Wildwood Whispers

by Willa Reece

  Granny didn’t seem to notice my reaction to Walker. She reached into another pocket as if I wasn’t furiously blinking my eyes to dispel the moisture. I’d seen a slight softening around his lips when he’d noticed my emotion. Vulnerability wasn’t acceptable. If he looked this way again, he’d see dry eyes and a hardened jaw. But he didn’t look and this time Granny pulled out a rolled piece of paper. It was faded and smudged in her brown fingers. By now I understood her work with herbs—harvesting and preparing—must stain her fingers. Her dark curls were shiny and shot through with silvery glints of gray. Her cheeks were pink and her clothing fresh. The stains weren’t dirt. They were more like the earth left its mark on her in order to recommend her services to the community.

  “This was set down for your eyes a long time ago,” she said. She offered the paper to me on her outstretched palm and I took it because her gravitas wouldn’t allow me to reject it.

  The paper was difficult to unroll because it had been curled for so long, but I was finally able to read the bold script. The ink had faded, but I made out what appeared to be directions. Several lines were followed by a larger signature. The initials M and R were even bolder and hardly faded at all. They had been the most protected by the roll with several layers of paper between them and the sun, air and moisture that came with the passage of time.

  How could I trust a note written by a stranger and given to me by a woman I’d just met?

  “Those directions will take you to the Ross cabin. The garden is a ways behind it. Follow the trail. You’ll see where Sarah’s ashes belong,” Granny said. She stepped away and I started at her sudden movement. I dropped the paper and it curled back up. I’m not sure why, but I reached for one of Granny’s stained hands to prevent her from leaving. I hadn’t touched anyone since Sarah had died. It wasn’t in my nature to reach out. Lash out, occasionally, yes, but not reach. Granny was surprisingly cool beneath my fingers as if her circulation had gone poor with age. She lifted her other hand to pat my wrist, a warm gesture in spite of her cold skin. I couldn’t guess her exact age, but she’d surely laid friends to rest before. I hadn’t wanted her to see too much in the herbal detritus left in my cup. This was similar. Too soon. Too close. Too much.

  I could offer empathy by being polite to a waitress I didn’t know. Accepting it from someone else over tender feelings of grief made me edgier than before.

  And yet, I had reached for her and I didn’t let her go.

  “Best to get it done. Then we’ll talk again,” she advised. “Come and find me when you’re finished.” She moved her free hand from my wrist to the back of the hand that lightly gripped her. She urged me to release her other hand. Then she curled my fingers in on my palm until she helped them to form a loose fist. “You’re a fighter. Sarah needed that. She still needs that. Don’t give up. This isn’t the end. It’s a beginning.”

  I didn’t uncurl my fist when she released me to leave.

  This time, the biologist stayed seated when she walked out of the diner. He didn’t note her passing at all. Again, I found his behavior oddly charming. She had places to go and things to do and he was merely staying out of her way. I don’t know if he looked my way again when I finally opened my fingers and asked for my bill. I was too determined not to look his. I was aware of Walker on a sensory level that made me nervous.

  I was several feet away from the biologist’s back as I passed his stool to leave. My body mapped every inch of those feet as if it needed to know how quickly it could get to him should I give it permission. What’s more, the strange awareness I felt might have gone both ways. I could have sworn his shoulders tightened when I walked by. I kept walking. By the time I made it to the door, my jaw hurt from clenching my teeth and my eyes burned with determined dryness.

  He probably didn’t notice or care. I proved nothing to anyone but myself. I was okay with that. In this odd little town that seemed less sleepy than it should before 9:00 a.m., I needed to rely on myself to stay steady and strong. I’d created calm out of chaos a long time ago. And I’d survived Sarah’s death. Hadn’t I? Mostly? I wasn’t going to lose it now over a pair of intense green eyes and a fay grandmother with pockets full of herbal tea.

  Three

  I wasn’t used to following written directions, but the Ross cabin had no address and my GPS would have been spotty this far out of town. My phone might still be capable of sending and receiving calls, but the one lone bar in the top right corner of its screen seemed almost apocalyptic.

  So, I tried to find the landmarks the directions referenced with an anxiety-filled process of hit or miss that left me hoping I’d filled the car with enough gas.

  I finally found what I thought was the cabin’s driveway past a rock formation M. R. had called “Standing Stones.” The three large boulders piled side by side looked more like “Rocks Too Large for Highway Construction to Blast.” I signaled and cut the wheel even though the delineation of grass to road wasn’t clear.

  The rental car bounced on the overgrown road. A tall grassy streak in between two dirt tracks was enough to impede the car’s progress. The flow of flattened grass swished beneath the chassis. It sounded like driving through water. I navigated with care, passing through forest and fields, steadily climbing higher. Before the slope where the Ross cabin rested against the mountain, the road split a field of wildflowers in half. To my left was a faded red shed with a rusty tin roof and a bright splash of turquoise paint where an old pickup had been left for nature to reclaim. Vines mostly obscured its windows and frame, trailing over and under, around and through, as if to trace the automobile and remake it as a green and growing thing.

  A “No Pipeline” sign had been stuck into the ground by the side of the road. Time and weather had caused it to fade and tilt to one side. I’d seen similar signs on the way into town. I knew enough from statewide news stories that natural gas companies wanted to build conduits from their fracking sites in northern Virginia to the rest of the state. Apparently, a lot of people on Sugarloaf Mountain didn’t want the hassle.

  The condition of the road and the faded sign calmed my fears about encountering other people. Someone visited occasionally. Possibly Granny. Otherwise it would be completely overgrown, but all was quiet and still when I stopped the car in front of the cabin. I didn’t pause, because if I did I might head back down the road. I climbed out and slammed the door. I opened the back door and pushed my jacket aside. All quick and sure as if I carried my heart to be scattered in the mountains every day.

  The urn was cool in my hands. I clutched it close to my stomach and closed the door with my foot.

  Maybe letting go of Sarah’s ashes would end the nightmares. I needed peaceful sleep, but dreaded it at the same time. Right now, I was with her again, in a way, every night. But a promise is a promise. I couldn’t break my word to my best friend even if fulfilling her last request broke me.

  The cabin had been built a long time ago. Its logs were weathered and gray. The chinking between them stood out in faded stripes. But it seemed sturdy. Straight and square with an unblemished metal roof. The hollow in my gut I’d lived with since the accident echoed with Sarah’s tears when I saw bright red rubber boots beside the front door. Unlike the shed and the cabin, they didn’t seem faded at all. I’d lost Sarah. She’d lost her mother. No wonder the hollowness in the nightmare stayed with me even when I was awake. The cabin had a porch across its front. On one end an empty swing swayed in the breeze, at once inviting and heartbreaking.

  Peace. Tranquility. And all of it was a lie.

  The middle of nowhere wasn’t immune to pain or danger. Those red boots had probably belonged to Sarah’s mother. A woman who had been murdered near this spot ten years ago. Their cheerful color reminded me of the much less cheerful red I’d seen in my nightmares.

  I didn’t go up on the porch. I couldn’t bear the sag of the steps beneath my feet where Sarah must have played. Lingering here would only put off the inevitable anyway. I’d come to bring Sar
ah’s ashes to the garden. I’d have to see the tree that haunted my dreams. I’d have to walk on the moss in the clearing by the creek where the remedies had washed away.

  When I came around the corner where a riotous wild rose had been urged to grow up a trellis made of faded white lattice, the view behind the house stopped me in my tracks. The rose hadn’t been pruned in a while, but the backyard was pristine. And it was the yard I walked across every night in my nightmares. The sun had dried the dew hours ago, but I’d been here, exactly here, as Sarah, so many times.

  My body quaked.

  Exactly.

  The tingling of superstition I’d experienced in the diner morphed into a finger of cold dread down my spine. Had Sarah described this place so perfectly that I’d managed to envision it as it had been? The back door to the cabin was closed, but it was the same batten and ledge door made from weathered wood. I’d walked over its familiar threshold dozens of times.

  I walked to the door, but I hugged Sarah’s ashes rather than reach for the handle. What if the inside of the cabin was familiar? I turned away from the house and faced the forest. An opening in the trees revealed where the trail began. It was well traveled by someone. For a second, I imagined Sarah’s footsteps going to the black locust tree every night, taking me reluctantly with her. The dark whimsy didn’t ease my dread.

  The dirt was smooth and packed firmly beneath my feet. As it had been beneath Sarah’s, every night, in every dream. But a real person must keep it worn. I couldn’t allow myself to get carried away by coincidence.

  Suddenly, I was more nervous about encountering another person than superstition had made me moments before. I needed to take Sarah’s ashes to the garden. Afraid of an audience and uncertain of whom that audience might be, I kept walking.

  I wouldn’t find a woman hanging in the tree. There was nothing to be afraid of beyond the possibility of sharing my grief and loss with a stranger.

  I plucked a stalk of lavender as I passed the fence on the way to the opening in the trees. I brought it to my nose and breathed deeply of its soothing scent. The fragrance unlocked an image of pale purple dust created from petals crushed in the palm of Sarah’s mother’s hand. The path was smooth, but the forest surrounding the trail needed to give way when I entered it. I gently pushed past tendrils of hanging vines and the tickling fingers of branch tips, unsure if I was an intruder or a welcome stranger. I walked into the wildwood for the first time as I imagined Sarah’s mother opening her calloused fingers and allowing the lavender dust to fall into the steaming bathwater she prepared for her daughter.

  The pain had been sharp in Sarah’s fingers that morning, so this evening her mother prepared a special lavender bath before bed. Sarah was only five, but she knew the pain might be back in the morning, brought on by dreams that could sometimes bring ponies or cotton candy instead.

  Her favorite nightgown was already laid out on her bed and her mother had aired her favorite quilt on the clothesline as she often did in summer. The quilt was a masterpiece of handwork made by her mother’s friends where colorful scraps of bright cloth had been sewn into intricate kaleidoscope patterns Sarah had traced with her fingers for years.

  Her whole bedroom smelled of sunshine and warm grass. And while her mother filled the large claw-foot tub with steaming water, she sang. The song was from the Ross remedy book. It wasn’t one most people would have heard. The tune was strange and lilting and filled with words Sarah couldn’t pronounce herself.

  Not yet.

  One day she would sing them. That’s how being a Ross worked.

  Her mother had shown her how to make a daisy chain a long time ago. Stem to head and head to stem. You always ended the chain by connecting the end to the beginning to form a circle. Sometimes they made a giant chain together, working all day long to form a huge circle that wound around the cabin. Then they held hands and skipped seven times around singing the names of all the Ross women who had come before them so they’d never forget.

  Fair-Margaret-Ann-Elizabet-Berta-Katherine-Mary-Beatrice-Melody-Sarah.

  The powerful women who had come before her were known by the Ross name on the mountain. If they married at all, it was under the moon and stars with trees as witness and forest creatures as deacon and clergy and wedding guests. Sarah didn’t know her father, but even at five years old she knew Ross blood flowed throughout the community in many different homes and families. Some was just more diluted than others, like a strong, bitter tea that had been weakened with cream and sugar. The drink became something else altogether, easier to stomach for some. Gentler. Sweeter.

  The bath was full and her mother’s song had become a wordless hum. Sarah shrugged out of her shirt and pants while her mother tilted a mason jar full of dried blossoms with one hand to tap some of its contents into the palm of her other hand. She closed her fist on the petals and worked her fingers until the dried lavender became a fragrant dust that she released over the length of the bath. It sighed as it hit the hot water and steam carried its fragrance to scent the room with spring.

  “There, now. That should do the trick. You’ll sleep soundly and wake without dreaming for sure,” her mother said. But Sarah knew Melody Ross wasn’t sure her daughter wouldn’t dream. Sometimes a Ross was restless. Sometimes a Ross knew things that woke them in the wee hours of the morning. The knowing was never certain. It sighed and dissolved in their minds the same way the dried lavender dissolved in the bath, leaving nothing but a hint of it behind.

  Sarah took her mother’s dusty hand, and her mother helped her into the tub. She sank down into the water even though it was hot enough to make her skin rosy beneath the lapping waves.

  Once she was settled, her mother handed her a bar of homemade soap. The vanilla of the soap didn’t fight with the lavender. They went together and worked together. They were c-o-m-p-l-e-m-e-n-t-a-r-y. Sarah had known how to read and write before she started school because of the remedy book. As she foamed the soap in her hands, she carefully hummed the tune her mother had hummed without trying to sing the words. She was learning. She was always learning. But becoming a wisewoman would be a lifelong task. For now, she was content to be a girl. She let the bar of soap go and watched it float on top of the soothing lavender water. And as she toed the bar this way and that she imagined it was a boat gone to pick her up a pony to ride away from the pain in her dreams.

  I dropped the lavender from my fingers. Unlike my nightmare, my connection to this “memory” was hazy and vague. The whole thing could have been a fancy, brought on by the fairy-tale woods around me. It was midmorning. The heat of the day was already beginning to rise. But the shadows of the trees made the trail cool and comfortable. Suddenly, the reality of a damp, dewy morning replaced thoughts of hot lavender baths in my mind. But my steps didn’t falter. I was here now. There were no torn pages to pick up off the ground. No blood. I carried Sarah’s ashes clutched to me instead of the pages I’d clutched as Sarah in the dreams.

  Birds sang in the trees and insects whirred by on incomprehensible errands. Water rippled over rocks in the distance and the soft tread of my tennis shoes scuffed on the ground. I heard no other footsteps. Especially not those of my best friend’s cold bare feet.

  My toes were chilled as I drew closer and closer to the sound of running water. Pressure built in my chest. Blood rushed in my veins and roared in my ears. The air I forced into my suddenly constricted lungs was rich and loamy, thick with rotten leaves and fresh with green growth.

  As I rounded the bend, I heard the sound of the rope against the tree limb. The squeak of its coils protesting against the friction and the dead weight. Dead. My mother. No. Not mine. Sarah’s. I wasn’t trapped in a nightmare. I was only bound by my promise.

  I didn’t expect how full of life the garden would actually be when it came into view. My pent-up breath released in a whoosh of surprise.

  Lush and vibrant, filled with sprouting, budding, flourishing things, the well-tended garden could have graced the cove
r of a magazine. Instantly, I could see every bush, every plant, every vine had its place in carefully maintained rows and raised beds, but the explosion of green leaves and colorful blossoms was pure exotica to me. I recognized nothing. I knew pavement, cement and brutally trimmed city trees. Here, there were lush blossoms of pink, gold, royal purple and dusty blue. There was every shade of yellow from butter to nearly orange. The living rainbow fluttered en masse as the breeze brushed over the unusual clusters and silky groupings of petals I’d never seen. I knew the trees that framed the four corners of the garden only because Sarah had named them and because the deep ridges of their bark were so distinctive. They were black locust trees of different sizes. The differentiation told their age, one for each Ross woman who had been scattered to rest beneath their unusually gnarled branches.

  The condition of the road and this cultivated ground didn’t match. The garden echoed what the well-worn path had said. I might not be alone for long. I clutched the urn even tighter to my chest.

  “It’s illegal to plant on public lands. This is a national forest, but I’m not sure the first Ross gardener knew or cared, a pretty common mentality in the Appalachian region.”

  I turned quickly to find the biologist from the diner. Jacob Walker. His name came to me on a whisper in my mind very much like the rustle of the breeze through the golden petals on the tallest stalks in the garden.

  He stepped into the clearing from the trail moments after I had, but he spoke conversationally, as if he’d been my companion for a while. Had he followed me from town? Then followed me all the way up the path without speaking? Granny had seemed to know him well. His sudden appearance startled me, but I didn’t think he was here to harm me. He was still wearing the same clothes—ripstop gray cargo pants and a long-sleeve shirt with a well-known outdoors brand above its right chest pocket. His boots were expensive, but a sturdy choice and worn enough to be real, not an affectation. A biologist probably spent a lot of time outdoors. His hair was still tousled. Within its chestnut mass, lighter curly strands were picked up and blown by the same morning breeze that seemed to whisper inside of me, a soft echo of the wind in the trees. He stepped closer, jumping effortlessly over a fallen log I had skirted around.