The Light Through the Leaves

by Vanderah, Glendy

Dr. Pat saw that Raven was listening and asked her if she liked playing outside. “Yes,” Raven said, her full attention on the conversation across the room.

  “Please don’t teach her those things you do,” Aunt Sondra said.

  Mama turned to face her. “What things?”

  “You know what,” Aunt Sondra said, almost in a whisper. “The magic or whatever you call it.”

  “I never called it magic,” Mama said.

  “Your religion, your obsession—I don’t know what it is or where you got these ideas, but please don’t pull her into it. Living in this isolated way is going to be tough enough for her.”

  Dr. Pat talked, trying to keep her from hearing, but Raven ignored her. She used the sharp hearing of her father the raven to stay focused on what Mama was saying.

  “What do you mean, tough enough for her?” Mama asked.

  “You know what I mean! She won’t fit in. You know how that feels! Don’t you want her to feel comfortable in the world when she grows up?”

  “I feel very comfortable in the world,” Mama said. “I have since I stopped trying to please you and Father. Mother was the only one who understood. She let me be who I am.”

  “Will you let Raven be who she is?”

  Raven’s knee felt funny when Dr. Pat tapped it with the rubber hammer, but Raven kept her attention on her aunt and Mama.

  “All parents guide their children,” Mama said. “You did with Josh. You took him to Bible school and church. You educated him according to your views. You raised him to sit on the board of our father’s corporation. How is my parental guidance any different?”

  “I didn’t raise my son to be part of our company,” Aunt Sondra said. “He showed clear interest in the business from a young age.”

  “Are you certain you didn’t pull him into your obsession with Father’s business—your magic, your religion, or whatever it is you call it?”

  Aunt Sondra stared at her with stormy eyes.

  Raven smiled. Mama had won. This time, Aunt Sondra hadn’t made her into that weak person Raven didn’t recognize.

  Mama walked over and helped Raven get dressed.

  “She’s healthy as can be,” Dr. Pat said.

  “Would you like lunch before you leave?” Mama asked the doctor. “It was nearly done cooking when you arrived.”

  “It smells delicious,” Dr. Pat said.

  “It’s a deer,” Raven said. “Mama and I cut it up ourselves.”

  Aunt Sondra grimaced. “You kill deer on your property?” she asked Mama.

  “Tell the story, Raven,” Mama said.

  “It got hit by a car,” Raven said.

  Now both the doctor and her aunt looked upset. “You eat roadkill?” Aunt Sondra asked.

  “It was still alive, and the person who hit it drove away,” Raven said. “When she died, we brought her home in our truck. We took her out back, and Mama showed me how to cut her into pieces. A lot of her is still in our big freezer.”

  “Cutting up the deer didn’t upset you?” Aunt Sondra asked.

  “It was sad that she died young,” Raven said, “but I didn’t mind the cutting. It’s better to use the meat than waste it. And Mama taught me all the parts of her body. She called it a biology lesson.”

  “How do you know how to butcher a deer?” Aunt Sondra asked Mama.

  “I have many talents you know nothing about,” Mama said. She gave Raven a secret look, and Raven returned it. Because only they knew Mama could ask the earth for a baby and get one.

  “Would you like a venison sandwich before you leave?” Mama asked the two women.

  “No, thank you,” they said at almost the same time.

  Mama showed them out the door. After she fastened all the locks, she knelt and took Raven’s two long braids gently into her hands, as she sometimes did. “You’ve done well, Daughter of Raven,” she said. “I’m very proud of you. After we eat, let’s walk up the hill trail.”

  “Will we ask for something?”

  “What do you want to ask?”

  “For Aunt Sondra to never come back,” Raven said.

  Mama laughed and tugged her braids. “No, Daughter, we will not ask this of the earth. My sister truly cares about you, though she shouldn’t interfere in your upbringing. You have to be careful what you ask for. What if you need her in the future?”

  “Why would I need her?”

  “If something happens to me, you’ll need her help,” Mama said in a serious voice.

  “What would happen to you?”

  “All things pass from this life into the life of the earth. You know this.”

  Raven’s heart hurt just thinking about it. “Nothing will happen to you. And even if something did, I wouldn’t need my aunt. I’d go to my father.”

  Mama smiled. “Oh, would you, now? You’d ask a great and mysterious spirit for help?”

  “I would. And he would come, because I’m the best daughter he ever had.”

  “You certainly are,” Mama said, hugging her tight.

  3

  Raven sat in the bean tent made of branches and looked around at her first garden. The once-brown patch was now green. To put seeds in soil and watch the plants grow was almost as miraculous as Mama asking the earth for a baby and getting one.

  She flopped down on her belly and watched a beetle crawl up a leaf of lettuce. Ants scurried busily like people she saw in town. A white butterfly floated over the garden like a cloud.

  “Raven,” Mama called. “Come here.”

  Raven got up and met Mama as she came out of the woods from her walk. She had something in her hand. Mama uncurled her fingers, and there in her palm sat a naked baby bird with a few pinfeathers.

  “Steller’s jay,” Mama said. “A raven killed all the babies but this one. It was on the ground beneath the nest.”

  “Will we feed it like we did with the baby robin?”

  “You will,” she said. “Because your kin made the bird lose her home and family, you will make amends.”

  “But won’t my father be mad if I help it when his kin wanted to eat it?”

  “I considered that before I helped it,” she said. “But the raven stared at me as if to give me a message. I believe he wanted me to bring this bird to you. Caring for it by yourself will be like getting lessons from your kin. Ravens and jays are in the same family. Do you remember the name?”

  “Corvidae,” Raven said.

  She nodded. “Maybe the raven wants you to see what it’s like to become a bird, to feel closer to your kin.” She closed her fingers around the bird. “She needs to be kept warm until she grows feathers. She’s been warmed by her nestlings and parents.”

  “I’ll get the pouch.” She ran inside to get the “nest” they had used for the robin, a fabric pouch with a foam bottom lined with pieces of soft flannel that could be removed for cleaning. She slung the strap over her neck, slipped on her hiking boots, and went back outside.

  Mama gently settled the jay into the fabric pouch. Raven closed the drawstring over her, leaving it open a little. The jay’s beady dark eye stared up at her through the opening. “She’s scared of me. I think she knows I’m Daughter of Raven.”

  “Being afraid and staying still are her only hope of survival when she’s in the presence of a predator. You’ll have to win her trust and make her eat. Do you know what to look for?”

  “Insects. Almost all birds feed them to their babies because they have lots of protein.” She didn’t know what protein was. She only knew it was something people and birds had to eat to live.

  “What else will you need?” Mama asked.

  “A beak.”

  “How will you get one?”

  “I’ll make it out of a stick.”

  “Do you have your knife?”

  Raven pulled her folding knife from her pants pocket and carefully put the pouch inside her shirt, settling the bird against the warmth of her chest.

  Mama patted her cheek. “Go to it, Little Mama. I won’t
see you until twilight. The bird’s mother feeds her until the light fades. She has to take advantage of every bit of light she can.”

  Raven entered the forest with purpose. She must find food for her baby or it would die. She must keep her warm or she would die.

  But first she needed a beak. She found a small, sturdy stick and whittled it into a rounded point. Then she rolled over a rotting dead branch. There was a centipede there. Maybe poisonous. She wouldn’t feed it to her baby. She rolled over more logs and dug in the leaves, catching a fat cricket. She squeezed its life away. Please forgive me for returning your spirit to the earth.

  She sat in the leaves and squished the soft part of the dead cricket onto the point of her stick. When she opened the pouch, the nestling scrunched in terror. “I’m your mama. Don’t be afraid.”

  She remembered how they’d gotten the robin to eat the first few times. They had to coax the nestling to open its beak by gently pressing on the hinge at the side of the beak.

  She pressed the stick with the cricket on the baby’s beak. It wouldn’t open. The cricket kept falling off the stick. She tried again and again. “I’m not giving up, baby,” she said. “You have to eat.”

  The bird didn’t understand her words. She tried the kissing sound Mama made to make baby birds open their beaks. But the baby was still too scared to eat.

  When the bird at last opened her beak wide enough, she pushed the cricket a little way down her throat. The bird swallowed it. Raven smiled. She thought the baby looked surprised that she had been fed by a scary girl. She tucked the pouch nest back into her shirt and went in search of more insects.

  She wandered over the land she’d been walking with Mama since before she could remember. The house Mama had built when Raven was a baby sat on ninety acres of woods and fields. There were forested hills they could climb, meadows, and a stream with salmon.

  By the time Raven neared the stream, the jay had eaten five or six times. She wasn’t yet begging with a wide-open beak, but she didn’t fight the food as much. Raven used the kissing sound to tell her food was coming each time she fed her. Soon the baby would know this was the language of her new mama.

  Laughter and voices drew Raven’s attention away from her search for insects. She crept through the thick shrubs and ferns until she could see who was there. It was three boys, two older, one younger. They were walking in the stream, all wearing shorts and gym shoes. The older boy with pale skin and orangey hair had his shirt off.

  “When did this happen?” the shirtless boy asked.

  “He came to his first practice two days ago,” the other older boy said.

  “No way. Chris is a basketball and football guy.”

  “And really good at baseball. I finally talked him into it.”

  “What position will he play?”

  “Probably third base. He’s got a good arm.”

  “And he’s awesome at batting,” the younger boy said. “He hit two home runs during practice.”

  “Our best pitcher was scared to pitch to him,” the dark-haired boy said.

  The orange-haired boy broke into laughter.

  Raven didn’t understand anything they were saying. But she wished she did.

  The boys had reached the deep pool in the stream. The two wearing T-shirts took them off and tossed them onto the bank.

  They all went under the water and came up flinging their wet hair.

  “Hoo, that feels good!” one of the older boys shouted.

  “Good thing the werewolf died,” the other older boy said.

  “But may God rest his badass soul.”

  “We don’t know for sure that the werewolf’s dead,” the younger boy said.

  “Are you afraid?” said the orange-haired boy.

  “No. I’m just saying we don’t know for sure.”

  “You’re scared!”

  “Shut up.”

  The young boy didn’t know the other boy had slipped under the water to grab his legs. He screamed because he hadn’t been ready for it. The boy standing above the water laughed and shouted, “Werewolf’s got you, Jackie!”

  Jackie was pulled under the water, struggling with the older boy.

  Raven didn’t understand what was happening. She left her hiding place to help the young boy, but she didn’t know how.

  The two boys beneath the water popped to the surface, the older one laughing, the young one shouting, “Jerk!” He splashed the big boy. All three started splashing each other and laughing. The big boy didn’t mean to hurt the smaller one, Raven realized.

  The young boy called Jackie noticed Raven standing on the shore. He stared at her with wide eyes. Within a few seconds, the two older boys saw her. No one spoke for a long time.

  “Hey,” the older boy with tan skin and dark hair said to her.

  She didn’t know what a boy saying “hey” to her meant.

  He waded toward her. “Sorry we’re in your creek.”

  “Yeah, sorry,” the orange-haired boy said. “We’ll go.”

  Raven didn’t want them to go. But the two older boys pulled on their shirts, staring nervously at her. The tall boy with orange hair had pretty blue eyes.

  Jackie waded to the creek edge and put on his shirt. He was looking at her the same way the older boys were. She had to say something or they would leave.

  “It’s not my creek,” she said.

  “Oh,” the dark-haired older boy said. “You aren’t the girl who lives with the rich divorced lady?”

  Was he talking about Mama? Raven didn’t know what divorced meant. But she knew rich meant a lot of money, and she supposed Mama did have a lot. She’d figured that out the last time her aunt visited.

  “I live here,” Raven said, “but I don’t own it. This creek owns itself.”

  The older boys grinned. “So, like, no one can own the earth and all that?” the orange-haired one asked.

  She nodded.

  “Her mom needs to meet your mom,” the orange-haired boy said.

  “Yeah,” the other older boy said.

  After another silence, he said, “We’d better get going.”

  “You can swim if you want.”

  None of the boys said anything. They didn’t want to swim in front of her. She would have to leave for them to stay, but she didn’t want to. For some reason, she liked to look at them. And she’d liked listening to them when they hadn’t known she was there. She wished she hadn’t come out of her hiding place.

  But now she saw that they expected her to say things to them. Maybe if she did, they would stay. “I like to swim here, too,” she said. “But today I was looking for insects.”

  “Insects?” the orange-haired boy said.

  “I’m feeding a bird.” She pulled the nest pouch out of her shirt. The boys drew closer as she opened the drawstring to reveal the baby jay.

  “What kind?” the older dark-haired boy asked.

  “Steller’s jay,” she said.

  “You had it in your shirt to keep it warm?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you take it out of its nest?” the orange-haired boy asked.

  “A raven killed all the babies but this one.”

  “Damn ravens,” he said.

  She didn’t like him cursing her father, but she couldn’t say anything about that to outsiders. She had promised Mama.

  Jackie reached a finger toward the nestling. When the bird opened its beak, he withdrew his hand quickly.

  “That’s the first time she did that!” Raven said. “She was asking you for food.”

  “She was?” Jackie said.

  “We should give her an insect to show her that was good.”

  “Where do you find one?”

  “Anywhere.”

  Jackie got out of the creek to help. Raven tucked the bird into her shirt and showed him the best places to look. The other two boys searched with them.

  “Here’s a moth,” the orange-haired boy said. He brought it to Raven with its wings pinched
in his fingers.

  Raven took the bird out of her shirt and opened the pouch. She pulled her beak stick from her pocket. When she took the moth and softly crushed it, the boys winced. Then she plucked the moth’s wings off and smashed its body onto her stick.

  “Never saw a girl who’d do that,” the orange-haired boy said.

  Raven cupped the nest in one hand and brought the insect on the stick toward the bird’s beak. The baby looked afraid of all the people standing around. Raven made the kissing noise with her lips. The bird opened its beak, and she quickly thrust it inside. It swallowed the moth and settled back into its nest.

  “Cool,” Jackie said. “I have a caterpillar.” He held the brown insect out in his fingers.

  “Do you want to feed her?”

  “From my fingers?”

  “She’s not old enough for that yet.”

  “You do it,” Jackie said, handing her the caterpillar.

  The orange-haired boy laughed. “He doesn’t want to squish it.”

  “Yeah? You do it,” Jackie said.

  “No, thank you,” the orange-haired boy said.

  Raven killed the caterpillar, put it on the stick, and gave it to Jackie. “Get ready,” she said.

  Jackie held the food close to the bird’s beak as Raven made the kissing noise. The bird opened her beak slightly, but Jackie was too slow, and the caterpillar fell into the nest.

  “Oh no,” Jackie said.

  “That happens sometimes,” Raven said. She took the stick, got the bird to open, and pushed the caterpillar far enough down to swallow.

  “Okay. I think I’ve seen enough squished bugs for one day,” the orange-haired boy said.

  The other older boy grinned.

  “What’s your name?” Jackie asked.

  “Raven,” she replied. Mama said she wasn’t allowed to tell people her whole name because she must never speak about being the daughter of a raven spirit.

  “Are you joking?” the dark-haired boy asked.

  “No,” she said.

  “A bird raising a bird,” the orange-haired boy said. “Makes complete sense,” he said, grinning at the other older boy.

  “I’m Jack,” Jackie said.

  “But we all call him Jackie,” the dark-haired boy said, rubbing his hand in Jackie’s wet hair.

  Jackie swatted him away.