When she woke the next morning, she decided she would give it back to Freddy. What if Janie took the book again and left it somewhere? What if the Girl had not been there to see? Giving the book directly to Freddy would be best. She would have to take the form of the Woman of the Woods.
There were other tasks for her this day, and the errand would have to wait. Her little friends needed tending as did some of the other animals. Their needs were more important, and the book was safe.
“Another day,” she cooed to the book as she wrapped it in peat moss.
Another day became two. Before she realized, too many moons had passed. She hadn’t meant to keep the book so long, and now she rushed out of her cave with it. She fretted about the delay. “Freddy must be worried.” The thought that she may have caused her distress made her fret more.
She was careless.
She didn’t notice her, until it was too late.
********
The day her mother passed, Freddy had been up since dawn to walk the hill, gathering eggs and roots and berries when she came across them. Her mother had shown her how. Her father should have been the one to teach her, but Freddy had still been very young when Stranger had begun to disappear into the woods for months at a time.
“He’s hunting,” her mother had always said. As a child, she had believed her. Freddy tried to remember her father’s face, but she could only seem to conjure a handful of memories of a man with dark hair and a voice like a bird's.
Freddy had turned up the path that led back to the cabin when she saw the young Girl with the feathers in her nest of orange hair. Her skin was dark from the sun, and when Freddy looked at her, she seemed to change. Her body remained a girl's but her cheekbones and her eyes moved to make her face look much older. The effect was only for a moment. She smiled at Freddy, and she could see tiny, pointed teeth. Then the Girl ran.
"Wait!" she tore after her, dropping her pouch of morning finds. "Wait!" desperately, she ran. She wouldn't lose her this time, she promised herself. She had seen the Girl before, and always the creature outran her. This time, she pushed herself faster. Her mother was dying, and the Girl might know how to help her. She had to know how, because she was always the same age when Freddy saw her.
The first time the Girl had surprised her, she had been eight years old and fishing with her older brother at the stream. The skin under her right ear had prickled the way it always did when there was something unusual in the forest. She felt a breath of wind come from her right, and when she turned her head, the Girl was standing in the middle of the stream. Her face was upturned into the shaft of sunlight that surrounded her. Freddy watched the swirls of the water around her legs and knew they were too powerful for her to be standing there as still as she was. She turned to James to tell him to look. She only took her eyes off of her for a quick moment, but when she turned back, the Girl had disappeared. When James asked her what she saw, Freddy lied and said a heron had been there.
The next time she saw the Girl, she was walking home from a trip to town. Her sisters had started a game of chasing the path of the sun on the forest floor and were farther ahead of her. A shower of acorns dropped just off her left. Pulling out her slingshot, she peered up through the leaves for the critter who caused the distraction. Instead of shiny black eyes, she found a pair of bright green ones blinking down at her. A face and neck coiled downward like a snake from behind a cluster of autumn orange. Freddy reached up to climb, but as soon as she touched the second branch, the Girl skittered away so quickly, she might as well have been a squirrel.
The third time in her life she had found her, she had almost touched her. She was practicing walking the forest like her mother had shown her, "Quiet like a doe." At seven, she had been better at it than her mother had ever been. By fifteen, she was as silent as a wolf slinking through the woods. She stalked through the meadow, and at the center she surprised the Girl this time. Her back was to her, and Freddy slowly reached out a hand to stroke the thick braid she wore that day. Inches from her prize, the wind shifted. The Girl bolted upright and turned to face her in one movement. It was the only time she would see her this clearly. She wasn't a girl at all, just tiny. Her face and skin seemed like they belonged on someone older. She had creases in her cheeks and wrinkles around her eyes. She changed her face in front of Freddy, and she saw the Girl turn young again as she watched. Then the Girl sprinted like a deer, but Freddy thought of the wolf that day and chased after her. Through the meadow and into the forest, across the stream and then upwards into the hills. Freddy never took her eyes off of her until she dove into a thick patch of snowberry shrubs. By the time she circled to the other side, there was no girl to meet her. A flock of tiny, gray titmice swooped up from the shrubs and vanished into the canopy.
This time, Freddy was gaining on her. She couldn't lose her, not now. Her mother was out of days, and the Girl could be the only thing that could tell her how to keep her here. If her lungs weren't burning, she would have called to her again. She chased her to the top of the hill and found her waiting. The cabin wasn't far from where they stood. Freddy was panting to catch her breath, but the Girl stood calm and poised. She raised a hand to the west, where her mother was lying in her bed, and Freddy knew she was out of time. She had finally caught her, the wild Girl, and it made no difference. She turned and ran home, knowing that her sisters would tell her that their mother had taken a turn for the worse. That they should set the wicker lounge outside by the forest edge as she wanted and place her there so the last thing she saw could be the place that she loved.
When she nestled her mother down into the chair, she mistook Freddy for her father. "Stranger?"
Not knowing what to do, she hesitated before she pressed her cheek to Janie’s. "I'm sorry, Janie, love. I did my best."
"Of course, of course," her mother murmured and looked out into the forest.
They stood behind her in her last hours. All of her children and a few others from town who had made the journey. The Jamesons and their sons, the man they called Angelo who was newly arrived to this country, the Boones and Joseph Mackey. Adair McLaren who had come to town to help build the Rupert Covered Bridge. He had spied his future bride crossing the nearly finished structure. He fell in love and stayed to build a life with her. She stood beside him now. Mrs. Gerber, a good friend to his mother through all the years, and of course, Jehan holding her young son close to her as she sobbed. Freddy had offered to care for her and the child. Jehan had given up so much of her life caring for her husband and then for Janie, too, after John had passed. Jehan said she would rather return to her family in town. While Freddy knew that was probably best, she felt alone at the thought of it. As alone as she felt now sitting by her mother’s side, even though the others made an arc of support behind her.
Janie’s eyes had drifted closed a little while ago. Freddy thought she would not open them again when she suddenly turned to look at her. "Has the deer been by yet?"
Freddy blinked at her. "A deer?"
"No, not a deer. The deer."
"I haven't seen any deer, Mama," she had started to say. She stopped halfway through, because she had glanced around the trees. There was, in fact, a deer. The buck that she had seen with the Woman of the Woods, standing perfectly still just inside the edge of the forest. She no longer tried to make sense of the impossible things that happened here on the hill. The animal she saw before her now was one of those impossibilities. That animal would have died many years ago, yet here it was with its unmistakable features. "I see it, Mama. It's here." She leaned in closer so the others couldn't hear her. "How did you know it would be here?"
She smiled as she could, and said, "Your father..."
Until Freddy's own passing, years and years later, she would wonder on her mother's final words. In the moment, though, there was too much else to distract her. Janie sighed, and a gush of air swept up from the woods and brushed each person on the hilltop. Freddy's skin pricked behind her ear, and she
looked back to the deer in time to see the animal turn and fade back into the gloam. She put her mother's hand on her stomach and stood to tell the others that she was gone.
They were glowing. All of the people behind her. They were glowing a faint, pale orange, and the sight of it stopped her. She looked down at her own arms and saw that she was glowing, too. No one else seemed to notice, though. Or perhaps they pretended that they didn’t. They hugged one another and talked about arrangements for the body. When they spoke to Freddy and she didn't answer them, they thought she was in shock and let her be. She was too spellbound by the sight of them.
"What does it mean?" was the only thought she had. She silently asked herself over and over again.
________
Chapter: The Girl
She turned away from the people on the hill who had gathered. She had made a glamour around her so that only her daughter and her wife would be able to see her in this form. She was only here for them.
She wanted to stand beside them. She wanted to hold Janie in her arms and smooth her hair.
Impossible now. Impossible. She had waited too long. She had hid with her shame thinking that it would dissipate, that her heart would hurt less if she put distance between them.
“So wrong,” she thought to herself. She slowly shed the form of the buck and regained her own limbs, her own breath, her own mind.
Janie, her love, was gone. Only Freddy remained. The other children, too, but they never came to the hilltop. Only for these last few moments had they made the journey home. They were spread so far and wide into the world. The thought of it made the Girl smile sadly. What purpose would they have to return now?
Freddy was all she had. She thought the name again, and realized she had dropped the book somewhere in the woods. She had been distracted by her thoughts as she carried the book back to her and had nearly walked straight into her path.
She looked around frantically and tried to remember where it had fallen. Retracing her steps was difficult. She had been so focused on outrunning Freddy. Outrunning her was something that should not be difficult for the Girl to do, yet today it was. Was Freddy getting faster? Or was she getting slower? Another troubling thought for her. She tried to count how many years she had lived but the eons merely jumbled together.
A brash caw drew her attention further down the trail, and there in a patch of shadow stood one of her little friends standing atop Janie’s book. The Girl felt a wash of relief. She stroked the creature’s feathers with gratitude as it hopped down from its low perch.
The leather still gave off the scents of lavender and rose, and the Girl brought the book to her lips while she inhaled. It was as if the book had made its own spell, and clung to Janie’s scent. She walked slowly along the path that would lead her home and held the book in this manner for a while.
She entered her cave in a daze, reliving Janie’s last moments over and over. She nestled down with the book again, and felt how strange the moment was that only this morning she had awakened in the same position and Janie was alive. She looked sadly at the tome and huddled closer to it. She let the scents drift around her.
How to give the book back now that it was all that remained of her love?
********
Suns and moons blurred together for a while, and the Girl remained in her cave. Her little friends would peek their heads into the cave and coo at her. Sometimes they brought her food and treats that they themselves liked to eat. She would smile as she took the mice and the frogs, and later she would let them find their own way back outside.
One morning, as she swept the cottonwood fluff from the cave entrance, the faint recollection of a story her People had told around the night fires came into her mind. The mere whisper of the story made her body freeze where she stood, the broom tilted back at an angle of forward stroke about to commence.
A story from when she was a young Girl. Even then, the story had been old. It was perhaps not even a true tale, but the Girl clung to the idea of it.
When she had been young, there had been a story of a village girl who had been loved by one of the People. He had taken her to live with the People until her death, and on that day, he carried the woman into the sacred grove. He had asked to be with his love forever, and the trees had allowed him to do so.
The Girl leaned the broom against the stone wall, and she wondered if such a thing was possible. Not for Janie, of course. The Girl didn’t have enough magic to transmute a human; and the Ash here - though mighty - were no sacred grove.
But Freddy - one who was part human and part magic - she might be able to bring her over. If the trees agreed. If they were amenable to another pact on a greater scale than simply protective boundaries.
The decision would need to be Winifred’s choice, though.
________
Chapter: Freddy and Rebecca
Freddy was little more than a child when the Woman of the Woods began her education, and she had always regretted that the woman hadn’t found her sooner. It was this regret that caused her to start her own daughter’s learning as soon as she could speak.
She would take her into the depths of the forest with her, away from the fretting nature of her husband, and make her repeat the names of the plants she showed to her. The child grew tall and lithe as a wood nymph, and they would wander through the wildflower meadow and tromp down to the stream. They meandered through the paths made by others before Freddy was born, and she took her daughter to the cave that once housed her mother’s great book.
“It was here,” Freddy told her wide-eyed girl. “Until it disappeared.”
Rebecca brought a hand up to brush her unruly hair away from her cheeks. “Where did the book go, Mama?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I hope that the Woman of the Woods will come back so I can ask her. She would know.”
Rebecca had heard many tales of the Woman by the time she was fourteen. She knew how the Woman’s dark hair had faded to gray, how her smooth skin had glistened even as she aged, and how her green eyes shone ever brighter despite the years that passed. Rebecca’s mother had been teaching her everything she had learned from the Woman, but she also made sure she learned about the knowledge her own ancestors had brought with them from their far-away home. The book may be missing, but Freddy had memorized much of what had been written down. Something that Janie had mentioned to her in passing, that the words had originally been passed down orally through many generations, had made Freddy resolved to commit them to her own mind.
“How fortunate we are that she did so,” Rebecca thought to herself before she repeated the latest lesson back to her mother. She recognized that the words were spoken with intent. Combined with fire and herbs, the words made the intangible become tangible. Her ancestors’ lessons were different yet similar to the rituals the Woman had taught her mother.
She wished she could meet the mysterious Woman about whom her mother spoke. She wished she would see the Girl who lived in the forest and never aged. Everyday that Rebecca walked out of the cabin door, she kept her eyes and ears open for any hint that there was another force nearby.
She knew it had been many years since Freddy herself had seen either the Woman or the Girl. Rebecca knew her mother never knew where they could be found. “They come to me when they choose,” she had told her one night around the fire in the cave. She had shown her how to skin rabbits that day, and then they had used the offal to see what the future would bring.
The years passed, and Rebecca grew taller. She could recite from memory all of the stories her mother had told her and had even begun to make a new book of her own. “The original may never be found,” she reasoned. “Best to start over again.” This way, both her mother’s tales and the lessons from the Woman would be in one book together.
She was sitting in the dappled shade and writing in the book on the day her mother straggled off the path into the clearing by the cabin. Her appearance was sudden and had startled her, but she became mor
e alarmed when she took in the paleness of her flesh and the wildness of her eyes.
She jumped from her seat and rushed towards her. “What is it, Mama?” She reached out a hand to steady her by the shoulder.
There was a calmness that emanated from her despite her appearance. Freddy turned her gaze to look at Rebecca and softly touched her wild mass of hair and then her cheek. “Something beautiful,” she said to her in a tone Rebecca had never heard from her before. “Something that will also happen to you one day.”
________
Chapter: The Girl
She had been sleeping again. Her long rest was necessary if she was to accomplish her goal. She hated to leave Freddy with her fresh pain of Janie’s passing, but she consoled herself that soon she could be with her always.
“If she chooses,” she amended the thought. “If she agrees.” She twisted the nettle she was binding into rope and tried to keep herself from turning anxious.
********
She found Freddy among the cattails. She was rounding the edge of the marsh when she raised her eyes from her carefully selected steps and saw her. She knew she would have to show her some of her power, if she was to believe her. She presented herself as the Woman of the Woods as she had looked when Freddy first saw her. She was young again, and the buck at her side loomed over them both just as eternal.
She had wondered if Freddy would be alarmed, but her eyes were calm. Almost as if she would expect nothing less than to be greeted in the forest near her home by an unexplainable entity. She hoped this was a good sign.
She reached a slender hand towards Freddy, and she moved towards her until her cheek was in her hand. Freddy’s trust made her smile, and she felt her stomach flutter in anticipation.
“Child,” she called her, although she was a woman now with a child of her own. “I bring to you a gift, and if you accept it, you can stay here with the forest for always.”
Freddy’s brow crinkled briefly and then smoothed out again. She did not ask what she meant. She did not turn and run from her. She said, “My daughter? Rebecca?”
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