Windfalls: A Novel (26 page)

It was nearly dusk by the time she reached the campground. She had never been in a campground before, and it seemed she had arrived in a foreign land, as she walked the road that circled the campsites and saw people clustered around picnic tables, saw tents glowing like paper lanterns. Someone was playing a guitar. She heard soft talk, the laughter of families, the happy shrieks of children. But she found no tribe of kids, no painted school bus, no black puppy.

At the far end of the campground a narrow path led off into the trees. Cerise took it only because if she didn’t, she would have to retrace her steps, and she couldn’t fathom leaving the campground without finding Melody. She followed the path for a hundred yards or so until it intersected a weedy road that led through the woods like a green tunnel to a final campsite hidden in a thick circle of shrubbery.

There was no tent at this site, and no campfire. But a dusty Nissan was parked beside the picnic table, its trunk open. On its bumper, stickers announced “The Old Ways Are Not Forgotten,” and “Magick Is Afoot.” Moving closer, Cerise saw that a woman sat cross-legged on the bench in front of the picnic table, her dark hair loose around her shoulders, her back to Cerise. A blue cloth was spread on the table, and arranged across it was a puzzling array of objects—crystals and wildflowers, a silver cup, a votive candle, a figurine of a bare-breasted woman holding two snakes out at arms’ length. A little cone of incense sent a fragile trail of smoke into the forest air.

Cerise reached the car and then paused, uncertain how to proceed. Swaying with the odd sensation of not-walking, she waited until she heard the low growl of a dog coming from the shadows beneath the table. The woman shook herself as though she’d been napping and cast a startled glance over her shoulder. Then she bent and murmured something to the dog before she turned around a little defiantly to face Cerise.

She had bright blue eyes and a skin that had seen too much sun, though it was impossible to say if she was old or young. She was upright and trim, dressed in a gauzy purple dress and leather sandals. Encompassing her head was a slender circlet of silver from which a pendant hung, its green stone tapping against her forehead when she moved.

“How can I help you?” the woman asked, rising to stand in front of the table as if she might somehow shield its contents from Cerise’s view. Her words made Cerise think of a salesperson in a store, though something about her demeanor reminded her of Sylvia at the LifeRight center all those years ago.

Bewildered, Cerise peered past the woman to the picnic table. The quiet flicker of the candle at the foot of the little statue caught her eye, and the sight of even that tiny fire caused the tears to resume their path down her stiff face.

“Do you share my reverence for the Great Mother?” the woman asked, her tone suddenly warming as she noticed Cerise’s tears and the focus of her gaze.

“I’m looking for my girl,” Cerise answered. It had been so long since she had spoken that she could taste the bitter taint of her breath on her words, and her tongue felt thick and sticky in her mouth. “Is that water?” she croaked, pointing to the cup next to the candle while the tears rolled unheeded down her face.

“It’s moon water,” the woman answered. She sounded affronted, but when she saw how intently Cerise gazed at the cup, something in her expression shifted, and a second later she lifted the cup from the table. Holding it toward Cerise with both hands, she gave her a formal little bow. “May you never thirst,” she said. Clumsily, Cerise accepted the cup, drained it in huge, rough swallows. The water tasted stale, as if it had been stored in a plastic jug for a long time.

“Who did you say you were looking for?” the woman asked when Cerise handed her the empty cup.

“My girl,” Cerise answered. “My daughter.”

The woman frowned. “Is your daughter little?”

“Yes. No. Not really. She’s—I guess she’s turned seventeen. She was supposed to be—she said—at this camp.”

“There was a group of young people, camped down at the other end.” The woman gestured back the way Cerise had come. “I spoke with them last night.”

“Was there a girl with them?” Cerise asked hungrily. “Long hair? As tall as me?”

“Blond? With a tattoo on her cheek?”

“That’s her!”

The woman said, “Her puppy tried to eat my candles. She’s your daughter?”

“They’ve gone?” Cerise asked incredulously.

“They left this morning.”

“You’re sure? Where did they go?”

“Your daughter told me they were headed north. To Arcadia, she said.”

“Where’s that?”

The woman gave a quiet laugh. “Near Elysium, I think.”

“Where?” Cerise choked.

“I think she meant Arcata,” the woman answered. “Young people like to go there. There’s a university they can make a point of not attending, and lots of other similarly souled people to meet. Your daughter said they were going to build tree houses, and live in the woods.”

“How far is it from here?” Cerise managed to ask, though the words came out a broken whisper.

The woman studied Cerise for a long moment. “It’s a ways,” she answered finally. “Three or four hundred miles. Are you okay? I’ve never seen an aura darker than yours is right now. It’s really quite astonishing.”

Helplessly, Cerise shrugged and shook her head.

The woman asked, “Where’s your baby?”

Cerise started as though she’d been slapped. “What—”

“I can tell these things,” the woman answered almost smugly, though she added, “Besides, that’s milk, isn’t it? On your shirt.”

Beyond the curtain of bushes someone was building a campfire. Cerise smelled the first tentative wisp of smoke, and her gut clenched. She said, “My baby—” But the next word was too huge to be spoken.

The woman leaned forward. “You’ve lost your baby somehow?” she suggested. Her voice was tender but insistent.

Cerise nodded, still grappling with the word that was too large to fit inside her, too big to be gotten out.

“Did it die? He? Or she?”

“He.” Cerise stared at the scatter of twigs and redwood fronds littering the forest floor.

The woman asked, “How does that make you feel?” It was the question Cerise recognized from the news shows, the question that harvested others’ emotions, but it was irresistible. She said, “I want to be with him.”

The woman nodded. “It’s not as hard as we sometimes think. This society,” she scoffed, “with its dependence on technology—guns and pills and plastic bags. The woods have better gifts.”

“What?” Cerise croaked, struggling to understand what the woman was talking about.

“Hemlock’s probably best. Though there’s oleander and nightshade, too. And of course the amanitas.” She paused and peered more closely at Cerise. “Do you mind me talking like this?” she asked. “The ascendant culture is so squeamish and suicide is the last taboo. Too few people understand that it’s okay to be the mistress of your own destruction, as long as you’re clear on what you’re doing, and why.”

The woman waited until Cerise gave an uncertain shrug, and then she asked, “Why do you want to die?”

“I just—I want to be with him.”

“You already are, you know,” the woman said kindly.

“I’m dead?”

“No, though it might feel that way right now. I mean, he’s still with us.”

“Where is he?” Cerise asked urgently.

The woman gave a smile that was both sad and serene. “His energy hasn’t left the universe. His life force is still with us, as are all the atoms he borrowed to incarnate. He’s closer to us than ever, really, entering every breath, each drink of water. And of course you have your memories.”

“Where is my boy?” Cerise persisted.

“Look at these trees, look at the stars.” The woman swept her arm in a wide arc. “He’s all around you, even now. He wants you to be happy.”

Cerise glanced where the woman pointed. But there was nothing of Travis in the looming trees, nothing of him in the sharp and distant stars.

“Hemlock’s feathery,” the woman said. “It looks like carrot tops or parsley, a little like fennel. But it smells like mice, not licorice. Look for the purple splotches along the stem. It’ll kill you, but it won’t be pretty.

“But then you already have the knowledge of Our Lady,” she went on, the pendant on her forehead swaying as she spoke. “The Mother-Destroyer—Kali with her necklace of skulls. Demeter’s rotting swine’s flesh and sprouting wheat. Birth and death, that’s the whole story. Now you just have to find a way to hold it. But we women are containers. It’s our work.

“Let me see your hand,” she commanded.

Dazed by her own exhaustion and by all the woman’s talk, Cerise could hardly recognize the hand she held out, palm down, in front of her. Taking Cerise’s hand between her own, the woman turned it over, gently easing the fingers flat, tilting it toward the light that lingered in the sky above them.

When she saw the oozing blisters and shreds of dirty skin, she gave a little gasp. “Is the other one like that, too?”

Cerise nodded.

“Just a minute,” the woman said, crossing the campsite to her car. “All things were meant to be,” she called back as she rummaged in her trunk. “My coven meets tonight, and I packed before I came up here.” A minute later she returned with a basket and a bowl of water.

“Lavender and aloe,” she announced, pulling a towel, a tiny bottle, and a jar from her basket. “I wish I had my Saint-John’s-wort with me, too,” she added, swirling a few drops from the bottle into the bowl, and then submerging Cerise’s hands in the pungent liquid. “You’ll want to pick up some Saint-John’s-wort as soon as you can.” She lifted Cerise’s dripping hands, daubed them on the towel, and then opened the jar and smeared them with a colorless gel. “There,” she said once she had finished. “Now, before I cover them, let’s see what they have to tell me.”

Cerise watched as the woman studied her burned palms. She felt the stir of the woman’s breath and the movement of evening air stinging in the chill gel on her hands. She heard the sound of an ax, more laughter, a barking dog. She had walked so far to reach this place, and now Melody was gone. Her tears returned, warm and almost soothing to her eyes.

“It’s hard to tell much until they heal,” the woman said. Her voice sounded round and full, as though there were more people in the clearing than just Cerise. “But what I see is promising. Your palms say you are an important person. They tell me you have a long journey ahead, and that you’re smarter than Socrates.”

The woman paused, waiting patiently until Cerise croaked, “Who?”

“A stubborn, ugly old man who had inklings about the soul,” the woman answered. “It’s his blood you’ll find on the hemlock stem.” Despite her tangle of words, her hands were cool and gentle.

Then she fell quiet, bent above Cerise’s hands for so long that Cerise found herself staring at the little figurine, watching the flicker of the candle, listening to a wind she could not feel as it ran like a distant river through the treetops. Abruptly the woman said, “I think you should go north.”

“I don’t really believe this stuff,” Cerise said, finally reclaiming her hand.

The woman smiled and nodded, as though Cerise were a student who had just given the right answer on a quiz. “Excellent,” she said. “You’re making boundaries. You can’t keep them, of course, but you’ve got to have them to start from. And
don’t
might be better than
do
or even
want
for you right now.
Don’t
is probably what you need to keep going,” she said while Cerise stared past her to the darkening forest.

“You and your daughter parted unhappily,” the woman continued. “You’re still angry with her for her life choices. You think she’s made those choices to hurt you. You don’t yet see how much she learned from you, how much she needs you, even now. And you need her, too—though not in the way you imagine.”

Some of her words snagged Cerise’s awareness, and a protest rose up in her throat, though when she tried to speak, it sounded like another sob.

“Justice is the business of the Goddess,” the woman said, her voice ringing in the clearing. “Healing is the human task. Your job is to heal. You need to find a new way to align yourself with the intention of the universe.”

“I—” Cerise tried.

“Later, if you find you truly can’t, you know what hemlock looks like. It doesn’t take much,” the woman went on. “And it’s easy to harvest. The whole plant is toxic, though probably the roots are most effective.

“First find your daughter, that’s my advice. Find her, and then decide if you’re still hungry for hemlock. It’s always in season.”

She gave Cerise a sad, steady smile. Then, frowning, she twisted her wrist to check her watch. “I’ve got just time enough to bandage your hands, and then I really have to fly. Can I give you a ride back to the city?”

Cerise shook her head. For a long moment the woman watched her, studying her as though she were trying to balance something in her mind. Finally she said, “I’ll worry if I leave you here.”

Cerise shrugged, and when the woman continued to wait, she whispered, “I’ll be okay.”

The woman nodded. Spreading her arms wide, she tilted her face back to the patch of pale sky still left above the dark weave of soaring branches. “Earth, wind, fire, and sea. As she says, so mote it be.”