It’s been two hours since Joni left the cabin and she’s lost. The trees at the bottom of her land are a trick. There’s just a thin line of them before they break out onto a wide meadow of tall, wheat-colored grasses and pale wildflowers. Up on the ridge of the trees, Joni can just see the horizon meet the lapping water of the Sound. They’re the same color, bleeding one almost into the other. She didn’t expect to have to search for the forest. Not with how dense it was all around them on the drive to the cabin. And she doesn’t really know why she’s searching for it so earnestly. Has only the vaguest impulse.
Joni spent the morning drinking one cup of instant coffee after another, until she finished off the last of her carton of milk and then, sloshing with her half-breakfast, began to pace, wandering around the kitchen, the living room, circling the bedroom. A wild, loping energy that was at once slow and fast. She’d rummaged through the bedside table, found an old farmer’s almanac thick with dog ears, and read the chapter for April on the toilet. Which is why she’s out here, searching for the island’s southern woods. Spring onion is April’s foraging bumper crop. Located most often near wooded areas with rich soil near the mouths of rivers. An arduous task to pull them up by their roots, but well worth the effort. Joni needs an arduous task. Something to stop her pacing, to stop her from drifting in and out of herself. To fight the backseat feeling that had her emptying two bottles of old aspirin into a water glass. The page had been dogeared and her grandfather scrawled a little note by the entry in his halting, scarecrow handwriting: southern woods where the river meets the sea.
Joni doesn’t really know how to cook. Doesn’t know what she’s going to do with a bumper crop of green onion but she’s got to do something with her hands. She has to gulp down some outside air. Take to the salt of the seaside like a Victorian waif. Which is how she’s feeling, lost on an island small as a neighborhood, when the forest rises up from the horizon all at once.
At first, there’s only a few trees, some ferns on the ground growing away from the sun. Joni wobbles her way across a plank bridge over a stream fragrant with the smell of flowers and damp grass. It buckles a little under her, but once she’s safely on the other side, the forest surrounds her. Behemoth trees thick as redwoods, fallen logs alive with whole cities of colorful mushrooms, dense undergrowth that obscures her sneakers. The smell is rotten somehow even as it’s beautiful. The compost of a thousand years of dead trees and the corpses of every animal, plant, person that inched their way across its surface. Her thoughts spook her. In the darkness of the forest, light scant and dappled, her thoughts bloom around her. Big and frightening, she wants to shove them back behind the locked doors of her mind, where they’ll rattle the doorknobs but stay, for now, out of sight. But she can’t think about this for long. Her shoes sink a little deeper in the soil, the trees thin. Just beyond she can hear the soft lap of sea water on the rocky shore and the babble of a river just to her left. The air is filled with the sharp, unmistakable scent of onion.
She’s perched on a rock, looking out at the fog heavy water when the voice startles her. “How are the onions today?”
“Jesus.” Joni jumps, scratching her hand on a jagged edge of the rock. She’d only yanked a few spring onions before the whole thing became a chore and sitting out to watch the water is a cinematic melancholy, one without teeth. The sheer feeling of aloneness had been so complete that it’s a genuine shock to see another person.
“My bad. Didn’t mean to scare you.” The woman holds her hands up as if to show she’s got nothing in them. She looks about Joni’s age, maybe a year or two older, with a big, toothy smile. She’s dressed in a pair of oversized overalls and a tube top, her deep, gingery hair pulled into a loose braid over her shoulder. She’s tied a linen kerchief behind her ears. “You a tourist or a newcomer?”
Joni unfolds herself from the rock, dusting her jeans off with her palms. “You get tourists on the island?”
She grins. “Never.”
Joni can’t help but grin back. She extends her hand. “I’m Joni. Just moved into a cabin up the way.”
“Linda,” she says, shaking Joni’s hand. She has a firm, almost painful handshake and her top puts the toned musculature of her arms on vivid display. “Can I join your foraging?”
Joni doesn’t have the heart to tell her she was just about to leave, about to let the onions she yanked dry out in the sun and blow away. “Yeah, of course.”
They work in silence for a while, slipping the onions from the sandy soil and laying them in little piles. Linda pickles them, apparently, uses them in all kinds of ways that Joni only half understands. The silence between them doesn’t demand to be filled like it does with most people. It’s comfortable, warm even, and Joni can’t remember the last time it felt this easy to be with another person. She peeks over at Linda. She has a serene look on her face
When they finish, the sun is high and blazing in the sky. Feeling more like summer than early spring, even the lush tops of the forest trees look parched. They fall in step with each other as they head back into the forest. It feels easy to let herself be drawn down any which path and Joni wonders if this is something she should be worried about. Being pliable. But it’s probably just enough to worry about being alive.
Linda’s clearly been this way before, kicking aside brush to reveal old, worn paths amongst the trees. Joni assumes she’s been here a while but still asks, “tourist or old timer?
Linda snorts. “Neither,” she says, “I’m at the colony.”
“Oh,” Joni says, not sure why she’s surprised. There’s not much on the island in general. The little town, the artist’s colony, the smattering of cabins all through the woods. And Linda doesn’t look like a townie even though Joni hasn’t been to the town yet and doesn’t really know what that means. “Interesting.” Which is a lame thing to say.
Linda, walking a little ahead, turns to Joni, walking backwards through the trees. “I’ve got a couple beers back at my place. You in?”
Sitting in the shadow of the forest, the colony stretches long across a rolling meadow. There’s no fence, but there is a gate. A weatherworn wooden archway with Alta Lake Artist Colony carved into the wood. Beneath it, in paint, be free. Old and chipped like it was painted twenty years ago. Beyond the gate, Joni can see a long stretch of garden, hemmed in by a chicken wire fence. It’s early in the season, but already the garden seems to be bustling. On the far end, a heavily pregnant woman in a smock dress tends to a bean trellis. Near the opening in the chicken wire, a squat, muscular man leans heavily against a post, brown hair falling over his eyes. He looks liquor sick, and it gives Joni a strange sort of feeling.
“Here we are,” Leah says, stopping in front of a cottage just across from the garden. It’s shoebox tiny with clapboard walls and a roof that looks suspiciously thatched. The glass in the windows looks thin like plastic.
“You’re kind of far out,” Joni says. Over the crest of the hill, she can see more cottages.
“I am pretty far out,” Linda winks, searching the pockets of her jeans for her keys. Joni snorts. Linda unlocks the door then glances over at the garden. The man is still leaning against the post but now his eyes are turned up toward the sun. “It’s nice to be a little out of the way. Even from the colony”
Joni cracks the beer and it’s warm, but the company is nice. Linda has a good vibe, sitting unself-consciously on the old wood floor. Her work takes up the lion’s share of the cottage – canvases leaned up against the walls, a few black and white photographs hanging from a clothesline, a big slab of partially-worked wood in the middle of the room – the bed is like an afterthought, just a camping cot, and the only kitchen she has to speak of is a hot plate on a lone counter. Joni wonders if there’s a bathroom somewhere or if she has to go outside.
“So how long have you been here?” Linda asks, leaning back on her hands.
“Four days.”
“Oh, shit,” Linda laughs, “so you really just got here.”
“What about you?”
Linda looks out the window and Joni turns to look at what she’s seeing. Outside, the sky has turned a brilliant, beautiful gold. The rays of the waning sun spread out warmly across the garden and the trees. “A few months.” Joni feels like she doesn’t remember how to do this. How to have a conversation with someone new, how to start from scratch. Maybe Linda feels the same. Neither of them seem to know what to say next.
“To new friends.” Joni says suddenly, raising her beer.
Linda looks surprised at first, then smiles, raising her own. “To new friends.”
They split a six pack and talk about nothing and everything and Joni feels that sort of surprising warmth when someone is becoming, and quickly, someone who might start to matter. She hadn’t expected to make a friend out here. It feels auspicious.
They watch the sun set and the night rise up around them. Linda goes around the cottage’s only room and turns on each lamp one by one until the place is brighter than it was during the day and Joni wonders if she’s feeling the same sudden dread with the setting of the sun. “What are you doing tonight?” Linda asks and Joni makes a big show of shrugging. “Let’s move. There’s a bar in town. It’s pretty.”
Moving, Joni thinks, what a funny way to put it. She dated a guy once who told her that fish only die because they stop moving. They get too big and then they get stuck and their inert bodies start to break down, but if they could keep swimming forever, if they could just find a way to do that, they’d grow and grow, and find immortality in the smooth, slick movement under the waves. “Sounds good,” Joni says, standing then tossing back the rest of the beer.
They hitch a ride into town with one of the guys from the colony. A young guy with an American flag tattoo on his bicep and three missing fingers on his right hand. They sit cross legged in the bed of the truck. Joni watches the forest fade into rocky land that skirts along the coast. The Sound is far below them, waves crashing against rock. They wind along narrow roads until the town comes into view. Some of it is cut into the craggy cliffs, but most of it spreads out across the edge of the shoreline, butting up against more cliffs at its back, settling below pines with jumpy roots.
With night comes the full force of the island’s fog and when Joni and Linda swing out of the back of the guy’s pickup, it’s low enough to wade through. The bar looks as shitty as Joni imagined it to be, a real dive. A half-lettered neon miller lite sign, an old hog parked out front, a big logging truck on the far side of the lot empty of wood. The smell of wet liquor and old cigarettes is so strong that it wafts out into the night each time the door opens. The inside is like a cocoon. Nice, old mahogany wood with a hundred names carved into it. Everything reflective like the inside of a lampshade. Linda winds her way to a table in the back. Joni follows, wondering again how she got here. Wonders, in a strange, abstract sort of way, if maybe she is still on the floor of her bathroom back in Seattle. If she’s foaming at the mouth.
Halfway through her second beer, she has the sudden urge to tell Linda that she tried to kill herself. Just to try it out, just to see how it’s received. She hasn’t told anyone yet. She doesn’t think a lot of people do what she did. Or what she tried to do, at least. But she doesn’t tell Linda, just stretches her legs out under the table and takes another sip of beer. Joni’s not sure she’s ever had so much beer in her life and it’s making her feel strange and liquid. And she’s trying to think of what she should say – suspicious of the still easy silence between them – when she sees him.
He's bent over one of the pool tables in the corner of the bar, cigarette caught between his teeth, brow furrowed in concentration. He’s got Wild West cowboy swagger, a little air of danger, but he’s dressed like a guy she might meet at a record store. Slim jeans and a dark pullover. He changes spots at the table, leans down to get another angle on the shot. He’s wearing a pair of old sneakers that look particularly worn out. He slides back around the table to where he started. Someone out of view must have said something to him, because he takes the cigarette out from between his teeth and laughs, a wicked grin. He seems completely at ease in that sort of absent way that Joni always finds so appealing, so dangerous, in men. She scoots her chair over so she can see him better. Someone – from the art colony by the looks of them – has sidled up to Linda and they’re doing that whisper yell you have to do in a crowded bar. Joni plays like she’s listening a little in, nodding now and again, but she keeps her eyes on the guy playing pool. There’s an immediacy to him that Joni can’t quite explain. An energy that draws the eye right to him. She likes his sharp features. High cheekbones, a prominent, aquiline nose. He’s handsome, maybe not in the most conventional way, but he’s nice to look at. Has a nice body too. Tall in a notable way, lanky like a man who forgets to eat, but with enough muscle that Joni thinks he might work with his hands. His hair is so black it looks almost blue when it catches the right light. A mop of thick curls that fall just to above his ears. He brushes a few of them off his forehead when he bends now to set up his shot. Joni can’t hear it over the music and the people, but she guesses it was a good one by the way he leans back and smiles. This smile is almost shy and Joni notices that he has pretty, full lips. They fall when he steps away from the pool table. He blinks around like he’s seeing the bar for the first time, grip tightening on his pool cue. He doesn’t seem to like what he’s seeing. His frown makes him look older. He rolls his head to one side to crack his neck then turns abruptly, like he’s heard a loud noise. Another man puts a hand on his shoulder, squeezes.
“You on the market then?”
Joni turns to look at Linda. The other woman is gone and she’s sitting back in her chair, both hands on her beer, watching Joni watch him. “What?”
“Just haven’t seen someone so intent on someone else in a long time.”
Joni narrows her eyes at Linda, looks at the man, and then back at her. “I’m not intent.”
“No, of course not.” Linda says laughing, punching Joni lightly in the shoulder like she wants to really drive home that she’s teasing.
Joni laughs a little, embarrassed now. “What’s his name?”
“Sebastian, I think.”
“Interesting,” Sebastian has leaned his pool cue against the table. He’s laughing, but sheepishly. Someone hands him a beer, slaps him on the back. Joni turns back to Linda. “What do you know about him?”
“Not much,” another shrug, “he comes here every Friday.”
“Does that mean you come here every Friday?”
Linda snorts, looking a little away like she’s embarrassed. “Listen there’s only so many group meditations one person can go to before-“
“Oh my god, how crazy.” They both turn, startled, to find Ellen standing at their table. She’s dressed in the same smock dress as she’d word the night she showed up at the cabin, her hair the same pale blue-blonde, tangled in the very same way. Her smile is wide and airy. “Really wild to run into you guys here.”
“What’s up, El?” Linda asks, mouth just a touch tight.
“I came to round up some people.”
“Round up?” Joni frowns. She wonders if there’s an appropriate time to tell Linda that she caught Ellen prowling around the cabin in the middle of the night.
“What for?”
Ellen’s smile gets bigger. “There’s a party down at the colony tonight. Just starting.” She laughs, light and high. “Oh man, you guys should come. It’s gonna be fun!”
Linda looks at Joni and it’s a heavy look. One that she can’t really read. They’re trying to have a conversation with just their eyes, but nothing is translating. Ellen waits, shifting dreamily from one foot to the other. Linda clears her throat. “Alright,” she says, raising her beer, “to new friends, I guess.”
Joni feels crazy again, risky, like she had the night before the hospital, and that makes her even more reluctant to go back to the cabin alone. She raises her beer. “To new friends then.” When she looks back at the pool table, Sebastian is gone.
Sebastian is here!
i love this so much. it's all so familiar, but at the same time, it's not.
somehow, i’m more in love with this version than the one i read on ao3 way back. it being set in the seventies now just fulfills that air of uncertainty and wandering. and making seb a vet? amazing choice and i really can’t wait to see how he and joni interact this time around <3