Girlwood (13 page)

But the magic never stretched beyond the woods. Back behind four walls, sleeping next to the Crying Room, Polly's life was all too ordinary and real. Her mother still muffled her sobs, the dishwasher kept breaking, and, most mundane of all, Polly woke one morning to blood on her sheets. It was no surprise—she was twelve, after all, and most of her friends had started their periods last year—but it wasn't the slightest bit fairylike either. How would Bree cope with
this
in the woods, all the cramps and bloating and blood? Unless Carly Leyland had been right, and Bree was pregnant when she left. In which case, she wouldn't have a period until late spring.

Polly expected her mother to sense what had happened, but even when Polly shoved her sheets in the washing machine, for once doing her own laundry, her mom merely dashed past her, late for a meeting. Polly's stomach cramped as she sat alone at the table and later, as she headed for school, she abruptly changed direction. Her grandmother
might not sense anything either, but Polly could count on her to listen. Polly still worried about her health and expected to find her in bed, yet when Polly reached the garden, she found Baba marching out of the cottage, dragging a solid pine chair behind her. There was another bonfire on the driveway, only this time it was furniture that was going up in flames.

Polly raced across the yard. "Baba! What are you doing?"

Her grandmother looked frail, but she was upright and determined, lugging the hefty chair toward the fire.

"I'm getting rid of a few things," she said. "Too much clutter in the house."

In the fire were the charred remains of Baba's coffee table, unfinished bookshelves, and the rack where she'd stored her elderberry wine. Everything she'd owned, it seemed, was made of wood. Baba tipped the chair onto its side, then rolled it into the blaze. The pine wood crackled, and Polly's face burned from the heat.

As the chair ignited, Baba rubbed her hands together, satisfied. "You'll be late for school," she said.

It wasn't an accusation, just a statement of fact. Baba's gaze dropped suddenly to Polly's waist, then rose to her face, softening.

"Ah," she said, opening her arms. "Sweetheart."

Starting her period might have been no big deal, but Polly was surprisingly grateful that Baba had noticed.

"You have a secret inside you now," Baba said, holding her. "Something lush and wild that no one can take away. This is the start of great things, Polly. The start of everything."

Polly felt Baba's arms trembling and said, "You need to sit down."

Baba nodded, but she didn't move. They stood there watching the old chair burn and shoot off red embers like fireworks.

"I had that chair for forty years," Baba said quietly. "Your grandfather bought it for me."

"Then why are you burning it?"

Baba waved a hand. "I never needed a chair to remember him. I don't need much of anything, Polly. Isn't that wonderful?"

"You can't burn all your things, Baba," Polly said.

Her grandmother stood taller. "Well, maybe not all, but most. It's not illegal to burn your furniture, is it?"

"Well, no," Polly said, "but it's ... strange."

Her grandmother narrowed her gaze until Polly felt guilty for even saying it. Polly shook her head at the fire, but she also smiled. School was starting, but she would just have to be late.

"I'll get the kitchen chairs," Polly said.

Her grandmother was still strong enough to raise her arms and hoot. "Hooray!"

***

After a few visits to Girlwood, Mandy took a liking to thistle.

"I'm not saying I'd want it for dinner," she said as she chewed on a thorny leaf, "but for food I can find myself, it's not that bad."

Bridget smiled from the shelter that she kept strengthening with more side poles. They'd all noticed that Mandy was losing weight. Every day they came to Girlwood, she was a little slimmer, a little lighter on her feet. And Bridget was growing stronger. To prove that everything they, and Bree, needed ^ was in the grove, she had made an ax by hafting a slender, sharp stone to a two-foot larch branch, and she'd devised a wooden tripod with layers of grass, sand, and charcoal from the fire to filter their stream water. She even came up with an ingenious way to boil off the possible bacteria by pouring small amounts of water into a hollowed-out log and dropping in red hot rocks they'd heated in the fire.

"Is there anything you can't do?" Polly asked her.

"I can't sing."

Just to prove it, she belted out a few horrible bars of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," and Polly put her hands over her ears. Mandy laughed while Olivia sat on a boulder, looking grim.

"What's wrong?" Polly asked.

Olivia shrugged. "I just wish we could tell our parents where we are, that's all."

"We've been over this," Polly told her. "They'll make us stop coming. They'll freak out about wolves or snowstorms or all the men in the woods."

"Well, there
are
men and snowstorms, and they're building a subdivision around us! My mom'll go berserk if she finds out I've been lying all this time."

"No, she won't," Polly said. "Your mom still reads you bedtime stories. She's like a saint or something. Besides, I've never heard her yell at you once."

Olivia looked away. "That's because I've always been good."

Bridget ignored them and announced her plans for a second shelter. "A wigwam!" she said. "You've got to use saplings, preferably willow so they'll bend. It's a dome shape, basically, and harder to build, but we can make it really big!"

"Let's find some downed willows," Mandy said. "They always grow near water. What's over that way, beyond the larches?"

She and Bridget quickly headed past Baba's tree, where the larches grew in such a dense cluster they seemed to be rising from one giant root. Polly had never explored the boundaries of Girlwood before, not wanting to think that it had an end.

"Come on," Polly said to Olivia, but Olivia didn't budge.

"Polly, I really think we should stop coming here."

"Would you quit saying that? If you'd just stop being so scared all the time—"

"I'm not scared! It's just that my mom says these woods are evil."

"Evil?" Polly said, not sure if she should laugh or be insulted. "Baba practically lives in these woods."

Olivia looked away. "I think that's her point, Polly. I hate to say this, but every Sunday Pastor Bentley has something to say about your grandmother. How she's a witch or something, coming out here to brew potions and cure things even doctors can't. My mom eats up every word."

Polly hardly knew what to say. "Why didn't you tell me your mother felt like that before?"

"What was I supposed to say? I know how you feel about your grandmother, and
I
don't believe she's evil. As long as we were only around your parents, my mom was okay, but if she caught us here..."

Polly couldn't believe it. All this time, when Mrs. Nelson had been calling her "honey" and getting her extra blankets when she slept over, she'd really been watching her for signs of witchery, peeking in while she slept to see if she'd sprouted horns.

"Polly?" Olivia said.

"Let's go. I don't want to lose them."

Polly's eyes burned as she followed Bridget and Mandy's trail. What if Olivia started to hate her too? Obviously, it was as easy as listening to what someone told you. As simple as not trusting yourself enough to make up your own mind.

"Polly!" Olivia said.

Polly didn't look back as she climbed over a decaying trunk. Then all at once, the woods stopped, and she blinked at the light.

The grove ended at a cliff. Mandy and Bridget stood on the precipice looking down a nearly vertical slope of snow and rock. At the bottom was a fast-moving river, and just beyond it, the steep, north-facing wall of the canyon, wet and slick with moss.

Olivia came up behind her, and the four girls looked down at the survey stakes at the bottom of the ravine. There was nothing to say. It was a wild and perfect place, and it would be ruined.

"I'll bet those are willows growing near the stream," Mandy said, and before they could tell her the cliff was too steep and it would take hours to climb back up, she was on her bottom. The old Mandy would have launched an avalanche of snow and rocks, but this new lighter girl barely skimmed the surface of the slope as she slid safely to the canyon floor.

"Idiot," Bridget said, but laughed and headed down after
her. She was more scientific about her descent, choosing a zigzagging path and keeping her weight against the mountain. A few minutes later, she waved from the bottom.

Olivia looked down the cliff nervously. "I'll stay here."

Polly didn't argue. She couldn't even look at Olivia, knowing the things that had been said about Baba in her house.

Polly headed down the cliff, hollering as she rode a wave of rocks, but somehow she made it to the bottom without killing herself. Close up, the river was a torrent even Bree might have liked, with slick, sharp rocks and whirlpool currents. Bridget surveyed the willows along the shore, while Mandy jumped sure-footedly from rock to rock. Her blue aura was exactly the color of the frigid stream, so it was a while before Polly realized Mandy had stepped right into the water. She knelt down and tickled her hand across the surface, then dipped deeper and came out with a nine-inch silver fish.

Bridget dropped the downed willow branches she'd collected. "No way!"

Mandy let the fish go as Polly and Bridget made their way to the water's edge. Dozens of silver fish battled the current and kept leaping toward the sky, as if mistaking Mandy's aura for deeper water.

"No one will believe this," Mandy said.

Polly touched her arm. "
I
believe it."

Bridget stared at the river, stunned but smiling. "Me too."

They were still smiling at one another when Polly saw the blue fabric. A jacket, or what remained of it, caught on a snag upstream.

"Oh," Mandy said as the fish darted away. "Oh no."

Polly glanced up the cliff, where Olivia still sat glumly on a rock. Polly could have said it was time to get back and no one would have argued, but instead she waded into the icy stream. Water quickly splashed over her knees as she battled the current and made it to the snag. Balancing on slick rocks and ignoring the cold, she struggled with fabric and limbs, but the jacket wouldn't budge. Mandy and Bridget stood on shore, watching her nervously as Polly grabbed the coat and gave it a vicious tug. There was a loud tear as she fell into the water, but when she got to her feet she held most of the jacket. Only an oddly delicate sleeve still dangled on a branch.

Tucking the tattered remains beneath her arm, Polly slowly made her way back to shore. Wet from the waist down and shivering, she hardly noticed her friends coming over to examine the coat and console her. She couldn't focus on anything except the tag, the one with letters written in permanent marker, in her sister's messy script:
Bree Greene.

"Polly," Mandy said.

Polly gathered the coat against her chest and marched to the cliff. She didn't notice how long she climbed or how steep the slope; she was too busy convincing herself that the jacket's condition meant nothing. The wind could have carried it away, or Baba might have given Bree another coat weeks ago. Maybe she didn't even need a coat! If there was magic, then Bree could be warm all winter in nothing but a T-shirt and jeans.

At the top, Polly marched right past Olivia. Back in the grove, she threw the coat on the boulder and grabbed her bow and drill. Bridget had collected poplar branches, which Polly hated to burn. Her grandmother could have used the inner bark to make aspirin, but when Polly looked around there was nothing else. She worked the drill so intently, she hardly noticed when her friends came up behind her.

"Polly?" Bridget said, crouching beside her. "We should go. It's getting dark."

Polly ignored her as sparks began to fly. Once she had a good blaze, she took the jacket onto her soggy lap.

"Polly?" Olivia said. "Please, it's getting late."

"Bree doesn't need a jacket," Polly said. "Fairies don't wear coats."

She knew by their silence that they thought she'd gone right over the edge, but she no longer cared.

"Fairies don't need jackets," she said again. "They fall asleep in winter and return in spring."

Olivia put her hand on Polly's shoulder, but Polly jerked it off. She wasn't mad anymore, she just wanted them to go. Finally, Bridget asked if she'd be all right alone.

"I'll be fine," Polly said.

She waited until they left and their voices had faded away down the hill, then she examined the jacket more closely. A strand of blond hair had been snagged by the Velcro and the nylon pierced by thorns. But a watertight inner pocket was still zipped shut, and inside it Polly found a yellow lighter and an Altoids tin, empty except for the piece of parchment paper that had once covered the mints.

Polly tried to imagine what Bree had thought when she'd eaten her last Altoid and why she hadn't taken the lighter, but she wasn't going to draw any horrible conclusions. She stayed very still, like a rabbit in the brush when something big and scary walks by, her heart beating so quickly it hurt.

She fingered the parchment. She used to have paper like that, and a special pen. She'd write notes to the fairies and leave them on her windowsill, asking who their queen was and what they ate. Sometimes they answered instantly, other times it took a few days. Olivia had told her to compare the tiny writing to her mother's, but Polly never had. She had stopped writing rather than risk it. Again, it seemed best not to know anything for sure.

Now she reached into the fire and pulled out a black coal. She felt the sting of the heat but didn't flinch or cry out. She imagined her skin hardening like an eggshell, protecting all the soft, fragile stuff inside. She scraped the coal with her fingernail, carving it into a fine point.

The charcoal was her pencil, the parchment her fairy note.

Dear Bree,
she wrote.
Are you okay?