Solstice Wood

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “Oh, my,” Lacey whispered. “All of it?”

  “Yes. Every single pattern.”

  “Jane,” Miranda said briskly, “if you can bring yourself to move a step or two, we could examine it more closely. Perhaps it’s not as bad as it looks.”

  “It is,” I assured her, as the logjam in the doorway broke and we moved in around Jane.

  “Oh, my,” Lacey said again, breathlessly, searching through the broken threads on a square. Her voice firmed abruptly. “Iris. Do you still have your crochet pattern designs?”

  I nodded vigorously, relieved that she could see the possibilities. “Yes.” I paused, cleared my throat. “Well. Here and there around the house. If I can remember where I put them…” They were beginning to look askance at me. So was I, at myself, at the monumental carelessness of the one who should have been guarding Lynn Hall most carefully. I touched my eyes, wishing, suddenly and irrationally, with every bone, for Liam. “I’m sorry,” I said. My voice sounded harsh with failure and bitterness. “I screwed up.”

  “Iris!” Jane protested.

  “That’s how they put it now, isn’t it? It’s ugly, but that’s what I did.”

  Lacey put a comforting hand on my arm. “It’s easy enough to forget about an old quilt in an attic. Any of us can do that. And I think, if we all work quickly enough, we can get this back together in no time. All we need are the patterns. We’ll take the quilt squares apart, match your pattern copies to the crochet designs on them, and pass them out to everyone who can crochet. I’m sure Sylvia can learn quickly enough—” She stopped, finally sensing the absence of Sylvia. “Dear. Where is Sylvia?”

  “That is the problem,” I told them tightly. “Isn’t it? The passages are open and I don’t know where she is.”

  They stared at me, and then at one another. Jane sat down suddenly on top of the quilt. “Iris,” she whispered. I had never heard her sound so fragile.

  I couldn’t see the changeling, where it might be crouched and listening, but I had to tell them about it. “That’s not all—”

  Not even that was all.

  I heard steps from the direction of the back of the house, heavy and tentative. Not Sylvia or Owen, I thought puzzledly. Not Hurley, either. A man, burly melting to lumpy, rounded the doorway facing the kitchen, and peered at us tentatively. Something reassured him, brought a smile to his face; he stepped forward.

  “Iris,” he said, nodding at me. “Ladies.”

  It was Tarrant Coyle, in ironed denim jeans and a shirt that didn’t express an opinion or draw you a picture, just buttoned up and stayed mute. So did we. He took his baseball cap hastily off his head, and held it over his heart.

  “I knocked at the back door. The boy let me in. Tyler.” I started to speak; he held out the cap, firmly and solemnly. “Iris, believe me, I would not be here bothering you in your time of distress, unless I felt it was rock-bottom important. And before I go any further, let me say that, as regards to Liam—”

  “No.”

  “Pardon?”

  “As regards to Liam, don’t say anything,” I told him irritably. “Just be quiet about Liam. Tell me what you’re doing here.”

  “Well.” He cleared his throat, then took us all in again, and smiled. It was a little, suggestive smile, as though we all shared something together, and I didn’t like it a bit. “I understand from my daughter Judith that you ladies belong to a secret society. She says you’re all witches, and the society has been ongoing for over a hundred years. Now.”

  “Really, Tarrant,” Miranda said with enough ice in her voice to freeze the gold in her earlobes. “If Judith is talking about the Fiber Guild, I assure you that all we do is sew.”

  “I know. Darn socks and swap yarns. Heh. She spies on you. And she’s told me what you really do. And what I think, ladies, is what we have here is an incredible opportunity for a business partnership. Can we sit down and—”

  “No,” we all said together.

  “Okay. Let me put my cards on the table. Iris, you sell or lease—or you persuade Sylvia to sell or lease Lynn Hall and the woods and the adjoining lands to Titus Quest Company for a major sum of money—more than enough for you and Hurley to find a cozy place to live, and to compensate Sylvia—and we’ll be in business.”

  I closed my eyes, heard Jane demand bewilderedly, “What business, Tarrant? What are you babbling about? I’ve heard more sense from a hound with its tail caught in a door.”

  Tarrant widened his stance, solidifying his position, and continued, unfazed, “This is my vision, ladies. And it’s like nothing that’s been conceived or built anywhere, ever. We’d fix up the hall and make it into a kind of museum—so it’d never be full of hordes eating cotton candy—just quiet, intelligent visitors who’d like to learn a bit more—”

  “About what?” Lacey asked faintly.

  Tarrant took his eyes off his vision and slewed them, meaningfully, toward my wood. “About who else lives in that wood. Who uses Lynn Hall as their passage between worlds. Of course. I can offer the entire Fiber Guild consulting fees about that—for your history, anecdotes, the craftwork you do, artifacts, written tales about sightings, adventures— especially those who got taken and survived—”

  Jane gave one of her fruity snorts. “Sounds like space aliens.”

  “Exactly,” Tarrant said with enthusiasm. “That’s what gave me the idea. And then, in the adjoining field, we’d put the commercial stuff. The theme rides, the vendors, the games, all that stuff. But in the wood itself-—now this is really special—we’ll mark the places where things might happen, for real, and make a guide-yourself-path for the really brave, who are willing to take the risk, actually make contact—”

  “Tarrant.” My voice hit the chandelier above our heads; I heard prisms tinkle. “Why are you still here? Why are we listening to you?”

  He looked at me like the goat who’s just eaten the shoe you threw at it. “I think you know why, Iris,” he said evenly. “I think you’d rather do it this way than have it all over the county that all of you—including the principal’s wife, the local historian, and a couple of mothers with families—belong to an ancient, secret coven of witches who corrupt the young and innocent—my daughter included—by enticing them to join.”

  In the silence I heard the screen door slam, saw the changeling go dancing through the roses toward the wood.

  15

  Relyt

  The Grunc Hurley saw me. But he didn’t say, he didn’t tell her, the witch Gram, who promised me cookies, so I was safe. Until he says: I saw it through my magic lens. I saw you. Eye saw you. Your scaly tree face, your twigs. Your shadow, that flows and flows across our night, across the secret borders of another world. Netherworld. Other.

  Three witches came into the house, so I didn’t stay for them to look at me. I listened, but the witch Gram didn’t say Tyler. Quilt, she said, and Sylvia. And quilt again, and quilt, quilt, quilt. Never Tyler missing. Oh! Tyler lost. O! Just stitches and Sylvia until the man with the red cap came sneaking around the back and saw me see him. So he had to come in, then. He said some interesting words—cotton candy, museum, artifact, commercial—but they didn’t mean anything to me.

  So I left them and went into the wood to find my heart.

  They have human words for her; I’ve heard some. Queen. Huntress. Sorceress. She. She who bids me come and go. She who must be obeyed. They give her names that come and go like leaves. Never the same one twice, and always dangerous to say. To say is to summon. They think it’s that easy. If she came to me every time I said or thought her name, she’d never leave my side.

  But this time she found me.

  Sometimes she only sends her voice, coiling and purring like a cat into my mind. Or like a bolt of lightning, sudden, swift, and white-hot. I’ve seen enough of love in human fashion to know she doesn’t. Love. Me, or any of us. But it doesn’t stop me. Or any of us. She is our moon. Our tidal pull. She is the rich deep beneath the sea, the buried treasure, the
expression in the owl’s eye, the perfume in the wild rose. She is what the water says when it moves. She is what humans remember when they step into the wood: a glimpse of her, memory receding faster and faster, into sunlight and scent and shadow, of what once they saw, once they knew.

  She uses me, but I don’t care. For her, I sharpen my wits. I learn. If I make mistakes, I use my charms. The Grunc Hurley saw me with his lens, but not with his own true eye. So now I know. He didn’t say: where is Tyler? He only said: who is that? So he doesn’t know what he knows. And he gave me something to give to her that she wanted: the little gift of knowledge.

  We can be seen in that lens.

  I never expect her. So when I saw her, my limbs went fluid, my shadow peeled off the ground, went swooping away like a shout. She stood between worlds, in a fall of light, a blur of tree and shadow. A human, glancing at her and away, wouldn’t have noticed. Unless there was that snag at the eye or the mind. That backward glance. That closer look. But only if she wanted. If she chose to be seen.

  She chose my eyes. I bowed my head, a windblown shrub, twigs tangling. She smiled at me. I drank her smile like wine, like air and light. But the smile didn’t reach her summer eyes, the young leaf green that inhales light and more light until it glows within.

  “I have something for you,” I said, to kindle that smile. “The Grunc Hurley sees us truly with his attic lens. Shall I steal it for you?”

  She shook her hair, that cascade of gold that flowed into the light. “Never mind the Grunc Hurley, my sweet. I want you to do something else for me.”

  Anything. Anything, anything.

  “The boy refuses all my gifts, my comforts. He won’t eat, he won’t drink, he won’t even move. He barely speaks, even to me.”

  If I did that, what would she give me? I wondered instantly. If I spurned her and all her gifts? Her eyes flashed a laugh at me, as though she heard. Anyway, I never could. Foolish Tyler. Clever Tyler. To make her lack, want.

  “This is what I want you to do…”

  She told me. And then the light was empty. It took longer for my eyes to see that than for her to leave me. I stood gazing at nothing, nothing, for a senseless moment until my eyes said she had gone elsewhere.

  I turned away, went to look for what she wanted.

  It didn’t take long. Of course the Undine would come. She would want to know, to talk, after the midnight swim Tyler took through the pond water. I found her lurking at the edge of the trees, gazing up at Tyler’s window. I wasn’t interested—she was too young, too ignorant—but I had to pretend. So I gave her my sweetest Tyler-smile. Still her eyes grew big at me. But at what she sensed, not saw, because she only said:

  “Tyler.” Her voice squeaked. “Is everything all right? Did you get into trouble?”

  I shook my head. “My cuz talked to Owen. And then to me. Nobody is really angry.”

  “You look different.”

  “I took a bath. Got the frogs out of my hair.”

  “It’s not that…” She studied me, her face puckered. I turned away, keeping to the shadows, not knowing how close to witch she was already. I heard her sniff and looked back at her, smiling again.

  “I spilled Gram’s bubbles in the water.”

  She laughed then, a little mourning-dove coo that flew sweetly into my ear. Her skin was flower-petal new; her eyes pale green like young apples. I thought, Well, maybe… But I didn’t let her see that, either.

  “What are you doing out here?” she asked.

  “Looking for you.”

  “Oh.” She turned away then, but not before I saw her strawberry blush, her little bird-V smile. She bent down quickly, picked up a dry seedpod, and tucked it under a flap in her vest. I saw something flash in the attic then: the Grunc’s telescope, the eye searching, watching. I bent down, too, picked up a hazelnut cap, flicked it away.

  “We could go for a walk,” I said. “I know a place where mushrooms grow as big as babies’ faces.”

  She squinched her face at me, but it was only playing. “It’s too warm and dry for mushrooms, now.”

  “Oh.”

  “Anyway, I can’t.” She frowned then, at the house, not at me. “I have to wait for my father. He’s in there talking to Iris about some weird idea.”

  “Weird.”

  “I told him—” She stopped, began again. “You know how you say things when you’re excited, thinking someone else will be as excited and as interested as you? But they see something else—they look at what you’re saying all wrong— but then it’s too late, you’ve already said it.”

  She expected a noise, so I made one, to whatever she said with all those words.

  “It’s been years since I started talking about it, and I thought he understood—he made me think he did—so I kept telling him.”

  “What?”

  “About the Fiber Guild. How I watch them. How they’re all witches, doing magical things with their threads to keep the wood-folk away. How I want to be one. I mean, I was eight or something when I first told him! And all these years later, I find out what he’s really thinking about everything, all the secrets I’ve told him—”

  “What?” It was a good word. Like a rock in a river, sticking up to let you land on it, so you could make your way across the flow. What. Watt. Wot.

  “Know what he said to me while we were driving out here?”

  My lips shaped “Wh—” again, but she flowed right over it.

  “He said he’d been waiting for the perfect moment for years, and this was it: Liam dead, the heir to Lynn Hall living on the other side of the country, and Iris getting too tottery to keep up the place herself. With all I told him, he was going to make us rich.”

  Her mouth clamped shut. Mine was open, but I had trouble trying to find a word that matched whatever it was she was talking about.

  “How?” I tried finally, another rock word.

  “You won’t believe it.” The berry was under her skin again: strawberry, raspberry, staining that cream. I wanted to put my hand on her bare neck, lick her cheek. But she might not like that, and then she wouldn’t trust me, and then how could I do what I had to do?

  The screen door banged; her father came out on the porch, thump, thump, putting his cap on, and leaned over the railing to call “Judith!” at the trees. It startled me until I remembered that Undines have names. “Jude! I’m leaving! Let’s go!”

  She just stared at him, her arms folded. “So go,” she muttered. “I’m not coming with you ever again. I’ll live here in the woods.”

  I liked that. “Okay.”

  The Coyle man came off the porch, shambled like a bear through the rose garden, shrugging off thorns. He came to the trees, peered in. He nodded to me, and said to her, “There you are. Did you hear me call?”

  “I can’t believe,” she said, her voice small and taut as a thread, “you did that.”

  “What? All I did was make a business proposition.”

  “You betrayed all I told you in confidence. Iris will never trust me again.”

  “Oh, piffle. I hardly mentioned your name. Anyway, it’s to Iris’s advantage. She’ll stew over it for a day or two, then get to thinking seriously about it, and I’ll get a call from her before the end of next week. I guarantee you. Wait and see.”

  “She must think you’re nuts.”

  “Doesn’t matter. She’ll do it for whatever reasons.”

  “You’re blackmailing her. Over me.”

  His eyes narrowed. They were some murky brown, like his hair, sticking out around the cap, but they weren’t mean, just stupid. “Look,” he said. “This is the idea of the century, and I didn’t have to use you to make her think about it. It’s good enough to stand on its own two feet. It’ll be great for Iris, and for this community. I bet Tyler here’d think it’s a winner. Wouldn’t you, Tyler?”

  I said that word again, feeling murky myself, not understanding anything.

  “Think of it,” the Coyle said. “A three-part adventure
. Did you tell him what’s in these woods?”

  She gave a little nod. “Some.”

  “Fairies, boy. Real ones. I bet half of what we think are fireflies are really Them, flying around at night like little stars. They’ve been here for centuries, and the Lynn family knows all about it. They probably have documents, letters, stories about sightings. The entire Fiber Guild must have stories. We’ll use the house as the fairy museum, so to speak, and we’ll put the rides on that field, all with a fairy theme. The Little Folk. Brownies, elves, that kind of thing. And flying— lots of flying rides. Maybe a castle. Or a witch’s house— maybe we can get the Fiber Guild to do their sewing in it. Or would that be better in the museum?”

  “Dad!” the Undine wailed. “They’d hate that! Anyway, it won’t work unless it’s secret.”

  “Well, it’s not, is it?” he asked, eyeing her. “Secret any longer. Is it?”

  “But—”

  “Anyway, listen to this, Tyler. This is the best part. We’ll put trails through this wood to all the places that might be openings, passageways to the Otherworld. Mushroom trails, bread crumb trails—whatever they have in fairy tales. And people can walk through the woods, and maybe, if they’re quick enough, or smart enough—whatever it takes to see a fairy, we’ll have to do some research on that—they can have their own personal encounter with the Otherworld. Wouldn’t you be interested in that, Tyler?” He touched my shoulder. Then he looked at his fingers puzzledly, without knowing why. “Isn’t that an idea whose time has come here to stay?”

  I felt laughter, like little bells shaking all the way through me. “Sure,” I said.

  “Tyler!” the Undine breathed reproachfully.

  “I mean, I’m not sure. Don’t you think it might be dangerous?”

  “What’s dangerous? They’ve been around for centuries; nobody’s even noticed they’re here, except the Fiber Guild, who keep them all locked up so nobody else can see them. That’s not fair. Do you think it is?”

  “No.”

  “Tyler!”

  “He’s just being fair,” the Coyle said. “He’s part Lynn, and he can see it.”