Chapter Six

Sunday after church I tried my best to be polite during lunch without overdoing it; I was afraid that if I was too forthcoming, it might encourage Mom to ask what my plans were for the afternoon, and my plan was to say as little about that as possible. For sure, I wasn't about to say anything about going to the village.

But I needed to say something, because I'd be at the village through dinner, and even though I'd mentioned it to Mom last night, I didn't want there to be any misunderstandings. I waited until Dad had disappeared downstairs and Stu had headed out without any explanation about where he was going or for how long. I grabbed my jacket and keys, and as I headed for the door I called "See you" to Mom.

"Jesse? Where are you going?"

"Like I told you last night, I'm having dinner with a few friends from school. I'll be home in plenty of time to finish my homework for tomorrow."

"But where are you going now? It's not dinner time."

I stood with one hand on the open door and did my best to arrange my face into an expression of exasperation that didn't quite cross the line into impertinence, and I just looked at her as if to say, Really? Haven't we talked about this?

All I did say was, "I have my cell if you need me. See you later." And I escaped quickly, pretending I didn't hear her call my name again.

The afternoon was kind of warm for February, high forties, but overcast. It was still kind of early to show up at the village, but I'd wanted to get out of the house as soon after lunch as possible so nobody (read: Mom) could involve me in anything. So I needed to drive around for a little while. I was feeling kind of anxious about today, though I couldn't have said why.

I drove over to Wister Lake and sat looking at the water, which was almost black with no sun shining on it. I stared into it as though I could see what was hiding down there. Thinking back to the day I'd worked on the labyrinth, I tried to pick individual impressions apart; maybe that would help me figure out what was making me nervous about being in the village again.

There was Griffin, of course, but when I let my mind linger on him, what I felt was something light and fun, despite the black hair and all the piercings and that tree on his back. I was surprised that I felt absolutely nothing sexual at all now. Self-preservation, maybe? Because I knew he was straight? And the impression I used to have about him, that he'd know the answers to those universal and unanswerable questions, felt like misplaced hero worship now. I genuinely liked him. But he was not my hero.

Todd Swazey was impressive, but that's all. Eleanor was Eleanor; she seemed distant, but not out of anything unfriendly. It was more like that's just who she is, and maybe as Elder of the grove she needs to maintain a feeling of remove.

Then there was Ronan.

As soon as I focused on Ronan, there was a kind of chaos happening in my brain. I couldn't get my thoughts to land on anything and stay there. Impressions such as bristly, protective, cautious, dangerous, and fascinating flew around, and I just watched that black water and let the thoughts fly. After a bit, I wasn't seeing the water. I was seeing something in the center of all those flying things. It was like two eyes looking back at me, only they seemed more like an animal's eyes. They were looking right at me, not boring into me exactly, but something about them made me think of power that lies deep. Not like Todd's strength, but something other than a physical kind of power. The eyes were frightening and also compelling, and I wasn't sure which of those things made me pull away and blink until I saw the lake again.

I shook my arms out and decided I needed to immerse myself in something familiar, something mundane. So I sat in the truck for a bit, listening to music before heading to the village.

Griffin invited me inside his house, which I'd been hoping would happen so I could see if the insides of the houses here were as normal as the outsides. They were. Though I did notice a difference in the kinds of things the Holyokes had by way of knick-knacks. Instead of something like the Hummel figurines my mom collects, the Holyokes had things made of wood, like carved animal shapes, or stone things, some carved and some more natural forms. I was really drawn to something Griffin said was an amethyst geode. It was on the floor, standing upright about two feet high, gray and oddly shaped on the back and top. It had been cut open so you could see inside to all these purple crystal teeth. It was incredibly beautiful. Griffin said it came from Brazil, I think, not from around here, so it wasn't something Brad was likely to find. Too bad.

Griffin said that I'd get to meet his father, and also Selena and Parker, at the supper later. Mrs. Holyoke seemed nice, although she also seemed a little scattered as she worked on things she was preparing for the supper later. She talked mostly about how glad she was that Selena and Parker were moving back and would live in the village, which was news to me. She offered us apples with cheddar cheese, and as soon as we'd devoured everything, Griffin suggested going to the labyrinth.

"Most people have already walked it at least once, and although they might do it again later because of Imbolc, it's probably pretty empty right now."

On the way out of the house I noticed something beside the door. Two somethings, actually. They looked like crude dolls, made out of what must be corn husks. One was obviously newer than the other.

"What are those?" I asked Griffin.

"Imbolc dolls. They symbolize the old year, the crone, and the new year, the maiden. The crone was last year's doll, and the maiden will be the crone next year. Mom always has me make them, though she can't explain why. It's just a tradition that someone in the house who's male is supposed to make them."

"Do they live here near the door for a reason?"

Griffin laughed. "No. We'll give the crone to the fire later. The maiden doll will get put away until Imbolc next year. Come on."

The sun began to peek out from behind the clouds as Griffin and I walked over to the labyrinth. I could see there were a couple of other people walking it now. There was a bench off to the left, to the north of the shape and looking toward the woods that led to the funeral site.

I asked, "Is there one path in and another path out?" I was wondering what happened if two people met going opposite directions. I knew the path was single-file wide.

"In this particular design, you enter on the left, and it leads you all the way around. You'll probably want to stop for a minute, to contemplate or whatever, when you get to the limestone with the quartz. Then keep going, and it will lead you out."

By the time we got to the labyrinth, there was no one on it anymore. Griffin said, "Why don't we just walk around the outside first? It will give you a sense of the thing, and you can see all the work that was done, maybe pick out the standing stones you brought."

As we started around, clockwise, he asked, "Have you decided what you'll bring into the walk?"

OMG, was I supposed to bring more stones, or something? An offering of some kind? "Like what?"

"A question, maybe. Or a feeling. A problem. Something you want to offer, like gratitude, or something you want to know, like what you should do about something bothering you. That kind of thing."

Right. I'd forgotten to come up with something. "Can I think about that while we're walking around the outside?"

"Sure. Or you can just walk the pattern and see what comes to you. Up to you."

"If I think of something, do I need to tell you what it is? Or is that bad luck?"

He chuckled. "No need to tell anyone. Do you see your standing stones?"

As I recalled, I'd brought four, all thin, taller than they were wide. There were quite a few like that, but then I saw the one I'd found first, with the irregular points on top. "That's one of them, I think."

As we approached the entrance again, I asked, "Are you going to walk now, too?"

"I'm gonna sit in the sun, just over there," and he pointed to the bench facing the path into the woods. "I've already walked it today."

"Are you supposed to walk it every day?"

"See, Jesse, the thing about labyrinths is there are no rules. You could walk it every day, but for most people that's probably too often. I think folks here have walked it a lot, because they probably walked it once or twice for Allen, and then they walked it again for their own reasons. The novelty will wear off, and I think everyone will find their own routine. It's whatever feels right, that's all."

We stood together at the opening. The path in led between two metal posts that stood like gate keepers, about seven feet tall, square columns that were hollow and had images cut out of them in various places. On the top of each was a different three-dimensional shape I couldn't make sense out of, but I'd already asked so many questions I decided not to ask about those. I couldn't help wondering, though, if it was Todd the blacksmith who made those columns, who did all the cutouts, who created those mystical shapes.

"Whenever you're ready, just walk in. When you get to your limestone slab, see if you have any clarity on whatever you were thinking about on your way in."

Walking around the outside, nothing much had come to me. I considered contemplating what those eyes had been, staring up at me from the lake, but I wasn't sure I wanted to know, and I figured that was enough metaphysics for one day, anyway. So I just stepped forward, slowly, like Griffin had said.

The brick path was set level with the dirt, and in between one curved brick path and the next were flat stones set so they were slightly higher than the bricks, probably to help keep you on the path. At first I tried to remember where I'd been digging so I'd know when I got to the bricks in my section, but I couldn't figure it out. So I just walked.

My mind kept going back to the lake, but it wasn't focusing on the water. Instead, it was all about being there with Stu, with what I'd felt about our relationship and about what I couldn't tell him. Without any conscious effort, I realized my thoughts for the walk would be about being gay. It would be about what it meant to tell the people I love, the people who love me, this really important thing about who I am. And about what had happened once they knew.

Thinking into the future, I wondered whether my family would ever get to the point where they'd want to meet my boyfriend, if I ever had one. And someday, maybe a fiancé. I just couldn't wrap my mind around that. And if my own family couldn't accept me, couldn't accept the way I need to live my life, what could I expect from the rest of the town? It had occurred to me already that I wouldn't be able to stay in Himlen, but I hadn't allowed myself to dwell on it. But now, with nothing else to do but think about it, it hit me. It hit me hard.

By the time I got to the limestone slab with the quartz breccia, I was kind of emotional. All these questions were tumbling over each other with no clear way for me to move forward, nothing to help me decide what I should do. I stared at the quartz pieces, and that spiral that Eleanor said represents eternal life was more obvious to me now. But it wasn't comforting. If I had to live my life as a lie, I didn't want any part of "eternal."

I stood right on the spiral and closed my eyes. The deep breath I took was shaky, so I took a few more until they were smooth, and until I felt calmer. The sun was fully out now, and I could feel its warmth on my face.

When I opened my eyes, I was facing the path that led into the woods. I knew the bench where Griffin went to sit was behind me, and as I was about to turn toward it I already knew there would be someone else there, too. Maybe I hadn't been as unaware of the bench as it had felt while I was walking, so maybe I'd already seen him—but before I turned around I knew Ronan was there.

He looked quite small next to Griffin, but somehow his presence was larger. He was looking right at me, that level gaze that made me feel like he was seeing right into me. I walked over and sat on the other side of Griffin from Ronan, and we all gazed toward the woods without speaking for a few minutes.

Griffin broke the silence. "I have to go help get stuff ready for supper. Not cooking, of course," and he grinned at me, "though maybe another time you'd like to bring something you've made." He turned to Ronan. "Jesse’s quite the chef, it seems."

"I—well, that's overstating things, really. I just like to cook." I kept my eyes on the woods.

"And create things," Griffin said. "Don't be too modest. I know you make up your own recipes. Anyway, Ronan has something he'd like to talk to you about, so I'll head off. See you in a bit." As he got up, the space where he'd been felt electric, or pulsing, or something. I couldn't tell whether it was coming from him or Ronan or what. I wanted to turn to look at Ronan, and I didn't want to do that. I looked down at my hands instead, open flat on my thighs.

Ronan said, "I have something I'd like to show you. But you'd need to keep it a strict secret. Very strict. From anyone outside the grove. Can you accept that?"

My impulse was to say Sure, but that felt way too casual. Turning to look at him, I asked, "It's not anything too weird, is it?"

He smiled. It changed his face so it was less intense, less guarded. "Not at all. It's something fun. Feel up to a short walk?"

Now I could say it: "Sure."

I followed him toward that path into the woods. He knew I'd seen the clearing where they'd had the funeral ceremony, so it seemed unlikely that was where he was headed. And in fact, just after the path headed south into the trees, he turned left on a narrow trail I hadn't noticed in the dark the last time I'd been here. We walked single file as the land started to rise through the woods, and then the trail led steeply uphill for maybe a hundred yards. Ahead of me and above me, the trees and Ronan blocked the view or I'd have been less surprised by what was in front of us suddenly. When I saw it, I stopped short, next to a pile of split logs.

The path we'd been following had led us to the top of a cliff. Right in front of us was a short swinging bridge, ropes along the sides to hold onto, and it led to the door of a small house that looked like it was perched in the branches of a huge tree growing from below the cliff. When I got over my initial shock, I saw it was really built around the tree trunk, on some kind of platform that was bigger than the house part. Around the outside of the door was a wooden frame with ornate carvings that looked like branches or vines wrapping around different kinds of animals. The windows had shutters that actually worked—that is, they were pulled closed over the windows.

Ronan had turned, no doubt to see my reaction. I was completely stunned and didn't know what to say. So I went with, "Words fail me."

He grinned and said, "Let's go in."

The footbridge swayed gently as we crossed. There was a kind of small porch, or deck, in front of the door, which wasn't locked. Inside was dark and cold. There was only one room, though the tree came right up through the middle.

Around to the right, I could see a mattress on the floor, covered by a quilt and several colorful pillows. On my near left was a small table with short legs that looked like wooden balls, and there were pillows on the floor to sit on. Past the table, against the back wall, was a very small wood stove with several tiles on the floor around it, the pipe over it going straight up for a bit before bending at a right angle and pointing through the wall. There was a small pile of split logs to the right of the stove, and from there a screen blocked the view of the bed. Two wooden rocking chairs stood on either side of the stove, not quite facing each other. There were small braided rugs in various places on the wooden floor.

Ronan moved around to the windows—a few near the stove, and then two near the mattress—and opened them so he could open the shutters. He left one window open a few inches, and I could hear the sounds of water; must have been a stream below the cliff. Ronan gestured toward the chairs at the stove.

Our rockers made soft creaking sounds against the floor for a few minutes before Ronan said, "This is my home away from home. I can even get water from the stream if I lower a rope ladder through the window over the bed, and I can purify it, or boil it."

"Who built this place?"

"My grandfather started it, and my father and my aunt worked on it after that. When I was younger, I always came here when I wanted to be someplace fun, but most of the village kids used to go play in that barn on the side of the highway. I think the younger kids do that now, too. You know the one?"

"I think so. It's just south of the Woods Way entrance. Why don't you all take it down? It's a wreck."

"It's not on grove land, actually. It's on a single acre of land—I don't remember how that happened—that belongs to someone in town, and it's surrounded by woods that we do own. We've asked them to take it down, but they keep refusing. And village kids love to play in it. Someday someone will get hurt." He chuckled. "Then we can sue them."

"Does anyone else use this treehouse? Anyone but you, I mean?"

"Not any more."

I noticed some lamps mounted on the walls. "Electricity?"

He shook his head. "LEDs. Battery-powered." I looked around, taking it all in, thinking how amazing it would be to have a place like this. He added, "If we were going to be here longer, I'd light the stove. But it takes a while to warm the place, and then I'd have to bring in more wood."

"That's okay. This is—I don't know what to say. You must love this so much."

"I do."

I glanced at him; he was watching me. "And is there any particular reason you wanted me to see it?"

"It's a gesture of good faith. I want you to know I trust you. And I wanted to tell you a few things about the grove you might not hear from anyone else."

"Like what?"

"Have you ever heard of porphyria?"

"No. What is it?"

"It's a disease of the blood. Some historians think King George III of England might have had it. I don't remember all the details, but I do know that the medicines they have to treat it today have really bad side effects. They usually try to manage it with blood-letting. Transfusions can help, sometimes. People who have it tend to be extremely light-sensitive, and some of them can't stand sunlight at all. Garlic makes their symptoms worse. And sometimes the skin shrinks in places, like when gums pull away from the teeth, making them appear larger." He waited a few beats and asked, "Does this remind you of anything?"

I didn't want to say what had come to mind, which was an image of Griffin’s locker before he’d removed the red paint. I shook my head.

He said, "Vampires, perhaps?"

I shrugged. "Yeah, I guess." That was it; he'd nailed it.

"It's okay. You can admit it without offending me. I think you know Pagans aren't vampires. But there used to be someone in the grove who had porphyria, and they had a really hard time treating him for it. He used to take walks at night to avoid the sun, and some folks say he also went a little crazy, or unpredictable, which isn't uncommon when the disease isn't treated effectively. Of course, part of his oddness might have come from the fact that troublemakers in the area would sometimes watch for him and throw stones and garlic cloves at him, shouting ‘Vampire!’ at him the whole time."

Ronan took a breath, and I didn't know what to say, so I waited for him to go on.

"Anyway, people outside the grove blamed him for things like drinking animal blood every time someone's pet went missing. Then there was a teenage girl in the town who got pregnant. Rumor had it that she tried everything she could think of to create a spontaneous abortion. Finally the poor baby was delivered prematurely, with a deformed leg. Then it went missing."

He rocked for a minute, maybe gathering his thoughts, and I said, "I suppose she denied doing anything to it."

"Correct. And the town blamed the Pagan with porphyria for stealing it and eating it, or at least drinking its blood. Totally ridiculous, and of course they couldn't prove anything, but there it is. You can imagine how horrible things got after that, though." If the picture in my mind wasn't enough, his tone of voice said worlds.

"And the guy with—whatever it's called?"

"Porphyria. He died when I was three, childless. I never knew him. So, now we're all vampires, even though no one's complained of missing babies. Some pets have gone missing, but that's coyotes. And delinquents."

And, maybe, cougars. An image flashed into my brain of the way Mom had looked at me the time I'd told her about driving to the village. Now that I knew this history, I knew it was where the fear came from. But I also saw that the fear itself was because they didn't understand what was really going on.

I said, "Has anyone ever tried to explain about this? About the disease, and how it has nothing to do with vampires?"

"How would we do that, Jesse? We can't exactly get on a soap box on the town green. We'd be stoned to death before we could explain anything. And anyway, Eleanor has tried. She's met with the last two mayors. But both times, when she showed up, there were, like, seven other people in the room. She'd get about five words out, and they'd start shouting her down."

"Shouting her down?"

His voice rose, and if possible his eyes got even more intense; he was really angry, now. "They wouldn't let her speak long enough to explain anything before they'd bring up stories about missing pets, or they'd ask her to admit we'd done unspeakable things to Sherrie Williams. It was eight years ago, and she must have run away or maybe was taken by a predator. She was twelve at the time. Never found, never heard from again. And we got blamed."

Eight and twelve would mean she’d be how old now? Twenty? Stu's age. There was something in the back of my mind, some memory about it. I could hear my heartbeats. "Anyone in particular blamed?"

He shook his head, looked at the floor. His tone some odd combination of disgust and despair, he said, "They didn't have a clue which way to point, other than toward the village. And that teenage girl who got pregnant wouldn't say who the father was. Of course the fact that the leg was deformed was our fault. Evidently, we'd cast some spell on her, first to get her pregnant, and then to make the child hideous, and finally we stole it for our own nefarious purposes."

We watched each other's faces, and then he said, "And it's not just these disappearances. People of the town seem to think we do horrible things in secret, out here in the woods. They don't understand our relationship to nature, to the earth, and they think there's something satanic about it. If they wouldn't even let Eleanor explain about the porphyria, you can imagine how much time they gave her to talk about our 'heathen' practices."

I had to ask something that had been rising into my brain for a few minutes now. "Don't take this the wrong way, but why do you all stay here?"

Ronan heaved a long breath, closed his eyes like he was trying to calm himself down, opened his eyes, and stared across the room. "I suppose we could leave. It would be a huge deal, though. Todd Swazey's grandfather inherited the land you refer to as the village, along with a massive amount of farmland across the road, and a few hundred wooded acres on this side of the road, in the direction of where you saw Allen Ward's funeral. There are a number of... well, maybe artifacts is the best term. Or maybe features. Many features about this land that contain magic. We all feel it, everyone in their own way."

He rocked back and forth a few more times. "And even if we could find someone else willing to risk exposing themselves to all the 'evil' we've done here and buy this land, the chances of finding another place as rich in spirit as this are very slight."

"Magic." That was the word my mind had stuck on. "What does that mean?"

"Well... like Talise dousing for where to build the labyrinth. And that place in the woods where we had the funeral. It probably looks like just a clearing in the woods to you, but to us it's a place where the physical and spiritual worlds come very close together." He looked at me. "I'm not sure I can explain it any better than that."

I wracked my brain for some way to respond and came up with rockhounding, and the reaction in the village to my limestone slab, which might be considered a kind of artifact. Did they see magic in that? "I think I told you I found that limestone slab in a place where my friend Brad and I look for rocks. He has some really gorgeous crystals he found when he was younger."

Ronan smiled, almost like an adult might smile at a child who's learned something important. It annoyed me. Then he nodded. "Different crystals and minerals possess different qualities. It's true this entire area of the country is riddled with this energy. And when we use the word 'magic' here, we're referring to the way different energies play out in our lives. These are all things you can't see, but they can be sensed. So I think what you said is a good connection to make."

That was a friendly enough response; maybe he couldn't help looking arrogant. I decided to cut him a break. "Thanks for telling me all this."

I think he was about to say something else, but I'd just noticed an object in the middle of the table for the first time, between two lanterns. I stood and walked over to look more closely. It was a carving in wood, maybe four inches long. A cougar. One rear leg reached far back, the opposite front leg stretched forward, and the was mouth wide open with teeth exposed. I picked it up, testing the smoothness of the wood, feeling the power implied in the haunches. Then I looked at directly at the face.

The lake. It had been a cougar staring back at me. I started, nearly dropping the carving. Setting it gently back on the table I risked a glance at Ronan. He was watching me closely, head a little lowered, eyes trained on me from under his eyebrows. And it hit me: He was a cougar. I didn't know what this meant, or why it made sense, but I knew it was true on some level I couldn't understand.

Neither of us spoke right away while I debated whether to say anything directly related to what I was feeling. I decided on something different that fell in the same general category. "Am I ready to hear what you meant by sensing my energy?"

Several heartbeats later he said, "I'll try." I turned my chair so I could see him better and sat in it. "It's not something that's easy to explain, and it will be difficult to understand if you've never felt it. Everything has energy in one way or another. Each person has a unique energy signature all their own. With people I know well, if I want to I can usually sense when they're nearby. Or if they're far away and I really concentrate, I can sense them even then. It's not like hearing their voice or seeing their face. It's a different kind of sensing. Maybe more of an awareness. But it's definite."

Once again, so many questions… "So you have to try to sense someone?"

"I do if there are lots of people around, or if I'm feeling distracted by something. And even then, even if I don't try, if there's something happening that makes a person's energy especially vivid, it might just hit me."

And the more important question: "So, what was it about my energy that made you sense it at Samhain, and at the funeral? There were lots of people around. Lots of distractions."

"It just hit me." He stopped; I expected him to say more, but he didn't.

"But, why?"

"I don't know yet. Not for sure."

"Yet?"

"I'm still getting to know you."

That made a certain amount of sense. I thought back to Samhain: seeing Griffin as a girl, letting my feelings about that go a little crazy, hiding on the edge of the woods and remembering the dream where I climbed Griffin's back, following the bonfire smoke up into the glittering sky…

Suddenly I was feeling uncomfortable. I was about to suggest going back to the village, and I stood, but then something else caught my attention. On shelves all around were different stones, crystals, rocks, all over the place. It was like Brad's room, but on steroids, and yet it was totally different. Why hadn't I noticed this earlier? I turned toward Ronan.

"You and Eleanor. You both get feelings from rocks, don't you?"

"Yes. She saw that I had that sensitivity, and she's taught me a lot." He got up and reached to a shelf near the door for a bright green rock. He held his hand out, palm up, and I took the stone in my left hand. It was completely smooth, not quite a rectangle, not quite an egg shape, maybe two inches long, and there were dark green swirly lines all over it with slightly lighter green color between them. "That's malachite."

As I was wondering why my hand felt like the stone was buzzing, Ronan reached for another stone on the other side of the door, a deep blue one. When he handed it to me, I could see tiny gold flecks in it. "Hold one in each hand, and close your eyes."

When I did this, I felt myself sway, and then Ronan's hand caught my arm. Eyes open again, I asked, "What happened?"

"It seems you have some sensitivity, yourself. Malachite absorbs negative energy, but it tends to leave emptiness behind. The lapis, the blue stone, gathers positive energy. You probably sensed the imbalance of one pulling out and another pulling in from the other side. I should have had you sit down first, but I didn't really think you'd react." He smiled. "I'm glad you did."

"The green one was buzzing."

"Exactly right."

I wasn't sure what to make of this, or what I even wanted to make of this. Negative energy, positive energy—it was more than I wanted to think about, and it was entirely possible that just closing my eyes in a house in the treetops would make me a little dizzy. I handed the stones back to him, and he replaced them on their shelves.

"Too much energy talk, perhaps," he said like he knew what I was thinking. "Ready to head back?"

"Yeah. What time is it, anyway?" I glanced at my watch: four-thirty already?

"Would you close the shutters near the stove? I'll get the others. They keep falling branches from breaking the windows."

On the walk back through the woods, Ronan told me about a couple of stormy nights he spent in the treehouse just for the fun of it, and how furious his mother was, sure he would crash to the forest floor. He described the columns of energy he sent up the tree trunk to help keep it upright. I had no idea what to make of that.

"So, Jesse, I'm glad your folks are okay with you visiting. I guess they’re friendlier toward us than most."

I chuckled. "They don't exactly know where I am."

Ronan, a few steps ahead of me, stopped and turned. "Where do they think you are?"

"Dad doesn't really care. As for Mom... well, I was pretty vague."

He stood there staring at me for several seconds. Then, "What would happen if they found out where you are?"

"I have no idea," I lied. "Why do you care? It's not your problem."

He shook his head. "You're wrong. It is my problem. The grove's problem. All we need—" He turned quickly, saying, "We have to talk with Eleanor about this." He marched forward, assuming I'd follow.

I wasn't any too happy with Ronan right then. He was treating me like some naughty child. And there was Eleanor, again. Always, Eleanor. What business was it of hers, or Ronan's? I was tempted to go directly to my truck and leave the village, but I really wanted to be at the bonfire later. I'd been picturing myself locking arms with everyone and swaying like I'd seen them do twice, now, and I didn't want to be left out again.

Eleanor's house was a simple ranch style, with the obligatory garden of dead plants in front. A path of flat slate stones meandered through it, and it looked as though some steps had been taken to get ready for this year's growing season.

A man I didn't know answered the door, and Ronan's tone had an intensity when he said, "Parker, we need to speak with Eleanor." So this person with spiky, dyed-blond hair was Selena's partner. No one introduced me; I had no idea whether he had a clue who I was.

The kitchen was probably the biggest room in the house. It even had its own fireplace and a big island with a sink, in addition to the sink on the side under the window. There didn't seem to be a dining room, but the kitchen table, on the far side of the room and surrounded by a large number of wooden chairs, was huge. There was food preparation going on all over the counters, but I didn't see anyone other than Parker and Eleanor.

Eleanor glanced at me, put down what she was working on, and wiped her hands on a towel as she approached us. There was no preamble, no small talk.

Ronan told her, "I've just found out that Jesse's parents don't know he's here."

Her steely blue eyes bored into me. "Where do they think you are, Jesse?"

"No place special."

"If they found out you were here, would they be angry?"

WTF? Why does she care? "I—I guess, yeah."

She turned toward the table, gesturing for me to follow, and sat in a chair at one end. I sat also, leaving a chair between us along the side of the table. She said, "Ronan, would you find Griffin and ask him to come see me?" Ronan left, and before Eleanor could say anything else, I decided to speak up.

"Look, I didn't exactly have a lot of options, here. Griffin and Ronan made it very clear that you don't want to call a lot of attention to yourselves." I didn't want to admit that my mom had already told me to stay clear of the village.

"Jesse, it's not my place to tell you what your relationship with your family should be like. However, here in the grove, we do not tolerate lies or deliberate deception. I encouraged Griffin to—well, to encourage you, because I want to think that we can improve the relationship between the communities by increasing the number of good relationships between people, and it seemed as though you could be one of those connections. But if you deceive your family in order to be with us, the chances are very great that the opposite will happen."

Griffin must have been very close; he entered the house without knocking and sat quietly across from me. Ronan was not with him.

Eleanor glanced briefly at him and back to me. "There are many things said in the town about us that are not true. No doubt you've heard some of these rumors. Are you aware that one of them has to do with stealing children?"

"I remember Sherrie Williams."

"Sherrie is not the only child we're accused of taking from her family. All the accusations are groundless, but there's no way we can prove a negative. And what I want is for the accusations themselves to stop. If you come here without your parents' consent, and—as it turns out—without even their knowledge, what rumors do you think that might start once it’s known?"

I was getting the feeling I was about to get kicked out of the grove. I looked at Griffin as though he'd be able to help me, but his expression was unreadable. My brain was jumping around all over the place, like static electricity caught in a small space, trying to come up with something to say that would make Eleanor let me stay. So maybe it was just desperation, but what came out finally was, "I can't be myself at home. They hate who I am. And they make me ashamed of it."

"What is it about yourself that's different here?"

I looked right at her. "I'm gay. And I'm not ashamed here."

She nodded. "I can understand how difficult that would be for you. But it doesn't change the situation I've described. If anything, it could make it worse. If your parents aren't accepting of your true nature, they're very likely to lump other things they don't understand together with their lack of understanding of that. This means that if you know they don't want you to be here, and you come here anyway, then when they find out—and that's pretty inevitable—we'll be blamed not only for seducing you into our ways, but also, very likely, for having something to do with your orientation. I realize this is completely illogical, but when people are afraid, they tend not to bother with logic. And we have a lot of experience with how that plays out."

She sat back and heaved a deep sigh, eyes on mine, but more thoughtful than anything else. She turned to Griffin. "Any suggestions?" Something in her tone made me think she expected Griffin to know what he was supposed to say.

"It's at least partly my fault," he said. "I didn't make it clear to Jesse that he shouldn't keep his time here a secret from his parents. I might even have given him the opposite impression, because we've decided to be so careful about what we tell people of the town about us." He looked down at his hands, then back at Eleanor. "As for suggestions? I can't think of anything other than Jesse not visiting again unless he has permission."

Suddenly I was Sandra Bullock, floating out of control in space, helpless to establish a firm connection, likely to die isolated and alone. "That's not fair!" My tone was frantic; even I could hear that.

Eleanor's tone didn't change; she still sounded calm, sane. "Jesse, as I said, I can't tell you how to manage your relationship with your family. And although I understand how isolated your situation can make you feel, I can't be a party to secrecy concerning us, here in the grove. I think you need to decide whether to tell your parents about your visit here today. But whatever you decide about that, as Griffin says, any future visits must be with permission. Otherwise I would be bringing the wrath of the town down on us for something justified. There is already more than enough unjustified ill will. Do you understand?"

My throat was so tight, struggling against a battle between tears and screaming, that I wasn't sure I could speak. All I could manage was, "What about tonight? The bonfire?"

She shook her head. "I'm sorry, Jesse."

I stared at her in disbelief. She had just uninvited me to the very thing I knew I needed. She had sent me back into my hiding place in the trees. And as the spokesperson for the grove, she had rejected me.

I stood so fast that my chair went over backward. I needed to get out of there, now. Eleanor called my name twice, but I ignored her. I ran to where I'd left my truck, got in and slammed the door hard, revved the engine, and that time I did leave black rubber on the road. I wanted those marks there. I wanted Eleanor and everyone else to remember what they'd done to me today.

I had no idea where I was going. I could go home and hide away in my room, but there was always the chance that Mom would want me for something. Besides, I needed to be someplace where I'd be completely alone. So I headed for my spot at Wister Lake. I was half-way there when my phone played the constellation chime, Griffin's text sound. I ignored it.

God damn them anyway! Here I was trying to help them, trying to build some kind of bridge of love between them and my people, and they treat me like this? They reject me?

At the lake, I left my phone in the truck and went right back to the same spot Stu and I had sat, where I'd seen the cougar in the water. Somehow this spot represented a place where both my worlds met, but also where they collided. At home, my family didn't want to know who I was. They actually hated what I was. And they hated the village and everything about it. The grove welcomed me and gave me a place where the part of me my family hates can belong, but I can be there only if I can convince my family to stop hating the place that would accept me in a way they can't.

I didn't sit on the rocks. I went down near the shore and threw stone after stone after stone, hard, one after the other. No one else was around, and I screamed with every stone. Wordless, howling screams. And then I was on the ground, on my knees, sobbing. The tears melted into the wet sand and disappeared, and it felt like they were pulling me in with them.

My family, who were supposed to love me, were ashamed of me. And they hated and feared people of the grove, who laughed at the shame, but who sent me away because of my family's fear of them.

This is what I was screaming about. This is what made me feel like I really was disappearing, falling fast into a gulf of hatred and fear. Maybe I'd seen myself on a mission to build a bridge across this gulf for the sake of the village, but even more, I'd been doing it for myself. And if they'd just caused it to fail, it wasn't my fault. But I would still fall.

No one seemed willing to help me. No one.

 

 

Maybe an hour later, sitting in my truck and staring sightlessly over the lake, I realized I was really hungry. But I'd told Mom not to expect me for dinner, and I wasn't up to facing any questioning if I showed up earlier. She might not even have made enough for me. I decided to head to The Flying Pig on my own.

I settled into a booth toward the back of the restaurant and ordered a hamburger with fries and a drink called "Beeer" that I knew would be a tall beer mug full of root beer with something extra in it to maintain a thin, foamy head and also something—yeast? hops?—to make it taste a little like beer.

While I waited for my food to arrive, I checked the two text messages that had come in right after I'd left the village. I knew one was from Griffin. His said:

We'll figure this out pls don't be mad

If I'd been on the phone with him, here's what I would have said: "Yeah, right. Like it's not eating at me right now that you're all there, one big, happy family, arm in arm around a big fire that's meant to symbolize new beginnings. And as for my new beginning? You don't give a fuck about mine."

The other one was from Ronan.

I'm so sorry I had to do that. So very sorry. I wanted you to stay. I wanted to stand with you at the bonfire. Know this: you will be here again. I'm certain of it.

I don't know whether I was more surprised that he'd texted me or that his apology was so heart-felt. On one hand, it was a little like when Griffin had texted me to ask me to forgive him. On the other though, I'd told Griffin I thought we were friends. Who was I to Ronan? I mean, okay, he showed me his treehouse and revealed some information about the grove, but it wasn't like we'd been all friendly; he'd still been at least a little prickly. Or maybe it was just that he was so intense? I don't know.

It wasn't until I'd read this message three times that it hit me how careful he'd been with his construction. No abbreviations, no omitted punctuation. It was more like a written note than a text message. I decided to answer this one. He wouldn't get it right away; he was probably at that bonfire right now. So I didn't expect an answer.

I'm certain of absolutely nothing.

I decided to keep Ronan's message. No idea why.

I sat back and closed my eyes, trying to calm down; it was all hitting me again what had happened, what I was missing, and how very much I wanted it. Needed it. A few breaths later I opened my eyes as the waiter set my drink in front of me, and almost immediately I noticed a girl sitting alone at the counter. Her side was toward me. In front of her was something dark in a tall, thin glass with a twisty straw, and she was picking at a blooming onion like she cherished it and wanted to make it last forever. The girl was Ivy Gilman, the reverend's daughter. She was in my classes at school.

She must have felt me looking at her, because she started to gaze around the room. There weren't many other people there, so she spotted me pretty quickly. I nodded, which was all the acknowledgement I thought she'd expect or even want, but she smiled, and the next thing I knew she'd picked up her plate and drink and was headed my way. She stopped at the edge of the table.

"Hi, Jesse. Mind if I join you?"

I didn't know Ivy very well, and I had no reason to think that her opinion of gay people was any more enlightened than her father's. Even so, what choice did I have?

"Sure." As she settled into the booth across from me I added, "Fried onion for dinner?"

"I already had dinner. And I didn't have dessert so I could have this. It's one of my vices."

The idea of the reverend's daughter having vices made it impossible for me to respond before she said, "I've been hoping for a chance to talk to you."

"Oh? Why is that?" I didn't want to be unfriendly, but I half expected her to lecture me on the perils of choosing to be homosexual.

"Have you been wondering who it was who moved the contents of your old locker?" She drew a curly line of her drink up through the straw, her eyes on my face.

I was thinking, Uh oh. Here it comes. "Maybe a little."

"It was me." She pulled a couple of fried fingers with flaking batter off of her onion and grinned at me before starting to nibble.

Thoughts fought for attention in my head: And you're telling me this why? and At what point are you going to start lecturing me? and Are you gonna tell me your father insists on a friendly consult with me and my folks? I chose as neutral a reply as possible. "I didn't know you were an office assistant."

"Yup. Daddy insisted. It's kind of fun, though, because I hear and see lots of things that go on in the school that most kids have no idea about."

I decided to get it over with, stop beating around the proverbial bush. "Like when someone paints their own locker."

Her laugh was musical. I would have liked it if I hadn't been determined not to like her. "Yes. Exactly like that."

"So you've been holding onto this information, I take it, or else lots of other kids would know. And it doesn't seem like anybody does. You've been saving all the castigation for yourself?"

She blinked twice and scowled. "Castigation?" Then she shook her head. "No, that's not—Jesse, I wanted to talk to you about it because I wanted you to know how wonderfully brave I think you are. You could have just kept quiet about it, but you told Mrs. Knapp outright that you did it. Obviously you expected word to get around. That took some guts, mister. No, I'm not into castigation. I'm into approbation."

It took me a minute to remember that approbation would be a good thing. "Really? Are you serious? But your father—"

"Oh, Daddy. Yes, I know. He's really a great guy, Jesse. He just needs to let go of that prejudice. I'm working on him."

"Why?"

"Because he's wrong. About that. He's holding onto that prejudice for all the wrong reasons. Oh, believe me, I've warned him that if he tries to sell me as a slave to a distant tribe, or if he wants to offer me as a plaything to a violent crowd as though I were merely his concubine, or if he thinks he can beget sons off of me, he's got another think coming. That's all scripture, too; I'm not making it up. I'm trying to get him to bring all of his thinking into the twenty-first century, not just the parts that he's more comfortable with."

The waiter arrived and set my burger in front of me. I was barely aware of it, a little in shock at what Ivy was saying to me. And I had no idea how to reply. I just stared at her until she laughed again, and it sounded even better to me this time. It broke the tension, and I reached for the ketchup.

She downed another onion finger and then said, "I've been trying to think of what to do about the other lockers that keep getting painted. One in particular. I think you know which one I mean."

"How would I know that?"

"Well... you mean, Griffin didn't tell you?"

"Griffin? Griffin Holyoke?" She nodded, and I sputtered, "I—I mean, I did see him this afternoon, but I, uh, I had to leave sooner than expected. What was he going to tell me?"

She took another sip of her drink, then another, obviously enjoying creating this suspense. "Griffin and I are dating. Sort of."

I think my jaw dropped, I'm not sure. "What?"

"It has to be 'sort of' because I haven't told my father. And, of course, I can't go into the village. We meet someplace, and then we go to some restaurant far out of town, or just drive around and—well, you know. Anyway, he was going to tell you. Um, why did you have to leave? You were there for Imbolc, right?"

So she knew that term. She knew about that sabbat. I nodded and took a bite of burger; let her wait this time. Then, "I guess they all thought I had my folks' permission to be there. They found out I didn't, and I had to leave before dinner started. At least I got to walk the labyrinth." Let's see if she knows aboutthat.

"Oh, I wish I could do that! Griffin says you were a big help with that, and even gave them, like, the most important stone."

She was passing test after test. "Yeah. So, how long has this been going on, with you and Griffin?"

"He asked me out on the Presidents Day holiday. He said Ronan told him to, because Ronan had figured out that I liked Griffin. Ronan also told him where I was at that moment, and he came to find me."

"Where was that?"

"I like to drive out to Wister Lake to be alone, and—"

"No way! I drive out there all the time!"

She grinned. "I know. Ronan told Griffin that, too."

"How—how the hell does Ronan know any of this stuff?" He'd told me that he could sense my energy, but this was too much.

"I don't understand Ronan very well. He has powers of some kind that let him see things." She laughed nervously. "Maybe he has a crystal ball or something."

Yeah, maybe. I didn't see a crystal ball in the treehouse, but there was a lot of stuff there I didn't take in. "So Ronan told Griffin to ask you out?"

Ivy nodded. "And Griffin and I both thought you'd like to know about us. Because, you now, you and I both have connections with the grove, and that's something really important to have in common."

I had to ask: "Have you ever been to a bonfire there?"

She shook her head and then looked at me intently. "Wouldn't that just be the best? I would so love to do that!"

Griffin had been right; Ivy and I had a lot in common.

"Well, anyway," she went on, "about the locker, I wanted you to know that I haven't said anything to anyone. And I won't, unless you decide to, you know, come out in a big way. You know, I was looking into a GSA at school. Do you know any other kids who are gay?"

"Whoa. First, what's a GSA?"

"Gay Straight Alliance. It's like a club, in a way, at school. Gay and straight kids get together and talk. It's really great support for the gay kids, and the straight kids learn a lot about what it means to be gay."

"Great support, huh? But any gay kid who attended would automatically be outed. And, no, I don't know any other gay kids. If I did, I'm pretty certain they wouldn't join something like that. Are you, uh, looking for a cause, or something?"

"I have a cause. It's called love. And it doesn't work when we judge each other and condemn each other. I'm all about getting to understand each other."

I chewed a mouthful of burger, thinking, and came out with this: "So, being with Griffin and all, are you still Christian?"

"Of course. Aren't you?"

"I guess, yeah. No one's asked me to be anything else."

"If you mean no one from the grove, I don't think they'd ever do that."

We spent several minutes comparing notes on Paganism, and—no surprise, considering each of us had started by asking questions of Griffin—came up with the same understanding.

Ivy topped me, though. "Their credo is 'An it harm none, do as ye will.' That might sound permissive, but it isn't at all. Because harming no one is a pretty tough thing to be sure of. And it includes yourself."

She was right. I was gonna have to think about it.

"Sigh. Well, I'm done with my onion, and I see your plate's about empty. Wanna order some ice cream?"

"I thought the onion was instead of dessert."

"Well, I'm sure you'll have something sweet. And I can't let you eat alone, can I?" She laughed again, and by this time I was starting to see why Griffin liked her.

Over sundaes (hot fudge for me, butterscotch for Ivy), I was turning something over in my mind. Something in my brain had stuck on Ivy's GSA idea, and I was trying to work out how many kids there were in the village who might be gay. I figured, you know, they'd be already out at home. They'd risk having yet another reason for town kids to terrorize them if they came out at school, though. And then inside my head, this bright light happened. It just happened, that's the only word for it.

"Ivy, that GSA thing. Would it work for something else?"

"Like what?"

"Like instead of gay-straight, what if it were town-village? What if we had, I don't know, a TVA?"

Her spoon clanked against the inside of her ice cream bowl as she let go of it. She stared at me, looking more excited by the second. "Oh, my God! Do you think it would work?"

"If you think about it, a GSA would make kids come out when they're going to get terrorized, and they know it. But everybody already knows which kids are from the village, so maybe being in a TVA would increase the risk a little, but if this worked, it should help things."

"And if we really get some traction, we increase our chances of getting permission to visit each other!" She bounced in her seat a couple of times. "I think Griffin would join."

"I might be able to get Brad to join."

We stared at each other, kind of in shock. Then I pulled out my phone and did a search on "GSA" to see what came up. I read out loud some of the requirements, like you'd need a teacher or someone from the school to be a sponsor. I found some starter documents that were hard to read on the screen.

Ivy said, "Who could we get as a sponsor?"

I laughed. "Mrs. Knapp?" Ivy glared at me. "Wait, though, what about Mr. Duncan? I wrote a paper on how Pagan traditions had been taken over by Christianity, and he really liked that."

"Great idea! So, here's what I think we should do. When we get home, let's each look up what we'd need to do."

"We can Skype while we do it."

"Great! We'll probably need to rework that starter stuff—we can each take some of it—and then when we have our ducks in a row, we can talk to Mr. Duncan. Oh, Jesse! This is so exciting!"

I grinned at her, feeling almost as excited as she sounded. "And it's in keeping with your Christian goal of love and understanding."

"Yours, too!"

I laughed. "Yeah, okay. Mine, too."

We exchanged phone numbers and left pretty soon after that; Ivy wanted to get started with the TVA project. I walked her to her car, which was parked a few spaces farther away than mine, and I was watching her tail lights disappear when Brad called.

"Hey," he said. "What happened to your plans? Weren't you supposed to be you-know-where for some group dinner?"

A fresh pain shot through my gut. Ivy and the TVA had almost made me forget. "Yeah, that didn't work out. Seems they didn't know my folks hadn't given me permission to be there." I gave him an abridged version of what Eleanor had said. And then something occurred to me. "How did you know?"

"Your buddy Griffin called me. Said you could maybe use some cheering up. And now that I know why he said that, I have to ask: Does this mean you're, like, shut out? Or are you gonna talk to your folks?"

I let out a sarcastic bark. "Yeah, that ain't happ'nin'."

"I guess this means I won't get to see the labyrinth. No way my folks are gonna give me permission."

"Sorry about that. Anyway, I went to the Pig for dinner; I knew my mom wasn't expecting me." I debated telling him about meeting Ivy, but there was so much going on with that—some of it still outstanding, like whether we'd ever really go forward with a TVA—that I decided it could wait for another time.

We chatted for minute, and then I headed home, my brain so full of conflicting feelings that I was glad I didn't have much homework left to do. No one at home asked where I'd been, and if it's possible to not ask something pointedly, that's what Mom did. She was reading in the living room, and she glanced up at me and back down to her book. So I just headed upstairs; I was anxious to get started on this idea Ivy and I'd had, because it seemed like a way—maybe the only way—to make any progress toward my goal of being able to be with people I didn't have to hide myself from, to get to that sense of belonging that pulled me toward those bonfires.