The forest ahead is still quiet, though the sun has struck out at the canopy with its first crystalline rays and they have filtered down already to fleck the mosses and lichens of the understory. Last night’s heavy rains were the first for months, and now the muted fall of water from the tips of the cedars’ curling boughs is the only sound here. The mist we walk through is dense, but before us the veil burns off with abrupt candor, the thin light of the sun now revealing the delicate malachite leaves of Ceanothus, now pulling the blades of the bowltube iris from the ambiguity of night.
The student leads us. She picks her way along the muddied path, taking small leaps from one crest of hardened soil to another. Her shadow flashes over the silty pools between. She is careful; with her immaculate hiking boots, it’s obvious that the scientist isn’t the sort to relish the pull of mud around her calf. Our student prefers the forest in the deep heat of summer, on those nights where the moon gleams from the edges of cutting bark and dying leaves. But today she woke in her bed feeling new, feeling the grip of this unshrinking morning at her throat and in her heart. So she sat up and set out, and now we are here with the academic in the near wilderness, breathing the soaking air in that peculiar space between the dawn and the day.
Her face is terrible in its emptiness; this is not the woman I know. But then– today she is out in the woods, on this sodden path. Do I come to know her because of the morning’s grip? Because of the pale clear sky?
You have to close your eyes as we step out onto the river bank after her: across the water the sun is cresting over the trees, and its reach is sharp and piercing, an unsympathetic revelation of the water’s skin. The steady brilliance makes the current seem still, but underneath there are golden trout and tumbling twigs and vast colonies of algae that struggle to endure the water’s pull, vibrant in blood red and prasine green.
When you can see again, the woman is kneeling on the rocky shore, her feet bare and her pant legs cuffed. The scientist reaches to touch the surface with the tips of her fingers and then stands, her knees already dark with water. She moves into the current, unblinking. And her face– it’s still so blank, Gabriel, though the water is cold enough to cut into our ankles as we stand beside her. Doesn’t she feel it? It isn’t just the cold, either; the rocks that stud the river bed dig into the soft arches of our feet, their edges still obvious even through the slick algal growths that tremble in the current.
Oh, here! Finally she shows some feeling! Is it discomfort, do you think? Irritation? I can’t tell. Perhaps she is regretting her choice to sink into this sludge; she twists to look back at the shore, at the long pools of rainwater that blaze with the pink and orange of the sunlight that is fracturing itself on their surfaces. Look at her: see the light on her curving lips and the miry current against her legs. She hates this. But she’s here, isn’t she. She’s here.
So now, with muck blooming up from beneath her feet in a muted rainbow of reds and golds, with the dense riot of greens pressing in along the banks of the river- now, the student uncaps a vial and bends to bury it in the algae below. Silt and scum get under her nails, dye the lines on her palms. Behind her, the forest begins to stir.
The woman to whom I’m bound isn’t like this. She isn’t afraid of mud, her face isn’t a mask. So who is this frigid automaton who has taken her place?
Come with me and take a seat: let us play her game.
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The little room we’ve settled into is, of course, the woman’s home. She isn’t here, so you needn’t worry. Can you hear her? She’s outside in the garden, talking to Ivan the landlord. If we’re very quiet, we could listen at the crack of the window. They’re only bemoaning the crabgrass, though, and I suspect we won’t learn much from the way her face contorts and shines with empathy. We must conduct our own investigations without her faithless touch; I may have been naive before, but I will not play the fool twice. Look.
In any other light, the student’s room would burst with color, but today the sky is flat and grey and the room has been robbed of much of its exuberance. Look how the cobalt of the comforter has sunk to slate, how the violets have died to grey. The greens, though. Alone in this bloodless room, the greens shift and burn. Leaves of celadon unfold in every direction, frenetic color against the ash-dark sky. Leaves of mint. Of jade. They press up against the windows and each other, straining to drink in the anemic light. On the bookshelves, peonies and anemones fight for primacy with their delicate nodding heads, african violets squatting in their ruffled shadows. Pilea plants, verbena, succulents without names: they line the walls and sills, sprawl across the desk. Combined, their verdant breath is dense and wildly aggressive; it saturates you. You can feel it on your tongue.
The force of their lives would be crushing, I think, if it weren’t for the lofted ceiling. The windows help too, broad as they are and open to the north and the west. You can see a few cobwebs clinging to the outside of them from your seat on the hardwood floor, and not much else except sky. From my perch on the bed, though, I can see only trees. To the north, a magnolia bends low over our student’s conversation. To the west, there is a persimmon tree that is just beginning to bear fruit.
Not all of the plants in here are real, have you noticed? The woman isn’t the type to mind falsehood, of course; she’s established a pot of fake flowers in a shadowy corner of the room. It’s overfull: the crush of cloth blossoms pushes out over the container's edge. Sometimes a daffodil or an iris will fall onto the dresser on which the pot sits through some inscrutable shifting. There, they lie among eyeliners and lipsticks and foundations: the student’s art supplies, I suppose. Accoutrements for her everyday costumes; without them, how would the actress slip from one persona to the next? And she is different every day. A grungy academic, a prim aesthete, a pragmatic gardener; which is she? I suppose I’ve never been able to tell her reality from her fiction.
All these plants are to be expected, aren’t they? The woman is a plant scientist, after all. Look: here on the bookshelf there is an old syllabus for a course on plant genetics. She’s listed as the TA.
Yes, of course she’s a graduate student.
I’ve only told you the truth, Gabe. Why would I lie?
Once you get your bearings, once you can look underneath all of the verdure and see the room as it is– well, it’s not a very interesting place at all. The bed’s made, and the floor is clean. It’s immaculate, except, perhaps, when it comes to the jumble of items under the bed. Right in front of you sits a box with a worn down lock holding it shut- I wonder what’s inside it?
But that will have to wait for another day, I’m afraid. The rattle of the doorknob has broken the comfortable quiet just a little, and our scientist has got a foot in the door.
The woman moves like she’s got a secret, but all she has is a vial of river water with a clump of algae suspended inside. The student is shaking the vial in short, sharp movements, so you can watch as the algae dissolves to give the little bottle a pinkish cast.
The biologist begins to pull other things from beneath the bed. The strangest: two sheets of glass that have been cemented together on opposing sides with putty of some sort. There’s a thin gap between the panes. A tank, or a window.
The pile on the student’s bed grows; stolen lab equipment and crumpled balls of aluminium foil roll off a bag of electric blue fertilizer crystals to abut a disposable water bottle. Finally, the student pulls on some gloves (obviously stolen from her workplace) and begins her craft. First, she mixes the water, the fertilizer, the algae. It’s a finicky task to insinuate the mixture into the rift between the two plates of glass, but she does it without spilling. One end of the tank gets closed off with putty and the other is capped with foil. When she’s done it still looks like nothing. A tank. A window. The scientist leaves it where it will catch the light of some other afternoon’s sun. She leaves the room on quiet feet; she has to get to class.
We shouldn’t have bothered with this. I don’t know what made me think this woman would give herself away. We learned more about her in the forest. Honestly. Why am I still here?