Girlwood (11 page)

"Do you believe in magic?" Polly asked after a long silence.

Olivia must have felt as safe in the grove as Polly did, because she yawned. "It seems unlikely."

"Yeah."

"It's like everything you believe in when you're little turns out to be a lie."

Polly nodded. The truth was like stars going out. First the Easter Bunny, then the Tooth Fairy, then Santa Claus. What next? What happened when everything went dark?

But everything
didn't
go dark. That's what Polly wanted to say. Olivia herself lit up the night. Polly had been wrong about her before. Olivia's aura wasn't watered down at all; it was camouflaged, like a wolf's coat of tan, silver, and gold.

"Olivia?" Polly said. "Can I tell you something?"

Olivia nodded, watching the snow sizzle as it hit the flames.

"I see things around people. Auras, I guess. Colors, even shapes."

Polly tensed, steeling herself for Olivia's scorn, but all Olivia said was "Why didn't you ever tell me before? D-do you see anything around me?"

Polly's eyes watered, surprised at how much it meant to be believed.

"A wolf," she said. "I think I see a wolf."

Plenty of people would have been horrified by Polly's vision, but Olivia searched her face to make sure it was the truth. It was as if she'd never looked in a mirror and Polly had had to tell her what she saw: a girl who was loyal, proud, and much braver than anyone thought.

"Really?" Olivia said. "A wolf?"

Polly laughed. "With silver and gold fur. You should see it."

They talked for a while of the things Polly saw, then settled into a comfortable silence. Polly swore she never closed her eyes, yet she dreamed. The larches no longer swayed, but walked. Faces emerged from the knots, hips and breasts grew from nubs, shapely legs split from trunks. The trees became beautiful dryads, their branches replaced with fingers, bark stretching into skin and long, wild hair. They greeted one another with long embraces and laughter, admiring each other's transformations, twirling bodies that gleamed like polished wood.

And from the bark of the largest tree, Baba's favorite, came Polly's grandmother.

Polly should have been stunned, but she wasn't. She felt only comfort and staggering happiness, as if now, at last, everything was as it should be. The dryads surrounded her and Olivia, marveling over them, laughing, caressing them as if they were newborns, soft and perfect. They massaged their
arms, rubbed their feet, sang a lovely foreign song, with words Polly couldn't understand but knew was a lullaby. The last thing she remembered was the scent of cedar in the air.

When she woke at dawn beside Olivia, the snow was six inches deep, and she still smelled the luscious scent of the larches, of Baba.

"Polly?" Olivia said, awake now too and staring wide-eyed at the trees, then over at the boulder where the vegetable jars had disappeared, except for the green beans.

Don't say it,
Polly thought.
Don't say it was a dream.

At last Olivia turned to Polly.

"You know what we should call this place? Girlwood."

The snow dropped from one of the branches, as if the larches agreed.

Chickweed gets its name from the chickens who love to feast on it. The plant grows all year, even during winter thaws when no other edible plant is available. One of the most delicious wild salad greens in existence, with a flavor similar to iceberg lettuce, chickweed is also a common ingredient in many commercial salves and ointments.

The forest could have been Fairyland as Polly and Olivia walked home from Girlwood—the dawn sky like a field of tulips, the new snow twinkling pink, green, and blue, as if even the ground they walked on was enchanted.

Polly's dad was sitting on the porch stoop when they approached, his face unreadable.

"Dad," Polly said, "I'm so s—"

"I'll always worry about you," he said. "Even when you're
sixty. Every time you're late, I'll imagine what it's like to lose you. I can't go through that again, Polly."

Polly sat beside him, his quiet, pained voice worse than shouting. "But you don't have to worry," she said. "I'm the one who stayed."

He closed his eyes a moment, then kissed her bird's-nest hair. "I know, honey."

Olivia joined them on the stoop. Polly didn't think her dad would believe the whole truth, but she wanted to offer him something. So she told him about the canned vegetables they'd left for Bree.

"She took them,"she said. "Everything but the green beans."

People got nervous because her dad was so silent now, but all Polly cared about was that he start believing her. He stared at her for a good minute, then finally said, "We combed the woods. The police refuse to look there anymore. They won't look anywhere unless they get a tip."

"Baba says all you need to survive is water, food, and shelter. There are hot springs in the woods where the water never freezes. If Bree could find a cabin or some other shelter, all she'd need is food. We can give her that."

He looked toward the woods. "She's just a girl, Polly," he said.

Both Polly and Olivia gasped. Polly jumped to her feet. "So?"

"Sweetheart, I'm just saying—"

"I know what you're saying. You and Mom both. But at least Mom goes out and leaves things for her, even if she doesn't really believe Bree is there."

Her dad squinted into the sun as it came up through the trees. "Your mom's been leaving things for Bree?"

"Of course! Clothes, boots, food. At least she's doing
something
."

Her father looked like someone who'd just been told the sun came up in the west, not the east, that everything he thought he knew was wrong. "Your mother shouldn't be out there alone," he said, then he headed around back to the woodpile. When Polly and Olivia followed, he grabbed an ax and split a twenty-inch round cleanly in half. "It would have been a death wish for Bree to go into the woods," he said. "A slap in the face of the people who love her."

Polly could have told him that Bree probably hadn't even considered them, but he kept swinging.

"If she did go into the woods," he went on, "do you know how much wood it would take to keep her warm this winter?" Though his voice was pained, the brown glow around him was growing stronger.

He set up a line of pine rounds and split them one after the other, wood chips flying around him like shrapnel. Polly had to hide her smile as she led Olivia away.

***

The following Monday, Mrs. Finch asked the class to choose a topic for debate. Polly usually stayed silent, but this time she raised her hand.

"Yes?" Mrs. Finch said encouragingly. "Polly?"

"How about Mountain Winds?"

The smile faded from Mrs. Finch's face as Carly Leyland looked up from her desk. "What do you mean?" the teacher asked.

"You know," Polly said. "A debate on whether or not it's
124
right to hack up a mountain so a few rich people can enjoy the view."

The class got real quiet, and then Carly Leyland stood. "I'll take pro," she said, and Mason Halberton hooted.

Mrs. Finch studied Polly as if she'd never seen her before. "You'll take con?"

Polly swallowed. "Yes."

"All right," Mrs. Finch said, though she didn't sound too sure. "Everyone choose sides and write your arguments. Polly and Carly will present them in twenty minutes."

Polly kept her head down. She didn't expect anyone to side with a swamp girl, but as she took out her spiral notebook she heard shuffling. Olivia was coming her way, along with Mandy Aloman and Bridget Stork. Then John Bender, who
lived in a cabin without electricity much like Polly's dad's, and Peter Wendell, a shy, acne-ridden boy with an aura as vivid and blue as a tropical sea.

"Wow," Polly said. "I didn't think ... Thanks."

The light around John Bender was like a turtle shell, olive green and ribbed. Kids made fun of the crude cabin he lived in, but Polly envied his thousand-acre backyard. When Mountain Winds was built, he'd have millionaires for neighbors but fences shutting him out of his favorite trails.

They composed their arguments, and twenty minutes later, Mrs. Finch called Carly and Polly to the front of the class. Carly was getting an A and Polly a C– in debate, which was probably the reason that Carly had such a bright smile.

"Miss Leyland," Mrs. Finch said, "the pros begin."

Carly stepped forward in her skirt and creamy blue sweater, and everyone grinned at her foolishly. She was so pretty, Polly thought, it put people in a stupor.

"Mountain Winds," she began. "Heaven on Earth."

She paused for effect, and Polly rolled her eyes. Carly had merely memorized the slogan on her dad's signs and brochures.

"One of the most basic needs is a place to live," Carly continued. "My father has been a hard-working developer in Idaho for twenty years. He's nothing fancy. He's never done anything more than put in ten thousand homes for everyday
people. And now he wants to do more. We've all seen the local woods. The pines have been eaten up by beetles, the whole forest is overgrown and diseased. One lightning strike, one fire, and we'll lose it all. We can't afford to do nothing!"

Carly smiled while the class whispered. "My dad's
saving
the woods," she went on. "He's taking out the diseased timber and thinning the trees until the forest is pretty again, and safe. Any other developer would raze the whole mountain and build condominiums.
My
dad's going to leave open space and even put in a swimming pool! He's the good guy here."

When she was through, the applause was deafening. Polly looked at her notes and felt sick. Her team had forgotten the first rule of debate: focus on facts, not emotion. They'd wasted twenty minutes coming up with nothing more than wishes, their desire that something in this world remain wild and untouched and a refuge for those who needed it—whether they were fairies or wolves or girls.

Polly stepped forward. "I want to talk..." Her voice broke, and the girls in the front row laughed. She cleared her throat and tried again.

"I want to talk about the trees." She hoped no one noticed her trembling, though it was violent enough to flutter the paper in her hand. "Carry's right about one thing. They
are
diseased, and many of them are dying. But that's what they're
supposed
to do. Trees get sick and die, forest fires burn them to the ground, and stronger stands grow up through the ashes. That's the
plan.
We get so wrapped up in fixing things, managing things, it's like we forget we're not in charge! The trouble isn't pine beetles or fires but us, building houses where they were never meant to go, always meddling and screwing things up."

The kids in the front row were opening and closing their mouths in silent mockery, then falling all over one another in hysterics. Even as Mrs. Finch told them to quiet down, a bead of sweat trickled down Polly's spine. She looked at her notes once again, then crumpled them in her hand.

"Do you think magic is real?" Polly asked.

The words just popped out, and half the class, including Carly, snickered. Polly forgot what she'd been going to say next and stared at the floor, where someone had dropped a chewed pencil on the old green linoleum. Her eyes were burning, and it took her a moment to realize what she was seeing. A few inches away, the floor was gray, yet when she moved a foot, the greenish hue went with her. The color, it seemed, was coming from her.

Polly blinked a few times to make sure the light didn't vanish. She'd never looked for her own aura, afraid that it would be some dull color or perhaps not be there at all, but now she wondered how she'd ever missed the green tendrils emanating
from her skin. She was the color of the firs, of the larches in summer, of Baba. She raised her head and smiled at Olivia.

"Magic is all the things we don't understand and aren't meant to," she went on. "It's the best things, like chickweed that grows in the middle of winter when the elk are starving or a bear that opens its eyes on the first day of spring. Magic is a forest that can heal itself, and everything in it, if we don't tear it down first."

The class got a little quieter. "Carly says it could be worse," Polly continued, her voice growing steadier. "And she's right. It could be two thousand houses instead of one thousand. It could be another clear-cut. But is that what we're going to settle for? A life that could be worse? Carly says they're going to clean up the woods, but did you know they're going to put up a gate too? I read it in their brochure. You'll need a code to get in."

There were rumblings in the class, and the sweat on Polly's neck began to cool.

"This is just phase one," she said, raising her voice to be heard. "Then they'll want to build up the next ridge. And the next. What's going to happen when we're grown up and want to come home to camp or fish or just take a walk in the woods? I'll tell you what will happen. We'll be out of luck. The woods will be cut down, paved over, and gated off. And only Carly Leyland will have the key to get in. We'll be forty
years old and still praying she likes us enough to invite us over."

The room was hushed as Mrs. Finch turned to Carly. "Do you have a rebuttal?"

Carly tossed her own notes in the trash. "I'd just like to make sure everyone knows where Polly's dad lives," she said. "In a
cabin,
in her precious
woods.
Why does he get to live there and nobody else?"

"That cabin's been there for sixty years," Polly said.

"So what? What happens if a fire comes through and threatens his house?"

"If the cabin burns, it burns," Polly said. "That's the chance he's taking."

"Oh, right. You'd call the fire department in a second, make them chop down all the trees just to keep him safe."

"I would not! My dad doesn't even own a phone."

Carly rolled her eyes. "Yeah. We know all about your dad. Mr. Off-the-Grid Granola. Another nut case like your grandmother. At least he doesn't go around poisoning people."

"My grandma doesn't poison people!" Polly said. "She heals them. What do you know about my family?"