“No, it’s not the same.”

Edith stuck out her tongue and fisted her hands on her hips, a little emperor not amused at Maryann’s refusal to see things her way.

“Is too!”

Maryann shook her head, not taking her eyes off the rock in front of them. The crack running from side to side made it look like it had an overhung jaw, one that Edith insisted was smiling at them. Maryann wasn’t so sure.

“It wants to be free! Just like the cougar.”

Other walkers passed the two on the dirt path from the lake to the town without a moment’s pause or greeting. Their feet kicked up the late summer dust. It swirled near the rock reminding Maryann of breath from nostrils on cold days. Despite the heat, her arms broke out in gooseflesh.

“You need to free him now.”

“No.”

“He’s been spelled just like the cougar!”

“No.”

“But—

“No!” Maryann glared down at Edith who faltered a step back, hands now limp at her sides. “Dinosaurs died a long time ago. No sorcery did this. What you want is unnatural and only harm will come from it.” She turned and began walking back to town without waiting to see if Edith would follow.

She did, but not before taking one last look at the rock, memorizing its lines, promising to return. And as she turned her back, it looked like the rock grinned more fiercely. But it was probably only a trick of the light and the wind.

Once the cities were built, once the buildings were higher than the trees, once the pavement replaced the dirt lanes, few people wandered into the woods anymore. Nature had been tamed, they said. It was put to better use. When anyone objected, when anyone expressed sadness, when anyone suggested the cities could use some more green, they were rounded on as if they’d said something truly horrible, like suggesting pets might be put to better use as a food supply. People learned to keep their opinions about trees and streams and meadows and unkempt spaces to themselves.

Ida never learned. And she never cared to learn. Because somethings were more important than others’ opinions and public attempts at shaming. Ida always stood as if she were contrite, as if she were repentant. But she was not.

She was not because she knew why those whose power was tied to the city didn’t want people to still go into the woods. She knew why they especially wanted people to stay away from the creek, especially the part where there was a bend and a small waterfall and a tree that beckoned people closer.

There was magic in the woods, in the trees, and especially in the creek. It was a magic that couldn’t be controlled through a strategic plan, a building vision, a committee. It was alive and feral and only answered when treated with appropriate respect and even then, answered in ways that couldn’t be controlled.

So Ida didn’t try. She smiled and listened and learned as she dozed, toes trailing in the water with her back against the tree. And she learned that every city has its cracks where nature and its magic can seep in.

There is a giant chair now sitting beside the usual one under the trees. It was impossible to miss in the morning, on a walk, even with the light grey from the clouds blocking the sky from view. It wasn’t twilight or dawn, when the light plays tricks and everything flattens out until it looks as if you are walking through a painting rather than standing in the world.

The new chair, red as the sort of wagon we used to play in dragging our loads of books back to the library or each other until our arms burned, dwarfs the one someone nestled among the trees. It is the same color, a red that is never seen in nature. I wonder at both chairs. No one in town has ever admitted to putting the first one there. I doubt anyone will admit to putting the second one there. I’ve never seen anyone sit in the first one or smelled the sharp, unmistakable smell of fresh paint retouching the first. But it looks as new as the giant’s chair.

I don’t move any closer to see if there are tracks marking the path that the chair was dragged or wheeled into place. It would be worse to move closer and see no tracks. It is better to believe that there have to be tracks. I turn and hurry into town, not glancing behind me once, not even when I hear the call of a bird that shouldn’t be there. No one makes a chair without a reason and I don’t want to know the reason for this one. Tomorrow, I’ll walk the long way ‘round to town.

Every year we harvest the pumpkins and pile them high. They smell like sunshine trapped in the dirt. At least that’s what I told Mother once, then she laughed, and I’ve learned to keep my thoughts to myself.

After they are stacked and the banners are raised, the people from the City descend on our farms like sparrows on a pile of spilled seeds. They jostle and yell and purchase such a number of pumpkins that they could never eat before they start going soft on the bottom. Apparently they cut them open, too, not for eating but for lanterns with faces. I’d seen one once and it made me shiver down to my toes.

It makes me shiver when I hear them talk about cutting them over and leaving them out with candles inside with no one around to watch them. But I smile and make their change and answer their questions that show they wouldn’t know how to survive a day on the farm. That they don’t know what it’s like to keep secrets.

And when they turn their backs and laugh as they carry their pumpkins away, I cross myself as I hold my breath. Because I know that each pumpkin holds a secret. Everyone in the country knows that. You can hear them if you are caught out in the fields at dusk or dawn by yourself and the pumpkins are fat on their vines. They whisper and they tattle and they tease with their secrets that never mean anything good. And we let them go because we don’t want to know their secrets. We plug our ears when we harvest them or sing songs loud and clear. We sell them and their secrets to those who don’t know better. We let them go because we have enough secrets of our own.

The egret looks improbable from a distance and precariously perched the closer one comes towards him. He bobs like a boat in a squall, weaving side to side like a drunk. Yet, he never falls from the tops of the hedge where he walks. It is maddening. There seems to be no reason for him to be there, so close to the surf with the dark clouds overhead threatening to unleash a storm that these parts are known for across the country.

Then his head darts down, quick as a snake into the lower branches of the bush. You shiver at the thought of snakes. His beak reappears from the foliage and a lizard, the color of emeralds, hangs limp like an odd mustache. The egret tips his long neck back and feasts.

You’re not sure if you feel badly for the lizard or happy for the egret. You decide it might be both or perhaps neither as the first drop of rain lands on your head.

“The problem is we’re too good at hiding the pain,” Erika said as she stopped and looked out over the mustard fields.

“I don’t think that’s the problem,” Leo said. “It’s that we won’t fight and they know it.

She shook her head. He always wanted to fight, to pound something with his fists. As if knocking someone out would make them come around to the light. More likely it would just addle their brains. She gestured towards the yellow flowers that were almost too vibrant against the grey, muted sky.

“We hide our feelings like they hide our dead.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I said.”

A siren in the distance sounded and Erika’s pulse pounded in her ears as they turned, discussion forgotten, as they tried to outrun the wind. The mustard bowed as the storm moved in behind them, but did not break.

Idiots and charlatans told Likai having an old soul was a blessing. The wise ones shook their heads with compassion and instead said it was a curse. On the night with the moon that looked like a scythe or a grin, depending on one’s disposition, Likai discovered it was neither and both.

And, with so many things in life, what one person considered a blessing, another considered a curse. She had yet to give any weight or thought to such matters. Likai had weightier matters on her mind.

She was still deciding whether or not she had a soul at all.

There are those who run when towards the shore and those who run away from the shore. It doesn’t matter the day or the time or the height of the surf. There are those who run to and those who run from.

Silas looked at the rocks that had stood since before the kingdom, before the country, before anything had been touched by humans on this shore. They had grown smaller, harsher with the pounding of the waves, as had the humans that now covered his land. Silas felt a kinship with the rocks, but not the humans. They had a choice. The rocks did not.

He whipped around as a branch snapped behind him. His eyes narrowed, but the tension flowed out of his stance like the water sliding off the sand back to the sea.

“Silas.” The other tsked. “You shouldn’t be out here by yourself. You know how you get. Your moods are changing the seas.”

“Sorry.” He straightened up and they walked back inland, their backs to the sea.

“What will you do?”

“Decide,” Silas said as the clouds rolled in off the sea, blanketing the sky with grey. Before the rocks fell down, he would have to decide what to do.

In the hurry to and from the station, running to catch the train before it leaves you standing on the platform waving sadly to its retreating form, it is easy to overlook the corner garden. It is unassuming under glare of the loud neon signs above shouting this week’s sales and last week’s news. It does not tug at your sleeve like the sales clerks hawking the latest gadget you don’t need and trying to shove another flyer that will line the bottom of your recycling can by week’s end when you clean out your work bag. But it is there and sometimes you spare it a glance and it causes you to smile without realizing it or remembering it later.

One day you passed the garden after work and saw a woman standing in the garden, tying a slip of paper to the lowest branch of the maple tree. No one paid her a second glance, even though you’d never seen anyone in the garden before in all your years of running to catch the train. You paused and watched her. She turned around and hopped back, startled at your attention.

“I’m sorry,” you said with a nod, hoping you didn’t look frightening. You were, after all, a foot taller than her and she looked like she had been crying.

“I didn’t expect anyone to see me.”

You looked behind you at the crowd streaming in and out of the station, like two schools of fish passing in the deep sea without acknowledgement. Perhaps she was right.

“What were you doing?” The question was out of your mouth before you knew you were forming the words.

She stepped over the knee-high fence separating the garden from the street. “Sending secrets.” She put her finger to her lips and mimed the shushing action of no librarian you’d ever met. “Gardens are the best places for writing wishes, don’t you think?” She didn’t wait for an answer and was already lost in the crowd before you could reply.

You thought nothing else of it until two days ago, when you went to work and found yourself out of a job and came home to find you couldn’t think of one thing in the rooms that you would care about if it was stolen, or burned, or vanished like mist in the rain. It was as if your entire life no longer felt like your own and you wrote a note to your landlord saying your apartment could be let, all furnishings included. You packed your backpack with a few changes of clothes and a book that was covered in dust that you meant to read years ago, locked your door behind you, and dropped your keys wrapped in the note in your landlord’s mailbox.

At the garden, you paused and took a slip of paper from your pocket and wrote a one line note. You climbed over the fence, holding your breath in case someone yelled at you to stop, but no one did. The note the woman had left was nothing more than a wisp of paper fibers attached to a yellowed bit of string. You realized you had nothing to tie your note to the branch before remembering the twist tie around the bag of toffees in your pocket and you tied your note to the tree.

As you stepped over the fence, you looked up and almost ran into a school-aged child watching you with wide eyes.

“What are you doing?”

“Sending secrets.” You put your finger to your lips and the child mimicked you.

You smiled and left the garden behind as you entered the train station, not sure where you would go next, but knowing you’d not be back until long after your note was eaten by the wind and the rain. And that was good. The garden would do its job and perhaps, if you were truly fortunate, you might meet the woman again in your travels who told you about sharing secrets. Perhaps.

 

 

“You know,” Keysea said, “People never look up when they’re walking.”

“Hmmm?” Tess wasn’t paying attention, not really. She was still thinking about whether or not she should have haggled more over the sack of seeds she had over her shoulder from the market.

“Look up.” Keysea pointed to the tree in front of them. “What do you see?”

Tess raised an eyebrow at her friend before looking up at the tree. It was still just a skeleton, an outline of a tree. It was too early yet for the first buds of spring, even if the sky had finally cleared out the grey storm clouds. In the topmost branches of the tree were black specks that could be mistaken for buds, but instead were birds. She sighed.

“Nothing but a flock of birds.”

Keysea shook her head. “Not just any birds. Listen.”

The birds’ high, wispy call cut through the noise that flowed out of the town and the faraway sound of a train whistle. It sounded mournful and hopefully all at the same time. It made Tess shiver and Keysea smile.

“Those are harbingers.” Keysea made the sign for luck as they passed under the tree.

“Harbingers of what?”

Keysea shrugged. “Depends on what they see and what you hear in their call.”

Tess shivered again. “What do you hear?”

“The changes of spring.”

Tess didn’t reply as she walked alongside Keysea back to the crossroads where they parted to make the last half-mile journey alone to their families’ respective farms. But Tess thought she heard Keysea whistling as she watched her retreating back and it sounded like a bird’s call from high up in the trees.