by Laura Sibson
“I’m working on a new remedy for you. I need you to run an errand for me.”
She hands me a mason jar with a thick brown liquid sloshing around in it and then she gives me something long and thin wrapped in a muslin bag.
“I need some bark from a beech tree. This isn’t the ideal time to harvest bark, so in the jar is the enrichment to help heal the tree. The other item is a sharp knife. Do you remember how to ask a tree for bark?”
“Yes.” It had been a solemn lesson with Mom, but one I couldn’t forget. I’d gone into it rolling my eyes. Why did we need to ask a tree for bark? Mom had explained that bark for a tree is like skin for us and that we only harvested it when we truly needed it. If we wanted something from a living thing, we needed to show respect and gratitude and we needed to give something in return. That lesson had stayed with me.
I grab my helmet and a water bottle and walk to the marina, where Jim keeps a couple bikes.
“Jim?” I call.
“In here.” His voice comes from the office. I enter the space, which is dim compared to the bright light of the midday sun outside. Jim sits at his desk working on a tablet, which seems out of place in this weather-worn building. He’s got his beat-up old O’s hat on and a navy-blue T-shirt with cedar branch marina over the left breast and, beneath that, the coordinates for the marina.
Behind him are a few framed photos. One with a group of people in an unfamiliar landscape catches my eye. On one corner of the photo hangs a medal like people receive after finishing a marathon. On the other corner hangs a black corded necklace with a round pendant that looks sort of like a coin.
“Are you a runner?” I ask, pointing to the medal.
Jim turns to look where I’m pointing. “Was. In another lifetime.” He turns back to me and I think I catch a bit of sadness before he smiles and asks, “What can I do for you?”
Maybe it’s not sadness; maybe he’s just busy. “Could I borrow a bike?”
“Of course. You’ve got a helmet?”
I hold up the helmet. I’d never ride without one, not after what happened to Mom—but Jim doesn’t know that.
“Okay, be safe,” he says.
I smash the helmet over my unruly hair and slide the water bottle into its holder. Gently, I lay the knife wrapped in cloth in the basket alongside the jar of brown liquid. Then I point the bike toward the only beech I know.
The ride is longer than I expect, but I don’t mind. Flat roads mean easy riding and heat doesn’t bother me. After a while, I come up to the turnoff and pedal my way down the dirt road, bumping across the field to the weeping beech.
When I part the low-hanging branches to let myself in, I realize someone is there and I freeze. Rhia sits on the ground with her back against the trunk and her knees pulled up to her chin. It seems like she might be crying, but I’m not certain because her face is pressed against her knees. She’s obviously having a private moment, so I step back as quietly as I can. But of course I step on a branch, which cracks loudly. Rhia’s head snaps up. She quickly wipes at her eyes.
“Edie.” Rhia stands and wipes off the butt of her shorts. “What are you doing here?”
“Nothing,” I say. “I’m—” I can’t seem to speak. I point behind me. “I’ll go.”
A warm breeze ruffles the leaves around us. A lone bird calls from a branch far above our heads.
“No, it’s fine. You can stay.”
“Are you sure?” I’m still frozen.
“Yeah, yeah.” She gestures for me to come into the enclosed area beneath the draping branches. “Join me.”
I enter the space and hold my breath for a moment, caught by the peace of this place.
“What are you up to?” she asks, before I can ask if she’s all right.
She eyes the jar in my one hand and the cloth-wrapped knife in my other hand, which she doesn’t know is a knife, and now I’m suddenly wondering if I should, in fact, leave, because who brings a knife on a bike ride? Then I remember that she studies the craft.
“My grandmother asked me to harvest some beech bark. Would that be okay with you?”
“I guess?” Rhia looks at the broad trunk of the huge old tree. “Will it hurt the tree?”
I wobble my head back and forth. “Well, yeah. It will. But I’ll help it heal.”
“Really? You can do that?”
I hold up the mason jar with GG’s tree enrichment. “I can. Through my grandmother.”
Rhia steps toward me, her hands in her back pockets, and I can’t help but notice the way that her breasts push out her love is love tank top. I force my eyes away, and they land on her long legs. Effing Wheel of Fortune. Her hair is pulled back in a pineapple with tiny braids tracing her hairline in the front. Rhia could wear a potato sack and make it work, I think.
“I thought you didn’t want to deal with magic,” she says.
“More like magic and I don’t get along very well. You saw what happened the other night. I’m basically clueless.”
Rhia takes a small step forward. “Do you mind if I watch?”
A quiver goes through me. I’m not sure what it means. Maybe I sort of like the idea that Rhia wants to watch me.
“Sure,” I say. “Come over here.”
I set the jar on the ground and I kneel before the tree as Rhia circles around and kneels next to me. I pull the knife from the cloth bag and set it in front of me. Then I rest my hands on my thighs and close my eyes.
“Is that an athame?” Rhia asks.
I open my eyes. She’s pointing at the knife.
“No,” I say, and I pause. Rhia knows so much about the craft that I’m surprised she doesn’t know this, and I feel bad correcting her. “My mom taught me that athames are only to be used for directing energy. Not cutting actual things.”
Rhia’s sudden smile is as welcome as the sun emerging after a storm. “You’re not as clueless as you let on.”
“That was a test?”
Rhia cocks her head and grins. “Yup.”
“And I passed?”
“With flying colors.” After a moment, her face takes a serious, more vulnerable expression. “Can you actually teach me what you’re doing?”
The joy of pleasing Rhia is tempered by her question. It’s so foreign for me to share this part of myself with anyone. And last time I was here, it didn’t end all that well. It takes me a moment to respond.
“I can show you what I’ve been taught.” The words come out slowly.
“But . . .” Rhia hears something in my tone.
“I’m new at this and I’ve never taught anyone.”
“I just want to be a part of it.”
“Okay,” I say, relieved. “First, we sit in a way that shows respect for the tree, like this.”
Rhia mirrors my position: kneeling with her butt resting on her heels.
“Now close your eyes and press your hands on the trunk of the tree.”
Rhia follows my guidance. I try not to get distracted by the fact that if I scooted over just a foot, we’d be touching. Being so close to her, my body is electric, like before a big race. I breathe out to calm myself.
“Okay, now you can repeat after me: Great Beech, whose memory is longer than ours.”
I wait to go on until Rhia says her part.
“We request bark from your strong trunk, which feeds your many branches and roots.”
Rhia repeats my words.
“We thank you for your sacrifice.”
Rhia’s voice catches with emotion.
“We leave you this nourishment for your soil so that you may live on after we depart this world.”
My mother taught me this and now she’s departed from this world—and here I am now teaching someone else. My mother lives on through the passing of her knowledge. The realization blooms big in my heart.
“Okay, I’ll carve a bit of bark from the tree. Like this.” I make a swift and shallow cut into the trunk, carving a piece about two inches long, which I place into the cloth bag that held the knife. “And now I’ll use this enrichment to mend the area that I cut.”
I rub GG’s salve on the cut and then hold my hand there for a moment longer. “Thank you,” I whisper to the tree. When I remove my hand, the bark has already begun to knit itself back together.
“Wow,” Rhia whispers.
“GG’s preparations are very powerful,” I say.
I pour the rest of the salve onto the soil at the base of the tree. “This should help it to stay healthy.”
Rhia scoots over and places her hand over the spot where mine had just been, whispering her own thanks. After we’re finished, we sit next to one another on the exposed roots with our backs against the smooth trunk.
“I’ve never met anyone—not even Tess—who has the same respect for trees that I do. I could see it in you the first time you came here,” Rhia says.
The branches of the weeping beech rustle in the breeze. “Sometimes I think I like trees better than people.” I catch what I’ve said and look quickly at Rhia. “Not all people.”
She laughs. “It’s okay. I get it.” Rhia picks up dead pine needles and twirls them between two fingers. “People can be hard.”
“Agreed,” I say. I look at her. “Do you want to talk about it?”
She squishes her eyes closed tight and then opens them. “It’s my grandmother. She’s got dementia. We used to be so close. But now? She can’t remember things.” Rhia’s voice catches. “She can’t remember me.”
Impulsively, I reach out and grab her hand. “I’m so sorry.” She nods her appreciation, squeezing my hand and letting it go.
I’ve lost sight of the possibility that the people nearest to me could be going through hard stuff, too.
“When it first started,” Rhia says, “when she first started forgetting things and asking the same questions over and over—that’s when I turned to magic. Gods, I know it sounds ridiculous.” She closes her eyes and shakes her head. “But I thought that maybe I could find a way to cure her, you know, through the craft.”
“Doesn’t sound ridiculous to me,” I say in a quiet voice. I understand wishing for a magical solution to an unsolvable human problem.
“Obviously, I didn’t find a cure,” she continues. “But the rituals and the focus on energy and nature gave me comfort.” She shrugs. “So I stayed with it. And I come here when it gets hard. Instant mood adjustment sitting under this tree.” She draws up her knees and rests her chin on them. “Do you have anything like that?”
I look at her. “An instant mood adjuster? Running. No matter what’s bugging me, a good run can get it out of my system.”
“Did you need to run after the last time here?”
“What do you mean?” The memory of my shame prickles.
“You were angry.”
I give her a rueful half smile. “It wasn’t anger, exactly.” I rub the back of my neck with my hand while I figure out what to say. “I guess when it comes to fight or flight, I’m all flight. Speaking of which”—I look at Rhia and sigh—“I’ve got to go. Sorry. Feels like bad timing, but my grandmother is waiting on me to bring this back to her.”
Rhia shakes her head. “No, it’s totally fine.”
I gather my items and we both stand. “Could I . . . could I hug you?” I ask. I sort of wince, bracing myself for a no.
But Rhia nods. I step forward to give her a quick one-armed hug, but the feel of her against me is so right that both of my arms wrap around her to pull her closer. She tightens her arms around me in response. I turn my head and bury my nose in her neck, breathing in her scent of sandalwood and summer air and trees.
“Thanks,” she whispers in my ear. “I needed that.”
We pull apart and immediately I miss the feel of her soft body close to mine.
“Happy to be of service,” I say, reprising my role as most awkward human to ever walk the earth. “And now I’ll go.”
Rhia giggles and waves to me. The feel of holding her close and the gift of her parting smile carries me back to the boat.
* * *
* * *
At the boat, I hand GG the knife, the bark, and the jar that held the enrichment. GG peers at me.
“What?” I wipe my hand across my mouth. “Do I have schmutz on my face?”
“No.” She peers at me some more. “Your energy is different.”
“Different how?” My mind goes to Rhia and our shared hug.
“Not as heavy as it was.”
I turn my head as I feel the heat of a blush come on. “Is that a good thing?”
“I believe it is,” she says as she begins shredding the bark.
“What are we working on today?”
“A healing decoction,” GG says. “For your hand. Please put that copper pot on the stove and fill it about two-thirds of the way with water.”
I do as she says. “Done.”
“Now toss in a couple cinnamon sticks, dandelion leaves, and a few peppercorns, and stir.”
As I stir, Rhia’s smile comes back to me. It’s such a new experience to spend time with someone and not pretend that I’m different than I am. I can’t be sure, but when we were together I sensed that she was feeling the same.
“Be mindful that you do not pollute the decoction with your emotions, Edie.”
I stir some more, but now my thoughts are clouded not with Rhia but the mystery of the infection and GG’s focus on my instruction. “How does me learning all of this help with my infection?” I ask her. “And mastering fire. I don’t get it.”
GG is quiet for a moment. “If I’m ever . . . compromised in some way, I need to know that you can take care of yourself. Defend yourself.”
My mind goes to what Rhia shared about her grandmother. I can’t even think about something happening to GG. She’s all I have left.
Chapter Thirteen
MAURA
June 28, 2003
I went back to the hardware store today to restock the supplies I’m already running low on. Standing in the sandpaper aisle, I tried to remember the correct size for my sander. Behind me, someone asked if I needed help. Over my shoulder, I said that I needed a boatload of sandpaper. The person laughed, asking if the pun was intended.
I hadn’t realized I’d made a joke, so I turned around to see the same guy who had helped me before. His smile crinkled his eyes in a way that made the grip on my heart loosen just the tiniest bit. He asked how the boat project was going and I said it was a lot of work. He reached out to grab the right size sandpaper that I needed and I noticed his nice build. He turned to hand me the packets and I hoped he hadn’t caught me ogling.
He told me that he thought it was cool that I was rehabbing a boat. As we looked for sturdy work gloves that would fit my hands, I told him how I was doing it for my dad. He would be working on the boat this summer if he were still here, but he wasn’t. I felt like I owed it to him, to his memory. Maybe I was starved for conversation because I hadn’t planned to say all of that.
Then the guy said his name—Jamie. And I noticed how his sandy-brown hair curled around his ears and the way his hazel eyes held so much compassion. I had liked that we were sort of anonymous, but I told him my name. Maura, he said, sounds Irish. My name on his lips, from his mouth, sounded to me like a wish. I wanted to hear him say it again. He asked what else I needed as we walked toward the front of the store.
I wondered about how to get the old boat out of the water so I could clean up the hull. Jamie barked out a laugh. I stopped walking, irritated by his reactio
n. He turned to look at me and realized I’d stopped following. He hadn’t thought I was serious, and when I said I was, he moved the bill of his cap, rubbed his forehead and adjusted the cap back down. He let out a big whew and said it’s a whole thing, getting a boat out of water. Then he said that working on the hull would be no joke. He explained that there’s a lot more boat under water than you realize.
I told him sharply that I was raised on boats. Dad always had a boat. He didn’t always keep them, but as long as we’d been coming to Cedar Branch, I’d been on boats.
I expected Jamie to surrender and apologize. He didn’t. He had the nerve to look at me with skepticism! Then he rattled off all these questions that he knew I wouldn’t be able to answer. Like about the engine and the septic system. And how to start it if it stalled.
He told me that I was a boat tourist. So I told him that he was a dick.
My fingers started tingling and I wasn’t sure I had full control over my element, so I walked out. The last thing I needed was to accidentally create a rainstorm inside this store. I was outside before I realized that I was still holding the sandpaper and the gloves. And I hadn’t paid. I sighed, waiting for my anger to calm down, and then I went back into the store.
We didn’t speak as Jamie rang up my purchases. After I paid, Jamie slid the bag of items to me. And still we said nothing.
But of course when I arrived at the car, I couldn’t find my keys. I whispered a quick charm to reveal where I’d left them. The keys were back in the hardware store. I stood by the car trying to talk myself into going back in for them and then Jamie walked up with my keys in his hand.
When I took the keys from him, our fingers brushed against one another. He apologized for being condescending and I apologized for calling him a dick. As I dropped the bag into the back seat of the car, I casually suggested that he could come help me with my big boat project if he knew so much about it. I told him that we were in Eagles Cove, if he decided to come by. As I pulled the car out of the parking lot, I noticed the afternoon sun peeking through clouds for the first time in days.