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When she first opened her mouth,
She tasted honey –
Rolled it around on her tongue
And discovered wildflowers,
More easily than she discovered words.
She unfurled in the earth,
Following tree roots mapping ancient paths,
Lifting up from the ground,
Brought to life by the warmth of the sun.
She blinked her eyes open,
Travelled acres to discover
The winding river
Stretching its mouth, yawning wide –
She became the wild and restless sea,
Lost herself in the undertow.
The girl formed edges –
Grew thorns.
Her fury turned to visiting storms.
Gales became her howling sorrows;
The silver edged clouds
Hung when her heart slowed
And blackened
On the days she thought
She could no longer carry on.
Slowly, she learned how to bloom,
And how the sun rose in her smile;
How her joy became the wild spring,
The world drawn in living colour.
She grew another then another;
More.
Taught them all she had learned
While they were still small.
She watched them lay claim to tides and stars,
Fields, fallows, ditches,
Fluttering sparrows.
She laid her head down
While the world still tasted of honey,
Slept inside sunsets
And faded into dusk.
Glittering silver droplets pelt the glass roof of the conservatory, rippling sheets sloughing off the panes above. You’ve been expecting this, watching a violet sky swirl above for hours, filled with the promise of a long overdue downpour; outside, the thirsty grass is just one more victim of the summer’s oppressive heat. Lying flat on your back, you’ve been anticipating the moment the clouds would burst with sweat pooling in the crevices where your limbs crease and fold; feeling it bloom from the pores on your forehead, every inch of your body slick and sticky and tired.
Faint sounds of conversation float through from the expanse of the dining room but are drowned out by the shattering rhythm of the rain thrashing against the windows. You are enveloped in the ebb and flow of it as it builds to a crescendo then fades out before coming back, stronger and more insistent. You allow each wave to wash over you, fighting against the temptation to slide open the conservatory doors and run out into the storm, willing yourself to stay still, barely daring to breathe as you wait for the inevitable growl of thunder signalling the maelstrom passing overhead. In the half-light, veins of white fork silently through the sky throwing the thick border of trees into sharp relief beyond the no-man’s land of the field outside.
You were never afraid of thunderstorms. When you were younger, you’d curl up, making yourself impossibly small against your surroundings, fighting heavy eyelids to lay awake and listen to the violent howl of the wind and the low rumble of the thunder overhead. You’d seek out the cracks where the curtains didn’t close all the way, trying to guess from the sounds raging outside when you could expect to see a sudden flash of lightning; you grew better at guessing as time went on, but could never completely anticipate it.
Before you had any real concept of time, you could sense that it passed differently in the midst of a storm and here it is no different, your reality falling away, something intangible replacing it.
The longer the wild storm rages on, the more inclined you are to move, the inverse of a cold-blooded creature lounging in the sun, the heat slowly breathing life back into its limbs. The air begins to clear, you are no longer constricted by it. Above, pulsing light spreads out and searches the space above the clouds followed by the hungry growl of an invisible beast, enraged; something stalks the air, mapping silent fields, deciding where to strike next. It is not fear of this beast that keeps you inside during the hunt but rather respect for its power, for its unpredictability. It is indiscriminate in choosing its prey.
Now, as it skulks onward, it is safe. As the marbled sky begins to shift, dark clouds retreating to somewhere miles away, the beast sets off for a new hunting ground and you unfurl completely, the cool air reviving you.
Your first few steps only take you to the near edge of the field that meets the sliding conservatory doors, the grass springy and wet, the ground soft; the downpour has relieved it of its thirst and now it clings to every last drop of water. You breathe in through your nose, meditating, and all you can smell is petrichor – the scent of the earth, fresh and sweet, rising up to meet you. You dart back inside quickly, fumbling with the laces on your shoes as you try to cram them onto your feet, racing against the sun as it reluctantly peeks out from behind the heavy grey clouds slowly drifting off somewhere to the Southwest. The longer you take, the more the world will dry out leaving no trace of the storm that has just passed.
Time slows again, stops. You stand alone facing off against the heavy green border that maps out the far edge of the field, ready to broach it as soon as you can urge your feet to move. One step forward, heading towards a place that is all at once entirely familiar and, somehow, unknown because the storm has changed everything, just like all the storms that came before it. The hunter in the clouds prowls away and leaves a different world behind in its wake.
Each step you take slaps against the ground, drenching your shoes. It might be thirty feet before you reach the trees or it might be a hundred, but you’ve never measured how many steps it takes before you’re able to encroach on this frontier of birches and conifers proudly standing guard, whispering a warning only you can hear: we’ll protect what lies within at all costs.
You duck underneath boughs that shake off drops of cool water, shivering as you pass them by, but they don’t catch you. They don’t tug at errant strands of hair or snag on your clothing, trying to pull you back. They know better now.
Inside, you stand in awe of it, a world reawakened. The aftermath of every storm is always a small rebirth; you hear the birds without seeing them, rustling high up where the treetops bow to one another, chirping and croaking, squawking to make their presence known. Something darts through the leaves, shaking raindrops from the branches, too fast to see. You wind your way further towards a clearing, gingerly stepping over gnarled roots breaking through the ground, disturbing thick patches of bracken that sway at your touch.
At night, this place you’ve attempted to claim as your own sings promises of a secret history, but in the heat of the day, it is different. You see the trees for what they are instead of the creatures they could be, the sentries, the guardians, some of them weathered and twisted and others new and still growing, shooting up from the ground. Generations of this forest tower above you and are interwoven so deep beneath the earth their roots could go on forever, unseen by the outside world.
Above, the sky changes as the sun floods the space above the retreating clouds. The canopy becomes thicker, but in the places where the treetops bend and separate, you can see flashes of hazy yellow. The sky only ever looks this way after a storm has passed, conjuring images of a world not quite your own, one where everything tries too hard to be the way you expect even though you know it isn’t. You watch it, waiting for bright sunlight to start streaming through, dappled in the places it can fit through the leaves but there is every chance the leaden clouds will blow in again. If that happens, you’ll know it is time to leave. Only the sound of a squirrel racing between branches is enough to stir you from your reverie – there is no one to ask if you should keep moving, so you do it anyway.
You’ve walked these paths before, navigating your own way through the thicket. The air is dense with that same cloying wet-earth smell and it cuts through all your other senses, filling your nostrils then your lungs but you don’t want it to stop. The forest reaches out to you, the feathery limbs belonging to ferns brushing gently against your skin, encouraging you to continue. You let it lead you further until you reach the slope that leads down to a ditch that stretches for miles each end.
All that remains of the old railway line is a gash in the earth, teeming with flora and fauna – the vegetation has reclaimed it for its own. You try to imagine the way the world would have looked back then, a behemoth forged in wrought iron and steel spitting black smoke into the atmosphere as it charged through the fields. If you dared to look hard enough, go deep enough into the ditch, you might find the rotten and splintered remains of a track. The slope is too steep and too damp for you to climb down today, though you’ve attempted this feat before.
Your heart doesn’t pummel a caged bird rhythm against your ribs while you’re safely ensconced inside the forest’s borders. Here, there’s a stillness that doesn’t exist for you on the outside. You’re alone, not forced to contend with the sinking feeling of being in a room full of your peers and never knowing what to say, words bubbling up and coagulating in your throat. Your mouth doesn’t drip with rapid-fire apologies and unintentional falsehoods. Wrapped in the soft breeze and the scent of the loam, all you have to do is exist; nothing else matters.
This is its own kind of meditation, in a place that feels like it exists only for you. You fold yourself slowly towards the ground, connecting with the damp undergrowth, and slip off your shoes, digging your bare feet into the cool earth. The forest hums around you speaking a clandestine language long since lost to time; you close your eyes to better hear it, sinking your fingertips beneath the soil to better interpret the message the trees carry for you.
Perhaps this is the truth of it. You imagine that every tree here was once a person not unlike yourself, more at home with birches and bracken, communing with the storm beast in the sky. Perhaps they, like you, sunk their limbs beneath the ground to become one with it. The more intently you listen, the closer you become to deciphering their chant – they whisper that you belong, that you are home, here. That you are safe.
When you open your eyes, you see her, a figure cloaked in moss, honey trailing glossy from her mouth, her eyes two milky opals that hold you captive. She approaches, wildflowers blooming in her wake then wilting and when they shrivel and die, more still replace them until the forest floor is carpeted by a meadow trapped in an endless life cycle. Everything here lives and grows and dies and this is the way of things.
Around you, the trees fall silent in fear or reverence – instinctively, you know which it is and as she nears you, you smile graciously up at her, antlers rising up from her head crowded by eager ivy. So, too, does it snake its way down her arm as she offers you a pale hand, climbing her anxiously the way you’ve seen it cling to the walls of old, crumbling farmhouses. It does not claim her the way it claims these long forgotten buildings. Nothing can claim her.
You don’t know how you know this.
You extend a hand towards her, unearthing it from the soil, the heady summer evening scent of honeysuckle closing in on you despite none growing here, sweet and inviting. The four seasons cascade from inside her cloak as it opens, the sunburst flares of daffodil heads, foxglove spires, the bowed pearl clusters of snowdrops and bleeding crimson poppies crowd together with delicate violets and cupped bluebells, weeping golden laburnum and constellations of gypsophila. She takes your dirt-stained hand and pulls you into an embrace that reminds you, immediately, of your impermanence.
She says nothing. Against her absent pulse, yours thuds steadily and the forest falls away again until only the two of you remain. You could disappear here, lost to all those who love you but don’t quite understand how ill-suited you are to their world. It exhausts you, wrings you out – the act of trying to be what others would regards as a human being. You could fade into the peace of the wilderness, a place you know intrinsically and that seems to know you in return. Nestled close to the wild woman you think the things you could never dare to say aloud, silently spilling the secrets you carry, cut open and bleeding them into the fabric of her. Your fears and wants soak into her and in return she does nothing more than hold you in an unyielding embrace that feels as though it stretches on as endlessly as time itself.
The trees resume their whispering chorus; chanting, they repeat the same phrase over and over, their voices overlapping, impossible to discern until eventually you are able to hear what they are trying to tell you: we understand.
Her grip on you tightens, the combined scents of herbal lavender and balmy magnolia curling around you, drawing you in. Wordlessly, she reminds you that there is no need to turn back, that you can fade and then be reborn here, at home in the forest, belonging. You think again of the possibility that the trees are all others like you, flourishing in ancient woodland more readily than in any other place or time, sleeping giants waiting to gently reclaim what is rightfully theirs, a slow march of roots searching blindly underground for undisturbed land.
The sky darkens again, but it is a change you feel before you see it; the wind gradually becomes frantic, whipping branches into a frenzied dance, low-lying shrubs turned to rippling green sheets. The air hums, vibrates, the restive forest sharing its warning with you. You know it is time to go back when you hear the hunter bellowing from what might be hundreds of miles away – in several great strides the beast will return, bringing more white light, more rain and you realise the stillness was a temporary thing, like it always is.
As quickly as she appeared, the wild woman is gone, taking with her the eternal meadow, the scents of flowers that don’t bloom here. Blinking away the newly descended gloom, you search for any sign that what you just experienced here was real, scanning the black-brown soil for a twist of ivy or a spray of disembodied petals curled at the edges. As your sight adjusts to the low light, it takes a moment, but eventually you see it, jewel bright against the undergrowth – a solitary forget-me-not sprig. Before the approaching storm can silence them completely, the trees have one more message: not yet.
Then, sensing the returning storm, or perhaps a different predator stalking grounds that another has already ravaged, the forest falls silent. As quickly as the wild wind arrived, the air is gone and there is no movement, branches wilting with nothing to rouse them. Your pace quickens as you retrace your steps, cutting through the bracken without time to ask permission to leave. The clouds swirl and they swell, weighed down leaden and grey and ready to burst all over again. There’s nothing to anticipate, this time, no real warning as you barrel out of the thick tree border and into the wet expanse of the field, pinprick drops of water falling on your exposed skin: a prelude.
Rain. The smell of rain is the smell of the earth opening up, of the world turning itself inside out. A swarm of fat, silver insects pelt down from the sky, plastering your hair across your face, soaking through your clothes and you shut your eyes as you cross the field, knowing your way back without having to look. You let the water run down your face, cool, settling in the grooves where your mouth twists into a smile; you let your arms hang limp at your sides, striding back towards the conservatory because the next roar that comes from the sky is closer and the world is darker, but you can’t tell the time from it. You blink twin rivulets out of your eyes just in time to see him, arms folded, hovering just behind the threshold, eager not to get caught out in this second downpour.
“Where on earth have you been?” pushing back strands of sopping hair, you lift your shoulders in a non-committal shrug. Telling him would spoil it; he doesn’t need an answer to his question.