Jean Hegland

Into the Forest

Beatrix

I long to indulge, to forget, to ignore. I want to live with abandon, with the careless grace of a consumer, instead hanging on like an old peasant woman, fretting over bits and scraps.

After all, Eva was my sister. She was my playmate, my best friend, my should-have-been-twin, and whatever she wanted, I wanted unquestionably for her.

Gradually the forest I walk through is becoming mine, not because I own it, but because I’m coming to know it.

I dream of the bear…it opens its jaws over my face, so wide that my whole head is inside its mouth and I am looking down the dark tunnel of its throat. I feel its teeth meet through my neck, and I know it has bitten off my head. But when it lifts its mouth from my empty shoulders, I can see the world as well as ever - in fact, things have a lucidity I had never before imagined, and I think, What an effort it was to have to lug my head around with me for so long.

“That’s the story… Could be better, could be worse. But at least there’s a baby at the centre of it.”

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