Wildwood Whispers

by Willa Reece

  In his left hand he held the broken piece of lavender I’d dropped. He had picked the flower up rather than crush it beneath his boot. I wasn’t happy about his intrusion, but I couldn’t help wondering why the flower held carefully in his fingers caught my attention. It reminded me of the deference he’d shown Granny. The breeze settled as I focused on the flower and everything in me and outside of me became still.

  “The garden has been here much longer than you or I,” I said. “I don’t think it cares about public or private. Seems to be thriving.”

  A small pack rested on his back and a collapsible hiking stick was hooked to a lanyard on one of its straps. His eyes were active and bright, cataloging everything his gaze brushed. But I’d noticed that before. In the diner. Hadn’t I? He stopped and looked me over from head to toe in a quick assessing manner. I was no different than I’d been in the diner either, but both of us stared as if it had been longer than an hour since we’d met.

  Or as if our eyes had found that meeting too brief and wanted to make up for it now.

  “There are plants in that garden that have been officially extinct for fifty years,” he said. “I still haven’t decided if I should report it or gather all the seeds I can this autumn.”

  A sudden flurry of butterflies rose from the patch of tall stalks topped by yellow thistlelike blooms, and I watched them fly out of the garden to rest lightly on Mr. Walker’s shoulders and head. Their delicate decision to favor the biologist with the tickling prance of their feet and brush of their wings drew my eyes back to his. He didn’t look at the fluttering insects. He looked at me. Our gazes locked again and my jaw was too soft, my eyes too dewy. I’d been better prepared in the diner. I wasn’t prepared now.

  As if he was a priest and the forest was his cathedral, I found myself confessing.

  “My friend Sarah’s mother died here. Ten years ago. In that black locust with the hooked branch,” I said. “I’ve brought Sarah’s ashes. I’m not sure who planted the sapling, but Granny told me I’d know where to sprinkle her remains.”

  He glanced at the locust trees. I should have been relieved, but I wasn’t. For some reason I hadn’t wanted him to look away.

  “I’d heard about the murder,” Walker said. “But I hadn’t heard about your recent loss. I’m sorry.” He lifted his hand and twirled the lavender in his fingers. I noticed his digits were colored with earth like Granny’s, although I was pretty certain his stains would still wash away.

  “Do you take care of the garden?” I asked.

  “No. I only wondered who had dropped this so soon after picking it,” the man said. “I use the Ross cabin as an access point for field research sometimes.” He shrugged out of his pack and it rattled as he placed it on the ground. He pulled a small field journal from the side pocket and pressed the lavender in its pages before putting the book away. He unhooked the hiking stick and telescoped it to its full length before he shrugged his free arm back into one strap of the pack.

  All of this was completed with an efficiency of movement that startled me. He was above average in height and build, but there was a grace to his physicality that made him appear as if he belonged among the flowers and trees. Sarah’s wildwood didn’t make way for him. It enveloped and accepted him. This was a scientist? I’d never met one, but my preconceptions of tweed and stuffy laboratories were suddenly, glaringly wrong.

  “I only use this trail occasionally. I spend a lot of time on the mountain, but I’ve never disturbed the garden. Not that I haven’t taken a closer look at some of the rare plants.” Walker’s eyes flicked toward the garden as he mentioned the rare plants. He pushed the end of his hiking stick into the ground, gripping it with both hands until I could see the white of his knuckles stand out in relief against the dirt stains. “Granny is a well-known herbalist in this area. There’s a community of people around here who comb the woods for ingredients. Dyes. Medicines. Most of them don’t bother to think about what they might be doing to the environment. Ginseng is a threatened species now. It’s worth big bucks on the black market. And its illegal harvest and sale is driving other dangerous activities like money laundering.”

  So, maybe his intensity had a logical explanation?

  He wasn’t only a scientist or a casual hiker. He was a man on a mission. Still, hunting plant poachers didn’t seem to fit the serious preparedness I sensed in him either. I wasn’t only a barista. I was a survivor. I’d been on my own for a long time before Sarah came into my life. Overworked caseworkers and jaded foster families didn’t count. Walker had me on edge worse than Granny had and I wasn’t sure if it was attraction or an early warning system. My body and my brain couldn’t seem to agree. The intent in his eyes didn’t match the rest of him, mission or not.

  “You haven’t reported the garden because you think it should stay hidden. That maybe it’ll be pillaged if word gets out,” I guessed. “I suspect the Ross women and people like Granny would rather die than hurt the forest.”

  “It would have been sacrilege. The way your friend’s mother was killed. The murderer didn’t only take her life. He or she tainted the locust tree…” Walker began.

  “And polluted the wildwood,” I finished.

  Saying the words aloud suddenly felt like the reason I’d come. The manner of her death and the way the killer had disposed of her body hadn’t only been cruel and violent and evil. It had been an abomination of all she held dear. Including Sarah. Whom I’d also held dear. Dearer than myself. I wasn’t tied to anyone or anything now that Sarah was gone, but I felt ghost tendrils from this garden and the Ross way of life reaching out to me. Sarah’s beliefs had brought me here with her ashes. She would soon become a part of this place again as if she’d never left it. Walker and the garden became distorted as my eyes swam with unshed tears.

  “I’m sorry I disturbed you. I should have walked around,” the biologist suddenly said.

  My jaw clenched. I refused to cry. But even without tears, my hold on the urn gave my emotions away. Of course he noticed. My white knuckles. My wet eyes. His were filled with understanding. I was immediately on guard. He might be observant, but I didn’t want him understanding me better than I understood myself. My grief was a vulnerability I didn’t want to share with a stranger.

  Suddenly, I was saved. One second, he was Mr. Walker, calm lavender-scented biologist, and in the next he stood straight and alert with his shoulders back and his hiking stick gripped like a weapon. He wasn’t muscle bound. He had the kind of understated strength that hid until it was needed. I gasped and took a step back from the changed man, but then I whirled because he had obviously been reacting to a threat behind me.

  “Tom,” Walker said. I could tell he had instantly relaxed. His voice was deep and assured. But it came from inches behind me. When I’d whirled to face the forest, he must have stepped forward. Much closer than I’d expected him to be. The move seemed protective, but it didn’t calm me. His proximity was bothersome in part because I wasn’t as bothered as I should be by this changeling of a man. “You planted a sapling for Sarah Ross,” Walker continued.

  The new man barely looked our way, but he nodded constantly as he carried a large bucket of water to the locust sapling Walker had referred to. I noticed an angry red scar that ran from the corner of one eye down in a diagonal slash across both of his lips to the other side of his face. He was a big man but was obviously no threat, silently tending the Ross garden as if we weren’t there.

  “It’s okay. He tends the garden. I’ve seen him here several times before,” Walker said. He hadn’t moved away. So I did. Several steps to the side didn’t lessen my body’s reaction to his confidential tones muttered so close to the back of my neck. He hadn’t touched me or overstepped any sort of bounds. The reawakened tingles along my spine were my fault not his. From the corner of my eye, I saw he’d lowered his hiking stick back to the ground. He’d returned to his casual, outdoorsy science-guy act. But that didn’t stop me from cataloging his sudden protective re
action as not very academic-like at all.

  “Granny said I’d know where to put Sarah’s ashes,” I said.

  Tom had finished his watering task and now he moved around the garden pinching off dead leaves and examining vines and flowers. He paid no mind to me when I approached the locust sapling and opened the urn.

  It took far too long for me to tilt the container. I stood. I waited. In the end, it was only a tremendous force of will to honor my promise that allowed me to sprinkle Sarah’s remains on the damp ground. Strangely, it seemed as if every individual particle of ash flicked off the lip of the urn to pause, infinitely defined against the air, before it fell. The birds sang. The insects whirred. And I laid Sarah to rest—the person who had known me better than anyone had ever known me—in the company of two men I barely knew.

  I couldn’t handle a spoken eulogy. No words could convey the sentiment for Sarah that beat in my heart. The urn was too light afterward. I replaced its lid and stood, not quite knowing what to do. Walker hovered. He seemed torn between leaving and offering support. Truthfully, I was so unused to the offering I didn’t know how to respond. My usual was frightening people away before they reached out. It’s easy in Richmond. The crowds. The rush. Nobody questions a “leave me alone” vibe.

  “My name is Mel,” I said to the biologist. He watched my every move and I was aware of his every breath. It seemed stupid not to introduce myself to the man if I was going to be that attuned to his respiration. He was a part of this understated memorial where everything about and around Sarah’s black locust tree seemed suddenly portentous.

  The dark, twisted trees were a memorial, but also vaguely unsettling. Their tortured limbs didn’t seem at peace as they scratched at the sky.

  “Nice to meet you, Mel,” he replied. He looked from me to the forest around us and nodded as if we’d been more formally introduced by the leaves in the trees.

  The ashes had settled onto the dirt and they darkened as they soaked up the moisture Tom had sprinkled on the ground. There was no sense of relief. No sudden sense of closure claimed me. Granny had warned me. It felt like a beginning instead of an end. My first noon on Sarah’s mountain. I tingled with the knowledge that it wouldn’t be my last. “You and Granny don’t get along,” I said. I wanted to pin him down. To define him. In the course of one morning he’d been too changeable for the keen perceptions I usually could count on.

  “I noticed she gave you some tea. Be careful. That old woman is always brewing something,” Walker said.

  “You think she doesn’t know what she’s doing,” I surmised. I crouched to place the urn on the ground and only when I rose with empty hands did my heart spasm in acknowledgment of what I’d done. Sarah’s life was over and every contraction of muscle that continued to give me life caused me pain.

  “Oh, she knows exactly what she’s doing. I’m just not sure you know what you’re getting into,” Walker said. My chest burned inside the way ice burns against skin, but even though I was painfully numbed from the heart out, I turned because his voice had come from farther away. He was finally moving toward the place where the trail resumed on the other side of the garden’s clearing. “It would be safe to assume that every bag of herbs she hands out has strings attached. And I’m not talking about the ones that tie them.”

  “You’re a scientist. You can’t believe…” I began. My screaming heart thumped harder in my frozen chest than it should. I’d been drinking a Ross herbal brew for years and I was fine. Perfectly fine. Not hexed or bespelled in any way. But hadn’t Granny said the coffee interfered? I didn’t believe in hocus-pocus. I’d believed only in Sarah and Sarah was dead. Even a fighter could get tired.

  “What I believe is that I won’t be drinking one of Granny’s concoctions anytime soon,” Walker said. “And neither should you. You should head back to Richmond. Say goodbye to your friend and go back to the city while you still can.”

  “While I still can?” I asked. The tone of his voice was lighthearted, but there was no mistaking the warning in his words.

  “Once the wildwood has you, it never lets you go,” Walker said. He had paused at the opening to the trail. Behind him, cool green shadows waited. I noticed his eyes were the same moss-in-shadows green. In fact, the colors around him didn’t only echo the color of his eyes. The multiple browns and golds in the waves of his hair and his lightly tanned skin blended with his surroundings so it was hard to tell where the woods began and he ended.

  “Does it have you?” I asked softly. My heart went warm and quiet without my permission. Ice thawed. Thudding eased. He suddenly looked nothing like a scientist and everything like a being who belonged among the trees. He was a creature of hush and masculine grace that somehow looked more at home in the wilderness than he would look among men.

  How could I be comfortable with this chameleon man? Even for a second? Loss had obviously made my radar spotty and my defenses faulty.

  “Always has. Always will,” he said.

  He turned and walked into the forest with a light, steady stride that would eat miles before the end of the day. In seconds, he was gone. Only then did I realize I was all alone in the garden. What’s more, the urn was gone. Tom must have silently cleared it away when he left. It hadn’t belonged here, a stark, terrible object wholly unnatural in a garden. My usual defenses were faulty here for a reason. Frigid veins didn’t belong. In the city, I could stay as detached as I pleased, anonymous in the crowd. The wildwood demanded warmth. Inspired it. I could grieve, but I also had to live on. Here, there was a natural cycle of birth, growth, death and rebirth that had to be maintained.

  The black locust with the crooked limb caught and held my attention for several macabre moments. I could almost hear the sound of the rope from my nightmare. Murder wasn’t natural.

  Cree-cree, cree-cree.

  A woman had died here. I’d seen her corpse as clearly as if I’d been the one standing at her bloodstained feet.

  Clouds suddenly covered the sun and I shivered in the shadows. Even in the clearing, the forest had taken over the garden as soon as the sun was hidden. I looked up and was comforted by the slide of fluffy white over the bright orb, confident its beams would be back in a little while.

  I didn’t wait.

  Granny would be waiting for me. She’d told me to come and find her. I brushed my fingers along the leaves of Sarah’s sapling. Not to say goodbye. I would be back. In spite of the nerves that skittered along my spine when I walked past the crooked locust, I didn’t consider accepting Walker’s advice on leaving.

  The ghost tendrils had taken hold. My heart squeezed in their grasp. Sarah had wanted to come back because this was her home. Granny had said this was a beginning and I could feel the start of something in me. Curiosity fought to clear the fog of grief. I wanted the nightmares to end, but I also wanted to understand what was happening. I couldn’t do that by running away.

  Four

  He hadn’t been here for a long time. Dirt against paws. Damp earth. Bitter bark. Spit after nibble. Not good to eat. He sneezed several times. Explosive shudders were pleasant. Cleared the house dust from his nose. He kept to the edges of the strip of bare ground he followed. The cover of undergrowth gave cool, blanketing shadows. Tickles in his ears and in his gut whispered, “Safe. Safe in the shadows.” But there was a burning too. Like hunger but not. Like seeking a mate but not. The burn forced him from his soft hidey-hole indoors.

  Nose and ears. Constant twitching. Run. Smell. Listen. Taste. He’d been quiet, hidden for an age.

  But he’d been waiting.

  Crafted from a love ferocious, he’d risen when his innards rustled in response to a newcomer. But he’d been too slow. Frayed threads and moth-chewed herbs became flesh and blood. Pain. Then the burning began. Go. Go. More than a charm. Go. The newcomer had gone, but his gut still burned. Down the stairs. And through to outside. Moving answered the burn. Joy after years of hibernation.

  No whispered songs revitalized him. No new gard
en growth freshened his insides. No needle and thread repaired his wear or fade. All different now. He hadn’t felt the touch of a powerful hand in so long. His once lavender heart pounded in his chest. He breathed. In and out. Too fast. Frightened.

  Different. But he remembered enough.

  He followed the scent of the newcomer’s footsteps to the wild place. Many times, long ago, he’d been carried to the wild place in a pocket. This time, he had to dodge around death. A long, slithering deathly thing. Slick. Quick. Swallower of him. But not. The burn made him quicker, slicker. He escaped, and then froze in a clump of tall grass. More tickles to teach him. He hid. The shadow of a hawk flew over. Chilled him to his newly formed bones.

  But nothing stopped him.

  And the longer he continued the stronger and clearer he became.

  He was old and frayed, but he’d been created with a loving intent that gave him life. There were bad dreams to be battled, still, and fear to be soothed. This was the burn in his belly. His purpose. Not for the girl who’d had to leave him when she’d been taken away. She’d been very brave to place him, one last time, wet from tears, beneath her pillow before she left. But even he knew with his lavender brain that he couldn’t stray far from the plants and wild place of his making. Else he’d be nothing but string and dried stuff.

  The girl had left him so he wouldn’t “die.” Maybe she had known he should watch and wait for another.

  Finally, he made it to the wild place. He sniffed every tendril and vine. The tickle and the burn led him to the ones he needed.