Jo stared at her knuckles, white with strain from squeezing the steering wheel. Maureen's steering wheel, the damned rust-bucket Toyota that had spent two months of a Maine winter frozen into a snow-bank but still started bang-off because Brian had once laid hands on it like a televangelist at a faith-healing.
She was turning into her sister.
Unemployed, hearing "voices," boozing, believing that the world was out to get her. Jeeze Louise.
Flying into rages and lashing out at those closest to her. And now, driving over to Carlysle Woods to seek wisdom and healing from the trees. Driving drunk, for Chrissakes, just like Grandfather O'Brian. But she'd walked out of that goddamned nursing home and right into the bar down the street. Good marketing move, that was, putting your whisky shop within walking distance of a reliable source of depressed people.
She'd ordered three quick shots of bar Scotch as a sedative, stared into the bottom of the second, and froze with it half-way to her lips. Her sister was a drunk. Her father was a drunk. Her grandfather had died from drink, and there'd been others. Odds were, if she went on and drank that second and third shot, she'd follow her family down the neck of a whisky bottle and drown there.
Heredity or environment, nature or nurture, she was screwed either way. Hand shaking, she'd set the shot glass down on the bar and backed away from it, then climbed into Maureen's car.
That didn't erase the reason why she'd wanted a drink. Three cheers for modern medicine. Bastards couldn't even tell the difference between a stroke or faint followed by a fall down the front stairs, and good old fashioned wife-beating. They couldn't do anything about the results, either way, so let's clear the bed out and move the goddamn empty husk off to a warehouse for long-term storage.
And Dad wouldn't pay the extra for a private room that his insurance wouldn't cover. So now Mom was in a double with a fat blind diabetic Indian who could really have used a roommate she could talk to.
She relaxed her hands, took a deep breath, and shut off the engine. She climbed out, slammed the car door because if you didn't slam it hard enough to shake rust loose from the body, it wouldn't latch, and locked it before she sobered up. Or sanity intervened. Or something.
The city plowed out this parking lot, chewing up the gravel surface and piling mud in the corners, but did nothing about the paths winding through the woods. Jo climbed over the heaps of old snow and followed snowshoe tracks that led between two birches, her boots sinking ankle-deep into the gray surface of Maine "spring." Snow rarely hung on so late, but this year looked like a record.
Maureen had dragged her out here a few times, sharing her world and trying to explain the differences between this tree and that. Birches were easy, the white papery bark peeling and curling loose to show pale orange underneath. Jo had also figured out the smooth-trunked gray beeches and could tell an oak if it dropped an acorn on her head, but that was about it. All the evergreens were pines to her.
The old snow was filthy, heavy, wet, shifting almost like loose gravel under her feet. Tracks had turned into grotesque negatives with the thaw so that the hard-packed trail was actually higher than the sides, with reversed ski and snowshoe prints made of ice that resisted the sun and rain. She closed her eyes, matching up the trail turns and branches with her memory. There was a certain tree that Maureen loved above all others; she called it Father Oak. She'd claimed it talked to her. She'd claimed it gave her strength.
Well, Jo had always been the strong one, protecting her little sister. Maybe it was time to tap into Maureen's support network for a refill.
Jo's memories led her down trails to the right and then left, until she found an old beech by the beaten path. A hole showed dark against the gray; Maureen said it was the daytime roost of some kind of owl. Jo couldn't tell, but she remembered that shape and smooth bark and the hole about twenty feet above the ground. Except that it was lower now, with something like five feet of drifted snow paring down the height.
Okay. Now it got tricky, moving off the trail and into unmarked snow. Second step, she sank up to her knees, above her boot-tops, and the wet cold washed right through her jeans. Bad choice for clothing, but she hadn't planned to go for a hike in the woods when she'd dressed that morning. She ignored the chill and pushed on.
She barely remembered the way to Father Oak. Maureen had brought her out in summer, with leaves all over and bugs whining in her ears. Winter gave the woods a very different look. Did she want to go right, now, or left, climb that rise or go downhill? There'd been a small creek, but it must lie buried underneath the ice and the winter's accumulated litter of small twigs and drifted grit. So maybe she wanted to go down and then up again.
At least she couldn't get lost. Her tracks made sure of that, leaving a trail like a moose floundering through the woods. She wiped sweat off her forehead and unzipped her jacket. Hiking through deep snow was perilously close to work. She waded on, once or twice almost swimming through the endless waves of sodden off-white crap.
Jo stopped and stood still, panting, up to her waist in a thawing snowdrift and with ice-water running into her boots. Another hundred yards through the drifts and she might not be able to get back to the car, even if she wasn't lost.
And the chilled sweat on her back reminded her of that panicked afternoon in Dougal's forest when she'd accidentally followed Maureen into the Summer Country.
Panic fear. Maureen always said that was the most dangerous animal in the woods. Forget about the lions and tigers and bears, oh my -- if you gave in to panic, you were dead. All the other stuff, ranging from poison ivy up to running flat out off a cliff, was just choosing the way you died.
And Jo had already tried that last route once. It sucked. She took a deep breath. She closed her eyes. Maureen had said you could feel the power of her sacred tree. That was how she'd found it.
{Come.}
The hair rose on her arms and on the back of her neck. The dragon had talked like that, a voice that reached inside her skull and echoed without the bother of touching her ears on the way. She'd come out here to try to find some calm. Those memories didn't help one bit.
However, something to her left felt soothing, like a fire crackling warm and yellow and fragrant on the hearth. She followed it, uphill, and the snow grew both harder and shallower as she climbed. Soon she was only ankle deep again, and her breathing calmed.
She saw him. No mistaking that huge old tree with the lightning scar spiraling down from its highest branches to the earth. He stood on the crown of a small hill, and the sun and wind had opened bare ground at his roots. Jo brushed the lingering ice from her jeans.
Father Oak. She'd just shaken her head at Maureen for years, the voices of schizophrenia and her claim that God lived in everything. That even trees had souls, and voices that could speak if you just sat still enough and listened.
She clumped up to the tree, leaned on it while she pulled off her left boot and emptied it of melting slush, then did the same thing for her right. Then she squatted down on a gnarled root that somebody's butt had worn smooth through years of contact. Maureen's most likely, although other people might have worshipped at the same shrine.
The trunk felt warm against her back, warm and strong and thick-barked against troubles. The sun warmed her face, as well, and she left her jacket open to the gentle breeze. Maine weather, you could sometimes change seasons just by walking fifty yards.
"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been twenty years since my last confession."
Silence answered her.
"You're supposed to ask for my confession."
Father Oak waited.
"Right. You're a Druid, if you're anything. Not a Catholic priest."
Jo chewed on her guilt. "Well, I'm going to dump it on you anyway. I'm a bitch. The world hurt me, so I hurt David. I wanted to hurt him. It felt good. Then it felt shitty."
She stared off into the trees. "And I'm going to do it again. I don't have an off-switch on my temper. Just like that stupid popcorn maker we bought -- plug it in, and it's on. I tried to unplug by leaving Maureen's forest, and that didn't work."
{Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.}
She couldn't tell if that was the tree speaking, or her memories of Sunday school. How did those gentle words turn into dogma that justified the rack and the stake? And why would Father Oak trigger memories of old gray smile-wrinkled Sister Anne sitting in a basement classroom of Saint John's?
Jo pulled out the crucifix she wore around her neck, ran her fingers over the body tortured there, and wondered. It meant so many different things to so many different people. She wore it mainly because it had been a gift from Grandfather O'Brian -- he'd given one just like it to Maureen. It obviously hadn't meant the same thing to him that it did to Mom.
He'd found warmth and strength and friendship in his religion and his God, not fear. But then, the old man hadn't paid much attention to Saint Paul or the Apocalypse. Grandpa's religion centered more on the Christ who had made sure that a wedding party didn't run out of wine and that everyone at his sermons got enough to eat.
Grandfather O'Brian and his daughter, such a contrast. Grannie hadn't been that hard-shelled, either, what Jo could remember of her. So something else had happened to Mom. Now Jo had a glimmer of just what that was. Something had scared the shit out of Mom, once upon a time, and she'd fallen into the same power that grabbed Jo when she was scared or angry and turned her into some kind of avenging Fury. And that had frightened Mom even more. She'd chained it with her rosary and walled it off inside a barred iron cell of denial and damnation.
And then there was Dad. If you're already in Hell, it's pretty easy to believe in the place.
Jo closed her eyes and relaxed, soaking up the peace and warmth and strength that surrounded Maureen's oak. She fingered the crucifix again, transported back to Sister Anne's class and acceptance. "Our Father, who --"
A drip splashed on her nose, intruding. She blinked, and then blinked again. The forest lay shadowed around her, late evening, and a gentle rain pattered down through green leaves.
Green leaves.
"What the fuck!"
She staggered to her feet, stiff from sitting, seeing the whole world at a tilt. She grabbed the tree behind her to find her balance, and her hands fell on a scarred welt of bark healing a wound. The lightning strike. This was the same tree, in a different forest.
{My roots drink the waters of many worlds. God wears many faces. Look behind the mask to find out if what you see is God, or something else.}
Things moved between the trees in front of her, a gray shadow and a black, and then she stood in Carlysle Woods again, leaning on the old oak and shaking. She pressed her forehead against the rough bark, welcoming the way its edges bit into her skin. It felt solid. It felt real.
The magic was growing, transforming like some insect larva inside her that would split its husk and emerge as something different. Goddamn Maureen's naturalist images, it'd be a help to know if this was a butterfly or some kind of parasitic wasp.
Jo was sure that glimpse had shown her Maureen's forest. She'd felt her sister somewhere near -- nearby and in a dangerous temper. Jo had booted her back to the Summer Country -- nothing the kid could do to help Mom. And she had enough troubles of her own.
The boundaries wore thin. Now Jo could move from real to fantasy while sitting still. How long before she couldn't tell the difference?
But the sun was warm on her back and the tree felt strong against her chest like David holding her. The quiet forest soaked into her, and she found the calm that had touched her earlier. Maureen could wait. Mom wasn't going anywhere, wasn't dying, nothing urgent there. Even Dad could wait. He couldn't touch Jo any more. She'd broken his power. David was the urgent one.
"I should ask David to forgive me, right? That's my penance? And go and sin no more? But I'm no good at that. I've never had to learn, never found a man I couldn't stand to lose. Maybe I'd better learn?"
She hugged the oak, or rather pressed against it because it was far too thick to wrap her arms around. Then she turned and wrinkled her nose at the thought of wading back to the car. Not a fun way to travel.
But . . .
She stepped to the edge of the snow and set one boot on the surface. Okay, babe, you will support me. She visualized a hundred tiny snowmen under the sole, raising their stick arms over their heads and lifting. She thought of dandelion fluff drifting from her breath and of soap bubbles blown iridescent from a plastic ring. And then she moved her other foot and danced out onto the snow. It held her.
It held her all the way back to the car. Anyone who followed her tracks, expecting firm footing, was going to get a bit of a surprise.
The nursing home sat a block or so off the route back to her apartment. Maybe she could bring some of that serenity and understanding back to Mom, pass some of it in to her where she hid inside that shell.
Jo pulled into the parking lot and stared at the place, reluctant to move, to get out of the car, to do that hospital thing again. Long and low, wood-shingled walls, with broad eaves and wide windows, it did its best to look like a home rather than a warehouse for discarded people. And it was new, with bright colors inside and carpet instead of tile on the floor, and smelled clean, and the nurses seemed to smile a lot. Mom could have ended up in a lot worse places. Too bad it didn't really matter.
But the shift nurses recognized Jo and waved at her. They seemed to care. That meant as much to the families as it did to the patients.
Then she stood at Mom's door again, with the same gut-wrenching scene waiting on the other side. Jo found that there were limits to her new-found serenity.
She swallowed and pushed through the door as quietly as possible. Mom's roommate had been asleep, seemed to be asleep every time Jo visited. And the doors were new and silent. But the old Naskeag was sitting up in one of the chairs, seamed brown face and sightless eyes turned toward the door. Mary Thomas, her name was on the door, knitting away with strong gnarled hands criss-crossed by tiny scars. Jo wondered if she had been a basket maker -- those were the cuts and scratches and scrapes of a lifetime's craft. Apparently the old woman didn't need to see in order to knit.
"I swear, Alice Haskell again. Don't you have better things to do than to visit an old lady two days in a row?"
Jo stopped short. "I'm sorry, I should have knocked."
"Oh, mercy. You're that nice girl comes in to visit her mother. I thought you were a friend of mine. Can't see too good no more."
"If you're expecting a visitor, I'll leave. Mom won't know if I'm here, anyway."
"She knows, child. She knows." The old lady kept knitting, needles clicking along like quiet castanets. Jo noticed that she was making a scarf, two colors of yarn in a complex pattern. Must be counting stitches and have a hell of a memory.
"No, you stay. Don't worry 'bout me." The old woman shook her head, waving towards the chair across from Mom's bed. "Lordy, I'm not expecting nobody. Felt you coming down the hall, child, that's all. That's why I got confused. You felt like Alice."
"Felt me?" Peculiar choice of words.
"You glow, child. Aunt Alice, she's our witch. What's that whitefolk word she uses, sha-man? We just say witch. You got witch power falling off you like summer rain."
She cocked her head and stared at Jo, as if she could see Jo's face and feel the shock of her words. "Nothing to be ashamed of, child. Nothing bad. Just how you use it, that's all that matters."
She talks about it like she was discussing whether anchovies were good or bad on pizza.
"I'm just a crazy old Indian, girl. Don't mind me. I've got scarves to knit. Ten grandchildren with cold necks, and their mommas all want different patterns so's they can tell the little scamps apart without unwrapping 'em. You go and try to help your mommy."
Jo felt like a cartoon light-bulb had lit up in her head. "You've been awake, those times I came in before?"
"Child, any fool could see you needed to be alone with her. Best thing I could do was close my eyes. Now do what you need to do." She made a shooing motion and then ran her fingers along the full needle, counting stitches and tracing each thread of yarn back to its skein. The old woman nodded to herself and started another row.
Jo did as she was told. The Naskeag woman seemed to bring a feeling of solid Maine granite into the room, rooting it in life and generations and the comfort of an old house. She knew where she stood in the world and knew it was a good place to stand. Jo envied her family.
And then Dad was there, oozing around the door like the slime he was, and the feeling vanished. He looked startled for an instant, glanced at the old woman, and shrugged. His smile turned mean.