He talked in his sleep sometimes, and it was in this manner that she learned about the Girl from the forest. She only learned bits and pieces; never enough to know her whole story. How did she know to come to him? Why did he never see her again? Sometimes when Ever seemed lucid, she would ask him questions. The answers he gave Janie seemed strange and more often than not, he could only tell her, "I don't know." Whether that was because he had forgotten or had never known at all, she couldn't say.
The day that Ever passed had started bright and clear. She went down to the spring and was halfway back to the cabin when the forest became so still that it stopped her. Whole minutes passed before a bird sang again and the crickets commenced their buzzing creaks. She looked towards the cabin above her and hurried faster. When her brother came for his weekly visit, she told him to tell the rest to come up by evening.
Even to his last breath, Ever had just seemed smaller and quieter than his usual self. Afterward, when she was all cried out, she stood steadfastly next to him. She wanted to see what he saw in his last hour of his time here. The birds and crickets buzzed so forcefully towards evening that they made the air hum. She spied a doe that slid between the shadows in the woods a small ways off. A heron streaked overhead, startled from the stream below. She stood there watching long after she knew he had passed. Looking out at his forest, she remembered all the treasures of her childhood that Ever had gifted to her. She realized that the trees surrounding the cabin seemed like a fortress to her. They radiated protection. They emanated strength. With limbs as strong and interwoven as any barricade, the forest had kept Ever safe. Enclosed in his little world, he had always been so content. The forest was like a burg: protective, defensive of him. She could feel it.
She wanted what Ever had. She knew it then. She wanted to stay with the stars that pinned themselves one by one in the sky above the towers of green. She wanted to remain always with the hundreds of fireflies that swarmed the air around Ever's body. When her brother came to coax her away, she knew the only answer she could give him was, "No."
********
The first time she saw the Girl, she had been fishing at the stream the better part of the day. In the year that Ever's land had become her own, she had become adept at finding the most plentiful pockets of water. Laden with her catch and pleased with herself, she half hummed a little tune. She would let it fall away when the climb turned sharply upwards and pick it up again when the switchbacks would level out.
She was suddenly aware that her little song was very loud in her ears. The woods had gone silent again, like the day that Ever had passed. Little prickles ran up the hair on her arms, but she pressed up the hill to her home. Silent herself now, she even walked more softly over the forest floor. "Quiet like a doe," Ever had taught her. They had practiced together one sunlit afternoon. The memory seemed long ago to her now.
The flash of brown through the elderflowers passed so quickly, she couldn't be sure it wasn't a trick of her mind. Something flashed again, and she changed her course to walk nearer to the shrubs. The scent of them hit her as she drew close, as if someone had brushed against them all. The fullness of the scent in the air made her stop a moment, and that was when she saw her.
Standing in the small clearing ahead with a fawn nearby her. "She's just as Ever described her!" Janie thought to herself. She smiled with the delight of being certain it was the Girl, Ever's Girl. She opened her mouth to call out, and both the Girl and fawn slipped into the deeper forest in a blink. "Quiet like a doe," Ever had told her. Only in that moment did she realize she still had many years of practice yet ahead of her.
The chirrup of crickets eased back into the air, and Janie hummed again through a small, close-lipped smile as she commenced her walk. She wished Ever was still alive, so she could tell him that she had seen his girl-savior. If he had been waiting for her at the cabin, she would have burst through the door and said, "She looks just as you depicted her!" She smiled wider at the thought of how happy that would have made him.
Only when she was snug in her little cabin again, and her meal of fish and dandelion greens had been eaten, and her legs were scooped under her as she sat before the fire did the little skin prickles came back. She said to herself out loud, "She's just as you said she was." Knowing that it was not possible. Knowing that Ever had described her when he had last seen her fourteen years ago.
********
Once, she saw the Girl jumping across the boulders that jutted out of the stream. She watched her leap from the last boulder onto the bank and disappear into the woods with an inhuman bound.
Once, she came through the wildflower glen on the west side of the hill and found the Girl with her fawn. Janie shrunk herself down for cover and watched the Girl collect tall, purple coneflowers. The fawn, now almost a buck, grazed around her. Janie skirted the edge of the glen, watching the Girl from different angles, and convinced herself she had not been noticed. She had reached the other side and was ready to melt into the trees when the Girl turned and smiled at her. She waved a bouquet of wild poppies, and Janie sprinted into the trees for home.
Once, Janie trudged through an early snow with her cache of freshly caught hares. As she was thinking about the new fur hat she could convince her brother to make for her, she pulled her old one down around her ears. Fussing with her hat, she almost walked into the buck. She blinked at the chest of the large animal in front of her. It made no sense to Janie that the buck would just be standing there. Unafraid; still and quiet like the snow around him. When it lowered its head, she saw the enormity of his antlers and took a quick step back. That was when she saw the woman standing next to him. Her hand rested on the animal's soft back, and she stared at Janie. Her gaze was not unkindly, but Janie felt nervous all the same.
"Hello," the word squeaked out of Janie's mouth. Her eyes took in the woman's height, the color of her hair, the color of her eyes. She knew this must be the woman that Ever had seen one night, but she also knew something that Ever had not. Janie knew that this woman was also the Girl. She couldn’t have said why she knew exactly. The skin tone and hair were different and obviously the age. The Girl had always seemed playful, and this woman made Janie uneasy, almost fearful. Only later that evening would Janie realize that their eyes were the same. Not similar but identical. Such an odd color of green, almost glowing. A hint of an orange and yellow ring surrounded the iris, and there was a slight pointed shape to them.
She tried to slow her breathing, but the white puffs that appeared in the air betrayed her. "I have rabbits. Do you need one?" The woman tilted her head at her but didn't make a sound. Janie studied her long coat of furs, her leggings of leather, the necklace made of small bones that fanned around her sternum and collar bones. Snow was dotting her thick, black hair like a wedding cap.
Something cracked and splintered nearby, and the sudden sound in all that stillness made Janie jump. She turned sharply towards the noise and saw an ice-covered branch crash to the forest floor. When she turned back a moment later, the woman was gone.
"Quiet like a doe," she said to the empty woods. Janie practiced her silent walking the rest of the way home. That night, she laid wide-eyed in her bed listening to the snow as it fell heavy around her home.
________
Chapter: The Girl
Let one man in, and others will always follow. That adage had been spoken when even she was young in this world. The elders had cautioned often. Her People had known this saying long before she was made.
In truth, the Girl knew that there were various ways a human might find himself entangled into the lives of her People. Once encountered, men rarely left them to go back to their own kind. The few who did told stories that were often disbelieved. “I’ll show you,” they would say to their kinsmen, but the men often forgot the path that would lead him back to her People.
There were the few exceptions, of course. A man who had taken one of her People’s jewels before he stole away in the night. The jewel let him see t
he path to the People in his mind. He had brought back other men who meant to steal from her People. Not that they could ever succeed. Not that those men were allowed to live.
Not all men meant to do them harm. Some were taken as pets or as lovers. They were always treated well and with affection, but the men would become enamoured with their captor to the point that their minds would be lost. Most often they were simply discarded. They were left beneath a tree as they slept or dusted with the forgetting herb.
“Something happens in your heart, though,” one of the Elders had told them one night around the fire. The Starrag shone brightly over them in the night sky. “Once you form an attachment to one man, you’ll find yourself wanting another. You’ll turn a blind eye to whether they may do you harm.” The Elder leaned forward into the fire so it danced shadows below her eyes. “You’ll find yourself letting them get too close to your hiding grounds, and then you will need to make choices.”
The Girl had nodded solemnly. She had been young, when the rules of her People were so simple in her mind. Why would she ever risk her People’s safety? Why would any of them ever have a need for any outsider?
Her young self was righteous. Her young self was still one that was loved by her People.
“No longer,” she reminded herself as she watched the new one come through the trees. Another man in the forest. Not on her hiding grounds, no. Not yet. But James was below her, and the other man was close. Men need their own kind, she knew that. What if James became ill again? His hair and skin was changing, becoming older. She understood that was what was happening to him, even if her own form was as fine and young as ever.
She had not understood what it meant to have affection for one of mankind. The Elder’s words had been glossed over by her certainty that she would never have a need for one. She had kept James to herself all these years. In that moment when he was ill, and she had had to choose losing a mere handful of years out of her long life so she could stay with him for his brief time, she had turned away. Back into the Girl, she had retreated to safety. Her heart had thudded in fear. She had let the moment pass, and now he was alone again.
“Must choose,” she fretted in the trees above. A hand was waved. A veil was brushed aside, and James Ever heard another man say, “Well met!”
********
One man leads to two. Two lead to four. She pulled her hiding ground back from Ever’s cabin and soon a path was worn from the stream to the top of the hill. If she felt any melancholy that he was not hers alone, she satisfied that feeling by noticing his smiles. He hummed songs he had not uttered in the many years she had watched him. Men occasionally trekked up to visit with him or to trade. The Girl allowed it. She didn’t try to hide him any longer, but she also kept his circle small. Some of her charms she left in their place. None who had mistrust in their heart would find the path. Those who had anger in their soul would find themselves unable to cross the stream.
Even those who were allowed to make the climb, she still watched them as they spoke with Ever. She would perch in the trees above and stroke the long, black feathers of her little friends as they watched guard with her.
The small girl-child, when she first came, was a surprise. The Girl saw the stream calm itself so that the child could easily cross. She crept along the treetops and stopped often as the girl studied a flower; and then put her ear to a tree to hear the buzzing of the bees; and knelt to coax a bunny out to nibble at a carrot from her basket.
Amazed, the Girl could not understand. She looked closer at the child. There was no glimmer about her. There was no jewel on any finger to explain the girl’s powers. There was only a sweet face, a pure heart, and something...something the Girl could almost see.
The child was a puzzle. The Girl asked her dark feathered friends to alert her if the child came again. She watched the child grow taller, the hair longer, the skin darker, and she knew the years were passing. The Girl’s heart thudded in her chest in a way she understood now.
“Let one man in, and others will always follow.”
________
Chapter: Janie
When Janie was 24, and her brother had given up trying to move her off the hill, and her father had given up worrying about her all alone in the woods without a man to protect her, she found herself content. Even her friends had given up trying to convince her she should have been married and with little ones of her own by now.
That morning as she left the cabin, the sky was already a deep, bright blue. Her favorite birds sang to her, back from their winter's journey. She had her basket with her today, the kind that Ever had taught her to make. She thought about him while she gathered medicinals. She started to see her life stretching out before her. Janie wondered if she would be here until she died, with a few friends gathered around her while she looked out into the trees.
That was the day when she first saw the man from the river. His hands were full of crawdads, and she watched him stuff them into a wicker cage that he dropped back into the water. He turned his head upwards and looked straight at her. He raised his hand in greeting, and without realizing it, she did the same.
A stranger at the stream wasn't uncommon these days. Within the confines of Ever's burg, she was guaranteed a certain solitude. There seemed to be a ring around the roaming grounds Ever had cherished. Janie's brother told her that outside that radius, ten new people appeared every day. Their small village was growing. An unknown face now and then was bound to be encountered at the places where Ever's magic ring ended and the rest of the world began.
The stranger packed up his cages, crawled up the steep bank, and disappeared into the trees. He didn't give Janie a backwards glance or even say anything as a goodbye, but Janie stared into the woods after him just the same.
That evening, as she chopped some roots, she found her thoughts drifting back to the stream. A man of her own age, maybe. Thin, but strong. She could tell by the way the cloth of his shirt stretched over his shoulders.
Janie dropped the knife and glanced around. She knew she was alone, but a warm rush of blood crept up her neck and cheeks as if someone else had been in the room and she had accidently said her thoughts out loud. Until that moment, she had never thought much about what it would be to have a man near her. For the rest of the evening and half the night, she thought of little else.
She began trekking to the stream on days she didn't have a need. She made excuses to the silent cabin about why she should go, as if the empty air believed her. Two weeks of extra hiking in the warm springtime did wonders for her already dewy skin, her shining eyes, and her strong legs. What they did not yield was another glance of her Stranger.
Janie had more salted trout, wild ginger and sorrel greens than she thought she could eat in a season. Packing up her catch from the day, she resigned herself that this was the last time she would venture down here for no reason. She had other things that needed tending to and other preparations for summer that needed her attention. An entire month had passed since she had ventured down to her parents' farm.
The breeze was soft and nearly constant that afternoon. Dappled sunlight hit the forest floor in wide circles, and Janie made a game of meandering from one to another as she made her way back home. She thought once more about the man from the stream and remembered that she was happy without one. If she got up in the morning and wanted to hunt quail, then that is what she did. If she wanted to make cornmeal spoon bread for breakfast, lunch and dinner, she could do that, too. The strong earth beneath her, that was her foundation. All the stars in the sky, they were her jewels. Long limbs of the maples and the oaks, they were her protectors and her providers. The birds that greeted her in the morning, they were her children. She remembered she had everything she needed as well as everything she had always wanted.
She turned up the last path to home, reached the top, and saw her Stranger leaning against the porch railing. There was a basket of skinned rabbits and early summer salmonberries by his feet, and Janie realized that
she wanted one thing more from life.
________
Chapter: The Girl
“What I would give up is so small,” she murmured to the honey bees with her cheek pressed against the rough bark of their tree. “But what I could gain would be . . . could be . . . “. She never knew how that thought should end.
There was a hope of companionship that was blossoming in her chest. Janie was a human, true, but there was something else within her, too.
“I could show her my true form,” she muttered to a bee that had lazily crawled out from his home in the bole. “Perhaps, she would understand and love me all the same.” Even as she said this aloud, she knew it was improbable. She didn’t want to risk losing Janie. She would have one chance to make what she wanted possible. There was no room for maybes. The best chance was the plan that would ensure her acceptance.
“It’s small, what I would give up,” she told herself and the bees again. “A handful of years out of my very long life.”
********
Timing was key, but the form she took was just as crucial.
The Girl thought of all the men she had seen in her life. When she counted them up, the number seemed woefully few. There was Ever, of course, and the six or seven who had visited with him. Another six or seven that she vaguely remembered from her former homeland. There had really been little need to pay attention to mankind; she was honestly surprised she could recall as many of them as she did. Ever was the only man she had seen completely bare. During his sickness, she had seen clearly when she bathed him how different his body was from her own. She reviewed all the male candidates again, and her brow furrowed as she puzzled over how different the men looked. She did not know which ones were suitable.
After a day and night of thinking, she decided to choose the pieces she liked best, and afterwards she would put them altogether. “Like a clay poppet that we used to make,” she remembered with a small smile. “I’ll make a form how I choose and then I’ll breathe life into myself,” she giggled at herself, knowing that what she was attempting wasn’t exactly the same thing as making a clay dolly that would live for a day or two.
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