Tree by Leaf

by Cynthia Voigt

  “Child,” the Voice said again, but not from the woods she peered into. She turned around to catch it, over the water. “Clothilde.”

  It was behind her and in front of her. It surrounded her. It weighed down on her from above and rose up under her feet. But it wasn’t the Voice that was making her feel squeezed; it was scaredness squeezing at her. Oh, she was glad—gladness burst out of her the way it had when she first stood on the headlands and understood that the peninsula lying behind her was hers, her own. With the gladness, however, she was also remembering, knowing, all of the things she shouldn’t have done—the meanness in her heart and the way she’d wanted to take away Polly Dethier’s ruffledy dress and her dimple; times she’d sat there and watched Lou or Mother work when she could have got up and helped; and the way she’d run away from things at school instead of standing to fight them. The remembering made her afraid.

  Clothilde turned around, putting the water behind her. She ran as fast as she could. She held her skirt up so her legs could move freely. She ran among the trees and through the woods, not following any path, dodging and ducking. Leaves brushed at her face. Branches slapped at her body. When a root caught at her foot, she stumbled but she didn’t fall. She ran on.

  The Voice ran beside her.

  Clothilde’s blood beat in her ears and she gasped for breath. It hurt her feet, the way they were pounding down onto the ground. It hurt her chest, the way it tried to suck in air. But the Voice beside her ran like water, flowed beside her like water.

  Clothilde couldn’t get away. She halted, and rested her forehead against the white trunk of a birch until she had caught her breath and had stopped the sobbing she hadn’t realized she’d been doing as she ran. Then she turned around to return to the headlands, rubbing at her eyes and nose. She was tired. She’d been as frightened as she could stand to be, more frightened than she could have imagined being, and now she was too exhausted and afraid to feel frightened. She walked back through the shady woods, with the dappled sunlight falling like rain. The Voice walked beside her.

  Standing again on the rock, facing again over the water, Clothilde just waited. Her hands felt like they were trembling, so she put them behind her back. There, they held tightly each to the other, and her fingers wound together. Her back straight, her shoulders stiff, Clothilde held her head up. She made her head stay up.

  It wasn’t gone, she knew that.

  “All right,” she said out loud. Her voice sounded thin and high. “I’m listening,” she squeaked out.

  “Sit down,” the Voice told her. “Let your body rest upon the rock.” The Voice was trying to make itself as little as it could, which wasn’t very little. Clothilde almost smiled, at how large small was to the Voice.

  “No,” she said, adding politely. “Thank you.”

  She waited to hear what the Voice wanted from her. Maybe it was going to tell her she was about to die. Maybe this was what happened when you died, and she was already dead. She looked quickly down at herself, the blouse, rumpled now from the exertions of running, the blue skirt hanging, the toes of her shoes with their laces threading back and forth between the eyelets. She didn’t think she was dead.

  “I—” she started to say. But she didn’t know what to say next and she thought she should have kept on waiting. Was she supposed to stand and wait? “What—” she tried next, which was no better.

  “You called to me,” the Voice said. “Knocking upon my door.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Clothilde said. “Did I?” Because the Voice must be right about everything. “Why are you saying that?”

  The Voice smiled. It wasn’t the way a grown-up smiled at something a child said, and it wasn’t the way someone smiled when he heard something funny. It wasn’t exactly the way the whole world smiled on a bright day, but that was the closest.

  “I didn’t,” Clothilde repeated. She wasn’t going to be forced into saying something that wasn’t true.

  “Sit down,” the Voice told her. “Sit down up on this rock, and let your body rest.”

  That was what Clothilde wanted to do anyway. She sat down abruptly, Indian fashion, carefully arranging her skirt over her legs. Once she was sitting, she wanted to be standing again. She needed to move, she could feel that in her legs; but she wanted to sit still and silent, with not even the blood going around her body. This was more than frightened. This was fear of something you were glad to be afraid of. “What do you want me for?” she finally asked, looking out to the east, over the spreading sky and water, as if she could see the Voice.

  “To be my people, to know the creatures of land and sea and air, to know the leaf and to know the tree. To carry light in your hand as you step from one season to the next, to guard the light from darkness, guard the darkness from the—” The Voice stopped, as if it saw the smile Clothilde was hiding. Of course, the Voice couldn’t understand her question—it was too large to know how small she was—she understood that, but the smile rollicked along under her skin and the most she could do was to conceal it.

  “Yes,” the Voice said. Then, “Yes?”

  “I meant, what do you want me to do?”

  “You called to me,” the Voice said.

  “Do you mean, what do I want you to do?” she asked, so surprised that she didn’t hear the disrespectful speech until she had uttered it. “I’m sorry—I didn’t think—I shouldn’t have even—it doesn’t matter,” she said. “I shouldn’t have disturbed you, if I did. I didn’t mean to. It’s not important.”

  “The leaf grows and the tree grows; it is important.”

  Clothilde knew then what was happening, and she was ashamed. She knew why it had happened—because it was more than she could bear. To bear meant to carry, and her strength wasn’t equal to the weight of what piled up on her. Like an egg you pushed and pushed down on until its shell gave way, and your hand’s weight crushed the shell into the yolk and white, her brain had given way. She retreated into herself, to find her normal self again. Her crazy self—the self that thought she could call out and be answered, and be asked what she wanted—as if God had time—Clothilde was frightened of herself. She’d never been frightened of herself before, and that frightened her even more And if the Voice might be real—which she half believed—which was the craziest thing about the whole—she felt her brain’s shell cracking.

  Clothilde jumped up, to stand on the rock with her hands on her hips and the sea before her and the trees behind her. Turning her face right up to face the sky, she called: “Why do you make wars, anyway?”

  It rose up, a great black wave from the sea. It curled over her. She was there where the air was thick yellow and red, where the thick air smelled of things burning, and of mud. She was there with whistling explosions, with voices crying out like the minister’s description of damned souls, souls damned to hell, and crying out. She was there under an icy rain, where a doomed silence wrapped voices around, silence like a bandage that courage bound around an incurable wound. She was there, where a black horse lay fallen in mud that streaked his face like tears, his mouth frothing blood, and a man had to put the gun to the horse’s head, and shoot Bucephalus even though Father would have been happier to put the gun to his own head, and his hand shook as he pulled the exploding trigger. The black wave held her, then passed on.

  “The design is mine; the embellishments are yours. I do not make wars; men do.”

  “I’m sorry,” Clothilde said. She sat down again, even though she hadn’t been told to. She kept her eyes closed, for fear of what she might see if she opened them. All she wanted now was to be left alone. “I’m sorry. Really. Really, sorry.”

  The Voice knew sorrow too, and when it next spoke it sounded like a foghorn, warning through the shrouded night to ships that it could not see and that could not see it, warning of the deadly rocks waiting invisible under the dark water. “What would you have?” the Voice asked.

  Clothilde, eyes squeezed shut and covered by her hands, shook her head. If her mind
had given way—poor Jeb Twohey, his mind caught in that black wave that wouldn’t ever let go of him. Oh, she could understand what had happened to Jeb Twohey.

  The Voice asked, “What would you mend?”

  “The man in the boathouse.” Clothilde mumbled the words into her own hands, not wanting to answer the question, answering with the first thing that came into her mind, not knowing until she answered how that was the first thing. Even if she’d taken her hands away from her face she couldn’t have opened her eyes. “I’d make him better.”

  The Voice didn’t know who she meant.

  “Benjamin Speer,” Clothilde named him, and the Voice recognized the name.

  “Yes,” the Voice agreed.

  “And Nate shouldn’t go on that cruise, he shouldn’t, I wouldn’t let him,” Clothilde said, the words rushing out now, “and Lou—” But if she thought about Lou, it was just selfishness to say that she’d let Lou stay and work for them. What Lou really needed, to make her life better, was to be kept safe from her father. “Mr. Small shouldn’t be able to hurt her.”

  “Yes,” the Voice agreed. “Yes.”

  Clothilde thought, in the darkness of her hands over her closed eyes. She didn’t want to be greedy and she didn’t want to be silly. She wanted to ask if she couldn’t be prettier than Polly Dethier, and strong enough to fight off the boys’ teasing at school. She didn’t let herself ask for that. What if, like a fairy tale, she only had three wishes? She would have already used them up. “And my peninsula, Speer Point,” she added hastily. “Speer Point ismine.”

  “No,” the Voice said. Then it was gone.

  Clothilde had opened her mouth to argue, to ask why not. She took her hands away from her eyes and looked around. The air filled with noises, and she knew she was alone again. She heard the waves, as the tide rose and a breeze rose, she heard gulls, birds in the woods behind her, and the buzzing of insects.

  The craziness had passed, like a fit of laughter or tears. She was almost sorry, then. She was almost glad. She was entirely confused, except for the solid rock underneath her. She turned around, putting her hand down on the sharp rock, looking all around her.

  It was more than any eye could take in all at once. The pines growing straight up, each one pointing into the sky. The trees, thick trunks spreading out strong branches, each green leaf held firm as it sprang out toward the sun, each, every, leaf entirely itself. Blind with seeing, Clothilde looked back to the water, where waves moved and the great tides swung underneath. Her hand spread out on the rock, and she looked at it, seeing its bones with the muscles spread over, and the skin encasing it. She lifted her hand and turned it over, moving her fingers slowly closed, and then open. The gray corrugated surface of the rock she sat on was dusted with gray-green lichen growing slowly outward to spread over the surface of the stone, and the gray stone itself almost grew outward from the earth, as if the earth sent forth stones into the light. Clothilde lifted her eyes in time to see the sleek body of a seal gather itself together and slip underwater, where silver fish swam, and hard-shelled clams back down into the thick sandy mud, and the water rested heavy on the strong floor of the earth. Her skirt, she saw, was woven of hundreds of threads, each going on its own dark fabric that lay over her crossed legs. Clothilde stretched out on the rock, lying on her stomach, seeing.

  When she woke up, she was not sure for a second where she was. The air had grown chilly and waves slapped up against the rocks. Clouds approached from the east. She stood up and looked at the woods. The trees had become only that again—they weren’t each so crowdingly distinct. Except, maybe—she peered into the woods with the wind blowing at her back and her skirt moving around her legs—the birches. She could see the swaying of the birches, and their delicate leaves scattered high along their branches, almost as she had seen them before she fell asleep, like the memory of a song.

  Of course it hadn’t happened. Clothilde knew that. It was a dream, or some temporary craziness that she should hope would never return.

  But if, she thought, half believing, if it was true?

  Then the peninsula wasn’t hers, she remembered. The Voice had said no to that. So she didn’t want it to be true. Not if the man in the boathouse could sell the peninsula now, so she wouldn’t have it for when she needed it. Not if she couldn’t go to college and be able to earn her own living so she could have her own life. Besides, it was hers, whatever the Voice said. It had been left to her in a will, and that was the law. Even if the law also said a father could take it away, the law said it was hers.

  She’d have to just wait and see, Clothilde thought, running through the trees along her own path to the beach. She didn’t believe it for a minute; but it would be something, if it were true. If she could have taken care of all those things. She wished she had asked to be prettier than Polly Dethier. It was all a dream, anyway, she decided. The nap had filled her with energy. It was all a dream, especially that strange way of seeing everything so clearly, the way everything had crowded itself into her eyes. Things were back to normal now. She’d rather have it be a dream, anyway, rather than craziness, if she could choose. If she could choose, she’d rather have it be true, she admitted, stumbling over a stone. But it couldn’t be true. But if it were, time would tell. “Only time will tell,” she laughed to herself.

  If the things she asked for came about, she calculated, then she would know. And if they didn’t? Well, it had been a wonderful dream, anyway. The nap and the dream had lifted her spirits. If that was all it was, she was still glad. There might be a way to keep the man in the boathouse from selling Speer Point, if she tried to think of it; she might be able to stop him, if she tried.

  Chapter 6

  Clothilde woke the very next morning, Monday, with sunrise in her heart, despite the fog that had come in overnight and wrapped itself around the house, crowding at her window. What if, Clothilde awoke thinking. What if it wasn’t all a dream, what if—

  She went into the bathroom, her mind full of possibilities. Her great-aunt hadn’t pinched pennies on this farmhouse. Even for her tenants she had provided a thoroughly modern home. The bathroom was a big, tiled room, with a porcelain toilet and sink and tub, with deep shelves for storing towels. Clothilde wondered, scrubbing at her teeth and looking at the room reflected in the mirror, what the bathrooms in the cottage had been like, if this one in the farmhouse was so comfortable. Then she wondered what the cottage had looked like, and what it would have been like to live in, if it hadn’t burned down. And what if Father were to come walking out of the fog this morning, Father healed, handsome and lighthearted. What if he were to walk up through the swirling fog, and come home again; and she, Clothilde, would have made it happen. Clothilde smiled at her square face in the mirror, meeting her own eyes. Her eyes danced, like waves under sunlight.

  She dressed quickly in her chilly bedroom, where wisps of fog brushed by the window. Downstairs, the kitchen was empty and cold. They didn’t run the big coal furnace from late May to mid-September, to save money and to save the work, so the house was cold in the mornings, until the stoves were lit. Clothilde found her mother in the parlor, a shawl around her shoulders, sorting embroidery threads. Mother’s fingers spread out the different colors onto the table beside her. The gas lamp gave out a warm light but that was only warmth in the room; the wood stove sat in its corner like a cold black pumpkin.

  Dierdre sat at Mother’s feet, beside the deep bag in which Mother stored her fine needlework supplies. Clothilde hadn’t seen that bag for four years. Mother hadn’t time for fancywork, in the last four years.

  “I’m hungry,” Dierdre greeted Clothilde.

  “It’s cold,” Clothilde said. She took the fuel starter out of its container of kerosene and opened the door of the stove to lay the starter on the ashes. She built up a little pile of kindling on top of it, and added some medium-sized logs. When she stuck the long match in under the kindling, the kerosene-soaked starter caught fire immediately. Flames sprang up, as if the
y had just been waiting to be asked. Clothilde closed and latched the heavy metal door. She opened the vents wide, so the fire would burn hot, to warm up the heavy metal of the stove. Then she stood up to face her mother.

  “I’m hungry,” Dierdre insisted. “I want my breakfast.”

  Dierdre hadn’t been given breakfast, the stove hadn’t been lighted, and Mother was just sitting there sorting colored threads.

  “Do you feel all right?” Clothilde asked her mother.

  “It’s my hair,” Mother answered. “I didn’t have time to dress it properly,” she said, as if that explained everything. “I’m a little hungry myself.”

  Mother’s hair looked fine. She had it pulled back into a thick knot at the back of her head. Big tortoiseshell pins held the twisted mass of hair in place. If Mother was hungry, and Dierdre was hungry, why hadn’t she made anything to eat?

  “Would you like me to make some oatmeal?” Clothilde offered.

  “No,” Dierdre said. “Pancakes.”

  “That would be fine, Clothilde,” Mother answered. “I’ve often thought Lou shouldn’t be allowed to sleep out Sunday nights. It’s bad management to let servants do that. They don’t get back in time for the morning meal.” She turned her attention back to the threads. Clothild went across to the cold kitchen.

  Clothilde started a fire in the stove, opening the vents wide so it would burn hot. She put a pan of water on the stove, to heat. When it came to a boil, she added salt, butter, and a measure of oatmeal. The water foamed up and she stirred at the mass until it had reached the thick, slow boil at which the cereal would cook. Then she turned down the flame, covered the pan, and set bowls and spoons out on the table. From the cool cellar she brought up a pitcher of milk. From the cupboard she brought down the bowl of brown sugar.