Solstice Wood

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “Rois Melior. Your great-great-great-grandmother. Maybe another great or two. According to family lore, she used to wander around in the woods rain or shine until she lost her heart and finally her wits. She managed to find them both again and married the heir to Lynn Hall. Which is why we’re here.”

  Tyler grunted. “Sounds like Grandpa Liam. Except for losing his wits.” He was silent; I heard him draw a breath, then swallow. He was leading me toward the kitchen and the rooms clustered around it. His steps slowed to a crawl while he searched for words. “Do you,” he said finally, without looking at me, “still miss your mom?”

  “Oh, yeah.” That was one thing in the world I was certain of. “I was your age when she died. But I never stop thinking about her.”

  His eyes slid to my face, then. “I still miss my dad. They keep telling me I’ll get over it. I guess my mom got over it okay.”

  “I doubt that. I don’t think that’s the way love works.”

  “How does it work, then?”

  I didn’t have a clue; I could only tell him what I had been told. “Nobody can tell you how to feel, or how long you’re supposed to feel that way.”

  He nodded, swallowing again. He turned down the shorter hallway at the end of the house, and I heard Gram’s voice coming out of the room across from the kitchen. That was the old breakfast room, where the windows faced the rising sun and the rose garden that had been there as long as the hall. Grandpa Liam and Hurley had turned it into a sort of den, where they could shut away Gram’s world and read their papers, watch football. Hurley, Gram’s older brother, had been invited to live in Lynn Hall as its handyman after his wife died, a quarter of a century earlier. To judge from the state of the hall, he wasn’t very handy anymore. But at least now he would be company for Gram.

  The door opened abruptly before we reached it. Gram had sensed me, I guessed, or sensed something moving along the trembling threads of her awareness.

  “Sylvia!”

  Seven years had done nothing to diminish the force and energy of her voice, which could have cut short a brawl between sea lions. But either I had grown, or she had shrunk. Once a tall, beautiful woman with bones to die for, she used to tower over me. Now we stood nearly eye to eye. She felt feathery when I put my arms around her, as though she would fall over at a shout. Her white hair, a dandelion gone to seed, would float away with her if somebody sneezed. But the elegant bones of her face, and her birds’ eyes, dark and piercing, hadn’t changed. She still seemed able to see through me, check out my tidy white skeleton if she wanted. “You’ve come home,” she declaimed tearily, as though I were a runaway pet.

  On the couch behind her, Hurley was struggling, making vague noises. “Ah?” he demanded. “What? Sylvie, is that you?”

  I went to hug him before he got all the way up. He was confused, expecting to see what he remembered. “Where’s all those long, dark curls?” he asked, touching my smooth, gilded helmet. “Is it really you? You look so—What have you done to yourself?”

  I grew away, I thought. He had been a big man when he came to live at Lynn Hall, hale and burly; he carried me easily on his shoulders, then. Now I felt hollows and crooks in my arms, memories of where his body had been. My eyes burned. I had left my past, but I hadn’t expected it to change: what I loved should have stayed exactly the same.

  “How are you, Uncle Hurley? Still stargazing up in the attic?”

  “When I can. On the days when there aren’t so many stairs. And I’ve been working on things around the house, for Iris and Liam.”

  He stopped, looking confused again. So was I. Someone was missing; my eyes kept searching for the tall, gentle, good-humored man with his ivory hair, and his eyes as clear as a child’s, smiling contentedly at me. Aunt Kathryn swept into the room instead, laughing and weeping a little.

  “Syl,” she said, hugging me hard. “Look at you! You’ve gotten so beautiful.”

  So had she, I thought, amazed, and tried to remember the name of the man I assumed was responsible. She looked, with her red-gold hair and gray eyes, so much like my mother. But my mother had let her hair grow wild, and her eyes, fierce and impatient, seemed to see, even before she knew, that she hadn’t long to live.

  Still holding me, Aunt Kathryn appealed to Gram. “She’s every bit as beautiful as Morgana was, but she never looked at all like her. You know everyone in the county, Mother; you must see a resemblance to someone.”

  I had been born there in Lynn Hall during a nasty blizzard, in an immense old bed, under the glacial eyes of a portrait of Liam’s fastidious mother, Meredith. My mother hadn’t bothered to marry; my father was Anybody’s Guess. And guess everybody did, for years; but not even Gram, who could sort out the genealogies of families for miles around, including barn cats and a few flocks of geese, could put a name to him.

  Gram tried again, holding me in another dark, unnerving scrutiny for a moment; my thoughts fled like mice, scattered among my bones to hide. She shook her head finally and loosed me. “Not a clue,” she said briskly. “Sylvia, you must be hungry.”

  It sounded like a command, but I was. I said meekly, “I remember some kind of bag lunch on a flight.”

  “Come into the kitchen. We made roast chicken, and slaw, and fresh oatmeal bread. You stay here with Tyler,” she told Hurley, and Tyler, who had been hugging a doorpost and watching us, dropped down beside Hurley on the couch. “We’ll feed her and bring her back.”

  “Show her what I did in the pantry,” Hurley said. “The folding shelves for all your jars.”

  “I haven’t canned in ten years,” Gram murmured as she closed the door behind us. “And if you look at those shelves cross-eyed, they fall down.”

  I went down the hall to the bathroom. Uncle Hurley had been playing in there, too: a towel rack as spiky as a porcupine took up half the floor. Gram was filling a plate for me when I came back. Aunt Kathryn had poured us each a glass of wine she must have brought, since there were no cobwebs on the bottle.

  The kitchen was a vast square cavern that had been thoroughly modernized sometime before my mother was born. The pineapple wallpaper above the wainscoting, big prickly ovals of yellow on blue, had been there since before Gram was born. I sat down beside Kathryn at the sturdy oak table, with its familiar history of scars, cuts, water rings, the place where I had banged it with a tack hammer trying to imitate my mother’s carpentry, the burn I had made smoking my first and last cigar with Grandpa Liam. Gram sliced bread, piled coleslaw on a plate, plucked a fork out of a cobalt-blue tumbler filled with them, country-fashion.

  “Your old bedroom is ready for you,” she announced, putting my plate down. I swallowed a laugh; it had probably been ready for the last seven years.

  “So was mine,” Kathryn murmured to me; Gram, fussing at the stove, ignored us.

  “This is good, Gram,” I said after a few bites; she could be right about some things. I put my fork down after a few more and raised my wineglass to Kathryn. “Tyler said you’ve remarried. Congratulations.”

  Kathryn turned bright pink. A deep snort came from the direction of the stove. “It would have been appropriate to have brought him,” Gram remarked to a saucepan, “since I have never laid eyes on him.”

  “Oh, stop fussing, Mother,” Aunt Kathryn pleaded. “You never laid eyes on Syl’s father, either.” Gram banged a spoon against the pot, speechless for once. “Patrick and I had planned to come up together when we brought Tyler here,” Kathryn explained to me. “But then this happened, and so we decided to keep things quiet for a while, not introduce my second husband to half the county at my father’s funeral. Anyway, he’s working until the end of the week. So I came up alone. With Tyler,” she amended hastily. “How long are you staying?”

  “Just a few days,” I said clearly; Gram’s spoon had stopped stirring, as though it listened.

  “No longer?”

  “I own a bookstore. It can’t just run itself. When is the funeral?” I asked, to get off the subject.


  “The day after tomorrow.” She paused, her eyes reddening, making my eyes hurt, too. At the stove, Gram was still quiet. “Tomorrow, he’ll be—”

  “On view,” Gram said harshly.

  “At the funeral home.”

  “Ridiculous custom.”

  “I know,” Aunt Kathryn sighed. “But he is Liam Lynn, of the village of Lynnwood, and Lynn Hall. Everyone knew him; people will want to say good-bye. He’ll be buried in the village cemetery the next day at noon.”

  I took a tasteless bite, remembering my mother’s funeral. “People eat afterward. Don’t they?”

  “Yes. They’ll come here afterward.”

  “Do we cook?”

  “Something,” Aunt Kathryn said vaguely. She took a hefty gulp of wine, then reached for a napkin and dabbed at the tears on her mascara. “But by tomorrow evening, we’ll be up to the rafters in food. Someone dies around here, people cook. I don’t know why.”

  “It’s comforting?” I guessed.

  “He wanted to be cremated,” Gram, her back to us still, said abruptly. “He told me a dozen times to burn him and scatter his ashes in the rose garden.”

  “Mother,” Kathryn said, her voice trembling. “That’s a thoroughly disquieting idea. How could you stand to dig in the dirt, knowing he was all over the place?”

  “I know,” Gram said. She turned finally; her own eyes were red-rimmed. “I couldn’t do it. It was that streak of Melior in him—wanting to turn into a rosebush when he died. I didn’t want him blown all over the county by any passing wind. Or into the wood. I want, for once in my life, to be certain where he is. Do you think he’ll forgive me?”

  “I don’t know,” Aunt Kathryn said, wiping at tears and getting up to hug Gram. “I suppose if he doesn’t, he’ll let you know.”

  I got up, too. We put our arms around each other, and our heads together, and rocked each other in the middle of the kitchen. Aunt Kathryn shared her tears with me, but Gram’s face, pale and fragile as ancient porcelain, remained dry. She could cry, but never easily, not even when my mother died. She swallowed her tears, I guessed, held on to them, fashioned them into something other, rather than letting them fall uselessly all over the place like more careless mortals did.

  The phone rang then. Aunt Kathryn reached for it with a grim efficiency that told me she had been fielding calls most of the day. Tomorrow, at Jenkins Funeral Home in the village. Noon to two. The day after, in the morning at eleven. Yes. Yes. Thank you. She’s bearing up well, thanks. I’ll let her know you called. She put the receiver down and told Gram, “Penelope Starr. She and the twins will drop off a smoked ham and half a dozen jars of Penelope’s spiced pears before the funeral.” She pulled a drawer open under the phone, which was so old you had to put your finger into a circle with holes in it above the numbers to dial. “I’d better make a list. So you can thank people later.”

  She was talking to Gram, but she glanced at me when she said that. I drew breath, held it a moment. It was going to be a tough fight getting out of there.

  I had no idea.

  We sat a long time in the kitchen, reminiscing, since Gram showed no signs of ever wanting to sleep again. Aunt Kathryn opened another bottle of wine; Gram actually had a sip or three. Tyler and Hurley drifted in and out. Hurley pulled a bag of chocolate cookies out of the cupboard to share with us. Near midnight, Aunt Kathryn made tea, and Tyler, squirreling around for a snack, found a jar of mixed nuts. Later, we could hear Hurley snoring in the breakfast room. The TV was still on, but very soft. Tyler drifted in and out again, with a bowl of nuts and cookies, to sit with Hurley.

  “He stays up all night,” Aunt Kathryn sighed. “He’ll play computer games and watch videos until dawn, even on school nights, if he can get away with it.”

  The phone rang. We all blinked at it: it was one-twenty in the morning. Then Gram put a hand on Kathryn’s shoulder before she could move, and said briefly, “That will be Owen.”

  I stared at the cigar burn on the table, suddenly wide awake, remembering again what complexities, what mysteries, I had ventured back to. Both Kathryn and I were silent, listening, while Gram said, “Yes, she’s here. Yes, I did. No, I didn’t. We’ll see. No, I don’t expect you. Yes. No. Yes.”

  She hung up, as usual without saying good-bye. She stood silently, looking vaguely bemused, missing something, forgetting what she was missing, why we were there instead, and then remembering again.

  Aunt Kathryn said gently, “Let’s go to bed. Mother?” Gram nodded, still without speaking. “You get Syl settled; I’ll take Tyler up.”

  Gram nodded again. Then she said with an effort, “Throw a blanket over Hurley; he’ll be fine on the couch. I put some soap and towels out for everybody in the upstairs bathrooms. The well’s brimming; no need to keep your showers short.”

  Aunt Kathryn smiled wryly. “I think Tyler’s version of a shower is standing as far as he can away from it and turning the water on and off.”

  Gram carried the teacups to the sink, checked the stove settings, pushed a drawer closed, an old witch putting her lair in order. How much did Aunt Kathryn know? I wondered suddenly. How much had Gram told her of what went on in the shadows, the corners, behind and beneath what people expected to see?

  We filed out. Gram shut off the light. Aunt Kathryn disappeared into the den; I collected my bag and purse in the hallway.

  “You don’t have to come upstairs,” I told Gram. “I know my way.”

  She smiled suddenly and took my face in her soft, wrinkled hands. “Do you?” she asked me. Her crows’ eyes looked dusky, weary, but hopeful. She dropped a kiss on my cheek. “Sleep well. If you can’t, I left something by your bed. I know how you love to read.”

  I kissed her back. “Thanks, Gram. I’ll see you in the morning. Good night.”

  Upstairs, I wandered restively around the room Gram had refused to let me outgrow. The wallpaper was sprigged with violets; the curtains over the windows facing the wood were eyelet lace. The rug she had hooked for me in violet and ivory to match the wallpaper lay beside the bed. The same worn candlewick spread covered the bed. From somewhere on the other side of innocence, she had unearthed an old ballerina lamp, pink toe poised on what looked like a water lily, hands uplifted to hold the light.

  I stared at it, wanting to laugh and flee at the same time. For no reason, lines from a rhyme Gram had taught me echoed out of the past: Three with eyes to see, Four to shut the door… I went to the windows, pushed them open to get at the cool night air. The waxing moon, dipping over the trees, cast a silvery glow above the wood. I remembered watching the wood on early-summer nights when I was young, feeling restless and curious, impatient with my ignorance, yet not even sure what it was I wanted so badly to know. I would wait breathlessly for the moment when something shifted among the trees. In that moment, just before I recognized what I saw, anything might be moving toward me through the wood, anything or anyone at all.

  I turned my head, gazed at myself in the mirror above the fireplace to see if I had left any trace in it of that young girl with her books and her ballerina lamp and her uncertain vision. Gram had finally gotten me glasses, and then I saw clearly what she saw, what she didn’t see.

  I tripped over what Gram had left me to read when I finally tried to crawl into bed. It was a box full of old papers. I crouched beside it, too tired, I thought, to do more than lift the first page, decipher the delicate, even lines of what looked like copperplate: handwriting so old it was faded, on paper that crumbled at the edges, and smelled vaguely of mice.

  Then I recognized it. I had found it in the attic years before, read it there in secret, one gray afternoon while the rain tapped softly, insistently on the roof, and in the wood the trees loosed bright leaves like messages on any passing wind.

  The voice I heard in my head speaking the words seemed as familiar as family, which I knew, from the writer’s name, it was.

  “My name is Rois and I look nothing like a rose.”

  I hauled the
box into bed with me and read it all over again: a message from Gram, though what, and why now, I had no idea.

  2

  Tyler

  It was a weird day. And it got weirder after everyone went to bed. Syl didn’t look like Syl anymore, and my mom hardly saw me when she looked at me. She saw Patrick, who she just married, or Grandpa Liam, who had just died. She and Gram spent the afternoon answering the phone or making calls and talking about caskets and what Grandpa Liam should be buried in, and flowers, and food, about what to say, and should someone sing? Half the time it sounded like another wedding, except my mom didn’t cry so much for that. Gram was pretty much the same though, except she would look at me, when 1 went into the kitchen to make a sandwich or get a drink, like she expected somebody else to be walking through the door. And then her eyes would see me and go blank. So mostly I just stayed with Hurley, who didn’t cry, and only talked about his telescope in the attic, when he talked at all.

  My mom made me turn off the TV and sent me upstairs when they all finally came out of the kitchen. I wasn’t sleepy, so I sat on the window seat, which ran under the sill and opened like a chest to keep wood in for the fire. It was empty, a cool place to keep secrets in if I found any. The moon was this bright eye, nearly wide open, staring down into the wood, and that’s how I saw her.

  Everyone else seemed to be asleep. No light from Gram’s door when I went down earlier to get a Pepsi from the fridge; no noises downstairs but Grunc snoring. He sounded like something that lived back with the dinosaurs. A saber-toothed tiger, napping after its kill. Or a twelve-foot polar bear hibernating in an ice-cave. But it was only Grunc, the oldest tortoise in the world, dreaming turtle dreams. By day, he seemed human. But you could tell what he really was by his reptile eyelids, and his skinny, wavering, crinkled neck. I’ll be like that when I’m old. Maybe not a tortoise. But something ancient with lots of armor and no need anymore to move fast. If I get old. It’s easier to imagine that than grownup. Old and young are more alike than grown-up. Grown-up is a different planet.