The Underneath

by Kathi Appelt

  Daughter, they warned, there’s a prrriiiicccce!

  She paused. Was it a warning? Perhaps she should go back, turn away. The forest seemed to hum.

  Beware, beware, beware.

  The sound of it was urgent. She recognized the copperheads, the hognoses, the orange and black corals. Her sisters. Her brothers. She stepped toward the creek.

  Turn back!

  They filled the air with their steam-filled remonstrances. The creek swirled at her feet, pushed itself against the sandy bank. Even in the darkness, she could see the gleaming water. And then she heard the chant again.

  Come to me, my lovely daughter. . . .

  “Grandmother!” she gasped.

  And while her husband and daughter slept in their hut in the village, Night Song stretched her open arms toward the creek. She hadn’t seen her mother in ten long years. For all that time, she had pushed the memory of her to the back of her thoughts, there but not. And now here she was, calling to her.

  In an instant Night Song remembered her childhood, remembered swimming in the silted bayous, sunning on the back of the old alligator, hunting for crawdads in their underwater caves. She remembered those nights, coiled in the top branches of the trees, remembered the stars blinking at her, remembered.

  Grandmother.

  Beloved Grandmother.

  She was filled up with Yes.

  And without a second thought, Night Song stepped into the water.

  67

  ONCE IN A while, Puck caught the glimmer of the tiny hummingbird. She was always a surprise. Here one moment, gone the next. Occasionally she came to his side of the creek and circled his tree. (This was how he thought of the tree now, as his.) He used it to sharpen his claws. He relied on its cool shade. He rubbed against the bark to help get the caked mud out of his fur. He even marked it with his own Puck scent.

  Puck’s tree, this old loblolly pine, despite its numbered days, knew that his kitten, (for that is how he thought of Puck now, as his), this kitten needed to cross the creek. And when one tree knows something, the others do as well. Where there is a chorus, as there is with a stand of trees, there is a lot of knowing.

  If Puck knew the code of the winged elms and wax myrtles, the blackjacks and chestnut, he might hear them tell of the Bayou Tartine and its little sister, the Petite Tartine, of the land between that was made of quicksand. He might heed their warnings: Stay out, little brother, stay out. Beware the Tartine sisters!

  Puck looked at the old forest on the other side of the creek. Sabine and Ranger were over there. Underneath the tilting house. He had to find them. He had promised.

  68

  PUCK WASN’T THE first one the trees tried to warn. There have been others. A thousand years ago, they tried to warn Hawk Man. They tried.

  As soon as Night Song stepped into the creek, Hawk Man awoke. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. How long had he been sleeping? He shook his head, groggy. In the nighttime’s dark, he waited for his eyes to adjust. He stretched his arms and yawned. Across from him, his daughter slept, the jar his wife had made beside her. He smiled.

  Then he noticed the unused mat beside him where Night Song normally slept. The emptiness was enormous.

  He looked at the quiet mat, cold and undisturbed. A stab of panic, like a knife to the ribs, pierced his chest, sharp and quick. Night Song. Where was she? He felt a cry well up in his throat, but he stuffed it back, afraid he might alarm his sleeping daughter.

  Quickly he left the hut and ran to the edge of the creek. He walked first upstream, to the bend. There, the weeping willow dipped its fingers into the cool water. He knew that his wife often came here at night to wash her hair. But now, as the salty water tumbled by, there was no sign of her.

  All at once, he heard a whirring in the air and looked up. Birds. Birds everywhere, lifting into the dark sky, thousands of them. He listened for a message, but their voices were silent, only the thrumming beat of their wings against the breeze. They filled the dark air, shadows against the sky. Hawk Man’s heart raced. This couldn’t be good.

  He retraced his steps and walked downstream, past the village. He splashed into the creek and stood in the shallow water of the edge. He looked at the opposite bank, toward the thickest part of the woods, thick with brambles and vines and the poisonous ivy that curled around the trunks of the towering pines. His heart pounded. Surely she did not wander into the dark side of the forest, not there. Its large pits of quicksand could swallow up an unsuspecting creature—a deer, or a black bear. Once he and the whole village had witnessed a bison, up to its belly in the sucking mud, struggle for more than a day to escape. Its thick cries had been terrible and deafening. Finally the sand won and pulled the beast under.

  Bereft at the disappearance of so much food, Hawk Man had cried for the loss, but to get near the beast would have meant certain death for anyone who tried. They would have gone under too, pulled by the struggling animal and the sucking mud. Helpless, he had stood and watched the great creature disappear.

  The memory of the bison set Hawk Man to shaking. He had to sit down. Where was his beloved wife?

  • • •

  He didn’t know that there, in the realm of the Bayou Tartine with its little bayou sister, someone else was crying. Night Song. She knew that Hawk Man was looking for her, could feel his presence in the air of the thick and heavy forest. But she could do nothing, only turn her eyes to the sky, to the sight of a host of silent birds, but none of them were her husband, the one who had given up his wings for her.

  Here is a woman who has stepped out of her human skin and donned her serpent body. Here is a woman who has gladly followed her mother, the one she loved so dearly, so openly, the one she trusted. Here is a woman, cloaked in a scaled skin so black it looks blue, so shiny it gleams. But here also is a woman who did not know that once she returned to her serpent shape and slid into the water, she could not ever go back to the world of humans. Never.

  Here, yes here, is a woman betrayed. Deceived by someone she loved. And so here also is a woman who has forsaken her husband and her daughter forever, the two she loved most. The ache of it has stitched its way through her long, sinewy body, inside, outside, a searing thread that pulled her into a hideous knot. She writhed against its tension, until at last, spent, she curled herself around the branch of an old cypress and listened, listened to the silence of the trees. For what can trees say in the presence of such sorrow? All they know to do is stand, somber and sad.

  • • •

  Below the branch, in the thick water of the bayou, the alligator looked at Grandmother with his golden eyes, eyes like the sun, and said, “You did not tell her.”

  Grandmother did not have an answer. Instead she spun her massive body around and around in the water, stirring up the silt from the bottom, turning the water into a chocolate cloud that reeked from the rotting leaves and branches that settled there, now churned into a mucky stew. There was no sorry here.

  She had Night Song back, didn’t she? It didn’t matter at all whether her daughter was happy right now. In time she would forget all about the man, the man whose voice rang through the forest and hung on the thick, wet air.

  69

  TREES ARE THE arbiters of time, gathering up the hours and days and years, keeping them in their circular rings. They know that forgetting is not so easy. The blackjacks, the water oaks, the sumacs, they all had time to spare, and more. And they remembered. They remembered the glimmering girl, daughter of Night Song and Hawk Man. They remembered that awful morning.

  Here she was, almost ten years old. Only a moment in the life of a tree. Here was a daughter whose father had held her in his strong arms since she was a baby, a girl whose mother sang to her every single night.

  The trees remember her waking all alone in the darkness of her family’s hut. Was it the aloneness that woke her? She lay very still and listened. She could hear her father calling from a distance, but she also heard something else. What was it? She lifted herself onto
her elbows and held her head up so that she could listen better. It could have been wind. No, not the wind. It could have been rain, an early morning rain? Not that, either. Then she recognized it: a sudden beating against the air, the winging of thousands of birds in flight. She looked around. The sun had not come up yet, it was still dark.

  Normally the birds did not rise up until daylight. What had caused them to stir like this? And why were they so quiet? All she heard were the wingbeats, none of the regular chatter of birds, the calls of grackles and orioles and gnatcatchers. Why didn’t they sing?

  At first she thought she was dreaming. The sound of wings filled her ears. Then she heard her father’s voice. Both were nearby and far away, close and distant, her father, the birds. The air must be thick with thrashers and wood ducks and kinglets. She opened her eyes and listened. Who was her father calling? Why were the birds so upset? She sat up, the day was barely present, just a thin stream of pearled light in the open doorway. It was early. Then she heard the birds again, circling high above their village. She sat up on her mat and looked around the hut.

  Her father. Missing.

  Her mother. Gone.

  She was alone. All alone. A small thread of fear crept up her back. She had never awakened alone before, without Hawk Man or Night Song.

  Wrong filled up her small body and tugged at her. Wrong. It curled up at her feet. Wrong was here, it was everywhere.

  Suddenly Hawk Man’s voice shot through her skin and bones and pulled her fully awake. All at once she realized her father was calling for her mother. She looked at the unused mat where her mother should have been. Where was she? What had happened to her?

  Outside, the sky was thick with birds. Their wingbeats thrummed in the heavy dawn.

  She could hear her father.

  Over and over he called. The girl clapped her hands over her ears, but they did not erase the sound of his urgent voice. Did not erase the flapping of wings that circled overhead. Over and over her father called out her mother’s name. Night Song. Where was she? What had happened to her? The girl rose from her mat and looked out. The sky was overcast, streaks of red bounced against the early clouds and slipped through the limbs of the trees. Dawn. Birds. Silent birds, everywhere, filled the sky. She looked toward the creek. Her father’s calls came from that direction. He called and called for her mother, over and over. Something was wrong.

  Wrong was here.

  Wrong sat on the ground in front of her.

  Wrong kept the birds from singing.

  Wrong.

  It crept up her legs and into her chest.

  She heard her father again. Something must have happened to her mother. Her beautiful mother, the one who held her in her gentle arms, the one who sang to her at bedtime. Mother. Where was she? The girl turned and looked at the enormous jar, the one Night Song had made for her just the day before. The birthday jar, its hundred crescent moons pressed into the rim. She lifted it up. She could not leave the hut without it, not this jar. She wrapped her arms as far around it as she could. It was heavy, and she struggled with its weight.

  Hurry, she thought, I have to hurry. And she walked out of the hut with the jar in her arms, its smooth round surface pressed hard against her chest. It felt cool against her skin. She walked as fast as she could, but the weight of it slowed her down. She had to be careful not to stumble and drop it. Oh, glimmering girl, do not drop this jar that your mother has made you. Do not. She stepped quickly, carefully, one foot in front of the other, toward the creek.

  The birds circled overhead. She heard them dip and dive above the low clouds and through them. The jar grew heavier with every step.

  Finally, she neared the water’s edge, where she could at last set her burden down on the soft sand. She took a deep breath and looked below, into the tumbling gray water. Along the banks she saw the red clay, the same clay that had offered itself up to make the jar.

  Her birthday jar.

  She looked at it, at the strong sweep of its curves, the certainty of its design, the beauty of its etching, the etching of Grandmother Moccasin.

  Once more she heard her father call. Call for her mother.

  Wrong was everywhere.

  In the sand beneath the jar.

  On the surface of the water.

  Amid the million wingbeats of the birds.

  Where was her mother?

  The little girl, the one who glimmered, began to walk back and forth along the water’s edge, looking and looking. Her mother was here, somewhere, she had to be. The girl could still hear her father’s voice coming from the forest. Why were the birds so unhappy? The water swirled beneath her.

  She looked back at the jar and as she did, a tiny beam of light fell across it, illuminating the etching of Grandmother. Here was a jar made with love from a mother to a daughter. Here was a jar of beauty. Beautiful like her mother, like the birds, like the etching of Grandmother Moccasin.

  Suddenly the sun slipped behind a cloud, and the light on the jar flickered out. Wrong welled up inside of her. “Mother!” she cried, and her cry filled the forest, rang across the creek and through the leafy branches, sliding over the watery ground of the brackish marshes. “Mother!” It rang through the treetops and over the dark water of the bayous, it slid over the feathers of the silent birds. Again and again she called, but her mother didn’t answer. Finally she stopped and looked at the whirling water just in front of her.

  There was something in the soft mud. Familiar. True. Her mother’s footprints. She knelt beside them. Yes, she was sure of it. Her mother must have walked into the creek, right here. Right here, where the creek bent away from her, where the water lapped the edge and tumbled away, away, away. These, she knew, were her mother’s tracks.

  Then she stood up and called again, only this time the one she called for was her father.

  70

  NOT TOO FAR away, Hawk Man paused. Someone was calling him. At first his heart raced. Was it Night Song? The voice was similar to hers. Yes, his wife. She was calling him, he knew it, he had to find her. “I’m here!” he cried. “Here!” He listened again, listened for Night Song’s voice. Only silence. All he heard was the circling birds. He knew they were keeping watch, but their presence brought no comfort. He cupped his hands over his ears. Which way had the call come from? He stood very still. There it was again, the voice. A small voice, calling.

  His daughter! His daughter must be awake. He had left her all by herself. Alone, without her mother or her father. Hawk Man abandoned the forest path and ran back toward the village. He could hear her clearly now, calling for him. He heard the fear in her voice. Run, he thought, run to your glimmering girl, run to your little daughter all alone. Run.

  When he emerged from the woods, he saw her standing on the bank of the creek, her skin shimmering, birds like a halo in the air above her. His heart broke at her smallness. So small, this radiant daughter. Quickly he scooped her into his arms, this small and glimmering girl, this daughter of his and Night Song’s.

  Wrong was everywhere.

  Nesting in the morning air.

  Settling on their arms.

  Inching up their backs.

  Here, right here, on the bank of the creek, stood a father, holding his little girl, her skin glimmering in the morning light. And here is a little girl, hanging on tight. Both of them here, with the silent, circling birds.

  When at last neither one of them could hold on to the other any longer, the girl took her father’s hand and led him to the place where she had found her mother’s tracks. Hawk Man looked down. Yes, there were his wife’s footprints. But what he saw right next to them made him step back. “No!” he cried. He gripped his daughter’s hand tighter, and screamed, “Nooooooooo!!!”

  There, beside the prints left by his wife, was the S-shaped imprint of a snake.

  71

  THIS FOREST IS older than any history, it predates the dinosaurs and mastodons and the giant ferns that touched the sky with their pointed fingers. It�
�s older than old. But even from the earliest times, not long after the old sea herself pulled away from the land and slipped into the Gulf of Mexico to the south, there have been cats. If you only knew the languages of trees, you’d hear about them. The saber-toothed tigers with their teeth as sharp as scimitars. Here they roamed for thousands of years, bearing their young in the thickets and using the ferns as dens. All of them are gone now, only a few fossils remain.

  And then came the sleek panthers, the jaguars, the margays. Mostly gone now too, slipped away to other forests, hurried south to Mexico, away from the hunters and poachers who sought their fur for coats and hats. Even the bobcats are few. And the painters, rarest of all.

  The trees especially miss them, the jaguarundi and ocelots and pumas. Trees love cats. Whenever a tree has an itch, it can count on a cat to give it a good scratching. Trees love a cat’s sharp claws. Love their purrs when they rub against their trunks. Love to hold them in the forks of their branches while they sleep the day away.

  No other animal can compare to the magnificent feline hunters of the past.

  Then again, here is Sabine, small member of the family Felidae, order Carnivora. Watch her call upon her greater relatives to track and trap an unsuspecting rat. See her pounce upon the swift salamander. Stand in awe at her predatory prowess.

  She has learned how to slip in and out of the Underneath, just as her mother used to do, and she has taught herself to be quick about it. Little Sabine, she is the descendant of the saber-tooth, this small silver cat.

  But despite her proficiency on the hunt, there were needs she couldn’t meet by hunting. She still needed her mother, needed to rest her head on her mother’s soft belly, needed to feel her mother’s tongue licking her face and ears and chin. And she needed her brother, too. Needed someone to curl up with beneath the tent of Ranger’s ear. Needed Puck. And as much as anything, she needed to hear Ranger’s song, his deep bluesy voice in the night air. She needed to break the rusted chain that tied Ranger to the post so that the two of them could leave this tilting house, leave the terrible man, leave and never look back.