Spruce Wood

The quiet in the kitchen was accentuated by the low tick tick tick of the second hand on the small white plastic clock hanging above the table. Marie sat at the table half reading her schoolbook, enjoying the utter peace she felt.

Nan bustled into the kitchen, peeler in one hand and a paper sack of potatoes in the other.

“Hows it?” She asked, Newfoundland accent thick like spruce gum.

“Fine. A little boring.” Marie shrugged and closed the book as Nan sat opposite to her at the table. “Can I help you make supper?”

“Yes maid you can peel these for me.” Nan handed over the peeler and the potatoes. “I’ll make us a cuppa tea.”

Marie peeled a potato carefully while Nan turned on the electric kettle and got two grandmotherly china cups out of the cupboard, placing black tea bags in them.

“Milk and sugar?” She asked Marie.

“Yes please.” Marie placed the peeled potato in the plastic mixing bowl full of salted water.

“So, tell me about school, what’s been going on?” Nan asked after the kettle popped and she had set a cup of beige tea in front of Marie.

“Mmm, nothing much really.” Marie took a sip of tea. “We had some guy from St. John’s come in for a folklore lesson. Took the grade fours and fives into the gym for an assembly and told us about old Newfoundland things. Like ships and stuff.”

“Oh right on.” Nan looked out the window at the darkening sky towards the small harbour. “Ships eh? Some funny for a townie to teach you lot about ships.”

“He also told us a bit about fairies, and how Newfoundland fairies are from stories like old Irish fairy tales.” Marie continued, finishing another potato.

“I loves a good fairy tale.” Nan told her. “I don’t know much about the Irish ones but my mudder used to have some good ones about little folk in the marsh around here.”

Marie nodded “Yeah and he said lots of the stories are lost because people don’t tell stories like we used to.”

Nan clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Shame it is really, I’ll have’ta see if I can remember any of the ones my mudder used to tell me.”

A cheerful cell phone ring began in the other room. Nan gathered herself and went to find her cellphone. Marie half listened to the conversation.

“Oh my girl, look at the time. Yer mudder will have me skinned if I keeps you any longer.” Nan said as she came back into the kitchen. “That was her on the phone sayin’ I’m kidnappin’ ya.”

Marie groaned, “I don’t wanna go home, she’s gonna make me help Patrick with his homework.”

Nan kissed the top of her head before securing the knit cap over Marie’s ears. She slipped her a toonie into Marie’s jacket pocket and winked, “Now that’s for if ya see any fairies on your walk over the hill.”

“That only works if it’s iron, the fairies don’t care about other types of metal.” Marie told her as she pulled on her boots.

“Fine, I’ll take back my $2.” Nan joked, reaching out for her.

“No that’s okay see you!” Marie dodged her hands and bounded out the door into the quiet, snowy evening.

“You tell yer mudder to call me so I knows you got home safe!” Nan called out after her.

“Okay!” Marie called back, tromping up the driveway towards the line of silent spruce trees.

Marie was a girl who appreciated the quiet. The walk from Nan’s to home was about 5 minutes when you cut through the small brace of bush and spruce trees that crowned the top of the hill. The evening had settled heavily, sky navy darkening towards black, the landscape becoming shades of grey in the snow. Marie’s footsteps crunched in the crusted snow. She scooped up a small stick, looking for a spruce tree whose trunk was covered in the oblong blisters that would produce a hearty glob of spruce sap. It smelled lovely, like Christmas, but it was so sticky that you had to rub oil into your hands to get it off, hence the stick. She stepped off the path towards a gnarled tree that looked promising.

As Marie looked over the tree trunk, she heard the soft rustle of heavy wings in the silent air. The ambient light reflected off the snow suddenly seemed more orange than grey, like the reflection of the sodium lights off the road. Back on the path a large bird landed gracefully in the snow, facing away from her. Marie stood as still as she could, she had never seen a bird like this! She knew it was an owl- its back feathers came together in a delicate point above its tail, and the back of its head was smooth and round, light reddish brown. Barn owl? She would have to look it up on google when she got home. She took a quiet step closer to the path.

The owl heard her and spun its head around in the unnerving way that owls can do. It took a moment for Marie to process what she was seeing.

Instead of the moon-faced bird, what greeted her was a smooth androgynous human face, set in the apple-half shape of the bird’s head. Marie’s heart stopped for a moment, and then returned double time. The rest of the bird turned, and she could see that its long-feathered legs ended not in furry talons but human hands, framed with downy white feathers. It opened its thin pink lips and made a croaking sound, halfway between an owl’s call and a human exclamation. It spread its wings, white underneath, and pushed itself off the ground with a flick of its skinny wrists. It landed in the tree branches above Marie and looked down on her, unnervingly still with empty eyes. She was stuck like a rabbit frozen under the eyes of the owl, staring up at it in terror. Her brain was empty fuzz. They remained like that for a number of heartbeats, nothing happening.

Marie assumed this was a fairy. She didn’t know of anything like this in nature, and her nan had just told her there were fairies around here. The owl fairy cocked its head at her, opening its mouth and making that croaking sound again.

Marie carefully turned away from the fairy and walked slowly to the path, keeping her eyes on the ground to make sure she didn’t trip. She looked down the path and realized with a jolt to her stomach that the woods seemed to have expanded, stretching out until she couldn’t see the opening of the path. Marie decided that turning back to Nan’s wasn’t an option, since the woods back there had appeared out of nowhere. She would have to just finish her walk towards home.

As she walked down the path, she could hear the owl flapping its wings and landing in the trees above her every few steps she took. She risked a glance up at it and saw its stoic face watching her from the branches. The quality of the light changed too, it shifted to soft green, the way the light filters in through trees in a heavy forest in summer. It didn’t seem to be evening anymore.

Marie remembered the folklore guy telling her classmates that the running theme in all the stories is that fairies like to play tricks. The snow beneath her feet became thin and damp and then melted away entirely in the space of a few steps. One more step and plush green moss and grasses sprang up underneath her heavy winter boots. The spruce trees branches bowed with new shoots, and colourful mushrooms and lichens grew along the sides of the path, tendrils running over exposed tree roots. Another step and birds began chirping far off in the woods.

After a minute Marie began to sweat, being suddenly in heady summer heat while dressed for the bitter Newfoundland winter. She paused, wondering if it was safe to take off her jacket. Her backpack seemed like a million pounds. Her boots felt like they were stuck in bog. She took off her mittens and stuck them into a pocket, laboriously taking another step forward before getting tired and sitting unceremoniously on the path. She felt confused- she was going somewhere but had stopped. Marie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The air was sweet and damp. She could smell the sap from the trees and the nitrogen seeping out from the dark soil where many-legged bugs burrowed, and shrews lined dens with dried grass. She put her bare hands on the path, feeling the springy peat moss and the hundreds of thousands of fascicles reaching down into the earth, touching millions of mycelium networks branching through the living soil, a pulsing network of green life breathing deep all around her. For a moment she was nothing other than a handful more of mycelium and vascular tissue processing air. The owl croaked somewhere near her ear. She reluctantly opened her eyes.

The owl had landed on her, its feathery human hands gripping the upturned toes of her boots. The oddity of it shocked her into movement once more, kicking the fairy off and struggling to her feet against the heavy weight of her corporeal body. The moss and grasses pulled at her hands, reluctant to let her go.

Marie plodded along the path, trying to remember where she was going. The owl preened in the branches above her, human teeth straightening the feathers she had ruffled in her panic.

Her thumb ran over the edge of the $2 coin in her pocket, and a memory traveled up her arm like a spark- Nan’s house! Going home! Doing homework with Patrick!

With each step the heavy perfume of the summer forest shrank, and the world got colder. The grasses became crispy for fall and the small animals and invertebrates under the ground closed their eyes for their renewed hibernation. A few more steps and the new spring boughs of the spruce trees withered, and the owl chattered angrily in the branches, this time behind Marie and not directly above her. One more step and the snow started- Marie put on her gloves again. Another and she could see the soft yellow light pouring out of the window of her house, and the light in the woods faded to grey. She turned to look back at the owl, and saw it pushing itself gracefully off a branch and flying away from her into the woods.

A cry of triumph spilled out of Marie’s mouth, disturbing the quiet. She turned towards her house and began to run. Just before she got to the edge of the woods, she realized the exact details of what happened were slipping away from her, like a dream after you wake up, that you try too hard to remember. Her mouth tried to form the words of what took place, but as she stepped beyond the edge of the trees it slipped away with a final tug at her cerebellum.

In her yard, she turned back to look at the trees, puzzled. She was sweaty, the air held a startlingly crisp quality like she had just stepped outside from the inside of a warm house. She had the sense that she had been gone longer than just the 5 minutes it took to walk from Nan’s to home. Evening had definitely settled down for bed and it was fully nighttime.

Still confused, she walked up the stairs into her house, pausing to stare back at the woods again. Her mother opened the door, cheeks pink.

“Honestly Marie,” Mom said, exasperated. “When I call Nan and say to come home, you come straight home. No diddle dallying in the woods for half an hour.”