Brave in the Woods Read online

  I would come to learn that Teddy likes opening doors. For me. For Abigail. For anyone who might need a door opened for them. When I stepped from the truck, I turned to see the tail end of an airplane sticking out the backside of the café.

  I looked at Abigail, skeptical. She smiled and offered her hand. I didn’t take it.

  “They have the best ice cream sundaes in the West,” Teddy said in his best cowboy voice. “And there’s a story behind that airplane.”

  I supposed an ice cream sundae never killed anyone, and I was always up for a good story, so we all walked together into the café, Abigail brushing at the wrinkles in her cotton skirt.

  “See?” Teddy said, pointing to the largest topographical map I’d ever seen in my life.

  From floor to a very high ceiling, it was a map of California, its mountain ranges raised in peaks and painted green, the snowcaps white. There were actual sand beaches and even tiny redwoods dotting the forest above the Golden Gate Bridge and in Yosemite. Sacramento had a tiny capital building, and a California condor sat in a tree in Big Sur.

  “That really is something,” I said.

  A man named Hickory settled us into our table underneath the watchful eyes of a taxidermy buffalo head, and gave us sundae menus. He had burns down the left side of his face and spoke with Teddy about fishing on Lake Almanor. They seemed to know each other.

  Once he’d left, Teddy said, “Hickory is alive because of a miracle.”

  “I don’t believe in miracles” was what I said, like a reflex. “So if this is a story about miracles, I don’t want to hear it.”

  For his part, Teddy looked mortified, and I felt bad for snapping. He wasn’t carrying around my tragic story at the front of his mind twenty-four hours a day the way I was. He didn’t know I’d asked for a miracle for Daddy, Mama and Will more times than I could count.

  Too little, too late is what I’d say to a miracle if it walked through the door just about then.

  “I’m sorry, Anya. I wasn’t thinking,” he said, fidgeting with the hairs of his mustache.

  No. You weren’t, I wanted to say. But I held my tongue. At least it looked as though he meant what he said.

  “What is your favorite subject in school?” Abigail asked. Although it was a terribly bland question, I figured it was as good a place to start as any.

  “I like to read and write stories,” I said.

  “Oh, I love to read! I have bookshelves at home positively overflowing with all sorts of books. I’ll take you down to Miss Betsy at the library first thing so we can get you a card.”

  I read over the menu, not feeling like eating all of a sudden. I wondered if I was pale, or tinted green, the way Will used to say I looked when I was sick to my stomach.

  Abigail had known me for a whopping sixty-seven minutes, but she noticed. “We can come another time if you don’t feel like eating.”

  The noise of people laughing and silverware tinkling and Patsy Cline singing from the jukebox “I go out walkin’ . . . after midnight” was a weight on my chest.

  Abigail pushed her chair away from the table and stood up. She smiled. “We’ve got nothing but time.”

  She would be wrong about that. At least at first.

  We walked back out the way we’d come. Teddy stayed behind, probably to explain to Hickory about his poor, pathetic foster child. Abigail and I waited with the truck door open so the heat wouldn’t kill us.

  Teddy didn’t take long, but before he started the truck, he handed me a small circle of wood. It had been cut from the middle of a wide branch, maybe four inches in diameter, rough bark around the outside edge. At the very center, a soldering iron had been used to draw a complex outline of a cedar tree. It was intricate and beautiful and stirred a deep feeling inside me. Like floating on calm water.

  I must have been more tired and overwhelmed than I thought.

  “The cedar is a symbol of strength,” Teddy said. “We’re all going to need a bit of that, now, aren’t we?”

  He turned the key in the ignition, and the engine roared to life. And just as he drove back onto the highway, there was a loud bang! The truck going all wobbly until he pulled over to the shoulder. Teddy got out and inspected the front end of the truck.

  “Flat tire! Never fear! I will have us home in no time!” Teddy declared.

  “This sort of thing happen often?” I asked Abigail as we stood in the shade off to the side.

  “First flat tire we’ve had in years.”

  “No. I mean bad luck.”

  Abigail looked thoughtful. “There was a time where I would have answered yes. But not anymore.” Abigail smiled. She had a lovely crinkly-eyed smile that made you want to smile, too.

  But I knew better than to believe her.

  I tucked the piece of cedar away in my bag. Teddy and Abigail were clearly loving and kind people. And they really wanted a child. I felt it coming off of them like the warm breeze off Lake Tahoe in August.

  Right then I knew I had to leave. My being in danger of the curse was one thing, but there was no way I could put them in danger, too. Or anyone else for that matter.

  Who knew how hard the Grimm family curse might strike next?

  A PILGRIMAGE

  JUNI STOPPED READING, and they sat, quiet. She knew Anya went to Tahoe every September by herself, had been going since long before Juni was born. She called it her Annual Pilgrimage to the Lake. When Juni was nine or so, she’d looked up the word pilgrimage—“to go on a journey to a sacred place as an act of devotion”—and asked her grandmother why she did this every year. Lake Almanor was literally in their own backyard and just as glorious as Tahoe.

  Anya had told her it was a way of honoring her past.

  The thick pines and cedars of Lassen National Forest had momentarily opened to rolling hills, brown and gold from the summer sun, cows grazing. Juni thought how Anya had driven this very road with Teddy and Abigail, only going in the opposite direction.

  “No wonder she thought she was cursed,” Mason said. “She blamed herself for her mom and brother dying. Do you know what happened to them? What about her dad?”

  “Her dad died in a trucking accident, her mom from cancer a few months later. Will died from pneumonia.” Juni knew this only because Dad had told her.

  “So, how was it her fault?” Gabby said.

  Juni shook her head, thinking about the way Anya had fit the curse to her own situation. How, in a different time, Juni would have argued that the curse couldn’t possibly be true, no matter how much fairy-tale sense it seemed to make. Juni would have argued that Anya was just a kid and had suffered unimaginable loss, and unimaginable loss could make your mind funny.

  But then you go and wake up with antlers sprouting from your head, and logic doesn’t feel like the best argument for anything anymore.

  You have to know where you begin and the story ends. Anya’s words the night Juni found out Elsie had gone to the Wilder family. Knowing where Anya had gotten those words felt like completing a circle.

  “I can’t imagine losing your whole family like that,” Luca said, tightening his grip on the steering wheel.

  Juni refused to imagine losing a single piece of her family. Under any circumstances.

  Mason wrapped his pinkie finger around hers. He knew what Juni needed just by looking at her face; a touch on her shoulder, a silly note in her locker, time alone. He said he was an expert in Juniper-Creedy-watching. As though she were a rare bird, or a sunrise.

  They passed a sign announcing they’d entered QUINCY, POP. 1,728.

  “Meadow Valley isn’t far,” Juni said. She handed Gabby the directions to Madame Ophelia’s so she could call out the turns.

  Juni closed Anya’s book and held it against her chest, her heart thump-thumping beneath. She concentrated on Anya’s bravery in facing the u
nthinkable, pulling that bravery deep inside herself so she might feel it, too.

  MADAME OPHELIA’S CRYSTAL EMPORIUM

  THE DIRECTIONS TOOK them off the highway onto Bucks Lake Road, which Juni took as a sign that she was on the right path. Two wide lanes quickly turned into a narrow two lanes without lines or a shoulder. Luca followed the winding road, eventually turning right onto Silver Creek Lane, the forest pressing in on both sides of the car, ancient and dim.

  “Look at that,” Mason said.

  Juni looked out his window just in time to see a crooked old tree, half dead, with a rusty bicycle wedged in its branches.

  “Stop the car!” Juni shouted.

  Luca pulled over. “What is it?”

  Juni got out and walked back to the dead tree. Gabby, Mason and Luca followed. The tree had grown through the wheel spokes, its gnarled bark devouring the frame of the old bike.

  “Can’t you see them?” Juni said.

  “See what?” Luca said.

  “It’s a perfect set of antlers,” Mason said, in awe.

  Juni reached for one of the dried-out branches, about an inch around. They had five shoots, each an exact mirror of the other. They reminded her of the antlers she’d drawn on her picture window, seemingly growing from the oak in their meadow.

  A hot breeze blew pine needles across the forest floor. A crow cawed nearby.

  “This is the part in the horror movie where the audience screams, ‘Are you crazy? Go back!’” Gabby said.

  “Like you’ve watched any horror movies,” Luca said.

  “Goosebumps movies count as horror movies. They are terrifying,” Gabby said.

  Which was a fact.

  Mason made a special place for the antler branches in the back of the station wagon. He’d wrapped them carefully in the light blanket Connor kept for spontaneous picnics and looking at the stars.

  When they drove back onto the road, Juni read the mailbox numbers until she saw the one she was looking for: 569 Silver Creek Lane. She didn’t see houses, just woods in every direction. Luca turned left and drove slowly down the long gravel driveway.

  “The picture on the internet didn’t look like it was in the middle of nowhere,” Juni said.

  Finally, they rounded one last bend and an old house came into view, taller than it was wide, and painted in shades of purple. Luca turned the engine off, and they sat for a minute, staring. Juni’s astonishment didn’t come from the color of the house sitting square in its own meadow, nor was it because of the fairy-tale scenes in the stained-glass dormer windows—six swans in one, a hedge of thorns in another, Little Red Cap’s cloak in a third. It was because they’d just driven up to an honest-to-goodness gingerbread house in the middle of the forest. With a witch inside.

  Not actual gingerbread, although Juni had the urge to lick the siding to find out, but an old Victorian with gingerbread trim. Maybe there was even a child-sized oven in the kitchen, or stairs leading to a stone basement with a single spinning wheel, its spindle sharp and waiting.

  “‘Madame Ophelia’s Crystal Emporium.’” Mason read the hand-painted sign hanging from the porch rafters as he got out of the car. “Tell me we didn’t come all this way for a crystal you could have bought from Juke at the Holiday Market.”

  “Tourist crystals are different from real ones. The last one Anya bought from Juke’s went . . . bad. But she also asked me to do a little research on curses and witches. For her latest book.”

  “Crystals don’t go bad. They aren’t cheese,” Gabby said. She’d unraveled all the little braids she’d been weaving so her ponytail looked electrified.

  “Thank you, Madame Gabriella,” Mason said. “So far on this trip I’ve learned that summer gives you leaky brain syndrome and crystals aren’t cheese.”

  “Awesome! Now you know even more random things,” Gabby said.

  “But they are extremely interesting random things,” Mason said, and he waggled his eyebrows at Gabby. “I taught you how to French-braid, didn’t I? That is a life skill. Unlike algebra.”

  “Whatever. I would have figured it out eventually.”

  For a moment, it felt like old times, and Juni smiled.

  They walked between two pear trees and climbed the porch stairs as large brass wind chimes bonged softly in the light breeze. The only other sound was the tap-tap- tapping of a woodpecker in the distance. Before Juni could knock, the heavy door swung open. Standing before them, Juni assumed, was Madame Ophelia.

  She could not have looked less like a Madame Ophelia.

  There was no flowing robe or pointy hat or wild hair. She wasn’t old or covered in witch warts or tie-dyed scarves. In fact, Madame Ophelia looked exactly like Juni’s third-grade teacher, Ms. Baker. Tall, thin and a little stoop-shouldered, Madame Ophelia was young, not much older than Connor, and had long, straight dyed-gray hair. Not white gray, like Anya, but brown gray, like a sun-bleached fencepost. She wore ripped jeans and a Pat Benatar T-shirt.

  “Um, hi?” Juni said.

  “Hello yourself. What can I do for you?”

  “We’d like to employ your . . . services?” Juni finished. “I need a crystal, and a few questions answered. Do you charge money for answering questions?”

  “Depends on the questions. I’m Lena.” She extended her hand for Juni to shake. “Madame Ophelia was my grandmother.”

  Lena hung on to Juni’s hand for a moment longer than Juni thought was normal. Maybe it was a witch thing. “What type of crystal do you need?”

  “One to help with creativity,” Juni said.

  Lena stepped back from the doorway. She smiled as Juni introduced herself, Mason, Gabby and Luca, and shook their hands as well. Luca suddenly looked gobsmacked, moon-eyed and somehow zombified all at once. It was extraordinary, and Juni wondered if Luca had just fallen in love. She hoped not. They didn’t have time for that.

  Juni followed Lena to the main room of the house, which had glass-front bookcases filled with crystals and jewelry. Placed throughout the rest of the room—on tables, hung on the walls and crowded on shelves—were all manner of curiosities: a perfect forest-green butterfly wing under a glass dome, a jeweled skull and willow baskets filled with dried flower petals. Heavy red drapes framed the windows.

  Lena walked to a bookcase and opened the glass door. She handed Juni a blue orb the exact size and color of a robin’s egg.

  “This is the one you need. It’s apatite. For a type of creativity to help clear confusion.”

  “It’s not for me, though. It’s for my grandmother. And I’m not confused.”

  “Hmm.” Lena swung the door closed. She didn’t take back the robin’s egg. “It’s better when the person is here, but . . . let’s see. Do you have something that belongs to her? Or an object she might have touched?”

  Juni thought of Anya’s book, but found herself reaching for the antler bone instead. “She made this for me.”

  “Interesting,” Lena said. “Do you mind if I hold it?”

  Juni slipped it from around her neck. Lena took the bone in both hands and closed her eyes. Juni glanced over her shoulder to see what the rest were doing, suddenly nervous.

  Mason looked as though he wanted to wrap up the whole room and take it with him. He was going from one object to the next, pulling Gabby along, pointing and whispering. Gabby was clearly trying not to touch anything or let anything touch her. Luca still appeared zombified as he absently flipped through a thick book on a marble pedestal.

  When Juni turned back to Lena, her eyes were open. Without a word, Lena went to a different shelf in the bookcase and selected a green crystal, rough from the earth. Lena gave the antler bone back to Juni, along with the crystal. “It’s called malachite. It helps with the grieving process and releasing the past. I’ll give you some literature to go along with them so you can see what they do.”

  “How did
you know . . . ?”

  Lena smiled. “The bone has energy, but everyone is grieving something most of the time. My grandmother used to say grieving begins at birth with the first big loss of a warm, safe home. Learning to navigate grief is a lifelong practice.”

  Lena talked to Juni as though she were an equal, as though of course Juni knew exactly what Lena was talking about. Which she did, sort of. What Juni didn’t know was what to say in return. Lately Juni felt like she was a horse with blinders and on the other side of those blinders were the right words to describe what was happening inside her, why people did the mystifying things they did, how to make sense of monumental catastrophes, like death.

  Juni used to talk to Connor about it. How she could never find the right words to describe the terror of not breathing, the sense of her body betraying her. Words were so tiny next to the enormity of death.

  So Juni stopped searching and simply nodded. She read the price tags on the robin’s egg and the crystal. “I only have twenty-seven dollars, so I’ll just take the one for my grandma.”

  Lena took them both from Juni and walked toward a large claw-foot desk. “It’s two for the price of one today. Come, sit. You said you had questions.”

  Juni was grateful for Lena’s generosity as they sat on a green velvet sofa beneath a bay window. Beyond the window was a freshwater pond on which two black swans floated side by side. Juni took Connor’s phone from her back pocket to check the time. They’d left the house an hour and a half earlier. Anya would be telling Mom and Dad at any moment.

  “What sort of witch are you?” Juni said.

  “I’m primarily a hedge witch, with a few other practices thrown in for good measure.”

  That was one Juni hadn’t read about. “What is a hedge witch exactly?”

  “We are healing witches. We walk the hedges between this world and the next.”

  Juni checked again on Mason, Gabby and Luca, who were still rummaging around, throwing the occasional glance her way. Luca studied a taxidermy bat in a shadow box on the wall.

  “Do you cast magic spells?” Juni whispered. “Because I need a magic spell.”