unnatural—speaks for the first time. “We’re not sick.”
It’s Ash who’s spoken, and the group falls still again.
“We only tried to help my child,” he pleads, “because you all refused to do anything. You’d rather stay safe within your homes than see what’s out there, beyond our walls.”
No one answers and I’m surprised Levi allows Ash to continue to speak. Maybe he knows it’s too late—the men’s fate is already decided. The truth of their wounds cannot be denied.
“Ash and Turk have brought the pox back with them,” Levi says decisively, a calmness hung on each word. “This is why we do not cross the border. This is why we cannot pass down the road and bring back doctors or medicine. These two men are already dead, their bodies devoured by the rot. Two lives have now been given trying to save a child. Two lives lost needlessly.” He swallows, a word catching there, as if he’s lost his train of thought briefly. “We cannot allow the pox to infect anyone else, we cannot allow this disease to destroy what we’ve built.”
This declaration is met with a sudden cry from Marisol. “Please,” she shrieks. “He didn’t do anything wrong.” She’s weeping and I hear her footsteps scramble forward, reaching out for her husband. But someone stops her, hands braced against her shoulder, and she’s led away; her wails heard across the community until she is ushered inside somewhere and a door shut, muffling her desperate cries.
I press a hand against a nearby pine, my bones buzzing, my ears filled with too much noise. I wish I could see what’s happening, yet I can feel the terror in the heartbeats of everyone gathered around the Mabon tree. It’s already too late for Ash and Turk: the rot will kill them eventually, painfully. But in their slow deaths, they might infect others. So instead, their deaths will be swift and absolute.
It’s a mercy, to end their lives. But I also know, in some small way, it’s a punishment for what they’ve done. Levi will prove his point—and he will ensure our enduring fear of the woods.
I close my eyelids and back away from the gathering circle, gasping for air, needing the silence the trees will bring, my pulse beating at my throat.