She walked there, touching the slim limbs of the young trees, until she found a clearing where the light shone down from the sky in dusky beams. The ground was soft and bare, the earth giving beneath her feet. She kicked off her shoes and pressed her toes deep. There was a sound of moving water in the distance, a mystic tinkling of liquid over rock.
Juliette held the packet of seeds before her. She looked up towards the sun.
She pulled the white dress up over her head and hung it off the limb of a sycamore sapling. It swayed there in the gentle breeze like a ghost struggling to be free. She knelt down in the dirt. The sun kissed her naked back and her shoulders and her legs. She pushed her hands deep into the dirt, and she began to turn it, to let it breathe, to bring it wearily to life.
* * *
Brian never knew his father. This was something new to us. We could not understand it, our lives were given shape and form by our fathers. They were the great and terrible architects of our existence, the models for our understanding of the patriarchal divine.
We never learned the name of his mother. Brian hid her from us almost completely, and the bits and pieces we did managed to scrape together were inconclusive, if not outright contradictory. She did not attend our church, nor any other. We knew of her only that she would tolerate no mention of any god under her roof, though we couldn't say why.
As for Brian, there was little to go on. Some of us knew him from school, but little was known about him. He kept to himself for the most part. Nobody ever knew him well.
Brian and his mother lived outside town, alone in the woods like something from a dark fairytale. He loved magic, though the word was forbidden him. He believed in magic, in a world of spirits. There is magic in the veins of the earth, running beautiful and foul alike beneath the crust.
He told me once that he wished he had never been born. I remember being really freaked out by that. But Brian was only a kid then. He didn't act like he was anything special, really. Not at first, anyway. I don't think he felt any special burden in those days, other than the same we all felt when we were young. It wasn't until he met Juliette that he realized how much more there was to the world.
Brian walked. What drove him from the house was never revealed to us. If some argument with his mother prompted his wanderings, we have no knowledge of it. He walked aimlessly in the woods. The sun went down and the moon rose. He listened to the creatures of the night all about him, to their cawing and howling, to their rustling through the great wood.
He slept. None of us would have dared, sleeping outside was anathema to everything we knew of the world, to every carefully instilled value. Natural becomes unnatural, and artificiality grows like a curtain over the world, never to be stripped away.
The next morning Brian rose and, for a moment, did not know what had happened to him. He told us later that, in that instant, he had felt himself die. He woke in the forest and, to his dreaming mind, it seemed the entirety of humanity had been wiped away overnight. Whether this was a premonition of what was to come, or merely a dream, we do not know.
He stumbled to his feet. He had forgotten everything, who he was and what he was doing and why he had done it. There were dead leaves in his hair. An insect had crawled up the sleeve of his shirt, he shook it loose and brushed away the leaves. The morning sun glimmered high above like a silver eye.
He remembered himself soon enough, but the boy who had woken there was not the boy who had slept. Perhaps it was simply the shock, the dull ache of the body having lain on hard ground. At the time, even gripped as he was in a state of near transcendent clarity, he still felt a measure of doubt. There was a part of him which longed to return to his mother's house, to return to what he had been and forgotten.
He wandered in the wood, aimless and hungry and alive with ideas.
What if his mother was wrong? What if there was a presence, a spirituality of some kind? He could not believe that the world, so teeming with life, so potent with energy that it seemed to hum in his ears and shimmer in his eyes, could be so simple, so bloodlessly formed as his mother insisted. There was something else.
The hours vanished unnoticed as he wandered. His thoughts did not turn inward, but outward rather to the forest around him. Everything seemed too beautiful, too wonderful. He wanted to kneel down and stare at every insect, every plant, every lichen-spangled rock.
Those of us that knew Brian would have found him at that moment almost wholly unrecognizable.
He was a moody kid, but he wasn't, like, weird or anything. He was just a normal guy, you know? He stared with everybody else when a hot girl walked by, he just didn't have the guts to talk to her. Not that I did, but I think he was more frightened of girls than I was. I don't know where I was going with this. He wasn't one of those sad-sack types who was always swanning around with a fistful of poetry, that's all I'm saying.
Brian found the water around midday. He thought about swimming. He touched his toe to the clear surface. It was cold. He heard a voice.
“Don't worry, I'll take care of you. I'll come every day, and I'll make you grow. Don't be afraid.”
Brian crept through the brush. Another person. How far had he wandered? An instant before he had felt totally alone in the world, alone with the world. Who was this intruder?
He peered out through the brush, crouching low. His breath seemed to him horribly loud.
He saw the dress first, fluttering weakly in the breeze. And there she was, kneeling in a patch of sunlight, patting down soft earth over planted seeds. She wore nothing. Brian felt his throat turn dry. She was younger than he was, hardly a girl even. At once he was attracted to her, though it wasn't a sexual attraction, wasn't lust. She pulled rather, drew him closer like a vortex might. He could not but fall towards her.
She was like nothing he'd ever seen.
Brian stepped out of the bushes and he walked toward the girl in the sun. He knew, somehow he knew, that it was something he was supposed to do.
* * *
“Why are you planting those?”
“So they'll be safe. If I plant them at my house than my father will dig them up.”
“Why would he do that?”
“He says that God would have put flowers there if he wanted them.”
“How far away is your house?”
“I don't know. Close.”
“Very close?”
“Not too close. Where's your home?”
“I think it's far away. I walked for a long time.”
“Are you going somewhere?”
“Not really.”
“Are you running away?”
“No.”
“Do you want to run away?”
“Sometimes. I...”
“What?”
“I don't have anywhere to go!”
“There's this place. You can come here.”
“Have you been here before?”
“No.”
“Do you want to help me plant these?”
“Alright.”
“Don't bury them too deep. They have to be able to reach the surface.”
“It's funny, what you said before. About God.”
“What's funny about it?”
“Nothing.”
“There's nothing funny about god. That's what my father says.”
“Who's your dad?”
“He's the pastor.”
“Of what?”
“The Church.”
“What church?”
“The Church.”
“I don't have a dad.”
“Everybody has a father.”
“I know that. I mean I don't know where he is. He's somewhere, but he's gone, I've never met him.”
“You don't even know what he looks like?”
“I guess he looks like me, but older. I think I'd probably recognize him if I saw him. You know. I sometimes feel like I can remember him, but before I could remember anything.”
“When you were a baby?”
&n
bsp; “No. I'm talking about before I was even born.”
“Nobody can remember that.”
“I can.”
“What was it like?”
“It was warm. I heard my Dad's voice.”
“I'm not sure I believe you.”
“Do you believe in God?”
“I have to.”
“Because your father does?”
“I guess so.”
“But what if you didn't have to. Would you then?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“God isn't like they say.”
“You have your own God?”
“We all do. Living inside.”
“Doesn't that make everybody a god then?”
She laughed.
I remember a story that my gran once read to me. It was about a girl who wandered away from her family and found herself in the fairy gardens of a world beyond. Gold dust falling from the sky, little people living in the mouths of lush purple flowers. There was no hate or greed or religion. My parents took the book away before gran could finish it. They said that they didn't approve of those kinds of stories, and I didn't get to see much of gran after that. I never got to hear what happened to the little girl after she went into the fairy garden. I hope I find out someday.
* * *
The poppies grew.
They made no plans to meet, nor did they take any special note of the location of their hidden bower among the trees. As the days passed they found themselves drawn there often.
Juliette found it easier and easier to sneak away from her parents. Her father was more often called away on the business of the church – and it was a business, he was often occupied with the economic concerns of his parish. He had little time for his silent and dutiful little daughter. Her mother seemed hardly alive. She lived out an automated existence without comment or complaint, responding only when spoken to. There was no light in her eyes. Juliette found it quite easy to slip away, and her absences – if they were noticed – went unremarked upon.
She came many times to the clearing under the cover of darkness, slipping from the house while her parents slept and running noiselessly through the moon-blue grass. When she was far from home she would throw her head back and howl at the blackened sky, scream with bared teeth to the great yellow eye and the smoky clouds as they slid across the dome of the sky. It made her feel free.
Having stolen the seeds without incident, Juliette turned again to thievery. She felt guilty about it, but the theft was never for her own gain, but rather for the sake of her budding children: a corroded silver goblet stolen from the dusty dining room cabinet that she used to ferry water from the spring to her thirsty poppies, a pair of over-large work gloves from the garage which she wore when she tugged up the snarled gray weeds which sprouted so easily. Brian and she decided to keep the cup and the gloves in the hallow of a twisted old willow tree that grew on the edge of the pond, an elderly giant amongst saplings.
Slow time slouched off, and deep in the earth her children grew.
* * *
Eventually we started to realize that Juliette was changing. We couldn't pinpoint exactly what form her difference took, but the transition was obvious. The first blossom of summer was upon us then then; the days were long and the nights warm. We only ever saw her at church, and that was not a place in which we looked for either truth or change. It took some time before we noticed.
We draped ourselves on the steep wooden stairway leading along the back of the building and we gazed idly down at the churchyard below and at the boys romping wildly in the golden fields beyond. We laughed behind our fingers and we basked in the sun.
Kendra Hendricks brought us a cigarette which she'd stolen from her uncle. It was long and white and beautiful, clean in its symmetry. Everybody laughed when she took it out, a nervous laugh that tripped its excitement from one girl to the next like a spark of electricity racing around the circle. Sara had a matchbook, and she held a wavering cardboard flame up to Kendra's mouth until the crushed tobacco lit and Kendra coughed up a cloud of smoke. She gave it to the next girl, and she to the next until half the thing was burned away and smeared with a half-dozen shades of lipstick.
Gloria Vern was keeping watch at the window, up on the tips of her toes with her cheek pressed against the warm pane. All at once she spun around and hissed at us. “Get rid of it, someone's coming!”
Patricia Daniels had the cigarette. She went pale and froze.
The door opened, and there was little Juliette. She was twelve years old that summer. She had long black hair and piercing blue eyes. Even her lips were pale. She was not tall, even for her age. Her dress was startlingly white, like a little puff of cloud wrapped around her.
She looked at us all, surprised and curious. Patricia hid the smoldering stub behind her back too late. Juliette cocked her head and we were all sure at once that we had been found out. Our minds were racing to the punishments which were ahead of us if she told her father and he told our fathers and our fathers told our mothers. Then Juliette stepped forward and plucked the cigarette from Patricia's trembling fingers. She brought it to her lips and drew in the acrid smoke, drinking it deep into her lungs before expelling it in a slow gray breath. She coughed a little, and frowned. “This tastes horrible,” she said, and went on down the stairs, the cigarette in the corner of her mouth and her hands in her lacy pockets.
We told the boys what had happened when they returned, and none of us could think of any sort of explanation for her behavior. It was agreed amongst us that it was very odd, and most unlike her. Juliette had grown up. She was not a child anymore, not like us. We felt that there was something special happening around us, and we wanted at once to be a part of it.
* * *
There was a songbird high above her, dancing from branch to branch as it chirped.
Juliette pushed her fingers into the dirt. Out here she was herself, and she knew that she was good. Brian didn't judge her, he seemed sometimes to hardly acknowledge her as a separate being from himself, like she was one of his limbs, or he hers. It was a strange feeling.
He talked a lot about magic, the magic of ordinary things. She found it thrilling, not only because she was breaking her father's rules to say that word, but because of the grain of truth she saw in what he said. There was magic in the world. She knew that, because she had touched it. They both felt it, both knew it.
Brian plucked a long strand of grass and turned it idly in his fingers. The sun was warm where it showed through the trees.
Juliette looked at him. His body fascinated her, so like her own and yet so very different. He had a strength to him which she did not see in her own figure. Her strength was in grace and mind. She liked to watch the muscles in his back when he knelt in the garden to coo mysterious words into the earth; she liked to watch the muscles of his arms flex when he gripped a handful of weeds and tore them from the soil. She wanted in some damp corner of her mind to touch his skin. She did not know what to do with these feelings. They confused her, and they frightened her. Was it wrong to feel that way about another person? About a boy? She had a feeling that her father would say it was.
Brain looked at her. His eyes glittered.
She knew what she had to do.
* * *
I used to play in the forest with a girl named Abigail Brighten. There's a path behind my house that winds through the town, eventually looping around the lake and leading into the stone pits. We were walking there one day, dancing back and forth across the dirty black trail of broken rock. There was a fisherman on the side of the path, trailing his line in the murky water below. He called out to us and smiled a broken toothed smile. If we'd been alone we probably would have been scared of him, but together we just laughed and raced off down the path. We crossed a little bridge, then came back to splash in the shallow water. The rocks were so slippery that Abigail fell over and got the back of her dress all wet. She tried to splash me, but I scampered awa
y, shoving into the clinging underbrush like a rabbit tearing through. She ran after me. We found a blackberry bush and ate until our fingers and clothes and tongues were stained purple.
We came back to the path and there was little Juliette crouched in the dirt, sobbing. We were at once ashamed, though I'm not really sure why. We circled timidly around her, touching her gently and asking in little voices if she was all right, was there anything we could do, what was wrong? She opened her hands and she looked right at Abigail, her tear-stained cheeks shining.
“Is God punishing me? What did I do wrong?” And she fell weeping to the dirty path.
We tugged her at once up onto her feet, panicked to see her in such a state. It wasn't right, we knew. Something bad had happened and, although we didn't know what it was, we were sure that we didn't want anything to change. If only she would stop crying, we thought, it would make everything better. It dawned on me then that Juliette's home was nearly two miles away. How had she come here? Where was her family? I didn't want to be discovered there, and be drawn into her misery. It was selfish of me, perhaps, but I was afraid, truly afraid. I grabbed Abigail by the arm and I tugged her away. Juliette staggered without us holding her up, but she stayed on her feet. The hem of her white dress was soot black from the dirty path. Abigail and I ran back down the trail, and didn't look back until Juliette was so far behind that she was nothing, just a shape in the green wood.
* * *
“Our flowers are dying. Our children.”
“Why? They were only just starting to bloom.”
“There's no blood. You can't live without blood.”
“That's not true.”
“You know that it is. That's how it has always been.”
* * *
She took out the knife and she held it towards him. The leaves above were reflected on the surface of the blade like an image of green fire.
“Where'd you get that?”
“It belonged to my family.”
Brian swallowed.
She pushed the knife into Brian's hands.
He looked at her. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
Juliette looked back at him.
He held his hand out, palm turned up.
Juliette shook her head. “Not like that.” She took the knife from his trembling fingers. “Do it this way.” She opened her mouth and pushed out her tongue. Brian winced when the tip of the knife pierced the muscle, and a red flower bloomed behind her teeth.