Hannah and the Wild Woods

by Carol Anne Shaw

  Sabrina raises her hand to push aside one of Kimiko’s braids, but I grab hold of her wrist. “No! Don’t touch it! Those monitor things are super delicate!”

  Sabrina yanks her hand out of mine. “Whatever, Hannah.”

  “Well, fox tail or no fox tail, we all need to get to work,” Peter says, pulling his toque on.

  “Okay. I’ll go and put this away,” Kimiko says as she nervously pats the end of her tail. “I … I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Well, hurry up,” Peter says. “You snooze, you lose!”

  Kimiko runs up the stairs, her tail billowing out behind her. What would have happened if all her tails had showed up? I dash up after her, but she whirls around and holds out her hands to stop me on the stairs. Her cheeks are streaked with tears.

  “Do you finally get it now, Hannah?” she hisses. “Surely you see how useless I am? And this is so typical. I can’t even hide my tails! Just when I think I might be able to live an almost normal life, something stupid like this happens!”

  “But it’s not that big a deal,” I assure her. “And it turned out okay in the end! They totally bought the Shippo tail story.”

  “Thanks to you. If you hadn’t been there, I don’t know how I would have explained it.”

  “But I was there, so it doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course it matters! I can’t expect other people to bail me out every time my powers backfire.”

  “You’re over-thinking things,” I tell her.

  “I’m not lucky. I’m nothing but a burden. I’ve known it all my life. This little incident with my tail is just a sign of what lies ahead for me.”

  “Listen,” I say, grabbing her by the shoulders. “You’ve got to stop feeling so hopeless, okay? Focus on the positive stuff, Kimiko. Like, if you hadn’t whipped up those lights last night, we’d still be stumbling around in all that fog.”

  But she’s not listening. She runs up the stairs to our bedroom and before she shuts the door behind her, says. “I’m not working today. Please tell the others I’m not feeling well.”

  The door slams, and I’m left standing on the landing, frustrated beyond belief. When I turn to go back downstairs, Norman waiting at the bottom, his hackles raised.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Wow. What I wouldn’t give for just a regular Cowichan Bay sort of day, one where I visit Nell before the bakery opens, to help myself to a warm onion bagel. One where I hang out with Riley on the Tzinquaw, or maybe help Ben pull up his crab traps, or spend a rainy afternoon at the Salish Sea Studio, carding wool with Ramona and whoever else happens to drop by. Someone always drops by.

  Kimiko stays locked in her room all day, claiming to be sick to her stomach. I try on two occasions to talk to her—I even bring her up some peppermint tea—but she refuses to even look at me.

  “What’s her problem?” Sabrina says when the rest of us head out to work.

  “Sick,” I say.

  Sabrina snorts. “Yeah, right. More like lazy.”

  You should talk!

  Peter and Jade take us through the woods for a bit, and eventually we reach a rugged tucked-away cove. I start working on a mound of tumbled driftwood, pulling plastic and garbage out from between the cracks. I also spend a lot of time staring out at Wickinninish Island. The ocean is choppy today, and I wonder how wolves manage to keep their heads above water swimming between these islands.

  All day long I listen for the Meares Island wolves—the ones that Warren, the water taxi guy, said he saw. But all I hear is Jack and some other ravens out on the point, all of them dancing around what looks to be a dead fish. I’m glad he’s made some friends, even though it’s pretty obvious that ravens aren’t big on sharing.

  Later on, after all the evening chores have been done, I wander into the kitchen and peek out the back door. Just in case, because while I may be worried about Kimiko, I’m also worried about Sitka’s bad leg. She’s already so thin. If she’s going to be lame as well, finding food will be even harder for her.

  The phone on the wall rings, surprising Pearl, who scoots across the floor and down the hall. It’s so unusual to hear a land line ring; the strange ring tone seems so completely foreign to me.

  Ruth yells from the other room, where she’s wrist deep untangling a basket of yarn. “Could somebody please answer that?”

  I pick up the receiver. “The Artful Elephant.” I say this in what I hope is a good, “telephone answering” kind of voice. “Hello. Is this Ruth?” a woman asks.

  “No, would you like me to get her for you?”

  “Well, I’m actually hoping to speak with Sabrina Webber,” the voice says. “This is her mother calling.”

  “Oh, hi, Mrs. Webber,” I say. “It’s Hannah Anderson. How’s Hawaii?”

  There is a little hesitation on the line before Sabrina’s mom says, “Oh! Hannah. How are you? You kids having a great time up there?” She doesn’t answer the Hawaii question.

  “Yeah,” I say. “It’s great. Hold on. I’ll go and find Sabrina.”

  Sabrina looks surprised when I tell her that her mom is on the phone. Her cheeks pink up, and she leaps off the couch, making a beeline for the kitchen and slamming the door behind her. But ten minutes later, when I go down the hall to retrieve my laundry from the dryer, I find her sitting alone beside the washing machine.

  “What are you doing in here?” she says acidly.

  “Um … getting my laundry?”

  She stands up and swipes a hand angrily across her face. “Are you all right?” I ask.

  “Of course I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be all right?”

  “Is your mom okay?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s not supposed to mean anything,” I say. “I just thought, you know, if she was calling all the way from Hawaii—”

  “Don’t even bother,” Sabrina says, pushing past me. “What would you know about mothers and daughters, anyway?”

  The question feels like a punch. “Excuse me?”

  “Come on, Hannah. Your mother has been dead for so long she doesn’t even count anymore, so just leave me alone, okay?” She bangs the door behind her and stomps off down the hall.

  I lean against the wall next to the ironing board, feeling as though I’ve been slammed in the chest with a cinder block. Everything slows down and becomes surreal. It feels as if I’ve left my own body, as though I’m looking at my sorry self from somewhere up near the water stain on the ceiling.

  I remember this feeling, and I don’t like it. I want to come back to myself. I want my limbs to move. I want to get out of this room, only I can’t. I feel dizzy and my body feels frozen against the wall.

  The phone rings in the kitchen again. It goes on and on and on. Where is everybody? Isn’t an answering machine going to cut in? When I can’t stand it a moment longer, I burst out of the laundry room and answer it.

  “Hello?” My voice is thin and reedy.

  “Hello? Is that you, Han?” It’s not the greatest connection, but I recognize the voice immediately.

  “Max?”

  “Hey! I got you!” He sounds like his usual enthusiastic self, and hearing him makes me miss him so much. It takes everything I have not to cry.

  “Where are you?” I ask.

  “In Mexico, Einstein. Remember?”

  Remember? How could I forget?

  “Hannah?”

  I can’t open my mouth. I can’t say anything because I know that as soon as I do, I’ll start blubbering. But Max is on to me.

  “Uh-oh. What’s wrong?”

  I take a gulp of air, and try, unsuccessfully to stifle a sob.

  “Come on, Han. Talk.”

  “Just … just a bad day,” I say. “Just stuff. Nothing you can do from where you are.”

  “Is this, by any chance, about moving to Victoria?”

  Victoria. It’s the icing on this pathetic cake of an evening. I try to answer him, but end up gulping more air instead.

/>   “Aw, Hannah. I’m sorry I’m not there with you.”

  “It’s just that,” I stammer, “… it’s just that everything is happening so fast, Max. Everything is changing, and it feels like I’m not even allowed to have a say.”

  “Come on. It won’t be that bad,” Max says. “There are buses to Victoria. And it won’t be that long before I get my license.”

  “You don’t even have a car, Max.”

  “But I’ve saved almost four grand, and that sweet old Volvo is still for sale in the Bay. Red. Standard transmission. Heated seats, even.”

  I smile, despite myself. Figures Max would have a plan of action in the works, even one for a year or two down the road.

  “Are you sure nothing else is bothering you?” he asks.

  “It isn’t that big a deal,” I lie. “It’s just, you know. Sabrina can be a real piece of work sometimes. She says things that—”

  “Oh, jeez, since when do you care what she thinks?”

  “I know.”

  “Let it go, Hannah. We’ll both be home soon. And then we’ll go do something fun together and eat food that’s bad for us.”

  I smile weakly into the phone. “That would be awesome.”

  “You’re awesome,” Max says. “Don’t forget that.”

  After I’ve hung up, the sting of Sabrina’s words has subsided a little. Max can always cheer me up, even from a zillion miles away on a white sand beach in Mexico.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I lie in bed, waiting to fall asleep, only I don’t.

  “Kimiko?” I whisper. “Are you awake?” If she is, she’s pretending she isn’t. Her duvet is pulled up over her head. She is clearly hiding from the world. She wouldn’t come down for dinner, and a little while afterwards, Ruth took her up some chicken soup and toast but she didn’t touch any of it.

  “Kimiko!” I hiss again. Nothing. Eventually, I give up. You can’t force a person to talk to you.

  I stare at the ceiling. This has been the weirdest spring break ever. I try to stop thinking, and just listen to the sounds I hear around me: Sabrina snoring, Norman’s toenails as they clatter on the wood floor outside our door, and a groan in the pipes from somewhere downstairs. Outside, I hear wind, as well as faint rumblings of thunder off in the distance, something that doesn’t happen too often on the West Coast.

  I breathe in and out, in and out, and concentrate on the ticking of the old grandfather clock in the hall, but each passing second feels more like a passing minute. Sabrina snorts herself awake, turns over and falls back to sleep again. How is that even possible? How can a person say something so cruel and heartless, and then sleep like a baby? Kimiko may only be half human, but sometimes I wonder if Sabrina Webber has a beating heart at all. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying desperately to forget the caustic bite of her words.

  Your mother has been dead so long she doesn’t even count anymore.

  It doesn’t work, and the sting returns.

  I sit up, and pull my sweatshirt on over my T-shirt, then reach over the side of my bed for my Cowichan sweater. I have to get out of here. It’s not that I really care what Sabrina thinks about me, or anyone else for that matter. It’s just that hearing her talk about my mom as though she never even existed fills me with an indescribable ache. She died when I was ten but I still miss her everyday. The thing is, lately I can’t always remember her that well, things like the details of her face or the tone of her voice. That scares me. Will there come a time when I don’t remember her at all?

  I need some fresh air. The longer I stay up here in the dark, the more depressed I feel. I find my jeans, pull them on, and tiptoe carefully across the floor and down the flight of stairs.

  When I step outside, I hear an odd “pattering” noise up on the roof. I look up but don’t see anything unusual. It’s probably just Pearl prowling around the way cats do at night.

  A blast of wind smacks me in the face when I reach the bottom of the stairs. I raise my chin and let the cold snap of air blow the proverbial cobwebs out of my head. Clutching the collar of my sweater at my throat, I make my way toward the compost shed, hoping that with any luck that I might see Sitka. What I see instead, at the base of the spruce tree, is a small white porcelain bowl of cooked white rice, carefully placed on a flattened mat of sword fern fronds. Seeing it there gives me some hope. Kimiko can’t have given up completely if she’s left an offering for Inari I back away from the spruce as the wind tosses the treetops back and forth above my head. I can’t imagine any creatures being out and about on such a wild night. I steel myself against the repeated blasts, and head around to the front of the lodge to sit on the bottom step of the deck. I shiver—the wind is getting stronger, and I feel so alone. Now more than ever, I want to be hanging out on dock #5, laughing at Jack while he dive-bombs Poos and Chuck on the deck of our houseboat.

  And then, as though he’s read my mind, he’s beside me, wet, windblown and bedraggled.

  “Jack!”

  He hops onto my lap, carefully settles his wings and gives his head a couple of shakes. That’s when I see he has something in his beak. I lean back a little, allowing the dim porch light to shine down on him. A moment later he drops a curling spiral of lemon rind into my open palm.

  It hits me like a bolt from the blue. Lemons. There can only be one reason why he’s brought me this. Mom. And in this very moment I remember her as though she’s been hanging out with me all day. Suddenly, everything about her is crystal clear: the way she would throw back her head and laugh, and not even be embarrassed when she’d let loose with a giant snort. Or the way she’d manically tap a pencil on the table when she was concentrating—a habit that used to drive Dad and me crazy. But most of all I remember the way she smelled. The lemon oil that she wore every single day for as long as I can remember.

  I hold the rind up to my nose, and breathe deep of the fresh citrusy scent. “Thank you, Jack,” I say, smoothing down the wet feathers on the top of his head. “Your timing is perfect.”

  Satisfied, he settles further into my lap, and I wrap my woolly arms around him, blocking out as much wind as I can. Kimiko may be a spirit fox, and Sabrina may be tactless and unkind, but Jack seems to know what I need at the exact moment when I need it. And even though my whole world seems to be changing, it’s comforting to know that Jack is just Jack.

  “Hang in there, buddy,” I tell him softly. “We’ll be back in the Bay soon. Back with Riley and Ben, and the Salty Dog Café.”

  We sit together like this for a long time, staring out toward the sea, where the waves have begun to hammer the shoreline.

  “Come on, bird,” I say. “It’s nuts out here. You better sleep in the pantry again, where it’s dry.”

  I stand up, carefully cradling him in my coat, and he doesn’t even try to squirm free.

  “This night isn’t fit for man or beast,” I tell him.

  But as I reach for the door of the lodge, Jack suddenly shifts and bursts from my arms. A second later, he is gone, and all I hear is his manic cry as he cuts through the thick night air toward the beach.

  I lose my footing on the bottom step and stumble, then race after him through the brush to the beach, shielding my eyes from the building wind and salt spray that assaults me from every direction.

  I can hear him—he’s close—but I can’t see him. I can’t see anything! And then, in the middle of the inky darkness, I see a light. Faintly at first, but as I inch my way across the sand, it grows brighter.

  When I am only ten feet from the light, I stop. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. A russet-coloured fox, one with many tails, is walking in a wide arc near the water. Kimiko! A tiny circle of bright light—her hoshi no tama—is carefully cradled in her bushiest tail and held high over her back.

  She cautiously watches both of us with her topaz eyes, but she doesn’t stop walking the circle. Light from the hoshi no tama illuminates the wet tracks her paws leave in the sand.

  And then, rising over the sounds of th
e building storm, I hear it: howling, from somewhere out over the sea. The sound hangs in the darkness, and sends shivers down my spine.

  Something moves high up on the beach—a flash of silver! And then a lanky form stands motionless on a rocky ledge, her head raised to the sky, ears pricked. It’s Sitka. But she doesn’t answer the call from over the water. Instead, she lopes along the rocks, favouring her back leg, before slipping silently back into the forest.

  Jack cries out and when I turn back, the fox is gone. Kimiko has simply vanished.

  “Kimiko!” I yell into the wind, but nothing comes back. And then there is a crack of lightning, and the sky lights up overhead, and in that brief moment, I see her standing on the same ledge of rock: Kimiko, in her human form. The ledge juts dangerously out over a boiling sea and Kimiko’s slender form stands poised at the rock’s edge, like a figurehead at the prow of a ship. I watch as she raises her arm over her head, the hoshi no tama of light in her open hand.

  “KIMIKO!” I scrabble over the rocks and driftwood on the beach to get to her. Another crack of lightning strikes out over the sea—its flash so bright I see Jack soar past, caught hard on a gust of wind.

  He reaches Kimiko before I do, but he won’t let me out on the slippery rocks. He flies at me shrieking, dive-bombing my head, and flapping his strong wings aggressively in my face. It’s horrible!

  “Jack!” I shout. “Stop it!”

  Kimiko holds up her free hand. “Get away, Hannah. Go back!”

  “No!” I shout. “Get away from there! It’s too dangerous.” The sea churns below us, and a dark angry wave explodes against the rocks, drenching all of us. All those lectures we’ve had about rogue waves, they’re true! Kimiko is asking for trouble out here. This is total lunacy!

  I manage to sidestep around the hovering Jack, and make a lunge for Kimiko’s free arm. She fixes me with a fierce stare that is half hatred and half fear. Then, without any warning at all, she launches her hoshi no tama high up into the air. It hovers for a moment in a kind of slow motion golden haze, before hurtling into the turbulent ocean.