Girlwood (19 page)

"I walked everywhere I needed to go," Baba continued, her voice such a whisper Polly had to lean close to hear. "Some people go all over the world to find what they're looking for, but everything I needed was right here. Did you know—"

She coughed, and when blood came up, Polly whimpered. She pulled a sodden leaf from the snow and dabbed her grandmother's chin.

"Grandma."

"I saw every plant that grows here," Baba said. "Even one your mother would like. It's probably got some official name, but I called it Faith. It's a tiny blue thing that blooms in the grove in April. You should show it to her."

"Please don't go," Polly said. "Bree ... we both need you."

She was close enough that Baba could place a kiss right on her cheek. "Oh, Polly," she said. "Don't worry. It's been a joy."

"I'm sorry I didn't protect the grove. I should have—"

Her grandma shushed her. "Don't be silly. I'm so proud of you."

Polly rested her head against her grandmother's chest. As long as she was listening to Baba's heart beating, she thought, it couldn't stop. Yet the colors around Baba also vied for her attention. Only a thread clung to Baba now, while the rest of the arc hopped from limb to limb like some crazy tropical bird. Even through her tears, Polly had to smile. Baba herself had always paused to look at anything out of the ordinary, from rainbows to exotic mushrooms to the people who dared to come to her door. Every day has a moment of wonder in it, she'd once said to Polly, that most people pass right by.

The rainbow twirled and hopped and finally leaped from the ash to the first pine in the woods, forming a perfect
jewel-toned horseshoe, arcs of garnet and sapphire, ruby and emerald, amethyst and pearl. Then, finally spreading itself too thin, the rainbow snapped. For a moment, the whole world was splashed with color, and then normal daylight returned, muted and gray.

Polly pressed her ear firmly against her grandmother's chest, but she no longer heard a heartbeat. Polly began to shudder, and for once she didn't try to act brave or stop her weeping. She cried so hard, even Olivia would have been impressed. Her wailing must have led Joe right to her, because at some point he pulled her away from Baba and took her in his arms.

Her whole body shook, and she couldn't imagine it ever stopping. Without Baba, the world was an unsteady place. She expected Joe to pull away, to grow tired of her sobbing, but he held on silently until her tears quieted to hiccups. Then he reached into his pocket and took out a larch branch he'd brought from the grove, laying the tiny limb on her grandmother's lap.

Even through her tears, Polly could see that his spirit was brown, like her father's, but on Joe it was most prominent near his feet. When he stayed very still, thin roots stretched from his soles into the earth, and eventually Polly felt them beneath her, slow, soothing pulses through the soil. Every day has a moment of wonder in it.

Baba, she thought, would have liked him.

Evening primrose is entirely edible: the leaves and flowers are delicious in salads, the seedpods can be steamed and the roots cooked like potatoes. Medicinally, the bark and leaves are useful in the treatment of whooping cough and asthma, and an oil from the seeds may help prevent cirrhosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis.

One Babaism was that there was not much difference between people and plants: both do better with a little tending, both turn toward the sun, both grow tougher over time, and both die. Life works like a garden, Baba liked to say—not in a straight line, but in cycles of growth, death, and rebirth. If the summer harvest goes bad, it's no cause for worry. Come spring, you get to start all over again.

Bree might have declared all Babaisms nonsense, but Polly
and her parents had proved that this one, at least, was true. They'd survived Bree's loss, started to go on without her, then circled around to mourning again. The only difference was that this time it was Baba herself whom they'd lost.

Polly lay on her bed listening to her parents' muffled voices downstairs. She'd stopped crying, but her brain was slow. She couldn't recall what had happened after Baba died. She knew Joe had run to get her father and that the three of them had taken Baba's body inside her house. But after Joe left, things got fuzzy. She couldn't remember what her father had said, how they'd gotten home, or even what her mother's reaction to the news of Baba's death had been.

Her father's voice suddenly boomed through the floorboards, the way it always did when he was on the phone. Since he'd moved to his cabin, he could no longer understand technology, anything that didn't live and breathe.

"I'm calling to get some information on your cemetery plots," he shouted. "Do you handle the casket as well?"

Polly battled her way through the numbness. A casket? A cemetery in the middle of town? She pushed herself off the bed, her legs weak and tingly as she hurried downstairs. In the kitchen, her father leaned wearily against the counter, the phone in his hand. Her mother sat at the table, her eyes red but dry.

"You're not burying Baba in town, are you?" Polly said. "We've got to bring her back to the grove!"

Her father put his hand over the phone. "Polly, please," he said. "Go back to bed. Your mother and I—"

"You can't let someone take her body!" Polly whirled on her mother. "What if they bury her where there aren't any trees?"

Her mom went pale; someone's voice came through the phone, asking if anyone was still there.

Polly's dad turned his attention back to the phone. "Can I call you back?" he shouted. "My daughter is a little upset."

As he hung up, Polly put her hands on her hips. She was stunned at how quickly the feeling in her legs had come back, at how strong she could be without Baba behind her.

"Polly," her dad began, but she was already shaking her head.

"Don't tell me about the rules," Polly said. "I don't care what you're supposed to do now. All that matters is what's
right.
Baba belongs in that grove."

Her dad looked at her like she was crazy, but her mom got to her feet. Faith Greene's reflection in the window was a pale, wide-eyed version of herself, and Polly realized that although she had lost her grandmother, her mother had lost her last parent. Polly didn't even want to imagine how that felt.

"You know it, Mom," Polly said softly. "That's her place. We have to take her back."

"That's Dan Leyland's property, Polly," her mom said, not turning from the window.

"No, it's not," Polly replied. "You can't own the woods."

Her mother stepped away from her reflection and touched Polly's arm. Polly expected a long-winded rational argument about the things you could and could not do, but her mom surprised her by smiling.

"That's exactly what Baba would have said."

Her dad stepped forward. "Don't tell me you're actually considering this."

Polly was glad for her mother's hand on her arm, holding her steady while everything in their house turned around.

"Polly's right," her mom said. "My mother belongs in the grove."

"You can't be serious! You can't just bury a body on someone else's property. There are procedures, Faith. There has to be a coroner's report, papers, a death certificate. I suppose after all that, we could have her cremated and sprinkle—"

"No. She'd want her bones there," Polly's mom said. She was quiet a moment, thinking, then she looked up, her eyes twinkling like Baba's.

"We could tell everybody she's out walking," she said. "She's gone away for long periods before. When she doesn't come back, people will say what they always have: that wolves got her. That she's still walking somewhere, lost in her plants, and is never coming back." She turned to Polly. "You'd have to talk to Joe. He'd have to lie, Polly. He couldn't tell anyone that he was with you when ... she died. Would he do that?"

Polly's dad looked at them as if they'd lost their minds, but Polly smiled. "I think so."

Her mom rubbed her forehead, the twinkle in her eyes turning to tears.

"Mom?" Polly said. "Are you sure? Because if people find out, they'll think—"

"To hell with what people think," her mother said. Then she looked back toward the window and, at last, put her head in her hands and cried.

***

The grove was a fitting graveyard. It was terrible to go back.

The larches still lay in ignoble heaps, awaiting logging trucks and a ride to the paper mill. With the trees down, the borders of Girlwood had been revealed. Polly was stunned at how small the grove really was—just a few dozen yards across. Why had it seemed so vast and impenetrable before? They'd been deceived by shadows and branches. As long as there had been trees in their way, they could imagine a million possibilities for what lay beyond them.

Despite the snow on the ground and the ominous storm clouds, Polly's dad was down to short sleeves. He'd chosen a spot for the grave well beyond the location of the future swimming pool and had been digging through frozen soil all
night. It was backbreaking work, and no one but Polly's father could have done it.

"I'll go down to her house and get her," he said. "I'll have to make sure I'm not seen, so it might be a while."

Polly's mom reached for his hand, and it was only then that his shoulders sank from weariness. Polly wished for a tree to hide behind so that they could forget about her. Instead, her dad climbed over a fallen trunk and left the grove.

Polly could no longer see a glow around the debris. Only her mother's aura lit up the grove—not a wavering candle flame but a steady white glow, as if she were taking over where Baba had left off.

The bow and drill were buried somewhere, so Polly started from scratch. She searched the piles of debris for the right pieces to make a bow and spindle. Her mother watched Polly silently as she notched a fireboard, strung the bow with her shoelace, then began the quick sawing motion to create a coal. When she had the ember, she transferred it carefully to a heap of needles, blowing gently to spark a flame. Her mother looked at her as if she'd never seen her before.

"I never knew you could do that," she said quietly as she held her hands over the fire.

"Baba taught me," Polly said proudly, fighting tears.

The larch wood sent up flames of lavender and green. It was a good hour before Polly's dad came back, trudging up the mountain with Baba in his arms. Without her towering
spirit, she looked tiny, like a sleeping child. Polly's dad laid her out gently in the grave.

Then they looked at one another, and Polly realized neither of her parents knew what to do next. A few months ago, this would have stunned and alarmed her, but today Polly merely stepped forward. Her grandmother's favorite song came back to her in its entirety, as if Baba had lent her her own voice.

Honey, child, honey, child, whither are you going?
Would you cast your jewels all to the breezes blowing?
Would you leave the mother who on golden grain has fed you?
Would you grieve the lover who is riding forth to wed you?

Mother mine, to the wild forest I am going,
Where upon the champa boughs the champa buds are blowing;
To the koil-haunted river-isles where lotus lilies glisten,
The voices of the fairy folk are calling me: O listen!

Honey, child, honey, child, the world is full of pleasure,
Of bridal-songs and cradle-songs and sandal-scented leisure.
Your bridal robes are in the loom, silver and saffron glowing,
Your bridal cakes are on the hearth: O whither are you going?

The bridal-songs and cradle-songs have cadences of sorrow,
The laughter of the sun to-day, the wind of earth to-morrow.
Far sweeter sound the forest-notes where forest-streams are falling;
O mother mine, I cannot stay, the fairy-folk are calling.

Polly's mom stared at her, glowing like the moon, then finally kissed her head. Each of them scooped up a handful of cold earth and threw it over the grave, but before they could shovel in the rest of the dirt, there were voices over the ridge. Polly's eyes burned with fury and frustration. They couldn't be found out!

The voices got closer, and Polly's mom strode across the grove. But it wasn't Dan Leyland or some graveyard police whom she confronted by the remains of the devil's club. It was only Joe. And John and Peter. And Mandy and Bridget and Olivia. Each carried a larch seedling in a brown paper bag.

"Don't worry," Joe said immediately. "We swore each other to secrecy. But we're your friends, Polly. We needed to come."

Polly blinked, not to stop her tears but to be sure that what she saw was real. She had friends, real, devoted friends. Friends who would try to stitch her heart back together if it broke, friends who brought
trees,
friends who wouldn't laugh when she told them their spirits had sprouted wings. Pointed and raven black along Bridget's back, shimmering like blue fins between Mandy's shoulder blades, moth brown and unassuming on Joe's spine. Aquamarine and quick-beating around Peter, slow and shell-like for John, thick and bushy on Olivia.
They
were the magic, the fairies. It was real life, not some bedtime story, that was enchanted.

"I told my mom what happened to the grove," Olivia said.
"I don't know if it changed her mind about you and me, but she did say that I could come here and bring this." She held up her larch seedling. "The man at the forest nursery thought we were crazy. He said no one plants this time of year, but we had to try."

It began to snow while they planted. Mandy used the embers from Polly's fire to melt the ground; Bridget dug down deep near the last of the devil's club; Olivia, Joe, and the boys planted their seedlings in the soft soil around the grave. Their beating wings kept the snow out of their eyes, though they mistook it for the breeze. As soon as Polly's dad filled in the grave, snow began to cover it.