Next Ms. Taft came in Jackie’s room. “Time to get up, Jackie. First day of school, sweetheart.”
Jackie must have gotten out of bed fast because she said, “Wow, you’re bright eyed and bushy tailed this morning. Do you know what you’ll wear?”
“Yes,” he said.
When Raven heard the door close, she peeked out of the closet. Jackie stared at her with wide eyes.
“I forgot to get up,” she said. “Will your mom come upstairs again?”
“Not unless Huck doesn’t get out of bed.”
“Go wake him up.”
“He’s probably awake. He usually gets up faster than I do.”
The door opened too quickly for Raven to hide. “Who are you talking to?” Huck said, bursting in. He gaped at Raven.
“Shh! Close the door!” Jackie said.
Huck closed it behind him. “Why are you here?” he whispered.
“I was cold,” she said.
“Her mom made her leave her house last night,” Jackie said. “She was mad because Raven asked to go to school.”
“Oh my god,” Huck said. “Did she hit you or anything?”
Raven shook her head.
“Don’t tell Mom,” Jackie said.
“If she finds out, she’ll probably call the police,” Huck said.
“The police!” Jackie said.
“Yeah. It’s illegal to treat your kid like that.”
Raven’s stomach felt sick, and her legs were wobbly.
Huck saw how scared she was. “I won’t tell her,” he said. He looked out the door to make sure his mother was downstairs. “Stay up here while we have breakfast and leave after we go. Use the back door and make sure you lock it behind you. The key is under the rooster.”
“Can I get dressed in your room?” Jackie asked.
Huck smiled. “Yeah.”
Jackie got his clothes and backpack and left the room. Raven sat in the closet in case Ms. Taft came back. After the boys had been downstairs for a while, Huck came back and whispered, “Raven!”
She peeked around the door.
He held out a bowl. “Here’s something to eat.”
It was oatmeal with strawberries and sweet soy milk.
“Clean the bowl before you leave or she might get suspicious,” he said.
“Okay.”
“Are you going home when you leave?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t run away or anything,” he said. “My mom will help.”
Raven knew she would, but her help could only make everything worse.
“Let’s go, Huck!” Ms. Taft called up the stairs.
“Bye,” he said.
“Bye.”
When she heard their car pull away, she sat down to eat the oatmeal. But being in the house without them was too sad. She had to leave that terrible silence. She flushed most of the oatmeal down the toilet, washed the bowl, and put it in the cupboard. Then she left and locked the door, placing the key under the rooster.
She walked toward her house because she was cold and there was nowhere else to go. The morning was gray and chilly. The leaves were starting to turn colors. The spirits of the earth were telling her that everything was changing.
She sloshed in her stocking feet through the stream, stopping at the Wolfsbane. Madonna looked very different without the moss on her face in daylight. A pale, round face surrounded in green. As if last night’s bright moon had turned her into a moon-faced forest spirit.
Please, Moon Madonna, don’t let Mama send me away again. I don’t know where to go.
10
Her steps slowed as she neared the house. She didn’t know how long Mama wanted her to stay out of sight. Maybe forever.
She peered through the trees and saw Mama sitting on the porch steps. Mama with her sharp sight spotted her seconds later. “Raven, come to me,” she said, standing up. “Don’t be afraid.”
Raven walked out of the trees. She was surprised when Mama almost ran and pulled her into her arms. “Oh, my miracle. My dear Daughter of Raven! I was so worried!”
When at last she let Raven go, she had tears on her pale cheeks.
“Why didn’t you come home?” she asked.
“You told me to go from your sight.”
“I only meant in that moment. When I was angry.”
“You aren’t anymore?”
“I’m very disappointed in you. For lying. For going to those people’s house and keeping it from me.” She lifted Raven’s chin with her fingers. “What do you have to say?”
“I’m sorry, Mama.”
“Good. Now, let’s go inside. We have much to discuss.”
Inside, Mama had her change into clean clothes. She told Raven to sit on the couch in the living room, and she stood in front of the stone fireplace.
“Tell me why you want to go to school. Is it the lessons or those boys you met?”
Raven dared not lie again. “The boys.”
“I thought so,” she said in a bitter voice. “You will find, Daughter, that gangs of children at a school are not something to want. They will see you’re different, and they will hurt you.”
“They would never hurt me.”
“Perhaps not them, but there are those who would. And once you go to that place, you’re trapped. You will be the raven’s child caught in a cage. You’ll feel like a bird beating against glass in your desperation to get out. The freedom of your present life, the trees and grass you see out the school windows, will be taunting misery.”
“You’ll let me go?”
Mama sighed and didn’t say anything for a while.
“School started today,” Raven said.
“I know.”
That surprised Raven.
Mama paced back and forth in front of the fireplace. She stopped and said, “I’ve decided I should trust the instincts of my Daughter of Raven. As I’ve said, you will one day be more skilled at communing with earth spirits than I am. Because you’re half-spirit yourself. You were a gift from that world, and I must listen to what you and they want.”
She stepped closer, her white-blue star eyes wet. “The spirits punished me last night by taking you into their fold. Your absence was terrible. I was afraid they would never give you back.”
Guilt made Raven’s cheeks burn. She had been with Jackie, not with the spirits. But the bad feeling went away when she realized the spirits had sent her there. They had made her cold and wet. They had sent her to his house to get warm.
Mama said, “I’ve been asking the spirits for help with a problem that has come up since you turned five. I believe your kinship with the spirits connects to my search for answers. Your three Askings—the one that bonded you with the boys and the two that expressed your strong desire for school—have shown me how I must respond to this problem.”
“What problem?” Raven asked.
“When you came into being, you didn’t have a birth certificate—proof of your birth in the human world. The outer world didn’t know of your existence. But my sister and Dr. Pat insisted your birth had to be recorded or there could be trouble. I saw the wisdom in that and let the doctor record your birth.”
“I thought we must never speak of the miracle to anyone.”
“We must not. But not having a certificate might have brought worse suspicion. The information I gave for the certificate is a false version of your birth. It says your father is an unknown person. It has times and dates that aren’t true.”
“Are you in trouble for making it up? Is that the problem?”
“The problem is you’re now known to the outer world. It was inevitable. I couldn’t hide you forever. Once a child is known in this country, she must be schooled. And the government oversees the schooling even if a parent wants to do it at home. In recent months, my sister has sent me many warnings about this. She mailed government papers to me. They say I have to be qualified enough to teach you. I have to have a planned program. They will come here and stick their nose
s in my house and my teaching. They may say I’m not capable of being your teacher.”
“You’re a good teacher!”
“They go by their own rules, Daughter. Out there is an ugly machine that wants to control everyone, and now its lens is focused on you. They will make you be schooled their way, file papers for everything you do, pay taxes to the government. Buying this property and building this house was a nightmare of government machinery you can’t imagine.”
She couldn’t imagine. She didn’t want to. She wanted only to think about going to school. Was Mama really going to let her?
“Am I going to school today?”
“Not today. But you will. I can’t have the government snooping around here. I think the recent events are a warning. When the spirits took you last night, they were showing me what could happen if you don’t go to school. You must go and pretend to be a human child to protect both of us.”
Raven was too excited to sit. She got off the couch. “When will I go? Tomorrow?”
“You are very eager despite my warnings. You want school so badly?”
“Yes!”
She had a strange look in her eyes. “Sit down, Raven. I have more to say.”
Raven sat and folded her hands in her lap.
“I have made two decisions along with allowing you to go to school. The spirits have guided me in these judgments.”
Raven knew by the sharp look in her eyes that she wouldn’t like the decisions.
“First, I have decided we will spend summers away from here from now on.”
Raven’s chest felt hollow. “Where will we go?”
“My parents owned a large ranch in Montana. When they died, they left it to my sister and me. Sondra took the big house, and I have the cabin. The cabin sits far from the house in beautiful country. It’s next to a stream and looks out on mountains.”
She sat next to Raven and took one of her hands in hers. “I promise Daughter of Raven will be happy there. My mother started taking me to the cabin when I was a few years older than you. Living in the big city of Chicago made me feel sick most of the time. But I would get better at the cabin. My mother took me there every summer, and we went any time I got sick. I learned how to speak with earth spirits in that place.”
Raven doubted she would love Montana as much as she had loved her summer with the boys.
Mama let go of Raven’s hand. “The second decision has to do with a promise you will make. Will you do that?”
“What promise?”
“You will never again set foot on the land of the teacher and those boys.”
Tears stung her eyes. “Mama . . . why?”
“I will not have them influencing you, distracting you from your kinship with the earth spirits. I will not have that teacher woman digging around in our lives. No doubt she’s already asked questions about me.”
Ms. Taft had asked questions. Mostly she had wanted to know if Mama hurt her.
“Has she?” Mama demanded.
Raven nodded, tears spilling over her cheeks.
“I knew it,” Mama said in an angry voice. “You’re too young to understand why this is dangerous for you. If you go too far into your bond with those people, you’ll think you can trust them. You’ll tell them about your father.”
“I won’t!”
“I have talked to the spirits, and they have verified this danger. You will go there no longer. And when you see those boys at school, you will tell them I don’t want them on my property ever again. Tell them I have a gun.”
Raven’s tears fell faster.
Mama wiped them away with her fingers. “You’ll see them every day at school. That will have to be enough.”
Could it be enough? Raven thought of the boys piled around her on the couch, the games, the joking and laughter. But Raven would have seen them only on weekends now that school had started. If Raven went to school, she would see the boys and Ms. Taft five days a week.
“Do you want to start school tomorrow?” Mama asked.
“Yes.”
“I’ll call the school now. But first, tell me you’ll never go to that house again. Do you promise?”
Raven felt tricked by her spirit kin. She would get what she had asked of them with all her soul. She would go to school. But what she would lose might make her wish she had never asked.
“Raven, speak your promise aloud,” Mama said in an angry voice.
“I promise I won’t go to the boys’ house.”
“Not one foot on their land.”
“Not one foot.”
Mama stood. “The spirits will be watching you, Daughter of Raven. They will tell me if you break this promise.”
In that moment, Raven hated her father. If she went outside and saw a raven spying on her, she would want to throw a stone at it.
Just thinking that scared her more than anything ever had.
PART THREE
DAUGHTER OF THE WILD WOOD
1
Leaving the western mountains was like leaving home. For a year and a half, Ellis had stood on their peaks, drunk water straight from their rushing rivers, bathed in waterfalls, meditated in meadows aflame with alpine flowers, spent hours and hours watching the mountains’ marmots, pikas, moose, elk, bears, jays, dippers, and hummingbirds. The western mountains were like rooms in a familiar house.
But she didn’t want a home.
Allons! we must not stop here,
However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this
dwelling, we cannot remain here . . .
The words always brought her back to the night Caleb introduced her to the “Song of the Open Road.” He had read in her lamplit tent after they bathed in the mountain river, after they made love, at first numb and dripping ice water but soon streaming with sweat and in need of another rinse, washing in Whitman’s words instead.
She’d found a used paperback of Leaves of Grass in a Montana bookshop a month after the night with Caleb. It had the same cover as his copy. She often read the poems as she fell asleep in her tent. A better way to self-soothe than whiskey.
She turned onto a new highway. For two weeks, she’d been gradually moving eastward, camping along the way. She had to leave the west, at least for a while. She didn’t want to get too used to any one place. “Forever alive, forever forward,” as Caleb had quoted.
She was eager to see the woodlands of her childhood and college years. A conversation with hikers she’d met in Colorado had given her the idea to hike the Appalachian Mountains during spring bloom. Spring beauty, woodland phlox, trillium, lady’s slipper, bluebell. She hadn’t seen eastern wildflowers for a long time. For almost two years, since the day Viola was abducted.
But she wouldn’t think about that. She was about to cross the Mississippi River. She saw the bridge ahead.
She had her foot on the brake. She didn’t know why. She wanted to turn the car around. Go back west. All the ghosts were still there, waiting for her on the other side of the Mississippi.
She felt them coming closer as the bridge neared. The sweet smell of a baby cuddled in a towel after a bath. Jasper climbing into her lap to sleep. The softness of the boys’ hair. The weight of Viola’s body as she nursed. The two freckles next to River’s nose. “Heckle and Jeckle, my favorite freckles,” Ellis used to say, dabbing her finger on each.
No, she wouldn’t let a trajectory, the simple act of heading east, do this to her. She was better. So much better. She’d been sober for three months, the longest she’d ever maintained sobriety. She was strong from climbing mountains. She could go east if she wanted. Nothing would stop her.
“Check out this bridge,” she said to Gep. “Pretty cool, isn’t it?”
The blue pony had been riding on her dashboard since last summer. Ellis had worried she might lose him every time she packed camp. She’d stuck him to the dashboard with little pieces of duct tape under each hoof. Exposure to the sun was fading his blue plastic, but nothing could erase his tireless smile.
Ellis took a deep breath as she arrived on the eastern side of the river.
“These are your old stomping grounds,” she told the pony.
Gep’s smile suggested he felt better about that than she did.
She was talking to the pony too much. Like she used to before she got better. She needed rest. She’d been up at dawn, hiked for four hours, and been on the road longer than expected because of a traffic jam. She was heading for a campground in a nearby national forest. It had a stream where she could bathe.
She found it at twilight, relieved to see it was empty. Navigating the winding gravel roads to find it was difficult, and people rarely camped on weekdays in cold weather. She’d been worried turkey hunters might be there. She didn’t mistrust hunters per se, but she avoided men with weapons and alcohol when she was in an isolated campground. She’d gotten a bad feeling a few times in the past.
She put up the smaller of her two tents and went to bed with a book. Reading at night had replaced drinking. She couldn’t sleep unless she read at least a few pages. If she was too tired to get into a book, she read poetry.
She’d been asleep for several hours when she was awakened by the slams of car doors. A man swore about how cold it was. “Go get a room at the Hilton,” another man said.
She looked outside. The men, probably hunters, were only a few campsites down from hers.
The noise gradually abated, and she went back to sleep. She woke as the sun came up, ate, then put her bathing supplies in her backpack and headed to the trail.
Billows of clouds in every shade of gray hung low over the forest. The forest stream was beautiful with the stone bluffs rising over it. Its rocky pools were clear and deep. When she was far from camp, she bathed with vegetable soap so she didn’t harm the water ecosystem. She cleaned and changed into fresh clothes with practiced quickness. Then she washed her soiled clothes and put them in a plastic bag that she stuffed into her backpack.
She rubbed leave-in detangler into her hair and sat on a rock to pick the knots out. Her unruly curls were long past her shoulders now. Her hair hadn’t been that long for years. Since Zane used to call her Lion Queen and chase her around growling. Since Mick used to say he’d seen a bird fly out of it.
The Light Through the Leaves Page 14
