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Groves

Brandee Johnson

The morning was gray and cold.  A fidgety squirrel perched on the rim of the birdbath; he and I seemed to be the only ones up.

Rissa was still in bed with Jack.  I’d slipped quietly past their door, hoping not to wake them; she and I had been up long after midnight, laughing at old movies and drinking mudslides.  Better she get as much sleep as she could.  Besides that, as much as I loved her, right now I didn’t want her company.  I just wanted the silence to myself.

A bluebird glided down from a branch.  The first thing I’d noticed about Arkansas was the trees—when she met me at the airport, Rissa could only laugh.  I found I couldn’t stop staring at them: thick and green, rising up on both sides of the highway in throngs.  Real forest, spreading out for miles, dark emerald pockets parted only by a long, serpentine river.  It was like a dream.

I hugged myself against the chill.  I could feel the cold, smooth wood of the deck through my socks, the frosty mist through my thin shirt.  The sun still slept beyond the hidden horizon, leaving my little moment shrouded in soft, pensive light.  The small, untroubled conversation of the birds was the only sound. 

There were very few things I’d ever done in the heat of the moment; coming to Arkansas was one.  A week ago I’d been in LA, rushing from class to class and from class to work and then back home, where I’d sleep four to five hours before starting again.  Life was a schedule; I had no time to run heedlessly across the country to visit an old high school girlfriend.

But then the world dropped out from under me.  And here I was.

I closed my eyes and listened. 

What on earth was I still doing in LA, anyway?  How often had I fantasized about a place like this, an idle place, a raw, unburdened clearing?  A druid’s grove?

Only every waking moment of my life.

Shayden sat cross-legged in meditation, her palms rested on her knees, listening to the hushed silence. A doe entered the glade across from her, its progress reflected in the winged one’s unseeing eyes, but Shayden was elsewhere.

The breeze that wafted through the feathers of Shayden’s wings was a gentle, contented breath.  Demeter’s sacred realms were at peace; the Green Lady was well.

She eased out of her concentration with a sigh.

It had been like this for days: nothing wrong, yet still a restless unhappiness plagued her.  Seraph had noticed her daughter’s reticence, but Shayden found she was unable to talk about it, even with the woman who had adopted and raised her.  She might have approached the elders, but somehow she knew they would never understand.  She was invisible to them.

Soon, she might disappear entirely.

Jack, who had a penchant for belching, swearing, and just plain being a smart-ass, for some reason had a problem with cigarettes.  So to catch a smoke, I had to go for a walk.  Not that it bothered me; I’d just go far enough so that I couldn’t see the house anymore and sit down with my back against a tree and think.  Or not think.  Whichever. 

I walked about a mile, lost in thought as I listened to the muttered rustle of the leaves beneath my feet.  Cold morning had melted into muggy afternoon.

I took my notebook with me, but bringing it didn’t guarantee I’d get any use out of it.  I’d picked it up in hopes that it might be useful, that I might spontaneously articulate something within its pages that would magically explain my hurt.  Maybe I’d write my own epiphany.  But no such luck.

I found a slender white birch in a shady spot where the verdant, mossy smell of earth was rich and the fallen leaves beneath my fingertips were still wet with dew. I stretched out, lit my cigarette and took a deep, gratifying drag.

I let myself drift.

“I had doubts about inducting you.”

The harvesting party had gathered early to tend the plants.  Janüs had joined them, not by coincidence, and as soon as Shayden wandered off to a corner of the clearing alone, the druid elder was beside her.

“You said as much when you made me an apprentice,” Shayden muttered back, feigning interest in a sprig of myrrh.

“Why have you become so distant?” Janüs asked.  “Seraph is worried about you.”

Shayden rustled her wings, keeping her back to Janüs.

“Distant?  No, Janüs, not distant…merely pensive.”

“You missed the Feast of Demeter,” Janüs went on.  “You have not attended guild meetings.  Twice we have found you guilty of overharvest in your own grove—”

“Both accidents, Janüs,” she replied, praying for patience. They had not found her guilty; she had admitted both instances. “Once of a perennial herb, which I immediately replanted.  Will you cast me out for that?”

“You are troubled, Shayden.  Do you think we do not see it?”

The elder circled her, gently taking Shayden’s face in one hand and tilting it up to look into her eyes.

“The Feast?”

Shayden shrugged.  “I was occupied.”

“With what?”

“Exploring,” she replied.  “I went west, to the Maldáaens.”

Janüs raised an eyebrow.

“That mountain range is dangerous, Shayden.  Enemies of the forests travel there.”

Again, Shayden shrugged, pulling away from Janüs and dropping to her knees to inspect a hawthorn bush. 

“You avoid me, child,” Janüs said.  “You avoid your own guildmates, your Divine Matron, even your mother.  What is wrong?”

Shayden remained silent.  Even if she could explain herself, she would never tell Janüs.  Not the guild elder who had never wanted her anyway.  How could she admit that the druids had failed her, that perhaps this was not her place after all?

And what would she do if she was cast out?  Where would she go?

Janüs sighed and finally walked away.  Shayden saw her mother look up from her harvesting, her gaze drifting to where her daughter crouched in the hawthorn like a chastised child.

Without a word, Shayden stood up and turned away, walking alone into the shadows of the trees.

“You want to call him, don’t you?”

Rissa handed me a caramel apple cider as she sat across from me.  We were out for coffee, just the two of us; Jack had wanted to come along, until Rissa told him we’d also be getting haircuts.  At that, he sat himself back down in front of his video games, reminding her that he didn’t like her hair too short.  She assured him she’d get it cut as short as she liked, planting a kiss on his pouting mouth.

Haircuts were Rissa’s answer to bad days.  Though I firmly denied finding any value in such girlish resolution, I inwardly agreed.  Something about a new look felt fresh and renewed.  I’d had my hair trimmed, re-layered and razored, and I loved it; Rissa, though swearing she would have it all shaved off just to spite her boyfriend, had it trimmed and added long, sexy bangs.  We then dropped into the cozy little coffee shop and ordered our usual favorites. 

When she returned to the table, I had my cell phone out.  Leave it to her to read my mind.

“Yeah,” I replied, “but I don’t think I will.”

“Are you afraid of violating some unspoken rule of break-up etiquette?  If you want to talk to him, call him.”

“But I don’t,” I said.  “I don’t know what I want to do.”

I thought of the people back home who’d called me mistreated, the ones who wanted to put all these labels on my relationship, as if I’d asked them to assign blame for me.  I thought of the women who suddenly, in my moment of crisis, turned into fierce chimeras trying to abduct me into some sisterhood of the scorned.

My thumb caressed the bare, naked underside of the fourth finger on my left hand.    Everyone thought they could dismiss the fact that I loved Keith; to tell them I still wanted him was to somehow brand myself a traitor to women’s liberation or some such bullshit.  Where any of them got the preposterous idea that he’d ever abused me, physically or otherwise, didn’t matter; somehow they had to save me from myself before I did something stupid like try and love him again.

Rissa shrugged.

“You don’t have to prove anything,” she said softly.  “You’ve been with Keith ten years.  You grew up together.”

“But Rissa,” I interrupted, gazing down at the table.  “What if that’s all I am?  Keith’s high-school sweetheart?”

She didn’t answer.

I looked at the notebook I’d brought along with us, just in case anything came to me while we were out.  The first pages were filled with frantic litany:  I know I am an Aries; I know I am a writer; I know I am not going to bed with any man before I’m married.  I thought of Shayden and how on the first page of hers, she’d lovingly written the directions to her grove, so she’d not get lost on her way home.

I thought of how much it was going to hurt her when she finally let go.

The wind in her grove was troubled and uneasy; the trees rustled unhappily, and the herbs and plants she’d been careful to leave in full bloom seemed to droop.  She  reached out, sensing the mark she’d left on this place years ago when she’d only been a budding novice. 

Had she somehow failed her grove?  Had she been faulty, useless to the druids, and had she hurt the little place she’d made her home?  Had this section of the forest also become flawed, because of her?

She felt her mind slip into the place where it had once put a bond on these trees.  She put her palms down, against the grass; slowly, gently, she severed her connection.

“Be well,” she whispered as she felt her mark fade from the little clearing.  “Be well, and grow strong.”

The sudden emptiness made her want to re-claim the grove, make it hers again, never let it go.  It had been so much of her life, her own little place, her private, perfect home.  But soon another novice would wander upon this perfect patch of forest and would be overjoyed to make it theirs.

Sadly, Shayden touched the druid’s brooch that rested upon her breast.  She unfastened it, and laid it on the grass beside the journal she’d kept all through her years in the guild.  Her mother would find it, and that would be enough.

She turned west, towards the dark Maldáaen range.  It would be a short flight, she thought.  And maybe there would be something there for her.  Perhaps another grove… perhaps another home.

She spread her wings and took to the skies.

“So she left?” Rissa asked.

We were on our way back; the dark, beautiful trees spread out on either side of the road, and I gazed out longingly into their depths.

“She didn’t belong there,” I explained.  “There was something missing.”

“What about Seraph?”

I shrugged.

“Shayden will always love Seraph,” I assured her.  “Seraph took her in.  She gave her a family.  But… I don’t know.  Shay needs something else.”

I didn’t know if it would be enough; I hardly ever know why Shayden did the things she did.  And I knew Seraph would be hurt… but that was just the way of things.

“My plane leaves at three,” I said. 

“Yes,” she said.  “No worries.  Jack and I can drop you off.”

“Thanks for letting me come,” I said quietly.  She turned away from the road a moment and smiled.

“Anytime, sweetie,” she said softly.  “You just let me know.”

I nodded and lost myself in the shadow of the trees.