Arcadia Falls

10


I manage to get back to the cottage, change into jeans, and get back to Briar Lodge in a little under half an hour. I’m amazed at how much has been accomplished in that time. At the edge of the forest Shelley Drake is pacing in front of a long line of students and teachers like a general surveying her troops. There’s a teacher or staff person for every five students and each group leader has been given a whistle and a bright pink bandana.
“The bandanas were left over from a breast cancer benefit walk,” Shelley tells me, handing me my bandana and whistle. “Find a couple of students who don’t have a leader and make sure you keep a good eye on them. We can’t afford to lose another one.”
Could we afford to lose the first one? I think, but I keep it to myself. Shelley is clearly harried. Her cheeks are as bright pink as the bandanas and her eyes nervously dart everywhere, as if she could rein in the chaos by sheer willpower. In addition to the students, there are two ambulances parked in front of the Lodge, half a dozen EMT workers, and, holding a German shepherd straining at his leash, a man in camouflage hunting clothes who is talking to Sheriff Reade. A little past where Reade stands I see Sally with her new friend Haruko, Clyde Bollinger, Hannah Weiss, and Chloe Dawson. I look around the crowd for another group to lead. As much as I’d like to keep Sally in my sights, I don’t want to crowd her. But then she looks up and waves me over.
“Why don’t you join our cell?” Clyde asks when I reach the group. “Professor Drake thought it was a good idea for the older students to mix with the new ones because we know the area better.”
“Clyde and I were both in the hiking club last year,” Hannah adds. “And Chloe wrote a paper on the history of the woods—”
“That doesn’t mean I know my way around them,” Chloe snaps. “We’re not supposed to go in them without a supervised hiking group.”
“I didn’t say you had—” Hannah begins, her voice rising in annoyance. They’re all overtired, I realize, like toddlers who haven’t had their naps, and will soon be squabbling if I don’t interfere.
“Oh look,” I say, “Sheriff Reade is making an announcement.”
Sheriff Reade has mounted an old stone wall to speak to the search parties. One of the EMTs offers him a bullhorn, but he turns it down. I see why when he speaks. He has a deep, authoritative voice that instantly silences all chatter in the line. “We’ve got three hours till nightfall. That means three hours to find this girl. I’m calling all civilian searchers in at dusk. We need to cover as much ground as we can in that time. Proceed directly west toward the ridge with your group leader. At the quarter hour we’ll all stop and call Isabel’s name for one minute, then observe total silence for four minutes.”
“Why?” someone asks. “Shouldn’t we just keep calling?”
“How do you expect to hear her answer if the woods are full of people shouting?” Sheriff Reade asks. “For the rest of the time, keep your voices low. If you find anything—a piece of clothing, an object that might belong to Isabel—blow your whistle once and wait. I’ll find you. If you find Isabel, blow your whistle three times. Remember, stay with your groups and watch your footing. When you reach the ridge, turn back. We’re putting together a climbing team to search there. It’s too dangerous for civilians.”
Reade lifts his left hand up and checks his watch. “I’ve got six-fifteen. Check your watches and make sure that’s what you’ve got.”
I look down at Jude’s old Rolex, still set on Japan time—or, as I’ve been thinking of it, Jude time. Jude would be the first to tell me that it’s more important now to be in sync with the rest of the search party, so I twist the stem until the watch reads 6:15 and push it in. When I look up, I notice Sally staring at me. “Let’s go,” I say. “Let’s find her.”
Although we have three hours of daylight left, the sun is low enough in the western sky to cast our shadows, and the shadows of the trees, behind us. Climbing the ridge I feel as if we are advancing through the ranks of a retreating army: the ghosts of those who have gone before us. It’s an image that can’t help but remind me of the last scene in The Changeling Girl.
The peasant girl looked from the witch, who stood at the edge of the woods holding the handful of dirt that would give her the freedom to return to her old life, to the changeling who stood in the doorway of her old home. As she watched, another figure appeared in the doorway—a man. She recognized the young shepherd who courted her, only he had grown stouter in the year she’d been away. He’d become a prosperous gentleman. He put his arm around the changeling girl and squinted out into the dusk, but he didn’t see his old sweetheart. His eyes were dazzled by the changeling. She’d made him her own, just as she’d made everything in the peasant girl’s old life her own. Only now she had the power to take it all back.
The peasant girl turned to the witch and held both hands out, cupped together. The witch poured the soil into her hands. It was warm and loamy, like soil newly turned for spring planting. It was full of life. Feeling its power in her hands, she knew what she must do.
She lifted her hands up over her head and, twirling in a circle, tossed the soil into the air. Instantly, a wind caught it and carried it into the woods, lifting the cloud into the topmost boughs of the oldest trees and then letting the grains rain down through the branches. The wind sighed and the trees swayed and creaked, sounding like old bones coming to life. The tops of the pines tossed and thrashed like girls drying their hair … and then they were girls, stretching their arms, tossing their hair, and shaking out the cramps in their legs. Dozens of girls.. hundreds … come to life. All the changelings that had been forced into alien shapes for time out of mind, now free to move.
The peasant girl looked at the witch and saw that she was smiling. She was no longer a witch, but a beautiful woman in a long white dress: the queen of the changelings. She held open her arms to welcome all her children back and the peasant girl turned away and began climbing the hill toward the high ridge that marked the boundary of the valley. The sun was setting beyond the ridge, staining the sky rose and violet. The girls who were once trees were black against that light, shadows who passed the peasant girl as she climbed the hill. As they passed her, they reached out their hands to touch her, their fingers grazing her lightly like pine needles brushing against her skin, their voices whispering in her ears in the cadences of the wind, thanking her for setting them free. When she reached the top of the ridge, she had been brushed clean and given all she’d ever need to go out into the world and make a new life. At the top of the ridge, she turned back to wave goodbye, but the woods below her were filled with a dark mist that hid everything below the tree line. She turned and faced the setting sun, the next valley, and her future.
The last picture in the book shows the dark figure of the peasant girl silhouetted against a lilac and pink sky, bravely setting off into the unknown. Although she stands alone, her hair and dress are tossed by invisible breezes that I had always imagined were the voices of the changeling girls whispering their parting wishes to her. Their breath like the touch of white pine needles …
A hand brushing my hand startles me out of the fairy tale and into the reality of our mission in the woods tonight. “It’s seven-fifteen,” Clyde is reminding me. “Time to call.”
I signal to Sally and Haruko, who are on my left while Clyde alerts Chloe and Hannah to the right, and we stop. All around us the quiet woods fill with myriad voices calling Isabel’s name. Then at 7:16 the woods fall silent again. Even the birds, no doubt frightened by our voices, are quiet in the ensuing hush. For four minutes there’s only the sound of the wind sifting through the tops of the white pines. There’s no answering cry.
“If she were out here and conscious she would have answered by now,” Clyde points out as we resume our upward trudge. I’m sure it’s what we’re all thinking as we get close to the top of the ridge: if we don’t find Isabel on this side, she has probably fallen into the clove—and if that’s what happened, how likely is it that she’s still alive?
“Maybe she’s not even in the woods,” Hannah says. “Isabel was a real wuss—she couldn’t even watch a scary movie—I just don’t see her going into the woods.”
“But you saw her go in, didn’t you, Chloe?”
Chloe doesn’t answer right away. Instead she looks down at Clyde’s feet. “Your shoe is untied again,” she says with a long drawn-out sigh and a pained look on her face.
Clyde’s face turns red as he stoops to retie his black Converse high-top. His shoelaces have come untied so many times that I’ve been tempted to tie them in double knots like I used to do for Sally. We’ve stopped in a swatch of golden early evening sunlight that streams through a break in the canopy that was made when the tree Clyde has his foot propped on came down. It must have fallen years ago, because its upturned root plate is furred by moss, making it look like a huge hairy spider—an impression that I imagine would be magnified at night. I don’t envy Isabel if she came this way.
“Come on,” I tell Clyde, “we’ll waste the ten minutes we get to walk. At this rate we won’t make it to the ridge by dusk.”
Clyde drags his foot down from the root and something white flutters in the air. A moth, I think, but when it settles on the ground I see it’s a piece of white cloth. Chloe reaches out and fingers the material before I can stop her.
“It’s the same cloth Ms. Drake used to make our dresses,” she says in a shaky voice.
“It could have been from someone else’s dress,” I say, “but I think I’d better blow the whistle. Sheriff Reade will want to see this.”
I lift the whistle to my mouth. It takes me a moment to find the breath to blow it. We’re only a few hundred feet from the ridge and I’m suddenly afraid of what we will see when we look over it into the ravine. When I do find my breath the whistle sounds like someone shrieking. The woods are unnaturally silent afterward. No one speaks while we wait for Sheriff Reade. Fortunately, he doesn’t take long.
“There he is.” Clyde points up the hill. I look up and see Callum Reade silhouetted against the western sky. Of course, I realize, he’s been patrolling the ridge. He’d want to find Isabel before anyone else. Well, at least now he’ll have a narrower area to search. When Reade reaches us I hold up the piece of torn cloth. As it ripples in the breeze I feel absurdly like a medieval lady saluting her knight. Sheriff Reade takes the cloth from me with all the gravity of a knight accepting his lady’s favors.
I describe how we found it and turn to Chloe to confirm that it’s the same cloth that the dresses were made from. Reade nods and says: “Right. I need you kids to go back down to the Lodge. Tell any teachers you meet to meet me on the ridge—you can use this fallen tree as a landmark—and send all the students back to the Lodge.”
“But why can’t we help?” Chloe cries.
“Because I can’t go fishing anyone else out of the clove. If Isabel’s down there, she could be seriously hurt. We can’t afford to waste any time.”
Chloe looks as if she is going to argue, but Clyde leans down and says something in a low voice. Her eyes widen and I’m afraid we’re in for a scene, but she gets to her feet and meekly follows Hannah and Clyde down the hill. Haruko turns to go, but Sally hesitates—as if she were suddenly unwlling to be parted from me. The thought that she might actually prefer for me to stay with her for once—that she needs me—makes me reluctant to go with Sheriff Reade. I’m about to tell him that I’m going back with my daughter when Hannah comes back up the hill and lays a hand on her arm.
“It’s okay,” she tells Sally in a lilting voice that seems more mature than her years. “We’ll all stay together at the Lodge. You’ll see—the good thing about this place is that we all stick together.”
Sally nods and, without looking back at me, turns to follow Hannah down the hill.
“It looks like your daughter has made some friends,” Reade says as we start walking up the hill.
“Yeah, I hope so. It’s been a rough year for her, and the friends she chose in Great Neck were no help. She started hanging out with a group who went into the city to clubs and used their parents’ money for alcohol and pot. I was hoping the kids here would be different. Less … shallow.”
“Because it’s an art school?” Reade asks, barely disguising the derision in his voice.
“Well, at least they might care about something other than the latest Marc Jacobs bag or who has an iPhone.”
“The affectations and poses may be different here, but they’re still affectations. I’d keep a close eye on who your daughter hangs out with.”
“Really?” I say. “And where do you get your parenting experience? Do you have kids?”
Instead of answering he suddenly grabs my arm. I let out an offended squawk and he immediately lets go and holds up his hands, palms out. “Sorry! I wasn’t trying to interfere in your parenting, just keep you from walking over the edge. You seem to have some peculiar attraction to the spot.” I look past him and see that we’ve reached the ridge and, once again, I’ve almost walked right over the edge. It’s a particularly steep fall from this point and the drop-off is obscured by a blackberry bush. Below us the Wittekill leaps from rock to mossy rock, golden in the last rays of the setting sun. Between the rocks are deep patches of fern and hanging mosses.
“She could be right below us and we wouldn’t be able to see her.”
As if in answer to his words a breeze ripples the surface of the clove, parting the greenery on the ledge above the second cascade and revealing a patch of white. “There!” I point at the ledge about twenty feet below us. “Did you see that? I saw something white.”
Reade leans farther over the edge, staring at the spot I’m pointing to, but shakes his head. “I don’t see it, but if you’re sure—”
“I’m not sure, but if it is Isabel—” I don’t need to finish my sentence. We’re both thinking the same thing. If there’s any chance that Isabel’s still alive, there’s no time to lose. The sun has sunk below the ruin of the barn in the valley below; there’s only another half-hour of sunlight left. Sheriff Reade takes his walkie-talkie off his belt and asks someone named Kyle how far he is from the ridge. I can’t make out the blast of static that comes out of the machine, but he nods and says, “Over.”
“They’ll be here in ten minutes,” he says, stripping off his jacket. “You show them where to go.”
“Shouldn’t you wait—” I begin, but he’s already swung his legs over the edge of the rocky precipice. The man’s infuriating, I think as I watch him crawl down the steep, rocky slope, using roots and rock outcrop-pings as handholds. He must see himself as some kind of hero. Still, I can’t take my eyes off him. I lie flat on the ground and lean my head over so I can watch his progress, as if the force of my attention will keep him from slipping. When at last he makes it down to the ledge where I spotted the patch of white I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
Reade looks up and waves to me, then he turns and wades into the ferns, which come up to his waist and are now entirely in shadow. I hear footsteps and voices behind me. I get up so that the EMTs will see me, but I don’t take my eyes off Callum Reade. He looks like a man wading into deep water, and I have the uneasy feeling that he might suddenly go under and then I’ll have to know exactly where he is to save him. It strikes me that even though I’ve only known this man for less than twenty-four hours—and for most of it, I’ve found him bossy and prickly—I have no doubt that I’d dive in after him to rescue him.
Which is what I think I’ll have to do when Reade trips and falls to his knees. The brambles close around him like hungry wolves. I cry out and fall to my own knees, ready to scramble down, but he holds up one hand and yells, “Wait!”
How, I wonder, did he know I was already on my way down?
“I’ve found her,” he says, turning around. The blood has drained from his face; the only color left is the green reflection of the leaves, giving him the complexion of a drowned man. “You can send the EMTs down. But tell them there’s no need to hurry.”