Tree by Leaf

by Cynthia Voigt

  Except that the windows had been brushed free of cobwebs, it looked the same. The stairway still careened wildly over the rocks. Parts of the railing had fallen off, to leave blank spaces in the line. The boathouse looked abandoned, as if it wanted to fall apart and be done with enduring. Clothilde, now she was actually there, hesitated. She thought that if she’d thought about it, what she saw was just what she would have expected.

  Turning, she looked behind her, up the grassy slope to where blackened beams rose up out of the rubble, like pointing fingers, as if they wanted to accuse the sky. The boathouse sat under the shadow of that destroyed cottage, lived in its shadow. Under that constant reminder of destruction, the boathouse couldn’t forget.

  Clothilde went up and knocked on the sagging door. No voice answered her. There was no sound from within. The only sound was the slapping of water up against the rocks. That familiar sound made the silence from within the building more strange.

  She could almost see the man, crouched in there. He would be barely breathing, to make no noise. He would have his head raised to look at the door. If you were inside, there was no way out except the one door, so he was trapped, and he felt that. His only hope was silence and stillness.

  Clothilde knocked again. She held the covered bowl up close against her stomach, to keep it secure while her right hand was rapping on the wood. Again, no answer.

  Mother would have stood there, waiting for an answer. Mother would stand and wait, for a long time, maybe calling out once or twice. Then she would set the bowl down on the peeling wooden stoop and make her slow way back to the farmhouse, her long skirts brushing against the grass.

  Clothilde knocked again—sometimes, the third time was a charm. She rapped with her bare knuckles against the wood. Mother’s knocking would sound different, she thought; the man inside would know it wasn’t Mother. Even so, there was once again no answer.

  She wasn’t like Mother, and she was getting cross, cross and impatient. She felt sorry for anyone who huddled away, too frightened to open the door, but that wasn’t going to stop her. Clothilde turned the metal knob and pushed at the door.

  The door scraped against the wooden floor, trying to stick, but she forced it open. The one room was dimly lit by three high windows; shadows crowded against what little light came in. The room was empty.

  Clothilde stood in the open door, looking around; nobody sat on the bedroll, nobody crouched in the corners. A pile of clothes lay like old rags on the floor by the bedroll. A painted table was set in the middle of the room, but there was no chair. A wooden box had been placed on its end to hold an enamel bowl, the kind you used in a sickroom, and some pieces of paper had been stuck on the walls with nails. One long wooden plank made a shelf along the length of the room; on that was a messkit, a metal mug, a glass jar half full of clear liquid—water, probably, but where did he get his water from? At the other end of the shelf was a narrow wooden box, the size of a music box, on top of pads of drawing paper.

  What a dismal place it was. She moved to set the covered bowl on the table, at the center of the table like a bowl of flowers, to cheer up the room. Then she stood, looking around.

  He would wash in the enamel bowl, she thought. There was no sign of any fire, or stove to cook on, so she guessed he would go outside and bring in cold sea water for washing. She guessed he would eat cold food. A kerosene lamp on the floor beneath a window must be his only light, during the long dark hours; he would wrap himself up in one of the blankets thrown over a bedroll, and sit by the lamp. There were no books on the shelves and she wondered how he passed those long dark hours. He had made no effort to make the room comfortable.

  Clothilde walked around, imagining what it would be like to live there. Spots on the wooden floor showed where the roof had leaked during the night’s rain. The room was damp, and chilly. She moved around, and approached one of the pieces of paper, high on the wall. It was a drawing, done in dark pencil, or maybe charcoal. The paper had been ripped out of a pad, ripped carelessly.

  She went closer and saw that it was a landscape, distant and barren. All the lines were dark. She wondered if the lines had been done in ink, they were so clear and black. A crumbled building with one tower left standing lay at the distant horizon, and odd wavy lines ran across the ground until a shapeless dark mass took over, spreading out from the bottom right-hand corner. It was cold there, maybe in some icy country, Greenland or Finland or Siberia. She didn’t know how she knew how cold it was, just as she didn’t know how she knew that it was daytime, and the sun was bright somewhere over her shoulder if she was in the picture. She didn’t stay long in front of it, it was so cold and dead, but went to look at the picture above the basin.

  That one she recognized—it was his face, a pencil sketch of that monster face, tacked up where a mirror should be. She looked back at the landscape, and saw now what the dark mass of color was—shadows. Going up close to it again, she could pick out shadows of men, with rounded metal helmets on their heads, elongated on that frozen ground. When she looked, she could see that some of the shadows did not have living men behind them, and she could see how very many men were there. One shadow blended into the other so completely, they crowded their section of the picture.

  Horrible, it was a horrible drawing. Clothilde wanted to rip it down from the wall and rip it into pieces. But it wasn’t hers, so she didn’t. It belonged to that face over the wash basin.

  Before he might return Clothilde left the boathouse, pulling the door closed behind her. Outside, she hesitated, breathing in the sweet wet air and rubbing her hands on her apron, as if she wanted to clean them off.

  She looked down into the rocky cove. No one. Only the water, gurgling, lifting its heavy burden of seaweed, up and down, as it rose and fell with the waves.

  The landscape on the wall—Clothilde had once slipped along a weedy rock and slid down, falling into the water. The water had closed over her head, enveloping her. The water had been icy cold and she felt, rising back to the surface, how completely it surrounded her, how it soaked its coldness into her skin and into her heart. She could swim a little, so she wasn’t frightened. It wasn’t fear that had set her heart racing and made her gasp for air when she emerged, even though she hadn’t been underwater long at all. It wasn’t fear she had felt, feeling her feet slip out from under her and her slow, helpless sliding down the rock. She never knew what it was, but she recognized it in that barren landscape.

  Keeping her eyes on the ground because she couldn’t bear, at that moment, to see the ruined cottage, Clothilde crossed quickly into the woods. Instead of heading back to the farmhouse and her unfinished chores, she turned east and made her way through the pathless woods to the headlands. Her head was full of so many things at once—ideas leaped out of her, snapping across her mind the way branches slapped at her face and arms. He didn’t have a mirror, she thought; and nothing had been done to make the boathouse comfortable. Jeb Twohey’s empty eyes, and Polly Dethier’s eyes lit up with so much hope that it must hurt to hope so much. Those shadows, massed together in a black shape—none of them had guns, no weapons, just the round helmets to protect them. The sky overhead, the way light warmed the air and glowed behind the high soft cloud cover. In that landscape—nothing growing, and no color. Nothing reaching up that loved sunlight, everything downward, loving rain, if Jeb Twohey’s words made any sense. If Dierdre, just a little child, looked at you and screamed. With no mirror, if there were any change, any healing, he wouldn’t see it.

  Out on the headlands, she climbed down the rocks—placing her feet carefully, avoiding slippery patches of seaweed—climbing down to meet the water. The tide had just turned from the high. She crouched at the edge of a rock, looking down through the clear water to the rocks piled up below, underwater, with their dark crevices the water stole into. Then she looked out, away to the unbroken water beyond the little islands where they lay under the pillowy gray sky. From a distance, the water looked like a blanket, a rumpled bl
anket woven of dark blues and grays. Nearby, three black cormorants swam along the shore. As she watched, one after the other they dove. Watching, waiting, she saw them resurface, at a distance. They popped up from underwater like floats, then resumed their sedate paddling. They were three black shapes, almost like cutouts, with narrow curved necks. They were there, and then gone.

  Clothilde knew she had to get back home, so she turned. Turning, she saw the figure of a man on top of the next headland. He hadn’t seen her. He was looking the other way. What she saw was his back, the high-necked white sweater he wore, the trousers that seemed too big for him, the heavy boots. She crawled back up over the rocks, hoping he wouldn’t turn and see her. When she got to the top, she stared across at the figure for a minute, wondering—if he turned—if she would see new skin growing over his face. The creamed chicken would be cold by the time he came in to eat it. The rice would be stuck together in gummy clumps.

  When he did turn around, she wanted to run away but made herself stay still, hoping to blend into the trees behind her. He had no idea anyone was there and his body froze stiff in surprise. It only took a second before he had disappeared abruptly into the concealing trees. It only took a second or two, and she was too far away to see well, but she could see there was no difference in the face. She knew, just before he turned away, that she’d been staring, so she raised her hand—and he turned away.

  Clothilde, going back to her chores by way of her own path through the woods to the beach, didn’t know if she was disappointed or relieved. Just because Nate hadn’t gone cruising didn’t mean her dream was true. If she’d known the kind of lies Nate had been telling, she would have guessed that this cruise was another lie. She would have guessed he’d go live with Grandfather because—looked at a certain way—that was the only sensible thing to do. There was nothing like magic going on, or wishes coming true. If she’d been a boy, she might have done just what Nate did. It didn’t take any voices to make Nate do that. As if any Voice would come just to ask Clothilde what she wanted. How childish could you be, like Dierdre afraid of ghosts, believing in fairy godmothers. When she thought of the hope she had started out the morning with—Clothilde could have laughed at herself.

  Chapter 11

  Mother met Clothilde at the door with news. “He’s been found,” she said. “They’ve both been found.”

  Clothilde wondered for a minute, Who did she know who was lost? Then, “Mr. Small,” she said. She wasn’t surprised. It made sense for Nate to run away to Grandfather so if he hadn’t gone on that cruise, there wasn’t anything too strange about it. The man in the boathouse wouldn’t have turned away from her if he had put his hand to his face—the way you often did, every day—and felt healing on his skin; so healing wasn’t happening. “And Mr. Twohey I’m glad. Where were they?”

  Mother spoke sternly. “They were both drowned, Clothilde. I’ve put Dierdre to bed.”

  “Why?” Clothilde asked stupidly. She couldn’t think why Mother should put Dierdre to bed at this hour of the afternoon.

  “Nobody knows,” Mother answered. “There’s no sign of their boat.”

  “Oh no,” Clothilde said. But it was true, and she knew it.

  “Do you need to go to your room, for a rest?”

  Clothilde shook her head. The last place she wanted to be was in bed, where all she could do was think. She felt strange. She felt as if she were miles away from the person who just stood staring at Mother.

  “It may be for the best,” Mother said. “Sometimes, it’s better this way.”

  “Don’t say that, Mother.”

  Mother’s lips closed tight. “Girls are not to speak in that tone of voice to any adult, especially their parents. Mr. Small was not a good father. You are too young to understand what that means, but his death may well prove a blessing to his family.”

  Clothilde shook her head. She didn’t want it to be true that Mr. Small was dead.

  “It’s easier for his family this way, dear. It’s easier to know what’s happened, than to wait—waiting and wondering, then at least you could hope.”

  “Lou has gone home. Mr. Dethier gave Tom Hatch the use of his wagon, to come out and fetch her home. That was kind, wasn’t it? Often, people can be kind, in times of need. People you least expect it of. Her mother will need Lou with her. But I don’t know how we’ll manage without her.”

  “I’ll make a pot of tea,” Clothilde decided. She would make a pot of tea, boiling the water in the kettle, steeping the leaves in the round white pot. She would set out a tray, with a napkin underneath it, and a little pitcher of milk, two cups, the sugar bowl, and she musn’t forget the spoons. Her body got busy with that.

  That night, with Mother and Dierdre deep in sleep, Clothilde climbed out of her bed. She wrapped a blanket over her nightclothes and went quietly down the stairs, silently out the kitchen door. The house was dark, its air filled with sleep, as if she could hear their steady breathing, as if the house itself breathed quietly in sleep. Clothilde couldn’t sleep.

  She went across the grass to the beach. Her feet were cold, but so was her whole body. She had been cold, numbed, all day—so that now it felt as if her spirit were huddled so deep within her body that it came nowhere near the edges of her flesh. The wind, coming from behind her, blew the long blanket ahead of her. It tangled at her bare feet, but she didn’t notice that; the wind was warmer, warmed by the vast inland forests and fields, but she didn’t notice that either. On the beach, she couldn’t see into the black water, blown up into waves that headed out to the darker ocean. She didn’t know what time it was.

  Clothilde sat on a flat stone, far back from the water’s edge. She drew her feet up under the blanket and stared.

  Overhead, the black sky poured forth stars. The waves rushed at the shore and the offshore wind blew them back to where they had come from. Clothilde sat, huddled in her misery.

  She hadn’t meant that and the Voice knew it. She didn’t mean Mr. Small to die, she’d never even thought of that. The Voice should have known what she didn’t mean. She hadn’t meant dying to happen.

  Looking over the water, with the starry sky overhead, she thought of those two bodies floating in. Black shapes on the black water, their backs to the sky. She couldn’t even remember what either of the two men looked like, and that was terrible too. If the bodies turned over, she couldn’t even identify them. She’d never seen Mr. Small, except maybe a few times, years ago, when he’d been around the farmhouse. Her memory had no picture of him. She should at least remember what he looked like. When she thought of Mr. Twohey, all she could see was Jeb’s blank face, but she should know what Mr. Twohey looked like, too. He hadn’t even been in what she asked for. He had nothing to do with it.

  She was so sorry, she would have taken back everything if she’d been able to. She’d have turned back the clock to Saturday afternoon and if the Voice came after her, she wouldn’t have said anything. She wouldn’t have asked for anything. She wished she hadn’t asked for anything.

  It was as if the Voice had deliberately misunderstood her, as if the Voice had done this to teach her a lesson. It was all a trick. The Voice wanted to trick her. She wondered if the Voice had a good time, filling people with hope, and then tricking them. She wished she had that Voice there, right then, because she would give it an earful. There were some things she’d like to say to that Voice.

  And she could just imagine what the Voice had in mind for the man in the boathouse—the exact opposite of what she’d had in mind when she asked. She couldn’t imagine what was going to happen to that man, and she was sorry already for him. It was her doing, after all. Whatever she’d meant to do, what she had asked for was what happened.

  It wasn’t Lou’s family she really felt worst about, though, it was Jeb Twohey’s and his mother, Mr. Twohey’s family They hadn’t even been in her mind at all, and they still had to be part of it. She hadn’t even thought—

  The Voice didn’t play fair. The Voice was so b
ig, and powerful, and tricky, it hadn’t even told her it might not play fair with her.

  She couldn’t imagine all that trickiness—the man in the boathouse would have something terrible happen to him, because there was no way to heal his face—and besides, the Voice wasn’t about to do what Clothilde really meant—but before whatever it was going to be had happened, the man would sell the peninsula—she was willing to bet on that. That would be the one perfectly true thing the Voice told her, about the peninsula not being hers.

  Clothilde looked up, angry. She had a right to be angry, she silently told the stars, burning so whitely out there, safe in the sky. She did, and they knew it.

  If they did know it, they didn’t care. And even if she did have a right to be angry, and was angry, she was still so sorry, and ashamed, and—

  Clothilde wished—her eyes filled with so many stars you could go crazy trying to count them, her ears filled with the dark wind blowing at her back—she wished she could be as far away from what she’d done as the stars were. Nobody would know to blame her, but she knew she was to blame.

  Maybe she would find a way to study to become an astronomer and just look at the stars all her life. Astronomers were awake at night, when everybody else was asleep. But she didn’t think girls could be astronomers; there was something about a girl’s brain that made that impossible. Like it was impossible for girls to run businesses, like Grandfather’s factory. There were things that boys, or men, could understand automatically. She wished she had been born a boy. Boys seemed to know things. Life was easier, because there were more things for boys to choose from. If she had been the one to run away to Grandfather’s house, for example, he wouldn’t even have let her in the door. He’d have slammed the door in her face if it had been her. If she’d been a boy, she would have seen that there was a trick in it; she was willing to bet on that. She wouldn’t have left room for those tricks, if she’d seen. It was impossible, but she wished she’d been born a boy; it was really stupid, but she was angry at herself about that, too, as angry as she was at herself about what she’d asked the Voice for.