Wildwood Whispers

by Willa Reece

  “Sometimes the mountain whispers more pleasant things to me,” Granny said. The twinkle was back in her eyes, but she closed them as she drank from her glass so I couldn’t read her mood. When she lowered the glass, the twinkle was gone, but I thought I heard it in her next words. “Walker might have warned you away, but he won’t be sorry to find you’re still here.”

  Mischievous twinkle or not? I was suddenly too sleepy to know for sure. I only knew that I wouldn’t dream about Sarah’s mother hanging in the black locust tonight. But not because of bittersweet cookies. Granny had filled my mind with thoughts of shadowed eyes and tousled hair, and it would be the mysterious biologist who followed me into my dreams.

  Ignoring the tingle definitely wasn’t the same as not feeling it. And maybe a little loosening in the privacy of my own thoughts wasn’t a bad thing after all.

  Tomorrow would be soon enough to accept I’d come to Sarah’s wildwood not to lay her to rest but to find her again in this place of lavender and secrets.

  Five

  Summer was the best time. Sarah’s feet were toughened by mid-June and she rarely had use for the recess-worn sneakers she’d had to endure during the school year. They sat, faded and forgotten, by the back door, while the tops of her feet turned golden brown in the sun.

  She didn’t care about the mosquito buffet of her briar-scratched legs or the wild tangle of her curly hair, kept as far as she could keep it from brush or comb. From dawn till dusk, and often well after the lightning bugs began to flicker and flash, she was free to play in the wildwood as long as some of her play involved lending a helping hand or bringing a ladleful of cold spring water to her mother in the garden.

  Her mom was always busy, but she was busiest in the summer when the garden became a jungle of fragrant ingredients that had to be tended, to just this side of tame, in order to be ready for harvest. Sarah learned what she could touch and what she shouldn’t right around the time she learned to walk. And yearly practice made her an expert at playing in the garden’s moss-carpeted clearing by the time she was ten.

  Enough of an expert to invite her best friend to play along with her, which was perfect because her best friend’s mother was best friends with Sarah’s mother. While the adults plucked suckers from fledgling tomatoes and deadheaded marigolds, the young girls set up a dollhouse made of sticks and stones by the creek. They used poplar leaves for rugs and pine knots for chairs. They twined honeysuckle vine into beds and bathtubs and used a large flat rock for a dining room table. Up from Sarah’s bedroom, they carried fashion dolls that had been improved with berry-tinted hair and dresses made from colorful silk scarves Tallulah Rey had found in her grandmother’s closet.

  And, of course, Lu sang.

  She was a singer. Had gotten in trouble at school for singing just as Sarah had gotten in trouble for knowing things when she shouldn’t—like which teachers were courting or when Mr. Thompson snuck away for an after-lunch cigar at recess. They were often in trouble together, standing in time out against the wall of the school, humming nice and low. Sarah could catch Lu’s tunes as soon as she thought them up. They were both “unique,” but not stupid. Way back then, they’d learned there was a time for singing and a time for pretending to care about coloring inside the lines and cutting carefully around the edges of things.

  Lu’s song was like Sarah’s feelings. It bubbled up constantly until Sarah could see it in her eyes even when she made no outward sound at all. At best, Lu could try to tend it, just this side of tame, like the garden—but it was always barely controlled, she said, still wild in her chest.

  So, they were different together.

  Lu could sing as often as she liked in summer, and every now and then the adults in the garden would pick up what she sang and go along with her. But only Sarah was able to sing the new songs that came from Lu’s own head. She knew the words and the tune almost as soon as Lu knew them herself. Sarah had learned never to sing those songs with Lu at school, but the wildwood garden loved Lu’s songs, so here, in the summertime, they usually sang while they played, as carefree as could be.

  Today, the adults had started whispering about something sad and serious and the girls had gotten distracted from their play by the sweet nectar of honeysuckle blossoms. It was a game they liked even better than dolls. So, they became fairies and abandoned their dolls to their sap-stained chairs. They flitted from vine to vine in order to pluck and suck the perfumy sweetness from the bottom of each bloom. For a while, the sweet nectar held their mothers’ whispers away. Fairies didn’t care about such things. They only wanted to flit and fly and race the bees from bloom to bloom. But girls who were only pretending to be fairies needed more than honeysuckle to offset scary talk of a disease that the garden couldn’t cure.

  “I’m lucky to have May to help. She’s crazy about Lu. Did you know she decided to make her a dulcimer? Tom brought her some walnut from a tree at the old homeplace up the road. The one the lightning felled last August,” Lu’s mother said.

  “Tom always knows what you need before you know it yourself,” Melody replied. “My great-gran would have said he hears the wildwood’s whispers.” Sarah’s mother stood and stretched her back before dusting the dirt from her hands. She draped an arm around her sick friend’s shoulders. “I wish there was more I could do.”

  The honeysuckle girls looked at each other above the blossoms. Sad, sad talk. Sorrowful times. It was summer, and that made it worse. Cancer was even more terrible with the buzzing of the bees and the tickle of moss between your toes.

  But there it was.

  The garden grew, and even as it did, parts of it died. Leaves turned brown and withered on the vine. Petals curled and wilted and fell to the ground. Tallulah’s mother wasn’t going to be well. Not ever again. Lu’s song was only a temporary softness before the hard goodbye.

  Sarah no longer felt like drinking nectar. Instead, she moved closer to her best friend. This nearness was a different kind of support than singing along by the schoolyard wall. Less rebellious and more a simple offer of comfort.

  A sudden rush of steps came from the undergrowth on the north side of the clearing. A young woman ran out of the trees and stopped to blink at them in surprise, as if the garden hadn’t been in these woods for a hundred years or more. Her dress was torn and her kerchief was loose, but Sarah could tell from the faded homespun fabric of her clothing she was from the Sect community on the other side of the forest.

  “Are you okay?” Melody Ross asked. Sarah stepped toward the Sect woman at the same time as her mother.

  But before they could reach the panting woman’s side, Tom came from the trees behind her. He always managed to walk through the wildwood without making a sound. He knew the hidden trails and pathways better than anyone else. This time his sudden appearance made them all jump because they’d already been spooked by the frightened Sect woman.

  “They’re looking for you, Mary. You can’t lead ’em here. Come with me,” Tom said. He took the young woman’s arm—it was always hard to tell how old the Sect people were because of their scrubbed faces and covered hair—and no one protested when he led her away. Not even Sarah’s mother.

  “Girls. Head to the house. We’ll be right behind you,” she said. “Don’t drag your feet. Don’t look back. Just go,” Melody ordered.

  Summer was the best time, but something had gone wrong. Even more wrong than the disease that was hurting Lu’s mother. There had been acceptance in the adults’ conversation earlier. Resignation. Grief. But now Melody Ross stood facing the wildwood in the direction the young woman had appeared. Her chin was up and her dirt-smudged hands were fisted at her sides. Mrs. Rey went to stand with Melody even though her steps were slow and unsteady.

  “But… Mom,” Sarah said. Lu’s hand closed over hers. Suddenly too human again, they stood together surrounded by sweet-scented drifts of honeysuckle blossoms. The honeysuckle would be no protection against whomever the woman had been running from.

  �
�If he follows her here…” Lu’s mother began.

  “Shhhh, Ruby. Let the girls go,” Melody warned. “Go,” she repeated to Sarah without turning her head. Summer was wild and free, but her mother was the law and even during summer Sarah obeyed.

  Melody Ross was Mom. But she was also the closest thing to a real fairy queen Sarah could imagine. Wisewoman. Caretaker. Wildwood tender. Whichever “he” might come from the trees would find Melody Ross and her garden in this clearing and he’d better back away. Sarah’s chest loosened. Her heart still pounded, but her fear became a feeling closer to ferocity.

  Lu followed when Sarah tugged her back toward the cabin. They heard nothing else. No shouts. No confrontation. If her mother was capable of rousing a honeysuckle blossom army, it fought silently while she and Lu huddled in Sarah’s room, no longer able to fly away.

  I stepped through damp morning mist and onto the sidewalk that hugged the slightly curved hook of Main Street.

  Nothing was straight and simple in Morgan’s Gap.

  The hollow where the town had been built opened up enough to allow streets to sidle this way and that, but here and there buildings backed up against the craggy hills. “Gap” was a misnomer. The rocky, rolling and often narrow landscape made the layout of the town haphazard. A walk through it seemed like a fun house stroll.

  The whole place and the people in it might as well have sprung up between boulder and brick like unexpected dandelions reaching for the sun.

  It had rained the night before and the moisture was rising as the sun began to heat the air. Granny kept a strict schedule. Early morning was for deliveries. Midday was for kitchen work—grinding, mixing, steeping and stewing. Late afternoon, when the sun had done its work to dry the plants from earlier dew and damp, was for the garden.

  The scent of tended soil and fresh growth—the acidity of lemon balm; the bitterness of aloe; the sharp, stinging aroma of mint leaves—was a welcome respite from feeling lost. Granny must have been a teacher many times in her long life. Her process was firmly in place. I’d slipped into the vacant slot of apprentice with an ease I didn’t usually feel. Maybe it was because my connection to Sarah made every task seem vaguely familiar, even though my own hands had never completed them before.

  Yesterday, I’d applied careful script to new labels for jars of dried herbs that had hung in Granny’s pantry since last fall. My label script was neater than my usual handwriting, but still a sort of proclamation. I’d never really been the type of person to leave my mark:

  Mel was here.

  “Good for arthritic knees” or “soothing for headaches” Granny had directed me to write on labels. I’d stared at the completed project for a long time after, wondering why the coals in my belly were kindled by such a simple task.

  I spent every evening before bed examining the pages of the Ross Remedy Book, trying to better understand my nightmares and the strange connection that still existed between me and the friend I’d lost.

  Granny had seemed to suggest that the hit and run hadn’t been an accident. That Sarah had been in danger even after she’d been sent away. In my whole life, I’d never felt truly safe, but the idea that a killer had been stalking Sarah for years seemed crazy. I was used to more mundane threats—bill collectors and customers more interested in getting your phone number than a cup of latte.

  I wasn’t a Ross or a wisewoman. The strange scribbles and sketches in the book meant nothing to me. I was simply the delivery girl for Granny’s stomach cures and wrinkle cream for customers who preferred to receive their products in the early a.m. before the town woke up. I allowed the simple routine to soothe me. The rental car service I’d used had an agreement with a local garage for pickup. Last week, a pimply faced teen had driven off with my best means of running away.

  So, instead of running, I walked everywhere I went.

  My last stop this morning was at a handcrafted dulcimer workshop that sat proudly in a prime spot on Main Street between a barbershop and an antique gallery housed in a former drugstore that still had the remnants of a soda fountain on display. Tallulah Rey was a well-known singer and songwriter in addition to being an artisan who custom crafted the instrument she also played. Her mountain dulcimers were treasured all the way to Nashville and beyond, as was her singing voice and her way with words. She probably could have left Morgan’s Gap years ago, but she hadn’t.

  The mountain was where the walnut wood grew in the thickets of her family’s homeplace not far from the Ross cabin. And her blind grandmother had known the mountain well before her eyes had failed. She’d be lost anywhere else. In Morgan’s Gap, she could still “see” as well as anyone else.

  I already knew the dulcimer craftsman. She was Lu in my dreams. Sarah’s best friend before she was forced to leave Morgan’s Gap. The shop didn’t open until ten o’clock, but Granny had told me all about Lu and her grandmother. They lived above the workshop where Lu made the dulcimers with lathe and chisel and her two gifted hands.

  In the shop’s window, a “No Pipeline” sign was taped beside an advertisement for sheet music.

  “Granny always knows when May runs out. Never have to ask,” the young woman said when I came through the shop’s door. It wasn’t locked. On the second floor, window boxes full of trumpet vines seemed to be the only sentinels to guard against theft… or worse.

  “She hears the wildwood’s whispers,” I softly replied, remembering what Sarah’s mother had said about Tom. Lu didn’t know we’d already been introduced by my dreams and Sarah’s memories. The sun couldn’t warm away the chilling memory of the Sect woman being chased through the woods. I stopped in the middle of the polished cherry floor and held on tight to the basket in my hands. Maybe it was my background that made me see the shadows around things. Maybe it was my nightmares. But suddenly I wanted to warn the African American woman who greeted me like an old friend that her smiles were too open and welcoming in a town that might still harbor a killer.

  “Everyone is already talking about Granny’s houseguest. She takes an apprentice from time to time,” the blind woman, May, said from her plush seat on a cushioned rocking chair in the corner.

  “I’m Mel,” I replied. As always, the darkness I carried wherever I went made me feel awkward. My friendship with Sarah had caused it to recede somewhat over the last ten years, but her death and the lucidity of my dreams had brought it rushing back. The trumpet vines should have heralded a warning when I arrived. Maybe I brought the shadows instead of simply seeing the ones already there.

  “Granny never had an apprentice in my lifetime,” Lu mumbled with a smile and a roll of her eyes her grandmother couldn’t see.

  “And you’re only twenty-three. I guess you know something,” May corrected with a tsk-tsk of her tongue against her teeth. Her eyes had failed, but her hearing was fine. The strands of gray in the thick braids she wore wound at the top of her head turned the coils into a silvery crown against her smooth, dark skin. As she spoke, she worked to place strings on the rosewood fretboard of a freshly made instrument in her lap. Her gnarled fingers carefully fitted the steel cord with quick, sure movements.

  I stood, still rooted, embarrassed because I knew I didn’t deserve special treatment from Granny, a woman these two people seemed to admire. But neither May nor Lu seemed to notice the scars on my hands or the shadows reflected in my eyes. They merely continued their morning routine while including me by offering up a third cup of steaming chicory, its bitterness cut by a dollop of heavy cream.

  It wasn’t coffee, which Granny had forbidden in no uncertain terms, but it was similar enough that I closed my eyes to savor the richness of the creamy liquid in my cup.

  “My mother taught me to like chicory over coffee. She came up from New Orleans. Married in Morgan’s Gap and stayed awhile,” May said. “Lu’s mother, rest her soul, was my daughter-in-law.” She’d set aside her work on the dulcimer to rock and sip.

  “My mother sang too. Oh, how she sang. Wish you could have heard her s
ing. You need a song. I can tell,” May continued. She hummed what I thought was an old hymn in between sips.

  As if May had thrown down a challenge, Lu set her cup down with a clink of china and turned to pick up a dulcimer that was obviously hers. Its box had a smooth, worn patina that only being constantly and lovingly played could have created, and it went to her lap as if it subtly conformed to the slight curves of her thighs. Seemingly without effort, Lu picked up the tune her grandmother had begun. Her deft calloused fingers picked and strummed in a rapid dance that was far too quick for shadows to catch.

  And then she sang.

  Her music was like the garden. It rose up from the wood, but it also seemed to rise up from her heart and soul, her blood and bones. My blood quickened in response, in a way I couldn’t explain. I was an outsider, but warmed by the chicory brew and the sweet contralto of Lu’s voice, I was somehow, not.

  I belonged.

  It had to be because of Sarah. My love for my dead friend forged a connection between me and the people who had loved her too.

  When Lu was finished, she set the instrument aside and picked up her cup as if she hadn’t casually given a stunning performance that had changed her audience.

  “Just like that,” May said. “Just like that. My Tallulah has her great-grandmother’s music in her. Yes, she does.”

  Lu had welcomed me, but her music had done something more. The sound had flowed through me to leave vibrations between the two of us that didn’t end when the song was over.

  “Thank Granny for the arthritis cream, Mel,” Lu said with another smile. Unlike her grandmother’s braids, Lu’s were a riot around her face, accented with colorful beads and a freed inch at each end left to curl this way and that in a hundred lash-like ways. She was beautiful, but I had to admit some of her beauty came from the superimposed ghostlike image of the girl she used to be courtesy of my dreams. She might be older, but something told me she would still sing whenever she needed to, come hell, high water or arithmetic lesson. Sarah told me. I could practically hear the words in her slight mountain accent so like Lu’s. “You’re welcome. Anytime. Granny says we’ll be friends. I’ve no cause to doubt it.”