Honey Roots Read online

  Honey Roots

  A Novel

  By: Sydney Migues

  Chapter One

  Two days after my thirteenth birthday, as I strolled through the yellow woods behind my home, I heard laughter floating across the small creek that bordered the edge of my family’s property line, and curious at the noise, had followed it to its source.

  From behind the thick veil of Manzanita bushes that lined the creek, I could see a girl I’d sat next to once in class a few years prior, but could not remember the name of. She laid under the shade of a large oak tree, her long blonde braids shimmered in the sunlight against her tan skin as she reached up to grab the hand of a boy I had never seen before.

  He looked to be around my age, if not slightly older. His hair hung low over his honey brown eyes, a messy mop of caramel brown curls. He was barefoot and shirtless, only wearing a pair of worn blue jeans despite it being a slightly cloudy day. He carried a small knife in one hand, using it to cut thin slices off an apple plucked from a nearby tree that he held in the other. He threw the core into the creek as I watched from my hiding place behind the bushes, the bright red tips on each end showing brightly as it slowly floated down the waters edge.

  “Carve our initials in the tree Silas” The girl said to him.

  I watched as the boy touched the trees trunk, almost caressing the rough bark.

  “No. I’ll do it on it ground though.” The boy replied as he kneeled, knife in hand, and began carving into the earth beneath the tree.

  “But why?” The girl whined indignantly.

  “Trees are alive, they can feel. How would it feel if someone carved their initials into your stomach?” He asked her as her carved.

  I watched her expression as she thought, admiring what the strange boy had said, I had never met anyone who had loved trees the way I did, as if they were friends who could hear me and feel my touch as I passed by their hearty trunks.

  “That’s silly” she finally concluded, shaking her head at the thought.

  I didn’t think it was silly, I thought it was beautiful. I receded back into the trees, away from them, feeling invasive in bearing witness to their innocent intimacy. I thought about the boy as I strolled back towards my home, I wanted to know him, to talk to him about the trees and how they could feel us under their heavy branches as we swayed in swings beneath them on sunny summer days.

  My family’s home sat on the top of a hillside that gently sloped downward, its surface dotted almost entirely in thickly lined maple trees until it stopped at the small gurgling creek below. My mother had painted the house a sunny yellow, just before I was born, to match the bright fall shades of the tree tops that led up to it. It had faded now slightly, a stark contrast to the deep purple she had chosen to paint the thin porch that wrapped around it edges.

  People always spoke of the woods as if they were a sinister and dark place, but the woods that surrounded my home were the primal opposite of such things. The bark of the trees was smooth and light, the leaves radiant shades of red, orange, yellow, lime green, and every possible shade in between. The ground bounced beneath my feet as I explored every inch, every ant hole and wood pecker mark that speckled its contents, from the years of leaves that covered the forested floor below me. The light showed through the leaves and moved with the wind, a disco ball of sunlight I could dance in under the cover of the branches that loomed high above, the trees and birds my only spectators.

  I reached the freshly mowed thin strip of grass that separated the rough gravel drive from the woods below. I sat in the fresh clippings and pulled off my shoes, inhaling the fresh scent of the grass as a low breeze picked up the clippings and swirled them around me. I walked the strip from end to end, the fresh cut blades tickling the arches of my feet as I stepped. I admired my mother in the kitchen window as she washed dishes in the big white farm sink she loved. Since my father died in March of the previous year, his light snuffed out by a heart attack no one had seen coming, I had noticed her beginning to age quickly, her dark brown hair had become invaded with grey, the tips that touched just above her pale freckly shoulders, the only old color I had known so long, left untouched by silver strands now. She looked up at me, her ocean deep blue eyes locking on my unfairly hazel green ones, and waved me inside.

  The people who would comment on the quirkiness of the exterior of my house, were the ones I had grown to know would have an expression of utter shock when stepping inside. My father had called my mother an artist, her masterpieces comparable to Picasso, but she would always deny this, claiming her hatred for the sale and snooty following of artwork. Our living room was the first room entered in from the front door, it appeared normal enough, light beige suede sofas, sturdy brown bookcases between the tall thin windows with their white lace curtains. It looked fairly average, until you looked up.

  My mother, unable to sleep one night during my toddler years had decided to take every paint can my father had in the garden shed into the living room, where she set up two ladders, placing a wide board across them, and there, on the board elevated tenuously by the two ladders, she had painted the ceiling, laying on her back high above the ground. She had painted clouds and pirate ships, mermaids and fairy’s, an entire world of its own. It took her two months, and then she had moved onto the kitchen, where she added eight foot tall sunflowers to the blank walls, their leaves curling onto the ceiling above. Over the years she had steadily added to the house, spraying blue glitter onto the ceiling in the bathroom, painting a life size, roaring, rainbow lion in my bedroom with only old nail polish, building ostentatious Victorian mice sized doors out of clay to cover the wall outlets that weren’t in use. I loved every inch, it was the museum that showed the works of our lives.

  “How was your kingdom today my love?” she asked as I entered the kitchen, referring to the woods, which my father and her had titled my kingdom early in my youth, when I had first begun disappearing into its shade, getting lost in the yellow glow that stuck between the earth and tree tops like cold honey on a January morning.

  “I heard voices coming from the other side of the creek.” I told her nonchalantly, not telling her that I had spied through the bushes at the speakers just before I’d walked the slope back to the house.

  “Oh, I heard some people bought the old Conner ranch across the way, their property backs up to the creek across from ours. I hear they have a boy around your age, that’s probably who you heard.”

  I looked down to hide my smile. I was happy to hear I would likely get more chances to see the boy across the creek.

  I began lingering at the edge of the water longer than usually after that first day, waiting to catch a glimpse of him again, but the only living creatures I’d seen on my walks in the weeks after were unfortunately just deer and birds.

  Chapter Two

  Nearly a month after I had spied on the young couple from behind the bushes, I had been asked on my first date. Neil Martin sat two rows away from me in class. He had light red hair, his face a cluster of freckles and a bad case of acne. He was taller than most boys in the school, his limbs gangly and his clothing always just a bit too short, unable to keep up with his sudden growth spurt. He was quiet, and usually spent most of his lunch period playing basketball with some of the other more sports oriented boys.

  I had been sitting on the edge of the track field in the grass, as far away from the school building as possible, my back turned to the basketball court that was adjacent to the field. Attempting to skim through the rest of the chapter in my biology book that I had meant to finish the night before but had forgotten, in an area I could be sure my teacher wouldn’t happen across me. He had approached me from his normal spot on the basketball courts, the sun causing his shadow to cast in front of me long before he c
ame to stand before me in the grass, making me aware of his looming presence, although I didn’t yet know it was him who was approaching. I tucked my knees up to my chest, a futile effort to hide the book in between my chest and knees in case it had been my biology teacher approaching to bust me for not having done the reading the night before.

  “Hey Silvana, what are you reading?” I shielded my eyes from the sun, placing my palm flat above them to see him as he spoke.

  “Oh, I forgot to finish the Biology homework last-night.” I told him, unfolding my legs to reveal the big blue biology textbook I had been trying to hide.

  “Sorry…I didn’t mean to bug you, I was just wondering if maybe you would want to go to the movies with me or something on Friday, my mom said she would drive us if you said yes.”

  “Like a date?!” I asked, my voice unusually high in my throat, surprised at his request.

  “Uh, yea like a date.” He answered me, his chin tucked into his chest, his face that was always slightly red from his budding acne turning even redder.

  “Sure, I guess.” I told him, feeling myself blushing too, my ears turning hot as I worked to avoid his glance.

  I was not especially fond of Neil, did not harbor any desire to stroll hand in hand with him or share a drink with two straws stuck into it. At thirteen, I think we all held a silent agreement that being incredibly awkward was inevitable, I felt that Neil however, took being awkward to an entirely new level. Everything about him pulsated with uncomfortableness, from the way he spoke, to his unbalanced gait as he walked. He is not whom I would have chosen for my first date, but he was nice enough, and no one else had ever even bothered to ask me yet, so I went.

  His mom and he pulled into the gravel drive that led to my house at approximately six in the evening that following Friday, the shiny burgundy minivan they rode in kicking up a cloud of dust as they arrived. I stood in the door way, in a flowy knee-length purple dress my mother had sewn tiny fabric daisy’s onto. White strappy sandals I knew would inevitably give me blisters, as they did every time I had tried to wear them, on my feet. Our mothers spoke in easy pleasantries to each other, fawning over the first date of either of their eldest children, asking us to pose awkwardly for photos, after each flash of the lenses, encouraging us to move closer together. We rode together in the back of his mother’s van to the movie theater without speaking, listening to her soft generic radio station that just barely broke though the silence.

  We hardly spoke as we made our way through the theater and into our seats, neither of us sure of what we should say or when we should say it. The backs of our hands touched on the arm rest between us, and remained that way until the credits rolled, both of us too scared to raise theirs and place it in the palm of the others.

  We stood on the curb in front of the theater, waiting for his mother to arrive. The sun had gone down while we had been inside, and being alone under the street lights in the dark with him I felt energized, abuzz with the newness of it. He leaned towards me, as if he were going to steal a kiss, but turned away at the last moment, which I was relieved and disappointed by all at once.

  I fell asleep early that night, not bothering to take off the dress my mother had chosen, feeling accomplished for having survived my first date, blushing in the dark of my room as I relived the memories of the night while I drifted off into a heavy slumber.

  On the following Monday, as he passed by my desk in class, he placed a note on its empty tan surface. Stating that he had had fun on our date and that we should try it again some time. I smiled shyly as I read it, then folded it up and carefully slid it in my pocket, where later alone in the safety of my room I would trace its letters with the tip of my finger, admiring his shaky scrawl.

  We spent the remainder of the week casting shy glances at each other when we would pass in the halls, managing to squeak out a quick greeting occasionally, but never actually stopping to speak in full sentences. When the school wide talent show came around on Friday, and the entire student body was told to squeeze into the dark auditorium, I had expected that we would sit together in the darkness, as we had in the movies the Friday before.

  So, you can imagine my surprise when I saw him near the front already seated as I entered, next to Cindy Demos, who many considered to be the prettiest girl in our grade, with her extra-long eyelashes, perfectly straight long black hair and ahead-of the-rest-of-us body.

  I froze in my tracks, causing a large boy that had been walking behind me to run into my back, throwing me off balance. I fell to the floor from the force with a loud thud, everyone already inside staring back at me, including Neil and Cindy. I could feel the hot tears welling up in my eyes as I pushed myself off the ground, running swiftly back out the auditorium doors towards the main office. Where I called my mother, who promptly came and picked me up early, understanding the horrible embarrassment that had always been junior high. Something she still remembered all too well even in her late age.

  When we arrived home, I tossed my school bag onto the gravel drive, and took off into the comforting solitude of the woods, not stopping to go inside. I glided down the familiar hillside, my eyes on the glowing leaves above, my feet already knowing where to step on the soft ground below, cursing the hot tears that still threatened to fall from my eyes like a storm erupting on my face.

  So concentrated on sulking in the sheer melancholy was I, that I hadn’t noticed the boy across the creek was back again. He was alone this time, lounging against a rotting tree stump, his bare feet in the streaming water below. I had been pacing back and forth along the creek, cursing Neil, picturing myself slapping his ugly speckled face, stomping my heels into the earth, kicking up little clouds of dirt as I followed the line of the creek back and forth, as far as the trees would allow.

  When I finally noticed him, he was smiling at me, a bemused expression across his sun-kissed face. I stood still, frozen in embarrassment for the second time that afternoon.

  “You remind me of an angry kitten, stomping about like that.” He hollered across the water as he chuckled lightly to himself.

  “Well you remind me of a snake, stalking silently in the shadows.” I snapped back at him, annoyed at the comparison.

  He laughed at this, his hand sweeping down to hold his bare stomach, moving with the exuberance of his laughter.

  “Why, I’m just enjoying the sunshine, you could join me if you wanted. Unless you’d rather go back to pacing that is.”

  His eyes were an invitation, melting the ice that had frozen my anger in place since seeing Neil and Cindy earlier that day. I looked down at my jeans, imagining how they would stick and abrasively rub my skin the whole way back up to the house if I were to get the bottoms wet crossing the creek.

  “My jeans will get wet.”

  I hollered back to him, feeling discouraged, wishing I had chosen to wear a dress or my a-little-too-short blue denim shorts that day. He laughed again, crossing the water in one swift leap, landing with a crunch into the bushes that separated me from the creek, cracking them to the ground. He pulled out the same small knife I had seen him slicing the apple with before, and for a moment thought maybe I should scream, alert my mother that I was in danger, alone next to a strange boy with a knife.

  “I can cut them into shorts for you, so you can cross.”

  He said gesturing towards my jeans with the knife. I nodded without speaking, wanting to go across with him but heavy anxiety keeping my mouth clenched shut. He started on the bottom hem of my left leg, pulling the flared ends away from my body as he moved in a bumpy upward motion with the small blade, cutting a slit up the slide, much shorter than even the shortest shorts that sat in my closet. He then wrapped the knife around my leg, cutting off the split jean material that now hung loosely below. He did the same on my other leg. The cuts were rough and jagged, white threads fraying out from the bottom. From the front, looking down they looked dangerously short, prompting me to try and discreetly touch my butt, to check that they fully covered all of
it before making may way into the water.

  “My names Silas by the way, my folks just bought the place up this hill.”

  He told me as he folded the pieces of the remains of my old beloved jeans into a small pile on the water’s edge, before hopping effortlessly back over again.

  “I’m Silvana, Silvana Wilkes, I live up the hill that way.”

  I told him gesturing behind my back in the direction of my house as I stepped into the deliciously cold water and made my way towards his side of the creek.

  He leaned back into his spot in front of the rotten stump, placing his toes back into the water as he shut his eyes, the picture of relaxation.

  “The trees smell sweet here.” He said simply as he dramatically inhaled through his nose, taking in the scent.

  “It’s the scent of the sap warming in the sun, people compare it to cookies usually.”

  I told him knowingly, having asked this same question many times as a child as I admired the thick woods behind the house that I was not yet allowed to explore. He opened one eye and glanced at me sideways, still knee deep in the middle of the creek, unsure of if I should fully cross or not, enjoying the cold chill of the water against my bare legs.

  “Come lean on my tree with me, it enjoys the attention now that it’s too low to tremble its leaves against the others.”

  I felt completely at ease as I splashed over to where he lounged, plopping myself onto the earth next to him. I rested my head near his on the hard stump, hanging my feet loosely in the water as his hung. I felt no awkwardness as I lounged next to him in the sun, all the tension I had felt around Neil void from my body now next to Silas.

  We lounged that way in silence, our eyes closed, the water running gently over our bare feet, for a long while. His voice breaking the silence only for a quick moment.

  “If we stay this way long enough perhaps we will begin to grow roots, become one with the woods and remain here forever and always.”