American Arcadia by Laura Scalzo

Author:Laura Scalzo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regal House Publishing
Published: 2023-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

19

The woods at Arcadia are Chry’s sweet secret. Her dad made the path that wound through them when he was a kid, then opened it back up with Nyro’s machete when Chry was old enough to venture in by herself. At the far edge, there’s a wide clearing with mossy ground cover and a wide ring of mushrooms. The mushrooms are like in a fairy tale, but they’re real: white stalks, red caps with white dots. Chry was told never to touch them and never, ever, to eat them. She never ate them, but she did touch them. She made them into umbrellas for the woodland creatures she created out of sticks and leaves. She picked them and pulled out their stems, turned them over to make boats for the pools of water that form where trees grow together.

She takes us there. We follow the path into the woods, the sounds of motorboats and lawn mowers transmuted into a distant buzz, sunlight coming through the trees in long rays as Chry tells us her childhood tales. “I used to think they could kill you, but they won’t kill you—that’s not the main purpose anyway—they’re for daydreaming. I only ever picked enough so I wouldn’t get caught. I didn’t want to disturb the fairy ring; it protected me. I liked to lie in the middle of the circle looking up at the clouds moving through the sky and the trees swaying in the breeze making the light move.”

And here we are, Nyro, Dare, Chry, and me, lying in the clearing on the mossy earth staring up at the tops of the trees and moving light just as she had as a child. I’m asleep and awake, dreaming of the exact place I am in. We humans, for once, are quiet, even Nyro. And for the moment, I don’t know anything else so there’s nothing else to dream about. We lie and lie and lie in the circle beneath the sky and dream dreams about only this. I respectfully decline the universe’s standard offer of the future. Instead of moving forward in time, I let it circle me. There’s only this sky and the memory of this sky, nothing else.

I feel a shadow across my face. It might be the sun moving past the trees or the trees themselves, alive and moving in the breeze, but it’s Chry, standing over me. “Time to go,” she says.

I nod. Everything is a circle, nothing ends, just answers to questions, questions to answers, questions, answers…

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