Ruby

by Francesca Lia Block

  On my way out the door, my mother stopped me.

  “Why don’t you let Dad do that?”

  I just gave her my most scathing stare and ran outside. My father never referred to what had happened or apologized for it. I didn’t expect him to.

  WAS THERE A CONNECTION between the dead animals and the way you had been transformed? I didn’t know. But it was one way to make the loss worth something, at least in my mind. And that was where I still mostly lived.

  spring

  A MONTH AFTER YOUR PARENTS returned from their holiday, you rose from your bed and walked outside the door of the cottage. No one understood how this miracle had occurred. Marie-Therese had removed the beaded cloths, the candles, and the jars before Isabelle and Phillip came home. I had rolled up the paper with the outline of the man and hidden it underneath my bed where it remained all winter.

  Now it was spring. I lay on my mattress in a fetal position with my eyes closed, breathing in the scent of blossoms on the wind, trying to become part of the air myself. I was not trying to be invisible. I was trying to remember the springs of my childhood, to reassure myself that it had not all been trauma and dead creatures. The life I had made up was not that different from the life I really had. Was it?

  Isabelle and I always talked about flowers. She told me their properties and essences and how to use them in spells, potions, and rituals. I told her things, too.

  In the spring, where I grew up, red buds opened on the trees and lily of the valley filled the yard. At my grandparents’ farm, the lilac bushes grew in dense purple clusters, so fragrant they made my knees weak. On May Day, my mother, Opal, and I woke at dawn, picked as many dew-speckled flowers as we could, and arranged them carefully in pastel construction-paper baskets we had made. Then we left them anonymously on people’s doorsteps. I would get a ticklish feeling in my stomach; it was more exciting than Christmas morning for me to leave those baskets for people to find.

  Everywhere I went, ladybugs attached themselves to my hair and clothes. “Good luck,” my mother said. Sometimes she called me her little red ladybug. Opal and I ran outside after the rainstorms and stomped through the puddles in our yellow galoshes, soaking each other. When the sun came out, we hung the laundry on the line outside so our clothes would fill with the smell of the wind. The nights gurgled and hummed with the sound of locusts.

  On the farm, there were some piglets whose mother had died and they wouldn’t take their bottles; I asked my grandpa if I could try. I went into the pen and talked to the piglets and sang to them and fed them from bottles, like babies. I loved the suckling sounds and the tug of the bottle as their bodies wiggled with delight.

  We had a big family picnic. There was barbecue pork to eat, and my father insisted I have some. He told me if I didn’t I wouldn’t get any dessert. I don’t know if the meat was bad or if I was just sick from seeing that whole pig roasting on the spit and thinking of the suckling piglets. Either way, I threw up all night until I thought my body had turned all the way inside out, and I never touched pork again.

  I DIDN’T TELL ISABELLE that last story; after all, she had a shop sign shaped like a sow. But the dead pig just sneaked into my mind. Turning and turning on its spit with its charred snout and cherry eyes. It was spring. Ask the poets. Not all demons look like men.

  THIS MAY DAY, I filled a construction-paper basket with day lilies, sweet peas, daffodils, and daisies that I’d grown in the small plot Marge Bentley had let me tend. I left the basket on the doorstep of the cottage. As I crept away, the tickly feeling in my stomach was so strong it almost made me queasy.

  Later, Isabelle called and invited me to the May Day festival. “A goddess was here at dawn with a basket of flowers. You must come see what she left.” If a voice could wink, hers did.

  At the fair, little girls in pastel dresses and hair ribbons and scrubbed little boys in starched white shirts, sky-blue vests, and short pants were dancing around, waving the Maypole ribbons.

  “It’s so beautifully pagan,” Isabelle said.

  You rolled your eyes. “Here they go.”

  “Well, it’s just wonderful. How these things persist. The pole represents the sun god penetrating the earth goddess, Ruby. You probably could tell that.”

  “I hadn’t really thought about it,” I said. “Makes sense.”

  “It’s also quite scientific,” Phillip added. “The ancient Maypole sites have definite magnetic and energetic pulses readable by scientific equipment and perceptible to the very sensitive spirit.”

  We stood watching the children dance. Our arms weren’t touching but I could feel your body’s warmth and smell the soap you’d used that morning. Everyone was laughing and clapping, and my body swayed with the others’ as if we were one. I almost could imagine that I was a spring goddess in the sleeveless white blouse and floral circle skirt I had made. I wished I could leap and twirl with the children and twist colored ribbons around the gleaming white pole.

  As if in answer to my wish, several of the girls left the circle and started choosing people from the crowd to take their places. You pushed me forward as a girl with curly golden hair walked near us. I nearly knocked her over and she grabbed my hand. Her eyes were deep-set, blue, somehow very wise and serious in spite of her impish grin. She placed her ribbon in my hand and off I danced, leaping with the children. It was a relief to shamelessly express the joy inside my body. A ladybug landed on my arm and clung there. You were clapping and watching me twirl, and for a moment I felt that maybe you could love me. And I felt that maybe in that moment I was pure enough for your love.

  the green man

  I PACKED A PICNIC BASKET with hard-boiled eggs, apples and grapes, cheese, delicate, buttery Mexican wedding cookies, and a loaf of bread shaped like a woman’s body, from the funny bakery in town. We went down to the meadow at the edge of the forest and found a spot under a tree by a shallow creek where some wild blackberries grew. It was the first time we had been out alone together. The air was thin and the sky was a very sheer blue, as if you could see through it to another place. Waxy daffodils had begun to open in the gardens, but in the meadow the flowers were weedy and wind-blown.

  We were sitting together on the checked blanket when you told me the story of your accident. You said you hadn’t told anyone yet, not coherently anyway, and I knew that this meant something—for you to have chosen me—so I held every word as if it was a kiss from your lips.

  You said you had been in L.A. promoting your latest film and you were burned out, so burned out, you needed a break. It was the end of summer, and your mother kept saying how much she wanted you all to herself for a little while, so you swore your agent and publicist to secrecy and came home.

  On your third day, you decided to take your horse, Day, for a ride. You hadn’t seen her in ages and you thought it might do you both good to go out to the woods, bond a bit.

  It was a gorgeous morning, the sunlight through the trees making a glimmering haze. And it was strange. You kept seeing animals. Not a few here and there, scurrying across the path, but groups of animals gathered in the shadows watching you. At first it was just small ones—chipmunks, squirrels, rabbits. But then there was a stag, a great big one, with an enormous rack, just standing by the edge of the path, staring at you. As you got closer, you kept expecting him to dash away but he was like a statue; for a minute, you thought he really was carved out of stone. But Day was getting nervous, snorting, whinnying, pawing the ground as she turned in circles on the narrow path. You were trying to calm her down, so you didn’t notice at first, but then there was a feeling of electricity sparking the air, like just before a storm, and you looked over and someone was standing beside the stag.

  THERE HAD BEEN STORIES of the leaf-faced man when you were a child, and you had nightmares about him, but you hadn’t thought of him in years, you said. You said it was like some sign that you’d gone too far away from who you were, that the natural world was trying to warn you; you knew it sounded crazy but
you couldn’t explain it any other way. There he was, with his hand on the stag’s back.

  Nothing picturesque or magical about it, you said. The leaves were growing out of his flesh, forming his features like some kind of tumors, like they hurt him. And when you looked into his eyes, which were just spaces of darkness night caught in the leaves—you felt things you didn’t understand. A terrible hollowness, you said, and other things you couldn’t speak about.

  THEN THE STAG REARED UP on his hind legs and Day couldn’t take it anymore. She bolted. You dropped the reins and clutched her neck, just trying to hang on. She was jumping and thrashing through the trees and undergrowth. Everything was a blur, and the sound of branches snapping was amplified in your head. It was like screams, like crashing through disintegrating flesh and splintering bone.

  “I woke two weeks later in hospital.”

  There were tears in your eyes and then I realized I was crying, too. I had watched the whole thing as you spoke, as if I were there, but behind glass, unable to do anything to stop it.

  “I really want to ride her again, Ruby. I’ve never been afraid like this.”

  I said, “Let’s go see her. Day. Let’s go tomorrow. I know it will be all right.”

  A SHORT, STOCKY, middle-aged man greeted us.

  “I’ve got her ready for you, Orion. I didn’t know who Miss…”

  “Ruby. Just Ruby.” I held out my hand.

  “Pleased to meet you Just Ruby. I’m Stuart. So why don’t you have a look around, Ruby, and let me know which horse you fancy.”

  You had already gone over to a shadowy stall in the corner. I began to walk around the stable, stopping to stroke or whisper to the horses. The last stall was empty and I paused, turning to glance back at you, not wanting to interfere but trying to let you know I was there if you needed me.

  Something tugged my braid, almost pulling me backward off my feet. I whirled around to see a large black horse, eyes glistening with mischief. He tossed his head and whinnied at me.

  “Sorry, boy. I didn’t see you there.” I patted his neck.

  Stuart came rushing over.

  “It’s all right, Stuart. We’re just making friends.”

  “Well I’ll be damned. Would you look at this? Orion look at this.”

  “What’s the matter with you two?”

  “She’s met Night,” Stuart said.

  “This is Day’s brother. My mother named them. She thinks it’s witty. Day’s like an angel, at least she was until…But Night’s a little…difficult.”

  Stuart snorted. “That’s an understatement.”

  “Stuart takes him out every now and then and Mum used to until he threw her.”

  “Well I’m going to ride him,” I said. “You could use a good run, right boy? I take a Western saddle, please, Stuart.”

  Stuart raised his eyebrows at you and you hesitated, watching me stroke the horse’s nose. Then you nodded and Stuart shrugged and went to get the saddle.

  We waited at the stable doors. The scent of the meadows was already stronger now that the sun rose, and the sky was blue with a few scattered white clouds in the shapes of horses themselves. Stuart brought out the two animals. One was white, elegant, the other even more completely black and wild-looking in the sunlight. Day gazed disdainfully at her brother as I mounted him.

  He felt spring-loaded. I pulled the reins taut and murmured to him. You were standing at Day’s side, stroking her absently with one hand, the other in the saddle horn.

  “It’s all right,” I said.

  “You know, Ruby. This thing with my back. It can go at any second. I’ll never know.”

  “If you don’t want to do this, I understand,” I said. “But if you do, I know it will be okay.”

  You pulled yourself up into the saddle and wheeled Day around to face me. You were smiling now, that daredevil grin. “I guess none of us ever knows, do we?”

  “I’ll bet you I can beat you to the edge of the forest,” I shouted, letting the restless animal do what he was meant to.

  “Amazing.”

  You pulled up to the dark cluster of trees a split second after me. The horses stopped easily here; even Night seemed slightly unsure.

  “What’s amazing?” I laughed. “That I beat you? Or being out with your girl again?”

  “Well that. But I meant you. On that horse.”

  “Sometimes a wild horse needs to feel that his rider is just a little bit wilder,” I said. Ruby on the ground might not have said it but Ruby in the saddle could say almost anything at all.

  You arched one eyebrow.

  “Are you ready?” I asked, smoothing out the ridges along Night’s wide neck.

  You nodded, your jaw set, and I could tell you were remembering the last time you rode among these trees. Or imagining the last time you left them.

  The path was just wide enough for us to go side by side, the earth swollen with moisture from the spring rains. As the growth became denser, the ground felt firmer; the giant trees had already sucked up all the wetness.

  We rode in silence, just listening. Then you stopped and pointed.

  There, in the trees, was a child-sized house made entirely of vines. A tree stump was on either side of the door and the first blooms of lily of the valley surrounded the walls. The doorway and windows were void of light, and somehow the contrast between that darkness and the bright white flowers disturbed me.

  I thought of the painting my mother’s mother had in her house when I was a child. It was a dark hillside with a small arched wooden door built into it. A dirt road wound up from the door behind the hill and into a thick wood where the trees were so dark green they appeared almost black.

  I remembered asking my grandmother about it. I don’t think she ever told me much, but whenever I thought of the painting, I recalled another conversation we had had, about how she used to hold séances with her mother and aunts when she was a child. How they levitated a table once. They had learned this from their mother, who had been a circus performer. Even in her eighties, my great-great-grandmother would dress up in a sari, paint her eyes with black kohl, lie across the back of two chairs, and insist that her husband and his brothers lift her in the air.

  The painting frightened me, but in a pleasant way. My eyes watered and my chest tightened with excitement. I liked to imagine that the house belonged to a witch and that I was going to take the dirt path, march right up to her door, and knock.

  “I guess magic isn’t always good,” you said.

  “What? I’m sorry.”

  “All right, dreamy. I was telling you about the house.”

  “And the magic?”

  “I played here when I was a kid. We used to come and wait for something fantastic to happen but my mother told me to be careful what you wish for.”

  Magic isn’t always good. What had you meant by that? I tried to rub away the goose bumps on my arms, and then I followed you down the path away from the vine house.

  “There was a place like this in the woods where I grew up. A steamboat, just standing there among the trees, completely overgrown with moss and vines. I have no idea how it got there. I used to play there all the time but most of the other kids were too spooked by it. Inside it was so dark and musty, with these amazing little rooms.”

  You looked back at me, cocking your head. “You’re really something, Ruby. I try to impress you but you keep topping me. What are you, some kind of miracle-worker?”

  Then, silence. I couldn’t see your face, but somehow I could tell you were remembering what you’d said to me at Christmas.

  You pulled Day over to the side of the path and faced me. “I’m sorry, Ruby. I never apologized. I was just so frightened I wouldn’t be able to move or do anything again.”

  “I’m the one that should have apologized.”

  “No, all you did was try to help me. You did help me.”

  It felt like too much. I looked away and we kept riding then, not speaking. All of a sudden I heard you mu
rmur: “Bloody hell.”

  “What?”

  “We passed it. The spot where it happened. We went right by it and I didn’t even notice.”

  The way you were looking at me, your eyes wide, your lips slightly parted, I could tell you thought it was more magic. I wanted to tell you that I didn’t really know what I was doing. I was just like my grandmother as a little girl, calling on ghosts and lifting tables with her fingertips. Not really understanding any of it but ready to knock on the witch’s door anyway.

  Instead of replying, I turned Night around and started back to the stable. When we reached the edge of the woods, we broke into a gallop. You and the horses and I—part of the wind.

  Stuart was waiting for us, squinting, stamping down straw with his boots. He seemed relieved.

  “Didn’t give you any trouble then, Miss?” he asked me.

  “Oh no, Orion was a perfect gentleman.” I winked at him. Then I slid off Night’s back and patted the horse’s powerful neck. “And Night was, too.”

  You grinned at me as we walked back to the car.

  “I’m famished,” you said. “Let’s cook a meal with everything in the house.”

  lady of the forest

  AFTER CLEARING UP THE DISHES from dinner, I called your name but you didn’t answer. I looked in every room but you weren’t anywhere. I felt panicky. Not that you could have gone anywhere. Not that something could be wrong. Where were you? Orion?

  I passed the door leading to the back garden and heard your voice calling my name. I ran out onto the soft grass. The night smelled sweet. All of a sudden, everything was soft and sweet and warm. You were sitting on a blanket in the middle of the garden, where the ground rose to a soft mound, perfect for stargazing.

  “I couldn’t find you.” I felt so stupid for letting you see my fear.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you.”