What Went Ye Out Into This Wilderness to See?

Written by Elisabeth Oliver

The red sap nightmare of the forest is real. You are in it. The trees are terrible and tall. They surround you. A witch lives deep within its fat black heart. This is where she has taken you.

You were once not here. I know. I know because I was once not here either. We are ghost stories now, me and you. We will haunt the faces of our unfortunate doppelgängers, and our families will find us in the most inconvenient of places.

(My mother saw a girl with the same hair color as me on a bus stop one day and started weeping in public. She said so on the television. Please let my daughter go, she said, please. Please be kind to her. Let her come home.

She, of course, does not understand as you and I do, that the gray woman who keeps you here does not feel she has done anything wrong. Do not try to convince her of her transgressions. You will only be screaming into a void.) 

We are not born into this suffering, I promise, it grows upon us as time passes like a vine curling around the throat of a statue. You and I were not made for this confinement. Girls are not meant to be phantoms. But we are products of an uncongenial world.

You can no longer be what you once were. Soft things cannot exist here, they are too tender, they are too easy to tear apart, like winds scraping away dewy soil and leaving behind sand. Wastelands, we are wastelands.

You have not been captured and put into a box for safekeeping. Attic-dwelling-girl, this is no man’s land. Only you inhabit this land, you and the mice and the moths and the spiders. And her. She lurks behind the heavy wooden door; her movements ring, she carries your freedom in her cotton pocket.

Do you understand? She has locked you away.

The sun will only touch you if you stand under the crack of the ceiling in the center of the room. She watches from behind the door, through a narrow opening, where you can see the flash of her pale brown eyes. She likes to see you in the light. You are prey. She is predator. Understand?

You are in a room with sloped ceilings. You have a dresser and a cot. There is a sink, and a toilet, and a lamp, and a round window covered with paper from the outside (when she isn’t prowling, you can climb onto the dresser and look through the small tear on the left side—you can see the green tops of pine trees and the painful cerulean of the sky—there is nothing else).

Your ankle is bound by a long metal chain to a tall wooden beam not quite in the middle of the room. You cannot reach the door. (The clinking of the iron is the music of a monster’s teeth.) The skin there will always be raw. When the old woman comes in, she is careful to keep out of reach.

In the bottom drawer of the dresser are three books. There is a naked bible, cover torn off, spine bare, the first pages your fingers touch will be Genesis. Also, a dictionary. It is denser than the scripture. Full of stories. The third is a collection of fairytales with black ink illustrations. It has a purple cover and gold-leaf tracery. It is beautiful. It is the only beauty you will find here. We are changelings kept by a dark fae. The wilderness is an ugly empty place, do not scorn your only reprieve. Keep it safe. Keep them safe.

In the corner of the room, on the far side of the beam, there are names etched onto the wall:

Kathryn

Billie

Grace

Alice

Violet

Add yours as soon as you can.

There is a chance you come of free will. I understand (you’ve found this in the trash, or on the side of a highway, or beside an old skeleton with young bones). And I offer you this, the first rule of the wilderness: do not trust old women or young men. You have been warned of them before. Their tactics have not changed. They will lure you in ordinary ways, in familiar ways, in ways that will be hard to resist.

The boys will preen like parakeets. They will have hands to hold your swaying hips and lips like hot water. They have voices like fire. You will follow them into alien lands, you will want to hear them sing, you will enjoy their deception—you will not know any better. They will take you dancing. You will dance until your red shoes fall apart, until your rubber soles wear out, until the bottoms of your feet are purple. You will dance until your father doesn’t love you anymore. They will destroy you. You will want their destruction. It will be easy. It will be like surrender.

Old women are different. We know this. They brew poisons in dark basements. They sit in candy cottages waiting to eat children. They keep young girls locked away in towers—or attics, with other pretty furniture, gathering dust. They have names, they have so many names, too many to count.

The worst will have you call them Mother. Mother, like your blood belongs to them. Mother like if in ten-thousand years from now, when your bones and marrow are stone and dust, your fragmented and synthesized matrilineal DNA would reveal you to be theirs. Such is the witch you live with. She is a ghost story too.

Here is what I’ve surmised: she was born in a river (all witches are) like a bloated mosquito deep in Styx. Corpses float like lily pads in those terrible waters. She likes children. She wants one for her own.

Here is what I know: nothing has sprung to life in the rotten compost of her womb. Nothing ever will. This is why she has stolen you.

What you call confinement, she calls incubation. Every nine months she will call you by a name that is not your own. She will tempt you with an open embrace. She will tell you to call her mother. Her amphibian voice will sound so sweet, sweet like spun sugar, sweet like vanilla crème. Do not go to her. She does not know love. She only knows consumption. She is not your mother.

When you reject her (and you must, you must) she will weep. It will be loud and laborious. Her body writhing on the ground, scratching at your door, begging you, and pleading, and pleading, and pleading. Wear her misery like gilded armor. Her sorrow is a farce.

She will leave you alone eventually, slinking back into her night-owl silence. She will tell you that you aren’t ready to be born yet and remind you that she will wait for you. Because she loves you. Because that’s what mothers do.

Remember what she is (not-Mother) so you will always be ready for these spells.

Second rule of the wilderness: keep track of time. I count years by the changing of the seasons. On clear nights, through the hole in the ceiling, you can see stars. Only a few. They are cut off in a new order, still, you should become familiar with these constellations. Stars are steady and repetitive—their old light will not deceive you. During the cold winter months, the witch will throw a tarp over the crevice to keep out the snow. Do not despair. You are not lost.  

Use your blood to track the months. Forget the shame of your thighs—remember its uses. Despair will not steal time from you, only your own negligence. Remember: there are worse things to come. You must know when they are on the way.  

You will rarely see the moon. When you do, she will appear through the widest part of the wooden sliver, a celestial lantern floating across a glittering veil.

Third rule of the wilderness: consume or be consumed. Eat the food the witch brings you. She has a garden and will give you dark greens and tart berries. The bread is stale, and the cheese is sharp, and the meat is always dried, and I cannot tell you what it is, but eat it. If you do not, others will. First the mice and then the flies, and then the roaches, and then the ants. If you do not eat you will become frail, then your body will shrink and bloat, and you will be unable to move. If you cannot move, she will stop bringing food. If she stops bringing food, the vermin who have become fat and selfish on your bounty will turn to your body and use their tiny teeth to strip the flesh from your bones.

It is not an easy rule to follow. Death would deprive her of you. I know this. I know this dream. I have dreamed this dream, cupped it in my palms, lifted it up to touch my lips, and at times it sustains me. But this is a slow death. A death she can observe. A death you are undeserving of. Eat.

Rule number four: be kind to vermin. They are your only company. The mice are small, like children, they will nestle near your warmth. The roaches are hungry and alone—they know your plight. Spiders are artists—their webs like grand tapestries. Moths are a rare delight, fluttering and gray. Cherish vermin as you would friends. But do not feed them. They will not starve. They have eaten before you and will eat long after you.   

Fifth rule: collect something, grow something. Collect rocks and pebbles you find on the floor. Pretend they are birds. Throw them through the crevice, watch them fly away or come hurtling back to you. Collect lint. Create a rabbit from the lint. Collect something that can be entirely yours. Make swans from the paper napkins she leaves with your food. Make paper from them, use water and dirt to paint landscapes, hide them under your cot. Know they are there. Know they are yours.

Grow. Grow anything. Grow personally. Grow mold. Make a garden of fungus on the moist floor where the sink leaks. It could be lovely—almost floral. Grow your nails (I grew mine to a sturdy point and carved my name onto the wooden beam. And I tried to scratch her once when she came in with food. She sang Jerusalem my happy home, / When shall I come to thee? / When shall my sorrows have an end? / Thy joys when shall I see? And she set the tray onto the dresser, and then I scratched at her face. I barely got her at all. A little nick across the nose. She called me a wicked girl wicked girl wicked girl, and beat me with the metal tray, and told me if I ever tried again, she would rip my nails out of their beds).

Grow your hair. Listen—there is a story in the book where a girl locked in a tower had hair long enough for an escape, only she was too stupid to take a chance. Grow your hair. You could make a rope and strangle her while her back is turned (there will be a day when she is close enough). Grow your hair and weave it into a braid long enough to hang from the tallest support beam and tear your way out through the hole in the ceiling.   

Six: ropes are for climbing out windows. Do not tie them into nooses. Do not jump from the highest beam. You are not a pendulum. Do not dangle as they do—obscenely in the open.

She will be there to watch your last dance. As your throat constricts beneath the weight of your own body, against a rope made from your own body, she will watch. As your body stills its jittering and your last choking noise extinguishes, she will enter. She will cut you down with a kitchen knife—your body will drop with a bruising thud.

She will say, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price.”

She will drag your corpse down the winding staircase, across her Persian carpets, and out into the garden. You will be Little Sister Death beneath the cool wet earth.

She will hammer a wooden cross above your head. “Still Born” written on the horizontal plank where Christ’s arms were forced open. She will mourn you in black lace and gross sobbing, something your real mother never gets to do.

Ropes are not for this. Ropes are for climbing out widows and choking old witches. Grow your hair and remember what it’s for.

The last rule of the wilderness is this: do not hesitate. You do not have the privilege to do so. You only have the burden of action left to claim. If she comes close enough, cut her down.

If there is thunder loud enough, throw your body against the door until it breaks, until your skin is full of purple blood, until your ribs splinter, until you cannot tell the difference between your own desperate noises and the howling of the storm. Do not hesitate. Never falter.

Listen to me, a day will come when she realizes that you truly are a wicked girl wicked girl wicked girl and she will not stop beating you with a metal tray. Your blood will run like a river from your body, syrupy and black. It will seep into the porous wooden floor. You will become a stain for another stolen girl to see. You will only be remembered as a catalyst for fear. And that’s not even the worst part of it all. In your last moments, you will betray your mother. In your last moments, you will call her mother, beg her to stop, and say, “Mother, please.”