Where the Forest Meets the Stars

by Vanderah, Glendy

  He smiled.

  “Do I sound like a kook?”

  “No. I totally get it.”

  He watched Ursa record location, date, and status on a new data sheet as Jo dictated. She carefully printed Gabriel Nash on the FOUND BY line.

  “I’ve contributed a data point to science. My existence is no longer meaningless,” he said.

  Jo liked that. “We’d better go,” she said. “The parents are going nuts, and we don’t want to bring in a predator.”

  “No predator may touch my nest,” Gabe called into the forest as they walked away.

  “Maybe saying that will be magic that protects it,” Ursa said.

  “That could be a new line of research,” he said. “The Use of Magic in Preventing Predation on Bird Nests. ”

  “I’m sure you’ll get a grant from the National Science Foundation,” Jo said.

  “Ursa Major will be my coauthor.”

  “Yeah, you’ll definitely get funded,” Jo said.

  Gabe’s beginner’s luck didn’t continue at the next study site, but he had high hopes for their last study area, Ursa’s magic forest. They arrived at Summers Creek in the early afternoon. Gabe was immediately charmed by the wooded ravines, mossy waterfalls, and ferny rocks of the burbling stream. He told Ursa he felt the magic, and every so often he’d claim he saw a nymph or a fairy or a unicorn. Ursa started seeing phantasms, too, and soon the two of them were working harder at inventing fantastical creatures than looking for nests. Jo loved it, even if it was a little distracting.

  Midway through their work, they sat at the usual big, clear pool to eat the second half of their lunch. Before Jo perched on her favorite flat rock to eat, Ursa was in the water, barefoot and grabbing at fish. “You should eat your sandwich before you get your clothes all wet,” Jo called to her.

  “I don’t want to,” she said, belly flopping into the deepest water.

  “So much for my disciplinary skills,” Jo said, handing Gabe a turkey-and-cheddar sandwich.

  “She’s a good kid. She doesn’t need discipline.”

  “Other than the fact that she won’t tell me where she’s from no matter how much I beg?”

  He sat on the rock next to her. “She told you where she’s from.”

  “Right, the big nest in the sky.”

  “Sometimes I can almost believe it,” he said. “She’s not like any kid I ever knew.”

  “I know. And there’s still no one looking for her.”

  “You check the internet?”

  “I do, but it gets harder every time. I’m afraid I’ll see her on one of those pages, and she’ll go back to the idiots who never even reported her missing.”

  “They won’t get her back. She’ll go to foster care.”

  Jo faced him. “How much longer are we going to wait until we involve the sheriff again? It’s been almost two weeks.”

  His hand holding the sandwich slackened as if he’d lost his appetite. “I thought about that a lot the last few days.”

  “I think about it all the time. We have to figure out a way to get her to the sheriff.”

  “Yeah.”

  They finished their sandwiches in gloomy silence, watching Ursa play in the water. Jo handed Gabe a Nalgene bottle filled with water and opened another for herself. “How did your sister and mother react when you went home to change clothes this morning?”

  “Lacey went ballistic because she wants to go back to Saint Louis.”

  “Did your mother say anything?”

  “She was too surprised to say much.”

  “Why would she be surprised?”

  “You know why.”

  “No, I don’t. So you had a breakdown when you faced a high-pressure university. Why does that make your life more expendable than Lacey’s? Why can’t you take a day off with friends? They purposely don’t let you recover and move on because they’ve gotten used to you being the full-time caregiver.”

  “There’s more to it than that.”

  “I don’t think there is.”

  He looked in her eyes. “I’m sick. I can’t just ‘recover and move on.’”

  “If you believe that, you won’t.”

  “Like most people who’ve never experienced it, your view of depression is optimistically misguided.” He set the water at Jo’s feet and walked over to Ursa. She was in ankle-deep water near the creek bank trying to catch something in the convoluted roots of a huge sycamore.

  “Did you see that?” she said. “I caught a big frog, but he got away.”

  “So much for your handsome prince,” he said.

  “Who wants a stupid handsome prince?”

  “What about a smart handsome prince?”

  “There are no princes in this magic forest,” she said.

  “That’s modern.”

  She waded into deeper water. “Are you coming in?”

  “I think I will,” he said. “I feel all prickly.”

  “That’s from the nettles.”

  “I know. The word nettled has taken on a whole new meaning for me.” He took off his boots and long-sleeved University of Chicago T-shirt but left his jeans on. Jo couldn’t help staring at his bare torso, lean and strong from working on the farm. When he’d waded deep enough into the pool, he ducked down and disappeared. He came up hooting and flinging water from his hair. “It’s surprisingly cold!” he called to Jo. “You should come in.”

  “Jo doesn’t like to get her data sheets wet,” Ursa said.

  Jo walked to the edge of the pool.

  “Are you coming in?” Ursa asked.

  “I have to now that you said that.”

  “Said what?”

  “That I don’t like to get my data sheets wet. It makes me sound like a dork.”

  Ursa cheered and jumped on Gabe’s back, clinging to him like a baby monkey.

  Jo took off her hiking boots and rolled her field pants to her knees. The problem was, she didn’t want to get her data sheets wet when she went back to work, and the two layers of shirts that kept nettles and mosquitoes away from her skin would never dry.

  She unfastened the top buttons and pulled both long-sleeved shirt and tee over her head. Maybe she did it because she’d told Tanner she was happy with what she looked like. Or because her mother had said, Live passionately for both of us . Maybe she took off the shirts because she wanted to show Gabe that she knew something about how to “recover and move on.” Whatever the reason, the shirts were off and the cold water she was splashing onto her hot chest felt great.

  Ursa hardly noticed. She’d seen Jo’s chest a few times when they were changing clothes. But Gabe clearly didn’t know what to do. First he looked at the scars. Then he looked away. Then he looked at her again, but only at her face.

  “I wonder if I’d get arrested for indecent exposure if a forest ranger happened by,” Jo said. “Is it indecent when you don’t have anything to expose?”

  “Good question,” he said, visibly relieved by the humor.

  She liked that she’d let a man see her chest for the first time in the forest pool. No bedroom. No pressure. In the woods she was relaxed, as whole as she ever felt. She stretched her arms into the water and glided across the pool. She turned around, slipped underwater, and came up in the middle of the pool. Ursa shifted from Gabe’s back onto hers, hugging her arms around Jo’s collarbones. “Aren’t you glad you came in?”

  “I’m really glad.”

  Ursa put her cold, wet lips to Jo’s ear. “Let’s splash Gabe,” she whispered.

  “Okay,” Jo whispered back. “One, two, three—” Ursa leaped off her back and fell into a frenzy, shoving water at him. Jo helped, but with much less gusto.

  “No fair. Two against one!” he said.

  “You’re bigger,” Ursa said.

  He sent powerful waves at them with strokes of his arms. Ursa grabbed Jo’s shoulders and wildly paddled her legs.

  “I surrender! I surrender!” he said.

  “Girls win!” Ursa ye
lled.

  “Of course they do. I never stood a chance.”

  “Hey, did you hear that?” Jo said. They kept still and listened to thunder rumbling from the southwest.

  “It’s not close yet,” Gabe said.

  “But we have a long walk back to the car.” She left the water. She didn’t like how far the distant rumbles carried, and their frequency portended a storm that was ripe with lightning.

  “Can I have my sandwich?” Ursa asked.

  “Eat it quick while Gabe and I dress,” Jo said.

  By the time they’d dressed and Ursa had gulped down her sandwich, the woods had darkened and the thunder was much louder.

  “That storm is moving fast,” Gabe said.

  “Those are the worst,” Jo said.

  They used the rocky creek bed as much as possible to avoid the thick streamside vegetation, but farther upstream, where the creek had more water, they had to walk in the forest. Wind rushed through the treetops, and the temperature dropped at least ten degrees. The sky turned greenish black.

  “It’s like nighttime!” Ursa said.

  “Hunker down or run?” Gabe asked Jo.

  “I never know which to do.”

  “Let’s run!” Ursa said. “This is scary!” she shouted as they ran, but Jo sensed her delight in the booming thunder and sudden pelt of rain. The wind and lightning escalated. When branches started cracking, Jo looked for cover but didn’t see any.

  “Almost there,” Gabe shouted over the thunder and wind. “Jo!”

  Jo stopped and turned around. Gabe was kneeling on the ground over Ursa. Jo ran to them, her chest throbbing at the sight of Ursa sprawled in the vegetation, face slack, eyes closed. “She tripped?”

  He rubbed his hand in Ursa’s wet hair and showed Jo the blood.

  “That branch hit her.”

  The branch was as thick as Jo’s wrist. Jo knelt at Ursa’s side and rubbed her cheek. “Ursa? Ursa, do you hear me?”

  She opened her eyes, but they looked unfocused.

  “We have to get her to a hospital,” Gabe said. He pushed his arms under her body and lifted her up. Jo ran ahead and unlocked the car.

  He laid Ursa across the back seat. “Stay with her. I know where the nearest hospital is.”

  “Where?”

  “Marion. I’ve been there with my parents.” He took the keys and gave Jo the extra T-shirt from his backpack. “Use this to put pressure on the cut.”

  Jo cradled Ursa’s head in her lap and held the shirt to the wound on her scalp while Gabe drove. The windshield wipers slapped wildly as rain, thunder, and lightning assaulted the car. Everything felt like a sensory translation of her panic.

  Ursa tried to sit up. “You’re hurt,” Jo said. “Don’t get up.”

  “I’m okay. A piece of a tree hit me.” She lifted her head and looked at Gabe. “Why is Gabe driving your car?”

  “Because I know where the hospital is,” he said.

  “I don’t want to go to the hospital!” Jo couldn’t hold her down. “I want to go home! Don’t go to the hospital!”

  “You were unconscious for at least ten seconds,” Gabe said. “You probably have a concussion, and you might need that cut stitched up.”

  “I was just playing a joke! I wasn’t really unconscious!”

  “You were,” Jo said.

  “Everything will be okay,” Gabe said.

  “It’s not okay!”

  She was right. Nothing would be okay when they arrived at the hospital. How would they explain why Ursa had been with them in the forest? Even worse, she’d been living at Kinney Cottage for almost two weeks. If the university found out, Jo might be in serious trouble.

  “Will police come?” Ursa asked, betraying similar thoughts.

  “Yes, the police will probably come,” Gabe said.

  “They’ll take me away from you!” Ursa said through a gush of tears. “I’m not going!”

  Jo tried to hug her, but Ursa pushed her away.

  “I’m sorry,” Gabe said, “but we have to do what’s best for you, even if you don’t want it.”

  Ursa fell quiet, tears dripping down her cheeks. The rain and thunder diminished, the only sound in the car the intermittent swish of windshield wipers. On the outskirts of Marion, Gabe slowed behind another car at a stop sign. Before the Honda came to a full stop, Ursa popped open her seat belt, flipped the lock, and slammed the door behind her. Jo scooted across the seat, but Ursa had already sprinted into a thicket at the edge of the woods. By the time Jo pushed through the dense vegetation, Ursa had vanished. “Ursa!” she shouted. “Ursa, come back!”

  Gabe emerged from the undergrowth, scanning the trees. “She must be hiding. She can’t have gotten far that fast.” He jogged a short way into the forest and stopped. “Ursa, I know you can hear me!” he called. “Come out and we’ll talk about it, okay?”

  “Ursa, please!” Jo shouted. “Please come out!”

  They searched behind all the trees that were big enough to hide her.

  “She’s still running,” Jo said. “We’ll never find her!”

  “Ursa!” Gabe shouted as loud as he could. “If you come out, we won’t go to the hospital.”

  They waited. Rain dripped from the trees. A chickadee scolded.

  “She’s gone,” Jo said.

  “Looks like she is.” He saw that Jo was about to cry. “We’ll find her. Let’s drive down the road in the direction she went.”

  “Was that a promise?” Ursa said behind them.

  They turned around. She was standing at the edge of the roadside thicket.

  “I’ll run again if you don’t promise to take me home,” she said.

  “But . . . where is your home?” Gabe said.

  “My home on Earth is with Jo!” she shouted.

  “Ursa . . .”

  “You aren’t my friend if you don’t do what you said! You said we wouldn’t go to the hospital!”

  “We won’t,” Jo said.

  “Do you promise?”

  “Yes.” Jo walked toward her slowly to keep her calm. “How is your head?”

  “It’s okay.”

  When Jo reached her, she lifted her hair to assess the cut. “Look, it’s stopped bleeding,” she said to Gabe.

  “Because she has the hardest goddamn head I ever saw. Where the hell were you?”

  “In a metal thing,” Ursa said. “It’s in here.” She led them into the thicket and showed them the opening of a corrugated drainage pipe, rainwater swirling out of it. They would never have found her in there.

  “I give up,” Gabe said. “This alien is way too smart for me.”

  “Can we go home?” Ursa said.

  “We’re going home,” Jo said.

  16

  Jo had hardly stopped the Honda when Ursa jumped out, grabbed a stick, and threw it for Little Bear. All the way home she’d been manic, trying to prove that the blow to her head hadn’t done any damage.

  Jo unlocked the front door of the house. “Ursa, inside for a bath.”

  “You mean a shower?” Ursa said.

  “No, I don’t want you standing up.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “At the very least, your head has to hurt. Do what I said. I’ll be in the bathroom to help in a minute.”

  “I don’t need help,” Ursa said, though she obediently walked inside.

  Still cloaked in his bloodstained shirt, Gabe put his backpack in the back of his truck. “She looks good.”

  “I think a lot of that is fake,” Jo said.

  He laid the bloody shirt they’d used to put pressure on Ursa’s cut next to the backpack.

  “Will you come back after you clean up?” she asked.

  “Do you want me to?”

  “I do. What if I can’t wake her up in the middle of the night or something like that?”

  “That’s the risk we’re taking by letting her call the shots.”

  “Come on . . . I feel bad enough.”

  He gently t
ouched her arm. “I’ll be back soon.”

  “You’re welcome to have dinner with us,” she said.

  “Are you sure you have enough? Your fridge looked pretty bare when I put things away last night.”

  “I know. We’ll have to do omelets with the eggs you brought.”

  “I’ll bring something over to cook. Let me handle dinner. You look beat.”

  “You must be about the same.”

  His weary smile confirmed it. “We’ll manage. I’ll see you soon.”

  Jo had Ursa undress and sit in warm water. After she cleaned the wound on Ursa’s scalp, she gave her the soapy cloth and let her wash her body. Ursa came out of the bathroom wearing the pink Hello Kitty pajamas she and Gabe had bought at a yard sale. She didn’t want to lie down on the couch while Jo showered, but Jo made her.

  Jo bathed and dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. When she emerged from the bathroom, Gabe was already in the kitchen cooking. “Hope you don’t mind if Ursa let me in,” he said. “I wanted to get dinner on as fast as possible.” He was seasoning a chicken in a roasting pan, and he’d brought bread stuffing to cook on the stove top.

  “This looks great,” Jo said.

  “I want to make the stuffing, but he won’t let me,” Ursa said.

  “Because you’re supposed to be resting,” Gabe said. “Go back to the couch.”

  “I’m not an invalid,” she said on her way to the living room.

  “Invalid,” Gabe said. “My sister doesn’t use vocabulary like that, and she’s a writer.”

  “How is Lacey?”

  “Spittin’ nails, as they sometimes say around here.” He poured the stuffing mix into a mixture of water and melted butter. “I think she suspects we’ve committed a murder.”

  “The blood! How did you explain it?”

  “I told her Ursa got hurt. And that led to another lecture on why I shouldn’t be going around with someone else’s kid. She threatened to call the cops.”

  “Will she?”

  “Never know with Lacey.”

  “What did she say when you left again?”

  “She demanded I stop my childish fling —as she called it—and stay home. She says she’s leaving in the morning no matter what.”

  “Do you have to go home tonight?”

  He quit stirring and faced her. “You asked me to stay the night, and I’m staying.”