The Girl in the Trees

by Tom Lichtenberg

The Girl in the Trees

  by Tom Lichtenberg

  copyright 2012 by Tom Lichtenberg

  Chapter One

  Tara Carter was worried about the girl, though she knew it was none of her business. "As if I don't have enough troubles of my own", she told herself, but still it just didn't seem right, that girl being all alone up there on the mountain with nothing but her grandfather and that old mare she came in on. Once a month, "regular as sunrise" as she liked to say, here she'd come, riding down into the valley with a few dozen fresh farm eggs, all carefully bunded and stowed, some goat cheese and some bars of homemade goat fudge, and every now and then a jar of fresh clean honey. She'd swing down off the horse and sling that satchel over her shoulder, bring it into Tara's family's little country store and hoist it onto the counter with barely a word, maybe a nod and a grunt as if she were a little cowboy from the movies.

  Calvin Harden, Miranda's grandfather, never accepted a dime for these offerings. He felt it was something he owed for the service the store provided of just being there when he needed it, as if his once a month dispatch into the known world was enough to keep it all waiting with endless patience for his trivial little gifts. Tara's parents had been dealing with the man all their lives, so even Tara knew better when she was at the counter than to try and give the girl any cash. Instead they subtly subtracted a few bucks here and there from the running total as the grandfather - or the girl, whoever it was who came shopping if not both - piled up the items they needed. It usually wasn't much, mostly ingredients like flour and sugar and oil and butter and rice and dry beans. They seemed to have everything else they required.

  The Carters had other typical characters, who'd wander into the tiny town of Los Arboles every now and then to pick up a few things. Los Arboles wasn't even properly a town, more a collection of houses and a post office and the Carter's small country store. It was thirty miles from anywhere, and the few people who lived there practically drove their cars for a living, heading up over the mountains and down into the adjacent Valley of the Sand, where all the paying jobs were. Tara made that trek on most days. Her real job involved sitting at a desk and re-arranging the data on spreadsheets according to arbitrary work orders that arrived from consultants worldwide. It was all part of "providing end-to-end solutions", or whatever it was that Global Highware existed for. Except when she was back in Los Arboles, filling in for her aging mom or dad at their sorry excuse for a store, she was on the grid, fulltime. She couldn't imagine being off that vast network of modern convenience that supplied her every need.

  Calvin Harden never was a dirty hippie or anything like that. An old-fashioned rancher in some respects, he had also taken what he needed from the new. It was a hell of a lot easier that way. As a younger man he had put in some time in the military and then the shipyards down the south coast, and had some fruits of those labors arriving in the form of social security and pension benefits, all of which went directly into his bank account, "regular as sunrise" as he liked to say. Then when the firts cellphone service went in, even way up there in the mountains, he was right on it, ordering up one of those smart phones which gave him and his granddaughter all the internet they'd ever need, featuring online banking, mail order shopping, entertainment and education and books and news and you name it. He'd grown up with candles and wood stoves, but went solar early on, and upgraded his installations every now and then so they had all their electrical requirements satisfied, even down to some of those internal oil heaters. It was a remote, country life and at the same time completely tied in to all the goings-on going on.

  It was the only life Miranda had ever known. They owned a few hundred acres of mountain meadow and woodland high up in the Cybelline Mountains, where no road led, only a meandering secret trail. Their ranch was surrounded by so-called "open space", land bought by urban trusts controlled by valley millionaires who wanted to keep their sacred views safe from the relentless pressures of human population growth. Those people must have loved sitting around their fire pits on their new condo decks sipping wine and looking up at all the pine wood and scrub up there, and that was fine by the Hardens. They had enough pasture for their goats and horses, wood for their stove and fences, room for the chickens to roam, and their own clear view of the dark night sky where the stars were still shining for them.

  "She has to be lonely," Tara Carter was thinking, "and what about friends? And what about school? That girl is only about eleven years old!"

  "How old are you, Miranda?" she asked her directly. Miranda was methodically packing her supplies, all handily purchased by debit card (when had she even last held any cash?), into the same shoulder bag she'd brought the fudge and eggs in. Miranda glanced up. She couldn't hide the scowl on her face. The girl could look friendly sometimes, when she smiled and her eyes would glitter with mischief, but mostly she kept those thick brown eyebrows down like a red-tailed hawk's, and her bright teeth hidden behind her thin lips.

  "Twelve," she said and nodded once sharply. The nod was a proud silent gesture to herself, a reward for having used as few words as possible.

  "Don't you get lonely up there by yourself?" Tara tried to further the conversation, but Miranda was nearly done packing up and simply shook her head. Feeling like that was enough to answer all questions, she raised her eyebrows and tilted her face at Tara. This was apparently some kind of communication, at which Tara sniffed with incomprehension. Miranda pulled the bag up off the counter and onto her shoulder and with a brief quiet grunt left the store. The lack of any other customers in the place, or "business as usual" as Tara called it, gave her the opportunity to watch Miranda load herself onto her horse and trot off down the parking lot, across the state highway, and into the forest. She was still worried about the girl, even though she knew very well it was none of her business. Everybody's got their own life to live.

  Chapter Two

  Miranda wasn't worried about Tara. She didn't even know her name, though she'd known her all her life. Most of the times Miranda went down to the store, Tara wasn't even there. Usually it was her parents and Miranda didn't know their names either. Calvin had always referred to them as "the Carters" and either Mister or Missus or "the daughter" for Tara, so that was how Miranda thought of them too. She usually repeated whatever her grandfather said. So it was that she went down there "regular as sunrise" or heated up the stew so it was "bubbling and boiling" or made sure the chickens "ran on in" and the goats "hunkered down for the night". She didn't have any sayings of her own that she knew about. Lately she had picked up some new phrases from her cousins that she'd met online but never seen in person. They were Grace, age fourteen, and Lark, her own age. They were the children of her mother's sister, someone else she had never met or even heard of until recently.

  She didn't remember her mother or even her father, who was her grandfather's son and had lived there at the ranch according to Calvin. Her mother had visited once, Calvin told her, but didn't like it there very much. She was a city girl. He'd said that with sort of a growl, so Miranda knew he didn't approve of that. Grace was also a city girl, as far as Miranda could tell and there didn't seem to be anything much wrong with her. She was nice. She had found Miranda somehow on the computer and sent her a message to their @lemonchutney account saying "hey I think we're cousins because my mom and your mom were twins." Miranda didn't like to say much about herself, but she was full of questions for Grace, less so for Lark because he was a boy and Miranda didn't care about boys.

  She found out that Grace lived pretty far away, a couple hundred miles in completely different terrain. She found out Grace had never met her mom, which wasn't too surprising since Loretta had died when Miranda was a baby. She found out that her aunt, Grace's mom, had been loo
king for her, Miranda, for years. She still hadn't found out why. This was news that gave her a lot to think about, and was the reason why she didn't tell Grace where she lived. Miranda was pretty sure she didn't want to be found by anyone, even a relative.

  "What do you think about that?" she yelled down from her perch in the loft, but didn't expect a reply and wasn't surprised when there wasn't one.

  "Grace's mom is named Lucky," she added with a snort. "What kind of name is that for a person? Sounds more like a dog, like a cocker spaniel or something."

  Miranda wanted a dog, but not so much that she'd go about getting one. She already had cats, or rather, they had her. There must have been a dozen or more, impossible to keep track of, mostly living out in the barn and spending their time in the woods hunting gophers and moles and crickets and mice. Sometimes one or two would cry at the door and after Miranda let them in they'd sneak around the walls of the house, cautiously inspecting everything until demanding to be let outside once again. She wouldn't have minded them staying, even spending the night, but none of them really liked being inside. She guessed they missed their friends too much.

  Up in the loft, which was really just a long balcony built up over the downstairs, Miranda clicked off her phone and plugged it back into the long white extension cord which connected it to the main solar batteries. She climbed over the railing and let herself drop the eight or nine feet to the hardwood floor below, ignoring the ladder which hung from the rail and was the only proper way up or down. It was only four-thirty and she still had plenty of chores to get done. She had all the time in the world but it still seemed like she hardly had any. There was water to fetch from the well and clothes to be washed. There were the two horses who needed attention, goats to be milked, chickens whose eggs needed gathering. The vegetable garden had to be watered and checked for potatoes and carrots and peas that were ready for picking. She'd make a tour of the fruit trees as well and haul out some jars to be cleaned out for canning. She didn't like making a fire because it might draw attention, but there were times it was needed so she'd check on the woodpile.

  She had one of those hand-pumped radios which she carried around on her belt, but sadly for her it could only bring in one station, and that one played country music. She wasn't a fan but she'd sing along anyway if things got too quiet. Her favorite times of the day were the mornings and evenings when the birds made a racket. Times like now, in the late afternoon, when the creatures were silent, even the goats, were the times that made her uneasy. She'd make her rounds with her ears on alert. She even played the radio softly, just in case there were any unusual noises coming in from the woods. Now and then she heard hikers, who weren't supposed to be up around there. The thing about the open space, her grandfather had told her, was that it wasn't actually "open". Access was restricted to mainly rangers and docents, not to the general public. There was no camping, no hunting, no hiking or biking allowed, but every so often there'd be somebody out there, and Miranda didn't like the idea they just might find randomly appear.

  If they came up to the house, there'd be trouble, like there had been before. Her grandfather was famous for that. Ever since she was tiny, she'd been given the job of cleaning the rifle, and it wasn't by accident that she liked to do that right then in the late afternoons, when silence was over the place. She'd take a seat on the old bench where she couldn't be seen from without, and put the gun over her knee and take the best care of it then while peering out through the window into the trees. There was always a box of shells on the table beside her.

  Funny thing was that as soon as the birds started singing at dusk, all that tension would just disappear. It had to be superstition, the idea that strangers would only show up between two and four thirty in the still afternoon. She would laugh at herself for being so silly but she also believed that somehow, deep down, she was right.

  Chapter Three

  Her grandfather had never been religious. There was no saying of prayers at their simple stews or before saying goodnight and going off to their beds. He'd never had any strong beliefs in any direction as far as she knew. He was just a man who'd had enough of the world and went his own way. He'd always promised that whenever she wanted he would take her out there and show her around, even arrange to pick up a car and go for a drive, a suggestion that always got her laughing out loud. Imagine Calvin driving a car! She'd never seen him drive anything but that narrow little cart he'd built by himself and would attach to the horses whenever he needed to haul something large up the hill. He'd shake his head in mock mourning when she teased him like that. Of course she knew he'd once driven a forklift, made his living that way, but the thought of it still cracked her up.

  She had no inclination to go visit the real world in person. She could see quite enough of it through the screen on her phone. Whenever it had enough charge, she could listen to music from all over the world, watch movies or television shows, people's home videos from everywhere. She'd found her favorite music that way, cumbia from Colombia. She especially enjoyed watching soap operas from Hungary and was teaching herself Hungarian that way. She'd made a study of geography and seen pictures of all the famous beautiful places. She'd seen lots of faces and heard lots of voices and had friends, invisible friends it's true but people she'd talk to, even out loud. She had even tried talking with people in Hungary. She still had a long way to go.

  She allowed herself two hours a night, after chores, after supper, just before bed. She let herself read during the day when she had a chance, and a lot of that also occurred on the phone. Lately her cousin had been trying to convince her to invest in a laptop, but Miranda was hesitant. There wasn't a whole lot of money coming in, and the cellphone charges were already more than she was comfortable with. You had to be frugal when you lived on a limited income. Besides, she was good with her thumbs on the virtual keyboard, and could see everything well enough. A laptop would only be bigger, that's all, and she didn't see the advantage. Sure, there were some things the phone couldn't do, but she figured that was only a matter of time. She'd already seen how quickly the upgrades were coming.

  Her cousins never seemed satisfied. It was strange. She'd only met them a few weeks before, and they were so full of needs and desires. She hadn't known people like that. Lark was always on to the next video game, and the new video game system it always required. Grace was changing her hairstyle weekly. Miranda had given up complimenting her because she could tell that Grace didn't care. She'd never be happy with the way that she looked. And she was always giving Miranda advice that Miranda would never take. Do this with her face. Do that with her hair. Do something else with her clothes. There was nothing wrong with her clothes, Miranda said to herself. When she needed new jeans they came in the mail, same with her t-shirts and boots. Last Christmas her grandfather had bought her an L.A. Kings cap and she'd worn it continuously ever since then. Nearly a year. Nearly a year since he died and left her alone. And still nobody knew.

  Miranda was proud of herself. She'd kept it together this long, and her only problem was how to keep out the world, to make it so it would leave her alone. She understood very well what the challenges were, and the risks. She was walking a line, and it seemed to get finer and finer. Now her cousins were asking about visits. Now the Carters were getting suspicious that they hadn't seen him in several months. On the one hand she knew it could not last forever. On the other hand she was determined to live her own life her own way for as long as she could, even if it meant cutting out the new cousins. Even if it meant keeping the Carters and everyone else in the world from away from her door, whatever it took.

  Chapter Four

  Miranda liked her life, and she knew the situation was complicated. Yes, she'd been lonely since her grandfather died, but she'd been lonely sometimes when he was still alive, so she felt she could handle that. The work was harder now that he was gone, but she had it under control for the most part. She worried that something big would happen that she couldn't take care of
but so far nothing like that had occurred. She knew very well that if anyone found out the truth about her situation, they would take her away from it, and put her somewhere she would not want to be. She wanted to be right where she was. She had the idea that if she could only make it until she was eighteen, then no one could take her away.

  At the same time, she was under no illusions about the complexities. She was still a minor, so the fact that she was probably committing some kind of crime - tax fraud, for example, with the payments coming in, though she was unclear on whether or not there would have been some kind of inheritance benefit in any case - would protect her for now from prosecution, or so she thought. She'd done some research online but didn't clearly understand and wasn't about to go asking anyone, not even anonymously. She was cautious about the internet. She'd read and heard too much about issues of privacy and security online to be confident. She was already concerned that her cousins could track her exact location if they wanted through her connection information. She wasn't sure about that, but it was a concern. She seriously did not want to be disturbed in her nest.

  She did not join many groups online, but the ones she did were obscure and populated mainly by foreigners, people who had no interest in her family life or whereabouts. She did not discuss such personal matters with them, but stuck to general topics, opinions and such. Her favorite online contact was a girl from outside Kiev named Irina. Irina also lived on a ranch, more like a farm, and they met while playing an interactive world-building game. They talked about chickens and horses and goats and other familiar subjects. Miranda enjoyed sharing details about her daily routines and liked hearing Irina's gossip about her own family and neighbors. Miranda for her part made up stories about Grace and Lark and chatted as if Calvin were still around. When Irina asked about her parents, she also invented new lives for them. She didn't see any harm in doing that.