Girlwood (8 page)

"Let me put out the bonfire," Baba said, "and you'll lead the way."

***

Under the full moon, Polly could see everything from the dark green fuzz on the pine boughs to the startling gold of a screech owl's eyes. Her new haircut made her feel quick and nearly weightless. Fairylike, freed from glass, drawn toward the Dark Lands.

"You know there's an abandoned miners' cabin about a mile northwest of here," Baba said. "Nice and secluded, up the second gully past Willow Creek."

Polly glanced at her, her palms suddenly sweaty despite the chilly night. "Yeah?"

"Now,
I
wouldn't live in it. Too dreary and grim. I'd find myself a cave or build a lean-to. But some people might like it, especially when the snows get real deep. You need just three things to survive: water, food, and shelter. The rest is decoration."

Polly knew this was the moment to ask where Bree was. But suddenly it seemed like the truth always had some ugliness or disappointment in it. Either Baba didn't know where Bree was, or else she was willing to put Polly and her parents through hell to keep Bree safe. Polly didn't know which was worse.

Polly saw the last of the sheep sorrel in the moonlight and stooped to pick the leaves. She answered the unspoken question herself. "I'll take this to Bree in the grove."

Her grandmother nodded, and as Polly stood she saw all
those colors around Baba again, the rainbow. It wasn't the moon at all but her grandmother who lit up the mountain.

***

When they paused to catch their breath, the forest did the same. The wind stopped rustling through the trees and the birds suddenly grew silent.

"I used to be able to look at a person and know what was wrong with them," Baba said. "But last week I mistook Julie Benson's gas bubble for a broken heart. Luckily, vervain works on both."

"You're an amazing healer, Baba," Polly said. "I can only see colors around people, and sometimes shapes. What good does that do?"

Baba laughed. "But that's everything! You see a person's true colors. You have no idea how powerful you are." She paused. "You see something around me?"

Polly shook her head. She would rather watch the whole forest come down than talk about that rainbow. It was mesmerizing, but also the last thing you saw after a storm. The last thing.

"Polly," Baba said, taking her chin in her hand. "You think anything you can say will scare me?"

Polly shook her head. "Nothing scares you."

Baba let go of her chin and laughed softly. "Oh, that's not
true. Your mother terrifies me. Going into botany, turning the magic of plants into science. Marrying a dull man, then divorcing him just when he got interesting.
That's
scary."

Though the harebells had faded, a blue glow still hovered where the flowers had been and ghostly green auras shot up where grass blades would come in spring.

"A rainbow," Polly said at last.

Baba nodded and touched Polly's shoulder. "Oh, I'd like to see that. I never saw color. Just secrets. Pain."

***

Twenty minutes later, they arrived at the grove. All the needles on the larches had fallen, leaving the limbs as bare and smooth as bone. Between the full moon and the fluttering white light around the trees, the grove was as bright as day. Baba went to the oldest, tallest tree and pressed her cheek to the trunk.

"When I first came here," Baba said, "Edward's company never even thought about replanting the forests they cut. They thought the trees went on forever." She sighed, the last part of it turning to a cough. Polly shivered beneath jeans and a thick flannel shirt, and her grandmother hugged one of the larches for warmth.

"I tried to convince him to change his ways," Baba went on. "Tried to bring him out here under a full moon like this one and make him sit a spell, but he was so antsy! He could never
stay still long enough to really see anything. They were just trees to him. Lumber. There was big money to be made. He loved me, but he was who he was."

"So what happened?" Polly asked.

Baba shrugged. "That's it."

"That's it?"

When her grandma nodded, Polly put a hand on her hip. "That's a really bad story, Baba."

Her grandmother laughed, her breath coming out in a thick puff of smoke. "Most happy endings are. They're dull as dishwater."

"But you didn't say how you changed his mind."

"I didn't. You can't change anyone's mind, Polly. But one day someone may love you enough to make a sacrifice."

Before Polly could respond, her grandmother bent over a tangle of fallen limbs and picked out a strong, thin piece of larch.

"This can be our bow," she said. "Find some poplar wood for a drill and fireboard and make me a fire, Polly."

Polly glanced toward the ring of stones where the fire house she'd built for Bree had been burned down to ashes and the matchbook still sat, unused, on a rock. How had Bree done it? Polly had tried the bow-and-drill technique a hundred times and had never been able to produce more than smoke.

Yet Baba was already off in search of tinder. Reluctantly, Polly gathered an armful of poplar wood, then found her grandmother removing a leather lace from her boot.

"You remember how to make fixed loops on the bow?" Baba asked.

Polly nodded and set down her wood. Her grandmother watched closely as she knotted the shoelace on either end of the larch branch, pulling it taut to make a curved bow.

"Good," Baba said. "What do you do next?"

Polly may have never sparked her own fire, but she still knew all the steps. First, she stacked dry wood and tinder in the fire pit, then she sorted through the soft poplar wood for a spindle and fireboard.

"Put a notch in the fireboard," Baba reminded her, "for the spindle to sit in."

As Baba hummed happily, Polly used a sharp piece of larch to make the notch. Kneeling on the fireboard, she looped the bow lace around the eight-inch-long spindle, then set one end of the spindle in the notch. Holding the other end steady with a rock, she began sawing the bow back and forth. The spindle turned, and eventually the friction was supposed to produce an ember she could transfer to the dry tinder and fan into a flame. When her grandmother did it, the whole process took ten minutes or less.

But after ten minutes, Polly's arm ached and the rock
slipped from her moist palm. She started again, only to have the spindle spin out, losing what little heat she'd mustered. Again, Polly repositioned her bow and started sawing. She kept up the motion for fifteen minutes, until the lace on the bow snapped.

Polly dropped the bow, trying not to cry. Her grandmother squeezed her shoulder.

"That's why we have two feet."

Baba removed the lace from the other boot and handed it to her. Fighting tears, Polly strung the bow once more and knelt back down on the cold ground. She had no idea how much time passed, though it felt like hours. She sawed without enthusiasm, without much hope of a spark at all.

When her motion slowed, her grandmother said, "We'll have to leave if we can't get a fire started soon."

"I'm doing my best!" Polly said. Just then the bow slipped from her fingers, and she flung it aside in frustration. "It's too hard! There's no way Bree could do this."

Her grandmother retrieved the bow but didn't hand it to her. "Well then," she said, "we might as well give up."

Polly got to her feet. "Yes, we should!"

There. She'd said it. She couldn't make fire from a couple of sticks, and she certainly couldn't make everything right. Baba watched her as she snatched the matchbook off the rocks and opened the flap. All the matches her sister hadn't used were in there. Someone had been out here starting fires,
but at that moment, Polly couldn't believe it was Bree. She knew, deep down, how impossible Bree's survival was.

Polly tore a match from the book and struck it, holding the flame above the tinder. She was just about to drop it in when she felt the breeze on her back. The winged white auras around the larches had begun to flutter, and more than that, they were no longer white. Maybe the colors had always been there and she just hadn't noticed, but now each tree seemed to have its own personality—one cool blue, another sunny yellow, the showiest ones a glittering pink. It was as if the larches got up and danced when no one was looking and Baba smiled as if this was all perfectly ordinary—in her world, the impossible happened every day.

Polly rushed back to her grandmother, wanting the impossible more than she'd ever wanted anything else. She grabbed the bow and sawed furiously, not caring if she went too fast, not caring how irrational or dumb it was to believe that if she could make fire, then Bree could make it too.

After ten, fifteen, twenty minutes—she lost track of time—smoke wafted out between the spindle and fireboard. She would have stopped sawing, but her grandmother knelt beside her.

"This is the critical time," Baba said softly. "Increase your downward pressure a bit. That'll make a little dent in the fireboard, where the coal will start."

Polly wanted to check for the coal immediately but kept
sawing until her grandmother told her it was time. With trembling hands, she lifted the spindle, and there it was. A tiny ember, the littlest thing.

"Don't blow," Baba said. "That'll put it out. Just give it a little oxygen by waving your hand." Polly waved until the tiny coal began to glow. "That's it. Now move it carefully to the tinder."

Polly was so excited she nearly knocked the ember off the fireboard, but she managed to get it safely to the stack of tinder and tap it out. The coal slipped in among the twigs and needles, and went out.

"No!" Polly said. The tears started just as a whiff of smoke began to rise. She looked up through blurry eyes at her grandmother.

"Go on, now," Baba said. "Blow."

Polly blew on the tinder until, with a
whoosh,
the smoke ignited into flames.

"You see?" her grandmother said. "Everything's going to be fine."

Polly was surprised to find herself sobbing. She reached through both Baba's rainbow and the colors from the trees to hug her grandmother. "Don't die, Baba," she said. "I need you."

Her grandmother just held her as sparks from the fire burst toward the sky.

The name
dogbane
comes from the root's reputed value as a remedy for the bites of mad dogs. Though often poisonous as a food, dogbane is still used internally by Native Americans to treat everything from headaches to insanity to cancer.
Warning!
Dogbane should be used with great caution, and only under the care of a qualified practitioner. It can dramatically slow the pulse.

Polly and her grandmother didn't return to the cottage until morning.

"What did you put in my tea?" Polly's mom cried the moment they walked in. The tiredness in her eyes was gone, replaced by sparks of fury.

Baba tried to look offended, but she was battling a smile. "Just something soothing. You were so worked up."

"Worked up? Look at her!" Polly's mom swatted at Polly's hair, letting loose a shower of dirt and needles. Polly's
sneakers were caked with mud, her jeans torn and dirty, her flannel shirt more brown than red. But none of that mattered to Polly because last night, she'd kept her fire burning. Baba had sat beside the flames, as contented as a cat.

"You took Polly to the woods, didn't you?" her mom went on. "Where i've forbidden her to go. Didn't you hear the wolves? Did you consider for one minute that you were putting the only child i've got left in danger?"

Baba's face fell as a double rainbow took shape around her. "I suppose I didn't," her grandmother said quietly.

Even Polly's mother seemed surprised at this rare capitulation. She opened her mouth, then closed it. "Well," she said. "We're late. You've got school, Polly, if you haven't forgotten, and I've got a meeting at work. I won't even have time to change."

Baba eased herself down on the couch, her eyes dull with pain.

"Are you all right, Baba?" Polly asked.

Her grandma smiled weakly. "Go on. I'll be fine."

The light around Baba's lips turned pink, a color Polly often saw around people in love and, ironically, also around those who lied. Her grandmother's hands trembled and in the full light of day looked as crinkly and brittle as autumn leaves. Polly would have refused to leave her, except that she remembered what Baba always said: when there's a problem,
girls, run for the trees. There had to be something in the woods that would save her grandmother—maybe an herb so powerful even Baba had never dared to use it before.

Polly hugged Baba tightly, then followed her mother to the car.

"You can't go to school like that," her mom said as she backed out of the driveway. "I'll take you home to shower. You'll be late, but I'll write you a note."

"No," Polly said, shaking pine needles from her hair. "I'm going like this."

"Don't be ridiculous, Polly."

"I'm not! I don't care what the kids say. It's nothing I haven't heard before."

They were two blocks from home, and Polly felt strangely calm. She'd search the woods for a cure for Baba, leave roots and berries for Bree, even go to school covered in mud. The key, she thought, was just to do
something,
even if people thought the things she did were dumb.

Her mother turned down their street and pulled into the driveway, but she didn't turn off the car. Neither of them moved.

"What do the kids say about you?" her mom asked.

Polly turned away. This was the last thing she wanted to talk about. She didn't fit in, but so what? Neither did Baba. It didn't matter; Polly told herself that a dozen times a day.
Baba had gone her whole life as an outcast, a misfit, and was probably the happiest person in town.

But for all Polly's mom knew, Polly was the most popular kid in seventh grade. Popularity mattered to Faith Greene. She might have hated Bree's friends, but Polly could tell she was relieved that she had some.

"Nothing. You know. The usual stuff," Polly muttered.