Madeline went out into the lane in front of the house, turned right, and began to walk down it, off to find Charlie. It was the kind of cold day that didn’t feel all that cold but made her fingers hurt when she went back inside, and she walked with her hands in her pockets and looked out for Charlie’s dark green coat, and listened for the rhyming songs he liked to sing while tapping things with a stick, the slushy whisper he made telling stories to himself. A few houses past the intersection, she thought she heard his voice, and she stopped and listened, staring at the windows facing the road that reflected the branches in the sky, and then two squirrels ran around the side of the house, screeching at each other, so Madeline kept walking.

When she reached the part of the lane where the woods started, she stopped for a second. Her parents had told her a thousand times not to go past that point, not to go near the woods, and never to take Charlie there, or even tell him about it, because then he might want to go himself. The clinking of the little things that had collected in her coat pocket sounded very loud, and she almost checked over her shoulder to see if her mother had followed her, but of course her mother hadn’t moved from the window or the straight-backed chair she’d pulled in from the dining room.

Madeline hurried up and worried the things in her pocket — a button, the old dark Susan B. Anthony dollar her aunt had given her. Charlie is out here, she thought to herself. She pressed the button into her thumb until it printed four holes there. “Charlie is out here,” she said out loud.

“Yes.”

Cold crawled up Madeline’s legs.

“Down here.”

Madeline looked down. The voice seemed to have come from a rock about the size of a loaf of bread tucked into the shoulder of the lane. Madeline stared at the rock. She wanted to ask it if it had meant her, but even with no one around she felt stupid for thinking about talking to a rock, much less doing it.

“The rock,” the rock said.
Madeline said, “I thought so.”

The rock waited. Madeline waited too, and felt stupid.

“So,” Madeline finally said.
“Yes,” the rock said. “A rock that talks. It’s a bit stupid, really,” and relief broke over Madeline like a sweat.
“I was just thinking that,” she blurted out, suddenly happy to have someone to talk to, even a rock. “It’s like a fairy tale. So — are you trapped in there, like by a curse or something?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that. I’m just a rock.”
“Oh. Well, so how come you can talk, then?”
“Well,” the rock sighed, “it’s complicated.”

Madeline hated that “you’ll understand when you’re older” kind of answer, but she thought she’d better not annoy the rock by pressing the point, so she just nodded and hoped it would keep talking.

“So,” the rock said. “About Charlie.”
“Right,” Madeline said. “My brother. I said he was out here and you said ‘yes.'”
“Yes,” the rock repeated. “He came past here — what’s today?”
“Saturday.”
“Okay, then it must have been Wednesday that I saw him.”
“Wednesday, that’s when he…went off.” The day before, Madeline’s father had yelled at her for saying that Charlie had disappeared. “So he’s still out here?”
“Well, I think so. He went past here and kept going, out of sight.”
“That way?” Madeline pointed in the direction she’d been walking.
“That way,” the rock agreed.
“And he hasn’t come back this direction.”
“Not that I’ve seen.”
“Maybe when you were sleeping? Oh, I bet rocks don’t sleep.”
“We don’t, as a rule. No, if he’d come by again, I’d have seen him.”

Madeline pressed the button into her thumb. In a fairy tale, the rock would have had magical all-seeing powers of some sort and could have told her what to do next. It would involve the heart of a dragon, probably, or witches, and while she didn’t love the idea of combat, at least she’d have a plan.

“I’m sorry I can’t be more help,” the rock said.
“Oh, that’s okay. Don’t feel bad. You helped.”
“Well, you’re welcome.”
“Thanks.” Madeline paused. “Except — what do you think I should do? Now?”

The rock didn’t answer for a moment, and Madeline worried that she’d irritated it, but then the rock sighed, “I don’t know, really. I guess just keep following the lane down and see.”

Well, it’s better than witches, Madeline thought. Probably.

“I guess,” she said. “Okay, well…I should get going, then. Thanks a lot.”
“No problem. Good luck,” the rock said.

Madeline turned to go. She wanted to take the rock with her, for company, or stay with it and talk for awhile. Her throat got tight.

“I’ll keep an eye out for him,” the rock called after her.
“Thanks,” she choked out, and she walked off quickly and concentrated on covering ground and pressing the button into her thumb to make a shamrock pattern of the little holes until she didn’t want to cry anymore.

Madeline walked and walked. Now and then, she checked the sun to gauge when she should turn back, or whether she should even bother turning back, whether her parents would get mad that she’d gone out for so long without an adult or whether they wouldn’t notice her gone at all. She didn’t want to go back yet. The whole house smelled funny from the weird food the adults kept bringing in, heavy dishes with lots of cheese and mushy vegetable bits, and her mother smelled funny too — like stale bread, instead of like candles and flowers whose names Madeline didn’t know, which is how she usually smelled. Madeline unfocused her gaze and hoped a dark green coat would pop into it, but it didn’t, and every time she heard leaves rustling in the woods, she only saw squirrels, or breezes too low to the ground for her to have felt.

She began to get angry. She stomped instead of walking. “A rock. God,” she grumbled to herself. “Talking. To a rock. ‘He went past here on Wednesday.’ Pfft. Some help.” Her cheeks flushed, remembering that she had talked to a rock. Nobody else would ever know that she had talked to a rock, but she would know. For the rest of her life, she would know that she had held a conversation with a rock — a stupid, useless conversation that hadn’t helped at all or had any point. She hadn’t found out anything about the rock, even, about how it could talk or if other rocks talked too or what, and she hadn’t found out anything about where Charlie went, either, not that anyone would believe her if she had, and nobody knew she’d left the house, even, she bet, and she wanted a ham sandwich and to sit on the couch in the living room with a book. She never should have gone out. Stomping, she groused, “This is so stupid, he’s not out here.”

“Who, Charlie?”
“Oh, sure, fine,” Madeline grumped. “Another talking rock, great.”
“No, up here.”

Madeline looked up and around. She felt ridiculous again, and she resented it, and she snapped, “Up where?”

“Here — the one with the nest, on the left.”
“A tree is talking to me now?” Madeline shouted, and as she stared at the red oak with the nest on the left, surrounded shoulder-to-shoulder by other trees, she got so furious that little pins and stars swam across her field of vision, and then she burst into tears.
“Oh, dear,” the tree said in a worried tone. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“SHUT UP!” Madeline yelled, and she sat down hard in the lane and slumped over her lap cross-legged and sobbed.
“I…” the tree began, but stopped.

Madeline cried, angry, and then she cried more, embarrassed, because she couldn’t stand getting mad and crying instead of yelling or hitting something, but after a minute or two her chest stopped feeling like it might erupt, and she calmed down a little and told the tree, “I’m sorry I told you to shut up. I didn’t mean it. I just got mad.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” the tree said. “I didn’t take it personally.”
“Thanks,” Madeline sighed, wiping her face with her hat. “It’s” — she thought of the rock — “complicated.”
“Sure,” the tree said. “I know how it is.”
“So,” Madeline said, getting to her feet.
“So,” the tree said.
“So,” Madeline said, squinting up at the tree and cringing inside, “I talked to this rock? Earlier? And the rock said Charlie — my brother — that he came this way, so I walked down this way. To see.”
“Sure, sure,” the tree said. “I saw him down here on — what day are we today?”
“Saturday,” Madeline said. “You saw him Wednesday — right?”
“Yes, Wednesday. Three days ago.”
“Right. Did you see where he went?”
“Sure I did. You see that little path down there?”
Madeline squinted. “Down by where those bushes are, you mean?”
“Right. There’s a little path starting at the bushes that leads down to the creek. He went down that path.”
“He went down to the creek?” Cold crept up past Madeline’s knees again.
“I don’t know if he went all the way down there, I couldn’t really see from here.”
“But he didn’t come back this way.”
“Not that I saw.”
“And you’d have seen.”
“I’d have seen, sure.”
Madeline sighed, exasperated. “I should have known he’d go off into the woods.”
“Oh, you couldn’t have known that.”
“I could have,” Madeline shrugged. “It’s where he’d go if he came this way.”

She pulled her hat back on and turned to look at the path.

“I should go,” she told the tree.
“Sure,” the tree said agreeably.
“Thanks for your help,” she said, and started towards the path, but then she stopped and went back to the tree. “Can I ask you something?” Before the tree could say yes, she asked, “Do all of you talk, or just you?” The tree didn’t say anything, and Madeline started towards the path again, but she’d only gotten a few steps before the tree said, “It depends. It depends on the tree.”

Madeline stopped. “On the species of tree, you mean?”
“Just the particular tree. And on who’s listening.”
“Oh,” Madeline said. “That makes sense.” It didn’t, really, but she’d expected that kind of answer, more or less. “Can I ask you something else?”
“Sure.”
“How far is it to the creek from where the path starts?”
“Hmm. Over a mile, I’d say, but not much over. A mile and a quarter. No — a mile and a fifth. Shouldn’t take you longer than half an hour to walk it. That path’s pretty clear this time of year.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“Sure.”

Madeline headed down the lane towards the path. She felt odd, knowing the tree was probably watching her. At the stand of bushes, she turned right off the lane and started down the path, and she debated with herself whether she should wave to the tree. It couldn’t wave back, after all, but on the other hand, she’d have to see the tree on the way back, and she didn’t want to be rude, so in the end, she waved. She tried to make the wave grateful and businesslike at the same time. Then she felt very silly. She marched down the path, wanting to get out of sight of the tree.

The woods got thicker on either side as she continued on the path, but the path stayed the same — narrow, but mostly level and well-worn. Now and then she had to step around an old puddle or a branch. Madeline wondered who had first decided on the path, who had smoothed it, humans or animals, hunters or children. She thought of looking for Charlie’s footprints, but the dust in the path didn’t take prints so well, and anyway she couldn’t remember what shoes he’d had on when he went off or the marks the soles would have made.

After twenty minutes, the path began winding downhill a little, and Madeline thought she could hear the creek. She thought about what she would do when she got to the creek. If a chipmunk or something doesn’t tell me where to go next, she thought, I’ll probably have to go back. I’ll have to go back to the house, and I can’t tell them where Charlie went, because I can’t tell them how I know. But maybe, she thought, she would find Charlie in the end, and then she wouldn’t have to explain because nobody would care how, because Charlie would be home and she would be a perfect hero in a new skirt and shoes.

Madeline could definitely hear the creek now. The path sloped down more sharply. She put her hands out to either side and brushed her fingers along the slim trees at the edge of the path just in case she lost her footing, and then she came out on a muddy ledge about the size of a desk that lipped out into the creek and stood in the middle of it. The path ended at the ledge, it looked like; she could go back the way she’d come, or into the creek, but she couldn’t go any further up or down the creek without doubling back and cutting through the underbrush. She looked down the bank and then up, but she didn’t see anyone, and she didn’t see any other ledges or paths.

Then she looked at the creek. The water ran past clear, and she could see the stones and spongy leaves at the bottom. It was wider and deeper than she’d thought it would be. It looked cold. She’d never seen it before, and everything she’d read that mentioned creeks seemed to imply that they were smaller than this. Friendlier, too. This creek didn’t seem welcoming. It didn’t burble. She could cross it if she had to, she thought, but she’d have to swim in parts. It looked like it would go over her head in the middle there.

“Well,” Madeline said out loud. She couldn’t find a dry place to sit, so she squatted down and sat on her heels. Leaning her chin on her arms, she felt very tired. She would rest a few minutes, she thought, and then she would just go home. Her legs began to burn from squatting, but she didn’t want to get up and pull herself up that hill and away from the creek quite yet. Then she thought of the rock again. Maybe the rock could help her some more when she passed it going home. She hadn’t asked it enough questions on the way; the rock had to know more. Maybe it had a code she hadn’t caught. Okay, she thought. She’d just wait until her legs couldn’t take squatting any longer, and then she’d walk back home, and she’d think of things to ask the rock on the way.

She’d just made up her mind about the rock when she heard a flippy splashing coming from nearby. She picked her head up and saw a small fish swimming in place a few feet from the ledge, and she knew the fish was there for her.

“Hello?” she said.
“Hello,” the fish said.

Madeline’s legs couldn’t take any more.

“Excuse me, I have to stand up,” she told the fish.
“All right,” the fish said.

Madeline stood up and brushed herself off and waited awkwardly for the fish to say something. The fish didn’t say anything. Madeline cleared her throat and said, “I went out to look for my brother, and I talked to –”
“I can take you to your brother,” the fish said.
“Oh,” Madeline said. “Oh! You can take me. Okay.”

Then Madeline frowned. Could the fish walk, too?

“But — wait. How will you — shouldn’t you just tell me? How to get there, or where he is?”
“You’ll have to come in,” the fish said by way of answer.
“Into the water?” Madeline said. “Won’t I be cold?”

The fish waited and swam in place.

“Okay,” Madeline said. She walked up to the edge of the ledge and looked down into the water, and then she put her hand down flat on the ground and dropped a leg into the creek. The cold shot up her leg and around her back, and she said “huhhh” and threw her other leg in before she could think better of it. Shuddering, she looked around for the fish and saw him a little way downstream, swimming in place again, waiting for her. The water swished between her knees, and the cold settled in her shoulder blades. She waded in a bit further, her coat floating up around her like a bell.

“Okay, let’s go,” she gritted out, and the fish moved away downstream.

The two of them made their way down the creek, the fish circling so Madeline could keep up. Madeline squinted through the reflections on the water to keep track of the fish. She thought to herself that she would never get warm, that she couldn’t imagine a world in which she had ever been warm. The bottom of the creek sucked at her feet, and now and then something even colder than the water slid along her legs and shot away.

“How far?” she chattered to the fish. “How far is it?”

“Not far now,” the fish said.

The creek opened out a bit wider, and the fish arced to the left, under an overhang of branches, and stopped. Madeline sloshed farther towards the center of the creek where it got deeper. She lost sight of the fish.

“Do I have to swim now?”

The fish didn’t answer.

“Hello?”

Now she thought she could see the fish, beside a boulder that sat half in the water and half out, so she kept going as the bottom of the creek dropped down and away, and when she pointed a toe down and didn’t touch anything, she put her arms into the water and paddled furiously. Only her head was still dry. She could barely think. She wanted to lie down on top of the water and sleep, but she had read in a Jack London story that you should never fall asleep when you’re cold, so she forced her legs along even though she could only feel a memory of them anymore.

Beside the rock, the fish moved its tail from side to side to stay in place. Madeline couldn’t speak, couldn’t move her lips. Her mind felt thick and slushy. She instinctively heaved her legs forward towards the shore under the branch overhang, and when her ankles stopped on something, it took her ankles a few seconds to tell her brain. She pitched forward, and then she steadied herself, and then she saw Charlie lying on the bottom of the creek with his eyes half open and his hair on end in the current.

Madeline looked down at Charlie’s face rippling at the bottom of the creek. It seemed far away. She held her breath and bent over and plunged her arm down to the bottom and felt along the front of Charlie’s coat until she found the top toggle button, and she made a fist around the button and yanked backwards so that Charlie would lift up a little from the bottom. When Charlie buoyed up, she plunged both arms into the water and worked her hands in under Charlie’s arms and pulled him up off the bottom. His head broke the surface and lolled back. Madeline bent backwards to loll it forward onto her chest, and with her hands under his arms and his head on her chest she heaved her legs through the water again towards the shore, pushing Charlie ahead of her. As the water got shallower, Charlie’s feet bumped the bottom, and Madeline had to lean further and further back to keep them from dragging, and then as the water dropped to her waist and then her knees, she couldn’t carry him anymore. She stumbled and fell onto her hands and knees in the foot-deep water near the bank, and Charlie wound up on his side in the shallows. Madeline had to crawl around him and get her arms under him from the other side and scoot backwards to pull him out onto the bank.

Once she had propped Charlie up against the log on the bank, she waded back out a few steps to look for the fish, but she couldn’t see it, so she climbed up onto the bank and looked for a path out of the woods on the other side. She thought she saw a trail, but it ended only a few yards away from the creek bank. The trees stood much closer together on this side of the creek and she couldn’t see through them and spot a house or a road. Every direction she looked in looked the same, all the trees and saplings and fallen branches, so she went back to Charlie and sat on the log next to him and petted his head with her numb hand as carefully as she could. Something would tell her where to go, she thought. A deer or a bird or something would come. She would just wait and rest. She petted Charlie’s thick wet hair and waited, and rested, and whenever she heard a sound in the leaves, she called out, but no answer came until nighttime.

March 10, 2003

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