Green Heart

by Alice Hoffman

  The townspeople whisper that the witch who can fly sleeps in a nest; she lays eggs and has feathers and talons. They say she knows things a flesh-and-blood woman has no business knowing. She knows your thoughts, your deepest despair, your brightest hope. She can call you by your given name even though she’s never seen you before. If you aren’t careful, she gets inside your mind. She understands you better than you understand yourself, seeing through to your truest self, whether you like it or not.

  Hers is the first story I want to hear.

  I start down the road with Onion and a basket of food, the typewriter strapped to my back. The packet of paper I made is stored in a mesh bag I use for drying herbs and sometimes for carrying Onion when he grows tired. I walk for miles under a cloudless sky. I like the feel of the road under my feet, I like the fresh air, but I don’t like my own fears. What if the whispers are true? What if the last thing a witch wants is to tell her own story?

  Clouds begin to appear in the east as if to echo my cloudy thoughts. They form a tower, a heart, a ring, a bird without wings.

  Diamond left me to find his mother and his people. But what if his people are our enemies? What if I hadn’t seen him for who he really was? What if our love is something I’d only imagined, yearned for, invented out of air?

  My journey takes a day and a night. At last, I see the high tower where the Sky Witch lives. It was once a fire tower. A fire marshal watched over our valley from this vantage point, on the lookout for the signs of smoke. But there is no longer a fire brigade. All our firemen went to the city on the day of the disaster, and they never returned. They crossed the bridge in a desperate attempt to save whoever might be left, but the flames leapt higher and the bridge collapsed behind them.

  These men can’t be replaced. Not ever.

  Now if something is set on fire, our people simply stand and watch it burn.

  I pop Onion into the mesh bag, then begin up the rickety ladder. I climb higher and higher, past the tops of the trees, right through a cloud. It’s so high I don’t dare to look down. I’m breathless, afraid I might fall. But I keep on. I’m at the point where going forward is easier than going back.

  I don’t stop until I see her. Of course she knew I was coming. She probably knew before I did. She has set out a bowl of water for Onion and a pot of tea made of berries and herbs for me. The tea is blue, hot and salty, like tears. The first sip is so bitter I nearly choke.

  You’ll get used to the taste, she tells me. And true enough, I do.

  The woman who lives in the tower, the one people swear has feathers and claws, was once the mother of six children. Now she is all alone in a nest made of twigs on the highest platform of the fire tower. The air here is cold and thin and clear. The wind makes you shiver, the sun makes you burn.

  The woman in the tower has hair that is knotted with blue feathers; her dress is woven from the down of blue jays. When she sings, the air fills with birds of every variety. Orioles, mockingbirds, nightingales, kestrels — varieties I haven’t seen since the city burned down. There are hummingbirds, herons, snowy owls, even parakeets and canaries that have escaped from their cages.

  I spy a hawk, one I saved after the fire. He’s perched on the roof of the tower — a guard keeping watch over our valley. I had cared for his burns with my mother’s lotions and salves. I nursed him back to health and watched him fly away when he was healed.

  He looks beautiful here, so high above the world, so at home in the sky.

  I’m so happy to see him.

  When I tell the woman who lives in the tower I’ve come to write down her story, she doesn’t seem surprised. She doesn’t shout or insist I leave as I feared she might. Troy Jones was right. She wants to tell me her story. She actually seems impatient, as if she has been waiting to reveal it for a long time. She speaks so quickly it’s not easy to keep up with her. It’s like trying to type the wind. She has cried so many tears over the past year that the leaves on the trees beneath the tower have all turned blue. It looks as if there is only sky below us, so vast and endless we can never get back to the ground.

  I feel dizzy, but I keep writing. I am still Green, the one who will listen to your story. Green, the searcher. Green, looking for my heart’s desire.

  The woman in the tower hasn’t spoken much since the disaster. At first her words sound like birdsongs, but after a while I understand. She had been asleep with her children when the accident happened, all of them safe and napping in their beds, nestled in a house on the hill. Her husband had been one of the firemen who raced across the bridge before it fell. His name was Jack Bird. Her husband’s name sounds like a song in her mouth. She cannot measure his courage.

  But can you measure someone’s love? I want to know.

  You think you can measure love?

  She’s kind not to laugh at me. I must seem a fool, a girl named Green who doesn’t yet understand the world.

  No scale would be strong enough, she tells me. It would break to pieces under the weight.

  On that terrible day, the firestorm ripped through her house in a blinding light. When she opened her eyes, she was alone. Her children had been turned into piles of ash. Her house was destroyed, but she stayed, unprotected from the fallout, the rain, the torrents of leaves, the moths and bats. She slept under a sky that was black at noon. She couldn’t leave her children even though people insisted they were no longer there. A group of kindhearted women from town came to comfort her, but she wouldn’t even look at them, let alone allow herself to be brought into the village.

  Then one day the wind rose up, and the piles of ash that had been her children rose up as well, into the sky, higher and higher. She ran after them, desperate, trying her best to catch up. She went through the woods, past the river, along the road, until she came to this place. She has been here ever since, watching out over the countryside, exactly as her husband, Jack Bird, had done when he was the fire marshal, before he raced into the city on that burning day.

  All her life she had been happy but foolish, she tells me. She had been too busy with the small details of her own life to appreciate what she had. She couldn’t even remember if she’d kissed her husband good-bye on that last day, or if she had sung her children to sleep before she tucked them in for their naps.

  Now she keeps watch over our valley with the help of the hawk. Lately, her eyes have been watering. There has been smoke. The Horde is going from town to town with their torches. They’re coming closer to our village.

  From up here I see everything, the woman in the tower tells me.

  She is nothing like the gossips suggested, not a birdwoman with talons and a beak, squawking and wheeling across the sky. Just the mother of lost children with feathers in her hair.

  What you see, you can understand, she says.

  I don’t believe that, I tell her. I still can’t make sense of anything I’ve seen.

  Look at it from the inside, she tells me.

  On that terrible day, she had gazed up into the sky for too long, staring straight into the burning black sun. She had lost her children and her brave husband. It seemed she had nothing more to lose, but she had.

  Only then do I realize that her eyes are milky. She has lost her sight. She’s a blind woman keeping watch over our village, our valley, our lives. Still, her lack of vision doesn’t keep her from knowing what our future might bring.

  I can tell they’re coming closer because of the birds, she tells me.

  She hands me a single blue feather, which I slip into my pocket alongside the stone that contains a leaf.

  Every day more flocks of birds come to our valley, she says.

  They’re being chased out of the woods by the fires soldiers from the Horde are setting in villages along the river. Each time the attackers ride in on their black horses, more people are captured and brought to their prison.

  Can you grant a heart’s desire? I ask. I’m asking as much for myself as I am for Troy Jones. Can you find someone who’s been lost?


  Someone may be able to, but it’s not me, she says sadly. I can only tell you about what I lost. I can only tell you my story.

  When I write her story, I record the names of all her children and everything they had loved. Jonah had loved apples and William had loved trucks. Sarah had loved books and Melinda had loved hopping about in the rain and Loren had loved rolling in the grass. The littlest of all, the baby named Sam, had loved waking up in the morning and seeing the color of the sky. The paper I use for her has feathers mixed in. The color is a pure pale blue. It looks like spirit paper, cloudy, sky-tinged, as though it’s been saturated with tears.

  By the time the story is told, it’s late and I’ve grown tired. The woman in the sky lets me stay overnight in the tower. I’m not bothered by the height anymore. All night the wind blows and the woman who lost her children keeps watch. She never sleeps. She is beyond sleep, she confides, day and night are one and the same. But I sleep deeply for the first time in a very long time. I don’t worry that my garden may be growing over the windows and doors. That night I dream of six stars in the sky and six birds in a nest. I dream about a baby who loved gardens and green living things.

  When I wake just before dawn, I’m alone, the dog sleeping at my feet, the clouds all around me. The woman with no children is gone. I notice there is blue fabric woven into the nest.

  I think of Heather Jones.

  I think of Diamond.

  I try to see with my heart and not only with my eyes. I gaze out and try to look beyond what’s right in front of me.

  There are flocks of birds in the distance. The blind doves that often nest in my garden are reeling through the air. Among them is one bluebird flying straight into the wind, higher than all the rest. Her shape is the form of a woman. She perches on the roofs of houses in our village to sing children to sleep with lullabies. She keeps watch all night long, making certain no one’s house burns down in the dark and no one else’s children are lost.

  When the morning breaks open into bands of clear light, I can see farther than I ever have before, all the way along the river. This tower is the highest point for miles around, and the landscape is like a quilt stretched out before me. Villages and fields and woods are a hodgepodge of yellow and green. I see windmills and roads and roses and houses. In the distance, on the other side of the river, lies the city. From here it still looks beautiful, as it did when it was made out of silver and gold.

  Then I notice something I’ve never seen before. In the center of the river there is an island where an old prison once stood. The prison is well hidden by shrubs and vines. You can’t see it from our village, only from up here in the sky. This is where the Horde takes men who won’t give up the future, and women who refuse to step back into a time when they had no words and no rights.

  From this distance the prison looks like a castle. Smoke spirals from the watchtowers. Skulls are nailed to the cornice stones. I spy a flag of ragged blue fabric waving in one window. To me it looks like a flag made of tears.

  The flag disappears after only a moment, but I have seen it. A sign from Heather Jones. I’m sure of it. But where is the person I had loved, the boy who gave me my heart, then broke it in two?

  Where is Diamond?

  I walk home thinking about things I thought I was done with. Love, loyalty, lies. It rains and the rain is green. When I reach my gate, I see that my garden has grown even taller. I cut a path through the twisted wisteria, the blood red roses, the beans on vines that reach all the way to the chimney top.

  After I feed Onion, I work on the books I’ve written, sewing the pages together. I use vines as my thread, thorns as my needles. I have a bookcase full of stories now. The baker’s story smells like cinnamon. The scientist’s story has the scent of grass. My teacher’s tale of the books she loved has stray words that fall out when I turn the pages. Heath and desire and moors. My neighbor with the field of stones has a book so heavy it nearly breaks the shelf in two.

  When the book for the woman who lost her children is done, it’s so light I have to tie it to the floor to stop it from rising up to the ceiling.

  That week when I trek into town with my wheelbarrow of vegetables, Onion follows along, barking at everyone we pass. I notice that the children in the village are singing the lullaby, the one they’d heard in their dreams. I think about the Enchanted. I wonder why it is that those who are the most wounded can often see what others cannot.

  More than ever I want their stories on my bookcase.

  I want them to last.

  The Finder soon comes to see me. I’m easy to locate. You don’t need much talent to find me. I’m planting red snap peas in my garden on a dark night. Because I’m still thinking about Diamond, the beans are all turning red. When people in the village eat them, they’ll dream of kisses. They’ll want to go out looking for love.

  The moon is hidden behind clouds, but the weather is warm. It’s late spring. Soon enough I’ll be turning seventeen. Somehow that seems old to me. So much has happened. So much is gone. I’m lonely in a way I don’t understand. I feel like one of the black moths flitting around a lantern, looking for the moon and finding only a false light, burning its wings in the process.

  When the Finder appears, Onion doesn’t growl. Troy Jones wants to know if I found the witch who can grant a heart’s desire. I shake my head.

  I tell him what I saw from the tower, the island prison in the center of the river. The skulls and the smoke and the blue flag.

  I had believed that Heather had fallen asleep near the fire. I thought she’d been burned to ashes. I presumed I knew her story, but I’d been wrong. Now I wonder if perhaps you can’t know the end of something until you get there.

  We go inside and have a meal of tomato soup and nettle bread. I serve Troy a slice of cake made from pumpkin seeds and chestnut flour. It’s my mother’s recipe, so of course it’s delicious. He wolfs down the cake, then politely asks for more. I know he’s thinking about everything I’ve told him, and thinking makes him hungry. He’s only a boy, after all, still growing. In time he will be tall — six feet tall, maybe more.

  As he eats the pumpkin cake, Troy tells me he became the Finder by accident. When he began to search for his sister, he discovered so many other things our village needed. He reminds me that his father had been a carpenter. Troy himself was always a tinkerer by nature. He’s good at puzzles and can easily put most contraptions together. He tells me this is why he has decided to go to the prison. If his sister is there, he’s certain he can help her escape.

  I’m not so certain. Surely, he will be seen as a threat. If he goes to the prison in search of Heather, he will most likely be caught and arrested, perhaps locked up for years. But a girl who is a mere weed can slip in and out of the dark. That’s what’s needed. Someone no one will notice. Someone who can find Heather.

  Someone like me.

  I convince Troy, and yet I still have doubts. I spied the blue flag in the prison window, but I don’t have faith in my own vision. Perhaps it was only a shadow, a cloud, a blue jay in the far distance. Who am I to leave my garden and go in search of anything? For that you need a believer, and that isn’t me. You need someone who is certain the future is a possibility, who is convinced that lost things can be found.

  I wish my mother, who always offered such good advice, was here to tell me what to do. I wish my father, who was always so strong, could go and kick down the prison gates. I wish my sister, with her open nature, could remind me to follow my own heart, a heart I’m not even sure I have anymore.

  Troy insists he can convince me there is something for me to find. All you need do is open your eyes and look, he tells me. He brings a small wooden box out of his pocket, the kind that is often tied to the leg of a dove to send messages into the city.

  It must have fallen off one of the doves nesting in your tree. It was right in your garden but you didn’t see it, Troy tells me.

  I probably walked past it scores of times. But I never on
ce spied it there in the grass.

  I slide open the cover of the little wooden message box. Inside there is a tiny painting. I feel a tightness in my chest. Diamond had been a painter. Even when he couldn’t speak, he could show me how he felt through his paintings.

  When I unroll the scrap of canvas, I see my own face. But the face is beautiful. I know I don’t look like that. Except, perhaps, in the eyes of someone who loves me.

  On the back of the painting, half a heart has been painted in red.

  The half he took with him when he left.

  Look at the mark on the box, Troy tells me.

  It’s a prison stamp. A small black skull, like the ones nailed to the tower, the ones I’d seen from my perch in the sky.

  Is Diamond a prisoner or a guard? Is he my worst enemy or still my beloved? Can I find anything, or simply lose more?

  I must have spoken aloud. I must need an answer. The Finder is happy to oblige.

  That’s for you to find out, Troy Jones says.

  We leave the next morning.

  Rose Witch

  This is what I hoped

  What you look for, you may find.

  Someone promised me this, but I shook my head.

  I insisted that what was lost was gone forever. I believed that searcher was simply another name for fool.

  I had made a life for myself in the village. I had gone on despite my sorrow, difficult as that was. It should have been enough to wake up every day, to see the roses in my garden, to know I was alive. Surely, wanting more would only bring more despair.

  But desire can drive you for miles. It can lead you in ways you never would have imagined. A map can be written in ashes, earth, water, air. Take a step and keep walking. Don’t be afraid to look back.

  In the end, every path you choose takes you closer to what you’ve been searching for all along.