Fairy Circle (6 page)

The sun was already at least a foot over the ocean. It floated bright and glaring in a bath of humidity. A trickle of sweat ran down her temple. The coming weeks would become unbearably New England hot, and in two months, this early in the morning, she would freeze if she didn’t bring a sweatshirt.

Better not to wait too long to pick the berries. Some of the fruit, too far gone, crushed and bled in her fingertips. Her hair hung heavy in the wet air, straight down her back like a copper stream. Once in awhile it became tangled in the berry vines; at which point Saffron swore while she tore herself free. She munched on her bagel and chugged on her juice. When the basket was filled half way, she decided it was enough. She was drenched with sweat and it was just too damned sticky.

She genuflected to the sun and flopped down on the tablecloth, arms thrown up over her head. A hot breeze came and blew a corner of the tablecloth over her face. She leaned over to stretch it back into place, then left her outstretched arm across the fabric so it wouldn’t happen again.

She tried to dredge the memories from last night, but they wouldn’t come without effort. Instead, she worried about the mundane things she always worried about. Although high school had been horrible daily to endure, at least it was somewhere she
had
to go, something she
had
to do. Even though she could hardly bear to get on that bus every morning, at least it provided better comfort than this going nowhere life that scared her with its big, open maw of choice.

Her cousin, Mindy the Beautiful and Proud, told her the other kids at school had called Saffron, “The Wax Doll,” because she was always staring off into space and her skin had such a “faux” look to it, “like shiny and plastic.” They said she walked around like she was dead already.

And now Saffron was an adult. She hadn’t even kissed a boy. She winced.
A Boy.
It dawned on her that she had missed her chance. That another part of her childhood, of her life, had disappeared. When high school life was happening, she just wanted to get it over with. But right now, the ache of what could have been was sharp. The lower limbs of the pines were bones bare of needles. They clacked and cracked when the wind picked up.

She wouldn’t be kissing any boys;
they were men now, weren’t they. She hadn’t held hands with a boy, or talked to one since third grade. Nothing. She couldn’t bring herself to do it. With each opportunity she had just seized up and moved her automaton-stick legs down the hall.

It was an undeniable force, this thing that made her act the way she did. Even on a good day, she felt the pressure of something guiding her. Her mother thought she was slightly retarded, no doubt. And Derek, the most wonderful of all of Audrey’s not-lovers, helped her to the best of his ability. Although he wasn’t quite clear on what he was helping with most of the time. They talked a lot, but she sensed he was suspicious of her.

She fell asleep.

Her mind woke, sharpened, while her body lay in hibernation. She sat up, looked down, and saw a fair face lost in dreaming. For the brief moment before she realized what was happening, before she realized she was looking at herself, she thought the girl below her was so beautiful with her soft hair that rolled like copper waves.

When Saffron realized she was looking at herself, she saw a zit by her lip and the way her skin was becoming oily in the ever-rising heat. She turned from her sleeping self and looked into the woods.

He was standing there, lounging as if he had been there for some time.

Her slumbering, physical self made a noise, a light moan as it lay flushed under the sun.

She looked at him again and he smiled. She couldn’t help herself and smiled back. She felt different now, being alone here with him. She ached for him as she had ached a thousand times before, for the dream lover that couldn’t possibly be real. She looked away from him, shy, and back at her supine body where she watched her hand rise to caress her neck.

In that moment, she knew; she would do whatever he wanted.

He grinned at her as if he understood her thoughts, then he cast aside the taper of wheat he had been rolling between his tongue and teeth. He walked away.

Saffron frowned. Why would he walk away from her when her very existence depended on his attention? She yelled out to him, but there was no sound. She wanted to run after him - he was out of sight already - but she couldn’t move her feet.

There was a sensation of pulling, of the need to respond. She realized her body wanted its spirit back.

She woke up inside her body to a smashing headache and an eighty-pound weight on her chest. She didn’t move at first, couldn’t move as exhaustion nailed her to the ground. With wincing effort, she shifted her legs.

She understood two things at the same time; there was no ground beneath her right leg and she wasn’t on the blanket anymore, but lying directly on small twigs and stones which cut into her skin. Her eyes peeled wide as she gasped and took in her surroundings. She was on the edge of the cliff, her right leg bent at the knee and dangling over the precipice. Directly below her, ocean waves smashed on gray boulders. A wispy last bit of thought, of urge, trailed through her mind.

Fall.

Her blood curdled as she scrambled back from the edge, crawling on hands and knees. She was afraid to stand up at first, staying as close to solid ground as she could, her belly heaving against the pine needles while she fought to control her breathing. She looked up - the tablecloth was several yards away under the copse of pines where she had originally put it. How had she let that happen? There was no way she had
rolled
all the way to the edge of the earth!

Then it occurred to her, slow and jumbled in her shocked brain; she had fallen asleep
outside
! How did she let that happen? And, because she let it happen, she had literally almost rolled off the cliff. The enormity of it all punched her swift and hard in the stomach. She retched up her bagel and orange juice, and then moved away from the mess, still dry heaving and trying desperately to breathe.

She wasn’t alone.

She turned, and through hot tears, she saw a woman. A girl really, dressed strangely. Her dress must have been beautiful once, but now the sky blue of it was soiled, the empire waist was crooked, and the capped sleeves drooped. The girl looked at Saffron and disappeared.

A pang of fear stabbed Saffron in the bowels. Above, the sky turned dark gray. Below, the sea raged gray too, so there was no horizon but an unending dome of lead, dense and pressing. There was no sound in the forest. The pain in her gut curled tight.
Oh, God,
she breathed,
what the hell is that?
Saffron quickly looked away from the tree where the wraith had emerged, but in doing so, she looked at another tree. The girl was there. She was staring at Saffron with vacant eyes. Saffron jerked away from the thing and started to whimper. Her breaths came in rasps; her eyes bulged as she stared at her flip-flops.
Don’t look up again,
she told herself and immediately looked up.

The lips of the ghost moved. “Why?” the thing asked. It tilted its head to the side and stared at Saffron with bottomless, black sockets.

Saffron flinched. She hunched over to hug her knees to her chest. She stared without blinking as her hair whipped around her head in the wild wind that screamed up from the sea. She wanted to turn away, so badly, but she wasn’t strong enough and continued to gaze at the thing, her eyes glazing over in shock.

The ghost turned away from Saffron and walked the few steps to the very edge of the cliff. The back of its head was a mess of pulp, hair, and ooze enmeshed with gray matter, flat and glistening, smashed in by something large. The dead woman’s right arm hung at an awkward angle - a broken limb that would fall to the forest floor at any moment. It caused the capped sleeve to pull with it, so both would soon be torn.

As it disappeared into ether, Saffron was washed in pain. The pain had a copper flavor, like a zap of electricity as it hummed through every pore. There was so much pain and confusion. Her hand shook as she automatically raised it to stifle the strange, animal sounds of grief which poured out from her. Suddenly, she heard a high-pitched scream tear through the air. As the scream faded, it gave way to the shrill call of the gulls. The sky became blue. The ocean turned back to green.

Saffron jumped up and ran. She ran so fast she didn’t feel the brush scrape her shins or the pine needles slap her face. She also didn’t see the stump that took out her right foot and sent her cart-wheeling to the ground. She spit out some yellowed pine needles and dirt. She heard crying. When she turned around she saw the ghost woman, with her back to Saffron, crying into her hands.

Saffron jumped up and sprinted again. Blood from a scratch leaked into her eye and blinded her. She ran into the side of a tree, took it straight in her solar plexus, and lost her breath. She heard crying. She looked and saw the back of the ghost
again.

Saffron tripped forward, holding her chest with one hand and smearing blood off her face with the other. Every time she turned around she saw the back of the ghost woman. The woman kept pace with Saffron. If Saffron ran and looked back, the ghost woman was right behind her. If Saffron walked and looked back, she saw the same, horrible sight.

Saffron barreled out of the forest, hurdling branches and rocks. She didn’t stop until she fell face first into the green grass of her mother’s manicured lawn. She sobbed, breathing in the wet dirt every time she gasped.

She heard her mother swear and Derek grunt about needing more coffee or a fricken Bloody Mary.

Saffron forced herself to be still and quiet. She had forgotten they were working in the herb gardens. She sat up quickly, her electrified hair taking a long time to drift down and lie fluffed over her freckled shoulders.

Audrey watched Saffron while she removed her gardening gloves one finger at a time.

Saffron knew her mother was waiting for her. She knew this time she had to give her mother something - Audrey wouldn’t go away empty-headed. Saffron looked back at the woods. She raised her eyebrows. Why not use the ghost? People didn’t place their children in treatment centers for seeing ghosts. Ghosts were super trendy right now.

And where would she start?
Well, I watch this guy screw these women in my dreams all the time, ya know? I think he’s like, hot. When I wake up and want to vomit against my locked door I also feel crazy in love and wish I didn’t wake up.
Nah, that’s not the tone she was going for. And s
he wouldn’t tell her mother she almost rolled off the cliff just now - her mother wouldn’t let her go back into the woods. One who has a history of near-miss cliff-launches shouldn’t nap by cliffs. She rolled her eyes. Maybe Audrey would like to hear that Saffron took a trip to Fairyland, to Neverland, to Santa’s Land - that would surely clear everything up. She was so much braver when she was four. She would’ve told her mother everything.

So, a ghost was the best tidbit to give Audrey. It was a little morsel of truth for her mother’s
I Need to Fix You
mentality.

“
Yeah,” Saffron halted, “when I was out in the woods…I saw a ghost.”

And then the ghost woman walked by. Just beyond Audrey. Saffron watched the ghost woman glide all the way across the lawn. She didn’t stop when she reached the edge of the field or when she reached the edge of the sea. Saffron cringed when the woman fell and started her screams.

A sudden sob leapt in Saffron’s throat. She willed herself not to get hysterical. Willed and willed and willed. Like a ball in a balance maze, she felt herself rolling toward one black hole after another. She wondered if she was going insane. She realized she was grabbing at the grass, pulling chunks out by the roots, and had already uprooted several fistsful. She froze.

Audrey’s brow furrowed as she continued to stare at her daughter. After a pause, she walked over and sat on the grass beside Saffron. She laid back, one hand behind her head, and reached for Saffron’s icy fingers with the other. She held tight.

Above them, the clouds scudded past. The ocean wind picked up and whooshed brine across their faces. Saffron gave a nervous snort, startling Audrey.

“
Look, I don’t really want to talk about this because it like, really scares me. But I knew you wouldn’t leave me alone until you found out what was wrong. So,” Saffron sighed, “that’s what’s wrong.”

Audrey looked at her daughter. Saffron locked eyes with her mother for a second, then turned away to stare at the peeling paint of the house. She shrunk even deeper into her hunch. “I’m scared.”

Audrey sighed. “You know I lived with one before.”

Saffron’s eyes shot heavenward. She dug her fingers right back into the roots of the grass. Her mother was about to tell her that damned ghost story again; as if Audrey’s experience would explain all.

Audrey thought her story would comfort Saffron.

Saffron thought her mother was just trying to one-up her.

Saffron cleared her throat, cut her mother off. “Have you seen
my
ghost? You know, around here anywhere?”