Green Heart

by Alice Hoffman

  I’m not this pretty, I said. My sister was the one who looked like moonlight.

  Diamond shook his head. He motioned for me to come close, and when I did, he touched my forehead.

  I still couldn’t see his face beneath the black hood. I couldn’t see the look in his eyes. But I understood. I knew that he’d painted not only what he’d seen, but what he’d felt deep inside.

  The next time I went to my neighbor’s house I brought another pot of stew. On this day, the old woman had made bread out of nettles. Although this loaf was not half as sweet as the bread I baked, I ate every bit.

  Do you still say your name is Ash? my neighbor asked when I had finished eating, when I had washed the plates and set them to dry, when I had swept the floor and straightened the portraits on the staircase.

  It’s still true, I told her.

  She gave me the magnifying glass and told me to look at my hands. When I did I saw that the leaves that had been black were now green. It was the green of newly cut grass. In my nose, there was the scent of summer, fresh enough to make me sneeze.

  I blew my nose on my handkerchief, but I could still smell cut grass.

  It’s the ink, I said. Not me.

  I didn’t believe the garden would grow, but I must have believed in Diamond. The next time I went into town I brought along my mother’s pearl necklace to trade for packets of seeds. I had found the necklace in a drawer, set in a velvet box, tied up with ribbons. Beside the box was a card made out to me. My mother had planned to give me her pearls on my sixteenth birthday. Now I wasn’t sure that day would come. The last thing I wanted was pearls. I thought my mother would understand and agree with me. I thought she would want me to choose lettuce and scallions and herbs above pearls.

  I traded for the seeds and for something else — a denim jacket for Diamond. I thought it might suit him when he wanted to toss away that black coat with the hood that smelled like smoke. When he was ready to show me his face.

  While I was getting ready to go I heard the shopkeeper and his wife talk about the people who had destroyed the city. Some of them had been living among us, pretending to be good neighbors. Their wives had shopped in our markets. Their children had gone to our schools, eaten our bread, played in our streets.

  Many of their children had burned right along with others. Still others were wanderers, their families devastated. In the storekeeper’s opinion it was easy enough to tell who these wanderers were. They would not look at you directly. Often they were burned. Even more often, they refused to speak.

  I felt as though I had swallowed stones. Was it possible that my talent had failed me? That I had not been able to distinguish a friend from an enemy?

  I walked through the woods without thinking of where I was going. I wanted to be lost, but I knew these woods too well. I could hear the music from the forgetting shack. I could hear laughter rising over the hill. I thought about the path that would lead me there. It was easy enough to find. I started down to the shack, slowed by my nail-studded boots. Halfway down the overgrown path I stopped. I had spied Heather.

  She was curled up beside the fire, so close that sparks fell into her hair. People did their best to pull her away, but she crawled right back. She was long past listening to anyone. She was barely Heather Jones anymore. She was disappearing a little more each day, so thin, so frail, a wisp of smoke. One day she would surely vanish altogether, and there was no way to stop her. She was so busy forgetting, she couldn’t take a single step into the future.

  I turned and went through the woods. I wasn’t interested in tablets or gin or sleeping pills or burning up alive. I had something far better to erase any facts that were too painful to remember. I could hear the hundred birds nesting in the treetops. I could hear the wind whispering that it would soon rain.

  As soon as I got home I took out my blackest ink. I lit a candle, then sorted my needles and pins from the most delicate to the sharpest. I had one pin that was like a strand of silver, another that was like a sigh, a third that was as cold as a chip of ice, and a dozen more so tiny, I had to feel for them because they were all but invisible. Pain wasn’t the thing I feared most.

  I could hear the dogs running in their sleep. I could hear the sparrows fluttering their wings. Dreaming of the hunt, the hawk stretched out his great yellow talons. Diamond must have been asleep in the barn after a day of working in the hopeless garden. That was just as well. I didn’t want to see him. I didn’t want his silence, his black hood. I didn’t want him as a friend or an enemy.

  I could still see the bit of green on my ankle. That vine. That leaf. That rose. The color was a mistake. I wanted to announce who I was, not change back. I was Ash, who wanted black and stones, leather and thorns. I took my mother’s mirror and rested it on a pile of my father’s books. Now I could see my own handiwork, even with my blurry vision and the darkness of the night.

  I had one place left, a circle above my heart.

  I used the needle that felt like ice. It was the sharpest of all.

  I was making a different sort of heart, one that was black, one that was protected by thorns, by bats, by raven’s wings, by sorrow, by my aloneness, my armor.

  I was halfway through this last tattoo when Diamond walked through the door. He was so silent, I could barely hear him. He was so quiet, I didn’t know he was there until he took my hand in his. He raised the pin up to the place where his own heart was. He made it clear what he wanted me to do.

  I gave him the other half of my heart. I worked until my fingers were numb, until our loss mirrored each other’s. I used the ice needle, the one that caused the greatest pain.

  I watched to see if Diamond flinched, but he never once did. I etched half a rose, half a wing, half a thorn, half a leaf. When I was done, Diamond took off his black hood so I could see what the fire had done to him. Then I understood why pain meant nothing to him anymore. I could see why half was enough for him. One side of his face was perfect, my Diamond. The other half was charred and discolored. I kissed both sides. They were one and the same to me.

  I could feel the season changing. It was growing warmer every day. I felt it as though I were a leaf that was greening, a vine that was growing toward the sun.

  One day the sparrows rose high in the sky, then settled in the treetops. I forced myself not to call them back to me. I knew they were meant to fly.

  Soon after the hawk disappeared from my porch. I would see him sometimes, his wingspan nearly blocking out the sun. He peered down from above, but I didn’t whistle for him. I didn’t wave so that he would light on my arm. I didn’t insist that he eat grain from my hand. I knew that hawks had to hunt.

  All the same, I considered putting a collar and a leash on Ghost. I knew she was next. I could tell by the way she stared into the woods. One morning when the air was especially fresh and Diamond was watering the garden, I left Onion inside the new fence Diamond had built. I felt the leaves, the vines, the warming air. I went out walking with Ghost.

  We went past the oldest trees, past the piles of stones, to the deepest part of the woods. Even I who knew these woods so well could have lost my way here, but the white dog knew where to go. We both knew what she needed to do.

  In the treetops there were the hundred birds who had come to eat birdseed from my garden. There were the sparrows who had knitted a fishing net from my own black hair. There was the hawk whose wingspan could block out the sun.

  I knelt down beside the white dog. I could feel her trembling. That’s how badly she wanted to run.

  She had slept on my sister’s bed with me. She had dreamed right alongside me. She had led me to places I never would have gone if I hadn’t followed her. She looked up at me, and I called her Ghost one last time. Then I let her go.

  Not long after that, Heather Jones disappeared. She was not at the place where she usually slept, beneath the bridge. When I left out food and clothes for her, no one collected the packages. When I looked for her footsteps in the mud, they weren’t
there.

  I went down to the forgetting shack to search for her. It was early morning, and most of the people there were still asleep. Their feet were bloody from dancing all night. Their hair was threaded with brambles. I found two girls I might have recognized if they hadn’t been so filthy and so drunk. They were settling down to sleep, but they nodded when I asked about Heather. She was gone, it was true. No one had seen her for days.

  There were those who wondered what had happened to her, but they were too tired to look for her, too busy forgetting. Some people said she had drifted into the fire as she danced one dark night. She had tripped, she had fallen, she had turned into smoke. When I looked in the fire they always kept burning, there were bits of blue among the ashes.

  When I left the forgetting shack, I went to visit my neighbor. My nail-studded boots hurt my feet, my leather jacket slowed me down, but at last I reached the old woman’s house. I thought about Heather Jones. I thought about how it was impossible to forget, no matter how hard anyone might try.

  I knocked on the door, and the old woman was waiting for me. She had made a soup out of well-water and nettles. It was thin and lukewarm, but the taste was just what I needed, bitter on my tongue.

  Tell me your name, my neighbor said.

  I could see the girl my neighbor had once been reflected in her eyes, in the way she held her hands, in the way she laughed at me now.

  Speak up, she said. Say it out loud.

  Ash, I insisted. Only Ash.

  My neighbor handed me the magnifying glass, and when I looked at my arms I could see that each black rose I had inked there had turned white with a green center, the night-blooming flowers of my dreams. I could feel something green growing inside me. Green as summer in my bones. I ran all the way home. I ran through mud and brambles and thorns.

  But I could feel it still.

  If sparrows were meant to fly, and hawks to hunt, and greyhounds to run, then a boy such as Diamond was meant to search for his mother. If he didn’t go, if he forgot or thought of himself first, then he wouldn’t be Diamond. I knew that. I wasn’t surprised when I reached the gate and saw him standing there, carrying his backpack, wearing the denim jacket I’d gotten in exchange for pearls. I understood why he couldn’t stay.

  So I gave him a map, a thermos of clear water, a loaf of the bread I had baked. I gave him half of my heart to take with him, no matter what road he turned onto.

  If he’d had a voice he would have said good-bye, he would have told me he would surely miss me the same way I’d miss him. Instead, he held me close before he set out toward the road. Instead, he kissed me and I knew these things without a single word being said.

  Sister

  This is the story I tell

  My sister came back to me in my dreams. I could see that Aurora wasn’t my age. She wasn’t my twin. She was only a little girl, one I would miss every day of my life. Now that I was Green again, Aurora recognized me. She called out my name, and I was Green through and through.

  I told my sister I didn’t think I could live without her, but she assured me that was something I would never have to do.

  I’m with you forever, she told me.

  Right away, I knew it was true. True for my father, who could whistle to the birds in the trees. True for my mother, who had such gentle hands. True for my sister, who shone like silver.

  When I woke from my dream I was crying. I cried like the rain, like the river that flowed to the city, and all my tears were green. At last my eyes were cleared of embers. At last I could fully see. There was daylight out my window. There were the seedlings Diamond had grown in the garden. There was the world waiting outside, aching and ruined, but beautiful all the same.

  I went out and worked until I was sweating in the sun. While I worked, I missed my father and my mother. I missed the white dog and the sparrows and hawk. I missed Diamond and I missed Heather Jones.

  Most of all I missed my sister.

  I thought about them every day. I thought about them while I weeded between the rows, while I soaked the ground with well-water, while I raked away what was left of the ashes. Before long, the vines from the pumpkin seeds left by the sparrows were a hundred yards long. The seedlings were as high as my waist. By spring, the vines of sweet peas were taller than I was. When the warm weather returned, Onion could hide between the stalks of corn. There were hundreds of blue jays and sparrows that came to sing to me while I worked. There were white clouds drifting across the sky.

  It was so hot, I took off my leather jacket. I took off my scarf made of thorns, my father’s old boots. At night I dreamed of my sister, and she knew me as well as I knew myself. I dreamed of vines and grass, apples and emeralds, rain and white night-flowers that bloomed with green centers. I dreamed of everything I’d lost and all that I’d found and everything in between.

  On the day I turned sixteen, I went to stand on the hillside. There were more and more lights to be seen on the other side of the river. People were moving back. The city was being rebuilt. Golden by daylight, silver at night. I could hear hammering as people from our town rebuilt the bridge. They worked all hours, they used every nail in the county, every spare set of hands.

  By the end of the growing season, I’d be able to take my vegetables into the city. I’d buy myself a scale and measure out the peas and the peppers carefully, as my mother always had. I’d whistle the tunes my father had loved. I’d shop at the stores that had been both my sister’s and my favorites: the bookstalls, the candy kiosks.

  Wherever I went, gold dust would stick to my feet. Silver would shine in my dark hair. On every avenue, every street corner, every sidewalk, I’d carry my sister close to me, inside my heart.

  Today, on the first day of being sixteen, I took three stones and went far into the woods. Without the nail-studded boots, I no longer tripped over brambles. Without the leather jacket, I did not tire. Without the scarf of thorns, I could move through the trees like mist.

  When I reached the three stacks, I bowed my head. I listened to the birds, a hundred different songs of sorrow and forgiveness. That morning the first thing I’d done after waking was to go out and search until I’d found one perfect black stone, one perfect silver stone, one stone that shone white as the moon. They were the last stones I would bring here. I knew they were the last because they felt light in my pockets, light in my hands. I knew because I could remember without them.

  When I left the woods to celebrate my birthday at my neighbor’s house, it was twilight. All along the hillsides, everything looked green in the fading light. A few of the oak trees had managed to send out some wavering leaves. The hardiest plants, witch hazel and old ferns, were growing in the ditches. I took my time and watched the green in all its shades. I treaded gracefully, as my mother once had. I took even strides, as my father had. Onion followed me, as he used to follow my sister.

  When I arrived at my neighbor’s house she went to the stove and ladled out a stew made from all the vegetables I’d brought her. It was a gift from Diamond, every bit of it. It was the garden he’d grown when I’d still refused to believe in anything. Sometimes I wondered if he hadn’t watered the seedlings with his tears, and if the tears hadn’t turned to silver. Everything he’d grown was filled with light.

  When we’d devoured every spoonful of our dinner, my neighbor brought out a cake made of nettles. There was no icing, no candles, and the color was faintly green. A cake such as this should have been too bitter to eat, but I found I preferred it to any I’d had before. I ate every crumb, and still wanted more.

  What do you call yourself now? the old woman wanted to know.

  She didn’t have to ask twice. For the first time since the day when it happened, I said my name out loud. The word tasted sweet as apples, fresh as grass, fragrant as roses. When I looked down I could see that the half-tattoo I shared with Diamond had turned green around the edges. In the center, it was red.

  My heart was opening.

  You made it happen, m
y neighbor told me. You are the ink, she said. Write as you want.

  It was Green who thanked the old woman, who ran home, greener with every step. Green, who was covered with bright vines, with roses that had emerald centers and only bloomed at night. Green, who threw away the ragged scarf, who cast off the leather jacket, the old boots, the ravens, the bats, the thousand thorns.

  I went to the table and opened the bottle of ink, meaning to spill it all out. By chance, I took a pen and dipped it in the bottle. I saw then that the ink was green. It was the ink of a sister, a woman with long, dark hair, a man who was strong. It was the ink of a witness, of a girl of sixteen who had no idea what the future might bring. Green as the world we once knew.

  I found a ream of white paper in a desk drawer. Then I understood the path my mother had spoken of for me. Every white page looked like a garden, in which anything might grow.

  I sat down at the table with the pen and the ink. I spread out the clean, white pages.

  Then and there, I began to tell their story.

  Acknowledgments

  With gratitude and love

  to my dear publisher, Jean Feiwel,

  and my wonderful editor, Elizabeth Szabla.

  Many thanks also to Elizabeth Parisi

  for her brilliant design.

  To Matt Mahurin, thank you, thank you,

  for pure genius.

  Green Witch

  ALICE HOFFMAN

  Stone Witch

  This is what I remembered

  What you dream, you can grow.

  Someone told me that, but I didn’t believe it.

  I said I had nothing and that people with nothing are unable to dream. But I was wrong. Dreams are like air. They never leave you. It takes less than nothing to begin. Start with a pile of rocks. Moonstones, night stones, stones the color of snow. Start with heartache, thorns, vines. Let there be mud on your clothes, nails in your boots, ink on your skin, pain deep inside you. Let it grow and don’t be afraid.