Evergreen

by Marissa Doyle

  “I don’t, but I will,” she said, more to placate him than anything else. After all, what could hurt her in the woods?

  “I’m relieved to hear you say that.” He hesitated, then said, “I was talking to one of the hunting guides—Mr. Dumont. You’ve met him? He had some interesting stories to tell about these woods.”

  “Like old legends? That sounds intriguing.”

  “Yes, I suppose it does—except he didn’t seem to think they were legends at all. It sounds as though a lot of his stories were about things he himself had seen.”

  It was hardly surprising that a man whose livelihood took him into these woods on a daily basis should have noticed something of the unseen world within them if he were at all observant. “I should love to hear them.”

  “This is perhaps not the best setting for a retelling.” He glanced around at the still, misty trees. “Perhaps another time?”

  She smiled. “Of course.”

  “Thank you.” His return smile was sheepish. “And now you probably think me a superstitious old fool, but I’ve seen a few things myself that I can’t entirely explain as I’ve admired the scenery at the lake. This is a rich and wonderful land we are visiting, Miss Boisvert. I hope my brother will enjoy it when he arrives.”

  “Oh, is he coming?” She thought about Alice’s need for distraction—maybe Kit had some attractive cousins. “Will he be bringing his family?”

  “No, my brother never married, alas. He’s been taken up with business over the last weeks, though, and will appreciate a bit of relaxation. Well, this is where I leave the path. I’ve found my own secret fishing hole where the fish never trouble my contemplation.” He smiled at her—she caught an echo of Kit’s lopsided grin in it—before setting off down a tiny side path.

  She watched him go until he was lost to sight among the trees and mist, and wondered what stories the guide had told him about the woods. For a second, the chill of the morning cut through Ted’s borrowed sweater, making her shiver. Then she shrugged and continued up the path.

  Not far from where she and Mr. Rookwood had parted ways, she struck into the trees and found a small, almost perfectly circular hollow hidden by a rise and dotted with birch and sugar maples and one beautiful and (at this elevation) unusual balsam fir at the center of the hollow. It was perfectly gracious when she spoke to it, but there was something about it—a quality of other—that made her wish she could climb one of the nearby mountains where the balsams grew up to the tree line and learn more about them. She dawdled for a long while there—it reminded her somehow of Mum’s grove back in Chestnut Hill—then, as it was approaching dinnertime, climbed back up its side and made for the path back to Tahawus…and stopped in her tracks.

  An enormous rock lay in the center of the path where there hadn’t been one before. It was like a playful giant had tossed it from the top of a nearby mountain, except that it was rough and lichened, as if it had always been here.

  She didn’t move, but studied it carefully for a few minutes. There were no freshly broken branches to show that it had somehow rolled here from someplace else… “Which means it got here in some other fashion,” she said aloud. “Perhaps it flew here? On wings, maybe?”

  There was a silence during which even the birds seemed to stop singing in the trees around them…and then the rock wasn’t there. In its place was a crow, which flew up to a branch and gave forth a burst of what could only be described as laughter.

  “Too clever!” it croaked. “Couldn’t scare you that way.”

  Grace jumped a little, even though she’d been expecting something like this. She took a tentative step toward it. “No, it didn’t scare me,” she said. “It was too ridiculous to be frightening. Why do you want to scare me?”

  “To see what you are.” It examined her, head to one side. “Tree-cousin, the trees are calling you. I don’t know what that is.”

  A puzzled quality came through the crow’s—or Changer’s, she supposed—harsh voice. “Well, I don’t plan on being afraid of you,” she said.

  The crow vanished. Suddenly in front of her was a large black bear, standing on its hind legs and growling at her with its mouth drawn into a snarl.

  Grace blinked and drew in her breath, but only for a second. “Well done.”

  The bear dropped to all fours and a red fox suddenly took its place. It sat to scratch behind one ear, then grinned at her, tongue lolling.

  “Yes, I can see you have the animal kingdom down pat,” she said.

  The fox was gone. A mighty balsam fir, eighty feet tall, hovered over her. And then it was gone, and Alice stood there. “Where have you been?” she demanded. “I’ve been looking all over for you!”

  Grace laughed. “Full marks for the balsam, but I think you need to work on humans a little more.”

  Alice vanished and the crow was there, pacing back and forth. “What was wrong with the human?” it demanded, for all the world like a diva criticized for a poor performance.

  “The eyes. It looked like Alice, but the eyes were dead. I suspect you may not think very highly of them, but humans do have souls and spirits, and you can see it in their eyes if you look.”

  The crow gave a derisive squawk. “I don’t get close enough to them to see that—if it’s true, tree-cousin.”

  “The proper term is dryad, in case you wanted to know.” She went to a rock and sat down.

  “So?” The crow flew up to a low branch and looked at her thoughtfully. “So what can you do, dryad?”

  Not much, Grace thought to herself. But she couldn’t tell it that. “Would I be wise to tell you all that I’m capable of, Changer? But I can do this.” She felt above her for a cloud, and pulled it down so that they were engulfed in thick, white mist. “Would you like some rain? I can bring that too, though it takes a little longer to call the clouds.”

  She couldn’t see the crow well through the mist, but heard it mutter, “You called it. Can you send it away?”

  The cloud sank into the ground around them, leaving a heavy dew on everything. Grace wished she could shake the moisture off like a dog emerging from a lake, but it wouldn’t be dignified. “Well?” she asked.

  The crow had no similar concerns about preserving its dignity; it ruffled its feathers and shook itself off energetically. “You show me, dryad!”

  Grace smiled to herself and called under her breath to the tree the crow perched on. Abruptly, the branch on which it was perched jerked sharply to one side. The crow squawked as it started to tumble, then caught the air with its wings and floated down to the earth.

  “Ha! I should have known that you could tell the trees to do that,” it said. “And yet, you would pass for a man.”

  “Only if I keep my hat on,” she muttered. Being among the trees like this was making her hair grow out green much more quickly. If she didn’t find an hour soon to be alone with her bottle of Mademoiselle’s Secret, she’d have to start wrapping her head up in a kerchief. And thank goodness the Changer didn’t seem to want any further demonstrations of her power; she didn’t think it would be impressed to hear her recite the song the balsam he’d been perching on had taught her or watch her cure a nasty case of oak gall.

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “Are there many of you in the forests here?”

  “Some,” it said vaguely. “We come and we go.”

  “What about the Shadows? Are they—”

  The crow jumped and let out a harsh caw, which it tried to pretend it hadn’t. “Hush! We don’t speak of them,” it said, and Grace could have sworn that it looked nervous.

  “Do you fear them?” she asked, not really expecting an answer. But the crow surprised her.

  “Everything fears them. How can you not know them?” it asked.

  “Because I’ve never seen one before where I live.” And there certainly hadn’t been any fearsome entities in Newport, unless you counted Mrs. Vanderbilt. “I think I’ve seen them—or one of them—well, not seen,
really, more like felt—”

  “They aren’t seen if they don’t want to be,” the crow whispered hoarsely. “But you know they’re there. There have been a lot of them here—they’ve come down from the mountains, for some reason, even with the moon in fullness—and they hate moonlight. I’ve seen them on the lake over there.” It jerked its head in the direction of Lake Henderson, not far away. “Don’t go there if you don’t want to meet one.”

  Good heavens—and the children went fishing there alone all the time—not to mention Mr. Rookwood at his non-fishing hole. Was that where Mr. Rookwood had seen the mysterious things he’d hinted at? Should she warn them not to go there? Still— “Why should they trouble us?”

  “There’s something they find interesting. Maybe it’s you, dryad.” The crow cackled. “I like you. You are not foolish, like the humans. I’ll be watching you.”

  “Haven’t you been already? Was that you I saw down at the blast furnace the other day?”

  “It may have been. Or maybe not.” The crow flapped up to a higher branch, then promptly gave itself away. “You were with a human.”

  “My friend Alice? Or Kit Rookwood?”

  “I don’t know what you call each other,” the crow said testily. “You ate food with it.” It paused. “I wanted some but you didn’t leave any.”

  It was talking about Kit, then. “Maybe I’ll bring you a sandwich sometime. What about the human?”

  “I don’t know. But it watches you. It wants something from you.”

  These Changers were observant. Yes, Kit wanted her friendship…and so? “I think I’d guessed that.” She rose from her rock.

  “Where are you going?” the crow demanded.

  “Back to camp.” She hesitated. According to all the old tales she’d read, it was not done to ask a supernatural creature its name, and she had the feeling that the old tales had it right. “I expect that I’ll be seeing you around, Crow,” she added, with a small bow.

  To her amusement, the Changer dropped a creditable curtsey. “You will, dryad, you will.” With that, it took wing and was gone.

  * * *

  Alice’s mood seemed much improved that afternoon—so much so that she agreed to let Ted and Kermit chair-carry her out to the brook behind the camp and set her up in a lawn chair under an umbrella to watch the children paddle and splash. The morning’s chill mist had long since vanished and the afternoon was golden and sultry. And to the further improvement of Alice’s mood, Kit came too. She gazed down at his form stretched out on the rough-mown grass with approbation but said, “How lazy you are, Kit. Shouldn’t you be doing something energetic and outdoorsman-like right now?”

  “We could get a tennis game up. They mowed around the net this morning so the playing will be good—except that Sister can’t right now, can she?” said Ted, looking disappointed. “Do you play, Grace?”

  She was glad he’d finally heeded her requests not to call her Miss Boisvert. “Yes, I—”

  “You’d better believe she does,” Kit broke in, sitting up. “She beat the socks off me two games out of three when we played once in Newport—and I barely squeaked by in the third.”

  Alice laughed. “It was no more than you deserved.”

  But Grace stared at Kit. That horrid game! It had been the start of his rudeness to her…and now, here he was, praising her playing and behaving as if none of the strange undercurrents of that morning had ever happened.

  “I’m hot,” she said abruptly. “I think I’ll join the children in the brook.”

  “Don’t let them push you in,” Alice cautioned. “They’ve been known to.”

  “Only with Father, and he likes it,” Ted said. “They won’t dare duck her, though Quentin might splash.”

  Grace could feel his eyes on her as she untied her boots and pulled off her stockings. Glancing up, she saw that Kit watched her as well. Their eyes met, but unlike in Newport, he did not look away. She stood up quickly and went down to the water’s edge.

  “Hey, it’s Grace!” Ethel shouted. She could out-shout all of her brothers. “C’mon, Grace! We’re having races!”

  Miss Young smiled at her from the bank where she was folding squares of newspaper donated by the Porch Ladies into boats. The children were launching them, then running alongside on the banks to see whose would go the farthest.

  “All the way to Albany and New York City!” Ethel announced. “That’s what Mr. Hunter said. He said this creek’s part of where the Hudson River starts.”

  “So we could get in a boat right here and go there if we wanted?” Archie’s eyes gleamed.

  “No, you could not,” Miss Young said firmly.

  “I’d like mine to go to China,” Kermit said in his dreamy way. “I’d sail it home filled with porcelain dragons and a pair of lion dogs for Mother.”

  “What would you eat? China’s awfully far away, you know,” said Ethel.

  “He could eat the dogs!” Archie collapsed into the water with glee at his own wit.

  “That’s a terrible thing to say! Youngie, did you hear that?” Ethel waded purposefully toward her brother. Miss Young rose immediately to intervene, and Grace took the opportunity to retreat downstream to be alone.

  Except that she wasn’t for very long. As she picked her way among the slippery rocks, holding up her skirt, she heard a small splash behind her and turned. Kit had followed after her, his trousers rolled up his calves. She restrained the urge to run down the creek bed and waited for him.

  “It’s like ice!” he called. “Aren’t you freezing?”

  “It’s a mountain stream. Of course it’s cold.”

  He came to stand next to her. “Are you all right?” he asked abruptly. “The way you jumped up like that—you weren’t offended by what I said about your tennis playing, were you?”

  Grace began to amble down the stream again so that she could stare down at her feet and not have to look at him. “It brought back unpleasant memories.”

  He followed after her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I guess I got carried away, telling Ted…but you were magnificent that day, you know.”

  She would not let his praise turn her head. “I didn’t want to play you, but I was determined to win. I was angry with you for intentionally losing to Alice. It was so—so obvious.”

  “I didn’t want to play you either,” he said. She noticed that he didn’t respond to the second part of her statement. “But since Alice was making us, I desperately wanted to beat you too.”

  She stopped walking and turned to face him. “I know you did. Why?”

  He didn’t look away. “Because I had some…inner demons I needed to best.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged, then broke into a smile and bent to scoop something out of the brook—a newspaper boat, waterlogged but still floating. “I wonder whose this is? Let’s see who claims it.”

  She followed him back up the creek. All the children claimed it, of course, so a fresh round of boats had to be folded and launched.

  Alice was frowning when they rejoined her on the bank. “Why did you go so far and leave me here?” she demanded.

  “I had to go after Grace and make sure she didn’t slip and fall. One sprained ankle’s enough in camp, don’t you think?” He grinned his old saucy grin at her, and she visibly melted.

  “Scamp. You’re supposed to stay here and keep my spirits up to speed my recovery,” she scolded, but with a smile.

  Grace wasn’t reassured. Alice wouldn’t start harping about her misfired sandwich magic again because Kit had followed her down the creek, would she?

  * * *

  To Grace’s (and, she supposed, everyone else’s) relief, Alice was up and hobbling within a couple of days with a walking stick Ted made for her. But she’d decided she preferred getting a breakfast tray to coming down to breakfast, so Grace was able to keep mornings after early breakfast for her solitary walks. Almost daily, she visited the quiet hollow she’d found and listen to the whispering
s of the trees and relax in a way she couldn’t at the camp. Or at least mostly relax. On two or three occasions now she’d felt that eerie, cold, watching sensation, the same as that afternoon in the hammock behind the camp, and felt a chill breeze that seemed to come from nowhere and vanish just as inexplicably. It didn’t quite make her afraid, but it wasn’t pleasant either. It certainly wasn’t going to keep her from the woods.

  But it made her nervous for the children. When one morning a few days later a misty rain began to fall before breakfast, the younger children cast only a few wistful looks outside before settling down with books by the fire. Ted and Kermit, however, donned waxed cotton coats and set out to go fishing on Lake Henderson.

  Grace stood on the porch and watched them trudge up the path, dodging puddles. The Changer’s warning about Shadows lurking at the lake made her want to run after them and ask them not to go, but she couldn’t do that without explaining why. And she could only imagine what they would have said if she’d told them to watch out for cold gusts of wind. She would have gone with them herself—though what she could do against a Shadow, she had no idea—but she had promised Alice a few games of checkers.

  “Good morning, Miss Boisvert. Are you walking this morning or remaining sensibly by the fire?”

  Grace turned. Mr. Rookwood, also bundled in a waterproof coat and hat and with a fishing pole on his shoulder, was smiling at her from the road. “Mr. Rookwood! Would you… May I speak with you for a moment, please?”

  “Certainly.” He came up onto the porch and set down his pole. “I don’t know why I’m going to the lake today, except that fish are supposed to like rain and I have a reputation to live up to. I hope that I don’t catch one or I shall be forced to find a new spot.” He took off his hat and shook it over the railing.

  Grace couldn’t help smiling. “That would be a terrible shame, sir.”

  “To be truthful, I doubt it will come to that. My friend, you appear distressed. May I help you?”

  He wouldn’t think she was being silly, would he? But no, he himself had said… “A few days ago you said something about maybe having noticed some…strange things in the woods—and at the lake—and I…well, I wanted to ask that if you happen to be at the lake when any of the children are there, and you sense that something might not be right—”