The Returning

It was her mother’s death that caused her to recall the days they lived in the cabin on the edge of the woods. It was so many lifetimes ago, she told herself, and so much had happened since then that she couldn’t imagine returning to that bygone place. Yet Lillian’s will bequeathed the forgotten house, her sole property, to Iris, her only child. Until that moment, Iris was unaware that her mother still owned it as they never spoke of it.

In the long, dark days of grief following her mother’s passing and her own recent divorce, unbidden memories began to trickle in. Iris pushed away the distressing ones as she had done for so many years and allowed in the benign ones. She and Lillian grew a garden of herbs and vegetables that sustained them without having to go into town often. She learned to cook and bake bread with her mother in the charming, light-filled kitchen where herbs hung from the low ceiling. Iris delighted in playing next to the great leafy oak just outside the garden. The gnarled trunk had what appeared to be a diminutive arched doorway at its foot where the bark had fallen away. Her mother helped her paint the door red and Iris made inhabitants for it—animal and fairy figures out of acorns, sticks, and flowers. The wooden porch that extended across the front of the cabin was her schoolhouse from age seven to twelve until they left in a hurry and returned to the city. 

Now, Iris peered from her third story window onto the busy tree-lined streets of New York below. The city had felt like more of a refuge these past thirty years than the cabin in the woods. But now the apartment she had shared with Ryan for ten years felt like a prison cell, and since Ryan’s departure six months ago, as if she has been living in solitary confinement. The apartment she grew up in with her mother was just a few blocks away, and now her mother was gone, too. Until she read her mother’s will she had not imagined ever returning to the cabin, even in her thoughts, but here she was, pulling threads loose from a ball of tangled memories. The cabin was a place that had been a safe haven for five years until he found them—the man her mother had caught climbing into Iris’s bed one night, the man Lillian had hit with a lamp, knocking him unconscious, allowing Iris and her mother to escape.

Iris always felt comforted peering into the treetops outside her urban apartment window. The trees felt like sentinels, guarding and protecting her, shielding her from prying eyes and offering a view of playful animals and birds amongst the branches that were always a welcome distraction. The multitude of tall trees in the dense forest that was essentially her backyard had felt that way to her as a child, too.

Iris’s forays into the woods were magical to her as she imagined fairies cavorting amidst the trees, hiding behind toadstools, and peeking out at her from holes in lichen-covered logs. She talked to them and felt sure they saw her under the bosky shaded canopy. There was that time when her mother was busy canning in the kitchen and Iris followed an overgrown path deep into the forest. She had never ventured that far before and was about to turn around when she reached a crossroads. There, a crooked wooden sign pointed in three directions, each way a barely distinguishable path. Iris played there seated in a circle of sunlight, making lunch for the fairies from the sandwich and fruit her mother had packed. She set out a banquet of tiny offerings beneath the signpost as she sang to herself, hoping the fairies were listening. And then as the sunlight dissipated and she got up to return home, she lost her bearings, unsure of which path to take to return home. 

Sitting in the window seat of her apartment, Iris feels the old stirrings of panic rise up in her, like the ones she has pushed down for so long. Staring out at the verdant tree branches brushing against the glass she returned to that worried child, seeing her turn round and round trying to recall which way she had come. A faint rustling sound in the undergrowth caught her attention and she turned towards it. She glimpsed a white-tipped furry tail move quickly out of sight down one of the paths. Iris instinctively followed, only hearing its scampering movements ahead, unable to see it. 

Down the twisting path she ran, unsure if it was the right way, but feeling as if she was being guided by some unseen force. She reached a clearing and saw the creature ahead. It was a red fox that stopped and looked back at her, its eyes shining brightly in the failing light. She then heard her mother’s voice screaming for her and the fox seemed to disappear into the foliage. Iris ran in the direction of Lillian’s frantic shouts and came bursting out of the thicket into her mother’s arms.

Iris felt her heart beating rapidly as she gripped the window sill seeing the forest of her childhood before her, beckoning her to return. She knew she must go to the cabin, to the woodland, and the place that had once been a sanctuary. Perhaps it could be again. 

Iris did not know what to expect of the cabin’s condition after thirty years but after clearing out her apartment and putting all but a carload of her things in storage she drove the seven hours to the Adirondacks in a state of relative calm. She had talked herself into believing it was a gift, an unexpected opportunity for her to have a new life thanks to Lillian who had always wanted the best for her. Along with the deed to the property, Lillian had left instructions on how to get there, and a key. Perhaps she had intended to talk to Iris about it at some point, but death had whisked her away sooner than either of them had anticipated.

As Iris turned off the main highway and onto a dirt road that wound up the mountain, she recognized landmarks and rocky terrain that bordered thick woods the higher she went. By late afternoon she made the final turn onto the bumpy road that led to the isolated cabin of her childhood. There it was, hidden back amongst the trees, the porch festooned with wisteria vines: a squat cottage made of wood, in better shape than she had thought it would be after so many years of neglect. Even the garden looked as if it had recently been cleared. As she unlocked the front door and entered, setting a lantern she brought on the table, she saw that it appeared to be recently occupied. There were a couple of pieces of old but well-kept furniture—some that looked familiar—neatly arranged on rugs and two framed pictures hung on the wall. One of them was of Lillian and Iris when she was a child before they came to the cabin and the other was of her and her mother at Iris’s wedding.

Iris took the wedding picture off the wall to look at it more closely and found there was something behind it. An envelope was taped to the back addressed to Iris in Lillian’s handwriting. She sat down in a chair upholstered in faded pink flowers that she remembered from long ago, took a deep breath, and opened it. Her mother told her she had been coming here every year for the past ten years to keep the place up and get it ready for Iris if she ever chose to return. She knew that the circumstances they had left in were not conducive to wanting to return, yet they had also had many good times here. It was still a lovely retreat if she could let go of the past and remember the magic. She hoped Iris would find that to be true for her if her situation should change and she ever needed a place to call home. 

Did she know? Iris wondered. Did she know that she would die soon, that Iris would be desperate to leave the place she had shared with Ryan? Why had she never mentioned it? Iris had thought they had no secrets from each other, just an unspoken agreement to never return to the memory of what caused them to flee. The letter was dated just a month before her mother died.

Iris unpacked her car and set her things up in the cabin, doing her best to make herself at home despite an uneasiness that she had returned to the place she had once fled to and fled from. There was something about her mother’s words in her letter that made her feel comforted. There were logs stacked neatly by the fireplace and a set of matches. Iris made a fire and sat on the oval rug before it just as she had as a little girl. 

She remembered something now as she sat on the floor—a small opening in the wood between the floor and the wall near the hearth. She crawled over and reached her fingers into the hole where she had once hidden things. She pulled out a little wooden fox that she had carved and painted red with a white-tipped tail. She clutched it in her hand as she lay down before the fire just as she had done many times before. She pulled the blanket that was folded on the arm of the chair over her and fell asleep from exhaustion.

Something woke her in the middle of night. A rustling. A window rattling. A creak on the wooden porch. Iris sat bolt upright and looked at the window, then the front door. Her mother always locked the front and back door and drew the curtains at night. She looked around in the darkness but could see nothing except burning embers from the fire. She held the wooden fox in her hand, its stick paws digging into her palm. 

Then she heard her mother whisper, “Get up quietly and go out the back door.” Iris obeyed, creeping over to it as quietly as she could. Now she heard the front doorknob wriggle. She reached the back door and quietly unlocked it, then turned to see her mother holding a shotgun pointed at the front door. Just then it gave way and her stepfather burst in. 

“Run!” Lillian shouted and Iris tore open the back door and ran. In the moonlight she saw the red fox running like wildfire towards the woods, the white tip of its tail pointing the way, and she followed. Then the blast of a gunshot, followed by another.

Iris runs and runs through the dark night, the path ahead illuminated by the light of the full moon, the fox always just ahead. Her heart beats wildly in her chest, her breath ragged. At last they come to a halt. It is the crossroads where she had first met the fox. The shadow of the signpost pointing in three directions looms large in the circle of moonlight. Iris looks around to see where the fox disappeared and to her astonishment a wizened old woman with piercing blue eyes and wild white hair steps out of the darkness. She looks familiar, but Iris is not sure how she knows her. She steps closer and sees that she is looking into her mother’s face.

“Come with me, Child. You are safe now. I will take you home.”