Chapter 2

June 21, 1997

THERE WERE NINE NEWCOMERS following Luce down the dirt path. Behind them, Heartwood Community Center's deck flickered with lantern glow, the twilight insects bombing toward the light. The women had half a mile to go along the path that wound through the redwoods. Dusk fading to black. Luce reminded herself to walk slowly, letting the newcomers' eyes adjust to the darkness, their hearts to the increased pulse that walking at night brought for most.

Is he gonna die, Roo had asked that first night and then the next morning, and over again. They didn't know, Luce said. He better not, their neighbor Juan had said when he'd stopped by for the story once the ambulance had gone. The last thing you need is another ghost in here. And Una had called just after Juan left, checking to see whether they'd heard how he was doing. Let's just hope he lives, she told Roo when he picked up, then Gloria when she took over, then Luce when she wanted to say hello. Let's hope he lives, or we might get some unwanted attention out here, she'd said. Cops always had to investigate a death. Luce shuddered, said, fuck the police. And Una said, exactly.

But three days had passed and the man was holding on, and there were so many other lives that needed tending. Luce let her fingertips graze the thick, soft redwood bark, tannic acid rendering it fire-resistant, insect repellent, and she said this to the woman directly behind her, "Amazing, right?" This redwood grove was a mile long, but there were others in clusters along the valley, which was four miles long and one mile wide, and the redwoods rose up on the slopes of the hills and then eventually, far enough up, grew less dense and gave way to the dry, dead-grass hills, the valley's own crown of gold. The redwoods kept the valley air damp, crisp, and chilly at night, but above on the hills, the air was dry and the sun beat down so strong it cracked open the earth in small fissures, like broken blood vessels. Five miles of open, undeveloped space on all sides, a border of wildness.

Luce let her mind visit the private suspicion that had been growing the last three days—maybe the man's heart gave out on purpose. Maybe the Red Grove was doing its wild, unknowable work, keeping them safe. She'd never say that to anyone, of course; she was not glad that he suffered, but, absently rolling a piece of dried moss between her fingers, she wondered. She wondered, and then imagined the man's family unfolding her note, their eyes misty with gratitude that he'd been enveloped by their care.

But what if he does die? Roo had asked that morning, not eating his oats, and worn out by this question, Gloria and Luce had said, in unison, He won't.

"See that?" Luce said to the newcomer behind her, trying again. She pointed to a massive dark opening in the tree, spanning a third of its circumference. "It's a wound. Redwoods get them from fires, mostly. But they don't kill the tree, just create these giant holes in the base. The tree survives. It can have a huge wound, big enough to climb around inside, and be fine."

"Makes some creepy hiding places," the newcomer said with a shiver, stepping over a branch. Luce knew her a little bit—Sam; she'd arrived in the Red Grove for the last few days of school, but Luce hadn't seen her much since then. Sam was short, uneven in her gait, guarded. "Like, anyone could be hiding in there."

Of course she was still afraid. Luce dug her fingernails into her palms; she could do better. "I used the wounds all the time in hide-and-seek when I was a kid," Luce said, trying to keep her voice gentle. "They were our playground. Listen." She cocked her ear toward the sky. There were the sounds of the animals going home as twilight pinched closed, and the nighttime hunters winging toward prey. Crickets chirping beneath everything. "No bad guys out here."

They didn't use to have a ritual. The women were allowed to take their time and adapt to the Red Grove slowly, gently. But Una had changed that. It was detrimental for newcomers to dwell in this period of adjustment riddled with fear, she'd said. What they needed was a clear demarcation. Before the Red Grove, your life was one way. After, something else entirely. Four times a year, the solstices and equinoxes, if a woman had arrived within the three previous months, she would take part in the ritual.

They walked on, a small animal rustling the ferns nearby. "Putting in a pool?" a woman behind Luce asked, pointing to a big hole at the edge of a grove.

"Used to be a Japanese peace garden here, but it got overrun with bamboo," Luce said. She scanned for rattlesnakes before crouching under a fallen trunk, the earth soft beneath her feet. "It's invasive, had to be dug out wide and deep to clear the margins." They were sprouting new redwood saplings to plant here instead, Luce explained. You had to wait for them to become a foot high before they could go in the ground. "Something as strong and giant as a redwood, and it takes a whole year before it can survive on its own," Luce said, trying to impart some wisdom about vulnerability and strength, but she turned and saw that nobody was listening. They were in the extra dark of the forest canopy, which people said was instinctually frightening, but Luce always pushed back—babies aren't afraid of the dark. Fear of the dark is learned.

They were mostly quiet as they walked, a few women whispering to one another in the back of the line, the occasional thud of someone tripping over a root. Luce stopped one last time, a fern brushing her bare leg, and gathered the group before the final bend in the path. There was a faraway scream. Luce said "Barn owl" as quickly as she could, but not before a few women had reached out for one another. And one of the women, her arms crossed over her chest, was shivering even though it wasn't cold.

"You okay?" Luce asked, keeping her voice low.

The woman nodded vigorously. Faker, Luce thought. She reached out her hand to the woman's arm. "What if Ron can find me here?" the woman said, and at that a few of the other women put their hands on her. Luce didn't recognize this woman. Likely she had just arrived.

"We're almost there," Luce said. They would feel better after what came next. "Remind yourself of what you know about being here."

The woman sniffed, wiped her nose. "In this red grove, no woman can be harmed."

"Exactly," Luce said, squeezing her hand.

They rounded the last bend, coming into an opening in the trees where the moon cast its last slashes of light before the needles become too thick. There, a dozen Red Grove women standing in a semicircle faced the newcomers. Una in the center. Lantern light in golden pools on their faces, watching the newcomers with calm, with knowingness. With serene we-are-not-fucking-around-ness. A yellow-breasted chat cackled, but its gleaming eyes, watching the women from somewhere deep in the forest, shone unseen.

Luce arranged the newcomers into the other half of the circle, her mind growing sharper, focused. Standing in the center of the women, scanning the newcomers, she thought, yes, they are all looking at me, there is no other moment where I want to be the focal point of all these eyes except for right here, these women and the brown salamanders and red-bellied newts under the wet needles and bark, wood warblers on the branches above. She could swallow any shyness because she told herself this crystalline truth: you are helping the women save themselves. She was the guide through the darkness.

Luce asked for a volunteer to go first, and Sam said she would, she wanted it over with. Sam's hand was clammy as Luce squeezed it, pulling her into the center of the circle and angling her body toward the dark forest. Luce tried to still the fingers of her other hand drumming against her leg, excitement lifting in her like summer dust. Gramms caught her eye and winked, good old Gramms, whose sweatshirt bore three wolves howling up to a cloudy moon, and who was, she could smell, chewing watermelon gum.

Luce steadied her nerves and began speaking, the other women of the Red Grove joining her:

"The women asked: Who is safe?

"And Tamsen Nightingale said: The women who shelter in this red grove are safe."

Goose bumps on Luce's arms, the back of her neck.

"The women asked: How are they safe?

"And Tamsen Nightingale said: In this red grove, no woman can be harmed. No violence may come upon her. No injury to her flesh from the flesh of another.

"The women asked: Who is welcome?

"And Tamsen Nightingale said: Those who can walk in darkness are welcome and those who affix to the deeply woven roots are free."

Luce spoke loud enough for all the newcomers to hear: ahead of them was one mile of pitch-black, dense, old-growth redwood forest. The women would walk into the dark forest one by one and keep walking until they saw a candle burning on the other side. They would be completely alone. It is their chance to walk through the darkness and let go of fear.

Sam didn't move. Her arms quivered against her stilled body. Luce knew the cause of this stillness. All her years living in the outside world had taught her that going out in the dark by herself was the exact kind of thing she was never supposed to do, and now, one month living in the Red Grove, and it's exactly what she must do, so yes, Luce understood how profoundly difficult this was. Gently, she placed her arm around Sam's shoulders and squeezed. She whispered, "You will be fine. I promise." Sam was blinking fast, tears building.

"We're with you," said the women in the circle. "We will see you on the other side."

"What if I can't do it?" Sam asked, looking panicked. She wasn't the first to ask. "Will you kick me out?"

"No," Luce assured her. "You will simply try again. You are here, and you may remain as long as you wish. And also—" Luce tilted her chin to look Sam right in the eye, steadying her voice as a reminder that kidnapping lunatics weren't here, couldn't be. "You will make it," she said.

Sam took a step forward. One step and then another, into the dark, where even the moonlight didn't seep past the thickness of branches overhead, trees towering three hundred feet high, tallest in the world. There was just the dark below.

Luce would hold the candle at the other side, she told them, looking each in the eyes before she left. The call of a spotted owl far away. A giant fallen branch, under which she'd once seen a nest of writhing garter snakes, the mama's jaw wide, with a mouse halfway down her throat. The rest of the newcomers stayed with the Red Grove women—hugged for reassurance, murmured to, hyped up, whatever they needed—until they too were sent out, one by one, into the dark.

As soon as Luce rounded the bend in the path, she stepped off into the trees. She slid between the shadows where no moonlight broke through, silent. This was where she became all animal. Her senses were taut, tuned to the frequency of the forest. Her quiet foot stepped on layers of forest debris, a faint waft of musk. Sight reduced, she could hear more, frog croak and the distant echo of one of the newcomers' loud voices; she smelled sharper, tasted the night air. Because Sam was not accustomed to the darkness, she was noisy. Luce stepped quickly, quietly toward her, palms pressing against the soft red bark of the trees as she pushed past them, this giant and now this, past this wound and toward the sound, with nothing to slow her down. She was powerful in her invisibility. She kept moving toward the sound of the newcomer, feeling her muscles flex and contract, trusting her haunches, smelling the damp bark and decaying logs and waft of bay leaves, the trace of skunk or sweat, the damp slime of witch's butter or banana slug—all her senses wildly awake. As guide, she must stay close, a helpful ghost should the newcomer twist an ankle or step on a snake, but still far enough, silent enough, that the newcomer never has any idea she is there.

She cannot see the fog, but feels it, wet and thick, on the back of her neck. She is going deeper, feels a gust of air from a bat swooping low, the yellow flash of eyes close to the ground. Beneath her feet, there are tender green shoots of redwood sorrel and ferns and thick layers of all the dead things that have come before, and she thinks, power coursing through her, I have never been this strong. The women are scared now, but they will not be forever. I will help them feel this strong.

Sam stumbled through. Luce heard her swear a few times, steady herself against a tree. But Luce didn't go to her. This is the journey. To make it through the darkness, to trust it. To let all that Sam has been clenching to keep herself safe finally unclench. That's the work. That's freedom.

Once Sam was close enough to the far edge of the grove, Luce gave her a wide berth and hustled around to the forest's break, lighting the candle. Sam stepped out, cheeks flushed but eyes clear.

"You okay?" Luce said. Sam was breathing hard, wiping her forehead with the back of her arm. "You did it. The darkness is yours."

Sam showed no pleasure. Blinked in the candlelight, looked back to the forest. "Well, damn," she said, shivering, pulling a stick from her hair. "I guess I survived."

The women can do anything. They do not need to be afraid ever again.