The Mapmaker and the Ghost(8)
The old woman laughed again. “You just wait until your seventy-one-year-old mother tells you she’s planning to hike all alone into the woods and see what you say!”
Seventy-one? Goldenrod would have guessed that she was more like a hundred. But that was probably the fairy tales talking again.
“I haven’t dared mention this whole rose idea to anyone,” the old lady continued. “In fact, you’re the only person I’ve ever told about it.”
“Really? Why would you tell me?” Goldenrod blinked in surprise.
“Same reason I’m the only one you ever told about your map.”
“But how did you—”
“You just wait until you’re seventy-one, honey. You’d be surprised the amount of things you know. Anyway, since you’re already on your way into the woods, if you run across that bush next week, could you cut three roses for me? They will keep for a whole week if you’re able to store them in an airtight container as soon as you clip them,” the old lady continued, her eyes shining almost as if she could see Goldenrod’s specimen jar through her backpack.
“Sure,” Goldenrod said without any hesitation. Flora that possibly no one had ever heard of before? This was clearly a great stroke of luck!
“Wonderful! Thank you so much. And just for even saying you’ll try, how about I help you out with some of those measurements? It seems like you could save time if you had an assistant, eh?”
Goldenrod had no idea how the old woman knew what she had been thinking, but she was glad for the help. So she took out her measuring tape, gave one end to the old lady, and went about the business of measuring all around her house. For a brief, shining moment she wondered if maybe this old lady would turn into her replacement Clark. But then she came to her senses and remembered the woman’s arthritis and why she couldn’t go into the woods in the first place. Still, there was something about this old lady that Goldenrod liked very much, and that afternoon, for the first time in a while, she felt like she was talking to someone just like she would to a friend.
5
INTO THE WOODS
The next day, Goldenrod was ready to finally step into the forest itself. As soon as she arrived at its edge, she saw the old lady again diligently working in her garden.
“How about a muffin before you set off?” the old lady asked her.
Goldenrod hesitated and took a quick peek at her watch.
“I’ll make it snappy,” the old lady promised.
“Sure. Thank you,” Goldenrod said.
“Just have a seat.” She pointed to one of two rusty white metal chairs on her front porch before she bustled into the house.
She was back a minute later, carrying a plastic store-bought bin of muffins and two mugs with spoons sticking out of them. “Nothing goes better with banana chocolate chip muffins than chocolate milk.”
“Thank you,” Goldenrod said politely as she stared at the chalky mixture inside her mug. A big clump of powder floated on top, and Goldenrod set to work on it with the spoon.
“You know, you really do have an amazing rose garden. I bet my mother would love to see it,” Goldenrod said.
“Oh? Is she a gardener?”
“She’s obsessed.”
“How wonderful.” The old lady sighed.
They spent a few more minutes discussing some of the finer points of Mrs. Moram’s garden while Goldenrod picked at her stale muffin and drank most of her chocolate milk.
“I should get going,” Goldenrod eventually said.
“Of course, of course. You have very important work to do,” the old lady said without a single note of sarcasm.
Goldenrod smiled as she took her backpack. “See you later,” she said and headed toward the forest.
She had only walked a few steps in when she noticed right away how different the forest felt from anywhere else she’d ever been. The first thing she observed was the light. Almost immediately, the trees above her closed in, creating a dense green and gold roof that filtered the sunlight in an almost magical way. The entire world was bathed in a soft glow with the trees themselves rustling gently and reminding Goldenrod of gossiping ladies leaning into each other. The ground was a richer shade of brown, and Goldenrod could see patches of emerald-green moss growing in certain places.
And then there were the sounds, because, surprisingly, the woods were very noisy: not in a traffic-on-the-street, kids-on-a-playground way but in a did-you-ever-know-there-were-so-many-species-of-birds way. Maybe one of those birds, Goldenrod thought excitedly, would not be found in Charla’s Encyclopedia of North American Flora and Fauna. Maybe one of them was just waiting to be discovered by her. She wondered for a moment whether if she did discover a new species, it would be named after her, like Lewis’s Woodpecker was named after him.
Goldenrod allowed herself another five minutes to soak in the surreal beauty of the woods and the grandiose thoughts of her future as a famous explorer, before making herself get back to work. She backtracked so that she was once again at the edge of the forest and then took out her sketchbook and her new and improved measuring tape. She had spent the night before working on it, so that now the end of the tape had a hole punched out of it that was the perfect size for one of Mr. Moram’s golf tees. By using the tee as a stake in the ground, Goldenrod could easily and quickly measure things as a solo explorer.