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Ever since the Shelby kids were little, it’s been drilled into their heads by their Aunt Polly, “don’t go into the woods at night, don’t go into the woods at night,” because there are things hiding in there with too many teeth who will give you everything you ever wanted. For the right price. Polly warns them; “ignore the singing in the trees, ignore the lights in the distance, ignore the call of riches beyond your wildest dreams, there are consequences to actions in this town and none of them are good.” But, Polly knows, every warning she gives is useless . The Shelbys have never been good at listening to what is good for them.
Tommy Shelby goes into the woods when his mother dies, comes out three days later and is never the same again. His mind is never quite right, he’s shifty, a bit harder around the edges, and sometimes, late at night, when a moonbeam casts the right angle, Tommy Shelby’s eyes flash a bright, glowing blue--just like the lights they were warned never to follow.
Tommy Shelby goes into the woods willingly. He weighs the promise for a better life for his family, for stability, for success, against the cost, and pays it with no hesitation. Arthur Shelby sells his soul for strength, on an impulse. His father has only gotten worse since their mother died, pairing hits with kisses and he is the oldest, he has to protect his family, and he can’t do it without the power the woods give him. John is lured into the woods. You see Esme, she never got quite the same warnings the rest of the townsfolk got about those woods. She never sees the woods as anything but a thing to barter with, carefully. Esme holds her hand out to the darkness and John follows right behind.
All those Shelby boys constantly cough up coal dust, their hands scarred and stained black no matter how hard they scrub.
Esme is the one even Tommy is afraid of. Esme grew up closer to the woods than any other, wild and unsupervised. To her, the woods were never something to be afraid of— it was something to be explored, endlessly curious. As a child, hunting for ladybugs, she never noticed the logs she dug under curved like mossy rib cages. She never noticed when she was fourteen and messing around with the Baker boy, unbeknownst to her, a shadow loomed over him and dislodged his hands from around her throat before he could squeeze doen. She never noticed the trees hiding her path through the forest after running from petty arguments with her family. But, eventually she became aware. The innocent ignorance had faded, replaced by a love for the forest. Aware that the woods had accepted her, had protected her, had claimed her for its own— and she smiled, and wandered ever further into the damp and the dark.
And then there’s Ada. Little Ada, always the sweet one, never did any wrong. She watches her brothers in the darkness, making bargains that they were never supposed to, and feels compelled by something she can’t explain, but she always stands right on the edge, her fingers barely brushing it, ignoring the voice that whispers honey sweet in her ear. “Come with me child, I can show you beautiful things.” But she always says no, she finds other ways to heal the ache deep down in her bones.
Ada’s always a little tipsy, locking out the horrors within her own head. Ada, who goes to church on Sundays like a good girl, but who trades illicit kisses with a quick talking boy named Freddie Thorne out behind the barn after the service because sin has never felt so holy, so pure. Ada who takes a little too much pleasure in watching things burn, who pricks her fingers on needles just to let herself feel again. Her hair is never brushed and her feet are always bare. “She’s a half wild thing,” whisper the hollow eyed men down at the general store. That woman is as much a part of the land as the land is of her.
Polly does not go into the woods--she has no need for deals with devils and fickle spirits, instead she makes her own power: in the tilt of her smile, the fine bones of her hands, the knife she keeps in her purse.
(But if she periodically makes sacrifices to other gods, ones from the motherland? Well, that’s no one’s business but hers)
Freddie Thorne--ah Freddie Thorne. You see, that Freddie loved the Shelby brothers. You had to, when you fought a war with them. But, the Shelbys were not the only family to dabble in the darkness, and they weren’t the only ones who came out...wrong. (Did you hear about the Thorne woman? Heard she went into the woods to kill her husband, the nasty sonofabitch, but the price was too much. She offed herself, left her boy sleepin’ in the next room over) so Freddie works with the Shelbys, likes them even, but never ever lingers near the woods for too long.
*
The woman with the golden hair who introduces herself as Grace, comes to town one hot, heavy summer morning, a sticky July dawn alive with the buzzing of cicadas and the smell of lies and deceit hanging thick as coal dust in the air. She doesn’t belong here, that one. Outsiders aren’t welcome in this town, no good ever follows after them. But she closes herself off to the jeers and the taunts, holds herself high, and slips a wicked little dagger into the lining of her shoes. Did you hear how she caught the eye of that Shelby boy? Which one you ask? Well it was the middle one, the one who was never quite all there in the head, even before the war. Grace Burgess falls head over heels for a dangerous man with empty eyes who reeks of whiskey and secrets, but she knows the risk, and my god does she let it swallow her whole. Yes, this love is poison, but it feels so good going down.
Charlie Shelby’s mother tucks him in each night and tells him of his inheritance. “Charlie Shelby,” she tells him, nudging his chin with her knuckles, “you will come into power.” The power of the forest, of the land, runs through his veins, so long as he is willing to pay the price. His mother had for him. “You see Charlie,” she smiles, “I prayed for a child. I prayed and paid the price, and the forest granted me you.’’
So Charlie Shelby grows up secure in the knowledge that the forest bestowed on him life. Because of this, he is not afraid. They joke that Charlie is more like Esme than Grace, despite him being the spitting image of the Shelby matriarch. He grows up unafraid of the forest, but does not ask for anything until his mother dies. He goes into the woods to ask for her soul back, to bring her body back to stop her from rotting into the fertile soil of the West Virginia woods. The forest is powerful, but no price is enough for a soul. So Charlie begins to resent the forest, stays away from it, visits the lonely and quiet church across town instead. And when war breaks out and he is given the opportunity to leave this godforsaken town, he seizes upon it, and marches confidently onwards.
*
Alfie Solomons is human, almost too human, completely normal, untouched by the gods. But that is the scariest part: he does all this without a patron, without the gods, without the woods. That, or he serves a chaos god and they are way too close, too intimate, too alike. She sits in on his business meetings, cocks her head in the same way he does (or maybe he cocks his head the same way she does). No one is sure where he ends and she begins.
Michael Shelby grew up in the city: far far away from any woods, from the coal dust that lingered in the lungs, hands, and clothes of every inhabitant. Instead he grew up with concrete gods: ones of glass and skyscrapers, brick and mortar, tamed by the hundreds of footsteps that wear down the sidewalk each day. It is why, when he arrives in town, he is a bad fit. The forest does not respond to him like he expects it to-too demanding and too easy to please all at once-but for the sake of the Shelby business he muddles through the sacrifices, pays the prices needed from him and never forgets about the gods of the city. When he goes back to New York, he brings back with him the brick dust of a city brought to life not by a presence found there long before humans, but by the daily toil and sacrifice of a hundred, a thousand, a million people, feeding into a new generation of god.
*
The Russians have a different god. A bloodier one--one paid for in jewels and gold. Tommy Shelby, used to the dirt under his nails, the fast beating hearts of small animals against his palms, the whispering of secrets in the bend of the treetops, communes desperately with the Russian god. If the woods could not give him his wife back, his beloved, his soulmate-then perhaps this sharp edged trickster could. All that leaves him is kneeled at the edge of the woods, desperately scrambling at the glint of something shiny, something to give in return for his wife in the dirt, slamming his palms into the ground and screaming his rage out when he finds that all he is digging up is broken glass.
The Russian trickster is not a kind one, dragged over to this ancient grove of desperation and moonshine unwillingly, shackled up in the hold of a boat that heaves and groans, growing thin and pale. There’s another woman who follows behind, her smile sharp, and her nails even sharper, who holds him the darkness of his nights when the screaming inside of his head becomes too much to bear, clawing at his throat, drowning him. She’s a wicked one, that girl, but her touch is like fire and he needs fire now, after all this cold left in the absence of a golden haired girl who tasted like summer.
*
Charlie, on the other hand, finds his salvation among that otherness, in the snow and the cold. It’s such a sweet relief after the pounding heat and humidity, although it’s a cold sort of fire, and leaves him wanting more. War is a cruel thing, but it makes him feel so unbearably alive. (although the blood of the boy he called a best friend never quite leaves his hands)
It digs under his fingernails and into the cracks of his palms, and the tips of his fingers, bruised and callused from the gun he shoots with a deadly accuracy, learned from the hours spent hunting squirrels in the woods when the weather grows harsh and cold. The others poke fun at him, but he closes himself off from them, he’s inherited his mother’s quiet dignity. He merely shuts his eyes tight and conjures up her face, soothing the burn inside of him. Europe is the home of ancient spirits, and he feels them calling to him, something older, deeper than the land itself, half forgotten memories lingering in the dust of a bombed out village just outside of Paris.
He’s lucky enough to barely feel the bullet sink deep into his lungs, coughing out his life blood onto the warm spring grass. Charlie lingers in the hospital for days, hovering on that soft border between life and death. The spirits come to him at night, their ghostly claws digging into his flesh, tearing, chewing. They take him in the end though, this little boy child, brush the soft hair off his forehead, murmur lullabies from the old country into his ears, close those too blue eyes off from the world forever.
When the telegram arrives, Tommy doesn’t want to look at it. He wants to ignore the words written there, wants to shut out the fact that his only child, the only remnant left of the woman who brought hope into his life, is gone forever, bones rattling around in a plain pine box. He drinks, by god he drinks when it arrives, drinks and drinks and drinks, feels like he could drink the Mississippi river dry and it still wouldn’t be enough. The pain is too deep, it’s left too much of a hollow in him, he’s not a man anymore you see, no, he’s just a mechanical thing with some poor imitation of a heartbeat, running on nothing but shattered dreams and broken promises.
So he braces himself, takes his daddy’s old shotgun from its hiding place under the mattress, and goes into the woods one final time, because what else does he have to lose? He screams until he can’t anymore, feeling the blood welling up in his throat. The barrel of the gun is cold against his head, but all he hears is a swift bang, which echoes down the mountainside and into the endless night beyond. And then silence, ancient, cold, and eternally unforgiving.