The Forest of Hands and Teeth Read Free Page A

to stroke my own. We watch as the lanterns come on in the village. My mother used to tell me about the times when she was a child when the Sisters would crank up the old generator on Christmas Eve. It's one of the stories I have never shared with my friend and I think about telling Cass this—about how once a year this little village used to outshine the sky.
    But she is snuffling now, her weeping over, and I don't want to fill her head with more fancies tonight.
    When she leaves she begs me to come with her. But I cannot. I tell her that I must be here when it happens and she raises her hands to her mouth as if the horror is too much and then she turns and runs back to the safety of the village.
    I want to run with her, to escape from where I am and forget this day. But I stay, my fingers trembling and the air thick in my throat. I need to face what my mother becomes. I owe her this much after this morning, after leaving her to wander alone.
    I return to staring at the fence. Watching the light slide down the sky, casting crisscrossed shadows on the ground at my feet. I blur my eyes, throwing my surroundings out of focus. The fence does not exist when I do this. As if we are all one world.

    “Mother?” I whisper at daybreak. There was a new moon last night and I spent the hours in the darkness listening to the rustling of dry leaves behind the fence, my mind imagining the worst possible scenarios. Every creak I heard was the fence breaking, every scratching the Unconsecrated finally finding weakness in the metal.
    Now the air is gray and moist and I crawl on my hands and knees closer to the pen that holds my mother. She is there, in the middle on the ground and she is so still that for a moment I think she has died and is about to Return. Bile and terror rise in my throat but are trapped. I feel the need to scream but I am utterly silent with my mouth open and my teeth bared.
    My legs tangle in my skirts and I claw at the ground and am almost to the fence when I hear the Guardian behind me. I look back at him, pleading with him. “She is still alive,” I tell him, because I just know that she is. He looks over his shoulder into the mist and, seeing that we are alone, he nods as if giving me permission and I lace my fingers around the thin rusted metal of the fence, feeling its sharp cold edges bite into my palms.
    “The ocean,” my mother murmurs. Sharp as a crack she whips her head around and I see that her eyes are wide and unfocused but lucid. She crawls toward me until our hands are linked together through the fence.
    “The ocean, Mary, the ocean!” She is speaking so urgently now, her mouth moving rapidly. I am afraid that the Guardian will think she is crazy and has turned and that he will kill me but I can't pull my hands back because my mother's grip is too tight.
    “So beautiful, the ocean.” She repeats the words over and over again, her eyes becoming bright with unshed tears. “The water, the waves, the sand, the salt!” She is shaking the fence now and it causes undulations to ripple outward to either side, the metal swaying back and forth. I am amazed that she has this strength; she has been dying for so many hours.
    “It consumes me,” she says, her voice only a whisper. She reaches one finger through the wire and strokes my wrist. “My little girl,” she tells me. “Do not forget my little girl.” Tears slip out of her eyes and I hear the Guardian shout behind me and then my mother slumps to the ground, her fingers slipping away from mine.

    In the moment between my mother's death and her Return, I stop believing in God.

    The Guardian quickly grabs the end of the rope tied to my mother's left ankle as I scoot away from the fence. It is anchored over a system of pulleys lashed to branches high above and he heaves against it, the other end of the rope dragging my mother to the edge of her pen. The Guardian pulls a lever, a gate rises and her lifeless body slides into the Forest of Hands and