Chapter Two: The Forest

The crunch of fallen leaves echoed in Lily’s ears as the twilight world of moor and billowing clouds disappeared behind her. In front of her, silent and tempting, the world of the forest seemed to stretch into eternity. Here and there, wisps of red, yellow, orange, and brown tumbled to the forest floor obscuring whatever paths may have been trampled into the soft earth, but even the brilliant autumn leaves seemed somehow darker and more forbidding than their cheerful descent should have suggested, as if they were working together to make retreat impossible. But perhaps the sudden feelings of fear were just Lily’s guilty conscience speaking.

“Mr. Rook, sir,” she ventured, “how far is it to the Rookery? I’m not really allowed to come into the forest without an adult, begging your pardon. I’m afraid that I’ll be in a dreadful amount of trouble if I don’t get back home soon.”

“Why! Why!” the rook asked, his head cocked to the side, and his black eye narrowing only slightly.

“Well…my governess is very particular about things. You see, I, well, I sort of ran away. When you found me in the heather, I didn’t exactly have permission to wander. I was hiding.”

“Why! Why!”

Suspicious that the rook was just teasing her, she thrust her head forward and pointed her finger as she often did with her brothers. “Now, I don’t know if that’s a real question you keep asking or just something you say because you’re a bird,” she said tartly.

But the rook just stared at her silently.  

“Never mind,” she sighed. “I was hiding because sometimes I feel so trapped in the village. There are always so many adults about telling me what to do, and my brothers are always playing together and never let me join in. I do love them all, Mr. Rook, but sometimes I just like being alone on the moor.”

The rook hopped uneasily from foot to foot, clearly anxious to be getting along.

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t understand. Perhaps I should go back,” Lily said, as a gentle wind coaxed several blood red leaves to the ground. Suddenly, the dark forest didn’t look quite as inviting as she had imagined.

Lily’s gaze drifted uncomfortably to the carpet of brittle autumn leaves and out to the gathering darkness of the deeper wood. She thought of Nan sitting patiently at home, helping Strathclyde the gardener build his special crackling fire in the nursery’s stone fireplace. She thought of warm buns for supper and bedtime stories, and as the images of home swirled before her daydreaming eyes, she looked, almost involuntarily, up through the trees to the purple-streaked evening sky above.

“Suit yourself,” the rook finally replied. “If you must go, you must.”

Then again, home was not so far away that she could not reach it before causing too much worry. Perhaps just a short peek at the Rookery would do no harm. Scolding herself for her moment of cowardice, she repeated, “How far is it to the Rookery, Mr. Rook, sir?”

“A few turns, a few twists, and a bit more and we will be there soon enough, little girl,” the rook replied rather vaguely.

“My name is Lily, if you please,” she offered with the daintiest of curtsies, “and, begging your pardon, but, do you have a name, sir?”

“Of course. My full name is Yoreth Adlwyn Wickersham, but you may call me Titus if you prefer. And I really must insist that we begin moving either toward or away from the Rookery, Lily. I have much to do.”

She took a deep breath, whispered an apology to Nan, and stepped toward the bird. “Then, Titus, take me to the Rookery,” she said boldly.

Lily had been this deep into the forest only once before. From the nursery window she could see the great wall of trees stretching along the horizon and out of sight toward the sea, almost black against the bright green of the summer moors. From her earliest memory the forest had been there, never moving, never changing, not frightening enough to inspire nightmares, but not exactly bidding her a warm welcome either. The forest was a fact of her life, like the sky and the hills and the distant rumble of the North Sea. It was a comfort even in its mystery, perhaps because of its mystery.

Lily wasn’t the sort of girl who was content to play in the village lanes with the other children. She had grown tired of skipping rope and making paper dolls long before a young girl, perhaps, should. No, the village, with its stone church and quarried cottages, held little appeal. It was the lonely, wind whipped moor that drew Lily time and time again. It was the roar of the waves against the sea cliffs and the possibility that pirates were hiding deep in their waterlogged caves that captured her imagination. And it was the forest, full of monsters, and ghosts, and all manner of howling beasts that filled her with the sort of giddy dread that a sensible child only allows herself to entertain on sunny days.

The only time Lily had ever ventured into the forest, she was safely perched like a baby monkey on her father’s back. Dot, her beloved fox terrier, had leapt over the village’s low stone boundary wall one summer afternoon, and had taken off into the forest wildly, frighteningly. Lily’s father, of course, wasted no time in grabbing his rifle, and with Lily’s favorite twinkle in his eye, lifted her like a bag of presents at Christmas and threw her over his shoulder. They climbed the hills of the moor, and slowly but steadily, Lily and her father drew near the edge of the forest. Dot was barking madly just beyond the tree line.

“Let’s see what our girl has found, shall we Lily?” Lily’s father whispered.

“Oh yes, Father, let’s do!” she whispered back, her tiny arms tightening ever so slightly on his chest.

They had passed between the outermost branches of the outermost trees, and the bright yellow summer sunshine faded behind them, revealing an emerald paradise on the forest floor. But all, it seemed, was not well in this magical place. Dot was bouncing frantically up and down near the base of an old, wrinkled oak tree, her eyes rooted to a hollow just beneath her.

“Lily, dear, will you be afraid if I set you down for a moment?” her father asked.

“I will try not to be,” was her reply, although it was only a longing to please her good, kind father that fueled her attempted courage.

“That’s a good girl,” he said, Lily beaming. “It appears that old Dot has forgotten that it is not foxing season. I’ll just go remind her.”

He approached the tree slowly, and as he walked bravely toward what Lily deemed the terrible unknown, her heart swelled with pride—this tall, broad man with his strong hands and ready smile was her very own father, and today he had chosen her for his companion, her alone.

The moment Lily’s father reached Dot, the little terrier stopped hopping and barking and trotted merrily over to Lily’s side. A quick lick of her hand sufficed for a greeting before the dog turned, like Lily, to watch the strange scene unfold.

Lily’s father bent his large frame in two, looking intently at the tiny ball of red fur just visible inside the tree. She could hear the low echo of his voice as he reached gently into the hollow and pulled out a fox cub no bigger than his hand. It trembled violently, its eyes fixed on his as he stepped a few paces back from the gnarled old tree and placed it gently on a tuft of moss nearby. He spoke to the cub again, softly, almost singing, before he turned and fixed on Lily one of his special moustachey smiles. She smiled back, and glanced at the fox cub one last time. It was tottering along the moss bank on tiny red legs, its fluffy red tail bending strangely to the right.

“Father,” Lily asked as he walked back toward her, “I wonder what’s wrong with his tail.”

“He was caught, my girl. His tail had become wedged into a fork in a fallen branch. He was hopelessly stuck, and I think Dot must have heard him crying and raised the alarm.”

“Good girl, Dot!” Lily cried, and buried her face in the old dog’s beard. “But,” she suddenly realized, looking up, “what about his mother? You’ve left him on the ground! Won’t he be eaten?”

“No, my love,” her father chuckled. “His mother was watching all along from behind a tree. Perhaps you can still see her, just there. Do you see her tail?”

“I see all of her!” Lily exclaimed, for at just that moment, the cub’s mother dashed out from behind a tree and caught her baby by the scruff of its neck with her teeth. She glanced for an instant at Lily’s father. He nodded as if to say, “You’re welcome,” and she bounded away into the forest with her little crooked-tailed baby.

Without warning, Lily was flying through the air too, caught up by strong arms with a jubilant Dot nipping at her dangling heels. In two steps the fairy tale was over, and they had passed through the trees and back again into the bright sunlight.

But that had been years ago—before the war, before Father had gone away. And here, in the darkening forest, Lily had no Dot to raise the alarm and no father with a strong hand to hold. She had only Titus.