Just as suddenly as the first tree had been devoured, a second grew into its place. This one I recognized immediately too, it was the tree in which I had dug through the mossy interior of and released Silas back into the world.
I only hovered my palms above the bark this time, but it too went quickly up in flame. It continued on this way, in an earth-shattering pattern. Until, finally my tree grew into the space before me. I had never seen this tree, yet I knew it was mine, felt the same bond with it I felt when looking into the deep blue eyes of my mother.
“Thank you.” I whispered into its branches, not wanting to touch it just yet so that I could simply take in the beauty that had once somehow been me.
I raised my hand to touch it, but the soft melody of water flowing made me stop in my tracks.
Though the sap still stuck in a fine honey yellow layer on the bed of the creek, a swirl of blue water had now begun to flow over it.
It was the watercolor artists spilled brush cleaning cup of blue swirls from my heaven, mixing with the honey yellow of Silas’s world.
I chased it down its path as it made its way towards Silas in our kingdom.
Chapter Seventeen
The stories of my naked ghost running through the woods with stolen acorns spread faster than the fire had, straight from Neil’s mouth of course. Though it was unknown to Silas and I as we pushed life back into the woods.
The water, though it swirled with bits of pink and green, and resembled paint more than water, was delectably drinkable we found. We could splash its contents over our ashy bodies, and pour its sweet cold nectar down our dry throats. We seemed to thrive from its colorful nourishment. The only thing we could not do was fully immerse ourselves in it, as we were too fearful of becoming stuck in the thin honey layer that still glowed from beneath it.
We were the Adam and Eve of this small kingdom, and we would bear life back unto it from the ashes that remained.
We worked tirelessly in the months that passed, the sun glaring mercilessly down on us without the shade of the trees. We dug wide holes in the hot endless ashes with our bare hands, allowing the earth below to finally breath again. We planted all the acorns I had gathered, and when we ran out I gathered more and we planted those too. We carefully watered each small mound in the earth with the liquid from the creek that we would cup gingerly in our hands.
We cleared the black bark that was all that remained of the towering maple trees, throwing it into my now vacant and unused yard where we could no longer step. We pushed the hot piles of ash to the far ends of our woods, where they began to form dusty hillsides that created a border around our kingdom.
We dug our hands into the earth until our fingernails were nearly pushed off, sweated over the ground until small weeds grew from the magic blue droplets of our sweat. We cried and pushed and bled and ached until finally all that remained was the bare earth, stained black.
Our kingdom would never be the same as if had been, but we were blissfully happy in our efforts anyway.
Re-growing a wooded kingdom is a never-ending job, but eventually you just have to wait and hope for sprouts. The waiting was what I began to love most. Watching plants grow may sound monotonous, but there is nothing more thrilling than simply watching and waiting with the one you love.
As the sun went down behind the burnt hills, and all the work that could be done for the day was finally completed, we could finally become lost in the simplicity of young love again.
We would lounge on the edge of the creek, with our feet in the painted water and our heads in the dirt, immersed in the merriment of our lives. These moments at the creeks edge were timeless, they were all the fire had not taken from us, and we savored in the innocent nostalgia they provided. We would whisper to each other as the stars spread out over the sky about what had been, what would be, and all that we now were.
Because Silas could not leave this little patch of woods, he would often ask what I had seen in my few journeys away from it.
“The golden honey came from my trees, but they burned away?”
“Yes, and then mine grew, although I can’t be sure it was mine, and the water came from it and over took the sap.”
He had been silent for a long time after I answered, and I began to wonder what he was trying to sort out in his mind.
“What are you thinking?” I asked curiously.
“I was thinking, that I am the gold, and you are the blue, and the trees are what will always bring me back to you.” I could hear the smile in his voice in the darkness. It was contagious.
“But first we have to bring the trees back.” I reminded him in a mock serious tone.
“But first we must bring the trees back.” He whispered back to me before we drifted off to sleep under the moonlight.
It was as if nothing could ever penetrate the magical blissfulness.
Until it did.
Silas had heard their voices before me in his place halfway up the hill side towards my house.
Neil, and a group of four other boys neither Silas or I knew, approached the woods from the edge of my now vacant home.
“Silvana, where are youuu?” Neil’s nasally voice cooed into the distance.
“Do ghosts have tits?” One of them joked.
“According to Neil they’ve got everything.” Another responded.
Silas had crept away from the sound of them approaching to where I sat unaware on the edge of the creek. He grabbed my shoulder lightly, turning me towards him so that I could see he had placed one finger over his lips to tell me to remain silent.
We ran to the farthest edge, to the place where I had been crossing over the burnt pile of branches, taking care to only step on the soft ashes that would not make a sound as we sprinted to safety.
They came into view just as we ducked behind the soot covered branches, and I recognized Neil immediately.
“They’re looking for you, one of them already saw you.” Silas hissed into my ear.
I hadn’t told him that I had seen Neil, and I didn’t have any actual reason. I had forgotten in my initial happiness and simply never found a good time to bring it up again. I thought it was unimportant, and did not want to tell Silas of my embarrassing encounters with Neil if I could avoid it.
“I know the tallest one.” I whispered back to him.
“That water doesn’t look right man.” One of the boy’s voices carried over to us where we hid.
“Didn’t some kid die here?” Another asked.
“Damn this place is all haunted, let’s go that way.” Neil responded to them, pointing them in exactly the direction where we crouched behind the branches.
Silas grabbed me by my shoulders in a firm grasp, lifting me slowly to my feet without taking his eyes off the group approaching.
“Go, Run. They won’t know who I am, but they will know you.” He whispered into my ear, his breath was hot and made me itch as he spoke.
He was right, I had no other choice. I took one last look into the depths of Silas’s hazel eyes and bounded over the branches and into the woods beyond as if I was running for my life, which in a way, I was.
Chapter Eighteen
I ran until I reached the confines of the little wooded area that I gathered acorns from. Silas however, stayed in place.
He had devised a plan that he hoped would work in the few short moments he had before they came into view of him, his body still naked and streaked with ashes.
“What’s up guys? You scared the hell out of my girl, she took off running with both our clothes when she heard ya.”
“Who are you?” Neil asked confused, he hadn’t expected to find anyone alive within these burnt woods.
“I should be asking you that man, you’re on private property.”
Neil looked him up and down angerly, as if to size him up.
“These woods are haunted.” He finally replied confidently.
“Yea? I’ve never heard that.” Silas told him with believable interest. It was ju
st enough to hook Neil.
“Yea dude, this chick I used to date died in the fire up here and now her naked ghost runs around the woods, saw her with my own eyes.” Neil’s cockiness was beginning to make Silas itch with irritation.
“I never heard of a girl dying in the fire.” He replied with a dramatic shrug.
“Yep. Silvana Wilkes, she used to be pretty cool but then she went nuts and got sent away and then I guess came back and tried to burn down the entire forest and killed herself.” Neil laughed at himself as he spoke.
“Oh yea, I remember her. She was pretty cute.” Silas told him.
“Damn right, hottest ghost out there.”
“You used to date her you said?”
“Yea man, for way too long, then I had to cut her off. Too clingy.”
Silas was working hard to hide his irritation.
“Were going to find her. You want to come?” Another one of the guys chimed in.
“Nah, I’ve got to go find my girl, she’s probably run halfway to china by now. You guys be careful though, the guy that lives in the house up there likes to shoot down into these woods.” Silas told them while gesturing up towards his old home as he made a move to leave.
“Oh, were not worried, that old drunk burned up in the fire too.” Neil called after him as he walked away up the hill, along the border he could not cross.
His words were a sharp knife thrown into Silas’s back. He knew that his father had started the fire, but assumed he had simply taken off after. He liked to picture him on a beach in Mexico, smoking fat cigars and watching the waves crash as the sun set. He stopped in his tracks, trying with all his might to not crumble into the ground in agony. He turned towards them for just a moment, using the last bit of mental strength he could muster.
“Hey, do you guys mind searching over that way? My girl went this way and I don’t want her to get even more freaked.”
“No problem man!” One of them called up to him. He slowly unstiffened his muscles as he listened to them retreat towards the creek.
His father was dead, his mother still missing, and I had lied, or at least obviously withheld something from him about Neil.
He was still curled into a ball in a dense pile of ashes when I finally tiptoed back into our side of the woods.
“Is it safe now?” I whispered over to him from behind the blackened branches.
“Is it ever?” he replied morosely.
“What happened?” I asked as I stepped over to where he laid.
“My father is dead.”
“How?” I asked in shock.
“The fire.” He practically spat the words at me.
“I’m so sorry Silas.” I tried to pity him, but I couldn’t help but not be a little pleased, my hatred for his father ran deep within my soul now.
“Why didn’t you tell me they saw you?”
“I was embarrassed. I dated that boy one time after I thought I wouldn’t see you across the creek again.”
“You dated him after we met?”
“Well, no. We hadn’t technically met yet.”
“What are you talking about? Besides when I was dead or when you were we’ve basically never been separated since the day we met.”
“It was only one date.”
“He seemed to believe it was a lot more than that.”
“It was before we met. I watched you across the creek with that blonde girl.”
He scrunched his face as he tried to remember. For him, the memory felt as if it were a life time ago. Which was no surprise, because technically, it had been several lifetimes ago now.
“Clarissa. She showed up the first day we moved here.”
“You wouldn’t carve her initials in the tree.” I told him.
“You saw that?”
“It was the moment I began to fall in love with you.”
My words lifted him ever so slightly out of his ball of grief, and he took me by the hand then, leading me down towards our place beside the creek.
It was an unusual pleasure, to argue like a normal young couple does, and we treasured the short moment in silly silence.
We heard the sirens before we reached the water’s edge, looking at each other in silent confusion. They echoed throughout the empty woods, bouncing off the hillsides in a high-pitched melody. We made our way towards the sound in the darkness, the moonlight only catching our eyes as our bodies were still covered in an ashy camouflage.
From our place hidden in the darkness of the scorched hillside, we could see the police lights illuminating off Silas’s house.
“What are you boys doing out here at this time of night?” We couldn’t hear Neil’s responses, only the mumbled sounds of his voice as he replied guiltily.
“Do you have permission from the home owner to be here? We were alerted by a silent alarm on the home.”
I looked over at Silas in the dark, I could see just by the down turned shape of his eyes, glowing in the moonlight, that he hadn’t known there was ever an alarm even installed. It was simply another of the many reminders that he had been absent from this world for so long, that his mother had suffered in frightful loneliness in his absence.
“Evening Mrs. Jackson, we are here at your residence with a group of young boys who appear to be trespassing.”
We couldn’t hear her response as the officer spoke to her over the phone, but we understood all we needed to at his response to her.
“That’s fine ma’am. We’ll wait here with them.”
Silas’s mother had finally returned.
I wanted to retreat, knowing she would come and find us when it was safe and she was ready, but Silas stayed glued to the edge of the hillside, refusing to move. He had already experienced the painful loss of one parent today, he was not about to take his eyes off where he knew her car would soon appear now.
A strange white sports car pulled into the driveway a few minutes later, two doors audibly closed in the darkness, but we could not see anything beyond the flashing lights against its surface in the dark.
“Mrs. Jackson, I presume?” We could hear the officer say.
“Yes, yes I’m Mrs. Jackson.” I held both my hands in a firm grasp around Silas’s bicep, not wanting him to run to the sound of his voice as I knew he would desire to do. He tugged away slightly, but then gave into me, thinking better of it.
“It looks like these boys triggered your silent alarm, they were all out here in the yard still when we arrived.”
We could hear the boy’s feet shuffling against the pavement nervously.
“Wait a moment. Neil Martin? Is that you?” My mother’s voice rang into the darkness like a beautiful melody, drawing me towards it. Silas had to grab me and keep me from running to my mother now. We laid still against the hillside, watching in aggravating anticipation.
“Yes Ma’am.” Neil replied, shame evident in this shaky voice.
“Well I am awfully interested in hearing what your mother has to say about this young man.” My mom’s voice was sharp, but there was a lightness to it I hadn’t heard before. She sounded happier.
“Thank you so much for your assistance officers, but I think we can handle it from here.”
“Are you sure ma’am?”
“Oh yes, I’m sure, I would like the chance to speak to their mothers anyway.”
“Alright then, goodnight to you ladies.”
We heard the police cars pulling away down the gravel drive. I had understood, that when my mother said she was going to call the boys mothers, that they would be held there for the duration of it.
Silas, unfortunately, did not share in this understanding.
He shot away from me like a star in the sky, impossible to catch. He yelled for his mother in the darkness as he leapt towards her, falling immediately to the ground below where it consumed it entirely.
“Silas no!” I yelled after him, unable to contain myself.
My mother screamed.
The boys all ran, the car they came in drifti
ng loudly down the road as they fled.
His mother simply kneeled beside him, rubbing her hands over his mossy form, melting the earth that held him away from his naked body.
I stepped out of the woods then, and they made no move to contain me as they had done to him.
Chapter Nineteen
Time had become irrelevant to us, until a single moment turned it into a limited luxury.
A series of unpleasant events followed in quick succession after our reunification with our mothers.
First, I tried to console my mom, ineffectively.
My idea of the worst moment of my life had changed throughout the years, first it had been losing my dad. Then it had been losing Silas, then having to leave Silas, and then ultimately getting Silas back and losing him again. After that, it had been the death of the woods, and my own death.
None of those horrible moments could have ever prepared me for the total devastation that this current moment caused me.
“You are not my daughter; my daughter is dead.”
My mother’s voice and eyes matched in their empty coldness as she looked right through me begging her to believe I was real, I was alive.
“I didn’t die. I was only sleeping. I didn’t die.”
I knew it was technically a lie, but now was not the time to get into specifics.
She reached back and smacked Silas’s mother across the face, the sharp sound reverberating around us in the night.
“How could you do this to me? How? How?” She begged her over and over before she retreated quickly away down to crooked drive.
“Mom! Please!” I screamed after her, beginning to follow. She broke into a run then, and from the way she ran you would think she deserved an Olympic medal. She looked like a cartoon character as she fled away from me, breaking a piece of my heart that could never be repaired now.
I realized then, that the water from my heaven, the water in the creek whose colors swirled magically, was not mine at all. It had always been my mothers. A piece of her I’d stolen, one I could now see she needed back. I decided not to go after her, to provide her the solitude to grieve she had always gifted unto me.
Honey Roots Page 12