Solstice Wood

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  The rest of the day and the next morning blurred together that same way. I blinked and heard someone vacuuming the hallway. The phone rang; someone spoke; I spoke. Things got cooked, eaten; the phone kept ringing. I sat down in my rocking chair, closed my eyes for a moment, opened them again, and it was dark. Then it was morning, and Kathryn was frying eggs, while the handsome stranger beside her buttered toast. Clothes appeared on my bed. I looked up and saw Hurley in the hallway, wearing a suit. I nearly asked him why: he looked so dark and tidy, unfamiliar. Who died? I wanted to say, and then remembered.

  I put on the lavender crepe suit that Kathryn had chosen. Pretty, I thought it was, before memory overtook me again. I had bought it for Meredith’s funeral, then put it on again for Morgana’s. And now for Liam. Might as well be buried in it, I thought. It’s what I wear when somebody dies.

  Then I was sitting in a car. Then walking across graves in the cemetery. Then sitting again beside a hole in the ground. Men from the oldest families around—-John Travers, who ran the village clinic, Millford Turl, who owned a riding stable, Jay Gett, whose farm was as old as the village—carried the coffin, along with Owen, and Tyler, blinking nervously, and the blond stranger who had been making toast in my kitchen. Patrick, I remembered finally. Kathryn’s new husband Patrick Lawson, who’d arrived unexpectedly sometime during the night. He wore a solemn expression for the occasion, his sculpted face a tad fatuous. But on the whole, good-hearted.

  Kathryn sat on one side of me, dressed in shades of gray, weeping into a crumpled ball of lace in one hand, and squeezing my hand with the other. Sylvia, in a short, tight black suit, black fingerless gloves, and heels so high they must have aerated a few graves, didn’t move or make a sound. I could smell the lilac bushes along the graveyard fence. In the little grass beds marked with stone headboards, the dead idled under a sky so blue and full of light you wanted to open your mouth and drink it in. Liam would have been long gone on a day like this, prowling the woods, maybe, on the hill above the cemetery, where the trees clustered so thickly together anyone could be watching within the shadows, and we’d never know.

  People were speaking, reading things over the grave, poems, memories; some dropped wildflowers or a handful of dirt into it. I didn’t listen. The one poem that crept past my thoughts was so dreadful it made me snort with laughter. Kathryn gave a quick sob to cover it; Sylvia bowed her head, stared rigidly at her tightly folded hands. Then I heard Owen’s sonorous voice, quoting Tennyson—From the great deep to the great deep he goes—and I wanted to wail like a winter wind and sit by myself in a blizzard until I was covered with snow and no one could find me again. Instead, I stared stonily down at Sylvia’s long, lovely fingers and made my thoughts as harsh as snow. You didn’t wait for me, I told Liam coldly. You could have just once invited me to come along.

  Finally, everyone was quiet; only the wind spoke, and a hawk circling high above us. Somebody whispered to me. I started to stand, but it wasn’t as easy as it should have been. Then Owen was at my side, and Sylvia, both holding me, and I could breathe again, and walk. People started talking softly, trailing after us. I took step after step away from Liam, except when I stopped suddenly, remembering what he had wished.

  I asked Owen abruptly, “Will he forgive me?”

  As always, he knew what I was thinking. “Yes,” he said firmly. “We couldn’t have Liam Lynn blowing all over the county. Plant a rosebush on his grave and stop worrying about it.”

  But I looked back anyway, suddenly uncertain. Liam was the only one who could make me feel that way. As though I might be—well, simply wrong about something. I stared at his open grave, half-expecting him to sit up and give me that bemused, vulnerable expression he got when I said something cruel or made an inconsiderate decision. Should I have burned you up and scattered you? I asked him. How much did it matter to you?

  On the hill where the graves ended and the wood began, a group lingered within the trees, watching. I saw only blurs for faces, shadowy green, maybe leaves, maybe clothes. Owen made a faint sound. I turned after a moment, went on toward the cars.

  Owen, whose eyes were better than mine, said, “Rowans, I think. Too shy to come down among the villagers.”

  Then we were in the car, driving slowly back to the hall, with half the village snaking along the road behind us, a few hapless tourists caught up in our wake.

  Kathryn put me into a chair on the back porch, told me to stay there. Somehow tables, chairs, a yellow pavilion had appeared on the lawn on the other side of the rose garden, around the old pear tree where Liam had fallen asleep. Offerings crowded the tables in every kind of bowl, platter, casserole dish. I watched Penelope Starr and Kathryn and Dorian Avery working methodically, taking off lids and foil, raiding my kitchen for knives and serving spoons and ice, making punches out of liquids so garishly colored they looked lethal. People crowded up the porch to speak to me before they ate. “He was so wonderful,” they told me in lowered, husky voices. “We’ll miss him so much. You’re so fortunate he went quickly, peacefully, so like him not to cause a fuss, just go when it was time.” They patted my hands, wiped away a tear or two, then turned away, and their normal voices came back as they went down the steps.

  Kathryn brought me a cup of tea.

  “It looks like a circus,” I commented, “with that pavilion.”

  “The Rotary Club donated it.”

  “Liam was never—”

  “It doesn’t matter. He was Liam Lynn, of Lynn Hall. They’re paying respect.”

  Patrick came up to join her. He kissed my cheek; I smelled cologne. “I’m sorry to meet you this way, Iris,” he said. He had one of those sincere, manly voices that sounds vaguely foolish. But there he was, causing that smile on Kathryn’s face, so I was polite. Nothing else to do about it.

  “You were brave to come.”

  He nodded, looking a trifle wide-eyed. “That’s some extended family you’ve got.”

  “I’ve been here in this small world a long time. We’ve all grown together, and believe me, when a stranger appears in our midst we pay attention.”

  “I noticed.” He hesitated. “Kathryn will be following me back tonight, so that she can pack while I work tomorrow. I hope you don’t mind Tyler staying with you.”

  “Not at all.”

  He brightened. “He’s a good kid. He can help you around the house. It’s only for a couple of weeks. Unless you decide you want him longer, of course. He’d be company for Hurley; they can go fishing together, or—”

  Kathryn put a hand on his arm. “I don’t know if I want to be without him too long.”

  “Oh.”

  I sipped more tea, feeling tired, though it was early in the afternoon. “Patrick, why don’t you get something to eat. I need to talk to Kathryn a little.” I watched him bound lithely down the steps, then turned to Kathryn, who was looking wary. “You didn’t want Lynn Hall, did you? Because it’s not going to you.”

  “No,” she said instantly, looking relieved instead. “I don’t want to live here. You have to drive forty miles just to find a shoe store.”

  “Half the family money will go to you and Tyler, a quarter to me, and a quarter to Sylvia, along with Lynn Hall. She’d need every penny, I know, to fix this old hulk up.”

  “Syl,” Kathryn echoed, bewildered. “What would Syl want with it?”

  “She doesn’t.”

  “But—”

  “But it’s hers. Arthur Manning will read the will after everyone goes home this afternoon. There are other bequests. But this is the gist of it.”

  “Mother,” Kathryn said softly, “you can’t force Syl to stay here that way.”

  “That’s not my intention. She’ll most likely want to leave me in it until I die, and then sell it.”

  “That’s putting it a bit harshly,” Kathryn complained. “After all, she was born here.”

  “I’m suggesting that’s what she’ll want to do. Not what she will do. She might find a reason to stay.”
/>
  Kathryn drew a breath, held it. “Mother,” she said again, in that voice of sweet reason I never found any reason to pay attention to, “she’s a grown woman. She has her own life. Let her be.”

  “It was Liam’s wish, as well as mine. What do you want me to do about it? I can’t change the will.”

  “You could have changed his mind.”

  “Then you or Tyler would have had to deal with it,” I reminded her. I saw Sylvia then, leaning like a shadow against the pear tree in her black suit, talking to Owen and his daughter. Owen was frowning, intent as he listened; he said something when Sylvia finished, and I knew that she had told him about the will. He was dressed as usual like a rumpled squire, in an old tweed jacket with a belt across the back and an elegant gray silk tie. Dorian glanced at me then, a quick, fluttering look that let her see without being seen. She walked away to join Leith Rowan at a table, her pretty skirt sprigged with tiny roses blowing up around her cowboy boots.

  Sylvia came to me, then. I took a look at her stiff, mutinous face and got to my feet. “Let’s take it inside,” I suggested, before she could speak.

  “Gram—”

  I shook my head, led her into the house. I heard the television going behind the closed door of the den. A male voice gave a sudden whoop. Patrick must have bonded with Hurley already. Nobody was in the kitchen, so we went in there. Sylvia shut the door behind us.

  “Gram,” she said again; her voice shook. Her wide eyes, her pale skin, and sharply tapered jaw reminded me suddenly of Morgana. How could I have thought they didn’t look alike? But maybe it was only the familiar, stubborn expression that verged oddly on desperation. “I don’t want this place. I don’t want to live here. I’m happy where I am. If I inherit Lynn Hall, I’ll sell it when you die. It will pass out of the family. If you don’t want that to happen, you should think about what you want done with it.”

  “I want you to have it,” I said simply.

  “I’ll give it to you. Put the papers in your name. You can will it to Tyler, or Owen, or something—”

  “It will come right back to you, when I die.”

  “Then I’ll sell it.”

  It went pretty much as I expected; she couldn’t know how comforting her objections were. The door opened abruptly; Penelope came in with a couple of empty platters.

  “Oh, sorry, Iris,” she said quickly and left, knowing that women hold their councils of war in kitchens: the knives are there, and the cups of coffee, and the towels to dry the tears.

  “You can do whatever you want,” I told Sylvia. “You can leave, and never come back, you can sell this place, you can tear it down—”

  “For what?” she interrupted, her nut-gold eyes narrowed, knowing me as well as I knew her. “In exchange for what?”

  “Tomorrow night. Stay for the Fiber Guild meeting.”

  She blinked, wordless for a moment. “Gram,” she said, uncertain now, but still adamant, “a quaint country sewing circle is not going to persuade me to change my mind.”

  “Then you’ll stay,” I said briskly. “Good.”

  “I might take the first plane back the morning after,” she warned.

  “If you choose.” I looked around then, suddenly tired again and wanting something. Food? Tea? Something stronger? It was Liam I wanted, I realized helplessly, and the rigid expression on Syl’s face melted.

  “Oh, Gram,” she whispered, putting her arms around me. “Let’s not fight now. Come back outside and sit down. Of course I’ll stay tomorrow. After that, we can talk again.”

  We walked out together. I saw faces at the long tables turning toward us: the Starr sisters, Bet Harvey, Jenny Crane, Genevieve Macintosh, Hillary Cross, Charlotte Henley, Jane and Agatha Sloan, Dorian. All silently questioning. I smiled, sat down again, and their attention went back to ordinary things.

  So, later, after everyone had gone home, and Arthur Manning read the will in Liam’s study, with its untidy shelves of nature books, seedpods, fossils, and agates scattered everywhere, there were no surprises and no explosions. The pavilion had been taken down, chairs and tables carted away; many invisible hands had left the kitchen tidier than I had seen it in months. We gathered at the front door to wave Kathryn and Patrick off to their honeymoon. The four of us, suddenly alone, looked at one another blankly, wondering at the silence.

  “I’m going to take a walk,” Sylvia said. “Dorian said she’d meet me at our secret place; we have seven missing years to share.”

  “Oh, that secret place in the middle of the stream where the rocks are flat and you can lie and watch the fireflies and smoke?”

  Her eyes widened. “Gram! How did you—”

  “Liam,” I reminded her. “The night-prowler. He liked to sit there himself, when you two gave him the chance.”

  Tyler said incomprehensibly, “C’mon, Grunc. I’ll teach you how to play Space Scavengers.”

  “Ah?” Hurley said, and followed him obligingly.

  “Gram?” Sylvia queried, and I patted her shoulder.

  “Go on. I’m going to sit on the back porch for a while and watch the stars come out.”

  So we went our separate ways. I watched the sky darken and thought of Liam. Owen came, finally, as I wanted him to. We talked for a long time, mostly about Liam, a little about Sylvia and Lynn Hall, and what we knew we needed to do, what always needed to be done when the passing of Lynn Hall from one heir to the next disturbed our work, and the opening of the earth threatened to open invisible doors everywhere.

  The moon began its arc over the wood, and Owen left me alone. I lingered, waiting for Sylvia, but always it was Liam’s step I listened for.

  5

  Owen

  I heard them on my walk home down the road that ran along the stream between the Lynn fields and Tom Trask’s north pasture: the disguised Sylvia, with her hair like a sleek brass bell and her cool hazelnut eyes full of the secrets of an unfamiliar world, and my unchanging daughter, with her wild curls and the potting soil under her nails, whose eyes had seen no farther than the next hollow, where generations of Rowans lived without benefit of street address or mailbox, sharing a post office box and a few ancient trucks among them. The young women’s voices, slightly deeper now but still light and sweet, tumbled over one another, discussing Leith, no doubt, Liam, me, Iris, and whoever it was that kept Sylvia so far away from us. Invisible as naiads they were, on their stones in midstream behind a spinning, flashing galaxy of fireflies.

  The moon, drifting overhead, illumined a gray blur of tarmac between the black wall of trees along the water, and the ditch at the foot of the field wall on the other side. I didn’t need the flashlight I carried out of habit. Liam had never used one. He could tell where he was by the sound of the windblown leaves in the wood: he could hear the difference between the chatter of maple leaves, and birch, and oak.

  He could smell where he was by the scent of wild grapes, violets, wild thyme. He could smell water: mud, wet slate, frog-spawn, fresh springwater, the damp stones above underground streams. Rambling along the mountain roads under the stars, he could smell the little hard apples in trees abandoned to the wild and know where we were. Water spoke to him: he knew the local flows in their changing seasons; the swift rush of early-spring snowmelt; the slow, languid, late-summer shallows. A whiff of smoke from someone’s fire, the night smell of a planted field, a sudden breath of hemlock or cow pasture would tell him as clearly as the light of day where we were in the dark.

  He taught me many things as we skirted the boundaries between sun and moon, between seeing and not seeing, the wood he saw, the wood he didn’t see. If he saw what that streak of Melior in him might have shown him, he never said. He only showed me what he loved. It was Iris who kept an eye on the secret wood within the wood.

  The lore was handed down through generations: my own mother had learned it; my daughter had been taught. How to guard the passages between worlds. How to recognize them: the underground stream that feeds a hidden well, the lightnin
g-blasted oak whose dark hollow, formed by fire, runs deeper into the earth than the passing eye would notice, the pond with the spring that feeds it springing from another world entirely. The great door between worlds, Lynn Hall itself, and all the places where water, or wind, or moonlight enter. How to seal those openings, confuse paths, lock doors, make fast the wall between the worlds.

  Between all we love and all we fear.

  So I was taught, by my uncle, since the gifts for seeing and protecting tend to leapfrog through the Avery line. A taciturn man, better at showing than explaining, he introduced me to Liam when I was very young. I followed Liam everywhere, even then. He taught me the names of wildflowers, mushrooms, beetles. Iris told me stories, real and fay; I hardly knew the difference for years. I would go home thinking that my grandfather, Marsden Avery, had fiddled at a fairy wedding in Lynn Hall, or that Liam’s father had been stolen for a time when he was a baby, and a changeling made of twigs had been found in his cradle. Gradually, I sorted out the difference between what the world considered true and what Iris did. Years later, I chanced across my own version of the truth. Or truth found me, on a moonlit night, like the one I was walking through, and changed the face of my world.

  She was waiting for me when I got home.

  I saw the glimmer beside the pond, which was the reflection of her in the other world. It startled me, how fluid the boundaries were that night. Opening one passage in the earth for Liam, we had opened another. She didn’t even have to hear my music to thread her way into my world. Death had unpicked locks, found its way under our guard, illumined all our illusions. The master of Lynn Hall had died; the heir had not yet accepted her place. Anything might happen, Iris had said. Imagining anything but this.