They’d outgrown this place, and the time for leaving was soon. Her body didn’t have long before the woods would not contain it.
* * *
IT WAS AUTUMN, almost winter, when she decided to leave. The children had just turned four, and Howling kept asking about the other half of his parentage. It was a simple question, but its answer was endless and gestured to a world her children didn’t know. “Where is this Lucy?” Howling asked.
“All that’s important is that you lived in my belly. You grew and grew in there till you were big enough to be bornt. Don’t worry about your father.”
Howling frowned. “I thought you liked Lucy,” he said. “Are people like beavers?”
“What?”
“Like beavers. And bald eagles. And barn owls. Or are they like deer?”
Vern shook her head. “What are you talking about, Howl?”
“Beavers mate for life, and so do bald eagles and barn owls. But not deer.”
Several months ago they’d all witnessed a doe give birth to her child. Howling had wondered where the buck was, and she’d explained the species’ mating habits. “What about people? You talk about Lucy like she’s your mate for life.”
Feral turned from his work shelling nuts to look at his mam, his way of echoing Howling’s question.
“It’s different for different people,” Vern managed.
“Do some people have cloacas?” asked Howling. Her children’s perception of the world was so skewed.
“You hurt, Mam?” Feral asked, as Vern shook tree branches with a stick to bring down more nuts.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You limping,” said Feral.
Her aches and pains had become more than aches and pains, but doctors didn’t do house calls to the woods.
Fear seized Vern to have it put in such simple terms. Nothing had changed about her circumstances, but the starkness of the truth of her world was bracing. There was no medical intervention out here, and if she died from whatever it was Sherman had put into her back at Cainland, her children died with her.
“Mam? You all right? What’s wrong?” asked Feral.
Last week Howling had fallen from a tree, losing his footing on a moist patch of moss. He’d not broken anything, but if he had, Vern could set only basic fractures.
“I need to tell you something,” Vern said. Sensing the seriousness in her voice, Howling and Feral listened raptly. They were used to abrupt changes in topic when it came to their mam.
“We’ve got to leave here. We got to leave the woods,” she said, forcing herself to spit it out before worry for how they’d take it could set in.
“What do you mean?” said Howling.
“We got to leave the woods,” she repeated.
“But how do you leave the woods?” he asked, gesturing all around. “The woods is everywhere.”
She shook her head. “You know how sometimes there’s a clearing in the trees? There’s a place where it’s like that everywhere, outside the woods. You’ve just got to walk far enough in the right direction. That’s where Lucy is.”
Howling didn’t answer back, but he was thinking, brooding, ruminating.
“Why?” asked Feral, sensing his brother’s distress and taking over.
“Because I think there’s a chance for us out there, and I don’t think there’s one here. I think I’m sick, babies, and I don’t know what’s wrong. Out there, there might be a cure for me.”
Howling kicked at the small structure of sticks and mud he was building, softly at first, then hard, until it crumbled. “You’ve never mentioned no outside-the-woods before.”
“It was implied,” she said, impatient. “Where did you think all my stories took place?”
“In the woods!” cried Howling. “The world!”
“The world is more than woods,” she said.
“But will there be sticks for building shelters? If there’s a whole place that’s only a clearing, where do you get sticks for making a shelter?” asked Howling.
“There are shelters out there prebuilt.” She didn’t mention that those cost money. It was something else neither of her children could begin to understand. “Haven’t you been wondering about what you saw on my back that day at the river? Or why my skin’s how it is? Or why I can hardly walk some days? It’s only going to get worse. What if I can’t take care of you?”
“Then I’ll take care of us,” said Howling. “I’ll take care of you!”