Cliff pressed numbers into the phone, then brought the receiver to his ear. “Lars. I’m out here in the grove. We just cut into one of the spruces. It’s good wood.” Uncle Cliff paused, his brow creasing. “I can tell them that. Yes. I understand.”
He listened for another moment, then covered the mouthpiece. “He said people from Denmark and Kenya are calling him to order guitars. From all over the world. Also, he’s getting his lawyers involved.”
“What else?” Nathan asked, pausing as he packed his equipment.
Cliff listened. “I understand. I hear you.” He paused, gazing around the forest, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Roger that. I’ll tell them.”
He hung up. Everyone watched him.
“So?” Josie said. “Uncle Cliff, what did he say?”
“He said his great-grandfather came over to the United States to cut wood, and that’s what he does. Also…that he’s backing out on the deal to cut the valley. He doesn’t want anything else to do with it. He’s selling the mill.”
Silence fell among them as they took turns staring at one another. Except Josie, who couldn’t take her eyes off Nicky.
“Does he have a buyer?” Nathan finally asked.
“Why?” Cliff said. “Are you interested?”
Nathan shook his head. “I couldn’t afford what he’s asking, I’m sure. But would you be interested in running it?”
Uncle Cliff looked over at their father. “What do you think, maestro?”
“What do I think?”
“Would you run the floor? Teach us how to build guitars?”
Nathan started to snap together his steel briefcase. “Now, if that were the case, I would be interested in investing in a local guitar company. And I know a few others who might as well.”
“As do I,” Alice said. “I bet people from all over town would help get this off the ground. We’d be shareholders. An island-owned worker’s cooperative.”
“I do believe this is going to make the Alaska state wire,” Aunt Mall said as she scribbled in her notepad. “And probably Alaska history.”
Nathan flipped up the collar of his waxed coat. “Good work out here. Let’s get back into town, and figure out how to buy ourselves a mill.”
As they crossed over the second muskeg, a cool evening breeze blew through the trees along the fringe. The moss was turning wine-red, while the alders and devil’s club around the muskeg shifted to a yolky yellow.
Her father stopped in the trail and waited for Nicky. “Hey, kiddo. My head is still reeling. How are you doing?”
“Hi, Dad. Me too. But I’m good.”
“You two girls, both of you—I can’t believe it. You found the solution.”
Nicky smiled up at him. “I was just listening to the trees,” she said honestly.
“Did I ever tell you, your mother swore that, when you were a baby, you wouldn’t stop talking to that red oak across from the church? You’d crawl through the grass and just hang out by the trunk, babbling away. She was convinced you were having an entire conversation with that old guy.”
“No,” Nicky said, genuinely surprised.
“She said you’d drop into another world. Now I think she might have been right.”
Nicky smiled at this, pleased with the new memory.
“It’s funny, because me, I was scared of the woods as a child. Grandpa told us that monsters lived in the woods around Danville. They had long nails and would scrape off your skin. I guess I’ve always been scared of trees, and the forest,” he said, looking ahead at Mallory. “Maybe that’s why I like taming them into guitars.”
Aunt Mall walked in long strides in front of them. Cliff had an arm around her waist, and held her close. They passed where Nicky had seen the bear earlier that morning. It felt like ages ago when she had stood right there, so sad and alone. And scared.
Nicky ran her fingers along the bark of a tree. An image of herself, or perhaps her own children running their small fingers along the bark, flashed before her. “I was thinking,” Nicky said to her father, “that maybe, once the mill gets going, you might need an apprentice.”
“Good idea!” he said. “Know anyone?”
“Clete?”
“I was thinking of all of you—Veronica, Clete, you, and Josie. At least, when Josie and Veronica don’t have debate after school.”
Nicky looked ahead, where Clete and Josie talked together, their twin buns bouncing as they made their way between the trees. The green in Josie’s hair had started to fade, her strawberry blond pushing back through.
“That sounds so cool.”
Word had gotten out that the Old Yellow Cedar had been cut, and a few of the loggers had come out to witness the behemoth lying on the ground. One of them now walked with Veronica and Nathan, the plastic mask of his orange helmet pulled over his face. Nicky recognized the handkerchief around his neck. It was the same worker who had brought her up to Uncle Cliff at the mill. Nathan smiled as the man gestured, explaining something about the woods.
The trail cut toward the river, and Josie drifted back to join them. The current grew louder, and she raised her voice as she spoke. “I actually think Watermelon would like it in these woods,” Josie said. “Next summer when it’s warm, we’ll bring her out. What do you think?”
“Sure,” Nicky said. “I think she’d love the moss. And the salmonberries.”
“Imagine that. An Alaskan iguana. Clete knows the name of every plant. He even has the Latin memorized. He’s an encyclopedia.”
Nicky watched him up ahead, running his hands through a berry bush, eating a few. “I told you our cousin was cool.”
The afternoon sun splintered through the needles. Nicky combed her fingers through a huckleberry bush, managing to capture a single red pea-sized berry. The arch of her foot settled onto a tree root, and a sensation of delight went up her boot.
“I’ve got a question for Nathan,” their father said. “You girls talk. I’ll be back.”
They both watched as their father walked ahead. Then Josie stopped in the trail and took Nicky by the shoulder. She turned her sister so the two faced each other.
“Hey,” Josie said, staring back at her. Then she leaned over and hugged Nicky. Even through her wet windbreaker, Nicky could feel the beat of Josie’s heart. Her wet hair brushed Josie’s cheek.
“Maybe you can teach me,” Josie whispered into Nicky’s ear. “You know, how to listen.”
Nicky surveyed the forest over her sister’s shoulder, then looked up into the layers of needles fanned out above her.
“Okay,” Nicky said, trying to imagine what the trees might say to her sister. “Maybe you can teach me to dye my hair.”
Josie pulled back, her eyes going wide with surprise. “Really?”
“Sure,” Nicky said. “Purple?”
“You would look so cool. I was going to do mine in pink next. Dad’s gonna flip out.”
“Dad will be fine,” Nicky reassured her.
Josie nodded. “You’re right. He’ll be fine.”
They started walking again. At the cedar bridge, Josie climbed the stump stairs, picking her way across. She stopped in the middle, and the two of them looked down into the water, watching their mottled reflections, drained of color.
“We could be the same person,” Nicky said.
“No,” Josie said, staring back at her through the water. Then she smiled. “Mine look so new compared to yours.”
At first Nicky thought she was talking about their faces, and started to laugh. Then she saw how Josie lifted one of her boots and was examining it in the low forest light. “They still look so new.”
“I thought you said you’d never wear them,” Nicky said.
“People change, I guess,” Josie said, staring at the toe of her boot. “Maybe I’ll even wear them to school.”
“I thought you were going back to Danville,” Nicky said, gently elbowing her.
“Watermelon likes it here,” Josie said after a moment, elbowing her back.
Nicky watched her sister skip the length of the cedar, continuing along the trail on the opposite bank. Then she looked upstream, toward the back of the valley.
She bent her head to examine her wrists, the blue veins running up her arms, taking blood from her heart and swirling it back. To her heels, up through her legs, into her head. Completing a circuit that allowed her to stand here, on this bridge, noticing this island carved by glaciers from the sea. Upright in the pine-scented, briny air, rooted in the living dark beneath her.
She felt a pull, and looked down into the water. Her gaze dropped beneath the stones, into the soil, thick with veins connecting the trees. “Hi, Mom,” Nicky said, staring along the length of the river. “I miss you, but you taught us so well.”
She stood for a moment longer. The current flowed hard and true at her feet, emerging from the dark of the valley toward the open ocean.
Then she took a breath, crossed the bridge, and ran to catch up with her sister.