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TO PVELP'S WORKSGood Little Children Trees’ branches hung close, and the few woodchips that were on the path gave way to mud as Nyssa trudged deeper into the marsh. Heather and her cronies were too far away to see, now. They had crossed the bridge and headed upland. So much for the “buddy” system. An occasional cacophony of cackles darted to her on ill-timed breezes. Or maybe they were merely aimed at her direction. Nyssa unwittingly glanced at her purpling wrist. She knew a little of what their jokes would tend to, farther down the trail. Her stomach turned butterflies at each laugh.
Burned brown on one side, flip to burn the other for a nicely toasted butterfly. Moth on a stick. Stick as a wick.
“Burn the wick for a moth on a stick,” she rhymed to herself.
It didn’t help. The butterflies were still there.
Nyssa found a rhino-faced stick perfect for walking, and struck out on the trail, determined to ignore them. Queen Ness surveys the land. She looked at the way the stick dug into the wet earth, at the late flowers nestled amongst the deadwood, brambles, and various marshy undergrowths near the path. She noticed a smithering of long-shanked, weedy things choking life from a patch of yellow violets. Queen Ness graciously picked one and ended its life as vine-fodder. She stuck it into one of the holes in her stick. You’re safe, now, she thought to herself.
Look at those rocks. Look at those leaves. And delibrately, Nyssa looked. She saw blue eyes, too light to be anything but cruelly-hewn ice, with paper-cut claws and a blood-tinged voice that rings the pluralities of death as it talks. What did it say?
I’m only looking, Nyssa thought. I’m looking at the stream as I approach it, how the water reflects light underneath the bridge. But the eyes remained. The eyes of that girl. Those eyes were there when a stick fell across her back, tearing her skin with splinters; they were there when she rolled into the brook, her sleeping bag closed around her. Could they be waiting here? No, the tents were too close. Had she slipped past them somehow, as they laid waiting? Where they following her?
Nyssa spun around. There was no one. With an excess of adrenaline, she bounced on the buoyant bridge and watched thin silver fish flit out from under it. The water was filled with light-- it glared brightly enough to hurt her eyes. She looked up. The sun was in a noonish position, and very little shadow could be found. They weren’t anywhere nearby, and the tents were so close that she could catch glimpses of green canvas whenever the wind parted the trees’ branches. She was safe. As Nyssa re-entered the woods on the other end of the bridge and walked up a steep slope, she repeated that thought to herself, to calm her butterflies. Her steps slowed. She hid her rhino-faced stick behind a tree. To bring it into camp would probably mean its destruction, no matter who was there. But Nyssa removed the violet and held it in her hands. She’d have something of her walk to remember by, at least.
The silence when she reached the tents brought her heart to her lips, beating in a savage rip. The girl scouts had already left for lunch. On the trail, no doubt, would be the bad ones-- the girls who knew she’d be late and alone. Fearful of following them, Nyssa ducked beneath the nearest tent, which wasn’t really a “tent”, but a canvas-covered, stilted platform, made especially for the high water or muddy ground which permeated the place in the summer. The ground was mostly dry, although there was a puddle in one corner. She sat there for a few moments, shaking a little. They wanted her to follow them in their silly pranks. Nyssa wouldn’t follow. They wanted someone who could grovel and snipe and whine, obey and be obeyed, a part of the child hierarchy.
That’s what they wanted in the beginning, at least; now they were content with other the role they had invented for her.
It began with a knocking of elbows-- one mistakenly landed in her stomach. They were sorry, of course. Another time, some beetles happened to fall in her soup. Feet mistakenly became entwined with hers as she clambered up a steep slope, items would become lost or mangled, spittle would land in her hair from behind. Abandoned on hiking trails, she was forced to brave their “battle defenses” on the way back. Each time they got bolder, until Nyssa told one of the adults about it. The beating she recieved afterwards convinced her never to tell again.
Nyssa loved the woods, though. In the hours when she was by herself on the worn paths, the greens and browns and yellows laid hold of her. She could fancy that she was someone else, and make up stories about the places she passed: about the journey of a leaf, the urgent Morse Code of a woodpecker, or tiny bottles of wine beneath berry bushes, which awaited only night to be opened up by reveling faeries. The sweet dreams that came to her during her rambles were worth anything she had to put up with that summer.
Nyssa’s body began to relax in the tent’s protective shade. Why should she go to lunch? She wasn’t hungry. I’ll just wait here until the whole troop returns, she thought.
Maybe not.
Their eyes glittered like ravenous jewels. There were three of them, hiding underneath a tent at the other end of the circle. Her tent. They uncoiled, coming out from beneath the platform in a smooth, circling manner. The ringleader was a blonde, lanky and tall. Her eyes were close together and blue-- that icy shade that Nyssa hated to look at. Had they been waiting there all along, watching her?
Nyssa crawled out from her hiding place. It was safer to be out in the open. The blonde one came and stood before her as the two others positioned themselves, one at her right and the other, her left. Nyssa thought, as always, that they contemplated her death.
Heather spoke first. She always did.
“Hey Nissie, hey sissie, what were you doing crawling with the worms?”
I won’t speak. You can’t make me speak.
The girl on the right shoved her. “Yeah, missie!”
“She’s a worm-kissie.”
The violet twirled in Nyssa’s fingers.
“Why,” Heather cried, in false horror, ”she’s lost her voice to the worms! We’d better give it back to her!”
The girl on her left picked up a handful of mud and did the honours.
“Nissie must feel better, now. There’s magic in that mud!”
“Magic-mud, magic-mud!” the toadies chimed.
Go away.
“So, Nissie, did you pretend that it was food, or something? Did you? Because that’s the only lunch you’ll get. Mommy was really pissie, Nissie, and you’re in trouble!” Heather’s indulgent mother was the troop leader.
“Pissie-Nissie! Pissie-Nissie!”
“Shut-up!” Heather roared at her cronies.
The girl on the right kicked Nyssa.
“I saw you do that,” said Heather.
It took a while for Nyssa to realize that Heather was talking to her, not the girl who kicked her.
“Do what?” Nyssa asked.
“You know what. You went beneath the tent and watched us getting dressed this morning. I saw you,” she said.
This was ridiculous. But then, it always was.
“What?” Nyssa asked.
“Shut up. I know what you did,” Heather retorted.
“You’re kidding. I didn’t do anything like that. Who would?” Her voice sounded high and thin-toned. She was aware of how small she was, and the looming bullies who had surrounded her, like weeds on the violets she had seen. They had invented an excuse to beat her up. Again.
“Confess, Nissie, you bastard twit!” Heather moved closer.
“I didn’t do it.” Nyssa replied. As if that would stop them.
Heather again switched tones. “Nice day, isn’t it?”
“Can I go, now?” Nyssa asked. She was tired of their games.
“Can she go now, do you think?” Heather asked her followers.
They didn’t know how to react to that. “No,” one said, uncertainly.
“Of course she can go,” Heather answered herself, with the air of a generous matron.
“Of course, of course,” they replied.
“We’ll let you go,” Heather said, “But first we’ll take a chunk of your brains. You’re so smart, you can probably go without them.”
Nyssa blinked.
“Open up!”
Nyssa’s wrist throbbed.
“What? Can’t open your own skull?”
She saw what was coming.
The one on the right grabbed her first. She didn’t put up much resistance. When the one on the left caught her, though, something inside turned red. Nyssa reached out with her nails, catching one of the girls on the wrist. She felt strange, like she was some kind of animal-- a rabbit, perhaps-- caught in a snare. A bright gleam of blood hit one of the few openings in the trees where light streams in. Blood on her nails, on the girl’s arm. Crimson replaced the cool colours of the forest in Nyssa’s mind, but she raced away from the trio, to where the adults were.
They soon caught up. Two of them, at least, as the bloodied girl was still wailing near the tents. They shoved Nyssa into the ground. Turf was kicked up and the smell of molding leaves assailed her nostrils.
“You clawed Alisha,” they said. “Say you’re sorry!”
“Leave me alone,” Nyssa implored, softly.
“You hurt Alisha. We’re going to tell.”
“I didn’t want to hurt her,” she whispered.
“We’re going to get you into trouble if you don’t say you’re sorry!”
She wiggled out of their combined grasp somehow, and fled. They didn’t follow her, that time. Perhaps they weren’t willing to fight a truly desperate person, or perhaps they weren’t going to waste the effort better used later. Nyssa tripped and fell twice from her own fear, and arrived at the mess hall covered in half-dry mud, clutching the remains of a wilted yellow violet. She stood in line at the flag ceremony, knowing that vengeance was coming, that she couldn’t hide from Heather or the others for long. Heather’s mother asked what kept her from lunch. Nyssa told the truth-- what the heck, since she was too shaken to think of a lie this time. The lady didn’t believe her, of course, and she got dish duty for picking rare, yellow violets.
Nyssa’s thoughts played the scene out, endlessly, in the bright reflections of the pans she washed. She began to smile as she finished her work. Never before had she struck back at her tormentors. Never before had they let her go. Put the two together, and therein stood resistance.
Maybe they would remember that.