The next time Cassie came back to the bramble, it was the dead of winter and she was drunk.
She hadn’t driven drunk. She had driven sober, parked the car, and then gotten quite drunk by accident. At least she thought it was by accident. Matt had gifted her what was probably a very nice bottle of champagne at New Year’s, and it had been rolling around on the floor of the car, clunking against one of her canteens, ever since. She’d opened it on a whim in the parking area at the trailhead, exercising the corkscrew on her swiss army knife for the first time, intending to just take a few swigs before hiking up. Instead she’d fallen into a bleak reverie and absent-mindedly finished half the bottle.
She didn’t even remember what it was that had so preoccupied her. Bottle in one hand, sketching supplies in the other, she trudged up the trail, thinking that it might be nice to share the champagne with Rubus, only to realize that: one, he’d never had alcohol before, and he probably wouldn’t like it, and: two, alcohol was not a recommended fluid for convalescing humans or plants. So instead, she finished it herself and tossed it into one of the few ramshackle trash bins maintained by the park service. Mustn’t litter.
Her head was spinning slightly by the time she headed off the trail and started staggering through the brush. By some miracle, she made it to the bramble without twisting her ankle, although she did fall down twice. She lost her kneaded eraser the second time. The bare branches of the maples rattled in the wind, counterpoint to the rush of the needles in the pines. She didn’t see Rubus.
She wasn’t expecting to, though. Only hoping.
Cassie waded clumsily into the bramble, even the lowest point now well above her waist, and ducked into the center. There was more room in there now, enough to lie down if she curled up; the trellis she made must have fallen and been swallowed by the cane. The gnome peeped out from the edge of the bower, half-hidden by leaves.
“I saw another dryad,” Cassie announced thickly. “Quaking aspen, further north. Higher altitude. She wouldn’t talk to me though. Very shy.” Lying down had made her queasy, so Cassie closed her eyes. It helped.
Cassie was cold, but she was more sleepy than she was cold. Something tugged at her hair. She brushed it away. Her hair was pulled again, harder. Cassie swatted at it irritably and was met with a cluster of thorns that tore her skin.
She yelped and sprang to a crouch, and immediately began to shiver violently. The sun had just set, and it was freezing. Literally freezing. There was frost near where she had been breathing on the ground.
Cassie sucked in breath through chattering teeth and hurtled out of the bramble, sketchpad and pencils forgotten. The wind raked at her face, making her eyes tear up and spill over, and her lungs burned with cold, but she ran. Sprinted in bursts until she felt like she might vomit, then slowed to a jog, gasping through a throat so tight she wheezed. Her phone’s light was barely enough to get her to the car, but she made it, and cried with relief when it started on the second try.
She had almost died of exposure, drunk in a bush, like some kind of hobo.
A hobotanist.
Cassie started laughing hysterically. Stupid, stupid love.
It took ten minutes of driving for the car heater to blast enough hot air to thaw her hands. Only then did the thorn-wounds sting.
⥈
March was far too early for a flower. Mid to late April was what Cassie would expect, given the weather and general location, but there it was. A single flower, bobbing in the gusty wind. Highly unusual for a blackberry, which fruited in clusters. Cassie tucked her chilly fingers into her armpits and stared. What did it mean?
When staring yielded no answers, Cassie ducked into the bower and set down her pack. No sign of the sketchbook and pencils she’d dropped last time, but there was a thin layer of duff accreting on the ground. It kept her pants dry as she sat down and pulled out a new sketchbook and a bag of jerky. She chewed as she sketched, and did not speak. Today she had nothing to say.
She drew the flower from memory: prickly bracts below, anthers crowning the filaments above, surrounded by five delicate petals. When she finished, she drew it again. And again. Her hand began to cramp, but still she drew the flowers—the single flower, over and over and over.
As she finished each drawing, she tore it carefully from the sketchpad and set it aside. When the sketchpad was completely empty, and Cassie was surrounded by a pile of illustrated flowers, she lay down and stared at the small patches of pale blue sky she could see through the leaves above. No longer in danger of freezing to death in a drunken stupor, Cassie closed her eyes and dreamed.
⥈
The boy was waiting for her when she came back the next day. She could see his eager form through the lattice of fence and leaves from halfway down the tunnel, still and bright-eyed. Cassie slipped through the gate and beamed up at him. “I have a name for you!”
She pulled a piece of paper out of her jumper pocket and held it out to him. He stared at it for a moment before reaching out and taking it in cupped hands, as though it were a moth.
“It says ‘Rubus,’” Cassie explained.
“Rubus,” whispered the wind, and then in an echo from the boy’s mouth: “Rubus.”
“Yes. See, these are the letters: R-U-B-U-S.” She pointed to each letter, penciled as neatly as her small fist could manage, as she spoke. “Daddy helped me with the spelling.”
He touched each letter in turn, as she had, then looked up.
“Do you like it?” Cassie asked. “It’s the name for ‘blackberry’ in Latin.”
He looked startled for a moment, then smiled. “Yes,” he said. “I like my name very much.”
⥈
Cassie was awakened by something flapping into her face: one of her own flower sketches. She pulled it from her cheek and sat up. Judging by the angle of the sun through the leaves, she hadn’t been asleep long, but she felt as though she’d been sleeping for hours. She grabbed her pencil and wrote on the back of the flower sketch:
RUBUS
She collected the sketches into a neat pile and laid the named one on top, writing-side up. Lord knew what he would make of the stack. She didn’t know what she was doing, herself. Not anymore. She was operating on instinct; an overgrown bower-bird. Cassie set a rock down on top to act as a paperweight, then gathered up her pack and shuffled out of the bramble. She still hadn’t spoken. All those words before, and now there was just nothing. Except:
“I love you.”
And then she left.
⥈
Cassie had everything she needed to spend the night in the bramble, but she couldn’t get in because of the bees.
She had already set her rucksack and sleeping bag down, but even without their bulk she couldn’t get in. The bramble had exploded with flowers, and bees were gorging themselves.
Cassie minced around the perimeter of the bramble—it was large enough now that the circumnavigation took a minute—but there was no gap through which she could squeeze without risking a stinging. The bramble was bestrewn from all angles. She wasn’t allergic, but still had no interest in being stung.
Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!
She put her hands on her hips. Perhaps she should just camp next to the bush? Or skip an overnight altogether; it wasn’t quite peak sampling time yet, but getting a day’s jump on the next leg of her fieldwork wouldn't hurt. Or maybe she could wait till later, when the bees retired to their hive. It wouldn’t be long till evening.
Cassie sat down to wait.
The bramble looked gargantuan from her seated vantage point. It was like being a child again, gazing into the engulfing wilderness of the thicket. Even the leaves and flowers seemed bigger. Perhaps it was the angle of the sun, but they almost seemed brighter, too. And there in the middle, wreathed by thorns, was a single blackberry.
Cassie caught her breath. It must be the fruit of the early flower. She reached for it in a daze, and at her gentle touch it fell into her hand. It was perfectly ripe. She brought it to her mouth. Cassie didn’t even have to chew; the blackberry melted on her tongue.
She saw the tunnel then, just to the left and clear of bees. There was no hesitation; she threw herself forward and crawled, heedless of any rocks or cane that might slice her hands, but the path was smooth and spongy with duff. The thorns glided harmlessly over her skin.
The further in she went, the higher the ceiling became. The sounds of open sky and field fell away, replaced by the rustle of creatures going about their business in the underbrush. By the time Cassie reached the bower, she was able to stand.
There was nobody there.
But it wasn’t empty.
There, in the middle of the duff, lay a single piece of paper, staked at each corner with a delicate rhizome sprout. They must have grown that way, four tender shoots finding their way through prepared holes before fanning out pale green leaves. Cassie fell to her knees, weeping with relief, with delight, with anguish, and dashed her tears away repeatedly, trying to see what was on the paper.
She finally succeeded: it was a sketch of her, viewed from above, sitting cross-legged in the bower, surrounded by a pile of sketches, writing RUBUS on the paper in her hand. A drawing of her drawing him.
Cassie looked up to the roof of the bower, as though she could see him there now, watching her, but all she could see through the renewed flood of tears was the green of leaf and blue of sky. She opened her mouth to say something—Please come back! Where are you? Why can’t you be here? Is something wrong? What more can I do? I need you! I love you!—but all that came out was the last part, in a strangled whisper.
“I love you.”
A low breeze rose, dying her tears, but then fell again into silence.
Cassie crawled back out and brought her rucksack and sleeping bag into the bower, mindful of bees and thorns. There wasn’t a lot of spare room, but there was enough to lay her sleeping bag down on one side of the staked drawing and her rucksack on the other. She curled up on the sleeping bag, eyes level with the sketch, and gently touched the sprouts. They felt pliant, but strong. Healthy new life. Sketches required hands, she thought, still tracing her fingers over the soft new leaves, and hands required a body, but she didn’t know how tiring that was. Maybe he needed just a little longer.
The sun slowly sank behind the trees, darkening the bower even as the sky outside remained twilit, but Cassie never turned on a flashlight. She simply lay there, eyes roving the bramble. She fell into a fitful sleep, still touching the closest sprout.
She dreamed.
⥈
“I can’t be the oak,” she laughed.
“Why not?” asked the boy. “It’s all a metaphor, anyway. A metaphor in a fable. You’re the one who told me people can be things they aren’t in fables with metaphors.”
“Yes,” Cassie replied, “but I still don’t see how that would work out. Metaphorically.”
The boy considered this. “All right,” he said finally. “In that case, you should be yourself. I will be the oak.”
⥈
Cassie woke abruptly. The smell of fertile decay was thick in her nose, so strong it was nearly suffocating. She sat up, breathing heavily. Was that a noise outside the bramble? She tried to quiet her breath to listen, but now all she could hear was the thundering of her heart. No good. She eased out of her sleeping bag as silently as she could manage and crawled out.
The air was fresher outside, but colder. Cassie shivered and looked up at the moonless sky. The constellations were ones she didn’t usually see directly overhead; it was very late. Early, in fact. She took a few aimless steps away from the bramble, hands reaching out to brush the tips of the long grasses as she passed, and peered into the night. Even without moonlight, the stars were bright enough to cast the clearing in a faint silver light. Nothing moved.
She let out a slow breath and put her face in her hands. For a long moment she stood there, mind as empty as the dark behind her fingers, until a breeze rose and stirred her hair.
“Cassie,” it whispered.
She turned.
The stars shone upon the blackberry bramble and the dryad who stood beside it.
“Cassie,” he said again.
She cried out and in two steps she was upon him, hands in his hair, heedless of the thorns, crushing her mouth to his. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her off her feet, returning her kiss.
“You’re alive,” she sobbed, when she finally broke away. “You’re alive.”
“Yes,” he agreed, pressing her to his chest. “I am alive.” He radiated the residual heat of sun-soaked stone after sunset. He took her hands and backed slowly into the bramble. It moved out of the way to draw them both in, undulating closed again behind them with a whisper of leaves and cane.
He lay her down in the bower, so gently it was as if the world were tipping to meet her instead. Dry-eyed now, she could see the stars peeping through the gaps in the bramble overhead, winking in and out as the leaves wavered in the nighttime breeze. His breath trembled on her lips as he kissed her, softly this time, almost nervously, as though she were the one who’d nearly died, not he.
Cassie closed her eyes and reached for him, touched his skin and bones and leaves and thorns, felt a thousand sproutlings return the caress as they denuded her, goosebumps quelled with a single warm pass of his hand. She worried for an instant that she might be dreaming, and nearly floundered up in a panic, but he was there above her, solid, mouth upon her throat and fingers twining in her hair, hips and thighs growing heavy upon hers. She wrapped her legs around him, urging him on—yes—and he sank into her with a groan that rumbled from the ground beneath her back. The canes twisted.
Cassie’s urgency was matched and returned. Rubus didn’t pant or cry out, but his breath hitched whenever she did, and his thrusts were not the slow, patient rooting from before. They had waited too long, through the turning of the seasons to the cusp of summer. He drove into her with all the force of his pent-up longing, his terror, his hope. Cassie moved to taste him again, his mouth, his face, whatever she could reach, but she could not; he had exchanged his gentle caress for a hold upon her body that would keep her inside the bramble bower even as he was inside her, thorns pinning her hair to the ground.
The cane bowed lower, closer, leaves trailing against her skin as the air became thick. Cassie writhed, close to sobbing once more: half in ecstasy, half in relief, entirely in love. She locked her legs around him, felt the gathering tension deep within herself that the dryad found again, and again, and again, until she could contain it no more, and neither could he. His thorns and fingers gouged furroughs into the earth about her. Sap flowed.
When at last all subsided, and they lay in each other’s arms, foreheads touching, canes unbowing, Cassie said:
“I love you.”
Rubus opened his eyes and kissed her forehead, mouth lingering as he breathed. “And I love you.” He released her from his thorns and lifted her into his lap. The bramble thinned; through the swaying leaves, Cassie could see the horizon beginning to glow in the east. Somewhere in the meadow, a bird began to sing.
Rubus trailed his fingers in her hair, curling strands behind her ears. “I have always loved you,” he murmured, turning towards the light, “and I will always love you.”
Together, the botanist and the dryad watched the sun rise.
⥈
“Are you sure you don’t need another muffin?”
“I’m fine, Mom.”
“I made plenty.”
Cassie smiled and slammed the trunk of her car shut with a rusted squeal. “I know. But I’m stuffed, and so is the car.”
Mom wrung her hands.
“She’s hardly even going anywhere, Mom,” said Matt, slightly bemused. He draped his arm comfortingly around his mother. “And she’ll be back nearly every week.”
“But she’s going to be camping every week for a year! No apartment to go back to even, just out in the wild!”
“Ah yes, the untamed wilds of the Eugene-Portland corridor.”
Cassie laughed. “This is hardly different than what I’ve been doing for months now, Mom.”
“It just seems so much more permanent, with all your things in storage.”
“She prefers living in the bushes anyway,” said Matt. “She’s a wildwoman.”
Mom stopped wringing her hands and put them on her hips. “Well, please just be sure to stay warm.”
“I will.”
Cassie kissed them both. They waved goodbye to her until she was out of sight.
⥈
The hill was lush and darting with swallows. Everything was green and rich, dark brown, damp and loamy. Cassie squelched her way up the slope, rucksack creaking with weight, and kept her eyes on her footing.
The wind caressed her face. “Cassie.”
She looked up.
There, standing tall before his bramble, the dryad waited for her. A swallow perched on his outstretched hand.
Cassie broke into a run.