I. Ansel
No signs protect the backyards in this part of town from the Marl Pits Forest. There’s no treeline either. Of course there isn’t. But even in the dark, you can’t really miss where the forest starts—not if you’ve lived a childhood in the wilderness here like Ansel has. He knows it by the way the ground softens underfoot and becomes springy like the flesh of a mushroom; by the way the dry weeds and runty wild apples start to lean back, as if recoiling; by the stars above.
The night outside the forest is a dusky sepia—a glassful of gin’n’bitters—just the way Grandfather drinks it—four parts gin, one part angostura. The memory fills Ansel’s mouth—the juniper needles, the bitter, the smell of gasoline on grandfather’s hands—the smell of leather and salt and blood—always somehow the smell of blood even when the skin doesn’t break.
His foot sinks into the ground—the edge of the forest. Ansel stops, takes a deep breath and holds still. Going in without some kind of ritual feels like a mistake. Even Grandfather himself still carries a fistful of salt and spent shells in his pocket and he hasn’t been in the forest since the mine closed.
But it’s not protection they need right now.
Nico grabs at his hand and pulls back. Ansel flinches.
“Let’s go home. I wanna go back to Momma. Ansel, please—I don’t wanna go in.”
There is no home. You ended home.
He can’t say that. He can’t get angry right now. He squats down and looks his brother in the face.
“There’s no momma to go back to now, Nico. We have to get her back. But we have to go right now. It won’t work if too much time has passed.”
“Why, Anse,” Nico whispers, too calmly. “Does the Lady have her? Did Momma go in the forest?”
Is this shock? He doesn’t remember finding the gun? Picking it up? How are his ears not ringing from the shot?
Maybe it’s best he doesn’t remember he shot her. It’ll make everything easier.
“We have to go. You wanna get Mom back, right? Come on, kiddo.” Ansel grabs his little brother’s hand and stands up.
The moment they cross inside, Nico’s hand slackens. His breathing slows down and becomes—wetter somehow, as if he is breathing through a thin layer of silt.
“I’m scared, Anse,” Nico whispers.
“It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”
I’m scared more.
They step into an indigo night so sudden and vast that Ansel teeters. He turns to look at Nico. Little brother’s eyes are closed.
“Nico, take a look. Open your eyes.”
The clammy little hand grabs tighter at Ansel’s own as if Nico is afraid he’ll fall. Nico opens his eyes and looks around.
“Now close them. Do you see the trees?”
Ansel closes his own eyes. Ghostly pale pines loom over him, crowding the sky. The wind blows through their tops and they inhale and exhale, inhale and exhale. Behind them are strange, unfamiliar stars.
The air around the brothers raises the hair on their heads and forearms and zaps them occasionally with fingers of soft lightning.
And that sound—like giant hounds panting, like boulders breaking off a mountain, like the world tearing itself apart in the far distance.
“They’re gone again,” Nico wheezes.
“It’s okay,” Ansel says and feels inside Grandfather’s dry-bag for the flashlights. He turns one on, grabs Nico’s right hand, and places the flashlight in his palm. “The images disappear after a while but if you open your eyes again and close them, they’ll be back. This is how we’ll navigate. Should be better with the flashlights.”
It is better but not by much. Ansel waves his own beam at the darkness, painting transient infinity symbols around them. He closes his eyes and the trees are there, in the darkness behind his eyelids, branded with glowing neon circles.
He grabs Nico’s hand again.
“Stay right behind me,” he says.
“Okay—Anse?”
“Yeah?”
“Promise me we’ll get Mom back.”
“She’ll be back, Nico.”
Eyes still closed, one hand holding his brother’s, one armed with a flashlight, Ansel takes a wary step forward. Then another. There was supposed to be a path to where the Lady lies somewhere here. He remembers his friends daring each other to go. He opens his eyes to take another snapshot and closes them. The clay heart of the forest is somewhere, in the dark, beating.
A shadow snakes through the sea of pale forest underbrush. Through his closed eyelids Ansel sees it come to rest at their feet. It feels like a gust of warm wind and nothing else. He opens his eyes and blinks, trying to set his perspective right.
Around them is a marl wasteland, haunted only by a handful of tall dark pillars—petrified trees stripped of their branches by the explosion that closed the mine. The brothers might as well be on their own strange planet. A chill wind carries swells of ozone and a faintly acidic smell—no trace of the woodfire and fresh cement smells of the town. No trace of terrestrial light. Just a stubborn darkness refusing to reveal its shape. A true night.
Ansel rubs his eyes and waves his flashlight at the ground. If he could only focus on the right bit of night around him, the shadow under their feet should turn into a path when he closes his eyes.
He can hear Nico’s strained, wet breathing behind him.
“Anse?”
“Yeah?”
“Why can’t we see the forest when our eyes are open?”
“I don’t know, Nico. We can still see it, that’s where those afterimages come from when our eyes are closed. We just don’t know we’re seeing it … I think.”
“Weird.”
“Yeah, it is.” Ansel laughs and a bolt of guilt immediately stabs his stomach.
He turns to look at his brother in those faded too-long pants and dark red scarf. Ansel-color scarf, not Nico—Nico loves green. He looks like that little alien prince from that book Mom used to read us, with the rose and the fox. In his hand-me-down clothes. Did I look that tiny when I was his age?
“Did the Lady make the forest and that’s why it’s so weird?”
“No, I don’t think that’s how it happened. You know, there used to be a normal forest here. Grandpa says the same explosion that wiped it out made the Lady as well. Or released her or something.”
“But Mom says the Lady’s been here forever. She says people have always gone missing, even before the town. And then—also—when it was just a road here, people went missing from the road, too. She—”
A dry scratching sound in front of them scrambles the flashlights. A thick branch, hanging as if in midair, unfolds and stretches wild feathery wings. An owl. Ansel trains his flashlight on it and the bird rears aggressively. It opens its beak wide as if to screech in warning or threat but no sound comes out.
Ansel looks around and, fighting his entire body and the loud beating of the heart in his chest, closes his eyes. And the forest surrounds them again. The owl is standing on a branch that hangs over the suddenly-in-focus path—wings spread wide. The tips of his feathers are glowing softly like the trees. Its beak is open. Its eyes are trained on the boys. And on its chest, a large dark spot spreads outward and drips down onto the talons gripping the branch.
Ansel’s entire body rejects the idea of walking by that bird. But if they walk too wide around, they’ll lose the path. This is as much of a choice as the ones Grandfather gives—no matter which door you pick, something terrifying waits behind it.
“Nico,” he says steadily without turning around.
Nico doesn’t respond. Ansel turns to look at him. Nico is staring at the dark spot on the owl’s chest. His whole body is shaking.
Ansel grabs his little brother’s hand tighter, closes his eyes, and steps on the path. If the owl turns to follow at them as they go, Ansel doesn’t look back—
—He is focused on the sound. A whisper—it settles in his ear the moment he sets his foot down on the path. Ansel’s blood chills—and by the way Nico’s hand jerks, he knows his little brother hears it too. It’s like same thing he heard in the distance, over the pines, but now, when it’s right by his side the sound is smaller, more—personal—somehow, more urgent. Now it sounds like air flowing through wet clay; like hornets swarming inside bulging walls; like yelling growing ugly in the next room.
There’s nothing human in that whisper, except for the tone. Its pitch rises and falls as if it’s holding its part of a conversation. When Ansel stops, the whisper stops too. A step forward—and it continues.
And when—
“Nico, don’t drop my hand. Just keep walking in the same direction,” Ansel says and steps off the path. The sound is gone, back somewhere beyond the pines. He steps back on the path again and—again it flies back to his ear as if it is, somehow, a part of the path.
“You hear it too, right,” he asks Nico.
“I hear it,” Nico says in a hushed tone, almost blending with the path’s voice.
“It can’t hurt you. It’s here to lead us to the Lady,” Ansel says.
Doesn’t matter if it’s true—it makes sense. It won’t matter in the end. As long as we get to the Lady.
“Anse?”
“Yeah?”
“Who are we giving her?”
“What?”
“To the Lady? That’s what she takes, right? A life for a life.”
“Yeah. Ah, yeah—that’s why I brought a stray cat. It’s in the bag.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
“Can I pet it?”
“Not now. It’s sleeping. You can pet it when we get to the Lady.”
Eyes open, eyes closed.
Ansel walks—and the whisper, rising slightly with every step—walks beside him.
“Anse?”
“Yeah?”
“What do we do if the cat doesn’t work?”
“It’ll work.”
A sudden movement on the path in front of them scrambles the lights again and Ansel’s beam reaches the surprised face of a tall, scrawny wolf. Something about it doesn’t make sense until it starts loping towards the brothers and Ansel realizes just how far away the animal was—and how gigantic. Its eyes glint in the starlight as it walks, but Ansel barely notices them. He is focused on the dark stain that covers the animal’s chest when Ansel blinks.
“What happened, Anse? What did you see?” Nico peeks around him, waving his own flashlight at the creature.
Ansel can’t move. Can’t—breathe—
He whispers down at Nico.
“Shh—shut up!”
Nico is holding onto Ansel, drawing in quick, shallow breaths like he is about to start crying. Ansel steps in front of him. The wolf stops—chest to chest—and dips its nose to sniff the top of Ansel’s head. A string of saliva drips over Ansel’s hairline and he feels a tiny wet spot in his underwear where he’s just peed himself a little. He closes his eyes but the wolf is there too—the dark stain directly in Ansel’s face. The wolf opens its great jaws, wide enough to bite off Ansel’s head like a grape. Its head dips low—Ansel gags at the smell of old blood, gin, and gunpowder—and then swings up towards the sky. It’s howling, Ansel realizes. But there’s no sound except for Nico’s strained breathing by his side and that fucking relentless whisper, more urgent. The wolf leans its head over Ansel’s shoulder, its wet muzzle still open, panting soundlessly against Ansel’s hair. The black stain on its chest grows wider and drips down.
“We have to walk past it,” Ansel says and swallows the vomit which spurts from his throat into his mouth.
“No, Ansel, I can’t. Let’s go back, please.”
“Let’s go, Nico. We’re running out of time. This is not the time to be a little—”
A little shit. Not Ansel’s words. Grandfather’s words.
Nico doesn’t answer. His hand slips out of Ansel’s. Ansel turns halfway around, keeping the wolf in his peripheral vision. His little brother is on the ground, on four legs, feeling about for his dead flashlight. Crying.
“Leave it, Nico! Nico!”
Nico ignores him. He’s crying—sobbing far more than a flashlight is worth.
He’s remembered.
The tension inside Ansel crashes and the words shoot out like hornets.
“Nico. Get up. It’s my fault too—I—wasn’t paying attention. I got him angry. You were trying to scare him with the gun and—Mom got in the way. She’s not hurt. She’s dead. She is not waiting for us back home. Grandpa is— He’s waiting for us there and he is mad. But what’s important right now is that Mom is dead and we need to fix—it— because it’s our fault.”
The wolf watches them.
Ansel grabs Nico’s hand and pulls him up off the ground. He is so light.
Was I this light when I was six?
“Tell me it’s not true, Anse. Anse, please? I don’t want it to be true.”
“It won’t be. I promise. As soon as we get through this.”
He drags Nico behind him as he slides around the wolf, chest almost touching the stain. The animal stands, tense, that incredible head with its open muzzle swiveling to follow their movements. Ansel gags at the smell again—old blood, gin, and gunpowder. His head sways but Nico is holding his hand tightly in his own small one, even as he is sniffling. Would I have been that brave eight years ago? The wolf’s face meets Ansel’s and its gasoline-and-blood breath washes over him and that’s when Ansel realizes he’s been crying.
He isn’t looking at his little brother but he feels him—shallow breaths, small steps, and sniffles—staring down at the beam of light in front of his dirty sneakers, holding on. Ansel wants to tell him it’s going to be okay, like he’s told him all these times before. Just breathe and focus on me, not on that animal’s eyes. Not the wolf. It’ll pass. You’ll be okay. He can’t speak but Nico knows.
Ansel watches the wolf warily until his brother is clear and then turns around.
Eyes—like thousands of bullets suspended in the air—are staring at them.
Ansel leads. Nico follows—almost running. Forest animals—with glowing eyes and chests stained dark, watch them pass.
Ansel walks fast, looking straight ahead, expecting—any moment now—a set of teeth to tear into his calves, into the sides under his ribcage, into the soft area where the shoulder meets the neck. He walks and the whisper babbles furiously in ear. And with every step, with every blink, the forest moves in closer.
Behind him, Nico struggles to keep up, breaks into a light run. The forest closes its thousand eyes and opens its thousand muzzles, howling out a deeper darkness.
Ansel picks Nico up and tosses him onto one shoulder. And runs. He doesn’t bother lighting anything but the way ahead.
The light bounces from left to right, white, when Ansel’s eyes are open—and streaks red when they’re closed. At times, when the path takes a turn, he can see the animals, the dark wet stains spreading wider on their chests.
His muscles burn. His lungs struggle for air. His heart pounds so loud and fast that it drowns out the whisper of the path. His vision darkens but he doesn’t need to see more than his running feet. He doesn’t stop until he reaches the old quarry, drops Nico on the grass, and falls down himself, unable to move a step further.
A single wrinkle—almost like a brain fold—waits in the wide clay river.
The Lady of the Clay.
She lies there, at the bottom of the quarry, exactly where the stories say she does. Like she has done for over thirty years. Maybe longer.
Much longer, some of the people in town insist. They say she must have been lying here unseen and undisturbed, long before the big explosion in the mine released a swell of groundwater from the rocks above and filled the old riverbed where the clay tailings were dumped—and revealed her. That would explain all the old whispered stories about roads folding over themselves, the missing hiker notices, and the articles about thousand-year-old bodies found wearing traces of modern clothes.
Ansel takes a deep breath.
He’s imagined this moment so often. The first time he dreamed of coming here, he was just about Nico’s age—six or seven. What if he had taken the gun himself then and threatened Grandfather? What if he’d asked his mother to save him again and again and again? What if he’d stopped believing her promises to start packing as soon as the next paycheck came and—done something. But he didn’t. He kept daydreaming, trying to figure out what the right sacrifice is when you ask the Lady for help.
Because the Lady isn’t known for kindness toward those who come unprepared. The occasional gruesome discovery in the mines used to remind the town of that. Finally today, as soon as he crossed into the forest, he knew the kind of sacrifice she wants and it’s not fair. It’s not fair he has to be the grown-up. It’s not fair he has to be the grown-up he'll become once all this is over.
Ansel stands up and looks down at Nico. Nico is breathing heavily through his snotty nose. His face is pale, distorted, estranged—a stranger’s face. As if he’s both six and sixty years old—and a very weird sixty too.
Those stories about changelings Mom used to read them—those things probably looked like this. Is it a trick by the Lady? Did she switch his brother with some strange child while they were running? To make things easier for Ansel.
“You dropped the bag, Anse. We don’t have the cat. What are we going to do?”
You killed Mom.
“Come on, Nico, let’s go to the Lady.”
Ansel stands on the bank of the clay river looking down.
Our Lady of the Clay looks like a woman lying in the shallows of the riverbed, covered with a veil of soft silt. The clay river appears to run over her, shaping a forehead, a nose and a mouth, a throat and a chest, hips and feet. Stories tell of people who didn’t know any better. People who ran in to rescue her, who knelt on the banks of the stream, people who scooped handfuls of clay from where her face was, curving their fingers and sticking them in what they believed was her mouth to try to clear her airways. People who slid their arms under her shoulders and tried to lift her only to feel the clay flow over their skin and down the stream. All those people are now either gone, or somewhere in the mine tunnels, mummifying, but Our Lady still lies here—a small constant in the flux.
She looks frail.
She looks like a tragic Arthurian maiden.
She is neither of those things.
Looking at her, it’s clear she’s been here for a long time. Before the quarry and the mines. Before the humans. Things like her don’t just move from place to place. She forms the landscape here—her, the rocks, the air, and the forest behind the eyelids.
“Nico,” Ansel says quietly, “there’s no cat.”
Nico isn’t looking at him. He is turned to the Lady. His entire body is shaking.
“Why did you bring me here, Anse,” Nico whispers.
“It’s a human life for a human life, Nico. A cat wouldn’t have been enough.”
This would have been me eight years ago.
“That’s why we’re here. I’m sorry—it was the only way.”
Nico is talking to someone. The Lady? It sounds like he is answering something. Some question the voice of the path—the one in Ansel’s ear, is asking in some changeling language. Nico takes a step forward. His sneakers sink into the pale clay.
It’s easier than Ansel thought. He just needs to let it happen.
The clay stains Nico’s shoes white. He trips and almost falls into the clay.
“Nico!” Ansel barks sharply.
Not Ansel’s tone. Grandfather’s.
Nico doesn’t turn.
It’s harder than it looks. Letting things just happen. It’s what people with responsibilities do. It’s what grownups do.
But Ansel is still a kid.
“Nico! Stop! Just get back. We’ll find another way.”
Nico says something and leans over but Ansel doesn’t hear him because he himself is pitching forward into the white stream—into the Lady’s embrace—just a few seconds faster than his brother. Before the clay closes over him, he has just enough time to make one wish.
II. The Lady of the Clay
They are so wondrous, these creatures from the outside.
The Sentience can’t see them clearly before they enter its world—they are only blurry specters moving about on two legs or four, coming closer, going away, coming closer, doing something to the membrane between their world and this one—and it’s always a joy when some of them come in.
They have an odd way of moving around time—always in the same one dimension—always in circles around one temporal axis. It breaks the Sentience’s poor heart—to borrow one of their phrases. It breaks its poor heart to see them use only a tiny part of their form to function.
The Sentience tries to prod them gently, to make them use their higher attributes—their exo-temporal crystaline lattice is so rich, so pearly grey. It’s, at the same time, very tensile and extraordinarily robust. It would be an excellent growing medium for strange possibilities. Not that the Sentience has tried to cut the lattice off and experiment with it. That would be cruel—
Now these two. The bigger one comes in like they usually do. He dives through the membrane over the Sentience’s brain—they always choose the same area. He fights the currents that form the Sentience’s thoughts. His mouth opens. Their mouths always open. Then he goes limp. He shudders for a bit and then stops. For a while at least. The Sentience watches his thoughts as he circles that temporal axis—doing these curious things—dying, coming to life, thinking, dying, coming to life. They always think the same thought as they go around. Always some form of “I wish.” Such curious creatures.
Another interesting specimen. The Sentience is delighted. It scoops him carefully—it doesn’t want to damage any of the higher-dimension forms—and deposits him lovingly in one of the empty caverns it uses to keep the two-legged ones. The creature starts to move again, around that same temporal axis but the Sentience doesn’t have time to watch now. The other, smaller creature is wishing too and the Sentience is in a giving mood.
III. Nico
“Why did you bring me here, Anse?” Nico whispers, suddenly afraid that Ansel will hear. Because, yes, right now he knows why Ansel brought him along.
“A life for a life,” his big brother says and Nico understands what that means. Nico is the life.
He is here to be the hero. There is still time to be the hero.
He’d tried and failed. Twice. He’d watched Grandfather carefully for weeks—where he kept the gun, how he loaded it, how he flipped the safety on and off. And then Nico’d taken the gun and buried it just at the edge of the forest, where Grandfather never went without crossing himself and throwing some shells and salt over the border.
Nico has no idea how Grandfather knew it was him. But he knew. And got so mad. No one in the world was safe around him when he was this angry. He told Nico to go fetch the gun and come back for his punishment. Which is when Nico tried to be the hero again and everything got even worse.
Third try. It’s meant to be. That’s why he’s here.
He tells the Lady all this and she whispers in his head something he doesn’t really understand but he gets it. She will give him his wish.
Ansel is talking but Nico doesn’t hear him over the Lady’s voice.
“Okay, Ansel,” he says. He closes his eyes, pinches his nose shut, and jumps.
The clay rejects him. It bounces him back, like a ball. Somehow, he is standing on the riverbank again.
“Please, Our Lady of the Clay,” he repeats. “Help me fix this. Help me be the hero.”
It’s why they are here. They are the only ones who can fix everything. Nico feels so useless—“a useless little shit,” as Grandpa says. Ansel is the brave one—the one who got the idea to ask the Lady, the one who got them here, the one who carried Nico. Nico was just the problem. Always the problem. He shakes his head.
“Why did you bring me here, Anse,” he whispers even though he knows the answer.
Still, the Lady rejected him.
He turns but Ansel isn’t next to him. He is alone.
“I’m sorry Anse,” he yells. “Please—Anse? Come back.”
But Ansel doesn’t come back.
Something pushes Nico back towards the forest. Something scary is happening in the stream behind him. Nico can feel it. And here he is, as always when something scary happens, being dragged away, locked into the room next door, told to go play in the garden until everything is quiet.
He doesn’t want to leave but he has no choice. Something makes his feet walk back to the edge of the clearing. Is it the Lady? Is this his quest? Maybe Ansel will forgive him and come back once Nico goes back and saves Momma.
He starts walking back towards the forest.
Is scared how heroes feel?
Animals come out to greet him at the edge of the forest but they are not terrifying anymore. Their chests aren’t dark. Now they’re bright and light the way ahead. Nico stumbles onto the path. Suddenly, he takes off flying. Like Superman. Did the Lady turn his sneakers into those magical seven-league boots?
All the creatures of the forest are here to see him through. Their chests glow like lanterns on the swaying tree branches. Their mouths are open and a strange fairy song flows over the path. Nico smiles into the wind.
The Lady gave him his wish. He’s flying home to save his mother.
The seven-league sneakers must have only had magic for one single leap because they drop him on the ground halfway through the forest. But his feet still push ahead. Step after step, they march down the path home and Nico, out of control and barely keeping his balance, follows them. With every step he hears the Lady’s voice in his head. It sounds different than it did on the way in. “Little thing. Little thing,” it sings. “Run home, little thing.” Or something like that.
His shoes lead him right to the giant wolf with a glowing chest waiting right in the middle of the path and stop. Nico understands. It’s a test. He has to show his bravery. He squeezes his hands into fists, takes a deep breath and steps forward—one … two … three … four—counting the steps in his head as he circles the giant animal.
The wolf’s head follows the hero’s movements, panting, until Nico is on the other side. They stare at each other and the wolf raises its head in a howl. Nico jumps back and falls on the ground. His hand feels something round, heavy. His flashlight! Every hero needs a weapon—that’s what the tales Momma read him say. He picks it up, turns it on, and points it at the wolf.
The animal backs off.
Nico is no longer shivering. Heroes don’t shiver. Maybe just a little.
He turns and starts walking home and his step is light.
The owl is the last animal to see him off. It rears up, light dripping from its chest, when Nico passes under its branch but Nico waves his flashlight at it and it folds back into the darkness.
The path ends. Nico’s feet stop. He opens his eyes. The field around him has grown strange soldiers instead of plants. The dragon teeth warriors from the tales Mom read him! Another test.
He waves his flashlight at them. They don’t move but turn into stone instead. Nico’s feet take him—carefully—through and onward.
By the time Nico walks out of the forest, the night is almost over. There is a hazy orange brightness west of the town.
He stops at the edge and looks back.
“I’m scared, Anse,” he says. “What happened? Does the Lady have you? I don’t wanna go without you.”
The forest doesn’t answer.
He walks back to the house and stands outside, heart beating wildly in his chest.
“Okay, Anse,” he says again and cries. He doesn’t think the words. They just come out on their own, like his breath. It was here Ansel hugged him so tight Nico couldn’t breathe and it was here Ansel told him “It doesn’t matter. We can fix this.”
“What happened?” Nico asks, for the last time today. His ears are ringing. Somehow, on the way here, he lost the flashlight. He looks around. Waiting on the ground for him is the gun. It jumps into his hand. Nico doesn’t want it but takes it nonetheless because a hero needs a weapon. That’s what the tales say.
He walks into the house. Momma lies on the floor. Her chest is glowing brightly, like the animals in the forest. As Nico watches, the glow seeps back into Momma and she opens her eyes, stands up, and reaches for the gun. Nico lifts it. A bullet shoots out of Momma’s chest and flies into the gun. Momma runs out of the kitchen, screaming “No, Peanut, this is not the way,” and now in the kitchen it’s just Nico and Grandpa. Grandpa is holding his belt, telling Nico, “You know what you did, you little shit,” but Nico is not listening to him. He’s a hero. The Lady of the Clay made it so. Heroes save people.
Nico turns and gets out of the house. His feet are heavy again. The magic has gone out of his sneakers. They no longer move by themselves, but that doesn’t matter. He walks to the edge of the forest and sits down to wait for Ansel.
