Eye of Flame (18 page)

“But you can’t do anything,” I said. “You won’t get past the roots. They’re all over the place now.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“Didn’t you see them on your way out?”

“I thought it was only your manic-depression, but you’re really out to lunch. That does it, Jennie. I’m calling Curt as soon as—”

“Go ahead and call. You’ll just be wasting your money. There’s nothing you can do.” She didn’t answer. “Evie? Evie?”

The line was dead. I wandered through the cabin, trying to sort out my thoughts. The electricity still worked, and water came out of the bathroom faucets. If I didn’t look through the windows at the bark barriers entwined around the place, I could almost believe everything was still normal. Somehow, the burrowing roots weren’t affecting the cabin, but that probably wouldn’t be the case for long. Eventually I would run out of food, and the roots would keep me from driving into town for more. There was no reason to stay anyway. How could my sister and brothers sell this land now?

I packed some food and a canteen of water, then struggled over the roots down to the dock. The roots winding among the forested hills had settled down, but now a brown wall cut off Mr. Simmons’s camp from view. He had said he was on his way out when I called; he would certainly be surprised when he tried to drive back. There was no point in going to his place anyway. I would try for town. I didn’t think about what I would do if the roots had spread that far.

I dropped the backpack into the canoe, then climbed in and paddled out, looking back when I was halfway across the bay. The pine towered overhead, as tall as a skyscraper, dwarfing everything around it, its needles as long as arrows. The surface of the lake was dappled by the green shadows of giant boughs. There had been some peace for me under the tree my grandmother had planted; maybe its limbs would grow vast enough to shelter the world. I paddled out from the shadows toward the far shore.

I beached the canoe at a spot where the land sloped gently up from the water, then shouldered my backpack. The tangle of roots on the hillside above had cut me off from a path that led to the nearest road. I scrambled over one thick root, into a ditch and up another root, then sat down to consider my options.

Even if I managed to find the road, making it to town might be pointless. If the roots had spread that far, I would only find chaos, and be forced to try for refuge somewhere else. I lifted my head and gazed across the lake at the camp. The cabin was hidden, the great tree a branching green canopy shielding the forests below. Roots were looped among the reeds near the shore; I thought of them tunneling under the water. The mountains beyond the bay, made blue by the distance, were now covered by thin brown webs.

So the roots had already spread that far. In the middle of this unexplainable event, sitting on top of a root that gently pulsated under me, I was surprised to find that I could still think rationally. Reason told me that my only choice now was to find the road, follow it to town, and figure out what to do after I found out what was going on there. If I kept climbing this hill, I would eventually reach the road, however many roots barred the way.

The tree was still stretching toward the sky, as if time was accelerating. I imagined the great pine springing into space, its boughs embracing the moon as its roots clutched at the earth. A wedge of ducks, quacking loudly, dropped toward the lake; the water blossomed around them as they landed. Maybe that was keeping me sane, the fact that the birds and animals I had seen were acting normally, that the roots had not harmed or frightened them. Perhaps the animals were somehow blind to them. I narrowed my eyes and stilled my thoughts, and the roots became translucent, as if I were gazing at one image superimposed on another. But the root under me still throbbed, as though sap and nutrients were coursing through it, and I felt the ground shake as another root slithered past my feet. The great pine and its roots might save this bay from intruders. I wanted them to be real.

As I stared at the lake, an eagle flew out from under the great pine, soared over the bay, then dropped toward me and landed in a branch overhead. It watched me for a while, waiting.

“Well?” I said. The bird fluttered its wings, then lifted from its perch.

The eagle wanted me to follow. I didn’t think of why a wild bird of prey would want me to follow it anywhere, but sensed that it did. The eagle led me. Whenever I was lost and uncertain of which way to go, it would return and circle above me before flying on.

I climbed over roots and down into wide ditches, then thrashed my way through underbrush. Roots were looped around berry bushes and arched over creeks. The staccato tapping of woodpeckers filled the forest, and once I glimpsed a rabbit before it hopped over a root and disappeared. I kept going, following my feathered guide through the tangled tendrils of wood until my backpack seemed as heavy as a boulder and my arms felt like useless baggage; my legs were cramping from climbing over so many roots. It was beginning to dawn on me that I should have come to the road by now, that the eagle was only leading me even farther into the forest.

I leaned against a tree, cursing myself for my stupidity. Had I been thinking clearly, I would have stayed in my canoe, headed through the channel and then hugged the shore until I reached town that way. Now I was too lost even to find my way back to the canoe. I might have given up then if the eagle hadn’t flown back and landed on a branch just above me.

“I suppose you want me to go on,” I said. “Not that I have much choice,” The bird tilted its head. What was the point, after all, of going back to a world where I had always felt displaced, where something inside me had constantly threatened to burgeon as wildly as these roots? My previous life had been as uncontrolled as this growth, a manic lashing out followed by a burrowing into depression. Like the pine my grandmother had planted, I had been waiting to gather my strength. I don’t know whether my grandmother had meant this to happen, or if she had been ignorant of the pine’s power, but I would take my chances among the roots burrowing into the earth, among the trees the great pine was protecting.

“Grandma,” I whispered, “you planted some kind of tree.”

The deep green light of the forest grew darker. The eagle disappeared. I struggled on until I reached a small clearing. Ahead lay the largest root I had yet seen, a rounded ridge of bark as high as a good-sized hill.

I was too tired to go on. I stretched out, propping myself against the backpack. The air was still; the birds were silent. My ancestors had believed there were spirits in these mountains, but I was more fearful of animals that might be lurking nearby. Then a darker thought came to me, the kind of grim reflection I often had just before falling asleep, a thought that becomes a sinkhole swallowing every fragment of hope.

Maybe I was as crazy as Evie believed. Maybe the sudden growth of the pine tree and its huge, spreading roots were a delusion. I wanted to save this land so badly that I could imagine the supernatural had intervened to save it. I had called up this vision, and the small part of me that was still sane was able to perceive that the surrounding land and wildlife were unaffected by my imaginings. Maybe I would wake to find everything as it had been, and be unable to find my way out of the woods. Fear locked my muscles and dried up my mouth. I might wander these mountains until I joined the roaming spirits of Indians who had never been laid to rest.

“Perhaps you will,” a voice said. “Maybe this is all an illusion after all.” The voice was inside me, but I opened my eyes to see a woman standing near the root. She wore a long cloak decorated with beads and a band with eagle feathers over her brow, but the darkness hid her face. “Perhaps what you see is only a vision that will vanish, and you will return to the world you remember. But you cannot find your way back to your canoe without help, and even if you made it to the town, what then?”

“My sister’s there,” I replied, “and she thinks I’m a few cards short of a deck as it is. She’d have all the reasons she needs to put me away. Can’t really blame her, you know—she has other priorities.”

“Do you want to go back?”

The answer shot out from me before I could hold it back. “No.”

The woman vanished. The ground lurched; I looked up to see trees swaying wildly. I jumped up and grabbed for a tree limb as the earth yawned under my feet. Roots were sinking all around me, groaning as they burrowed into the ground. I guessed what it meant. The tree had reached out with its roots and would now send them deep into the world to entwine them around the earth’s heart. Then I lost my grip and was suddenly rolling down the hill until something hard rushed up to meet me.

I must have lain there throughout the night, because when I opened my eyes, the forest was green with light again. I was afraid to move, expecting to feel bruises and aches, fearing that I might have broken bones. But when I finally sat up, my body obeyed me easily, bringing me to my feet as effortlessly as it had when I was younger.

Most of the roots had vanished, but I felt them pulsating beneath me. The giant root still lay across the hill, and now I noticed that the trunks of the trees around me were marked by lines and patterns that pointed upward. My backpack lay near me; I slipped it on. I had as much chance of reaching safety by following the carved markings as I did doing anything else.

I hurried up the hill, then climbed the root, clinging to ridges in the bark, resting my feet in its cracks. The backpack tugged at my shoulders and pressed against me with its weight. I kept going until the ground was far below me and it was too late to turn back. I climbed, afraid to look up or down, until I reached the top.

There were no giant roots in the valley below me, only maples and pines of normal size. They stood around a field planted with corn and squash, and in the distance, I saw the wide leaves of tobacco plants. Smoke rose from the roofs of the longhouses beyond the field; people waited in the doorways, men and women in deerskin robes adorned with beads.

I don’t know where this land is. It may be the past, or a far future, but I don’t know enough astronomy to look up at the night sky and find out. It could be a world that might have been. Whatever it is, something has guided me here, to the place where I will make my home and live out my life.

I stumbled down the other side of the root and went to find my clan.

The Shrine

Christine heard the childish, high voice giggling out an indistinct sentence; the woman’s voice was lower and huskier. She waited. A door squeaked open and then she heard her mother’s rapid footsteps on the stairs.

Christine stepped into the hall and peered at the slightly open door. Her mother had been in Christine’s old room again; she had been there last night when Christine first heard the voices and had recognized one as her mother’s. She went to the door, pushed it all the way open, and gazed.

Her mother had done no redecorating here, as she had everywhere else. Christine entered, turning to look at the wall of framed photographs and documents above the slightly battered dresser. A young Christine with wavy blond hair and a wide smile stood with a group of other little girls in Brownie uniforms. A thirteen-year-old Christine wore a white dress and held a clarinet; an older Christine, slightly broad-shouldered but still slender, grinned up from a pool where she floated with other members of the Mapeno Valley High Aquanettes; a bare-shouldered Christine in a green formal stood at the side of a tall, handsome boy in a white dinner jacket. Her high school diploma was framed, along with other certificates; another photo showed her parents beaming proudly as they stood behind Christine and her luggage at the Titus County Airport, waiting for the plane that would take their daughter to Wellesley. There, as far as the room indicated, Christine’s life ended. She had lasted less than one year at Wellesley.

She gazed at the top of the dresser, where her high school yearbook had been opened to her page. A pretty girl with flowing locks smiled up at her.

Matthews, Christine

“Onward and Upward!”

National Merit Scholar; National Honor Society, 3, 4; Student Council, 2, 3; Class Vice-President, 4; Aquanettes, 3, 4; Assistant Editor, Mapeno Valley
Clarion
, 3, 4; Dramatics Club, 3, 4; Orchestra, 2, 3, 4; Le Cercle Français, 2, 3, 4; Yearbook Staff, 4.

She closed the yearbook. The room was suddenly oppressive. She was surrounded by past glories; the room, with its embroidered pillows and watercolor paintings, was a shrine to what she had once been. Her mother could drive to her brother’s house, only forty-five minutes away, to view his athletic trophies and his various certificates, but Christine’s had remained here. She had been a good daughter, as Charles had been a good son. He was still a good son. Christine had not been a good daughter for a long time.

“Just coffee for me,” Christine said as she entered the kitchen.

Her mother looked up from the stove. “Now, Chrissie, you know how important a good breakfast is.”

“I never eat breakfast.”

“You should.”

Christine sat down at the small kitchen table while her mother served the food. “Well,” she said, and sipped her coffee.

“Well,” Mrs. Matthews replied. She poked at her eggs, took a bite of toast, then gazed at her daughter with calm gray eyes. “So it really is over between you and Jim.”