The Underneath

by Kathi Appelt

  If she had understood the languages of willow, birch, and bitternut, they would have told her about him. Here, in this pine forest. If she could have heard the tales spun by blackjacks and water oaks and junipers, they would have shared his story.

  Here, they would say, in that long ago time, was a young hawk, his feathers coppery in the morning sun, his eyes brown with flecks of gold. See him catch the wind currents and fly in wide, swooping circles, see him rest in the tops of the great pines and chestnuts. This piney woods, this great expanse of wetlands, of swamps and bayous, of slow-moving turtles and giant armadillos, was new to him, for he had traveled a long, long way. Here he was, a member of the tribe of feathered changelings, come to make this forest home.

  Grandmother Moccasin should have known about the young hawk who nested in an old tupelo tree, right along the banks of the crystal-clear creek, the bird who had listened to the sound of the night, the crickets, the cicadas, the hoot of the owl, the young hawk whose ear was keen enough to hear the rabbit burrowing and the crawdads humming.

  This young hawk.

  In the evenings, he often sat alone in the trees by the lovely creek. There, he could cock his head and hear the creatures of the night, the owls and bullfrogs, the cicadas and white-tailed deer. Like the trees themselves, he knew the songs of wrens and warblers, the Carolina parakeets, the whip-poor-wills and crows and red-cockaded woodpeckers, for wasn’t he one of their kind? Wasn’t he?

  But he also listened to the songs of the villagers, the ones who lived along this same creek, the ones known as Caddo, who filled their jars with water, who hummed while they did their chores and laughed at the antics of their children. He listened to their voices, too. The part of him that was human coursed in his blood, pulsed with the beat of the drums. He stretched out his strong wings and cried, “Screeeee!!!”

  One night, when the air was still and quiet, he heard something new. At first he had no idea what it was. Not an insect or a bird, not a frog or a raccoon. Not a member of the village. No, this was different. It was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard. A melody without words. A song without lyrics. It came from the other side of the creek, deep in the darkest part of the forest, toward the bayous, the large one and its little sister, a place where the villagers rarely wandered because of the quicksand and the million poisonous snakes.

  He listened.

  There it was again. He leaned toward the music as it floated through the thick night air of the forest. The young hawk knew right away that what he heard was a source of tenderness. All at once, he understood its beauty and clung to the clear lovely notes. Night after night he turned his ear toward the song. At first he listened with his ears, but as the nights passed, he found himself listening with his whole body.

  Grandmother Moccasin should have known about him.

  41

  A THOUSAND YEARS later . . .

  Here is another listener.

  Puck, wet and cold,

  listening for his mama,

  listening for his sister,

  listening for his old hound, Ranger,

  listening to the creek running by.

  All he heard was loss.

  Loss. A small, hissing word. A word that simmers into nothing. Beneath the old pine, Grandmother stewed inside her jar. Loss engulfed her as it had a million times before in this dark space. Lossssss! she whispered.

  A word that scrapes against the skin.

  42

  WHERE WAS GRANDMOTHER a thousand years ago? Swimming through the old bayous, sunning on the rocks beside the creek, sleeping in the drowsy cypresses. And meanwhile Hawk Man listened to the music wafting through the trees. He listened with every cell, every muscle, every copper-colored feather. After so many nights, he knew he had to find the singer of the beckoning song. He flew across the salty creek, past the shifting sands, listening for the sultry notes. He let himself be pulled along on their lovely chords, until at last he found the swampy realm of Grandmother Moccasin and Night Song. He landed in an upper branch of a large cypress and watched the two wrap themselves around the trunks of the tallest pine and glide to the very top. He was sure he had never seen a creature as lovely as Night Song in her shimmery scales, so black the blue of them glowed. He knew he had never felt this way before.

  Smitten is what the trees might call it, if they had a word like that in their vocabulary. Birds might have a different word.

  The piney woods is known for its birds. Here there are martins and swifts and flycatchers, ducks and warblers and boat-tailed grackles. When the birds saw Hawk Man, hypnotized by Night Song’s melody, they called out to him.

  Brother! Fly away!

  He heard their warnings but paid them no heed. The song he needed was not theirs, not the song of the chickadees or the wood ducks or the cinnamon teals. He needed her song.

  Together, the cranes and spotted owls, the stilts and kingfishers raised their voices in a chorus.

  Fly away, brother hawk. Fly away!

  But he was not interested in their anxious warnings.

  All of them, the vireos and kinglets, the peregrines, their voices grew frantic.

  Turn away, brother. Fly!

  He paid no heed.

  Hers was the song that filled him up, wing tip to wing tip. And as he circled the pine forest, the air soft on his feathers, he lifted his own voice, Screeeeeeeee!!! And the night sky filled up with his longing.

  Most of us would think the song Hawk Man heard was only the sighing of the wind, or the whisper of the leaves in the trees. We might think it was a star tumbling through the atmosphere or the water rushing down the creek. We might guess that a turtle was creeping through the pine needles or an alligator was pushing his fat feet against the current. There are many things we might think. But only Hawk Man knew what he had heard.

  43

  ANIMALS SING FOR reasons. Coyotes howl to set down the sun. Nightingales warble to please the emperor. Prairie dogs bark to attract a mate. Night Song sang because she was happy.

  With her ancient mother, she had learned the mysterious ways of the forest. Grandmother taught her where to find the tastiest crawdads, how to slither high into the trees, all the way into the upper canopy; she taught her where the secret underwater caves lay hidden along the deep sides of the salty creek. No one knew the piney woods better than Grandmother, no one, except perhaps for the trees.

  And no one told stories like Grandmother, either. Grandmother told Night Song about the Greek Isles and the white temples that lined the coast of the Mediterranean. She told her about the merfolk of the Irish Sea and the old dragons, their wings glimmering in the sunlight, gone now, long gone. She was careful to avoid her own story, the one of her husband and his betrayal. Why dwell on sorrow, she thought? Instead she shared tales of the whales and albatrosses and all the penguins at the end of the Earth.

  No daughter was more beloved than Night Song. No mother more respected. The loneliness that Grandmother Moccasin had known for so many years was long gone. With Night Song, her life was complete. Where Grandmother went, there was Night Song. And where Night Song wandered, Grandmother was close behind. They were inseparable.

  But as it is with any child, after a time, Night Song grew restless. She was no longer a snakelet. She had grown into a long and lovely young snake, and like any young woman, she longed for an adventure of her own. Her forest home, with all its mysteries, began to feel small. The tales that Grandmother told so well only made her more restless. And to add to all that, Grandmother began to seem old, older than the oceans and the hills, and she was. Night Song grew weary of so much oldness. She wanted something new.

  Day by day, Night Song began to wait until Grandmother closed her eyes for her nap, and she slipped off on her own, just to see what she could see and hear what she could hear.

  It wasn’t long before she noticed the handsome hawk, his wings broad against the afternoon sun.

  • • •

  Now, alone in her small dungeon, Grandmother h
issed, Betrayed! Deep beneath the loblolly pine, the one along the old creek, she spun in her anger. Betrayed. Betrayed. Betrayed. There is nothing new about betrayal, she thought. Nothing.

  44

  AT SOME DEEP level, we’re all of us connected. It seemed that Night Song, while she felt the blood of her strong and powerful mother whom she loved mightily, when she looked up at Hawk Man, handsome in his coppery feathers, his eyes flecked with gold, she also felt the blood of those magical selkies, those enchanted ondines, those lusty mermaids, those lamia from far back in her ancestry. And it was all this blood, enchanted and not, that made her slip down the tallest tree while her mother, the one who raised her and protected her and loved her so well, slept unawares, this blood that led her straight into the wings of Hawk Man.

  And like those other legendary shape-shifters, the moment he wrapped his wings around Night Song, she stepped out of her scaly skin and into the skin of a human, a beautiful sleek skin, while he shed his avian form and claimed his own human shape, tall and handsome, coppery feathers in his long black hair, his eyes dark with glints of gold, warm and welcoming.

  Here they were, two in brand-new skins, facing each other. Hawk Man held out his hand to Night Song. She took it.

  And all around, the watchful trees, the oldest ones, shimmered. They knew that Grandmother Moccasin, when she awoke, would not be happy. The trees knew, but they also recognized the moment for what it was: a love so strong that there was no going back for either one. So for just a little while, the soughing trees used their own ancient magic to stir up the Zephyrs of Sleep. To keep all the others in the forest a-snoozing until Hawk Man and Night Song, in their brand-new skins, had slipped away. For trees, who see so much sorrow, so much anger, so much desperation, know love for the rare wonder of it, so they are champions of it and will do whatever they can to help it along its way.

  45

  A CAT WHO has been nearly drownt needs some time to recover. A cat who has lost his calico mother, who has been taken from his sister and their very own hound, needs a lot of solace.

  But first this cat needs to find some food and shelter, especially with the evening drawing nigh. Puck looked around. At his feet ran the awful creek. A shiver crawled down his spine. Water. We must be near water. He coughed. He pulled himself up the bank away from its dreaded currents. His coat was matted from the mud at the bottom and along the sides. He was wet and cold. He looked back at the silvery creek and shivered again, then he looked as far upstream as he could. His mother had been right behind him, hadn’t she? She was right there, pushing him up, telling him to swim, swim , swim. And he had. But when he dragged himself out of the water, she was nowhere to be seen. He looked at the creek rushing by. Where was she? His calico mama? She had been right behind him. He turned around and looked downstream. Maybe she had swum by him, passed him in the tumble of the waves. As he stared, he saw the water curl around the bend, it hissed against the muddy banks. Away, away, away it seemed to say.

  And then, right there, on the shore of the silvery creek, that creek full of tears, Puck knew that he would never see his mama again. Never.

  It’s a soft-sounding word, “never,” but its velvety timbre can’t hide its sharp edges. Especially to a small cat who has broken the rules and conjured the word in the first place. He sat down hard, soaked and cold. In his deepest bones he knew that no matter how long he stared at the cold water, he would never see his mother again. Never pressed down on him. It grabbed him by the neck and shook him. He sucked in a deep breath, sucked in all that never and started to sneeze. Never filled his nose, his eyes, his soaking fur.

  He shivered again, and looked at the opposite shore. Where were Ranger and Sabine? He cocked his ears. Surely Ranger would call for him. If only the hound would raise his voice, Puck would know what direction to follow. He was sure of it.

  He sat at the top of the bank. Below him, the creek slid by, the creek that took his mother, the creek that almost took him. He listened for Ranger’s familiar bay. But all he heard were crickets and a few evening birds. He shuddered and turned away. And there in front of him was an old tree, dying.

  As he approached the tree, he noticed a dark space at its base. Puck went closer. He sniffed the opening. He looked inside. It was small in there, but it was dry. Stay in the Underneath. You’ll be safe in the Underneath. Those were his mama’s words, still in his ears. He had broken the rule. And now she was gone, and he was all alone.

  He walked inside. It was cozy and dark, and even though his belly rumbled, he curled up in a wet, muddy ball, and drifted off to a fitful sleep. Never, hard and cruel, settled up against him.

  How could he know that deep, deep below him, almost directly below him, in fact, there was an ancient beast, curled up just as tight? She too was asleep in the underneath.

  You wouldn’t think that these two, one so young and one so old, would have a thing in common, but they did.

  Missing.

  Yes, missing can happen to the best and the least of all of us. Puck missed his family. Grandmother missed Night Song.

  46

  THE TREES, THE alder and magnolia, the laurel and flowering ash, know about missing. They miss the passenger pigeons and the woodland bison. They miss the panthers and the black bears. They miss the Caddo, who roamed here for eons.

  But they also know about revenge. Revenge stays lodged in the memory for a long, long time. For a thousand years.

  After Hawk Man and Night Song slipped away, Grandmother Moccasin wrapped herself in a cloak of hatred, wrapped it so tightly around herself that eventually that was all she knew.

  Anger and hatred, wound together, have only one recourse. Poison. Poison filled Grandmother’s mouth, her cotton mouth. A man had taken the one thing that she loved more than water, more than air, more than the man who had betrayed her so long ago: her daughter. Night Song. Grandmother vowed revenge, a vengeance so bitter it glazed her skin and sharpened her terrible fangs.

  She simmered in the darkest part of the piney woods, where the cypress trees towered over the marshes, where the ground was thick with quicksand, where she settled into the nests of Night Song’s cousins, the tribe of cottonmouths. No human dared to enter this part of the forest, and that suited Grandmother, suited her just fine. Here was anger hard and cold, so tight it shut out all the light.

  Her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness so that nothing was safe from her. She dined on owlets and mink and frogs, anything that moved or didn’t. Her hunger was enormous. She could spot a marsh rabbit from a hundred yards. Her lethal jaws, like scissors, snapped her prey in half. And as her anger grew, so too did she, long and thick, her body as big around as a tree’s trunk.

  Even her old friend, the Alligator King, knew to give her a wide berth. “Sister,” he told her, “choose another way.”

  But she could not.

  “Sssssstttttt!” she said. “Sooner or later, Night Song will be mine again.”

  The alligator closed his yellow eyes, heaved a heavy sigh, and sank to the deep and muddy bottom of the Bayou Tartine.

  47

  GAR FACE FOUND the old house one day when he was out coon hunting with Ranger—back when they were both much younger, before the accident that made Ranger lame—stumbled upon the house that even then tilted to one side. Who knows how long it sat there, abandoned? There was no lightbulb and no running water. But Gar Face needed neither. Nor did he need a mailbox or a telephone.

  Few creatures in these woods even knew that Gar Face was here. No one in the old hidden tavern ever met his eye and he made no attempt to meet theirs. He simply sat in his dark corner and drank his bitter brew. No coins were ever exchanged. Only skins. Skins that he hung on the porch rail of this tilting house to let them dry.

  This house. This tilting house that sat perched on a spit of high land where he parked his truck, where he could curl up on the old cot that served as his bed, where he could come and go in his own way and time and no one would be the wiser. Where he could thro
w his trash into the yard, and who would care? Where he could use the old outhouse without closing the door because there wasn’t a door anyway.

  Usually it’s better for a house to be inhabited. There’s something about the moisture in a person’s breath that restores old wood and gives the place some dignity. A house with people who live there tends to sit upright on its moorings. Usually that would be the case. Maybe this house sat for too long before Gar Face moved in. But if you looked at it from just a few feet away, if you could get close enough without Gar Face aiming his rifle at you and snarling like a wolf, you would swear that it was sinking into the ground of its own accord, as if the only way to escape from its terrible inhabitant was to disappear into the earth.

  48

  SABINE WAS THE witness. She had awakened just in time to see her brother step into the sun’s dim light, see him roll onto his back, see the beams of the sun float onto his tummy. She had seen him smile up at the lovely light, seen his coat glow in the shimmery gold. She started to step into the shimmer with him, even though she knew he was breaking the rule, the rule about the Underneath. But just as she called out to him, there was Gar Face.

  She witnessed Gar Face as he snatched up her brother and then her mother and stuffed them both into the brown burlap bag, watched him throw them into the back of the pickup truck. She had tried to tell them, tried to warn them, but her cries were lost in her brother’s cries, her cries had matched his and so sounded like only one.