May 4, 2011: bushwhack \ BOOSH-hwak \ verb;

1. To defeat, especially by surprise or in an underhanded way.

2. To make one’s way through woods by cutting at undergrowth, branches, etc.

 

It happened, she supposed, when she was bushwhacking through the woods. Her father, incidentally, would have called it a stroll, but Gemma would use no other word than bushwhack; her father’s “lovely woods” were a mess of underbrush and brambles and who-knew-what-else, and the result was nothing short of expedition every time she decided to go for a “stroll.”

But if she were thinking back, she would also have to suppose that Rowan had seen her long before she ever saw Rowan. She might have been able to convince herself that she had seen a pair of eyes in the undergrowth, or a hint of just the wrong colour green if she hadn’t spent any time in Rowan’s company. But now that she knew her, Gemma knew that Rowan wouldn’t let anyone see her unless she expressly wanted to be seen.

So it was both a very good and a very bad thing that Rowan had mistaken her for someone else.

It began with the flowers and moss left on her windowsill soon after they arrived at the house. They would appear every morning, the most delicate little flowers she had ever seen. Tiny white flowers like stars that never seemed to wither or die, even though they had clearly been cut from their root.

But some days the flowers and moss would serve as funeral dress for little birds. She would find them placed lovingly on her windowsill as well, and when she received those gifts, her blood would run cold, but she knew better than to tell her mother and father. Something, she knew, was leaving them, and they were for her.

A month later as spring grew warmer, she began to hear singing coming from the woods, almost a bird’s song but not quite. She couldn’t explain why, but she knew it was for her. And always after she heard the singing, she would find the little birds on her windowsill the next morning.

As the days continued to grow longer and hotter, and there was less and less for her to do in the stuffy manor house, she went into the woods. And when she did, she couldn’t help but notice that some paths opened easily before her and others seemed piled with undergrowth and thick tree-branches, almost as if the trees were herding her. And when she continued on her merry way, bushwhacking through those closed paths precisely because they were closed, she was sure she could hear laughter.

Soon she learned that if she stopped being stubborn and followed the paths that lay open to her, she would find herself in sunlight meadows filled with the tiny white flowers and beds of the springy green moss she found on her windowsill.

But eventually it was less out of stubbornness and more out of fear that she stopped taking those open paths,  because when she found herself in those clearings, the unnatural urge to lay on that moss and sleep the day away almost overtook her every time.

One day, when she did sit down, the singing that always followed her through the woods became louder, clearer, and she picked herself up and dashed out of the woods, sure that something wonderful and terrible in equal measures would find her in the clearing if she stayed.

* * *

It was one day in late spring, when summer was almost ready to take its turn, that Gemma found herself once again making her own path through the woods and small bird alight in a tree made her stop. It was like one of the birds she always found on her windowsill, and it gave her pause because she realized at that moment that despite all the still little birds she found in the morning, she had never seen a live one. For some reason, she felt suddenly cold and her palms began to itch and sweat, and all she wanted was to leave the woods, but when she turned towards her home, a girl stood in her path.

Only, maybe it wasn’t a girl.

Her skin was woody brown and rough, and her hair was almost the rowan leaves of the trees around her, only it was just the wrong shade of green. Her eyes were as red as the rowan berries that grew on the trees, and she was tall and still and beautiful. As Gemma watched her, she thought at first that the girl wasn’t moving at all, but she realized that instead, the girl was moving perfectly in time with the wind through the trees – she moved with the woods as naturally as she breathed, and Gemma almost called out to her.

The girl’s berry red eyes, though, were as cold as winter, and froze Gemma’s words in her throat.

“I do not like your games anymore,” the girl finally said after a moment, and Gemma knew in an instant that it had been her singing, and leaving presents, and guiding her through the forest. It did not make her feel any better to have the mystery solved.

“You have kept me waiting, and I am getting very angry, Garrett.”

Gemma knew very clearly at that moment that angering this creature was the last thing that she wanted to do. The berry red eyes bored into her as she stumbled for something to say, her throat suddenly dry and her mind blank. Hastily, she rubbed her slick palms on her dress and tried to think of a suitable apology, something to appease this rowan girl and quell her quickly growing anger.

“I’m so-” Gemma finally began in a whisper, but stopped just as the words began to form on her lips.

The girl had called her by someone else’s name.

The girl had called her by a boy’s name.

“Hang on now!” Gemma said, her fear suddenly thawed in the heat of her anger at being apparently mistaken for a boy. “Garrett sounds very distinctly like a boy’s name.”

The rowan girl blinked her berry red eyes and opened her mouth to respond, but Gemma was not nearly finished yet.

“You don’t think I’m a boy, do you? Perhaps I’m not as beautiful as you are, but, but… a boy? I’m most certainly not a boy. Do I look like a boy? I don’t look like a boy!”

There was a very brief pause during which the rowan girl stared very fixedly at Gemma before asking, “you’re not Garrett?”

“No I’m not Garrett!” Gemma shrieked, but wished she hadn’t when the confusion left the rowan girl’s eyes and instead they went dark and cold again.

“Why were you trying to make me think that you are Garrett?" she hissed, curling long brown fingers tightly around the tree branch she stood against.

There was a brief second when Gemma thought about running, but instead she balled her sweaty hands into fists and stood her ground.

“Oh no,” Gemma said, although not quite as bravely as she might have liked, “you’re not going to blame this on me. I didn’t ask for your flowers and moss and little dead birds on my windowsill. I only came here with my family and they started appearing, and you started following me through the woods, I expect, and I don’t look like a boy, and—”

The rowan girl was next to her a second later, so close their noses were almost touching, and she looked at Gemma very closely. She made little “hmmm” noises, but her eyes remained cold, so Gemma couldn’t decide exactly how terrified to be.

“Hmmm. But you have pretty black hair, like my Garrett. Although yours is longer, maybe?” She held out Gemma’s hair and seemed to be measuring.

“And you have eyes like my Garrett, green and bright.” The girl came too close to look at Gemma’s eyes and Gemma was momentarily dizzied by the overwhelming smell of the forest.

“You smile like my Garrett,” the rowan girl said finally, touching Gemma’s lips, eliciting a shiver.

The rowan girl backed up very quickly at this, although her eyes had changed again. They were sad now, all the cold and anger having drained out of them.

“You’re not my Garrett,” she agreed finally, leaning heavily against the rowan tree at her back.

Gemma was still shaken from the girl’s fingers on her lips, so she didn’t say anything, she just brought a hand up to touch where the rowan girl hand, wondering at the warmth she still felt there, not realising that the warmth had spread to her cheeks and that she was blushing.

“But,” the girl said, and she straightened to her full height, staring at Gemma with her berry red eyes bright now, “you did take my gifts. And my gifts are not, I am afraid, freely given.”

With that, she started towards Gemma again, berry red eyes seeming to glow hot now, as a wolfish grin spread across her face…

 

Note: Well, at least Gemma’s story might be a little more interesting now. I’m only about five days behind, so I’ll be trying to do two a day for a little while until I catch up. Gemma and Rowan might show up again for the ninth, when the word is splenetic.

Words like that are why I’m doing this.

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