Jochen and I ran as if we were on fire, taking the long way, skirting my family’s field so we could stay clear of Papa and Johann.  The wind tore my braids.  My blood roared in my ears.  I was so excited I thought my heart would burst.  I couldn’t believe I was actually going to make it.  I kept watching behind me, to the side on which our field lay, ahead of me as we neared the forest’s edge, willing my feet to go faster, ever faster, praying they wouldn’t give out on me. 

I imagined us running from the world, two heroes about to set up house in the cradle of the forest.  I saw us living blissfully together in a cottage of wattle and thatch, forever young and so very much in love that no practical concern need ever worry us.  Oh, the romantic ideas I had!

I ran and ran pushing my body forward faster than I’d ever run before, and yet I felt like I was slogging along in the slow motion of a dream.  Fatigue burned my muscles.  My breath came in ragged gasps.  My throat was dry, as if I’d swallowed hot coals. 
Nonetheless I refused to rest until we’d nearly reached the wood line.

When we made it to the edge of Jochen’s field and the border of the forest was just paces away, I allowed myself to collapse behind a rock.  “I can’t!”  I wheezed to Jochen’s back, gulping for air and holding my head, my blood pounding so violently in my brain I was afraid I was going to be sick.  Jochen stopped and turned around feigning impatience, but he was tired too.  He took the few steps back to me and plopped down by my side.  He broke a blade of scabby grass and ripped it with his nail.  He tore it lengthwise clean in two then looked at me.  His hair had fallen into his eyes.  His face was flushed.  I thought he was going to kiss me.

“Yes you can,” he insisted, getting up and extending his hand.  “You’re strong for a girl.”  I grabbed his hand.  For the briefest of moments I considered wrenching him back to the ground.  Instead I let him help me up.

“And you’re smart for a boy,” I smiled, tilting and crinkling, the vinegar of my words splashing over my honeyed voice.  But Jochen was my one true love, the boy with whom I was taking flight, and so I’d already forgiven him and apologized right away.  He dropped my hand with a look I couldn’t read, picked up a walking stick, and led the way. 
The elders were blooming, their flowers as white as my grandmother’s hair, as white as my hair is now.  I’d never been so close to them.  I stopped to touch their petals, to nestle my face in them.  I broke off a cluster, thrust it into my hair, and patted it, thinking how bridal it looked.

I saw myself in a frilly white dress like the ones Mama made for our neighbors’ first communions.  How often I’d begged for one of my own!  I’d go sour with envy every time a Catholic girl would preen in an outfit my mother had created.  She’d strut, so smug in her dress and veil and dainty shoes, our mothers cooing and fawning over her, as if she were a swan and I an ugly duckling in my everyday dress and Johann’s hand-me-down boots.  Since we weren’t Catholic, and girls in my church didn’t adorn themselves as brides for our first communions, Mama refused to make me a veil or dress. 

“Judy, where would you wear such a thing?” She’d snort and flick her hand over her ironing.  “When you get married you’ll have something prettier that you’ll appreciate even more,” she’d promise, as if that were nearly good enough.   But there, at the tree line, I saw myself, veiled and dressed in lacy white, all ruffles head to toe, holding a white prayer book with a gardenia resting on it.

By the time I remembered Jochen he was gone.

I entered the forest calling his name, and, sure he was teasing, I braced myself for a roaring burst of him from behind a rock or a tree.  Nothing happened.  I yelled again.  There was no response.  I screamed, drawing out his name so I had to breathe between the syllables.  My voice cracked.  A twig snapped.  I twirled around with a grin, but Jochen wasn’t there.  Every crunch of the leaves, every whoosh of a bird caused me to spin, first with hope and then with fear as the truth of my situation seeped into my mind.  I didn’t know what to do.  If I stood still the bandits or wolves or bears or child-eating plants would get me.  If I moved Jochen wouldn’t know where I was.
 
Something crawled on my leg.   Sure it was one of the predatory vines Mama had warned me about, I clamped my eyes shut and shuddered, screaming Jochen’s name for a fourth and final time.  The thing moved again.  I took off running, arms outstretched, Heidi clutched in my fist.   Using both my arms I shoved aside the undergrowth and the saplings that sprang up to grab me.  I ran through a spider web and quivered with horror, scraping sticky thread from my face.  Terror-blinded I ran, dodging trees, leaping rocks, breaking fern backs and tripping over roots.  I think I might have fallen once or twice, but I was so focused on running I’m not altogether sure.  I ran and ran, sure that speed would somehow help me find a bit of light that would show me the way out.  But the faster I ran the darker were the shadows, the closer the wood sounds that terrified me.   Mama had been right.  I was hopelessly lost.  And, since I had run, I had guaranteed that Jochen wouldn’t know how to find me.  Frightened and alone, hungry and cold, I crumpled beneath an oak and sobbed.  As if on cue my stomach growled.

 “Why are you crying, Child?” The voice was large and deep.  Despair gave way to a new kind of fear.  If Mama had been right about the woods, surely she’d been right about the Man Dangers too.  I scooted back against the tree and pulled my knees defensively to my chest.  Moving only my eyes, I scanned the woods and found saplings and trees and broad shouldered shadows hulking over me.  Something crashed in the distance.  I started, reflexively jerking my arm in front of my face.  “Look up, Little One,” the man instructed.  “Turn around and look up.”  My stomach knotted, my arms and legs flexed for flight, I scrambled to my feet and did as he’d said.

The oak had become a very old man in brown wear-weary work clothes.  His collar was open and his sleeves were rolled up.  A broad brown belt tied his pants to his shirt.  A green cap tilted jauntily atop his distant head.  I think I cringed.  “Don’t be afraid, Judy.  It is Judy, is it not?”  I nodded.  So did he.  “Yes, I thought I had that right.  And my name is Pan Dąb.”  He looked down at me with such tenderness that I couldn’t help but trust him. “Tell me why you weep so, little Judy.”

I shivered, though sweat trickled down my back.  I wanted my mother and something to eat.  “I want to go home,” I whimpered.

“Oh, but you are home.”  I heard the voice, soft and silver as a tinkling chime, before I saw the tiny woman to whom it belonged.  Smaller even than Heidi, she was fair and blue eyed and dressed in a dark green skirt and a mint green long sleeved blouse.  Her boots were green too, and she wore a ribbon of cabbageworm green around her yellow hair.  A silver-white halo swirled around her body, growing and shrinking as she hovered like a dragonfly just in front of my face.  “This has always been your home.”  She twinkled as she spoke.  “This is the home of all wild things.”

“Child?  Judy?  You did say it was Judy?  I’m so bad with names,” the oak man apologized.  I nodded, though my eyes could not tear themselves from her.  “Yes, Judy.   Meet Małgorzata.  Her name means ‘little pearl’.”  I nodded again but my mind was on her words.  I paid no attention to her name. 

“Wild things,” she had said.  I rolled the phrase over in my mind.  Herr Schuler had called me a wild thing.  The words that had flared, blistering with blame, from the blacksmith’s mouth sounded different – intriguing -- when this creature spoke them.  I liked the idea of being a wild thing.  But I also liked the idea of regular meals and a safe bed in which to sleep.  I liked Mama’s chest of leftover cloth and Johann’s voice when he read from his primer.  Though I hated the fence, I liked the concept of home. 

“Couldn’t I be a part time wild thing?  Can’t I be wild during the day after a hot meal and tame at night, warm and safe in my bed?” 

“How can a bird that is born for joy sit in a cage and sing?” the tree asked.  Later I would learn he was quoting William Blake, but at the time all I knew was that he meant I had to choose. 

“This is not my home.” I stamped my foot.  “I don’t like this place.  I don’t like anything about it.  It’s scary and dark, and I want my mama.”  My voice rose, both in volume and pitch.  “I want my mama!” I repeated over and over, working myself into spasmodic sobs.  “I want to go home!”

“Małgy, you should take her to Matka Lasu.”  Pan Dąb was all reason in the midst of my tantrum. “She’ll know what to do.”  He bent himself in half and peered into my screaming face.  In spite of the rationality in his voice his eyes betrayed helpless fear.

“Go with Małgorzata, Child.”  I dried my eyes on the hem of my skirt, sure that this Matka Lasu, whoever she was, would show me the way to get home.  I could almost see my mother’s narrow kitchen, the white chipped table and the mismatched chairs, the coal stove leaning toward the yellowed wall, could almost taste her potato soup and crusty whole-wheat bread.  A force jerked me backward.

I found myself in a blue translucent ball tethered to Małgorzata’s tiny waist with a delicate silver-blue cord.  Zigzagging between trees, we flew at an insect’s height, and I winced and ducked, my stomach clutching every time tree trunk rushed at me.  I pressed my forearms against the bubble walls to keep from lurching side to side and vainly scanned the blur of the woods for hint of Jochen or a sign of home.   Then, as abruptly as it had appeared, the bubble was gone, dumping me at the foot of a pine.   Małgorzata alighted on one of its branches.

“Here we are,” she announced.  “This is Matka Lasu.”  And, before I could repeat my demand to go home, the tree had bent and touched my disheveled hair.

“Hello, kleine taube,” my grandmother purred the pet name she always called me.  She stood in place of the tree, partly veiled in woodland shadow.  She stepped forward, leaning on her cane.  Wearing her favorite pink gingham apron over a navy shirtwaist, her yellow-white hair pinned back in a bun, a renegade strand hanging limply over her eye, she looked the same as she always had.  Mischief sparkled in her violet eyes, and her grin was slightly lopsided, as it had been since her stroke.   I didn’t understand.  She had died the year before.  “I see your hands and knees need attention.”  Humming a lullaby that she used to sing to me, she gathered moss and lichen and wrapped them around my wounds.

“Who are you?”  I demanded, trusting the brass of rudeness to cover my confusion.  “And where’s Jochen?”

“I am Matka Lasu, and I am who I choose to be,” she said, and, as if to prove it, she changed into a maid with yellow braids, a mirror image of me!  But the moment I recognized myself she changed to a spider weaving a silver and diamond web.   “You see?  I am whatever I need to be.”  And with that she changed to a buxom woman, her chignon tabby cat gray and brown, her eyes as brown as the forest floor.  Her plump face was smooth save for the creping at her eyes and a furrow between her brows.  Her ankle length dress was brown and rough, sleeveless and cinched at the waist.  Her voice had changed, too, from Grand Mama’s soprano to an earthy, soft contralto. 

“As for Jochen, he ran back to his father’s farm.”

“He ran away?”  I couldn’t believe it.  I refused to believe it.

“He ran to his destiny, as you did toward yours.”  She clucked over my leaf-strewn hair and unbraided it, combing it with her fingers so it fell, crimped but free, around my shoulders.  “There.”  She patted my cheek.  “That’s better.”

“But I thought –”

“Yes, I know what you thought.  But your future’s not with Jochen.  Judy, you’ll discover somebody else, someone you’ll truly love and who will love you.  But not for years.  You have plenty of time.”  My chin trembled.  She sounded just like Mama dismissing everything I cared about.  She held me close.  She smelled woodsy and damp.  I stiffened in her arms.  “Kochanie,” she crooned the term of endearment, “I know you’re sure he’s the one.  But trust Matka Lasu.”  She held me at arm’s length and tapped her forehead with her fingertip.  “You’ll see him again, and when you do I don’t think you’ll like him overmuch. 

“I see you’re wearing your new shoes,” she changed the subject and brightened her tone.  “Do you like them?”   I’d forgotten about the shoes.  Confused, I glanced between Heidi and her.

I never said they were from me, the figurine disclaimed. 

“No she didn’t,” Matka Lasu shook her head.  “That was something you just assumed.  Actually, they were a gift from the woods.”  She gazed fondly at the trees as if they were her children who, having grown up, had prospered and married well.  “And your mother needn’t have worried.”  She looked back at the oxfords.  “They’ll grow with you.  They won’t wear out or need polishing either.”  I knew I should thank her, but I was too miserable.

My entrance to the forest hadn’t been anything like what I had hoped it would be.  I’d expected small creatures to chatter and chirp and flowers to toss themselves at my feet.  I’d expected to discover a little thatched cottage with sparkling windows and a narrow stone path meandering from the front door.  I’d expected a curl of chimney smoke and ivy climbing up the walls.  I’d expected to share all the wonders with Jochen and eventually with my parents and Johann.  Instead I felt hollow -- hungry and tired, betrayed and bereft of the boy I thought I loved.
 
“Poor child, you’ve been through quite a day.”  She cupped my chin.  “Things will look better after you’ve eaten and had a good rest.   Come, Kochanie.  Come and eat.”  She retrieved an acorn cap from the forest floor and blew on it, and before I could blink, the broken acorn had become a bowl of delicious smelling stew.  She served it with a flourish, pulling a napkin from the air.  Małgorzata nodded at a mushroom, and it pushed itself against the backs of my knees, forcing me to sit.  A leaf appeared in Matka Lasu’s hand and in less than a heartbeat it had turned into a spoon.  I tucked the napkin into the collar of my dress.

  Loaded with mushrooms and carrots and beans and fragrant with basil and garlic and herbs, the stew was thick and rich and good.  I ate. Oh, how I ate.  I ate as if I’d never eaten before, as if I would never eat again, and yet the magical bowl stayed full.  And the more I ate the sleepier I became. 

While I ate, Małgorzata and Matka Lasu puttered in a little clearing, humming and mumbling to each other, picking up twigs and rejecting some, accepting others with a nod or a grunt.  My arms grew heavy; my eyes wanted to close.  Weariness wrapped my head like cotton swathing.  I nodded, fighting to stay awake.  I didn’t know or care what they were doing.  I could barely hear their voices.  My hands and knees soothed, my stomach full, I yawned, no longer cold or hungry, no longer in pain, no longer longing for home, no longer afraid of everything I saw.  
  
I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew I was lying in what felt like a featherbed, except it was made of leaves.  And the roof over my head was the richest purple I had ever seen.  It was luminous and so clear that I could see the woods through it, and it pulsed as if it were a living thing.  Sitting up, I realized I was in a sort of teepee like the kind my brother had read about in an American Western he’d borrowed from Jochen.  But instead of cloth or hide, the teepee was made of gems.  There was the amethyst directly overhead.  Then, in descending order, there were horizontal stripes of sapphire, aquamarine, emerald, citrine, fire opal, and ruby.  I crawled from the bed and knelt near the wall, reaching over and resting my palm on it.  It was as smooth as one of Johann’s marbles, and there didn’t appear to be any seams between the stones.  It was as though they had somehow grown together and a teepee had been carved from the geode.  I stroked the cool surface for long moments before I realized that Matka Lasu was sitting cross-legged behind me.

There were others as well -- a chimpanzee and a funny little man whose clothing all but drowned him.  The shoulders of his orange shirt drooped to his elbows, and the sleeves were rolled so he could use his hands.  His pants were green and frayed at the hems where someone had cut them short.  His thick, brown boots looked a bit too big too and were laced up to his ankles as tightly as they could be.  He wore a brown peaked cap with a green striped band and a sparrow hawk feather spiking from it.  His grin exposed a beguiling gap between his two front teeth, and I knew right away that we would be friends.  Małgorzata was there, too, flitting around my head, ruffling my hair, her wings buzzing in my ears.  The gathering felt like a birthday party with me as the guest of honor, though my birthday was long past and I’d never had a party.
 
“She’s up!  She’s up!  She’s up!” the chimpanzee screeched, hopping around the teepee, grinning and flapping her arms.

“Calm yourself, Masha,” the little man scolded.  His voice was exactly like Johann’s.  “She’s a human child.”  Frowning, he clapped his hands and pointed to the ground.  “You’ll frighten her.  She’s not used to chimps.”  While looking at the ground where the little man had pointed, the chimpanzee stole the cap from his head and put it on her own.   Then she sat beside him.  But stealthily, slowly, looking over her shoulder, she sidled to me and examined my face, touching hands to my forehead with superstitious awe.

“You’re incorrigible.”  He popped up and sauntered to her, and, shaking his head, he gave her a hug, returning the cap to his own balding crown.  Though as cracked and as wrinkled as an old leather shoe and bent like a willow bough, he was as agile as a youth and had the charm of an elf.  I wished the little man would just keep talking so I could torture myself with the sweet pain of Johann’s voice.  For, parted from him, I could remember the boy as the perfect brother I’d always idealized.  Masha threw her arms around the little man, nearly knocking him off balance, and kissed him noisily on the cheek.   Had he not been quick to grab at the cap, the chimp would have stolen it again.  He grinned and wiped his face against his shoulder.

“How do you like your shelter, Judy?”   He looked around appreciating a job well done.  “Matka Lasu and Małgy conjured it for you.”   I couldn’t get over how much he sounded like my brother. 

My longing for Johann lumped in my throat, for at sixteen he was as much father as brother.  Without thinking I hugged the man whose voice was so like his.  “It’s all right,” the dwarf crooned.  “I know you miss your family.  And you can go home any time you want.  But before long you’ll find that this is your home and the forest is your family.” 
He held me close and patted my back.  “The truth is that this is where you belong.”  Backing away, he smiled into my eyes, a little bubble of saliva gleaming between his teeth.

“This is Tranoc,” Matka Lasu beamed as I cuddled into the little man’s chest.  “You’d think he’d have the courtesy to introduce himself.”  She touched the wall too, clearly pleased with her work.  “But he prefers to get right to the core of things.  He’s right, though.  You have much to learn, of course, but this is your home.  You chose it voluntarily.  In fact, you struggled for it. 

“By the way, let me see your hands.”  She peeled off the moss mittens, peered at my hands, backs and palms, and touched my fingertips.  To my amazement, they were totally healed.  “Good,” she proclaimed.  She was the mistress of the understatement, as I was about to learn. 

“Now it’s time for your first lesson.  Are you hungry?”  I nodded, remembering the stew of the night before.  “Well, find yourself something to eat.” 

I was stunned!  I looked around.  There were twigs, dead leaves, pine needles, a fallen feather, even a lumpy rock or two.  But there was absolutely nothing to eat. Without her magic I would starve.  Oh Mama, I prayed, please send someone to find me!  Surely the neighbors are searching for me by now.  Masha scampered from the shelter and squatted near a rotting log. 

Wallowing in self-pity, I absently watched her, assuming she was playing in the dirt. 
Then I realized she was using a stick to probe the wood.  She pulled out the stick.  It was alive with termites.  She ate.  I shuddered, rejecting the lesson.  However, just beyond her right shoulder I glimpsed the mushroom on which I had sat.  I crawled out of my teepee and made my way to it, circling wide to avoid Masha’s meal.  I thought I saw Tranoc start and Matka Lasu stay his hand as I broke off a piece and stuffed it into my mouth.  The flavor was odd, earthy but good.

My vision blurred.  My stomach churned.  Suddenly I couldn’t stand up.  The trees spun around me.  I stumbled to the ground. 

“No, Kochanie.”  Matka Lasu took the remaining chunk from my hand.  Her face swam above me, distorted, too thin, as if I were looking up at her from a murky body of water.  “Not this one.”  Her voice was muffled in the swill.  I knew I was going to die. “Here,” she offered.  “Drink this.”  She held a cup to my mouth.  “This is lemon balm.  It’s good for mushroom poisoning,” she instructed as I warily sipped the brew.  “You’re going to have to learn what’s safe and what’s not, and my telling you won’t teach you nearly as well as your own experience.”  And so my education began.

In moments my vision was clear again.  I was able to sit, was able to move my limbs, was able to smile at the knot of worried friends.  Masha, having abandoned her meal of termites, grinned and beat the ground in front of her.  Tranoc sighed loudly and glowered at Matka Lasu.  Małgorzata fluttered against my cheek, whispering something I couldn’t catch.  Standing over me, Matka Lasu held out her hand, ignoring Tranoc’s silent blame. 
“Come, Kochanie,” she pulled me to my feet.  “Let’s find you something to eat.”

Starting that morning and through the rest of her life, Matka Lasu taught me how to forage for food.  Even still, decades after her death, we scour the underbrush together.  She still guides my hand, decoding the vegetation, naming every moss and fern, every vine and flowering shrub.  She speaks of them with reverence, describing their magical powers as well as their nutritional value, as if she still cannot get over the privilege of knowing them.

“Look,” she still whispers to my heart with the awe of one describing a miracle, and, cradling a seedling in her hands as if it were the face of a child, she shows me a plant I hadn’t noticed before.  “See how the leaves are formed.  See the color, the conditions in which it grows.  Notice the height.  Feel the texture.  Smell.” And I still obediently kneel to sniff.  Then she quizzes me, telling me to close my eyes and describe the plant and its environs, to repeat its magical properties.  Only then does she allow me to taste.  Over all these years her method has never varied, and I believe it will be the same for years after I die.

She taught me to look beyond leaves and flowers and to dig up roots as well, though she still adds a warning not to take more than I need and to take nothing at all if the species is scarce.   And every time she reminds me to ask the plant’s permission before I cut or dig.  In a few weeks I developed a fondness for plants I had never noticed before, and the affection is the same now that they’re old friends.  In fact, it’s more profound. 

It would be a year before she’d let me grow crops, in part because seeds need to be planted in their proper time but also because she wanted me to appreciate the banquet the forest could provide.
 
When she finally allowed me start a garden she taught me to plant in accordance with the moon and to sing the proper chants so the earth would accept the seeds.  How she loved to plunge her hands into the earth and shove them under my nose. 

“Smell,” she’d tell me.  And I still do.  “This is the odor death and of life.”  We’d fill the holes with soil and special herbs and gather leaves to crumble for mulch to keep the seedlings moist.  And, after I had my own garden and house, I’d run out every morning to talk to the plants and to see what they’d done while I’d slept.  I’ll never forget the first tomato I’d raised entirely on my own in the garden I’d planted at my own little house.  How perfectly round and red it was!  How smooth, how warm, as if the sun and earth had changed its juice to pulsing blood!  How it squirted, tangy on my tongue!  No tomato I’ve ever eaten before or since has tasted quite as good.  But I’m getting ahead of my story. 

Only after I had learned to love the soil and to understand how hard it worked to bring forth life did she begin my formal education in conjuring food.  Though she did a lot of magic, Matka Lasu claimed not to believe in casting spells until all other options had been exhausted.  She said it was too easy.
 
“People are meant to be creative,” she’d explain.  “If all they learn is to snap their fingers they miss the challenge of working with what’s at hand.”  She hesitated a moment as if considering.  “And they forget to notice the magic all around in the little, mundane things.”  I think she had a point.  I wonder if that tomato would have tasted as good if I had plucked it from a spell.

Nonetheless, that very night Matka Lasu introduced me to the wonders of ritual magic.  Just after midday she made a picnic of boiled new potatoes tossed with parsley and chives and rye bread with honey and a salad of burdock, plantain, and wild thyme with a generous sprinkling of bilberry flowers.  Tranoc spread a quilt on the ground and Małgorzata brought a jar of wildflowers.  There was water to drink, which I thought was odd.  At home my family drank coffee or beer.
 
“This is the night of the first sliver of the moon, and so it’s a special time,” Matka Lasu explained.  

“It’s a magical time when wish becomes beginning if you know how to make it so,” Małgorzata interrupted, twinkling over the salad.   Matka Lasu nodded but went on as if the fairy hadn’t broken in. 

“I like my coffee and my mead from time to time.  But I want to be clear-headed and relaxed tonight.  Coffee sometimes jangles me, and alcohol gets in the way.”  

“It’s not just coffee and mead we have to watch.”  Tranoc chimed in continuing her explanation.  “It’s hard to do magic while you’re body’s busy digesting a heavy meal.”  He patted his belly.  “So eat now, because after this we’ll all fast until the moon is bright.”  He stuffed another potato into his mouth as if to emphasize his point.
 
“You’ll want a rest too,” Małgorzata added, looking like she was ready for a nap.  “You’ll want to be fresh for the ritual.”   

I was fine with fasting until just before twilight when my stomach began to grumble, but resting was another story altogether.  While the others napped peacefully near a tree I twitched and fidgeted, trying to imagine what kind of magic Matka Lasu would perform.  I’d heard of magic shows.   As a child my mother had seen one in Dresden where she and her parents had gone on a trip to visit my grandmother’s uncle.  She told me of a man all dressed in black with a top hat and a long cape.  He had blown on a playing card and made a dove appear and had turned the bird into a scarf.  I’d thought at the time that she was teasing me, but, having met Matka Lasu, I wasn’t so sure. 

“Judy, you’re going to have to learn to be quiet,” Matka Lasu complained, her eyes still closed, her voice thick with drowsiness.  She rolled over and sighed.  I tried again, watching her broad back rise and fall.  My dress was too tight.  The soles of my feet itched.  My hair got in my way.  Every time I closed my eyes an insect hummed around my ears.  A precocious grasshopper threw itself against my arm.  I leapt, startled.  Matka Lasu snorted awake.  I expected her to scold me, but instead she turned over and lay on her back, pulling my head to her shoulder.   “Kochanie, if you want to learn to do magic you’re going to have to learn to quiet yourself.”

“Why don’t you focus on that tree?”  Tranoc pointed to a beech.  “Just watch for her light.  It’ll be like Małgy’s.  And, when you find it, listen for her voice.  It will be much like Heidi’s – quiet and easily missed.”

“Just relax your muscles, even your tongue,” Matka Lasu winked.  Her brown eyes went blue then back to brown.  I dismissed the change as a trick of the light.  “And breathe as deeply as you can.”  She breathed very deeply to demonstrate and placed her hand on my belly.  “Now you do it.  Breathe so your belly expands and your shoulders remain relaxed.”   I did.  “Good.  Now try to empty your mind and focus only on the tree.  Stray thoughts will pop up, but just gently invite them to wait their turn.  Tell them you’ll talk to them later.  Now breathe in and out, deeply, deeply.”  Her voice was like a lullaby. “Yes, that’s good.  Breathe.  Breathe.”  

The tree’s halo glimmered, white and vivid, and bounced like ball lightning over the crown.  It peeked through the leaves and shimmered down the trunk and glowed through the ground along the roots.  My psyche floated downward, following the light deep into the cool, damp forest soil, and, as I journeyed, I heard the tree’s voice, as muffled as if I were listening from the womb.  She spoke not a word but only crackled and hummed a hymn so relentlessly repetitive, so astoundingly familial that I couldn’t help but weep.  I awoke to the breeze of Małgorzata’s wings tickling my face like ladybug feet.

“It’s time,” she twittered, her halo aglitter in twilight’s indigo.  “You must wash now.  Matka Lasu’s already at the stream.”  Suddenly I heard water whispering.  We meandered through the trees going generally west and found a narrow rivulet, deep and quiet, sparkling in the evening’s final gasping light.  Matka Lasu floated upright, naked and up to her chin, her hair loose and trailing her head like a train.

“Come, Judy.”  She bobbled to her back facing me and held out her arms in invitation, her breasts and knees little islands in the flow.  Małgorzata nodded.  Tranoc wasn’t around.  “It’s all right.  You’re safe.  Just strip down and come in.  The water’s cold, but you’ll get used to it.”  

I took off my clothes and the fairy did the same, draping them over the branches of a fir.  The warm air caressed my body deliciously, evoking a funny tingling in my groin that I did not understand.  I took off my shoes and carefully laid them side-by-side on the water’s edge next to Heidi.  I stuffed one sock into each.  Małgorzata had already flitted into the water, bubbling and bobbing, fluttering at its surface, filling her little lungs, and plunging to the bottom and swimming up again.  She broke the water giggling.

“Come, Judy.  It’s wonderful!”

I dabbled my toe.  The water was like a river of snow, which, of course, is exactly what it was, having flowed down the mountain from the white-crested peaks.  I edged one foot forward and then the other, icy water rippling around my ankles.  My feet went immediately numb.  I took another step as if I were a house cat testing something it doesn’t altogether trust.  I was up to my calves and hardly able to walk.  One more step and I lost the bottom and was over my head in glacial water.  My heart stopped.  Something punched the air from my lungs.  I couldn’t move my arms.  My legs were paralyzed.  Panic flailed inside me, as fierce and as solid as a swarm of bees.  Something pushed me from beneath, and I surfaced with a sputter, gulping oxygen and grasping at air with my fists as if it were substantial and I could cling to it.  Małgorzata wriggled to the surface like a tadpole.   Matka Lasu supported me under my arms, humming a whisper that I was fine, just fine.

My whole body warmed to her comforting.  My heart went back to its normal beat.  My breath came easily.  My arms and legs loosened, and I floated on my back as effortlessly as a leaf.  The stream was as warm as a tepid tub that Mama had filled with boiling water and cold until the temperature was exactly right. 

When the moon slice was bright Matka Lasu ran her fingers through her damp hair so it tumbled, dry and gently waved, down to her waist, and then she did the same with mine.  She put on a red robe that was embroidered down the front and along its wide sleeves with silver moons and stars.  Old and well worn, it fell shapelessly from her shoulders and, after many years of brushing the forest floor, its hem was frayed and stained.  But she looked and behaved like a queen in it.  Małgorzata had disappeared.  Matka Lasu explained.

 “This is a ritual just for Heidi, you and me.  Małgy will be with her family tonight.”  She pulled my dress over my head and tugged the hem to my knees.  “Tranoc will celebrate in his own way, so we’ll be on our own.”  I pulled on my socks and shoes and quickly dipped Heidi in the stream so she’d be clean too.  I thought I felt her shiver.  I held her to my chest.  “So tonight it’s just the three of us.”  Matka Lasu looked squarely into my eyes and waited, I knew, for a bevy of questions, but my thoughts were so tangled I couldn’t unravel a single one, and so I only shrugged.  She began to walk and I followed at her heels. 

“I don’t know what to tell you to expect tonight.  I never plan these things.  I find that as soon as I begin I know what to do and how to do it.”  She pressed a branch as if she were holding a door open and let me pass.  I took it and allowed it close behind me.   “You’ll undoubtedly see things you won’t understand.  Just stay quiet so you don’t break my concentration, and know you will not be in a moment’s jeopardy.”  The thought of danger had not occurred to me.  My throat went too dry to speak, and so I nodded, knowing, with her back to me, she wouldn’t be able to see.

In a special clearing reserved for ritual, she spread a white cloth over a large flat rock and lit a white candle at the southern corner of the thing.  She arranged a plate of soil at the north and a fan of five goose feathers at the east.  At west she set a bowl of water.  In the center of the altar she placed a bunch of hawthorn and some white enchanter’s nightshade.  When the altar was assembled, she swept a linden stick in a circle over her head and, in a voice big enough to startle birds from sleep, she chanted the names of the spirits of the winds.  I thought she was singing in a secret tongue.

She rested the wand near the spray of leaves and flowers and, still chanting, deliberately paced a circle wide enough to accommodate the altar and me.  Blue flames as tiny as violets sprang from the silver shadowed earth.  One after the other with every step, they followed her with a slender blue arc until the burning circle was closed.

She bowed her head a moment then, fixing her gaze on the moon, she raised her hands, allowing her sleeves to rumple back, exposing the white flesh of her inner arms.  A chill tiptoed over my body.  The flames stretched to match the elevation of her hands so that, when she pressed her palms together over her head, a translucent blue fire dome sheltered us.  I wept in quiet awe.

Her feet apart and firmly planted in the leaves, she let her robe drop, took a single step back from it, and bowed her head again.  She took a few deep breaths.  Her eyelids fluttered over statue eyes as white and as blank as stone.  She threw back her head and sang a different chant, her arms spread wide as if she would funnel the sky into her body. 
The moon’s silver light poured like milk into her fingers and down her arms, pooling at her feet and filling her up to her hairline.  She became a decanter of light, so bright I could see her bones through her skin.

She stood bone naked for such a long time that I thought, like Lot’s wife, she had turned to a pillar of salt.  I didn’t know what to do.  Panic flailed in my belly like a bird with clipped wings.  It fluttered to my throat constricting my voice.  I tried to scream, but, as in a bad dream, I could not make a sound. 

Wait.  Just wait.  Heidi whispered in my heart.  I stuck my thumb into my mouth and sucked like a starving babe, realized what I was doing, and yanked it out, grateful that no one had seen.  It found its way to my mouth again, and I settled on biting my nail.  I held my breath, willing an eyelash to flutter or a vein to pulse in Matka Lasu’s neck.  I waited, telling myself her nose had twitched, knowing I had only wished it so.  I waited, afraid to move lest I disturb her.  I waited, afraid of being still.  My tension-bunched muscles shrieked to rush into action, and yet I waited, second-guessing Heidi and doubting my doubts about her. 

Matka Lasu thrust her arms down and pointed to the stone so suddenly that I bounced backward on a startled squeak. 

She described a circle over the altar, and a current of stars flowed from her fingertip, splashing sparks over the cloth and onto the ground.  She traced the circle with increasing speed, whipping the star stuff to a swirling foam so bright that I could see nothing else.  And then she waited a moment.  She rested her palms just above the foam, spoke a few words, clapped her hands, and pointed her finger at me.

The light spun a starry squall around me so bright I had to watch it through battened down eyes.  Humming a wraith of a melody, it whooshed around my body from head to toe, blowing warm gusts of my unbraided hair into my face, raising goose bumps on my arms.  Star stung, I was locked inside the gale, unable to move, unable to cry out, almost unable too breathe.  Every cell in my body scintillated with its power, and yet I was powerless.  And then the star wind vanished, and, when it did, as if someone had simply blown out a lamp, the light inside Matka Lasu went dark.
  
The altar had been transformed to a banquet table.  I blinked, shook my head, and blinked again.  The feathers were gone, and in their place was a goose, gold brown and crackly, its drumsticks dangling by skin crisp slivers.  Parsley as dense as mustard weed encircled it overrunning the all but invisible platter.  Looking like miniature versions of the bird, brown crinkled baked potatoes as big as fists roosted in the oval of greens.  Instead of a candle there were bowls of fresh tomatoes intermingled with flowers carved of radishes.  There were beets, both hot and cold, and a crock of carrots and yams.  Crowded in the middle was a bowl of yellow corn spangled with bits of scarlet peppers.  A tureen of fish soup had replaced the water, white and creamy and flecked with lobster chunks and garnished with sprigs of dill.  We couldn’t get fish at home. I’d never tasted it.  And so I thought the soup exotic, the kind of food Ingeborg Felden would serve.  The plate of soil had become a loaf of pumpernickel bread, hard crusted and round, as big as the head of a bear.  The bouquet had arranged itself in a crystal vase as elegant as any in the Felden’s china closet. 

But the biggest surprise was the dress I was wearing.  My dirty, too small shirtwaist had disappeared, and I was bedecked all in white.  Matka Lasu stood aside and pointed at the air, producing a full-length mirror.   I sucked in my breath when I saw my reflection, actually took two steps forward to touch the glass to be sure that what I was seeing was true. 

Arrayed in a confection of a white georgette dress, I was more beautiful than any of the girls in Mama’s bedroom.  A cape-like Bertha collar with a scalloped hem and a large white satin bow floated over my upper arms, and under it a bodice as light as spider silk skimmed my body to the butterfly bow of a satin sash flouncing at my hip.  The long-waisted skirt was ruffled and tiered, and the hem was scalloped just below the knee.  There was even a special pocket in the skirt that was just the right size for Heidi.  I had on white anklets with white lacy trim and dainty white Mary Janes.  My hair was all curls and pulled up like Heidi’s with a chaplet of dewy gardenias.  Twirling this way and that I admired my reflection, barely able to confine my excitement.  I felt as glamorous as Cinderella at the ball.
 
“Can I keep it?” I prayed, remembering how Cinderella had lost her dress as well as her shoe when, at the stroke of midnight, the spell had been broken.  Matka Lasu nodded with a chuckle.
 
“Of course you may, for as long as you want.”  Retrieving her robe from the circle floor, she pulled it over her head.   “It’ll be your ritual dress,” she added, poking her head through her garment’s simple neckline and winding her hair back into a bun.  “Now walk with me and repeat what I say.”  And together we paced the circle the other way, she thanking the spirits, I repeating phonemes, since the names didn’t yet mean anything to me. The fire dome shrank back to little flames and, following our footsteps, shivered into the earth.

Everybody came, following the food scent.  Looking like a ghost hauling a wagon of snow, Tranoc brought dishes and flatware.  Małgorzata, twinkling like a little green star, flitted about his head and, following her, an array of fairies glinted, each in a different color.  Some were fair-haired like her.  Others were dark.  And a few of them had hair the color of fire.  They twittered and chirped, each with a different voice, bobbling and jogging through the trees like the fire sparks from Herr Schuler’s soldering.  Masha, proudly wearing Tranoc’s cap, brought up the rear, screeching and swinging from branch to branch.  The animals came too, spectral in the moonlight’s silver lace, and everybody fussed over me.

“Well if it isn’t Lady Łada, late for May but beautiful nonetheless!”  In a single fluid move Tranoc swept his cap from Masha, held it to his chest, and bowed.   Putting it back on his head, he took my hand and twirled me to observe me from every angle.  “Absolutely gorgeous,” he whispered, his exultant breath whistling through the gap of his teeth.  How wonderfully wise he was!  He didn’t admire the dress.  Everyone knew it was magnificent, but I had had nothing to do with its design.  Instead he raved about how lovely I was, as stunning as the Goddess of spring.  I’ll never forget that.  He made me feel so special.

I flounced as if I’d won a beauty pageant, and they all buzzed around me, as Mama had cooed over the frill-costumed girls in her bedroom mirror.  Clapping hands and nodding to the rhythm she’d created, Małgorzata made a ditty about how pretty I was in what she called my maiden dress.  And Tranoc, bowing extravagantly, kissed my hand and asked me to dance.  He skipped a little jig, showing me the steps, and in no time he and I were leading a procession of gamboling guests around the banquet table.  Some of the fairies rode on our shoulders.  Some glimmered about our heads.  Others capered at our feet, careful to give us a generous berth so we wouldn’t step on them.  Even Masha joined in, hopping and screeching and flailing her arms, bouncing off Matka Lasu and bumping into me, having a wonderful time.
 
When we’d spent ourselves dancing and everyone had loaded up a plate, I held back, unwilling to sit cross-legged with the others.  I shuffled my feet, leaning over the food and fingering a dish then letting it go.

“Come, Judy,” Matka Lasu patted the ground.  “Your dress isn’t that fragile.  Fill your plate and eat with us.  After all, this is your homecoming feast.”  His cheeks fat with food, Tranoc called me with a grunt, waving me over with his arm.  Masha nodded and shoved a tomato into her mouth.  Małgorzata flew over and landed on my arm.

“Your dress won’t get dirty, no matter what you do,” she assured me with a twinkle. 
“That’s right,” Matka Lasu agreed, slurping her soup.  “It’s like the shoes.  It won’t get dirty, and if it gets torn it’ll heal.  And it’ll grow with you for as long as you need it.”  And it did, until the night when I got my red dress.  But I’m ahead of my story again.

Thinking of the Feldens and wishing they were there, I filled my plate and bowl again and again, stuffing myself until my belly hurt and I could barely move.  I knew the Felden women would have loved the fish chowder, though they wouldn’t have approved of our manners.  We slurped and smacked our lips, sopping every bit of broth with our bread as we did at home.  We ate the meat and radishes and tomatoes with our hands and told stories with gestures as broad as Masha’s, talking over each other as the telling got lively and people chimed in to embellish the yarns.

Heidi leaned against a stone on the ground next to my knee enjoying the scene but not participating.  I felt sorry for her.  I propped her on my lap.
 
“Could you turn Heidi into a living girl?”  I asked Matka Lasu during a lull in the story telling.

“This is a night for new beginnings,” she nodded.   “But it’s really up to her.”  She lowered her gaze to the figurine. “Heidi, would you like to be a girl like Judy or maybe a fairy like Małgy?”  We all stopped eating and watched the statuette, straining to hear what she was not saying.  She considered the offer for the longest time, oblivious to our tense anticipation. 

 No, she finally whispered so none but Matka Lasu and I could hear.  No, I like things the way they are.  Then, reconsidering, she amended, Maybe later if I change my mind?  Matka Lasu nodded and returned to her food.

“Whatever you want.  The choice, of course, is yours.”  She broke a piece of bread and, pointing it at Heidi, she deflected the defiance I was about to fling.  “Judy, we all have the gift of free will.  It’s not up to either of us to decide what Heidi should be.”  Nodding his agreement, Tranoc grunted and shoved another forkful of beets into his mouth.   With a twinkle Małgorzata went back to her soup.  The animals ate.  So did the fairy family. 
Heidi and Matka Lasu waited. 

The crickets chanted, “Let it be; let it be.”  But I couldn’t.

“It’s not fair!”  I pouted.  “She’d be such a good playmate!”  I shook my head, knocking my chaplet askew.  “How can she know she doesn’t want to be a girl when she doesn’t know what being a girl is like?”  I braided my arms in front of my chest and nodded once to make my point.

“Judy, what’s the creature you would least like to be?” Matka Lasu tossed between bites of bread.  I shrugged.

“A flea, I guess.”  She cocked her head and squinted quizzically.

“Have you ever been a flea?”  She dipped her bread into the last of her soup.  I shook my head.  “Well, how do you know you wouldn’t like it?”  She reached for her wand.  “Let’s give it a try.”  The others gasped.  I stayed her hand.
 
She could have said more, could have scolded me, could have shamed me in front of the others.  Instead, knowing she had made her point, she hummed a little tune.  In a few bars Tranoc got the gist of the thing and added harmony.  Małgorzata made up a silly verse, and before long they’d created a song.  We all sang along, making a round of the thing, going faster and faster until no one could keep up and the song was lost in helpless giggles.  That’s how Matka Lasu was.  She’d make her point and then get on with life. It was her special gift.  I’m afraid I don’t have it.  I tend to lecture.

The next morning I would have wondered if I’d dreamed the whole thing if I hadn’t still been wearing the pretty white dress and if I hadn’t awakened to Tranoc’s snores.  The insects had eaten the little food that we’d left, and the ground wasn’t even singed where the fire ring had been.  Someone had taken the dishes away.  And the animals had gone back to their warrens and dens.
 
True to their word, as soon as they were up, Matka Lasu and Tranoc showed me the portal by which I could leave.  It looked just like the rest of the forest, but the air was gummy to the touch and, when I pressed it, the trees and underbrush shimmered and warped.  Without thinking I turned my back on it. 
 
“Don’t be so quick, Judy.”  Tranoc kissed the backs of my hands as he had the night before then turned them over and kissed my palms.  The gallantry of his gesture embarrassed me, and I felt a giggle bubbling in my mouth.  But the grief in his eyes squeezed my titters to a lump that settled painfully in my throat.  I took a deep breath and swallowed hard.  The lump remained.

“Look again, Kochanie.”  Matka Lasu placed her hands on my shoulders and gently turned me around so that I stood in front of her facing the portal.  “Look, Judy.”  She kneaded my shoulders and sighed.

mother’s house appeared in the distance, white and square, standing alone in a field of green.  The fence was there, too, tall and black and obstinate.   I could hardly see the garden through the serried bars.

“Come,” Matka Lasu commanded, and the house rushed at us.  Reflexively I threw my arms around her thighs and hid my face in her skirt. “Stop!”  She raised her hand, and the house stopped just a few meters from the portal. 

The groove Jochen and I had dug was still there -- a raw and ugly festering wound -- and Mama knelt at it, folded against the soil like a broken temple column.  She sat up on her heels and rocked, hugging her body, her mouth square with misery.  Her eyes red and swollen, her hair in dirty tatters, her face and dress mud stained and askew, her entire being was twisted with pain.  The sour sun soaked the ruins of my mother with its sickly light.  The pain in my throat bloated like a malignancy.  Blindly she looked directly at us then bent again, clawing fistfuls of dirt and letting them go.  I could not hear her keening, and I knew if I called out she would not hear me.

I wrenched myself from Matka Lasu and stepped toward the portal.  A cloud scraped past the sun, and the fence winked.  I halted in mid stride.  I looked at my mama and then at Matka Lasu, knowing I had to choose one or the other. 

“Why!” I demanded.  I lunged at Matka Lasu and pummeled her thighs.  “Why!”  The word billowed to a wail. 

“Go,” she commanded with less authority than before, and the house was gone.  She clasped me to herself bending over my head.  

“Oh, Judy.” The phrase stretched itself into a moan. 

Holding me and stroking the back of my head, she waited for me to cry myself out.  Only after the tears were gone and I was gasping dry sobs did she sit on the ground and scoop me like a rag doll into her lap.  I nestled my head into her ample breast.  It was as comforting as a feather bed.  She smelled of rosemary.  Tranoc stood by us rubbing my back.  I thought that was sweet, but I didn’t say so.  I was too miserable to speak.  When my breathing had eased Matka Lasu finally spoke.
 
“We need a conference.”  Her voice was flat, as if all life had been wrung from it.
           
We went to Pan Dąb -- Matka Lasu, Tranoc, Heidi, and I -- taking the time to walk so we could talk along the way, though we didn’t settle anything.  Matka Lasu sent a mental summons to Małgorzata and, since she flew, she got there first.
 
Once assembled, we sat in a semi circle around the tree and briefly explained the situation.  Then in gloomy silence, we waited for Pan Dąb or Małgorzata to come up with something we hadn’t considered.  Twin butterflies flirted a few paces away.  A carpenter ant scaled the mountain of my knee, trekked across the vast plain of my white georgette lap and climbed down to the back of a beetle.  A black and silver spider slid down her sticky thread, tied it to a fern, and shinnied back up.  A warbler whooshed into flight.  A snake scratched across the forest floor, shedding its skin.  Matka Lasu, Tranoc, Małgorzata, and I watched it all, heard it all, and sullenly sighed.  Pan Dąb was the first to speak. 

“Judy, don’t think about it.  Just tell me what you want.”   Without hesitation I said I wanted to stay.   “Then that is your heart’s true wish.”  He shrugged.  “Now all we have to do is figure out how to do that with the minimum of pain for everyone.”
           
“We could send an animal to take Judy’s place,” Małgorzata suggested.  “You know, like a pet.”
           
“And what animal would you send to live in a cage?”  Matka Lasu’s voice was gentle, but her point was not.  The fairy deflated.  I envisioned Masha, bewildered and scared, behind those iron bars.  The image hurt too much.  I shook it from my mind.  The spider was back, fastening her line.  I envied her simple life.
           
“Matka Lasu could go as me.  She can look like me. I’ve seen her do it.  She’s magic.  The fence could never hold her.”  I was thrilled with the genius of my plan.  I grinned at Matka Lasu.  “No matter what you’d find a way to come and go as you pleased.”
           
“No, Judy. I know your is a suggestion’s made in love, but that would be cruel. It would all be a lie.  And, when they found out, as they surely would, they would be unbearably hurt.”  She patted my hand.  The fairy flew to my shoulder and kissed my neck.
           
You could change me to a girl and I could go.  Thick with sorrow, Heidi’s voice was so soft I nearly missed it. 
“Is that what you truly want?”  Matka Lasu raised her eyebrow and gave her a sidelong look.  I hugged the figurine, wishing I hadn’t put into her head the idea of becoming a child, praying that no one would take her from me.
           
No. The statuette admitted.  If she had been a child she would have hung her head.  Perhaps she would have stepped back and scuffed a toe on the ground, her little chin trembling, her lower lip outthrust.  Maybe a tear would have glistened on her eyelash, while her shoulders drooped in resignation.  She probably would have looked just like me.
           
“Maybe I should just go back.”   My voice was as small as Heidi’s.
“Judy, deliberately causing pain to yourself is no more moral than hurting someone else. You’re a person too.”  Tranoc’s tender tenor voice wrapped around me like a hug.  I snuggled into it.