1. Girl

[clare_dragonfly]

-
falling down as the winter takes one more cherry tree
-

Winter was long. Juniper thought that each winter, in her relatively short experience, had been longer than the one before; certainly her food stores, this winter, were in serious danger of running out, more than they had last year. But it was ending now. The snow was melting around the roof, and she heard the loud, world-breaking cracks that signified that the thick sheet of ice on top of the lake was beginning to thaw.

It was still not truly over; she could walk out on the ice to her fishing hole without falling through, which she did, that afternoon, to get a few fish for her dinner. She had success, and ate well of their flesh that night, but she was out of nearly all of the canned goods she had made, so she had no vegetables or fruit with her dinner. In the morning she would go and see if there was anything yet growing to be found.

In the morning the snow was running even faster, down the slope to the lake, and the water was bubbling up through her fishing hole. It would not be safe to walk out on the ice again this year, unless there was a new freeze, but the sun was out for many hours each day and she did not think that there would be a new freeze. But soon she would be able to fish the ordinary way, and also to hunt, to supplement the small amount of smoked meat she still had hanging in her house.

She found cress that morning, clinging to soil nearly washed away by the meltwater. It was not much, but it was a good addition to complement her venison. And if she did not take it now it would be washed into the lake and no one but the fish, who had their own underwater plants, would get the benefit of them.

As she walked back through the slush to her house, she passed by her trees and patted each of their trunks. Three apple trees, two cherry trees. She did not know why the cherry trees clung on when the plums and pears had all died, but she was glad they had. She needed their nutrition. When the forest was more passable, later in the spring, she would have to trek to town and attempt to barter for more fruit pips. Two kinds of fruit trees were not enough, and the fruit they bore did not last, even canned or dried, through the winter. It had been a week since she had tasted the mild tang of a dried apple, and her mouth watered at the thought.

Cress and venison for breakfast; venison for lunch; squirrel for supper. It was filling, but unsatisfying. Tomorrow she would range further.

Tomorrow came; the rushing of the meltwater was even greater. Her deerskin boots, Juniper thought as she pulled them on, would need another treatment of waterproofing. Another thing to remember to do when she was able to go into town. Not today, though; today would be too unsafe, with all that mud. But she could look for food.

The first thing she looked to when she stepped outside was her tiny orchard, and she laughed softly with relief and delight to see that the apple trees were furred with tiny buds of green; their leaves were beginning to come in. Soon flowers would join them, and after that, fresh apples. Perhaps this would be the year she avoided making herself sick on unripe green apples, but she doubted it.

Slogging through the slush and mud towards the forest, though, she approached the orchard more closely, and could tell something was not right. The nervous sensation in her stomach began before she could see what exactly it was. One of the cherry trees had tiny green buds as well—not visible from as far away as the apple trees’ buds were, but still unmistakably there. The other one was quite, quite bare.

Stomach twisting, she reached up with a mittened hand and tore open a twig on the bare cherry tree’s lower branch. She had tried to hold on to hope, but the whole time she’d known the truth that was laid bare by the grey, brittle twig; this tree was no longer alive.

Her body shook so hard that, though she had not tried to take a step, she slipped in the mud and fell heavily against the trunk. “No,” she whispered in a cracked, tiny voice. The tree, never robust, creaked beneath her weight. It would make good firewood, the twigs fine kindling. But that would not make up for a whole tree’s worth of fruit.

She took a deep breath, pulled herself to her feet, and walked from tree to tree, touching them as though she could feel even through the wool the life that flowed in each tree’s sap. And perhaps she could, because it was certain that the cherry tree that had died felt different from the others.

She stepped into the shelter of the forest, still looking at her orchard as though she could diagnose the cherry tree’s illness if only she looked at it from the right angle. But there was nothing to diagnose. The long, hard winter had taken it, as it had taken so many of her trees before.

She had saved cherry pits from last year, of course, a whole bushel of them. But not all of them would grow, and fewer of those would thrive, and none at all would be ready to bear fruit in time to do next winter’s canning. It would be a harder winter than she had ever seen before, and knowing that made her wonder, with the clarity of despair, if she would be able to survive a winter so harsh.

Then, not putting aside that thought so much as returning to her original purpose, she turned away and walked slowly into the woods, her boots making only a soft sound on the mud and fallen leaves that still carpeted its floor; this forest, the forest she had always lived just at the border of, was so thick that little snow ever made it to the ground, though several branches, ripped from their trunks by the weight of the snow, blocked Juniper’s intended path, forcing her to move around them. It made no difference to her, for she did not know where she might find some kind of food.

No berries were yet fully formed, let alone ripe, but she did find a few scrawny root vegetables and a small cache of mushrooms at the base of one tree. She stuffed them into her tunic pockets, then walked slowly back home, chewing slowly on one of the roots and taking a different path. She did not think of her path or her food, and indeed thought of nothing but how best to prepare for next winter. She had lived by these woods for so long that the direction of her home was a sense memory, a knowing in the soles of her feet rather than in her mind or her eyes.

So it was that her mind was clear enough that her ears could hear the wind change. So it was that her mind was clear enough that her eyes could notice that the wind was still blowing very gently west, as much as it had all morning. So it was that her mind was clear enough to focus on the new sound that the wind was making in the trees, and so it was that she stopped in her tracks, root clamped in her teeth, listening hard to the wind. It was almost as though there were words in it.

You hear us. It was a question, a statement, a hope, a despair. It was in the wind. It was the trees. Had she imagined the words?

Juniper. You hear us.

She had not imagined that. She had imagined her name called, many, many times in the six years since her father had died, but it was always his rough voice, imperious, calling her back to the task at hand or letting her know that she had done something wrong, even when she knew she had not. Those were imaginings born of fear and love. They were never voices like this, like soil and leaf and sap and sugar, like bark and root, like reaching for the sky and settling deep in the ground.

These were the trees. The trees were speaking. She removed the root from her mouth, swallowed hard, and said, “Yes.”

There was a pause—or was it a pause? The wind was still whispering through the trees, or the trees, perhaps, were whispering through the wind. Finally words reached her again, seeming only to take shape as they struck her ear. We are dying.

“What? How can that be?” She moved her head about, seeking in vain for a face to look at, something to focus on. Everywhere she turned, there was nothing but trees, their branches moving softly in the slight wind. Nothing moved but those branches, save perhaps the leaves, and the needles of the many evergreens. There were no faces in the bark or hands formed by limbs. There was nothing human she could see in these trees.

But there was death. Some trees were green, or dusted with it, and some were nothing but brown and gray. Like the cherry tree, their sap had frozen some time during the long, dark winter, and now they could never reach the sun.

It is a curse. An old, old curse. An ancient curse. A cruel curse. The words seemed to be spoken at the same time, overlapping, as though the voices could not agree on a way to describe the curse. After another winter there will not be enough of us left to speak. It takes strength to speak this way.

Another winter. Juniper’s stomach shrank in on itself. She had just been thinking of how she could survive the next winter; if she, who had ways of procuring food and shelter, and plenty of warmth to keep her blood from freezing, was worried, how could the trees survive? She put her hand gently on the browned branch of a spruce tree close by. The needles shivered, and many dropped to the ground. “What can I do?”

Break the curse. Journey. Leave this place. Break the curse. The voices were becoming more and more fragmented, more and more like they could not decide what should be said, like they were indeed separate entities instead of a single mind.

“Why me?”

You hear us, Juniper. The voices were together again, stronger, all in concert. You listen. Others can hear, but no one else will listen. You must break the curse.

Juniper shook her head, but in fear, not in negation. Could she do this? There was no way to know until she had tried. But she did not want to try. She wanted to stay here in her warm, safe home (and as she thought those things she became aware of how her nose was nearly numb standing out here in the woods, her toes like blocks of ice even inside her boots), and live by her wits and her garden as she had always been taught.

But she did not have that option, not if there was a curse that was killing her garden. And if it was killing the trees, it must be killing the game, as well. If this curse was not broken, she would be unable to survive here, in this place she loved.

She thought of making a journey, wandering beyond the village—the farthest from her home she had ever been—and deliberately placed a wall there, in her thoughts. She would not think about it. She had always done what she must to survive. If that meant leaving, then so it must be. “How do I break the curse? What do I look for?”

Travel south. South, south. We will guide you. We will show you. The voices were breaking up again.

Juniper nodded, slightly relieved. If she had to travel, at least it would be in the direction of warmth and light. The trees may not have known how far her destination was, but at least the snow would have melted there. “I will leave tomorrow morning.”

The sound of the trees coalesced into a long, drawn-out sigh. There were no words, but Juniper could hear relief in it, pleasure and gratitude. Her heart lifted as she walked back to her house.

-
she’s been everybody else’s girl
-

Juniper spent the rest of that day, in between cooking up her roots and mushrooms with some venison into a stew that she nibbled at throughout the day, packing for her trip. It took her less time than she’d expected, even though she had no idea when or even if she would return to her home. Most of the things she owned—her feather-stuffed bed, her ancient stove, her carefully stockpiled firewood—had to stay with the house, whether she was there or not. She only had a few changes of clothes, and only one set of winter gear, which she would, of course, be wearing. Most of her time was spent sorting the last of her prepared food and a few other items into things she could trade and things that would be better to bring with her. She hated to have to give up her last little jar of cherries, so she finally decided to eat them for breakfast.

When she woke the next morning, the thin light streaming through her window and into her eyes brought with it all of her plans, and she rose immediately. A small amount of squirrel meat accompanied the cherries to give her energy as she dressed, and then she pulled on her pack, strapped the pouch containing her trade goods onto her belt, and was on her way.

She only looked back once as she started down the faint path that followed the river, already missing her trees. But the path was surrounded with woods, and they rustled around her, murmuring reassurances and bolstering her on her way.

The sun was a pale circle surrounded by grey clouds, barely cresting the tops of the trees, when she left her home; when she arrived in the town, it was a fist’s-length above the thinner trees, and surrounded by more blue sky than clouds. She took that as a good omen for her journey. It was beginning with clearer weather.

-
maybe one day she’ll be her own
-

A girl walked into the town. A stranger.

Or was she a stranger?

People saw her walking, not quickly but steadily, before she reached the town. She came from the north. She showed no surprise as she passed the outermost buildings, the homes of people still rising, still beginning to enjoy the beginning of spring’s weather.

Housewives bringing clothing out for the year’s first laundering watched her as she walked down the path past their homes.

Children running out bareheaded to feed the chickens watched her as she walked down the path past their homes.

Men going out to survey the land for the first spring plowing watched her as she walked down the path past their homes.

And as she walked past, back straight, face schooled into a mask of calm, they recognized her pale face and her thick eyebrows and her prowling gait, and they whispered.

She was Hawthorn’s daughter, Hawthorn, the strange man who lived up in the north woods, who refused human company except for that which he demanded. No one had seen him now for seven years, and they had seen his daughter only seldom, less and less often in those years. She had grown so that it was hard to see the child who had once accompanied her father on trading missions, but that child was still here in those clenched fists, that silent mouth.

That man’s daughter was here, and her dress bespoke travel, her manner bespoke trade, for she wore a heavy pouch prominently at her waist. But she was silent, and aloof, and strange, and perhaps someone else would want to trade with her. After all, they had their own chores, their own families to think of. What could she have to trade, after all? She was not, they had to admit, her father.


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