“I’m Huck, Jackie’s brother,” the dark-haired boy said. “And this is Reece.”
“Nice to meet you,” she said, as Mama had taught her.
Reece said, “I’d shake hands, but you have bug guts all over your fingers.”
Raven smiled when they all laughed. Now she understood why Aunt Sondra said she should play with other children. It was fun.
“How old are you?” Jackie asked.
“Seven,” she said.
“Really? I thought you were older,” he said. “I’m eight.”
Raven looked at Huck, wondering if she could ask how old he was. He seemed to understand. “Reece and I are ten,” he said. “We’re babysitting today.”
“Shut up,” Jackie said.
“We are. Mom said to take you for a walk.”
“I go for walks by myself all the time.”
“Your mom lets you walk out here alone?” Reece asked Raven.
“Yes.”
“You’re not afraid?”
“Of what?”
The boys exchanged glances.
“Doesn’t your mother warn you about strangers and all that?” Huck said.
Mama certainly did. But Raven couldn’t tell them that Mama made her land safe through her communication with the earth spirits. She said they watched over Daughter of Raven, and Raven knew it was true. She used to get scared when Mama left the real world to enter the spirit world, but the spirits had never let anything bad happen to her when Mama was away. If the boys were on Mama’s land, the spirits must have guided them there for a good reason. That was why Raven hadn’t been scared when she saw them. The only time Raven was afraid on Mama’s land was when the house alarms went off.
“She should be afraid of the werewolf,” Jackie said.
“What is that?” Raven asked.
“That dog that belonged to Hooper,” Huck said.
“Hooper?”
“The guy who lives on the property next to yours,” Reece said.
“His dog looked exactly like a wolf,” Huck said. “It used to chase us when we tried to cross Hooper’s property to come swim here. Jackie and I live on the other side of Hooper, but we don’t own any of the creek.”
“Nobody does. It owns itself,” Reece said.
Raven smiled because she understood he was teasing her.
“Why aren’t you at our school?” Jackie asked.
Raven had learned from My First Day of Kindergarten and School Is Fun that other children took lessons in a room with a teacher.
“I have my lessons at home,” she said.
“Oh, one of those,” Reece said.
“Reece . . . ,” Huck said.
“What? She can take a joke. Can’t you?”
Raven didn’t know how to answer, so she just said, “Yes.”
“Will you always do homeschool?” Huck asked.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Don’t you want to go to our school?” Jackie asked.
“I . . . do,” she said.
The two words came out of nowhere. She didn’t know why she’d said them. Mama wouldn’t like it.
“Then you should go,” Jackie said.
She didn’t know what to say. She could never even mention school to Mama. It would make her angry the way her aunt did when she talked about it.
Huck looked in her eyes. “Your mom won’t let you?”
Raven kept quiet.
“Our mom is the fifth-grade teacher,” he said. “She could talk to your mom about it.”
“Huck will be in our mom’s class this fall,” Jackie said.
“I will, too,” Reece said, “and it’s gonna be sweeeet!”
“It’s gonna suck,” Huck said. “She’ll be harder on us than everyone else.”
“Not on me,” Reece said. “She loves me.”
“Nope. You’re like family. You’re as doomed as I am.”
“Crap,” Reece said.
Raven liked the way they talked and laughed and made faces at each other. She didn’t want them to leave. But her bird baby was restless in her nest. The jay was as eager for insects as Raven was for the boys to stay.
Huck said to Jackie, “Speaking of Mom, we’d better go. She wants us back for dinner early.”
“What’s she making?” Reece asked.
“Enchiladas.”
“Can I stay over?” Reece asked.
“Vegan enchiladas,” Huck said.
“I know,” Reece said. “Your mom’s cooking is awesome. I’ll be lucky if my mom makes a frozen pizza.”
Raven noticed the way Huck looked at Reece, as if he were sorry for him. “Yeah, stay over,” he said. “My mom will want you to.”
“Because she loves me,” Reece said.
Jackie was staring at Raven. He had pretty eyes, big with many colors mixed in. Green, yellow, brown, maybe even some orange. But better than that was the happy way he looked at her. Raven thought that must be how a person looked at a friend, and she had never had a friend before.
“We have to leave,” he said.
Raven could tell he didn’t want to go. She felt the same. “Can I see you again?” she asked.
His eyes got brighter. “Yeah,” he said.
“When?” she asked.
Jackie looked at his brother. Huck shrugged.
“You can swim anytime you want,” she said. But she wondered how Mama would react if she saw the boys on her daily walks. The creek was one of her favorite places.
“We’ll definitely come back,” Jackie said. “Or maybe you could come over sometime. To our house.”
Raven noticed Reece and Huck grinning at each other but didn’t know what it meant. She was afraid to say she could go to Jackie’s house. She had a feeling Mama wouldn’t like that. But these boys didn’t seem at all aware of her being the daughter of a raven spirit. As long as she kept it secret, why not go to their house?
Huck and Reece walked away. “Let’s go, Jackie,” Huck said.
Reece turned around and said, “Nice meeting you, Bird Girl.”
“It was,” Jackie said. “Gotta go. Bye.”
“Bye,” she said, mimicking his wave.
The boys stepped into the creek because the shores were too thick with shrubs for walking. She watched until they disappeared around the bend.
It was sad but also exciting—because everything they had said and done could not disappear with them.
4
Raven didn’t tell Mama about the boys. She felt bad.
But she also felt good. She liked to think about the boys. Just imagining their faces made her happy.
She had gone to the big dictionary that night and looked up some of the words the boys had said. She got frustrated when she couldn’t find warewolf or veegin. She figured out she was spelling divorst wrong when she found the word divorce. There were two meanings in the dictionary: To end one’s marriage with one’s spouse and To make or keep separate. Raven didn’t understand the first meaning. She supposed the boys had meant the second meaning when they asked if she was the girl who lived with the rich, divorced lady. Mama kept herself and Raven separate from other people because of the secrets they knew about the earth.
But how had the boys known? It worried her a little.
The next morning, Mama woke Raven at first light. Because that was when mama birds fed their babies. Raven was glad to have an excuse to be away from the house and her lessons. As the day warmed and the baby jay’s belly filled, Raven made her way toward the stream. She hoped the boys would swim again. By afternoon, the weather was hot enough.
But they didn’t come that day. Or the next. When they hadn’t returned on the third day, Raven decided she had to make a serious Asking. She did it right there next to the stream. That had to be the best place to ask for what she wanted.
Beneath a cedar tree that overhung the water, she put four leaves of different colors in a flower pattern touching each other. Green, yellow, brown, and orange, all the colors in Jackie
’s eyes. Next to the flower “eye,” she put an orange mushroom for Reece with his pretty hair. On the other side of Jackie’s eye, she put a brown stone for Huck with his dark eyes and strong body.
She studied her Asking. It seemed to need something more. But what?
It needed her. Of course.
She took out her knife and cut some hair off the end of one braid. She sprinkled the hair over the three boys, bonding her to them. She felt good about it. Very good. She knew they would come back. Tomorrow or the next day.
Baby, as Raven now called her, was crying for food. She had fully accepted Raven as her mama.
As the sun sank behind the wooded hills, Raven made her way back home, searching for insects along the way.
“Look how your baby is growing!” Mama said when she got home. “You’re feeding her well. You must be hungry, too.”
She was. Mama gave her lunch to take with her when she was out feeding the bird, but it never seemed enough to fill her up.
Raven cleaned Baby’s nest and put her on her warming pad for the night. Mama set a big plate of food on the table. Ham, baked potato, squash, and green beans. The delivery from the grocery store had come that day. Mama rarely went out to stores.
They sat across from each other at the table. “What did you see and learn today?” she asked.
“I learned a baby bird is always hungry,” she said.
“You have a new appreciation for the work a bird must do. And imagine more than one in the nest.”
“That would be so hard!” Raven said.
“What else did you see?”
“I saw a coyote. And a doe with a fawn. I saw many birds. I saw a raven and told him I’m taking good care of the baby he gave me.”
Mama smiled and nodded.
“I found a white flower I never saw before. I saw a dead snake being eaten by ants. Oh, and in the morning, there was a spider’s web that looked like it had little pieces of glass all over it. It was so pretty.”
“Wonderful,” Mama said.
Raven looked down at her plate. She felt bad about hiding her Asking from Mama. But she was afraid she would say she must never see the boys again. Raven couldn’t let that happen.
Later, Mama tucked her into bed and kissed her cheek. “Good night, Daughter of Raven, my sweet miracle.”
“Good night, Mama.”
Raven was almost too excited to sleep, thinking about seeing the boys the next day.
But they didn’t come. Her Asking was still there next to the stream.
The next day, she went straight to the stream to do all her insect searching. When the sun was high in the sky and Baby slept, Raven ate the lunch Mama had given her. Afterward, she lay down, put her hands under her head, and looked up at the sun shimmering through the cedar branches.
She sat up when someone said, “Hi, Raven.”
Jackie and his brother were wading in the stream.
“How’s the bird?” Jackie asked as he came closer.
“She’s getting big.” She held Baby out for him and Huck to see. That woke up Baby and made her beg for food.
“She has lots more feathers,” Jackie said.
“She’s good with taking the insects now. She thinks I’m her mama.”
Huck was looking at Raven curiously. “Were you waiting for us?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“For how many days?”
“Every day.”
“I told you!” Jackie said.
“Where is Reece?” she asked.
“He’s helping his mom today,” Huck said.
Baby was calling for food again.
“Want me to help you find something to feed her?” Jackie asked.
“Yes.”
Huck sat on the stream bank. “I’m not staying long, Jackie,” he said.
His mood wasn’t as nice as last time. But that was okay. She was used to that with Mama.
“He’s kind of mad about coming here,” Jackie whispered near Raven’s ear as they walked.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I guess because Reece or one of his other friends isn’t here. He kept saying you wouldn’t be here, but I had a feeling you would be.”
Raven smiled. Her Asking had made him feel that. She had thought of Jackie most when she did the Asking, so it made sense that he was the one who felt it strongly.
They fed Baby a crane fly, a few crickets, and a caterpillar. While the bird slept, they sat on a log. They could see Huck lying on his back next to the stream, but they were out of his hearing.
“How far from here is your house?” Jackie asked.
“It’s far, but not very far.”
“We can’t see it from the road when we drive past your place.”
He got quiet and twisted the bark off a stick. She had a feeling she was supposed to talk, but she didn’t know what to say.
After a little while, he said, “Yesterday when we drove past your gate, I asked my mom if she’d ever seen your house. She said no, but she’d heard it was really nice.” He looked at her. “I don’t know how she knew that. Maybe the people who built it said that. People around here talk.”
Raven had never thought about the people around there. Not until she met the boys.
“My mom said your mom tore down the old house that was here,” he said. “You wouldn’t remember that because you were a baby. You lived in a trailer she brought in while the house was built.”
“What’s a trailer?”
“A house you can move.”
She tried to imagine that.
He threw down the stick he’d been peeling. “My parents are divorced like yours are,” he said.
“I looked up that word in our dictionary,” she said.
“Divorced?”
She nodded. “What do you mean by it?”
“You don’t know? I thought your mom was divorced?”
She was afraid to say anything about Mama’s divorce from the outside world.
“It means your mom and dad split up. They don’t live with each other anymore. Didn’t your mom tell you where your dad went?”
She couldn’t say anything about that. She shook her head to say no.
“Do you ever see him?”
Even if she had permission to say, the question was impossible to answer. She saw ravens almost every day, but those birds were not her father. They were an embodiment of her father, Mama said. She still didn’t understand that word.
He took her silence as a no. “I never see my dad either. He quit coming around when I was little. I don’t even remember him.”
An idea popped into her mind. Was it possible Jackie and Huck were born of earth spirits? Was that why they also lived in that place and had no father in their house?
“Do you know anything about your father?” she asked.
“No. My mom doesn’t like to talk about him. Huck doesn’t either.”
“What does your father look like?”
He thought about that. “Like Huck, sort of.”
Raven looked a little like her father. Dark eyes and hair. Her skin had taken some color from him, too, Mama said.
“How do you know what your father looks like?” she asked.
“From pictures. Didn’t your mom keep any pictures of your dad?”
She shook her head.
“She must be really mad at him.”
Raven supposed Jackie wasn’t the son of an earth spirit if he had pictures of his father and Huck looked like him. But the idea had been nice. She wished she could talk to another person like her.
Jackie got off the log. “Do you want to see something cool?”
He’d used the word cool before, and she was pretty sure it didn’t mean cold.
As they walked back to the stream, he said, “It’s more funny than cool, I guess.”
Huck stood as Jackie stepped into the stream. “Where are you going?”
“To show her the Wolfsbane,” Jackie said. “Your boots will get wet,” he told Rav
en. “You need shoes to walk in this stream. The rocks are killer on bare feet.”
She knew that and didn’t care if her boots got wet. They got soaked with dew every morning anyway. She wondered what the “wolfsbane” was.
Huck followed them into the creek. “What if she tells her mom?” he asked.
“She won’t,” Jackie said.
“It’s on her property.”
Jackie stopped walking and looked at Raven. “You won’t tell your mom, will you?”
“No,” she said.
“Did you tell her about us swimming in your creek?” Huck asked.
“No.”
“You see?” Jackie said to his brother.
“So you didn’t tell her about us at all?” Huck asked.
She shook her head.
“We didn’t tell our mom either,” Jackie said. “We didn’t think she’d like that we go far and on other people’s land.”
Other children kept secrets from their mothers, too. She felt better about not telling Mama.
As they waded downstream, she saw why the boys walked in the water to get to the swimming hole. Both shores were thickets of blackberry thorns and shrubs that made land walking impossible. She had never walked so far downstream.
After a long stretch of shallow water rippling over rocks, then a deeper bend, Raven stopped when she saw the strange thing ahead. The boys grinned at her surprise.
In the middle of another wide, shallow riffle was a stack of objects topped by a small humanlike shape.
“It’s better from the front,” Jackie said.
She followed the boys to the other side of the thing Jackie had called “wolfsbane.” Placed in the middle of the stream were two plastic milk crates, one blue, one red. On top was a boxy thing with broken glass in front. A TV, she guessed, because she’d seen them in pictures in books. Inside the broken TV was a deer skull with only one antler. On top of the TV was a rusty black microwave oven with a shattered glass door. And on top of that was a stone woman. She was carved to look like she was wearing a gown that draped over her hair down to her bare feet. She held her arms out with her palms up, but one arm was broken off at the elbow. The other shoulder had a piece missing. The woman used to be light gray, but now she was mostly green, covered in moss.
“Reece, Huck, and I made this last year,” Jackie said. “To scare the werewolf away. Reece calls it the Wolfsbane because it’s like that stuff in movies that scares away werewolves.”
The Light Through the Leaves Page 10