The Forest's Son Read Online Free

remember things, she knew. She could hear him crying out in his sleep and then…
    She shakes her head. He's not ready yet. She promised long ago that the choice would always be his. She wants him to make it for himself when the time is right, but hasn't she already made the choice for him? When they'd tried to take that perfect, squalling wrinkled boy and she'd run? When she had given him the angielski name and dreamed up a father who'd died instead of telling him the truth of the lovely boy she'd made love to on a bed of leaves with a canopy woven of stars and moonlight? That boy had gone back to his family, lived to a ripe, old age, and never been the wiser. She'd just been a beautiful woman on a warm summer night. But her son needed a different story, and she'd given one to him.
    All these years, and it's still so difficult to think with only her own mind. If she were with her sisters, the decisions would be so much easier to make. Thinking alone makes everything so much harder for her, and there is so much to think about here: what to wear, and what to eat, and where the money should come from.
    Things had seemed simpler when she left, but now she has so many things to keep track of. She is grateful Vance is such a smart boy. He picks up everything so quickly, and he stores everything, even though he doesn't realize how he comes by most of the knowledge.
    Over time, he has learned to do so many of the complicated things for her. All the electronics, and when the Internet became important, he took that over, too. She tries to acclimate, but forever feels out of step with the time and place she's living in. He adapts more easily.
    He was the one who figured out how to best keep their secret. The sisters found them — more than once — before he realized that if he totally suppressed everything, he vanished. As they sought — and felt —only him, and his strangeness, there was no thought of finding her among other sisters or distant blood of the sisters out here in the world. So she disappeared the moment her son did, and he makes sure he returns to that state every time there is a threat of revealing enough for the sisters to find them.
    Which is where he is now.
    There is no sense of the boy in him. He has the history, but none of the true knowledge. He senses the mother, but doesn't know why. He finds his mother’s nakedness some eccentricity, chalking it up to a modern version of pagan worship.
    Once, in high school, he'd come home and asked her if she was Wiccan, as some of the girls at school had expressed an interest, and he was still trying to fit in at that point. She struggled to explain it's a perversion of connection with the mother, but she no longer tries to explain. He will not understand. Not yet, anyway. Not for a while, and then only for a few days, at most.
    Her ears prick at the sound of a car. The exhaust system needs replacing, and soon, but Donovan won't have enough money. Grace will find a way to get it to her, for befriending her son, for staying with him even when things are so very strange in this seemingly normal world, for the things Donovan will lose in the end.
    She mourns the feel of the air on her body even as she reaches for the loose dress she pulls over her head before the tires begin their crunch on the gravel driveway. Looking down, she sees mud caked on her feet from the dirt floor. Ah, well. Too late to do anything about that now.
    Vance will shrug and hug her anyway. Donovan's eyes will widen, and she'll try to hide the smirk. And Grace will ask for help with the computer and beg Donovan to help her fill orders in exchange for the money she needs to help the poison-spewing metal beast that takes Vance away and brings him back safely each day run better.
    And pretend that she and her son are normal.
    ~
    Bożena floats on her back in the water; her hair, neither blonde nor brown, billowing at her side, creating a halo around her head that is nearly as wide as she is tall. Floating