1. This is the mile when I first needed a pee. We were on the way home, on the old road over the hills. The sun was setting and the baby was asleep in the back and we were on the part of the road where it’s just trees, mile after mile. I said, I might need to stop. But there aren’t any services around here, he said. Can you wait?
2-7. These are the miles when I thought it would be OK. Better to wait. I didn’t want to wake the baby. But of course it wasn’t. Here’s the thing, I said to him. I’ve just had a baby. My bladder doesn’t work very well. I think I really need to go. I need to go right now. We have to stop. Fine, he said. There’s a sign to a cafe. Let’s turn off here.
8. This is the mile we drove along the side road into the forest. No cafe in sight. Curious at first, peering through the dappled tree-light. Is it down a path? Did the sign fall off? And then down the rutted track, him cursing me, me cursing him: no cafe, can we even turn round? You’ll have to go in the woods, he said. Fine, I said. But you know I can’t go with anyone watching. Let me at least find a bush or something.
9. I don’t know if this was a mile or not, but it felt like one. Down the great open sweep of conifer forest, looking back all the while: can I see the car? Yes. Can I still see the car? Yes. And then, with the car out of sight: what if there were a stray walker coming over the ridge? What if that shadow is the wall of a house? And onwards, onwards. All the way on to the great old tree, the fallen tree with the dark crack up its side large enough for a person to squeeze in. It seemed like a gift, then.
10. This is the descent into darkness, the descent that went on and on. Was it a mile? It could have been. They said, later, at the checkpoint, that one must know the ritual to get in. Piss in a circle and put your hand on the black patch on the tree’s rotten heart. So I guess I was just lucky or something. Lucky, too, to step back into the tree’s new black fork and not out into the forest, confused in the darkness. The system is meant to keep out waifs and strays. Once you’re in, however, there’s no going back out again.
11. This is the mile from the checkpoint to the House in the Forest Under the Forest. They did not know what to do with me at the checkpoint. I think I was there for hours, maybe days. My breasts were filling up with milk. I was desperate to get back. They said there was no paperwork for me. I thought they were wearing masks, and then I realised that only some of them were. They gave me food, which I ate. Eventually they gave me a pass to the House. Ask the Custodian, they said. If you can get in to see her she is duty bound to give you one gift, and it is only one, but that one can be passage back to the outside world. For anything extra, there is a price.
12. This is the mile from the checkpoint to the House in the Forest Under the Forest. Don’t leave the path, they said. And at the House, they sent me back, again. This time there were strange beasts in the undergrowth. Someone said I shouldn’t have eaten the food, but too late now.
13. This is the mile from the checkpoint to the House in the Forest Under the Forest.
14. This is the mile from the checkpoint to the House in the Forest Under the Forest.
15. This is the mile from the checkpoint to the House in the Forest Under the Forest. It had been a while, by this point. Going there, getting sent back. Someone said I could get beyond the gate if I put a flat copper coin into the mouth of the gargoyle above the door and put the lantern out, and I’d left the path to climb up to the cave with the clockwork dragon and chipped off a single copper scale to see if that would work, but when the lantern was out I could see hundreds of eyes, bright green in the darkness, peering from the ivy, and something scuttled past to block the door, and I knew there must be other protections at work.
15. This is the mile from the checkpoint to the House in the Forest Under the Forest. And here’s the thing. Mothers don’t have adventures. Mothers don’t get caught in fairy realms. Mothers are not the subject of the story. When this happens to a mother, the child is the subject of the story, and the story is about abandonment and loss, about a scar that never quite heals. I was desperate to get home. My milk had dried up. I drugged the green-eyed beasts with the purple flowers that grew down by the lake. But I couldn’t find the way through the library.
16.-43. This is the mile from the checkpoint to the House in the Forest Under the Forest, with the weaver’s key and the map of the orangery roof. This is the mile from the checkpoint to the House in the Forest Under the Forest, armed with a silver needle. This is the mile from the checkpoint to the House in the Forest Under the Forest with the needle wiped in my blood and a crown of lavender and bramble. This is the mile from the checkpoint to the House in the Forest Under the Forest. This is the mile from the checkpoint to the House in the Forest Under the Forest. This is the mile from the checkpoint to the House in the Forest Under the Forest. This is all the miles, until the final door, and the Custodian, and her grudgingly-given token of freedom.
44-45. These are the miles I stumbled out of the woods, bramble-torn and muddied, the ink of the Forest Under the Forest splattered up my forearms, out into a winter dawn and an empty lay-by. I knew that it would be later. That’s part of the deal, isn’t it? You never come back to the same time. And down the road, at the cafe we had somehow missed, I found out just how much later. Too much later. Years and years. The awful story was already written. Unexplainable abandonment. Loss. I could go and see it, or not. The thing is, I told the waitress, I don’t have a ride home. Wait until my shift ends, she said. I’ll take you. The thing is, I said, I’m not sure I have a home anymore. I sat there until the sun was high in the sky. Then I went back into the woods.
46-47. These are the miles back into the woods. The path was familiar, now. I stopped for a few minutes at the long crack in the hollow tree. Then I went in.
48. This is the mile to the House in the Forest. Just the once, this time. I knew the system. I knew the way. I knew the words to speak and the forms to sign. I knew the sinister glint in the Custodian’s eye. I need to go back to when I left the first time, I said. Everything as it was. Can you do that? And she smiled, as if this had not been the first time she was asked that, and nodded. What do I need to do to make that happen? I asked. Well yes, she said. There’s always a price. Let’s talk, I said.
49. This is the mile I walked out of the woods, victorious: the clock exactly where it should be, the car waiting. You took your time, he said. The baby was awake; he was blinking at the dappled light coming through the trees by the lay-by. Well, I’m back now, I said. Let’s get home.
50. This is for all the other miles, sweet stolen domestic miles, home and back again. We don’t use the road over the hills now. It takes too long that way, I told him. There’s talk that his mother may move closer, anyway. I’ve a second baby on the way. I try to live in the moment. Don’t we all? I don’t think about those strange lost years if I can avoid it. But here’s the thing. Mothers don’t have adventures, no. Or maybe I should say, now: mothers keep very quiet about their adventures. But everyone loves it when young men have adventures. So yes, there was a price. He’ll find out when he turns sixteen.