Wildwood Whispers

by Willa Reece

  “Will I be taking the trike?” I asked. I’d used the bike around town since the apiary incident, but I dreaded taking it back on country roads.

  “No. No. Joyce has told Alan to stop by and pick you up. You can’t ride a bike that far in your Sunday best. But you’ve got time to get ready. The dandelions have to be fully open and dried out by the sunshine before they’re picked. Alan will be by around ten o’clock,” Granny said. Even though she said there was plenty of time, her wrinkled cheeks looked flushed as if she was flustered. Maybe because she was still in a voluminous white cotton nightgown. Had she overslept? If it was such an event, I wondered why she hadn’t told me about the dandelion harvest ahead of time.

  “Sunday best?” I murmured. Granny had already disappeared. Probably to get dressed herself. It wasn’t usual for her to still be in sleepwear at this time of morning. Sarah and I had never been churchgoers. But I assumed Granny wanted me to wear a dress. A tricky turn of events. I had exactly one dress that Sarah had gifted me several years ago. It was a summery thing I almost hadn’t packed. If it hadn’t been a present from Sarah, I never would have worn it in the first place. But I fished it out of the back of my suitcase and shook it out. Thankfully, it was made of a light, crinkly material that didn’t need ironing. Or hanging up. Or caring for in any way beyond laundering.

  It even had a built-in white slip beneath the opaque outer dress. Unlike most of my other clothes, the dress was a cheerful robin’s-egg blue instead of black.

  I felt self-conscious the minute I put it on. Like I was a cosplayer. But Granny seemed satisfied when I came downstairs. She didn’t even frown at my white canvas shoes which probably were not “Sunday best” by any stretch of the imagination.

  “Just in time,” she said as the sound of a large vehicle pulling up to the curb came from outside.

  Granny opened the front door and I was startled to see an ancient school bus waiting for me. Only a little orangish yellow showed through the many layers of paint the bus had seen in its repurposed lifetime. I thought maybe the children that waved and shouted at Granny from the bus windows must have helped with the current rainbow theme and the scribbled lettering on the side. “Crooked Creek Methodist Church.” I grabbed my bag and a floppy straw hat Granny must have placed beside it. The driver had waved at Granny without getting out.

  “Be sure to thank Alan for the ride,” Granny said as I hurried out the door.

  Maybe Granny hadn’t prepared me for the dandelion harvest because nothing would have prepared me for it. The laughter. The singing. Alan’s jovial welcome followed by a careening ride through town picking up dozens more children that waited by mailboxes with their parents. Easter had come and gone while I was alone with Sarah’s ashes in Richmond. But I imagined this is what children looked like on Easter morning, dressed all in suits and flouncy dresses and carrying baskets as if they were going on an egg hunt.

  Even I was swept up by the enthusiasm and holiday atmosphere. I waved. Several times. And Alan caught my eye once in the rearview mirror with a cheeky wink and a grin. He was a giant of a man. In height and girth and smile. A Santa Claus with a snowy white beard somehow transported from the North Pole to Morgan’s Gap. And his bigness obviously impacted his personality as well. Some of the children called him Mr. Alan and I thought that was fitting because even with his grins and his seemingly reckless piloting, he seemed very in charge of getting a whole town’s worth of children—and me—to Joyce’s dandelion field safely.

  The children cheered when the bus pulled to the side of the road. Through the windows, the field of dandelions was an explosion of color that was welcoming and intimidating at the same time. In the summer sun and breeze, the fully opened dandelion heads made me dizzy from the expansive floral waves of yellow—from amber to butter and back, again and again. I waited in my seat as a hundred kids that seemed more like a thousand pushed and pulled and tumbled down the aisle and steps. I wasn’t prepared for the feelings that hit me when I noticed the trailing ribbons and untied shoes, the mussed hair and smudged clothes. They had all been so pressed and perfect when they’d been picked up. And already they were loosened, as if driving into the country had freed them somehow. From Crooked Creek Methodist Church to the wildwood. Or almost. I could see the forest framing the edge of the field, a distant rustling of green shadows and towering trees.

  “Thank you, Mr. Alan,” I said when I rose and approached the front of the bus myself.

  “You’re welcome,” he replied. “I’ll take you all back to town once the picking is finished.”

  Joyce Mayhew had been waiting for the bus to arrive. Alan had parked behind her sedan on the side of the road. It was plain and proper compared to the bus. And Joyce was the same. She was younger than Granny but older than Sadie by at least several years. Her graying hair was in a set-and-sprayed style I’d seen only in movies and her skirt suit was polyester and a pink shade never seen in nature. The children had all lined up like fidgety soldiers for review.

  My chest tightened as Joyce walked up their ranks as if preparing to do an inspection.

  I came off the bus ready to defend kids I didn’t even know, but my rush was brought up short by laughter.

  “Watch for bees and help your younger friends,” Joyce was saying. “And there’ll be cookies and lemonade once your baskets are full!”

  Her eyes cut to me and the laugh crinkles at the side of them eased as if she wasn’t nearly as pleased with me as she was with the children. Watch for bees. I set my teeth against the urge to cringe.

  “Let’s show Granny’s new friend who can pick the most dandelions today. Ready. Set. Go!” Joyce shouted above the shrieks of children who were already running into the field, stomping as many flowers as they were plucking.

  “They’re so happy,” I said. I could easily imagine a young Sarah just like some of these girls, laughing so hard that they could barely manage to get any dandelions in their baskets.

  “They’ll grab leaves and stems too. We’ll have our work cut out for us. Cleaning away all the greenery so the wine won’t be bitter,” Joyce said. Vehicles had started to arrive. Men, women and older teens got out. Many I recognized from bus stops earlier that morning. “They like to get pictures of the children with the dandelions, but don’t want the kids to miss Alan’s bus ride. He brought many of them to this field when they were small too.”

  Suddenly, the bright day and the joyous chaos was a lot for me. Sarah should have been one of these parents one day. Now, she never would be. And the continuity, the tradition, the belonging of it all made me even more aware that I was on the outside looking in on an alien world. An ache pulsed deep in my gut. I thought of the dying bees writhing on the ground.

  “Well. You’re here. Might as well get to picking,” Joyce said gruffly. I didn’t know if she’d noticed my emotion, but she definitely noticed my idle hands.

  There were spare baskets piled by the road. Joyce must have brought them for anyone who had forgotten theirs. I picked one up and waded into the field a little more carefully than the children had. I noticed that most of the kids had run for the middle. I kept to the edges. Picking the dandelions that had been stepped over and forgotten. Step by step, I made my way around the field toward the trees. I didn’t purposefully stay to myself and move away from the families taking photographs and enjoying the day together. But by the time I came to the undergrowth that indicated the beginning of the forest and the end of the dandelions, I was far away from the others.

  The laughter and exclamations in the distance didn’t penetrate the wildwood. From the sunbaked field at my back to the shadowy forest in front of me, there was at least a five degree difference in temperature. The floral green scent of the dandelion breeze suddenly changed to a fragrance that hinted at mossy secrets and moist leafy carpet.

  At first, I was refreshed. I stretched my back and lingered in the shade. I had filled my basket. It had been painstaking work. My fingers were pollen-stained and my shoulders were
stiff. And still I had managed to get some greenery in with the dandelion heads. I sank down to my knees beneath a tree and began to pick out the stems and leaves while I rested.

  I wasn’t sure how long I worked before a twig snapped. I only knew I was wholly focused on presenting a clean batch of flowers to Joyce. I wouldn’t have noticed anything happening around me. The sudden sound jerked my attention from the task in my lap. The closely packed tree trunks didn’t allow me to pinpoint the direction of the snap I’d heard. Now, there was only silence. There were no scurrying squirrels. No birdsong.

  The absence of sound made me aware of my isolation.

  I rose to my feet, dusting off my dress as if I wasn’t strangely unnerved by the quiet forest. What had seemed like a haven from the hot, bright sun and the crowd now seemed more like a chill warning… of what?

  I stood in my pretty dress with my basket clutched in front of me, straining to see into the woods. Every squat stump seemed like a crouching animal. Every spindly sapling seemed like a skeletal figure, gone frozen while my eyes tried to focus, but surely ready to skulk toward me whenever I blinked.

  Ridiculous to be scared. A whole field of children played only a half an acre away. I remembered the flock echoing Moon’s condemnations and Moon’s burning eyes. I remembered the Sect man’s fury at the apiary and how his sedan had seemed to threaten me on the road.

  When the Sect woman revealed herself beside a curtain of vines that trailed down from an old twisted oak several yards away, a rush of adrenaline flooded my sun-warmed skin. The homespun blue of her dress was in sharp contrast to the festive dresses in the field behind me. Her gray kerchief was tied tightly around her hair, cutting into her face. Her cheeks seemed to bulge from the sides.

  And her eyes bulged too. As if she was shocked to see and be seen, as if she didn’t know what to do now that she’d been discovered. But her fists were clenched. And her mouth was drawn down in a frown. Her gaze dropped to the basket of dandelions in my hands.

  “Do not drink the witches’ brew,” she hissed. Her admonition wasn’t for me. The singsong quality of her voice was like the repetitive echoes of Reverend Moon’s flock. She was only repeating what she had been told.

  “I’ll drink it by the gallon if I like,” I said loudly. My voice rang out among the silent trees. “And I’ll help to brew it too.”

  She actually took a step forward with her fists raised. I’d faced aggression from my earliest days, but this was different. After the church bus ride. After sundresses and Mr. Alan and the happy chaos of the children and their supportive families. Even after Joyce’s less than enthusiastic welcome.

  This woman’s irrational anger made the wildwood seem fifty degrees colder than the dandelion field and it chilled me to the bone.

  The face-off lasted for only a few minutes. When I didn’t back down, when I didn’t run away, the Sect woman turned and slowly walked deeper into the forest. Her measured, careful steps didn’t seem like a retreat. She hadn’t meant to be seen, but now that she had been, she seemed to boldly claim her right to stalk me. I watched her back until she was swallowed up by darkness. I stared at the dark until I was certain she’d gone away.

  My study of the remedy book that night was halfhearted. Thunder rumbled in the distance and it was a comfort to curl under a faded quilt beneath the shelter of Granny’s painted tin roof.

  Granny had said the remedy book held all the answers I was looking for. So far I hadn’t found any revelations in its pages. Although I had to admit I noticed something new every time I opened it.

  As the storm came closer and closer with such flashing that the bedside lamp wasn’t the only illumination on the book’s brittle pages, I was suddenly startled by an illustration of a honeybee I’d never noticed before. A crash of thunder sounded directly overhead and a jagged bolt of electricity rent the sky beyond the filmy fabric of the curtains. The bee seemed to glow on the page in the lightning’s light. Done in ink, then colored with a yellow pigment that had faded to pale buttercup, the bee accompanied step-by-step directions for attracting pollinators to a garden.

  It wasn’t as simple as that, was it? The storm had been moving steadily, but now it seemed to have slowed, lingering above Granny’s house. The erratic patterns of shadow and light on the page should have made it harder to read, but my chest tightened and I had to moisten dry lips caused by sudden rapid breaths because the lightning flashes seemed to highlight several words, one after another, again and again.

  Bergamot. Water. Offering.

  Only after I imagined a revelation did the storm move on, leaving darkness and a steady rain pattering on the metal roof above my head. Now, lit by only the lamp, the illustration of the bee seemed faded and dull and the instructions were once again an ordinary listing of which plants would draw bees and how to cultivate them.

  I flipped back to the previous page and forward to the next. I recognized directions for a freckle poultice I’d laughed at before and a recipe for citrus jelly to be made from something that resembled a lime called a maypop. I’d seen that before too. But not the two-page spread about bees in the middle?

  The lingering guilt from the traumatic events at the apiary had made me notice it. That was all. Regret burned my cheeks and messed with my perceptions. But when I finally closed the remedy book to go to sleep, I’d already memorized the instructions. They followed me into dreams filled with the poor dead bodies of bees.

  The next morning Granny was busy in the pantry when I left for deliveries. Several of her regulars didn’t mind the occasional discreet Sunday visit when most people were in church. The basket had already been packed and left for me on the counter with a list of recipients. It was cowardly to shout a goodbye and leave without any morning conversation, but I still wasn’t sure what to say. Granny must have heard from Sadie by now. The phone had jangled several times since sunrise.

  In the center of Morgan’s Gap—if any point nestled in the quirky, twisting hollow could be called “center”—was a park that was more rock than respite. There wasn’t much to it. A few ancient trees that seemed prone to blight. An ancient gazebo more gray than white with previous colors showing through its chipped paint. And several patches of sparse grass. I’d passed around it on the crooked, rolling sidewalk many times, hardly noticing it at all. No one gathered there. There weren’t any flowers or picnic tables. There was no playground equipment. Maybe a town surrounded by plenty of green and growing spaces didn’t feel the need to put much energy into a park, but, today, I stopped and stared once my basket was empty. I didn’t like the idea that the heart of Morgan’s Gap was barren and still.

  “I would offer a penny for your thoughts, but your eyes are too dark. Something tells me I shouldn’t ask,” Lu said, instead of saying hello. She didn’t wave because her arms were wrapped around a large container that held a bright red flowering plant. She came to stand beside me on the sidewalk. “Haven’t given this place much attention, have we? I’ve mainly focused on the farmers’ market. Donated proceeds from my first album. At first it was all about music, but that liveliness drew others in. Give an artist space and freedom to express themselves, however they see fit, and suddenly you’ve got a community.”

  So Lu crafted dulcimers and created music, but she also gave back to her roots, creating a place for other artists to come together. You could see the enthusiasm lighting up her face. Community. She made it sound appealing.

  Even when she wasn’t singing, her voice was melodic. I’d heard the mountain in other people’s voices, including Sarah’s, but no one’s was as vibrato and compelling as Lu’s. My Richmond voice was sharply staccato in comparison.

  “What’s wrong with the trees?” I wondered. Many of the branches were leafless, covered by a pale green lichen that must have been leeching whatever life remained out of them.

  “Should probably be removed before they fall, but the mayor lives there.” Lu’s hands were full so she tilted her head toward an ugly walled house with colonia
l columns at the edge of the blighted park. It was a sprawling monstrosity compared to the other houses in town, with disjointed, modern additions that made the square of its original structure seem to dully squat in shame. “Most people just leave this park to him. A sort of neglected backyard. It suits, believe me.”

  The flower in Lu’s container kept drawing my attention again and again. I suddenly recognized it and my entire body flashed cold then hot with the strange coincidence. I wouldn’t have been surprised if lightning had cut across the sky even though it was a sunny day.

  “Is that bergamot?” I asked. I already knew. The illustration of the bee had been accompanied by sketches of the flower Lu held. Petals. Stem. Leaf. Whole blossoms. They hadn’t been colored, but the shape was distinct.

  “Yes. My mother calls it bee balm. It’s for you. Been trying to track you down all morning,” Lu said. She held out the container toward me and I couldn’t help stepping back. The eerily lit page. The words illuminated one by one. The surety that the storm had moved on once I’d seen what I needed to see. The equal certainty that I’d never seen the bee pages before. As if they’d appeared when I needed them.

  “Wh-why?” I asked.

  Lu wasn’t fazed by my nervousness. She stepped forward as I stepped back and nudged the pot into my arms. My basket was empty and the handle looped over my arm. My hands were free. I had to take the container. Once I did, the scarlet flowers trembled, giving my mood away.

  “I’m not one to place much store in mountain superstitions. But I guess I’ve always followed my heart and intuition. It’s where the music comes from. Since you came, I’ve been writing more. Stuff bubbling up from someplace I’d forgotten. You brought Sarah’s ashes home. And maybe that’s part of it. But since she’s been laid to rest I shouldn’t be so restless. Last night, when the storm rolled through, I couldn’t sleep. Went out back and dug up this plant like a woman possessed by lightning light. And all I knew was you needed it,” Lu said.