The Guild of Trees: Chapter 1

Note: This is the first chapter of a novel I am rewriting from memory, from an idea I had many, many years ago. For more information (and to stay in the loop!), please check out my thread in the Writers Corner :)

Hands on her chin, cheeks squished, Mae stared forlornly out her window. The rain drizzled in little rivers down the glass, distorting the view into a dreary kaleidoscope of twisted trees and the wet suburban street. It was quiet, the sort of quiet that creates a din out of boredom. In this moment, Mae was acutely aware of how dull life had become. She felt an uncomfortable hotness form in the pit of her stomach and it rose upwards, colouring her cheeks a little bit redder. She clenched her jaw. Why had her parents done this to her?

Of course, when they had sat down for dinner that fateful day just a few months ago, at the precipice of the summer holidays, the lasagne gooey and bubbling in the pan on the table, Mae was already suspicious. Lasagne was her favourite meal but her mother rarely cooked. The Marley family diet was typically sourced from the tenth-floor cafeteria of the law firm highrise in which her mother worked. Late nights stuck on cases meant Bridget Marley would arrive home like a droopy houseplant, bagged takeaway boxes filled with rice pilaf and steamed vegetables hanging off her arms like dying leaves. Tonight, though, Bridget had come home early, bagless and boxless, and smiling from ear to ear. There was a lightness about her that Mae noticed, a lightness she had never seen her mother carry. And now her suspicions were confirmed, the lasagne a giant red tomato flag planted much too firmly and comfortably in the middle of the dining table. Mae slouched a little into her seat, eyes narrowed ever so slightly. She barely moved as her father stood up and began to portion out pieces on plates.

“Corner or middle?” Morris Marley asked brightly, his obliviousness as clear as the blue of his eyes.

“Corner,” mumbled Mae. She liked the crisp, cheesy edges the best. Morris passed his daughter the plate, along with some cutlery.

“Bon appétit!” He waved his hand flamboyantly, grinning broadly, and passed another plate along to Bridget.

For a few minutes, the three of them ate in hung silence, nothing but the clatter of knife and fork hitting ceramic. There was a pause as Bridget and Morris looked at each other, some sort of marital telepathy taking place as they decided when and how - and maybe who - was going to be the first to speak, the first to confirm the worst of Mae’s fears. With a sudden, sharp nod, Bridget then turned to look at her daughter. Mae’s dark brown hair draped resolutely in front of her face, as she chewed her food with an almost militaristic focus. Bridget put her knife and fork down.

“Mae, your father and I would like to discuss something with you,” Bridget said, a soft smile forming on her lips. At a recent business meeting, she had been taught to display positivity to generate client buy-in. Bridget figured the approach could have applicability elsewhere, too.

Mae looked up at her mother, one eyeball barely visible through the shroud of hair. “Discuss? Or tell me?”

Bridget sighed audibly, deflating with a whoosh. She looked to Morris for help, almost begging him with her eyes. While he was undeniably a lazy husband in the house aspect, he had always been a doting father, somehow more attuned than Bridget. Perhaps it was his lackadaisical approach to life in general; most days, he contentedly wore stinky, old sweatpants and sat behind computer screens creating user manuals for all sorts of appliances, from dishwashers to lawnmowers. It was safe to say that Morris Marley had a knack for demystifying the complicated and making it make sense, fifteen-year-old daughters included. In many ways, he was the voice of calm reason that balanced Bridget’s neuroticism.

“Honey,” began Morris as he took over from his wife. It almost sounded like he was apologizing. “Your mother and I have decided to embark on an adventure. You see, the law firm is just doing too well and based on some restructuring of the clientele demographic…” Mae zoned out as her father droned on in fancy words about this supposedly wonderful opportunity for their family, how they would be living simpler, more quietly, she wouldn’t have to take the bus to school anymore, mom could be home for dinner every night, they could even get a dog, you know?

Now, looking back on that evening as she stared out the window, Mae could unravel the film reel of her life for the last two months: the days of packing up items into boxes, Bridget and Morris emphasizing that this was the perfect moment to declutter!, the strange men coming into the house one afternoon to take away all the cardboard boxes and drive them away to a house and a street and a town Mae had never even set eyes on, saying goodbye to her friends and thinking how could you even call this a party?, the feeling of despair when her mother unlocked the front door of the new house and the inside smelled empty and new and strange like she was a guest with no host, and now the endless, uncountable days that had ticked by, summer holidays gone to waste like vandalized lines on a prison wall.

Everything sucked.

Who knew life would end at the young age of fifteen? Mae pondered the inescapability of her situation, absentmindedly tracing the rain droplets on the window with her finger. A small part of her looked forward to school starting in a few days, when it would give her something to actually do, to actually show up for. And yet… she could only assume her classmates would be as terrible as the cookie-cutter, lifeless neighbourhood in which she found herself. Mae sighed deeply. Without the liveliness of her city, her friends gallivanting off to the mall and July music festivals, she was also trapped within the desolation of her mind.

***

Close to the end of the school year, just before her parents had dropped the proverbial bomb, Mae’s English teacher had said she spoke in hyperboles, had a tendency to exaggerate the reality of things. To clarify, the English teacher had written in the end-of-term report, it was not that Mae was a liar - no, that was not at all what she meant. Rather, Mae was lavish and generous with her description of how she navigated through the world. If something was big, it was really big. If something was small, it was minuscule.

So that is to say that Mae had to admit, if only to herself otherwise she would be forfeiting the characteristic stubbornness of adolescence that she was due, that the move was not all terrible. There was one new discovery that had resulted from the virtual end of her life as she knew it, and this was one thing she would cling to like plastic wrap: the forest.

The forest was a relatively expansive piece of land, considering where it was located, somewhere between a hellscape of beige stuccoed department stores and winemoms. The street Mae and her family had moved to snaked lazily up the side of a hill, one side dotted with houses that were all somehow derivatives of each other, and the other side a haven of untouchable land. Somewhere along the line, as she would weave in and out of eavesdropping range of her parents’ conversations, she had heard that the forest existed purely because of something to do with hereditary land rights and a family’s refusal to give in to large sums of money from developers. Boring stuff that Mae really didn’t care about, but it explained why the forest continued to exist despite the city slickers arriving in droves.

The forest was managed by whatever longstanding family had ownership (again, Mae didn’t care), but there were no threatening dollar store signs in red and black block print yelling: NO TRESPASSING. In fact, the family privately managed the land with such an intent to keep it open to the general public that they had created and continued to maintain an elaborate network of trails complete with signage. It was this that Mae took advantage of consistently, rain or shine.

And on one such day as today, as she stared gloomily out the window feeling sorry for the hand she had been dealt, Mae decided it was time to get a move on. She could only pout so much each day. Slothfully, she peeled herself away from the window and headed down the stairs to the front door. A quick glance through the opening to the living room, which ran adjacent to the front hallway, she saw Morris keenly focused on his laptop screen. Her mother was at work and wouldn’t be home for another few hours. Her father would not even notice when she left the house.

Mae grabbed her raincoat and gumboots from the closet, shrugging them on as silently as she could. She pulled up the hood, catching her reflection in the hall mirror. Her pale skin contrasted sharply with the deep green of her coat and her eyes, a brown so deep you could almost say they were black, sparkled like the coals of a dying fire. Mae knew she wasn’t the prettiest or the thinnest - there was no doubt she was Bridget’s daughter, what with a little bit of feminine padding here and there - but she did like herself. She liked that she was ordinary. It meant she attracted no attention.

Like now, as she slipped quietly out the front door and into the rain.