Gardening

Maria slumped in her chair at the back of the gardening meeting her mom had dragged her to, sketching a Chinese dragon with a gel pen on the back of one hand. Occasionally she raised an eyebrow to glance around the room at the bright-faced gardeners listening raptly to her mother talk about mulching and earthworms.

Mrs. Pickerel, Mr. Fox, and Mrs. Byrzynski all in the front row again. Same bunch of old folks week after week, and the only difference is when they bring their friends. And they all think my mother is God.

Maria had managed to avoid being dragged along a couple of weeks back, but this morning her mother had looked particularly perky and unyielding, so she hadn’t bothered resisting. Besides, it wasn’t like she had anything pressing to do today, except sit in her room and draw.

She raised her head again, looked around, then her eyes caught and she stared for a snatched second – keep it cool, assess, don’t look flustered – and looked down again. The dragon on her hand acquired a small speech bubble with the Chinese characters for “beautiful person.” She glanced over again, slowly, casually, a curious gaze rather than openly devouring with her eyes, which might draw undesirable attention.

The unfamiliar face across the room either belonged to an attractive, interesting girl, or a spectacularly beautiful boy, and Maria wasn’t sure which. She spent some time with head bent again, putting scales on the dragon’s legs, then risked another look. This time brown eyes caught hers, and shapely lips moved in a friendly smile.

Maria blinked, smiled quick and small, flicked her gaze away. Wasn’t looking at you in particular. Just looking around, that’s all.

Several weeks before, she’d finally come to terms with the fact that she found girls as attractive as boys, and this being the newly-admitted case, she wasn’t sure which gender she wanted the stranger to be. She certainly wouldn’t mind getting to know her/him better, though – if he/she approached Maria first, of course. Maria didn’t have the courage to approach anyone.

She might have at least tried to get a better look at the person after the meeting, but the face was gone, vanished into the crowd of gardeners.

Much to the surprise of her mother, she didn’t protest against coming to the gardening meeting the next week.

They were holding a demonstration outside on exactly how to separate and replant bulbs, laying out huge mats of iris and daffodil and pulling the tangled rootlets apart in a scattering of dirt. Dirt dark under her long nails, Maria’s mother knelt on the ground in the middle of the gardeners, who were holding their own conversations at the same time.

“See, you just have to – tease it carefully apart, like this,” she said in a carrying voice, tanned hands no doubt skillfully working through the reluctant tangle. Maria wasn’t watching. She sat under a tree to one side of the ten or so cars crowding the gravel parking lot at the top of the long, bumpy driveway, and in her sketchbook, drew the mountain peaking over the top of someone’s ancient VW bug.

“You have to be very careful with the newest bulbs,” came her mother’s voice across the yard, easily rising above the other talk, “they tend to be tender and easily bruised…”

Footsteps approached from the direction of the chattering gardeners. Maria kept her head down, hoping, but not daring to look up. Expecting rejection did not mean she had to cultivate it, and it was better to seem aloof than too eager.

“Hey, mind some company?” The voice was a rich alto or sweet tenor, as indistinguishable in gender as the owner’s face, something Maria wouldn’t have thought possible before now.

She dared a glance up. Shorter and slighter than herself, she estimated, with hair of mahogany and chestnut and oak down to mid-chest with tiny bells braided in. Wide-legged jeans with improvised embroidery, bells, and penned writing all up and down the legs, bright scarves hanging from the belt loops, long skinny shirt, but not skintight. No bumps at chest level didn’t solidify a conclusion; this could still be a flat-chested girl. Maria gave the smallest of noncommittal smiles and shrugged a welcome. The newcomer crouched beside her.

“Can I see?”

She tilted the sketchpad.

“Beautiful,” the gazer breathed after a moment. “How long you been drawing?”

Maria shrugged again. “Since I was nine.” She hesitated, then looked up to meet brown eyes squarely, feeling almost dizzy. Oh god, look at that face. “Maria.”

Broad cheekbones, almost Cherokee, pointed chin, well-formed mouth, thick, arched brows over sparkling eyes… At this close range, she finally noticed the slight stubble on the chin and felt an odd tension subside. Him. It’s a guy. Okay. That’s fine. I know how to deal with even a guy better than someone I can’t figure out at all! …God he’s gorgeous.

“Call me Ris,” the object of her inspection answered cheerfully.

Maria blinked and wondered if she’d jumped to conclusions; that didn’t sound like a guy’s name. Reading confusion on her face, Ris smiled. “It’s not my given name, that’s John. I answer to either.”

Maria found herself smiling back. So she’d been right after all. With this tiny triumph under her belt, she dared to push her luck a little farther. “Where’d it come from?”

He grinned, eyes lighting, and leaned forward a little, hands coming up to gesture. “I did a dream quest sort of thing when I was fourteen, fasted for a day and went out in the woods. While I was sitting out there, I realized I would have to find a new name if anything actually happened, so while I was waiting I looked for it. You ever done a dream quest? Know much about them?”

Maria shook her head.

“When you go out in the woods, you’re trying to find out who you are, waiting for a vision of the animal who’ll be your totem for the rest of your life, the guardian who gives you advice and protects you.” Ris’s eyes glowed with interest as he spoke, and she listened, entranced that he wanted to share this fascinating story with her. She found herself leaning forward like him, smiling with the same anticipation, although she didn’t know why.

“What’d you see?”

“I’d been sitting there the whole morning, just hanging out underneath a tree, meditating and falling in and out of trance, and I was just staring at the sky when the whole place goes quiet. You know how it is in a forest, squirrels are chasing each other, there’s critters rustling around in the bushes and stuff, birds singing their heads off – everything just stopped. Now, if you’re hanging out in a forest, and you’re being quiet and still, you’re gonna see a bunch of animals, squirrels and birds and stuff, but on a dream quest you’re supposed to get a feeling about the creature that’s your totem.”

Maria nodded, eyes held in Ris’s warm gaze. She could hear her mother on the other side of the yard, still giving instructions; “Now, you want to soften up the ground enough to make the bed nice and inviting for these young things to sprout.”

Ris swept a hand out, the wide bronze bracelet on his wrist flashing in the sun. “So it’s totally silent, no wind even, it just dropped. And I’m sitting absolutely still in the middle of this, just waiting. And then I look across from me, and there’s a big black crow sitting up on a branch there, staring at me. So I’m trying to figure out if he’s my totem or not, if I’ve got that feeling about him, and he’s just giving me this look like, Boy, you ain’t got a clue.” Maria laughed, and Ris grinned at her. “And then I look away from him, and standing right next to that crow’s tree, looking around like it hasn’t noticed me, there’s a fox. And I’m thinking, ‘What the hell have you got that would make this whole forest swallow its tongue?’”

Maria grinned at the phrase, gaze caught and fastened to his face as Ris leaned forward again, voice dropping. “That’s when the really strange bit started. The fox looked at me. And I’m expecting him to run away, right? This forest isn’t exactly in the middle of nowhere, the animals know about humans, they don’t usually stick around.”

Maria nodded again, drinking in every word of that rich, in-between voice. Her breath felt odd and hot in her chest, and she could sense Ris with all the planes of her body that faced him, every inch of skin blushing invisibly, every nerve awake and tingling with his presence.

“But he doesn’t.” Square-tipped fingers spread out, indicating stillness. “This fox watches me for a moment, and then he takes a few steps forward, still staring at me, and that’s when I realize my breathing’s gone all strange. I almost can’t feel my heartbeat, but I’m breathing like I’ve just come up from deep water, gasping and shaky, and I can’t take my eyes off that fox. I’m not scared, but I’m breathing like I’ve just fallen off the Empire State and been caught by a passing hang glider.”

Maria laughed again, a quick, startled breath, and couldn’t take her eyes off his face. His eyes were brown-amber with the sunlight glancing into them, and sparkled. She remembered vaguely that this story was supposed to be about his name. Ah, he’ll get there sooner or later. And if not, he’s still talking to me. I can always ask again.

Ris was grinning, one arm around his knee, the other leg folded in front of him, still gazing into Maria’s face as if she were the most fascinating listener he’d ever talked to. “I’m wondering kinda distantly if he’s got rabies or something, and maybe I should move or look for a heavy stick, but I’m not really thinking about it. The fox stops. He cocks his head to one side, and flicks his tail, and then he whips around and shoots back into the woods like somebody shot him.” One hand slashed out, echoing the fox’s straight dash into cover. “And then this breeze comes through, and a bird starts warbling again, and I blink and kinda snap out of it, and my heartbeat’s completely normal again.”

Something seemed to be called for at this point. Maria shook her head. “Wow…” She winced inwardly. Brilliant contribution, there. That’ll cost your IQ about thirty points, I think.

Ris either didn’t notice or forgave the supreme stupidity of her comment. He cocked his head to one side, like the fox in his story, and looked at her seriously. “You ever get into a situation where your brain goes into lockdown or trance and you just stop thinking?”

Maria did her best not to wince visibly. “Kinda…”

“And then you hafta start up again, and you’re poking inside your own head, trying to get the thoughts to work?”

Maria nodded with a little more confidence. “At about four A.M., usually.”

Ris actually threw back his head and laughed, his belled braids jingling. “Another night owl, huh? Excellent, good to meet you!” He held out a square, freckled hand and Maria hesitantly put out hers in return with a startled smile. Instead of a regular handshake, Ris took an arm-wrestling grip, clenched and shook it, then released it. His hand was warm and calloused and very strong. Maria put her hand back on her sketchbook, feeling like a cat fallen unexpectedly into a small vat of cream: probably not being allowed to stay there, but certainly enjoying the experience for the moment.

Ris chuckled. “You look puzzled. That’s technically a warrior’s clasp, from one fighter to another, a we’re-in-this-together, I’ll-guard-your-back kinda thing, but I figure it works to show fellowship anytime.” He shrugged, then grinned. “Although it’d be kinda funny between librarians.”

Maria started laughing, picturing two grim, skinny old ladies like Mrs. Schwarz down at the Sutherby Regional clenching hands like that before going off to do their duty by their books, come hell or high water. “That actually works better than you might think, depending on the librarian,” she giggled, and Ris laughed.

But now Maria was curious; why had he chosen that name? She moved back to the story. “So then what happened?”

Ris spread his hands, held them there. “So I go to start thinking again, poke around to get the trains running, and I realize there’s something in the way. This word is just hanging in my head, this name.” He grinned, leaning back on his hands, dropping the intensity of the story now that it was essentially over. “Took me a little while to figure out that it was my name, of course, since I was still a little stunned, but then I took it. ‘Ris’ is the first syllable of it. I don’t hand out the rest of it.”

“Cuz true names have power?” Maria said cautiously. She believed in the concept herself, but she didn’t know if anyone else did.

“Exactly that!” His eyes snapped excitement. “Are you Wiccan, or how do you know that?”

Maria blinked. Wiccan? Aren’t they the witches? Me, a witch? “I…” she sighed inwardly. This sounded so childish. “I read a lot. Andrew Cantor is one of my favorite fantasy authors, and he talks about that all the time.”

“Really?” Ris crossed his legs and leaned forward, interested. “Never read him. Can you recommend any of his books to start with?”

Maria allowed herself to be drawn out on the topic of Mr. Cantor and his writing, becoming quite enthusiastic about some of her favorite books, which involved working magic through drawing and painting. Eventually there came a pause in the conversation, when she’d said all she had to say on that topic, and Ris seemed to be considering which of the several books to look for first. Maria found her mind wandering back to his story of the quest.

“You know, the thing with the fox and your name almost sounds like some kind of hallucination or a drug trip.” She wasn’t entirely sure she’d meant to say that, it sounded kind of insulting in the open air, and she got ready to apologize sincerely.

Ris laughed. “Nah, those are different. Hallucinations aren’t so coherent, and depending on the drug, trips tend to have a different feel to them, at least in my experience. Besides, I wasn’t on anything at the time.”

Maria couldn’t stop the startled look. She knew she looked like a naïve little twit, but Ris did drugs?! But he doesn’t look sleazy or stupid or anything! “How many drugs do you know about?” I hope that didn’t sound as stupid as I think…

“You sound really surprised.” Ris cocked his head at her again. “Don’t you know anyone who does stuff? I thought about half the people at the high school partook of a smoke now and then.”

“Oh. I don’t go to high school. I’m homeschooled.” And now he’s gonna give me a weird look, and ask what that is, and if it’s legal, and what I’m gonna do about college, and all the stupid questions people always ask…

“Homeschool, that’s so cool! What d’you do? Oh, wait, you asked first.” He leaned closer, sprawling out a little on the grass, flicking his fingernail against one bell hanging right next to his chin, and lowered his voice. “Lessee, I’ve done a little bit of a couple of things. Never touched heroine, tried a little crack – that’s cocaine – tried opium once, won’t touch it again, mushrooms are great if you’re careful, and of course I’ve always got some weed around.”

Maria raised an eyebrow in trepidation. “Always?”

He patted a small lump in his pocket, then chuckled at her expression. “Don’t worry, I won’t ask you to have any, unless you want some of course.”

She shook her head, relaxing a little, and Ris grinned at her like sunlight off a lake, leaning in close and conspiratorial. “Yeah, I’m kind of a pothead,” he laughed softly, “but the thing about marijuana is you can either use it just for fun, or use it to get open so you can learn things. That’s what I like to do. A lot of the people I know just use it for fun, and that’s fine, but they overdo it, and then they walk around totally stoned, which is just stupid. If that’s what you’re gonna do, you should just stay in your room and be stoned with your friends, you shouldn’t go out in public and wander around.

“See, when I’m stoned,” he dropped his voice a little more, spread fingers flicking toward his chest, “you can’t tell. I sound normal, I move normally, I even drive a little bit better, because I’m more focused on all the details. That’s because I’m used to it and I’ve practiced.”

Maria blinked, not entirely certain she wanted to add her support for the hobby by sounding enthusiastic. “Huh.”

Ris shrugged, throwing back some of the hair that’d fallen over his shoulder. The bells in the small braids around his head chimed in a tangle of musical clinks. No doubt noticing her discomfort, he leaned back on his hands. “So, you mentioned before you were homeschooled? What’ve you been doing?”

“I’m studying to take the GED, so Mom’s got me doing math right now, but since I don’t argue about it much, she gets worried. She figures we need something to argue about, so now she spends her time trying to get me out of the house.”

“You object?”

She shrugged. “Where is there to go?”

Ris nodded thoughtfully and deftly changed the subject. “You said you’d been drawing since you were nine. Did you teach yourself, or what?”

Maria told him about the various drawing books she’d bought, and the one lady artist her mom paid for lessons with before Maria had realized that when it was turned into work, she didn’t like drawing much, especially when her notions of beauty clashed badly with the lady’s. Finally she glanced over towards the busy hive of activity on the other side of the yard, and with a sinking shock, noticed the gardeners straggling towards the cars and her mother gathering tools and the leftover bags of potting soil.

Ris saw her face fall. “So, whatcha doing now?”

Maria shrugged, feeling glum at the prospect of going back to her comfortable room for the first time since she was seven and gregarious. “Going home.”

“Didn’t you say you lived in town?”

She looked up at him, curious at the I’ve-got-an-idea tone in his voice, and nodded.

“Well, think your mom would mind if I hitched a ride?”

Maria looked at the ingenuous expression, grinned back and shook her head. “That’d work.”

Ris caught a ride back to her house, after which they climbed the tree in her front yard. He sprawled in the branches, one scarf with red dragons on it draped across a twig, and Maria sat slightly above him in the personal armchair the tree had made for her.

“I promised my friend Jerry I’d come help him with his car this afternoon,” Ris told her, “but after that I’m free for the evening. You wanna hang out?”

Something quivered in Maria’s chest, and she froze her face not to show it. That sounded almost like a date. She’d never been on a date before. She couldn’t help the obviously happy smile as she shrugged and nodded. “Sure.”

“Great!” He grinned up at her, brown eyes sparkling. “That’ll be excellent. You’re pretty cool.” One eyebrow tilted suggestively as his smile curled a little more, shortening Maria’s breath. No one had ever come on to her before either, but she was fairly certain that he’d just done it. What would be an appropriate response to such a thing?

She blinked a few times, then raised an honest brow back. “Says you,” the really cool one.

Ris flicked both eyebrows at her and looked up through his lashes. His voice dropped, becoming husky. “So I do, Beautiful,” he murmured.

If he did that again, Maria was going to fall out of the tree. She sagged in her natural armchair and hoped the surge of unaccustomed heat didn’t show in her face. Maybe, if she could get her hands to stop shaking, and get the little voice in her head to stop yelling OhmigodOhmigodOhmigod and drowning out any coherent thought, she could retain some dignity here.

“Okay, so what uh, what time do you, wanna… show up?” If her voice was all weak like that, however, she might as well forget about dignity. Dammit, I have no strength of will whatsoever!

“After dinner?” His tone was almost normal again, only the wicked gleam in his eyes showing that he’d noticed.

“Sure, that works. We eat around five.” As businesslike as possible, she nodded, trying to ignore the butterflies flopping around in her stomach. It wasn’t a date, really, they would just be hanging out at her house, after all. But still.

“So, uh, you wanna show up at like six?”

“Sounds good to me. Hey, you know my friend Jerry? Oh, you gotta meet him! He’s teaching me how to eat fire.”

They talked some more and then climbed down from the tree, and Ris left with a last sly wink back at her before he walked off down the road.

Maria ate dinner twice as fast as usual, and then hung around the house staring out all the windows and fidgeting. He wasn’t there at six. Of course there were lots of things that could have held him up, but he wasn’t there at six-thirty either, and Maria sat down on her bed at seven.

She should’ve known that nobody that interesting, glowing with energy and excitement and knowledge, would really want to spend time with her. Of course he wasn’t coming.

She sat on the bed and watched the hands of the clock move on.

The phone rang. She looked at it for a moment before picking it up.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Beautiful, sorry I haven’t showed up yet, I got dragged off to this party with my friends Dan and Aleah. There’s some pretty cool people here, and I wondered if you might wanna come over?”

She could almost see the casual pose he was standing in, one belled braid wrapped around a finger, leaning against a wall or a countertop and grinning at the room in general. Maria could feel her heart start beating again, blood moving through her veins as if it had never stopped. She would’ve been smiling if the thought of being in an unknown house with people she didn’t know didn’t knock her heartbeat into her throat. But Ris would be there. I have the feeling that he doesn’t intend to get me into trouble. He didn’t mock me when he found out I’m completely clueless about most stuff, including drugs, so maybe it’ll be okay.

“Um, where is it?”

“Oh, easy walking distance of your house, I’ll come get you, don’t worry about it. Better make sure it’s okay with your parents first, though – if you get in trouble, they’ll never let me drag you around again!” He laughed, and she couldn’t help grinning, excitement sneaking up next to the trepidation about this adventure.

“Are you kidding? My mom’ll be ecstatic that I’m going to a party with a bunch of young folks. She’ll shove me out the door herself!”

“She won’t mind that they’re college kids?”

Trepidation overtook excitement again by half a mile. “You’re at a party with college kids?”

She could hear the grin in his voice. “They’re not a separate species, you know. You’ll be one pretty soon, right?”

“No! I’m only sixteen!”

“Two years isn’t that long. Hey, it’s okay, no one’s gonna bother you. Promise.” His voice smirked. “Unless you wanna be bothered, of course.”

“Um… no…” She wriggled inwardly and bit her lip to keep from saying, not tonight, anyway.

“All right, well, you want me to come pick you up?”

“Yes, please.”

“A’kay, see ya soon, Beautiful.”

Maria wasn’t sure what kind of party it was, so she left the plain jeans and baggy t-shirt on and put her hair up in a twist. Then she sat down on her bed again to wait.

She gave him fifteen minutes, maybe half an hour to show up. Of course, he might get held up at the party. And there was really no way to know how far away the place was; he’d said walking distance, but in theory that could mean several miles.

There was no point in holding her breath and counting minutes. Maria nudged aside knowledge of the impending party and picked up her sketchbook.

Her pencil moved over the page smoothly, sketching out a pair of vibrant eyes, a laughing mouth, tiny braids ending in bells, a radiant personality that could warm the soul like sun on rich black earth. Under that influence, maybe even tender, stunted things could start to grow.