The Woodlands (#1 THE WOODLANDS SERIES) (COMPLETE)

28. WAKE UP

The world was grey. The color washed away, dripping down the sides of the trees like it was soaking back into the earth. I moved through the world but not in it.

We kept walking, leaving it all behind.

We walked through the darkness for miles. When the light started to show at the end, I took up my initial position, clinging to the rails. I didn’t want the light on me. It burned my eyes. Coward, coward, coward, the light screamed, balancing a slant over my face. You couldn’t save her.

From then on, he carried me as much as his strength would allow and, after his arms trembled under my weight, he held my hand and led me like a child. I followed him. I let him carry me. The fight in me was gone.

He talked as he walked but I didn’t listen. I couldn’t hear him from behind the wall. Occasionally a baby’s cries would punch through, but only for a second before it closed over, enveloping me in buffered sounds.

I wanted to speak but the words were buried. With her. If I could have cried or talked about it, maybe I would have healed faster. But nothing came.

I kept expecting her arm to link in mine, to hear her voice telling me to snap out of it. She believed things would work out. She was wrong.

I walked, ate, and slept, but that was all. My eyes focused on something far away. Just over the hill, just behind a tree, never on what was in front of me, or who was walking beside me.

At night I slept by the fire, my body warm but shaking uncontrollably. Closing my eyes brought on nightmares soaked in blood. He lay with me, holding my arms down to stop me from hurting myself. He spoke but all I could hear was calming whispers. No words.

I tried to recede to the point where nothing could reach me, but something was always tugging, pulling at my shirt, trying to drag me back into the light. But without her, the light was dull, insipid, lying over the forest like a silty blanket.

For weeks, I stayed inside myself. Joseph tried to coax me out, but even he stopped trying after a while. On the twenty-third day, I heard words. My head rose above the waves of my grief and I heard them talking.

Apella was cooing to the child.

“You’ll make a wonderful mother to little Gabriel,” a stuttering voice said lovingly. Gabriel?

I kicked my feet, trying to keep my head above water a little longer.

“Thank you, darling, you will make a wonderful father too.” Apella’s sweet voice was like a booming bell, reverberating and hurting my ears.

“His name is Hessa,” I said, my voice a tiny crackle.

Everyone stared. Apella sheltered the child in her arms, like she thought I was going to hurt him. I wasn’t going to hurt him. The couple was sitting, cradling the child under a tree. It was a spring sapling that was bending and swaying in the breeze, making shushing noises as the leaves grazed each other. Apella was holding a bottle full of grey liquid, which the baby was sucking. My head fractured as I thought of our grey milkshakes.

The trees were no longer grey, the color returning slowly. Green leaves touched by sunlight. I moved towards the couple on my hands and knees, aware that Joseph was behind me, shadowing my movements. I sat back on my heels and gently folded the grey blanket they had wrapped him in away from his face. He had springy, black hair, caramel-colored skin, and big blue eyes. He looked just like her and nothing like her at the same time. He was definitely All Kind. But it was there, that light had passed to the child. It shone in and around him, protecting him, announcing him as Clara’s son. I held out my arms. Apella shook her head. But Joseph was right there. So was Deshi.