Rose

  Everything is a blur. Like I exist in two realities at once. One of pain and another of joy. All those years with nowhere to rest. Nothing clean to eat. The air was poison to me. My body had been taken from me, even more than it already had been. And I was alone. Alone, like I’ve always been, but more thoroughly. Like the difference between drowning in warm water and drowning in cold. I will never leave the Radiant Woods. Not entirely. I knew that, even when I opened my eyes for the first time in years and saw Charlotte. And not just Charlotte, but Charlotte as she had always described herself, in her most private moments. And yet, even then, her eyes were haunted. I don’t think the cruelties of those who hate us can ever be outrun, and I was there far longer than most of the others here. And yet, there is that other world. This group. It’s like that shock you sometimes get in your fingertips when you touch someone. A tingling energy, kissing me all over. However terrified I am. However trapped I am, inside my head. There is a joy that insists on burning inside me.

  I only remember the first year or so. After I was taken and abandoned in the Radiant Woods. I can feel the rest of the time like a splinter under a fingernail. It lives in me, that misery. At the same time, I can feel myself changing. Not back to who I was, but into who I am. It’s strange. Like a straight line through the sky where night meets day. The memory of that first year. All the suffering that followed, tearing at the back of my mind. And the joy. The joy of returning to life and finding the community and safety I spent my entire life fighting for. What I lost my life for.

  The Radiant Woods were the exact terror I saw every night as a child. The realization of every bead of terrified sweat I’d ever woken up with. Both my mind and body, complying with someone else’s will. And travelling with Charlotte and her son . . . It’s only been a few days, but the contrast is like red wine on a white dress. A woman I thought I’d never see again? A family? Immediate support, and . . . I put one hand over my heart. It still beats like that of an excited child. I used to pray as a child. Every night. To the Collector, before I grew and learned who he really was. Before I’d told anyone my name was Rose. I used to pray so desperately. I begged. I begged to go to sleep and wake up the next day, and I’d have been a little girl all along. My mother would call me Rose, and my father would buy me a new skirt, and everything would stop feeling like broken glass.

  My prayers were never answered. My mother never called me Rose. My father bought me nothing he didn’t love himself. And when I tried telling them. When I tried trusting them with my identity . . . I learned who my parents were. I learned who the Collector really was. I dodged confession, hiding whenever my mother brought me for it. I grew older. I grew angrier. I stopped praying. I grieved, instead of begging. And as I grieved, I curled my fists and hid knives in my clothes. I became violent. No father would beat their son for failing to be his daughter. No mother would recoil in disgust at her daughter, abandoning her for not being a son. No one else would disappear, never to be seen or heard from again, the minute they are honest about who they are. Not in front of me. Not without consequence.

  But no matter how old I got, I was never safe. I was never comfortable. The closest I got was when Charlotte found me. But this time? When Charlotte found me this time, it was different. My body is more ‘me’ every morning. My life is more my own with each passing day. I can’t help but feel exuberant in each moment. Even when I think of the terror and the abuse that I’ll never scrub from my brain, it can’t wash away the joy. I feel the sorrow and the fear, and the lingering loneliness. But the joy is there too. Even when I see the face of the men who took me. Who dragged me to the church and left me in that old sick house. Even when I picture the wagon leaving me alone in the woods. Knowing I would be tortured forever. The joy is still there. My mind is filled with fog as the two emotions war with each other. I have been here for days, but it feels like moments. I have heard stories, but they mix like watercolor. I’m almost uncertain that this is real.

  Except for that joy. The Collector wouldn’t know how to give it to me, even in a fever dream designed to torture me. It’s too real. Too intrinsic to every moment and breath. It lives in this community. It surrounds everyone. Especially Charlotte’s son, Leo. He is like a fountain, and that calm smile never leaves his face. Living and traveling with everyone here, it’s like cold water on a burn. It’s a relief. Everyone feels it, except for three people. Three people who actively fight that joy, and all for the same reason. All three of them blame one person for the suffering of the other two.

  Charlotte has been avoiding me since I got here. She was happy to see me, and she loves spending time around the fire with me, so long as it’s in a group. But we fought a war together, she and I. I want to talk with her. Alone. Without interruption. And any time I try that, she excuses herself. Like I am only allowed to see the surface. It’s shame. I put that together pretty quickly. I don’t know what Charlotte’s life was like after I disappeared, but I know it broke her. She is ashamed, and after hearing the stories of her detractors, I know exactly why.

  I need to speak with her. I need to really speak with her. I need to find my friend, somewhere behind all of that shame. But as I approach her tent, I hear two other voices. Not from inside, but from behind. Lewis and Kasey. The man and woman who hate her most.

  “You got them all killed, you know that, right?” Kasey reprimands. “Everyone we were fighting to protect. Every man, woman, and child. Every home and every farm. You. You got them killed.”

  “I know,” my friend whispers. “I know I did.”

  “You know?” Lewis hisses. “You know, do you? And do you know that Kasey and I wandered around the Radiant Woods for weeks, in pain, and afraid? And you know that was your fault too, right?”

  “I do,” Charlotte replies. Her voice is so small it could be stepped on by an overly excited cricket.

  “You do. And you have known that. This entire time. While you were on a leisurely stroll. We were paying the price for your mistakes. And all you have to say is ‘I do, ’” Lewis spits.

  Fire runs through my veins as I hear them. I grit my teeth as I listen to them. I want to step in. I ache to defend my friend. Or, at least, the friend I had before I was taken. But Charlotte is different. She isn’t the woman I remember. My friend may still be in there, but the woman being lectured has swallowed her whole.

  And, as much as it hurt to think about it, I couldn't exactly blame the pair. I lived in those woods. I was tortured in those woods. I spent longer there, yes. But if I met the priest who left me there, I would kill him. Whether it was now, or a few hours after I was left there. I would tear his heart from his chest and sink my teeth into it as I watched him die. I didn’t understand exactly what had happened. There is too much. Too many names. I’m still not clear-headed enough to process and remember. Something about lilies and roses looking the same. There were multiple versions of the story, and I can’t sort them out.

  But I know one thing. I know Charlotte blames herself for what happened to these two. I know that all three of them blame her. I can hardly believe it is true. Charlotte was the face I pictured when I needed comfort. For that first year, at least. She was the kindest person I’d ever known, at least when I knew her. She was desperate for everyone she loved to be safe. To be comfortable. To be themselves and to stop hurting. She wouldn’t send people to torment. She never had my stomach for violence. She always wanted a peaceful solution. But they all blame her. I need to speak with her. I need her to stop avoiding me.

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  “I don’t know what to do . . .” Charlotte whispers.

  “Stand up, stop apologizing, and walk into those woods,” Kasey demands. “You want to really know what you did to us? While you were happily protected by Leo? Go live it. Go suffer as we did, and hope for the reality to end, with no way to fix it yourself!”

  That is it. I can bear it no longer. I don’t care. I finally have a chance at returning to a real life. And Charlotte, of all women, is here. I can’t rationalize this anger away. I don’t care. Maybe I will later, when I can think clearly again. But I won’t listen to these people trying to send my friend there. I won’t. I clench my fists and walk around the tent, ready to tell the pair exactly what I think of that suggestion.

  As soon as I do, however, my eyes meet Charlotte’s. The other two have their back to me, but my friend sees me immediately. I can read years in that look. Desperate mistakes and shame like the roots of a tree. My words die on my lips as guilty eyes beg for my silence. Lewis and Kasey turn, looking over their shoulders when they notice her eye line. Lewis scoffs. “Yeah. I forgot. You’re a coward,” he hisses. At that, the pair walks past me, locking glares on me as they do. “We’ll talk again, when we have another moment alone,” he promises.

  The air is thicker than blood as Charlotte and I stand there, looking at each other. That fog descends again. Everything I wanted to say flees from me. Charlotte just sits down, her back to her tent. She holds her knees to her chest and stares forward, past the boundary Leo has created, into the Radiant Woods. I can’t think of any words. So I awkwardly close the distance and sit down next to her. I am finally alone. She is finally not wearing any mask. And it feels like everything snaps into place. This may be the first real moment, since I fell out of the woods. I am with my friends again. Exactly as I had been, hours before my life was taken from me.

  It’s a heavy moment. Then, without warning, Charlotte begins to sob. It’s not simple crying. It’s the type of grieving that turns a face hideous and strains the lungs. It grabs me, like a rope around my neck. As she feels it, so do I, so I join her. Tears and snot run down my face before I know it. And sorrow like the stones–still, cold, and ancient–escapes me in cries. It hurts. It is every moment I have paid for fighting back. It is every loss. Every hour I could have spent with this woman, and didn't. It is her mistakes and mine. And it tastes like clean water. Freeing, somehow. Like we’ve kept a door locked, pressure building behind it, and once we had a moment alone, we finally stopped fighting it.

  We cry for a long time. Never saying a word. It moves from painful sobbing to quiet tears. Years of anxiety fall from our eyes, until slowly, something changes. Something inside me, and inside her. Or rather, the air of this place finally permeates our skin. The fog starts to recede, and one of us begins to laugh. A chuckle only, at first. I’m not certain which, but after a moment, it’s both of us, even as we cry. Then it grows louder, and fuller, and sings from our throats like a bird finally free. It’s the relief of letting it out. It’s the reality and the connection. It’s that tiny hint of a future even I had given up on. It’s the joy that lives here, sewing all of us together with hope. Charlotte presses her head against my arm. It’s wet, with tears and more, but I don’t mind. She is in so much pain. Nothing is funny, or amusing. But our presence here, in this moment, something strange to settle over our mind. It pushes her self-loathing and my memories to the side. We are grief and joy in the same breath, and I finally know, without a doubt, that the Collector doesn’t own me anymore.

  Leo

  I curl my fingers into a loose fist, then open my palm. Again and again, I do this. Every morning. It’s just my hand, barely different than it ever was. Even so, the grin on my face leaves me with aching cheeks. Every morning is like this, now. It’s strange. Five fingers, a little larger, with slightly sharper angles. My entire life, parts of my body felt like a death sentence. The moments before punishment, or the trembling of a public embarrassment. But it was constant. I wore it even when I was naked. Especially when I was naked.

  I curl my fist again as I sit on my bedroll. There were certain parts of my body I always hated. The obvious parts, of course. But not them alone. The unearned shame of birth in the wrong body isn’t carried in two or three body parts. It’s in everything. In my skin, and waist, and the texture of my hair. It’s in the great lie. The lie that, whatever I did, I would never really be who I wanted to be. That every attempt I made would be a half-complete mask, easily seen through and discarded. That I would only feel more shame, rather than validation. When I cut my hair. When I bound my chest. When I chose my clothes.

  The lie that presenting myself without a complete, immediate, and magical transformation into a man’s body . . . that I would just be earning ridicule. I hadn’t earned ridicule. I never had. The shame didn’t fit me any better than the dress it forced me into. It wasn’t mine. The insults, the loathing, the hate. All just symptoms of someone else's need to control me. To own me. To save me, like a cow being raised for meat, until I was ripe enough to be enjoyed by a husband. A husband assigned and chosen by my parents.

  My rejection of the mold they've made for me . . . it wasn’t my failing. It was a denial of a promise they made themselves. But I still felt it, in every part of my body. It’s so hard, not to feel embarrassed when everyone around you believes you should be. I hated my body because it was wrong. I hated it because that’s what I was raised to do. Even if it had been the right body, I was raised to be ashamed and embarrassed of it.

  But that wasn’t reality. It was a distortion. My hand is reality. Opening and closing. A little larger, with slightly sharper angles. My body is my own, to do with what I please. With magic, or alchemy, or scalpel, or nothing at all. With my mind alone, if that was all I had. I feel like a perfect night’s rest. I feel joy in every breath I take and every friend I make.

  There are so many of us. So many are trapped in these woods. So many are finding their lives again. Most remember little of their time in the woods. Some remember little at all. We are all from different countries. Places I’ve never heard of. Species I’ve never seen. Some are like me, exuberant in a man’s body. Others celebrate the body of a woman. Frey and a few others confidently enjoy something in between. There are even some who are perfectly comfortable in the body they were born in, only adjusting their identity in the mind. Theirs and others.

  But we all have one thing in common. We were rejected, and we found each other anyway. I don’t know where the Collector is trying to lead us. It’s obvious he wants us somewhere. It’s no longer possible to really deny it. I know. There are victims of the Collector whose crimes don’t match mine. Those who were broken, physically or mentally. Those who loved the wrong people, or those who denied the church.

  I am finding people like me because the Collector wants me moving, and he wants me moving somewhere specific. But . . . It’s just so hard to care. I do care, but at the same time, I really don’t. We are a people who do not let the expectations of others define us. Maybe the Collector wants me moving. Maybe he doesn’t. But I will leave no one alone and suffering, simply to spite him. I am acting because I choose to act. And I love more people every day.

  I have a family. Not like Lily, who understood rejection, but not quite the same rejection. I do love Lily, and I hope to see her again, but this just isn’t the same. I see so many smiles on so many faces. I see joy, and relief, and a community where I feel completely safe and unashamed. And I am building it. I am bringing that joy.

  I finally finish my morning ritual, satisfied that the slightly different hand really is mine. That I haven’t been living through that kindness and excitement offered only in dreams. The kind of dreams that only make the morning colder. No. It was reality. I was reality, and I would allow no one to try and twist it.

  When I emerge from my tent, I’m greeted by the barren clearing. It always looks like this, everywhere we go. My rejection of the vibrant woods seems to kill any foliage in the area, even as the Radiant Woods lose their control. My heart beats in my chest like drums, a new excitement flooding my veins with each groggy friend I see emerge from their tent. For each smiling face around the morning fire. For each smell, sound, and kindness.

  I don’t know when it happened, but I can feel it. I can breathe it. My aura no longer simply glows, dim with first-generation mana. It dances, exuberant in the light of the sun. My new aspect can be seen in every step I take. I could never have been like Lillith. She is grief, personified, and furious. But me? I am joy.