Hannah and the Wild Woods

by Carol Anne Shaw

  “Yes.”

  “Did you … did you lose your family?”

  She hesitates for a moment. “Yes.”

  I try to think of the right words, but in the end I just say, “I’m sorry,” because I am.

  “I … we never saw that much of each other. My mother is a great … she travels a lot, and my father, well, I haven’t seen him since I was a baby.”

  I want to ask her why, but I don’t know her well enough to ask such personal questions. Anyway, families split apart all the time; it’s really none of my business.

  “My parents didn’t stay together. And my father, well, he was never really accepted by my mother’s cl … family. They were ashamed of him. I was taken away from him when I was a tiny infant.”

  “You could find him now, couldn’t you? I mean, if you wanted to. There are all sorts of ways you can track family members now. If you—”

  “NO!” Kimiko says suddenly. “He is dead.”

  Sabrina snorts a little and rolls over in her bed.

  “Oh! I’m so—”

  “He’s dead,” Kimiko whispers. “And it doesn’t matter, anyway. I never knew him to begin with, so how can I miss him?” I don’t know how to respond so I don’t say anything.

  “Hannah?”

  “Yes?”

  “What is your father like?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Tell me about him, and your mother, too. And your brothers and sisters?”

  My dad. My first inclination is to tell Kimiko how angry I am at him right now. About how he’s threatening to change everything about our lives that I’ve come to know and love. But instead I tell her how goofy and absent-minded he is, and about the kind of books he writes, and of course, about his serious caffeine addiction.

  “Caffeine?” Kimiko says. “Is that a drug?”

  “Oh, come on,” I say. “I know you have coffee in Japan.”

  She turns her pillow over and lies back down. “Tell me about your mother now.”

  I hesitate, but not for very long. I tell Kimiko that my mother was killed in a car accident when I was ten and how much I still miss her. How sometimes I think I can hear her talking to herself in another room, and I have to go and check it out, even though I know she isn’t there.

  “Sometimes I smell her, too,” I say, and then realizing how weird that sounds, add, “I mean, she wore this lemon essential oil every single day. And now, when I’m sad or something, I can sometimes smell the scent of lemons. I think it’s her way of saying she’s still there for me, you know?” I can’t believe I’m telling Kimiko all this. I hardly know her.

  “I like that story a lot,” Kimiko says quite matter-of-factly. “Any other family?”

  “My aunt Maddie,” I say. “She’s my dad’s sister. She’s pretty awesome. And there’s Nell, of course, and Riley and Ben, and Izzy and Ramona, too.”

  “You have so many brothers and sisters!” Kimiko says excitedly.

  “No, no.” I laugh. “They’re my friends. They all live in Cowichan Bay, too, but they’re like family to me.” My eyes begin to prickle a little, because I suddenly have a random slide show in my head of my “family” in Cowichan Bay—my home that is soon to be history.

  Kimiko hesitates. “But, they aren’t the same blood as you. How can they be your family?”

  “Hah. I guess it depends how you define the word.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, the way I see it, a family is a group of people who love you unconditionally. You know, who are there for you through thick and thin. People who have got your back, you know?”

  “My back?”

  “It’s an expression. It means they’ll stick by you. Or, take one for the team for you.” I frown. This is harder than I thought it would be. “It means that they won’t give up on you.”

  Kimiko is silent for a while, as though she is attempting to process what I’ve said. “And your friends? They are all like this?”

  I nod, because even though Izzy gives most of her attention to Tyler these days, and Max is off surfing in Mexico, I know they care about me. “Yeah,” I say. “They are.”

  “You are very lucky,” Kimiko says, but her voice is tinged with sadness.

  “Hey!” Sabrina hisses from across the room. “Can you guys please shut up? I’m trying to sleep. If I don’t get eight hours, I’ll look hideous in the morning.”

  I try, unsuccessfully, not to laugh. When Sabrina is once again snoring softly, Kimiko whispers, “Is that true?”

  “What?”

  “What Sabrina said? If she doesn’t sleep eight hours, she will become hideous?”

  I’m about to make a joke, but then I realize that Kimiko is being totally serious. How can anyone be so literal? “No,” I say. “That’s just Sabrina being dramatic. If you want to know the truth, she’s hideous most of the time.”

  When Kimiko has finally gone back to sleep, I decide that this has been the weirdest night I’ve had in a long, long time.

  An hour later, I’m still awake. Big waves are still breaking on the shore, and the house seems to shudder a bit with each and every one of them.

  To add to my worries about tsunamis, scorched pillows and creepy girls wearing nightgowns, there’s the one I have about Jack. I didn’t see him before I came to bed, and while it gets windy at home in Cowichan Bay, it’s nothing like this!

  That’s when I hear something—a bark more than a howl, but there’s something different about it. It sounds close! I get up to peer through the rain-splattered window at the expanse of beach in front of me. The porch light casts enough of a glow to reveal a shape down on the sand. Something with hunched shoulders, something that is staring out to sea. I watch as it waits, and then turns toward the lodge with a loose, loping gait. It’s a wolf, all right—a young one, not quite full grown. I know it’s a female by the way she squats to pee near some driftwood. She’s kind of skinny, and I can see some of her ribs show beneath her coat. When she jumps up onto the porch to sniff at the back door, her mottled grey fur and black-tipped tail are plainly visible. I watch as she lifts her head, and I swear she stares right at our bedroom window. She is as still as a statue.

  Norman, curled up on the mat in our room, suddenly raises his head.

  “It’s okay,” I whisper to him. “Go back to sleep.”

  When I look back outside, the young wolf is still there, still watching our window. Can she see me, I wonder?

  I ease open a little and peek my head out. “Hey, there.” At the sound of my voice, her ears twitch, but she turns and lopes off toward the beach again, then once more, sits down on her haunches in front of the churning ocean. It almost looks as though she is waiting for something. I should get a picture of her! I pad over to the nightstand to get my phone, but when I come back to the window, the wolf is gone.

  The rest of my sleep is broken up and punctuated with weird dreams, and by breakfast the next morning, a familiar throbbing begins directly behind my left eye. No! Just what I need: a migraine on my second day of work.

  The last one I had was on New Year’s Day. Max and I were hiking up Mount Tzouhalem, but we only managed to get halfway up before we had to turn around because my head got so bad. Back at home, Max put a bag of frozen peas over my forehead and pulled the curtains closed, and later, when I was feeling better, he made me ravioli and toast. I wish he were here. I miss him.

  “You okay?” Peter asks over breakfast.

  “I have a bit of a headache,” I say quietly. I touch my forehead and wince. Even my skin is starting to hurt.

  Not today. Not today. Not today.

  But as everyone starts clearing the breakfast dishes off the table, I know I’m losing the battle. When Ruth wipes off the remaining crumbs from the table, the oh-so-unwelcome waves of nausea begin to wash over me.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Sabrina says, pushing her chair in and banging it against the edge of the table. “You look like crap.”

  “Migraine
,” I whisper.

  “Everything okay here?” Ruth asks from the kitchen door.

  “Hannah has a headache!” Sabrina shouts. It feels like a punch.

  “Uh-oh,” Ruth says. “I bet the weather is the culprit. The barometric pressure is all over the place this week. It’s probably messing with your head.”

  “Ummmm,” I say, my stomach heaving. Suddenly, I feel worse than awful.

  Ruth makes shooing gestures with her broad hands. “Go. Get yourself upstairs. If anyone can sympathize with you, it’s me. Migraine is my middle name.”

  “It’s true,” Peter says. “Ruthie gets ‘em all the time.”

  Ruth nods. “The price you pay for being psychic.”

  I don’t know anything about that, but what I do know is that I need to be horizontal in a dark room before I toss my cookies all over the Artful Elephant’s beautiful hardwood floors.

  I limp upstairs and fall onto my bed in a grateful heap. I look at the mug on my night table, and despite my throbbing head, snatch it off the table. It still has a little tea left in the bottom of it, but the glass ball inside it has vanished!

  Chapter Eight

  I flip over my pillow. The scorch mark is still there but that’s all the evidence left of the mysterious glass ball. There’s nothing behind the night table either. Ignoring my pounding head, I get down on all fours and check under my bed, but all I find is a dime, some dust bunnies and a postcard to Ruth from someone named Robert in Fruita, Colorado. Where is it? But then I remember Kimiko, standing at the foot of my bed and how weird she was after I came in from the beach last night. My face gets sweaty and my stomach heaves. I crawl back into bed and pull the comforter right over my head.

  Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. Just sleep, Hannah.

  When I wake up four hours later, my headache is thankfully gone. The storm, however, has returned with a vengeance, just as they said it would. I place my palms flat against the window and feel the glass shuddering behind them. Through thick condensation, I see the tall Sitka spruce trees swaying back and forth, while big waves smash down on the shore. But there is no sign of the wolf; there is no sign of anyone else either.

  I reach into my backpack and pull out my oversized sweater and another pair of the work socks that Aunt Maddie snuck into my pack. I shake out the contents of the bag, but the only thing that makes a noise as it hits the floor is a dried-up tube of lip balm. No necklace. Where is it?

  My head feels better, but my eyes are still sensitive, and when I flip on the bathroom switch, the sudden flash of light is blinding. I squint and scan the counter. Wow. Sabrina has taken over the space, that’s for sure. There’s a blow-dryer on the bath mat, a hair straightener on the toilet tank, and a massive gold-zippered case stuffed with cosmetics and skin creams sitting on the floor near the cast-iron radiator. I’m not going to lie; I think about turning it upside down and going through it all. Let’s be honest here; the only reason she’s part of this project is because of her little shoplifting incident back home. My hand hesitates above the case, but in the end I resist the urge. Besides, if Sabrina is the thief, she probably has the necklace with her.

  I check out the rest of the bathroom. A few soggy towels are heaped on the floor, and there are long blonde strands of hair stuck on the mirror and in the sink. Being beautiful is clearly a full-time job.

  Distracted, I pick up a bottle from the counter: aloe and seaweed pore minimizer. I lean in closer to the mirror and study my face. Do my pores need minimizing? How would a person even know?

  I return the bottle and turn off the bathroom light. Norman is in the hallway, sleeping on the landing with his nose on his paws. He raises his head and looks at me hopefully. When he sees I am without treats, he gives me a mournful look, thumping his tail on the wooden floor planks as I carefully step over him. This is exactly why I like dogs. They just don’t care about seaweed wraps or the size of your pores.

  Ruth is sitting at the pine table in the kitchen, the one that no one ever eats at, sorting through some bills.

  “Well you appear to be about a million times better,” she says, looking up from her notepad. “Feeling okay?”

  “Way!”

  “Good! Weather changes can be so nasty if you’re prone to migraines. I guess I was spared this time around.”

  “You’re lucky.”

  “I’ve just boiled a kettle of water if you’d like some tea. Help yourself to any kind you’d like.” Ruth puts on a pair of glasses and holds the notebook a little closer in front of her face. The page is filled with about six columns, all of them filled with numbers. Bookkeeping. Gross. “Mugs are beside the toaster,” she adds.

  I measure some leaves into a stainless steel tea ball that has a small frog charm attached to the chain. Then I hook it over the edge of my mug and pour in some boiling water from the kettle. Immediately, I smell mint and ginger, and after a sip or two, the last bit of fogginess in my head clears completely.

  “This is so good,” I say as I settle into the faded floral armchair in the dining room. The sky outside looks dark and grey, and I’m not unhappy to be inside. I pull a knitted afghan up over my knees.

  “Don’t forget to empty your tea ball when you’re almost finished,” Ruth calls back.

  “Why?”

  “Tea leaves, silly. I’ll read them for you.”

  “Really?” I’ve always wanted to have my fortune told, and after what happened the summer I was twelve, well, I’m open to almost everything. “Can you do it right here?” I ask.

  “I can read them anywhere,” she says. “I’ve been doing them for almost forty years.”

  When I’m almost finished my tea, I fish out the ball and unscrew the top, dumping the soggy leaves into the little puddle of tea in the bottom of my mug. I hand it to Ruth, who swirls it around a few times before pouring most of it out over the sink. The tea leaves stick around the inside of the mug, and when she tips it upside-down, she holds it that way for almost a full minute. I notice that her eyes are closed, and her head is tilted back a bit. I seriously hope she isn’t going to go into some wiggy trance or anything.

  “There,” she finally says, looking at the tea leaves inside my mug. “We’re good to go. Come on; let’s sit at the dining room table. It’s more comfortable in there.”

  I leave the armchair a little reluctantly, but bring the afghan with me to the dining room.

  “This shouldn’t take very long.” Ruth spins the mug several times on the tabletop. When the mug stops spinning and the handle directly faces her, she wraps her palms around either side of the mug.

  A branch cracks outside and smacks against the side of the house. I jump, but Ruth remains unfazed.

  “Oh!” Ruth says suddenly, peering into my mug. “This is interesting!” She pauses for a moment, and holds the mug sideways. “Goodness! There’s a whole lot going on here.”

  “There is?” I lean forward to sneak a look. “Like what?”

  “Hang on. It isn’t as easy as all that. I need to study these images for a minute.”

  “What images? Like actual pictures of things?”

  She sighs and looks at me with her warm brown eyes. “Hannah? You have to be quiet for a minute, okay?”

  “Oh,” I say, blushing. “Sorry.”

  After what seems to be way longer than a minute, Ruth finally sits up straight. “Okay. We’re ready.”

  “Is it good or bad?”

  “It doesn’t work like that,” she explains. “But I do see some images that I think may hold some significance for you in your life. Whether they are good or bad influences, remains to be seen.”

  “So, what sort of images are you seeing?” I ask hopefully.

  “Well, there is definitely some sort of dog here.” She points to a spot halfway up the side. “See? And it’s inside a circle.”

  I look at the spot on the mug but all I see is a clump of leaves. I guess the clump could be a four-legged animal. But it could just as easily be a pig, or a
goat. Still, I’m no psychic. What do I know? As for the circle—it’s a stretch—but yeah, I see something like that.

  “So,” Ruth continues, “a dog is representative of a loyal friend or companion, and the circle … well, it could be literal, or it could be symbolic of a successfully completed task. You know, one end finally meets up with the other, to complete a journey.”

  I think about the wolf I saw in the middle of the night, and of course, the glass-ball necklace with the strange red spiral on it. Both of those things could be represented by seeing a dog and a circle, couldn’t they? But I don’t mention either of them. Aunt Maddie told me you should never offer up details when a psychic is doing a reading for you. You’re just supposed to let them tell you what they see or feel. So that’s what I do.

  “Is there anything else?” I ask.

  She hesitates. “Well … actually …”

  “Actually, what?”

  “There’s a number here. Yes. A nine. The number nine.” Ruth looks almost as perplexed as I must look, but she says it again. “Yes, definitely the number nine.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense to me.”

  “I never said it would.” Ruth smiles. “And it’s quite rare to see numbers. They usually don’t manifest. I’m not sure about this, not at all. Then again, you never know.”

  “You never know what?”

  “You never know … anything.”

  I slouch back in my chair and fold my arms in front of me. Are all mystics this vague?

  Chapter Nine

  The crew appears early for lunch. Everyone is red-faced and soggy, and it is plainly obvious that Sabrina is not impressed with the wild West Coast. Oddly enough, Kimiko looks relatively dry. In fact, it’s sort of hard to believe she’s even been outside at all.

  Peter piggybacks Jade down the hall and dumps her on her feet, pretending his back is broken from carrying the weight of her, which is hard to believe, because she’s a pretty small person.

  “Kind of wet out there,” he says, pulling off his coat.