A History of Wild Places

A History of Wild Places Plot Summary

Introduction

# Beyond the Boundary: Where Memories Fade and Forests Hide The silver charm burns against Travis Wren's palm as he drives through the snow-laden mountains of northern California, following carved symbols deeper into a forest that shouldn't exist. Three vertical slashes mark the trees like wounds, leading him toward a woman who vanished five years ago and a truth that will shatter everything he believes about himself. Travis possesses a terrible gift—the ability to see the final moments of the missing by touching objects they once owned. The charm belonged to Maggie St. James, a children's author whose dark fairy tales were blamed for inspiring children to run away into the wilderness. But when Travis discovers his own abandoned truck hidden among the trees, registration papers bearing his name, he realizes he's not just searching for a missing woman. He's searching for himself. Beyond the boundary markers lies Pastoral, a hidden community where memories fade like morning mist and the line between protector and predator becomes as thin as the diseased trees that supposedly guard their borders.

Chapter 1: The Finder of Lost Souls: Following Silver Charms into Hidden Woods

The gas station clerk's cigarette-stained fingers drum against the counter as she studies Travis through narrowed eyes. Her weathered face holds the suspicious look of someone who has seen too many strangers pass through this forgotten mountain town. "Everyone around here's heard of Maggie St. James," she says, her voice gravelly from decades of smoke. "Woman goes missing and this place turns into a damn spectacle. Helicopters and search dogs swarming up in those woods, found a whole heap of nothing." Travis grips the silver charm tighter in his pocket, feeling the familiar buzz that means he's close. The charm is one of five that had hung from Maggie's necklace—tiny silver books representing each volume in her controversial series. This one bears the number three, found beside her abandoned car five years ago. "She asked about a red barn," the clerk continues. "Asked if I knew where she could find one around here. I told her about the old Kettering place up the road. She left without even a thanks." The charm grows warm in Travis's palm as he presses it, and suddenly he can see her—Maggie St. James standing in this very store, tearing open a pack of strawberry gum with nervous fingers. She had been afraid, but not of what lay ahead. She had been afraid of what she was leaving behind. Outside, snow begins to fall as Travis climbs back into his truck. The road stretches ahead into darkness, winding deeper into mountains that seem to swallow sound itself. The silver charm pulses against his skin like a second heartbeat, drawing him toward answers that have been buried for five years. Hours pass as he navigates by carved symbols—three vertical slashes pointing the way forward through a tunnel of darkness created by leaning pines. When his truck finally becomes trapped in deep snow, high-centered and immobilized, Travis continues on foot. Through the trees ahead, he can see lights flickering like candles in a cathedral.

Chapter 2: A Community Bound by Fear: Discovering Pastoral's Deadly Boundaries

A wooden fence emerges from the darkness, well-maintained despite its remote location. A crooked sign nailed to one of the posts reads "PRIVATE PROPERTY," but beyond it, Travis can see the glow of a hidden community. A small guard hut sits beside a rusted gate, and through its window, a tall figure moves with startled recognition. The man who steps out looks terrified to see him, as if Travis were a ghost materializing from the winter night. This is Theo, though he doesn't know his real name yet. Behind the guard, carved into weathered wood mounted on the gate, are letters that make Travis's blood run cold: PASTORAL. Theo has been crossing the boundary for over a year, taking five more steps down the forbidden road each night, marking his progress with stones. As a guard, he's supposed to keep outsiders from entering their hidden community, but no one has walked up that road in over a decade. His wife Calla sleeps peacefully in their farmhouse bed, unaware that her husband has been risking his life night after night. The forest beyond their borders carries a deadly plague called elm pox, a disease that rots trees from the inside out, causing their bark to split and weep infectious sap. Anyone who breathes the contaminated air or touches the diseased wood will die within days, their blood turning black as soil. At least, that's what Levi, their leader, has told them. But Theo has never gotten sick during his midnight wanderings. Each morning he examines his eyes in the mirror, looking for telltale signs of infection, but they remain clear. The mystery of his survival only fuels his desire to venture farther into the forbidden woods. When Travis appears at the gate like a figure from a half-remembered dream, Theo's carefully constructed world begins to crack. The stranger's face seems familiar in ways that make his skull ache, as if he's looking into a mirror that reflects not his appearance but his soul.

Chapter 3: Fragments of a Forgotten Past: The Abandoned Truck's Revelations

The night Theo finds the abandoned truck changes everything. Hidden among the trees, covered in seasons of fallen leaves, sits a vehicle that feels familiar in ways that make his bones ache. His hands shake as he opens the door—not from cold, but from recognition that defies explanation. Inside the glove compartment, beneath registration papers that bear his own name—Travis Wren, not Theo—he discovers a water-damaged photograph. The woman's face is partially obscured, but her visible eye stares up at him with desperate intensity. Blonde hair frames features that seem carved from memory itself. On the back, someone has scrawled "Maggie St. James" in careful script. The discovery sends tremors through his carefully constructed reality. Theo has no memory of being Travis Wren, no recollection of owning this truck or searching for this woman. Yet the evidence sits cold and undeniable in his trembling hands. The photograph burns in his pocket like a coal as he returns to the farmhouse, telling no one what he's found. When he brings the photograph home, his sister-in-law Bee makes a startling revelation. Despite her blindness, she remembers the sound of a stranger's heartbeat in their house—a man who had slept in the abandoned sunroom without their knowledge. Travis Wren had somehow made it past their defenses, had lived as a ghost in their home, searching for the missing woman whose image Theo now carries. The discovery shatters Theo's understanding of their supposedly impenetrable sanctuary. If one outsider could breach their walls undetected, what else might be hiding in the shadows of Pastoral? More disturbing still, why does holding this photograph feel like coming home to a life he's forgotten? Driven by compulsion he cannot name, Theo searches their old farmhouse for more evidence. Hidden like breadcrumbs in a fairy tale, he finds fragments of a journal tucked beneath mattresses and concealed behind wallpaper. Each page tells the story of Travis Wren, a man who came to Pastoral searching for Maggie St. James and found something far more dangerous than a missing person.

Chapter 4: Awakening from Manufactured Dreams: When Buried Objects Speak Truth

Calla finds the first clue while weeding her herb garden—a tiny silver book charm buried beneath the wild roses, its surface etched with the number three. The same number Travis had mentioned in his journal, the same charm that had once hung from Maggie St. James's necklace. But how had it ended up in her garden, and who had buried it there? Driven by an inexplicable compulsion, Calla digs deeper into the soil where she'd found the charm. Her fingernails pack with dirt as she claws at the earth, following an instinct she cannot name. Finally, her fingers strike something substantial—a large book, warped and water-damaged from its time underground. The cover bears silver lettering: "Eloise and the Foxtail, Book One." Inside, disturbing charcoal illustrations depict a young girl wandering through dark forests, pursued by watching eyes that gleam from between the trees. On the title page, someone has written in looping script: "Remember Maggie." As Calla reads the eerie story of Eloise chasing a fox into an underground museum filled with forgotten artifacts and malevolent watchers, she feels a chill that has nothing to do with the mountain air. The tale seems to mirror her own situation—a woman following mysterious clues deeper into a mystery that might consume her. But more than that, the words feel familiar, as if she's reading her own thoughts transcribed by another hand. The truth assembles itself piece by piece as more buried objects surface from her garden. Another silver charm, then another book, each one triggering memories that have been locked away like prisoners in her own mind. She knows this story because somewhere in the depths of her fractured consciousness, she remembers writing it. Meanwhile, Theo discovers more evidence in the abandoned sunroom where Travis had secretly lived. Hidden behind peeling wallpaper, he finds torn pages describing the investigator's growing unease with Pastoral's isolated community and his desperate desire to convince Maggie to leave with him. The final entries speak of bad dreams and the sound of trees breaking apart in the night. The fragments paint a picture of two people—Travis and Maggie—who had tried to escape this place and failed. Now they live as Theo and Calla, their memories buried as deep as the silver charms in the garden, their true identities hidden beneath layers of manufactured dreams.

Chapter 5: The Price of Defiance: Death Beneath the Mabon Tree

When Colette's premature baby is born with a failing heart, the community faces an impossible choice. The infant needs medical care that can only be found in the outside world, but crossing the boundary means risking exposure to the elm pox that has trapped them in their forest sanctuary for decades. Ash, the baby's father, cannot bear to watch his child die. Along with his friend Turk, he attempts to escape through the diseased forest to find help. But their desperate flight is discovered, and they are dragged back to face the community's judgment under the ancient Mabon tree that has witnessed every execution in Pastoral's history. Levi stands before the gathered residents with the weight of impossible decisions crushing his shoulders. He is a man who inherited power he never wanted, tasked with protecting a community that seems always on the verge of collapse. His green eyes hold the authority of absolute truth when he speaks, and his voice carries the cadence of divine judgment. "We cannot risk more lives for the life of one," Levi declares, but Ash and Turk have already been exposed to the plague during their escape attempt. They might be carrying death back into the heart of Pastoral. The solution is as ancient as it is brutal—two holes are dug beneath the Mabon tree, not graves but ritual chambers where the infected can be buried alive up to their necks. For three days the two men remain there, soil packed tight around their bodies, arms bound overhead, while the community waits to see if the mineral-rich earth will draw the poison from their flesh. When they are finally pulled from their graves, Levi cuts their arms with a ceremonial blade. The blood that flows runs black as midnight, thick as motor oil. The crowd gasps in horror at this proof of infection, this validation of their deepest fears. The pox has taken hold, Levi announces. The ropes go around their necks with practiced efficiency. Two men who dared to hope swing lifeless in the morning breeze, their crime not sickness but defiance. The community watches in silence, understanding the lesson written in their deaths.

Chapter 6: Shattered Deceptions: Bee's Sight Returns with Vengeance

The locked closet in Levi's house holds more than winter coats and forgotten belongings. When Bee finds herself trapped inside during a community gathering, her vision—lost years ago to what she believed was an accident—begins to return in fragments that reveal the true horror of her situation. The shelves lined with books come into focus, and among them she discovers the tools of her own destruction. "Hypnosis and Practical Applications to Alter the Function of the Brain" sits like a confession among Levi's collection. Bee remembers now the summer afternoons when they were teenagers, Levi practicing his techniques while she lay trusting in the meadow grass. He made her believe she was blind, convinced her that darkness was her natural state. He stole her sight to keep her close, to make her dependent, to ensure she would never leave him. But the blindness was only the beginning of his deceptions. Levi has been weaving lies into the very fabric of Pastoral, using his skills to make the community see what he wants them to see. The black blood that flowed from Ash and Turk's veins was an illusion, a trick of light and suggestion performed by a master manipulator. The pox itself exists only in their collective imagination, a shared nightmare that keeps them trapped within boundaries of manufactured fear. Bee has been his unwitting accomplice, carving false wounds into boundary trees to make his lies seem real. When Levi returns to his house that night, flushed with the power of another successful execution, he finds Bee waiting in his kitchen. Her newly restored vision takes in every detail of his face as understanding dawns in his green eyes. He knows that his greatest creation—the blind girl who helped maintain his reign of terror—has finally seen through his deceptions. The knife slides between his ribs with surprising ease, warm blood flowing over Bee's hands as she watches the life drain from the eyes that once hypnotized her into darkness. He dies knowing that the woman he thought he controlled has become his executioner. In the garden where corn grows tall and sweet, Levi's body feeds the earth he claimed to protect. His reign of manufactured terror ends not with revelation but with revolution, one blade thrust at a time.

Chapter 7: Escape Through Illusion: Crossing Boundaries That Never Existed

Fire consumes the birthing hut like a hungry beast, orange flames licking at the night sky while Colette and her baby remain trapped inside. The blaze is no accident—Levi's final attempt to eliminate the problems that threaten his carefully constructed world, set in motion before his death by followers who still believe in his vision of necessary sacrifice. Theo crashes through the burning door and emerges with the infant in his arms, her cries piercing the smoke-filled air. But Parker appears from the darkness, gun drawn and trembling in his young hands. He cannot let them leave, cannot allow them to cross the boundary and return with proof that the pox is a lie. The weapon discharges in the struggle, and Calla crumples to the ground, blood spreading across her shirt like spilled wine. They carry her through the forest as rain begins to fall, each step taking them farther from the only home they've known. The boundary markers pass by like milestones on a journey toward truth. No disease reaches out to claim them. No pox turns their blood to tar. The forest that has haunted their nightmares proves to be nothing more than trees and shadows and the ordinary darkness that lives between. The elm trees show no signs of infection, their bark whole and healthy, their sap clear as water. At the Timber Creek Gas & Grocery, fluorescent lights buzz overhead as Travis Wren—no longer Theo—begs the clerk to call an ambulance. The woman behind the counter remembers him from years ago, when he first passed through searching for Maggie St. James. She makes the call while he presses his hands against his wife's wound, trying to hold her together until help arrives. The outside world crashes over them in waves of sirens and questions and the harsh glare of hospital lights. They are no longer Calla and Theo, the quiet couple from the farmhouse. They are Maggie and Travis, the missing and the searcher, returned from a place that exists on no map but holds them in its grip like a fever dream that refuses to break.

Chapter 8: Choosing Identity: Building Home from the Ashes of Lies

The hotel room smells of industrial cleaning products and the dreams of strangers. Travis stares at the television screen where reporters discuss the miraculous return of Ellen Ballister, the actress who vanished eleven years ago. The world knows her as Colette, the young mother who fled a forest commune with her newborn child. Maggie's parents arrive with tears and recriminations, carrying the weight of secrets kept too long. Her mother reveals the truth she's hidden for decades: Maggie was born in Pastoral, daughter of Cooper himself, the community's founder. The stories her mother told her as a child were memories of that place, seeds planted deep that eventually called her home. But home is a word with many meanings. The life Maggie left behind in Seattle feels as foreign as the hotel room's polyester bedding. The woman who wrote dark fairy tales about lost children seems like a stranger wearing her face. She cannot return to being someone she no longer recognizes, just as Travis cannot pretend that his years as Theo were merely a nightmare to be forgotten. In the pre-dawn darkness, they slip away from explanations and expectations. The truck carries them back through mountain passes toward the forest that remade them. Behind them, the outside world continues its frantic dance of noise and light and endless motion. Ahead lies Pastoral, wounded but not broken, waiting for new leadership and old truths. They find Bee ruling with wisdom instead of fear, the borders open, the community healing from its long nightmare of manufactured terror. Some members have left to reclaim their former lives. Others have stayed, choosing the slower rhythms of a world where seasons matter more than stock prices and human connection trumps the hollow promises of modern civilization. The farmhouse welcomes them back like a living thing, its rooms holding memories of both their identities—Travis and Theo, Maggie and Calla—without demanding they choose between them. They are all of these people and none of them, shaped by experiences both real and implanted, finding truth in the space between memory and forgetting.

Summary

In the shadow of trees that never carried disease and beneath the weight of secrets finally unearthed, the residents of Pastoral discover that the greatest prison is often the one built inside your own mind. Travis Wren had come seeking a missing woman and found instead a community built on lies, where the most dangerous predator wore the face of a protector and wielded hypnosis like a weapon. Pastoral becomes what Cooper always intended—a refuge for those seeking something the outside world cannot provide, but without the manufactured fear that had kept it isolated. Bee raises her daughter in the shadow of the farmhouse, teaching her that boundaries exist to be questioned and that courage often looks like the simple act of opening your eyes. Maggie writes again, but her stories now carry the weight of lived experience, tales of communities built on trust instead of terror and the strength required to choose your own identity when the world insists you be someone else. In the space between who you were and who you choose to become, something like peace takes root and grows toward the light, nourished by truth instead of lies.

About Author

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Shea Ernshaw

Ernshaw crafts stories that delve into the mysterious and magical, bridging the gap between reality and illusion with her evocative prose. Her works often center around themes of isolation and the compelling power of nature, weaving these elements into rich, atmospheric settings that captivate her readers. In novels like "The Wicked Deep", Ernshaw delves into the haunting curses of a coastal town, while in "A History of Wild Places", she explores the unsettling aura of a secluded commune and the strange disappearances tied to it. Her transition from young adult fantasy to adult suspense thrillers highlights her versatility, always ensuring that the emotional depth of the story is front and center.\n\nFor readers drawn to psychological complexity and immersive storytelling, Ernshaw’s books offer an engaging experience. Her ability to create intricate plots and characters who navigate complex familial and magical dynamics resonates with audiences who appreciate nuanced narratives. Recognized as a bestselling author, Ernshaw has reached readers across more than twenty countries. Her recognition includes winning the Oregon Book Award and having her titles frequently selected as Indie Next Picks, affirming her impact on contemporary fiction.\n\nThis short bio of Ernshaw's literary journey showcases her commitment to blending magical realism with suspense, appealing to both young adult and adult readers. Through her unique style and thematic focus, she continues to captivate and challenge her audience, making her a notable figure in the world of fiction.

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