The Forest of Hands and Teeth Read Online Free PDF Page A

from burning, I let my hand drop and turn my back on the only home I have ever known. I look out at the familiar houses across the way. The vibrant summer gardens crumbling into dirt patches where three little girls hold hands and spin in circles, chanting out a rhyme. I know I should return to the Cathedral but I also know that once I join the Sisters my life will revolve around studying the Scripture and I will have little time for my own whims and desires. And so instead, I walk away from the cluster of small houses and skirt the edges of the fields, now harvested and prepared for winter, and I begin to climb the hill that hovers at the sunrise edge of our village.
    As a child growing up, I learned in my lessons from the Sisters that just before the Return They—who They were is long forgotten—knew what was coming. They knew that something had gone horribly wrong and that it was only a matter of time before the Unconsecrated swarmed everywhere.
    They still thought They could contain it. And so, even as the Unconsecrated infected the living and the pressure of the Return began to build, They were busy constructing fences. Infinitely long fences. Whether the fences were to keep the Unconsecrated out or the living in we no longer know. But the end result was our village, an enclave of hundreds of survivors in the middle of a vast Forest of Unconsecrated.
    There are various theories as to how our village came into existence in the middle of this Forest. The Cathedral and some of the other buildings clearly predate the Return and some people suggest that They carved this place out as a sanctuary. Others claim that we are a chosen people and that our ancestors were the best of their time and were sent here to survive. Who we are and why we are here has been lost to history, lost because our ancestors were too busy trying to survive to remember and pass on what they knew. What little remnants we once had—like my mother's picture of my many-greats-grandmother standing in the ocean—were destroyed in the fire when I was a child.
    We know of nothing beyond our village except the Forest, and nothing beyond the Forest at all.
    But at least They were smart enough to leave a stockpile of fencing material behind after They finished creating our little world. And so, after the village established itself, it began to beat back the Forest and expand. Little by little my ancestors hacked away pieces of the Forest and claimed it as their own, pushing the fence line until there was nothing left to build with.
    This hill was part of the last big push, the last big enclosure. Our ancestors felt it was important to have the high ground so that we could keep watch over the Forest. For a while there was a lookout tower at the top of the hill but now it has fallen into disrepair and is never used. But that doesn't stop me from climbing it so that for one last time before I go to the Sisters, I am at the highest point in our gated existence.
    I look out at the world below. To my right the fields stretch into the distance, dotted here and there with cows and sheep that have been turned out from the barns clustered at the farthest edge of the fence line. It doesn't matter if they stray toward the Forest— like all animals except humans, they cannot be infected by the Unconsecrated.
    To my left is the village itself. From up here the houses are even smaller, the Cathedral a hulking shape that dominates the sunset boundary, its graveyard all that stands between the large stone building and the fences lining the Forest. From here I can see the way the Cathedral has grown awkwardly, wings sprouting off the central sanctuary at strange angles.
    At the foot of the hill, on the side opposite the village, is a gate that leads to a path stretching deep into the Forest, a scar that runs through the trees. Though that path, and the mirror path that leads from the Cathedral side of the village, are also lined with fences, they are both forbidden by the