Martha died in an unorthodox way.
Unorthodox, that wasn’t the right word. Peculiar, perhaps, though that word didn’t do justice to all the strangeness and darkness surrounding it. In her fourth month of pregnancy, tragedy struck: young Martha Allwright-Lawrence, daughter of Roger Lawrence and wife of Jacob Allwright, had a miscarriage. Her shrill wails woke everyone on the farm; the bloodhound barked, the cow moaned, and Jacob and his parents stared, horrified, at the blood running down her legs and pooling on the floor. The lifeless body of the fetus lay on the wood, its swollen, reddish, and translucent head barely giving the illusion of life. Martha trembled and cried loudly in pain and grief. She kept wailing, "My baby, my baby, my baby," inconsolably as she dissolved into tears and blood.
Jacob's father accused her of heresy, and threatened to take her to the town where she would be executed for her sin. His mother confronted him arguing that no one would believe him because he was a loudmouth; and that, because of his impertinent tongue, they ended up stranded in a barren clearing in the middle of the forest. Jacob held Martha in his arms, warming her cold, shivering body as he tried to process everything that was happening at once. To give shape to the images he saw and the words his ears heard; the still-warm sensation of the blood staining his clothes.
Martha stayed. They buried the fetus, and she lay in bed all day, sobbing silently. She didn't respond with a word. She barely seemed to breathe. She ate only at Jacob's insistence, and went to sleep in the same silence she had limited herself to all day, every day for those two weeks.
Jacob was only concerned for her well-being. He wanted to make sure she was healthy, and that she was happy. His father and mother had been at odds ever since a year after they were banished from the enclave had passed and the land no longer bore fruit. Neither of them cared about Martha. They were so angry about the starvation and the cold that at times it seemed like the suggestion of making use of the young woman and eating her body to stave off their hunger rested impatiently on the tips of their tongues. And Jacob wouldn't allow it.
The last Sabbath’s morning, he invited Martha to meditate at the edge of the woods, and surprisingly, she accepted. They sat and watched the scene in silence, praying softly. It was the first time he'd heard Martha's voice in days, and it was worth it to be able to hear her whispering chant. Soon after, he realized he'd forgotten his Bible and, sadly, asked his wife to wait for him while he looked for it.
His father had taken the Sabbaths as a day not only of devotion, but of reflection and study on what he considered the correct way to study the gospel. Because of that doctrine, he said, they had been expelled from the enclave, and Jacob only nodded, not really knowing if he agreed with all of that. Was that why they didn’t attend church services the last few weeks they lived there? Was that why his father had advised him not to baptize his son when he was born? Jacob had reflected on all those teachings over that year, but he wanted to dedicate that one Sabbath to his wife and a devotional relationship. And his father respected that, at least.
When he returned to the same spot, Bible in hand, Martha was gone.
“The poor girl must have gotten fed up with living in this hell and immediately ran to her parents' house.” His mother said when Jacob entered the room with tears of despair in his eyes. There was venom in the tone of her voice. Contempt. Resentment. Jealousy.
His father could tell. And his pride seemed to be hurt so badly that Jacob almost thought he'd jump up and hit her. But he didn't. He decided to attack with words.
“There's no need to be blasphemous, Faith. I can't believe you used the word "hell" to refer to our new Jerusalem.”
“For God's sake, Thomas! Can't you hear yourself?! This can't be our new Jerusalem! We were banished from Eden! You have to crawl back! Kiss God's feet! Do it for your family!”
“I'm here for my family!”
"We'll die of hunger!" the woman sobbed. "The last thing we ate was that... that goat. And now it's gone. And the land doesn't bear any fruit. And our harvest is ruined. And we can't eat the cow. We have no choice but to go back!"
"We'll hunt," he said. "Jake and I will hunt."
Faith shook her head. "With that eyesight of yours?"
“I'll teach Jacob how to use a musket, Faith. Anything. What do you want from me? What can I give you?”
“Your pride on a plate to chew on and spit it at your feet!”
His mother got up and stalked into another room. Jacob couldn't stand their argument. His wife was gone. She'd suddenly disappeared, and he didn't know what to do. She could be out there, alive and scared. Or dead and torn to pieces. But he had a right to know.
Against his parents' wishes, Jacob went looking for Martha that night, with only his bloodhound and a lantern for company. The only weapon he had was the hunting knife his father had given him years ago, which he rarely used. There had to be a trace of Martha somewhere. Some scrap of cloth torn by tree branches. Some footprints. Some strands of blond hair. Some confused sobbing in the middle of the woods. Something. Anything.
He heard a noise coming from a clearing not far from where he was. Blacklegs, his hound, began barking wildly at the human voice crying for help. Jacob believed he had finally found his wife, so he ran and ran toward the clearing, not caring about the branches piercing his skin or the dust that littered him. He just wanted to see her again.
Martha wasn't there. Instead, a young man—about his age. Maybe a little older—looked up at him with fearful green eyes and a mud-covered face. His reddish hair was disheveled, and the fabric of his clothes was torn, revealing a dislocated knee, swollen, grimy, and bloody. Jacob's first reaction was shock. Then, anger.
From his waist he drew his hunting knife and pointed it at the young man's eyebrows, who shuddered in fear.
“Who are you? What are you doing here? Are you lost?” He questioned with a biting tone that pierced the dark grove. The hurried footsteps of several animals fleeing the scene broke the silence.
The boy shrugged his shoulders and tried to crawl backwards, with mediocre results.
"My name is Aidan," he replied, his voice cracking with pain and nervousness, and an accent Jacob couldn't recognize. "I'm from Derry, Ireland. I've been in Massachusetts Bay for less than a month and was driven from my enclave. Some Wampanoags attacked me and I lost them. I fell off the hill, tumbled, and twisted my leg..."
“How far away are the Wampanoags?”
"Far. Far away. I made sure of that, sir. They won't be a bother." He swallowed, looking at Jacob with pleading eyes. "Please... sir..."
Jacob didn't remove his knife from the boy's face. If anything, he tightened his grip. It was suspicious that he was in the middle of the forest so suddenly. He hadn't seen any Englishmen other than his family since they were banished from their community.
“What do you want?”
"I promise to be useful," the boy assured. "I can sleep... I can sleep in your barn. Or your basement. Even outside, in the grass. Whatever you want me to do, sir. I swear to Christ I won't be a bother to you. Offer me a plate of food and I will be your servant for the rest of your lives.”
“Christ? Are you a Christian, lad?”
Aidan plastered a shaky smile on his face. “Naturally, sir.”
"Jacob." He sighed, putting the knife away.exchanging it for his hand. “My name is Jacob.”
Aidan smiled from ear to ear and accepted the help.
While he was looking for Martha, it would be helpful to have another labor force to help with the housework, especially with deteriorating minds around like his parents'.
Aidan let out an occasional groan of pain on the way to the farm, through the darkness and the sounds of the forest. The birds, the foxes, the deer, and who knows what else. They seemed to laugh at him with their many sounds in the gloomy night, boasting of their impunity in the absence of the holy sun. But that wouldn't last long. Jacob would rule this wild, God-forsaken land and show the beasts that his power knows no bounds.
Upon arriving home, Jacob presented the boy, bandaged him, and offered him a bed for his stay. His parents were astonished and displeased.
“How dare you bring a barbarian into our house?”
“He was hurt and scared in the middle of the forest. Wouldn't it be Christ-like to offer him help?”
Faith and Thomas pursed their lips, their expressions annoyed, but they didn't deny it. Perhaps they believed Jacob was too foolish to understand what it meant to bring a stranger into the house. Perhaps even they could understand that, in desperate times like theirs, it was best to accept all the help that came their way.
That attitude struck him as odd, to say the least, knowing his parents as well as he did. Years ago, when Jacob was ten, they gave shelter to a homeless man. He wandered around the outskirts of his community's gates, his eyes vacant and his clothes and hair dirty. His parents offered him food and shelter. He helped them with the farm and taught Jake a few jokes before he got his own house and wife within the enclave. From then on, Jacob saw him at church every Sunday and even congratulated him and Martha when they married. He never stopped talking about how grateful he was to Faith and Thomas for taking him in and giving him a new life.
Recalling his years in the enclave gave Jacob a feeling of unease deep in his gut. It felt like an alternate reality, like a childhood utopia. Things have changed so much since then. His parents had become unrecognizable as time passed and their despair grew.
Jacob watched Aidan sleep and wondered if he was doing the right thing by taking him in. If he could really trust that boy, no matter how little he knew him. Jacob concluded that, if he gave him reason to distrust him, he'd throw him out without negotiation. If things escalated, he'd… kill him. Yes, that's what he would do. Even if, when he slept, he displayed the serenity of an angel.
The next morning, Jacob helped Aidan straighten his dislocated knee and covered it with ointment to reduce the swelling. He negotiated with his father to allow him to stay looking after Aidan while he hunted, and offered to help his mother with chores around the house so he wouldn't waste time. He offered Aidan the little bread they had made with ground corn and water. Aidan smiled in gratitude. The boy smiled a lot.
"That's all we have for now. My father is out hunting, and we're hoping he'll bring back something good today," Jacob explained.
Aidan nodded between bites. After swallowing, he said, "Have you been surviving on this?"
“No. There used to be more animals in the forest—more hares, squirrels, and deer. Corn was much more plentiful…” He paused “…Two weeks ago, we even found a wild goat that wandered from the woods to our farm, and we got as much use out of it as we could, but since then we've had no luck. The corn gets contaminated, the meat rots, and the air gets colder and colder.”
"Why don't you eat the cow?" Aidan asked naively. Jacob smiled.
"We're not there yet. And, you know, we need her milk," he replied. "Maybe we'll make cheese this winter."
Aidan smiled back. "Lucky me. I've never tried cheese."
“You haven’t?”
“No… where I come from there isn’t much cattle.”
“There are no cows in Ireland? Not even goats?”
"Of course there is. We just didn't have enough money to afford one," he explained, eating the last piece of his bread and finishing his glass of milk. "I've tried milk, but butter and cheese are more expensive. You didn't see much of it in our village because no one wanted to waste their produce."
“I see…”
Aidan licked his lips and smiled at Jacob again. Perhaps he felt he should show as much gratitude as possible if he wanted to secure his place on the farm; with twinkling eyes and self-conscious smiles. Jacob cleared his throat and looked away. He hadn't realized how grateful he was.seeing.
“I hope you heal soon so you can help us hunt.”
“There will be no need to worry about that, my good sire.”
The nickname caught him off guard even more than the night before.
“Jacob. You can call me Jacob. I—I told you before.”
“Oh, I must have forgotten.”
Jacob shook his head. Maybe his parents were right. Maybe he was a savage.
He swept the corral first and then milked the cow. He fed Ferrant, the Shire horse his parents brought with them on the Winthrop from Yorkshire to New England and who has been in Jacob's life since birth. He was a little old, but he cared for Jacob as if he were still five years old and not as if he would turn nineteen in the spring. Jacob was very fond of him, and so was his family. But, the way things were going, he very much feared that despair might overcome familiarity.
After noon, waiting for his father, he went into his house to help his mother prepare dinner. She'd already finished sweeping the barn, carving wood, trimming the grass, and cleaning the house. That last chore was therapeutic, in comparison. Relaxing, if he dared say so. All he had to do was flatten the balls his mother made from cornmeal and put them in the oven.
"You know, Jake, son..." his mother said without looking at him. "We could go to the enclave, you and I."
Jacob blinked in surprise.
“And leave father here?”
Faith shook her head, erasing her gaze and frowning.
"Your father is too arrogant. If he wants to live for what he believes in, good for him; but why are we suffering for it? Please, Jake. I'm sure you'll find Martha there."
"I can't believe what you're saying, Mother. Betray your husband? Leave him alone? You swore fidelity and unconditional love to him before God on your wedding day, and this is how you respond to that, years later?"
Faith stared at him and tilted her head toward her son with a shy smile.
"You could... take me as your wife," she whispered. Jacob didn't take his gaze off hers as he felt her slender fingers run up his arm. "That way none of it would matter, and the only one I would have to honor would be you, and only you."
Jacob stood abruptly and glared at his mother. He couldn't believe the words coming out of his mouth. Was this the woman who had raised him? The woman who taught him decency and morality? Was this the same woman?
He heard her voice pleading with him to come back, but he ignored it. He didn't recognize any of his family those days. His time in that forest had completely distorted them.
His father returned from the woods without any meat. He found a wild turkey's nest and took the four eggs inside. They had scrambled eggs for dinner that night. Jacob remembered to take a portion of it for Aidan to eat, and he smiled when he saw the boy’s youthful, joyful reaction to having eaten after so many hours.
Jacob fell asleep immediately after praying.
“Jake… Jake… Jake…”
A sweet aroma, like the perfume of poppies, fills his nostrils. And a melodic voice,argentina, suave, familiar fills his ears. His eyes are heavy, but he opens them, and before him he can see her, in all her angelic splendor: Martha. Her golden hair uncovered, combed back from above and on the sides with multiple rows decorated with pearls. Her face shines, its whiteness standing out around the crimson arches of her lips and her blushing cheeks. She has an earring in each ear and a pearl necklace. Her cleavage is bare, and the skin ends shamelessly in a white silk border that opens the way to the light blue fabric of the rest of the dress.
Jacob backs away until his back hits the wall and his eyes widen. Is that...? It can't be possible.
“Martha?” He stutters. “How long have you been here…?”
The girl raises an eyebrow and smiles at him.
“What kind of question is that, silly? Did you fall hard while chasing that hare?”
“Hare…?
"Oh, you even forgot! You've been obsessing over that hare for weeks. You said you'd finally catch it today and make me a purse out of its brown fur," she explains. Then she stands up and dusts off her skirt. "You don't have time to change out of your hunting clothes; you must be celebrating, since you hate party clothes so much. Get up quickly and let's run to the living room; I'm dying to show you off to all those old mistresses!"
Jacob is unable to finish processing the images around him when he's already somewhere else. In a glittering hall with gold walls and crystal chandeliers. With music and food and people dancing around him, dressed in their finest. Martha's face glowed as they danced in the candlelight. Her big blue eyes twinkled with amusement as she laughed and dragged him around the hall. Jacob was never a good dancer; on their wedding day, they tried dancing, clumsily and without much success—but Martha looked happy that time, and they both laughed, with the cow's mooing as their background music. In that moment, with her sky-blue dress and the pearls decorating her bust and hair, she looks like an angel of eternal joy.
Maybe Jacob is dead. Maybe that's heaven. Maybe he's dancing with Martha's angel while all the other souls are having a good time just like them.
"You must feel so weird," Martha says suddenly.
Jake doesn't understand what she's talking about, but he's so happy he doesn't want to dwell on it either. "I couldn't feel better."
Martha laughs and her cheeks blush with fervor.
"I don’t mean it like that, silly," he replies. "I mean... well, you know."
Everything starts to get confusing. No, Jacob doesn't know. What does he need to know? Why doesn't she just say it? Why are the walls changing color?
His sweet Martha doesn't wipe the smile off her face as she speaks.
“It's just that... your parents and I came straight from England. We lived in England. We were born in England. And everyone around you is English. And you're American.”
That has to be a joke, right? It's so stupid. Why would Martha talk about something so stupid? Of course Jacob is English. His eyes are blue, his skin is white, his hair is blond, and he speaks English. He may have been born in Massachusetts Bay, but he's as English as anyone can be.
That's why he tilts his head. And his confusion only increases when he hears a giggle escape his beloved's lips.
"Don't pretend you haven't thought about it before!" she insists. "We had such different experiences of what the world is like. You don't know what Yorkshire is like. What the colorful wooden cottages that branch off into the streets as you walk to church are like. The apple trees. The evening music in the pubs at sunset. The well-dressed men and women who chat in the evenings around their mansions. Oh! Nothing to compare with this land so far from God!"
“Enough, Martha.”
"You're different," she continues. "You grew up in this land we blessed with our presence, but our prayers haven't been enough to purify it. We have no choice but to survive it, and that's what we've been doing. But you don't have anything to, do you?"
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, no. You don’t. Not you, Jacob.”
"What are you talking about?" The music slowly stops, or so Jacob thinks.
“You belong to this wilderness. It's part of you. You can't help it. Not even prayers can shush it away”
“What are you saying, Martha? You're going mad!”
Martha laughs. "Why do you deny it? I've seen it in your eyes all these years. How you long to surrender and offer yourself completely to the forest and the creatures that live there. We've always talked about traveling and exploring the world, but you want to give yourself over to it. To let the earth consume you..."
“That isn't true…”
"You were always meant to be a free man." She lets out a melancholic laugh. "And I had you trapped; tied to me through my womb. That's why you ran from between my legs!"
“Enough!”
He releases her arms forcefully, and she takes a few steps back. The room darkens. It seems consumed by a mist as dark as night. The music is replaced by the whisper of the wind, the song of the owl, the running of the hares.
That last bit sends shivers down his spine. He looks around, gripped by a suffocating despair.
“Are you hearing that…?” He stutters.
“Hear what, Jake?”
The running grew louder. Jacob gasped.
“That!”
The hare's paws thundered in his ears like the desperate beating of his heart. Where was his musket?
“I don't hear anything.”
“Martha!”
“Why don't you look for me, Jacob?”
All sounds stop at once. Martha and he are in an empty ballroom, the floral and gold-leaf designs covering the walls blackened by the darkness. Only the moon illuminates her expressionless face.
Jake's heart sinks to the bottom of his stomach.
“That?”
"You didn't find me that night," he explains. "And yet you haven't looked for me again."
“I… I—I will.”
“You're lying. You don't need me anymore.”
"I will, Martha!" His voice cracks. He tries to walk toward her but he can't. "I swear!"
“No, Jacob. You don't need me. I'm not what you want. I have nothing to offer you. I can't give you a child. I can't give you the life you want. What's the point?”
"Martha, please." His eyes begin to fill with tears. He can feel it. "Stop talking like that."
“At least I hope you can eat a good meal after this.”
Jacob woke suddenly, his breathing ragged and his heart racing. Through the window, the sun was timidly peeking through the foliage, and Aidan was still asleep across the room, curled up in his blankets. His hair was disheveled, his brow relaxed.
He rubbed his face as his breathing calmed. That had been nothing more than his brain playing dirty tricks on him. Nothing more.
Martha was in the enclave. She chose that life over him, and he had to respect her.
After washing his face and putting on his clothes for the day, he decided to go outside. Blacklegs greeted him warmly, and Jacob petted him. He had tamed the hound a few months earlier to make his situation more pleasant. Martha was extremely happy with the dog, playing with and caring for him—grooming him, petting him, feeding him… That day, she would help him and his father hunt.
“Is that Irishman cured now?”
Thomas' voice caught him off guard. He straightened up to look at him. He was tying his shirt laces.
“Good morning, Father. Yes, I think today he’s better.”
“Good. Because I need you both to go hunting today.”
“Wouldn't it be better if you came with me?”
Thomas shook his head, a heavy sigh escaping his lips. "No, no. Your mother is right; I'm very slow, and I'll only be a hindrance. I'd rather have two young men fetch me. At least to make sure we have a good meal."
Those words brought back the dream from the night before, and a chill ran down his spine. He suddenly became aware of his surroundings. Of the wind that swirled around him and the leaves that surrounded him. Of the waking animals and the footsteps inside his house.
His father took advantage of the morning to teach him how to use the musket. Jacob already had an idea, having seen his father practice with it in front of a tree many times. From what he understood, he had brought that musket from Yorkshire, and it was one his forefather had used in the war against Spain, years before. His family took great pride in that sort of thing. Jacob hoped one day to be able to say the same.
Shortly after his mother woke up, Aidan woke up. Just as Jacob had said, he walked toward them with little to no limp, his hair tied back and his clothes clean, just as Jacob had left them the day before. He looked happy, with a smile from ear to ear and a confident gait.
They grabbed a leather bag and their weapons: Jacob's father's musket and his hunting knife, which he had lent to Aidan. Without further ado, they headed into the forest. Even in daylight, it looked dark and eerie.
“Jacob, how did you end up here?”
The question had come out of nowhere, after a while of studying their surroundings for anything of value. Jake suddenly felt ashamed and uncomfortable. There was nothing dignified about the way they had gotten to that place.
"That's not important," he cleared his throat. "How did you end up here?"
Aidan smiled. “That’s not important.”
Jacob forced a sarcastic laugh and continued on his way, deeper into the forest. He'd heard the rattling of branches against the ground and the flight of birds through the trees, but he hadn't seen the first animal.
“Have you hunted before, Aidan?”
“And you?
"No, to be perfectly honest. But it's my duty to learn," he said. "It's the right thing to do, and it's my duty if I want to provide for the family my wife and I want to start."
"Wife?" the boy asked in surprise. "Doesn't she live with you?"
"No—I mean, yes. It's just..." He licked his lips. "Look, that doesn't matter. I just want spring to come so we can make the land into a proper farm and get it going. I'm thinking of leaving and rejoining the enclave."
“I don't think you'd be welcome.”
“Pardon?”
Before Aidan could elaborate, Blacklegs barked loudly and stuck his snout into a hole in the ground. When Jacob approached, the animal displayed a baby hare between its teeth.
The little animal trembled in the palm of his hand. It wriggled and tried to jump. Blacklegs barked, and Jacob let it go.
"If the babies are here, Mom and Dad can't be far," he explained. "We have to search."
“Hares for dinner?”
Jacob shrugged. "Anything God puts in front of us is a blessing. Let's go."
Jacob dragged Blacklegs along to keep him from eating that or any other cub, and instead focus his attention on sniffing out the scent of a hare, or squirrel, or woodchuck. Anything.
Jake didn't want to think of himself as ambitious, but the idea of hunting an animal as large as a deer or a stag filled him with determination. With an animal like that, they could feed themselves for more than a month if they rested the carcass with a good amount of salt to prevent it from spoiling. He longed for that luxury.
Blacklegs’ tracking led them to an arboretum where a fat hare with a thick, dark coat was found. Jacob signaled the dog and Aidan to crouch beside him. He assumed the young man would also prepare his weapon, but he couldn't be distracted by the task of confirming.
He tried to make the process as quick and quiet as possible before scaring the animal away. He poured what he considered a sufficient amount of gunpowder into the muzzle and pushed it in with the wooden rod. The hare looked around, distracted, its back to them. Jacob put the pellet through the muzzle and straightened the musket. The hare remained inert, and Blacklegs hadn't barked. Jacob hurried to replace the lit fuse and got into position.
He fixed his eyes on his prey. The hare hadn't moved. He held his breath and fired.
The bullet deflected, and the impact sent him sprawling backward, landing on his butt on the ground. The hare ran off, and Blacklegs chased it.
"Blacklegs!" he shouted, then complained. He had done everything right, to his knowledge, so what was wrong?
Jacob turned his face to Aidan, who lay inert, immovable, the hunting knife still resting on his hip. Hadn't he even tried to help?
“Why didn't you take out the knife?!”
“I thought you had it under control.”
“No! Of course not! If we're both here, it's so you can help me! Holy Father…” He rubbed his hand over his face and looked at the arboretum where the hare and Blacklegs had been running. “Be of some help and get the dog. I'll see if I can hit a bird.”
“Good luck with that, all the birds are in the south during this season.”
“Do as I say, please.”
Aidan silently followed the order and went deeper into the forest. Jacob looked at the sky, at the crowns of the trees, at the way they tangled and joined together to form a thick blanket through which barely any sunlight penetrated. How they moved in the faint wind and how their inhabitants emitted every kind of sound. Murmurs, croaks, whistles, chirps, howls. He was attentive to each one of them. To the way some rumbled among the tall pines and the low maples, their once red leaves parading yellowish and grayish tones in the autumn.
He could hear every footstep. Every branch breaking. Every scampering. Every snort. He was surrounded by wildlife. By the beasts God placed on earth for man to tame and feed on. And he was ready. He was ready to take on that responsibility.
He put a small amount of powder and the other two bullets into the muzzle and aimed at the sky. The birds believed they were above men because of their ability to fly, but Jacob knew better. Man was created in the image of God, and those creatures were far from reaching his heels.
He heard something like the rustling of wings in the wind and his first reaction was to release both shots into the air, but nothing fell.
The sounds of nature grew louder; he could hear the birds laughing at him in their increasingly distant trills. He couldn't stand it. He let out a scream and threw the gun to the ground in a fit of frustration.
What am I doing here, my lord? He prayed in his mind. What is my purpose on this earth, if I can't even catch my food? These beasts laugh at me, and I can't stand it. I can't stand it, my lord. Help me do it. Help me become stronger. To act more like you. Please, my lord. My lord…
The noises from the forest were growing louder, and Jacob suddenly considered the possibility that he was going mad. Jacob swore he could hear human laughter and whispers all around him. He heard hurried footsteps surrounding him. He saw shadows darting around. He picked up the weapon from the ground again, tightening his grip on it, despite its hollowness; at least he hoped it might scare away whatever was waiting out there. The cracking of the branches around him was suffocating, and yet he held firm. He wouldn't let fear take hold of him.
It was as if the creatures weren't afraid of Jacob. As if they were mocking his presence there instead of running away from him. And that could only be the work of the devil and his dominion over all that wildlife. His way of blaspheming God and the power He has on earth. Jacob wouldn't let himself fall for it. He wouldn't let himself fall. He wouldn't let himself fall. He wouldn't let himself fall. He wouldn't let himself…
The cracking of branches grows louder around him and beneath his feet. He can feel the rush of a pack of wild hares moving around him. They squealed, and ran, and ran, and ran with the force of an army. Jacob watched them move beside him, near him, and between his legs, causing him to stumble and fall flat on his backside. He crawled toward a tree, absorbed in their wild march.
If he had bullets… if he had his hunting knife… Couldn't he have hurt them with a branch? He had to try. He had to do it. His family expected him to. He had to…
One of the hares running around stood up on two legs and grew a meter and a half, taking on an anthropomorphic body with androgynous features in complete nudity, and continued running. Jacob's eyes widened at the sight. The person-animal-thing disappeared into the dark foliage. Jacob felt like he was about to faint.
Witchcraft… Yes, that's what it was. Witch! Witch, witch, witch! He had to get out of there as quickly as possible, before some savage ate him alive. He had to…
He couldn't. He had underestimated the power of that forest, the power of the beasts. It was too much for him. He couldn't control it. He couldn't face it. It was a nightmare. The darkness would swallow him whole. He squeezed his eyes shut, and a wave of hysterical laughter filled his ears. Laughter, screams, howls, and the even louder rattling of branches breaking. He would let God protect him from evil. Let him scare away the demons. Let him shut the lions' mouths.
“Jake, Jake, Jacob!”
He opened his eyes suddenly, and all was silence. No more wild marches, no more laughter, no more howls or creaks. Only silence, agonizing and sepulchral.
Jacob raised his face, panting, and looked at Aidan. His hair was a little disheveled, and he had a worried expression, but it didn't look like the reaction of someone who had just walked through the woods amid a wave of wild creatures surrounding him and running amok. Hadn't he noticed?
He puts a hand on Jacob’s shoulder and kneeled down next to him.
"You're pale," he whispered, and Jacob squirmed. "You're sweating profusely. What's wrong?"
Jacob studied his surroundings, searching for any movement or noise, but there was nothing but silence and inertia. As if nothing had never happened.
"Did you find Blacklegs?" he asked in a small voice, then cleared his throat.
Aidan shakes his head. “No, I… It's better if you come with me. You have to see it for yourself.”
Jacob let Aidan's grip drag him through the trees, in a trance of slowness after the emotions and noises that surrounded and filled him. The forest no longer seemed so threatening. Not at that moment. Not with that boy's hand on his skin.
He studied Aidan’s back as he led him, his long reddish hair covering half of it. Suddenly, in Jacob’s confused trance, he looked like an ethereal figure; like a forest fairy, or a guardian angel guiding him. He laughed involuntarily; wasn't that the silliest idea he'd ever had?
Aidan led him to a black log; the darkness and vegetation made it hard to connect the dots, so Jacob had a momentary difficulty noticing that the jumbled mass of organs and black and white fur was Blacklegs, dead. slit open in his stomach.
Maybe he was still under the influence of the trance, but he didn't know how to react. He loved Blacklegs; he was the one who insisted on adopting him, and Martha found joy in playing with him and imagining her future son running around the farm after him. He should have been sad, crying, devastated; even angry at losing a good hunting dog. But he couldn't, and he didn't know why.
"Do you want to bury him?" Aidan asked in a low, calm voice. He strokes his arm, and Jacob lets him.
He shook his head and looked back at the corpse. No, that was all there was left. There was nothing else to do. It was something that had to happen.
Jacob came out of his trance when the faint sunlight hit his face and he identified his humble farm. He looked from side to side; from the small house to the barn and the path that led to the route to the enclave, surrounded by dry trees and bushes that moved with the wind, making clickitty-clacketty sounds… clickitty-clacketty…
He continued watching as he walked. As soon as he shifted his gaze to his left, he saw her: Sitting, staring at the grove. Her blond hair ran loose down her back…
"Martha," he gasped. "Martha! Martha!"
Jacob ran unchained toward the woman's figure. He wondered, suddenly, if Aidan was following him. It didn't matter. He had to see her. Martha, Martha, Martha!
She was wearing the same dress he'd seen her in his dream: sky-blue, with a narrow waist and a full skirt. Her hair was loose and neatly combed. Jacob felt his heart racing. It was her. She was finally back.
Now that she was back, he told himself, they had to get out of there as quickly as possible. Screw his parents. Screw everyone. Screw! Screw! His beloved was back in his arms!
He hugged her tightly from behind and, before he could say a word, she melted in his arms into circular, phallic and cylindrical figures.
Jacob’s breath caught in his throat, and he pulled away from the doll like it was on fire.
"Jake! Son! What are you doing?" Jacob's mother asked as soon as she saw him, walking toward him with slow steps.
His father watched them from a distance. Aidan extended his arm to help him up. Everyone could see what was right in front of them.
Inside the dress and under the long wig were pumpkins, corn, and squash, all in perfect conditions.
His father approached them and studied the scene.
“What is all this?”
“It’s… food,” Jacob stammered in a state of stupefaction.
“Food?”
“Where did you get that dress, Jake?”
But he couldn't answer. He glanced at Aidan out of the corner of his eye, as if he might have the answers. Aidan looked back, as if sympathetically, even though he had no idea who Martha was, and that gave Jake a feeling he couldn't explain. A wave of relief from the heartbreaking uncertainty that was consuming him. Like confirmation that he wasn't going crazy.
Aidan stroked his arm. Jacob didn't push him away.
"We should sell the dress," his father suggested at dinner.
"No," he snapped, running his fingers over the silk of its skirt. "It was… It's Martha's."
"Martha," Thomas muttered with a graceless snort. "As if Lawrence had that much money."
Jacob shook his head and continued running his fingertips over the soft sky-blue fabric. It had details he hadn't noticed. Small embroidered tile designs in the same color, white lace at the neckline and edges. It was a very beautiful dress. His Martha looked like an angel when she wore it. Martha.
He had to distract himself somehow. He refused to watch them eat dinner, made with what could have been his wife's guts. It was especially unpleasant given what his father had said: We can finally have a proper meal.
Aidan hadn't eaten either. Jacob didn't know why, but he appreciated the gesture, if it was intentional. He was sitting in front of the campfire, carving a piece of wood with a knife. His hair mingled with the flames behind him, and Jacob gasped in amazement. It looked unbelievable; out of this world.
Aidan looked up. Jake was sure he was going crazy, because suddenly he looked like he was wearing that same dress, with his hair styled like Martha's in his dreams. Makeup and everything, a mischievous smile on his lips.
Jacob blinked, and Aidan was wearing the same clothes as always: a white linen shirt with a red vest over it, brown wool trousers, and handmade leather shoes.
"Blacklegs died, and I think a bunch hares killed him," Aidan theorized, having set his materials aside.
Jacob was filled with fear as he vividly remembered the wild stampede of those animals cornering him and how they took human form. He felt a chill run down his spine.
But to his father, this seems absurd. "Hares? Are hares in Dublin two meters tall and have teeth the size of an oak tree?"
"I wouldn't be surprised," Jacob's mother whispered, audible only to him, who looked at her strangely.
Jacob saw the sudden focus on the lad's origins as rather strange and out of place. He assumed Aidan thought the same, but no. He just answered. As if it were something normal.
"I'm from Derry, my lord. Up north," he said in a calm tone. "When I found the dog, its organs had teeth marks that didn't look like a wolf, or a fox, or a mountain lion. They were the shape of a hare bite."
Thomas laughed again. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
"It's possible," Jacob said suddenly, catching the attention of the rest of the people present, then looked back at the dress. "I mean... it could have been another animal that tore his skin; a wolf or a lynx. But the hares probably bit his guts. There are... There are a lot of strange things in the forest."
The conversation did not continue and his father simply gave him a judgmental look instead of saying anything else.
It was strange, empathy towards Aidan, given that he was different, and a foreigner, and had little idea about his culture or the hostility his parents felt towards it.
Maybe they too believed that Jacob was going crazy.
His mother took the empty dishes elsewhere to wash them. They said their goodbyes. Aidan went out to sleep in the barn. Jacob looked out from the doorway to watch him walk.
"Martha was your wife, wasn't she?" he asked suddenly.
Jake squeezed the fabric in his hands and nodded.
“Was that dress really hers?”
“Something like that.”
Aidan smiled sympathetically. “I bet it looked beautiful on her.”
Jacob felt his heart hammering in his chest. His cheeks flushed, and the skin beneath his hands tingled. He looked away.
“Thanks for… for being there earlier.”
“No problem. Maybe we weren't lucky today, but… but I know everything will get better very soon, okay?”
Jacob looked at him. His hair was loose and fell in strands over his shoulders like tongues of pale campfire in the moonlight. His eyes shone with empathy from the small slits that were squeezed by his smiling cheeks. He was a very boyish man. Very pretty for a man. He filled Jacob's heart with intrigue and excitement.
“I hope so.”
They said goodbye.
Jacob retreated to his room and left the dress on a chair.
"My Lord," he prayed on his knees, "you have promised sleep to your beloved children; grant us the restorative rest we need for tomorrow's work. If dreams are ours, may they not be tainted by evil. May your Spirit make our rest a blessed temple of his holy presence. Amen."
He lay down and curled up in a cold, empty bed, sighing. Martha was gone; there was nothing more to be done about it. She had disappeared, or died, or she had forgotten about him. Whatever it was, he was alone and abandoned. That idyllic dream and that dress were nothing more than reminders from God of that fact.
Yes, that was it. Whatever he went through in that forest, it didn't matter when he rested in the hands of the Lord. When he placed all his faith in him and his omnipotence. Jacib looked up at the sky and was illuminated by his grace. That's what mattered. That's what he should think about.
Jacob woke up in the middle of the night to a symphony of cheerful music, hundreds of laughs, and incoherent words. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to ward off sleep and the headache. The sky was dark outside. What was all the commotion about?
Surely those Wampanoags were performing some ceremony right in front of the house, or close enough that Jacob could have been awakened by their commotion. No one else in the house seemed to be awake, so it was up to him to silence all the commotion and sleep peacefully.
As he opened the door while adjusting his pants, everything lit up.
It felt like he'd traveled to an alternate reality. The grass was green and fertile, decorated with multi-colored flowers. There were people dancing and playing music with animal masks covering their faces. Men, women, and children alike. They wore clothes in the colors of spring and sang, danced, and laughed in a language he couldn't understand. There were both men and women kissing each other. Children were running back and forth. All wearing animal masks. A duck, a wolf, a fox, a rabbit, a bear. Predator and prey were hugging each other and walking hand in hand. It was a truly bizarre scene.
Jacob blinked repeatedly, wondering if he was dreaming.
A young woman wearing a pig mask approached him. She had a plump build, brown hair, and tanned skin beneath the green linen dress she wore.
“Why aren't you wearing your mask? The celebration is in full swing!”
"What are we celebrating…?" Jacob stammered, incredulous.
The girl let out a squeal like a pig's in the form of laughter.
“Oh, haven't you heard? The great God Pan lives! He's alive!”
A pagan celebration, of course. Jacob had the urge to return home, but as soon as he turned around, he saw that his humble abode was gone. Absent where the grass and flowers of a clearing stretched to the edge of the lush forest. A shiver ran down his spine as he remembered what lay within.
The same girl from before was holding a deer mask, offering it to him. Jacob refused.
“No, sorry. This is a misunderstanding. I'm not… I shouldn't be here. Do you know where I can get back home? Or to the nearest settlement?”
The girl blinked in confusion.
“What are you saying? This is your home. It's the only community you need. The forest and nature open their arms to you. Celebrate to the sound of Pan's flute! Thank him for the gift of an eternal spirit!”
Jacob shook his head. He had to get out of there as soon as possible. He couldn't keep listening to so much blasphemy.
“I can't. Sorry. I just want to go back… back to my house. Or wherever. This isn't my place.”
The girl seemed to take pity on him and stopped insisting, letting go of the deer mask.
“Well, I don't know what directions to give you. I recommend you ask the self-righteous god directly. He knows everything, past, present, and even the future, and I'm sure he'll be happy to give you answers.”
The God? Was it an omniscient God they worshipped? Jacob wanted to laugh. None of those false gods knew anything about anyone. They were all demons disguised as wise men. The only God who existed and truly had all knowledge was Jehovah. He didn't have to talk to anyone else.
“I'm fine, thank you.”
The girl shrugged and gave up.
Jake took one last look at the party before his eyes—the naked people or those in strange clothes dancing. The masks. The flowers. The strange movements and sounds, and the wild, vulgar kisses—before embarking on his new journey.
There had to be a way to get back home or to some town, no matter how long it took.
He walked through the flower-filled clearing for hours on end, praying quietly. He begged God for a sign or some indication that he was getting closer to civilization. The road grew longer and longer. The same flowers and the same grass, displaying its fertility in its green color. The sounds of the celebration faded, giving way to the sounds of the forest. The rushing wind, the singing of birds and the running of deer. Jacob stayed away from the hungry stomach of the forest to avoid encountering anything similar to what he had encountered the day before. He wondered inwardly, what would he find if he tried to cross the grove? What would greet him among the trees? But fear prevailed over curiosity—the need to stay alive, and all. People didn't usually create their communities in the middle of the forest. There had to be something, someone, even some indigenous community.
The whisper of the wind was his only companion. The further he walked, the more his head hurt, and he grew hungrier and hungrier. His limbs weakened. He had no sense of time. He could walk for days and the sun would still be at its zenith. He felt sleepy and yet not. He felt like throwing up and yet not. His stomach growled and remained silent. Nothing made sense.
Little by little, the sound ceased completely. No more wind, no animals, no music of any kind. Then, he saw no more flowers; no daisies, no dandelions, no lavender, nothing. Then, there was no grass; the earth lay bare and seeped into his shoes. Then, there were no trees; the forest disappeared. And, in the end, there was nothing. Nothingness itself. Just a blank space.
Jacob felt too tired to be disappointed. He sank down onto the white floor and closed his eyes tightly, wondering if he would dream of something beautiful. Of a better life than the one he actually had. Of flowers and bright sunshine. He asked God for all of that with cries from his strident heart, but he remained unmoved. What had he done? Why didn't God listen?
In the Bible, moments like those were moments of revelation. God had to reveal himself in some way or another to bring hope to his children. Where was God at that moment? Father, Father, why have you forsaken me?
Minutes. Hours. Maybe days had passed. He felt his mind and body crumble beneath the cold emptiness around him. Everything crumbled like sand through a baby's fingers. He was alone. Alone. He lived an incomplete life. A short, despairing marriage. He tried to hold on to it all, to create stability, to maintain order. And for what? At the end of the day, he would die alone.
No one would come to save him.
Jacob heard a stream running. He slowly opened his eyes, and the first thing he saw was a hare studying his face.
He stood up suddenly. The hare walked away without taking his eyes off him. Jacob felt a chill run down his spine.
He listened to the rustling of leaves and branches as the wind moved them. He stood up and paced around, studying his surroundings. Had God saved him? Was that the moment he would manifest himself before his eyes? His heart pounded.
He saw a figure. An image composed of the leaves of the largest tree he'd ever seen. A man with goat horns looked down at him. His entire face was defined by the leaves of that tree. Jake felt his breath catch.
It wasn't God, but… maybe it was. Different.
“Are you Pan? The great self-satisfied God?”
The God didn't answer. Jacob tried to speak to him again.
“Can you tell me how I can get home?”
The God didn't answer. Jacob just had to talk to him a little more. If all those people were celebrating his arrival, it had to be… it had to be worth something.
“Why did you bring me here? To look down on me and not answer my questions? To expose me to despair and suffering, and not give any explanations?”
The God didn't answer. Jacob was getting desperate.
"I need to go home. Please. I need..." he licked his lips. "I need my life back. I need my wife. I need the family we were going to build. Did you take that away from me? Why? What have I done to you? What have we humans done to you? Is it because we forgot about you?"
The
God
Didn't
Answer.
“Answer! Answer! Damn it, answer!”
Thus cried Jacob. And the God did not answer him. God did not answer him. He fell to his knees on the ground and covered his head with his arms as he wept in agony. He was despairing. He felt his life and his humanity slipping through his fingers, and God did not answer him. God did not answer him.
Her name sounded distant from her mother's lips as she woke up. Her eyelids seemed to weigh seven tons. She let out a gasp of astonishment and sat up.
"What were you doing here, at the edge of the forest?" his mother asked.
“Pardon?”
He'd come home... Or he'd become a sleepwalker and walked all night until he fell asleep by the grove, and that was just a dream, no matter how real it felt. Whatever it was, he was still sleepy; his head was spinning, and he felt hunger gnawing at his stomach.
“I don't…”
"You have bags under your eyes the size of an ox, Holy Father." She shook her head and stepped away from him. "Get up. Your father and that boy went hunting. I need you to help me tidy the barn and fetch water while I clean the house."
His mother had a strange attitude. Her words were slurred, her eyes wide open, looking everywhere and nowhere at the same time. She certainly didn't look at Jacob while she spoke. She felt distant, not only from him but from the world. Gone. A hollow part of herself. What had happened?
"Hunting again?" Jake snorted as he sat up and brushed the dust off his legs, studying his mother's face. She gasped in surprise as if barely noticing her son's presence. "Hasn't wilderness made it clear that she doesn't want to be tamed?"
"As if... as if those animals could do more than us," His mother stammered.
She walked back to the house, whispering to herself and looking around. Jake tilted his head, puzzled by her attitude. She really didn't act like his mother.
He began his day in the barn, sweeping the straw and collecting the cow and horse dung. It was an unpleasant task that wasn't his—but in difficult times like those, the tasks assigned to each individual lost their meaning.
In times like those, everything lost its meaning. Food, drink, family, even the word of God. Nothing made sense. How could he learn to live like this?
As he combed the horse's hair after milking the cow, Jacob wished he could be like those animals. He wished he had a clear purpose in life instead of desperately searching for it in the farthest corners of the earth, as he felt he had to do every day since Martha left.
He once had dreams and ambitions. Once, for a time, years before they were crushed. He dreamed of travel. Of visiting his grandfather's birthplace in Yorkshire and exploring the Old World. France, Italy, Spain, Greece. He longed to hear it all, see it all. Music, dance, laughter. New languages, new cultures, new tastes. He wanted it all, all of it.
But that was nothing more than vulgar greed. God had given him one life, and that was the life he was destined to die with no matter what. There was no point in filling his mind with maybes…
Although at that moment…
At that moment, he knew nothing.
He gave the horse one last pat before starting his way toward the stream. It was a bit far from the farm, but close enough that he could carry water before sunset. Collecting water wasn't his job either. Still, he rolled up his pants and sleeves to kneel in front of the stream and begin drawing water with a wooden bucket.
Nothing made sense. Not the need to carry water, nor the need to stay alive. He was hungry, and cold, and the mud got between his toes.
He looked toward the forest in front of him, and the trees parted. He blinked, assuming it had been a trick of the mind. Branches and leaves rustled, giving way to a most bizarre scene. The grass on that side looked greener. There were intelligible sounds and hurried gasps filling his ears. What was all that?
The next thing he saw stole the air from both his lungs.
Aiden ran desperately. His hair was shorter, hidden under a strange green hat, with an orange surcoat with yellow details tied around his waist and a kind of burgundy palla resting on his shoulders and held with a wooden clasp on his chest.
Jacob dropped the bucket and stood up. Water splashed on his clothes, but he didn't really mind.
"Aidan!" he shouted. "Aidan! What are you doing?!"
But the young man didn't answer. He sank to his knees and forehead and began to shout so loudly that birds whose songs Jacob didn't know darted out from between the trees. He stood back and watched the scene, astonished.
“Dagda!” he bellowed in a language Jacob did not know, yet understood perfectly. “Dagda! Father of the Druids! Warrior who rules over Éire! Why do you stand by while these foreigners ravage our land?! I demand your answer! End them as the Fomorian in the battle of Mag Tured! Your people need you!
He waited a while. Maybe an hour. Jacob spent that time watching as the hope drained from his face and was replaced by despair. He dug his nails into the ground and screamed at the sky again.
“Gods of the sky, of the earth, of death, and of the ocean! Have mercy on this people who are crumbling before our eyes! The men of Albion demand that I kneel and pray to a corpse impaled on a cross. That I speak their confused and strange language. Have mercy on us, the people of the emerald isle! Have mercy! Have mercy!”
Aidan sobbed like a grieving mother as his clothes became stained with mud. Jacob could feel the desperation in his voice piercing his chest.
“Who am I without you? What am I if I can't worship you?”
He collapsed completely, as if dead, and curled up on his knees in a fetal position. Jacob considered going over and comforting him, but didn't think it was possible. This was a scene that shouldn't be interrupted by anyone.
The wind began to blow harder. Jacob could feel it. The water that had spilled on him when the bucket fell was drying and darkening on his clothes.
The trees across the river danced a violent, powerful dance. The hat Aidan was wearing fell off his head, and he stood up, closing his eyes and letting the wind ruffle his hair.
“Oh, earth. Earth, you who live and roar and die and rise again. You who feed and poison. You who bloom and wither. You who are older than me and older than all of us. Let my eyes see you free from the clutches of religion. Let me live long enough to be free from the expectations of men. I beg you, oh my earth. I beg you.”
The ground shifted beneath his feet, and Jacob gasped in astonishment. The forest closed in. Aidan was gone. He felt out of his depth.
Jacob heard a loud noise coming from his mother. He dropped everything in the stream and ran back to the farm.
What greeted him was… A heartbreaking scene, to say the least.
The cow's head rolled toward the door of the house, its guts mingling with the hay and staining the pasture carmine, its bones scattered in a haphazard and disjointed manner all over the place. The horse's head, meanwhile, was nailed to the barn's roof post. Its legs were torn to pieces, and its guts were chewed and spat out, chewed and spat out until they became an unrecognizable, pink-red mass. Its ribs pierced pieces of its body like meal sticks, and its tail was shredded into strands of hair by the hay.
The putrid smell of blood and guts permeated the air. Jacob felt the urge to crouch down and vomit.
His mother screamed and stared at him with wild eyes. Her dress, hands, face, and loose hair were soaked with blood. She stared at Jacob as if she didn't recognize him.
"You!" She shrieked so loudly that the sound didn't seem human. "Look at you!"
"What?" Jacob stammered in a whisper.
“You did this! Didn't you?!”
“No!”
"Yes!" his mother shrieked as she strode toward him. "You wild beast! You devilish creature! You have brought us nothing but death and misery!"
“What are you talking about…? I didn't do any of this!”
“God has given me an only son who is nothing but a useless man! Who married a woman who can't bear children and only knows how to get in the way! Who can't hunt, can't chop wood. You brought that... that demon into our house! You're destroying everything that's ours! You are our downfall!”
Jacob couldn't believe anything she was saying. Was that what he really thought? Everything she'd been keeping inside? He took a few steps back as his mother pushed him.
“That's why you woke up at the edge of the forest! Isn't it?! You went to do your... your nightly misdeeds. Look at you! You're not even ashamed to parade the blood that covers you!”
Blood? The only thing covering him was the water he accidentally spilled. His mother was covered in blood, almost from head to toe. She was unrecognizable beneath it.
He felt his eyes sting with the first drops of tears. He didn't want to cry, but it was inevitable. He couldn't bear to hear his mother's voice hurling such accusations at him. Weren't mothers supposed to protect and love their children unconditionally? That was how his mother had once been. She held Jacob in her arms as she rocked his tiny body in her lap and sang psalms to him until he fell asleep on her breast. She gave him her blessing when he married and wished him happiness. With watery eyes, she begged him to live with them so that he and Martha could help them with the chores around the house and the barn, because she had no other children and no one to help him. He even stayed with them when they were banished from the community. Because he loved them. Because he was their son.
"Mother!" he cried, not meaning to. "I'm your son!"
"You are not my son," the furious woman roared, "you are my curse!"
Jacob wanted to defend himself, but he was afraid of hurting his mother. He held her shoulders tightly, trying to free himself from her grasp without hurting her. He was taller and stronger than her, but at that moment she seemed to be possessed by a spirit that gave her the strength of a stampede of ferocious oxen. The woman brought her hands to her son's neck, intending to strangle him or tear his head off. She stared at him with wild eyes. Her face was red with blood and anger. Even her teeth dripped with the ink of the deadly liquid. Jacob felt suffocated.
"I'll tear your head off, you savage lion," she roared, inches from his face. "God be my witness! I'll destroy you, you hideous beast, and make jewelry from your bones!"
Jacob let out a wail of pain as he felt his mother's long nails dig into the skin of his throat. Little by little, his breath was leaving him, and Faith screamed and roared like something inhuman. Tears kept falling from his eyes. Was that the same woman who had held him and fed him for so many years? She didn't look like her, in body or mind, and yet Jacob felt his heart clench at her violent disregard for his safety. Wasn't that the strangest thing? Foolish, even childish? Whose arms would he run to, expressing that pain with tears in his eyes, when those same arms who had held him tenderly were exerting all their strength to hurt him?
He couldn't hold it in any longer. He gathered all the strength he could muster, used the hands he had on the woman's shoulders, and shoved her away from him. Faith was shrieking like an enraged animal; like a fox or a lynx. Her teeth bared and foaming at the mouth. She insisted on grabbing him, breaking his skin with her nails, biting into his flesh. She didn't even seem like a version of herself, but a completely different creature. Jacob pushed her away completely, and the woman fell to the ground like a rag doll.
Jacob squeezed his eyes shut as he gasped for air. He could feel the blood from his mother's hands drying at the base of his neck and on his clothes. Suddenly, there was a stifling silence around him.
He didn't know what to do. He was afraid. Everything around him seemed to be shaking. The wind blew and moved everything and made the rattling of branches and the hurried footsteps of animals sound, and he could feel it. Everything. All the sensations. All the touches. All the sounds. Like a stampede running beneath his skin. And it was overwhelming.
Jacob wanted to crouch down and throw up. To crawl and curl up next to his mother like a scared child. He didn't understand anything that was happening around him, and it filled him with an inexplicable fear. With a desperate uncertainty.
He confirmed that his mother was dead when he knelt beside her and didn't feel her pulse beneath his fingers. He cried a lot more. It was inevitable. He knew children were destined to watch their parents die, but no child deserved to see their mother die like that. To go mad until she became a fraction of what she used to be, to lash out at her son as if she didn't know him, to deny him, to shriek and roar like an animal. At least that's what he didn't expect from a woman like his mother, who was always good, to everyone and especially to him. Banishment had twisted her, but she had a chance to change, to be good again. She had to be. She had to be happy, and die a happy life. It wasn't fair. Oh God who rules above, what is this punishment to which you are subjecting us?
But God did not answer him, as expected.
He carried his mother's body into the house. He combed her hair and laid her on the bed, covering her with the sheets. She looked so peaceful, after the angry frenzy she'd displayed a moment earlier. She looked more like his mother.
Jacob returned to the stream and washed his face and neck of blood and sweat. He studied his reflection in the water. His blond hair had grown quite long, almost reaching his shoulders.
He took a deep breath as he headed home.
What was he supposed to do?
Aidan had arrived a few hours later. Alone. Empty-handed.
Jacob waited for him, sitting on a chair in front of the house. His only clothing was his untied linen shirt and wool trousers. He held a rye branch between his teeth, which he chewed slowly, watching the boy arrive.
He had to confront him. He needed answers, and he couldn't think of anyone else who might have them other than Aidan. That unknown Irishman who had brought nothing but misery to his home with his arrival.
His wife disappeared, the only trace of her a dress he saw her wearing in his dreams. His mother went mad and died. His livestock was torn to pieces. The whole world was crumbling before his eyes. And where was God? Watching everything from heaven and laughing?
"Where's my father?" Jacob asked as soon as he was face to face with Aidan.
Aidan turned to look at him in surprise. As if he hadn't been expecting to see him there.
“I came to tell you that. Your father… he was like crazy. Alert and shaky. We found a moose, and he started screaming and crying and begging for forgiveness on his knees. The animal screamed and ran to charge him. I tried to help him, but he wouldn’t let me. He let himself… he let himself die… God.” His voice broke. “Jacob, I’m so sorry…”
“Are you, now?”
The image suddenly appeared in his head: his father's body impaled on the tall animal's horns. The screams and blood dripping from his chest and stomach. He swallowed, ignoring the hollow in his gut. The scent of blood had mingled so much with the air in the past few hours that it was difficult for him to mourn the death of another of his parents.
Jacob would have liked to see him, in some way. To witness his vulnerability. To hear his repentance. To witness the helpless version of him that Jacob knew existed deep inside, repressed. His father only acted rigid and impenetrable, looking down on Jacob for showing what he considered weakness. He hated that. He would have liked to see him apologize to his son, apologize to God in heaven for having let his pride get the better of him and, as a result, dragging his family into a life of misery. He wanted to see him agonize and suffer. He wanted to see the sadness in his eyes. After all the pain he had inflicted on Jacob... it was only fair.
Aidan narrowed his eyes.
“What are you talking about?”
Jacob stood up and stared at him, towering over him.
"I saw you today," he said. "Running, praying. You're a pagan, aren't you?"
Aidan pressed his lips together. He didn't deny it.
“Answer.”
He puffed out his chest and glared at her.
“I promise you there's an explanation for all this.”
Jake squeezed his eyes shut, feeling a wave of anger course through his entire body. He clenched his fists, his eyes, and everything. Every corner of his body had tensed from the intense anger clouding his mind.
“Jacob, please listen to me.”
Jacob pushed him so hard that he fell flat on his backside. The ground began to shake, and suddenly they were in the middle of a dark forest, lit only by the moonlight. Hundreds of night sounds filled his ears. The rattling of trees swaying in the fierce wind. The cry of foxes. The hoot of an owl. The scampering of a hare. The howl of a wolf. All in a sinister symphony that drove him mad.
The loudest of all was an animal scratching at the wood of a closed door, struggling to get out. It was so loud it filled every one of her senses. She wondered if it existed only in her head.
Aidan laughed from the floor.
“Listen to the sounds of the wilderness! Feel them enveloping you! Look around you! The ferocity of the wind. The roar of the animals. All of them, living free and wild. Does that seem abnormal to you? Unnatural?”
Jacob couldn't believe what he was hearing. Was that the voice of his torturer? Was that the image of his executioner?
Aidan staggered to his feet and stood face to face with Jacob, a few feet apart. But Jacob was smiling.
Jake swallowed hard.
“It was you, wasn't it? The dreams... the... the cow, the horse. The dog. The hares. The God Pan. My mother. My father. Martha. You! It was all you!”
Aidan wiped the smile off his face and frowned.
“I barely have anything to do with any of this. Yes, I showed you Martha in your dreams. Yes, I unleashed those hares. The rest was… your doing.”
"My doing?" he croaked in disbelief. The scratching grew louder.
The smile returned to Aidan's face, and a laugh accompanied it. Jacob didn't find the situation funny at all.
"You haven't realized the power that dwells within you. You don't belong here; with those rules, those restrictions. You have a soul that yearns for freedom. It's in your blood. The restrictions of men cannot tame your spirit." Then he laughed. "You ran away from your wife's womb like a fawn hearing the hunter's shot!"
Jacob shook his head, feeling the sweat running down his face, even beneath the cold that enveloped him. His heart was racing. His head was spinning. He felt like throwing up. Something so strong and evil couldn't exist inside him. He was a normal man, like the rest. He always had been. It was easy to think of himself as someone like that.
The scratching grew louder and more desperate. Louder. Louder.
“No, I… I am a…” He licked his lips and puffed out his chest. However, he spoke the following in a tremulous voice: “I am a child of God.”
Aidan smiled even wider, if that was even possible.
“There is no God. There is no God in the sky, there is no God in the forest, there is no God beneath our feet. Our cries go unheard. Our prayers are ignored. The only force that perseveres despite the evil of men is nature. So many years of civilization, and look how it runs wild and imposes its excellence. Listen to it!”
The sounds grew louder. The scratching became more desperate. Jacob felt a chill.
“You killed my family.”
Aidan wiped his smile.
“You killed your family.*
—What happened to Martha?
“She disappeared.”
“Why? Where to?”
“I don't know. It was the only way you could be truly free. Maybe she knew.”
“Lies.”
“I'm being honest.”
“Lies ¡Lies!”
Possessed by rage, he threw himself at Aidan. That… bastard had taken everything he knew. The entire life he had built. Eighteen years down the drain. And for what? For what purpose?
So what if Jacob was unhappy? So what if he felt like that wasn't the life he should have had? So what if he wanted more? Indulging such desires was the lowest and most horrible thing a human being could do. One lives the life one’s meant to, one dies, and that's it. That's all there was to it. Nothing more, nothing less.
That was stability. It was peace. It was simple. Everything else was complicated, ever-changing, and heartbreaking. Getting married and having children was easy. Trying to break away from that pattern was unthinkable for him.
He punched Aidan in the face again and again. He held him by the back. He clawed at him with the fury of a rabid animal. Blood and dirt peeped out from tiny gaps of skin beneath his fingers. Inhuman gasps and groans, produced unconsciously, came from his lips. There was nothing left in the world but his anger. There was nothing left for him but his baser need to end everything he loathed.
Aidan writhed and moaned beneath him. Jacob was gasping for air, feeling the heat build up around his muscles from the adrenaline of it all. Aidan pushed at him with inhuman strength. Jacob stumbled and fell backward. He suddenly felt a weight on his body, straddling his lap. Aidan grabbed him by the shoulders and scratched until blood came out of his wounds. He gripped him hard. He pinched him. There was doubt in his eyes. His lips were pressed into a line of uncertainty. It was the first time Jacob’d seen him like that in all the time they'd been fighting, and all he could do was let out a hoarse laugh. Was Aiden trying not to hurt him?
“Now you want to show mercy?” Jacob bellowed breathlessly. “Hit me! Hurt me! Kill me! End this!”
"I don't want to kill you!" Aidan replied, his voice shaking. "It's not my duty. You can't die yet, but I don't know the limits of your abilities."
“What the hell are you talking about?! What abilities?!”
Aidan held him tightly by the shoulders, and Jacob didn't move for the first time. He wanted to hear what he had to say. He wanted answers.
"You and I are connected," he replied. "I still don't know what to call it, or if it has a scientific or spiritual explanation. None of this makes sense."
“I realized.”
Aidan nodded, his eyes closed, trying to control his labored breathing. “I asked the land years ago to let me live long enough to see it truly free. And here I am. And I don’t know if it has to do with that or something bigger. All I know is that I’ve been living in this world for centuries, and I haven’t found a place where I fit in. Not in Ireland, not outside of it, not… anywhere. Years ago, I wanted to be a druid, but ever since the missionaries came to our land, I realized the sky is empty. I’ve been all over Europe, Africa, and Asia. I’ve seen everything and learned everything. And nothing fills this feeling of loneliness that consumes me.” He began to cry without realizing it. “I’ve been to every corner of America and discovered everything the world has to offer. I’ve fallen in love with it all as a spectator. But this life is so, so, lonely.
Aidan inhaled sharply and threw his head back, pushing his hair away from his face.
“I’m sure there must be more people like me out there,” he said. “But if so, I don’t see it; everyone hides. Yet you, Jacob, you are so obvious. Your dissatisfaction shines on your face like a forest fire. This isn’t your life. And I could tell as quickly as I saw you, lost in that wood. Almost glowing with this… magic that runs through you. This isn’t the life you’re meant to be living.”
"And you think you know what life I deserve?" he yelled, propelling himself forward. "You have such nerve."
Jacob strained and grabbed Aidan’s face. Who did he think he was, talking about immortality and loneliness and freedom? Jacob's life was his own. That was the life he chose to live.
Aidan's nose was bleeding, and his disheveled hair fell in lava-like streaks. His cheeks and eyes were swollen. Jake's gaze shifted to the lad’s broken, bitten, and bruised lips. Jacob had nothing in common with him, and it was evident in their position. He grabbed Aidan's face tightly and forced him to look at him. He had caused those bruises and wounds. He had caused that glazed look. He was the predator, his frightened prey waiting for his next move, knowing every second could be his last. There was power in that. He felt a heat pool in the pit of his stomach. An unfamiliar emotion. As animalistic as his anger. Perhaps a consequence of it. An extension of it.
There was nothing left for him. The world he knew crumbled around him. All there was then was him, and that boy with the long hair and glassy eyes, so he gave in to that need, and leaned down to capture Aidan's lips with his own.
Aidan trembled, almost fearful, at the sudden touch, but he was no less shaken by the savage urgency roaring inside him. The clawing behind Jacob’s head grew more desperate and urgent, accompanied by howls and whimpers of anguish. He pressed closer to him, hands, body, and face. Their mouths collided with the fury of combat. With the anger of a rabid wolf. With the urgency neither of them knew was growing inside them. Or maybe the only one who didn't know was Jacob. The taste of blood seeped through both of their mouths, and Jacob moaned madly with the hunger roaring inside him. With the scratches of a hundred wolves begging to be released at the back of his mind. Jackb used both hands to tear at Aidan's clothes, and Aidan did the same to him. He needed to feel him as close as possible, to be engulfed by the flames that threatened to scorch them both, and end it all once and for all. They broke apart, Aidan's hair illuminating their bodies in tongues of fire.
It was implausible and ethereal. Like a mockery of the certainty that resided within Jacob. Every time he thought he understood what was happening around him, Aidan found a way to tell him no, he didn't know anything. That Jacob was ignorant to the limits of his world, and Aidan would be happy to let him know.
"Do you see it now?" He asked breathlessly, a smile on his face. "Do you see the connection?"
Jacob couldn't process anything at that moment. His voice was hoarse as he asked, "What the fuck are you?"
"I am your sin," he replied. "The manifestation of it made flesh. Eat me. Eat of me, and only then will you be whole."
Jake pushed him to the ground. He kissed, more calmly, the path that ran from Aidan’s cheekbones to his collarbone. Aidan moaned and begged between incoherent babble to be eaten. For Jacob to open his stomach and chew his guts. For him touch his bloody, throbbing muscles with his fingertips and drink his bloody wine. For him to tear his chest open and feed on what was his. Jacob felt lost. Out of the world. Blinded by an ecstasy and a frenzy previously unknown—if ever existent—to him. And he wanted more. He had never wanted more in his life. He was so hungry he felt his bones turning into dust under his skin.
With a strength he hadn't known he possessed, Jacob ripped the young man's chest open, tearing through skin and muscle like butter, watching blood erupt in spurts of hot, pulsating lava. Aidan cried out in delight, stroking Jacob's hair. Jacob watched from his position with bright, dilated pupils. There was something… tender in his prey’s gaze. Like love. Like devotion. As if a monster like Jake deserved such things.
He felt his stomach tingle at those eyes and self-consciously licked Aiden's heart's blood from top to bottom. Aidan whimpered and writhed beneath him, pushing his body into Jacob's mouth. Jacob bit into the organ and it tasted like the sweetest wine he'd ever had. He continued his journey, chewing bones and devouring lungs. Aidan stroked his hair, as if urging him to keep eating, and Jacob submitted with glee. His organs melted between his teeth like the sweet flesh of a fig. His bones split and snapped like candy. The young man eventually stopped moving, and that didn't stop Jacob. He kept eating and eating. Tearing and biting.
He felt her stomach rumbling with pleasure and fullness. His whole body, really. Years of an unhappy, incomplete life crumbled before his eyes. From then on, there was only that. That feeling of fullness. That love. Caresses in his hair and sweet juice between his teeth.
Jake woke up feeling light. Intoxicated. The sun was barely peeking through the trees. He heard the flow of the clear stream and the morning birds singing as if it were spring. He tried to get up, but the world spun. The images didn't make sense. He felt strange. Like he was in ecstasy. Maybe that's what being drunk felt like. It made sense people developed an addiction to that feeling.
He heard a cheerful laugh next to him and saw Aidan dressed from the waist down in what appeared to be the skirt of Martha's light blue dress, his long reddish hair falling in a braid over his chest and shoulders. In his hands, he held a handkerchief soaked with water.
"Let's see, get up," he asked. And Jacob did so.
On the horizon, he saw two suns rising and twice as many trees. Even Aidan's image seemed hazy and ethereal. Wrapped in a divine glow.
As Aidan cleaned his face, Jake noticed his clothes. A skirt like his, from the waist down. He laughed.
"Do I look like Faith, my mother?" he asked, his voice sounding alien to his own ears.
Aidan smiled. “I think I see her when I look at you,” he replied, reaching up to the side of Jacob’s face to brush a loose strand of hair behind his ear. He shivered.
Aidan finished washing the blood and dirt from Jacob's body. Jacob looked around. He didn't know where they were. Far away, it had to be. It didn't look like any corner of the forest he was familiar with.
Aidan stood up and extended his hand. He looked like an angel illuminated by the halo of the sun. And the crown of branches and flowers on his head made him look even more divine.
"Come with me," he said. "I'll introduce you to your new life."
And Jacob gave in. He took his hand, and they both began to float. His mediocre farm and the fearsome forest looked like children's toys from his vantage point among the soft clouds. So small he could crush them with the soles of his feet. He laughed and felt full. As if he'd found all the answers to all the world's questions. As if nothing else mattered. As if he were free. Free. Free.
END.