We are to the last day of First Chapter Week and to my latest book, The Creaking Tree. I know I shouldn't pick favorites, but I had so much fun writing The Creaking Tree. It combined my love for food, nature, and fairy tales. Usually when I finish the first draft of a manuscript, I can't wait to get some time and space away from it. This book, I couldn't wait to just dive in again and start rewriting.
Also, make sure you check out the First Chapter Week: Special Bonus. I give you a first glimpse at the novel I'm currently working on, A Tale of Magic.
The Creaking Tree
This Side
Chapter One
May
The first thing Louisa learned when she moved to the cabin in the woods was that trees could creak like squeaky floorboards. She also learned that pine trees rained droplets of sap, and ducks and geese defecated an ungodly amount of feces.
Of course, the cabin wasn’t really in the woods, nor was it really a cabin. That was just what southern people called weekend houses in northern Michigan—a cabin or a cottage. The word cabin invoked images of a rustic home made out of logs, an outhouse, animal heads mounted on the walls, and dirt floors. Cottages, on the other hand, inspired visions of quaint little homes with rose covered trellises, moss creeping on black roofs, white picket fences, and welcoming swirls of smoke twirling out of red chimneys. Jason used the word cabin to describe his house on the river, but it was really just an ordinary house. Small and cute with beige vinyl siding, red trim, and a black shingled roof. It even had a matching one-car garage.
When she first stepped out of the car—legs and back stiff from the three hour drive, goose pimples racing up and down the exposed skin of her arms and legs, the temperature at least ten degrees lower than in Lansing—she was pleased to see that the neighboring houses were in sight. In fact, the house practically sat in the middle of the tiny town of Indian River, population two thousand and eight, just a block away from the downtown with its abundance of quaint ice cream shops, fudge shops, and souvenir shops. Despite that, the house did have a secluded, woodsy feel. The North Central State Trail sat just across the street from the house. The scenic nature trail stretched on for sixty-two miles, from Gaylord to Mackinaw City, little towns dotting it the entire way. And though houses stood on either side of the cabin, a thinly wooded lot on one side and a few strategically placed pines on the other separated the cabin from its neighbors. A river meandered through the backyard of the house, The Little Sturgeon, a tributary of the larger Indian River. But for Louisa that quiddity of wilderness really came from the smell. The air was fresh, no exhaust or pollutants, just an inescapable pine scent exuded by the two giant white pines in the back yard, soaring eighty or ninety feet into the air. Louisa breathed that scent in deep, held it in her lungs, then slowly let it go along with all her trepidations and worries about moving up to what seemed like the middle of nowhere.
The land that the house rested upon had been in Jason’s family since the mid-1800s. When he suggested she move up here for the summer so she could finish writing (more like start writing) her cookbook, she had been against the idea. They had only been married a few short months and he wouldn’t be moving with her, only coming up on the weekends to visit. Jason still had a job in Lansing. Louisa, on the other hand, had come back from their Mexican elopement only to discover that her newspaper had folded. Of course, it hadn’t been totally unexpected. The Lansing Tribune had long lived and suffered in the shadow of Lansing’s major newspaper, The Lansing State Journal, and newspapers all over the country were going under. While she had done some freelance work as a food-writer, she had yet to find full-time employment.
Perfect time to write that cookbook you’ve always talked about, Jason said. Ah, but she had given up her house with the spacious kitchen, double ovens, and endless counter space to move into his chic condo, which boasted awesome views of the city but a cramped galley-style kitchen.
Spend the summer up north, he said. It doesn’t have a gourmet kitchen, but it’s ten times the size of mine. Plus, it’s quiet and peaceful. You can even plant your own garden. You’ve always wanted to cook with your own produce. And we’ll talk every day on the phone and every weekend when I visit, it’ll be like a little mini-vacation. He had so many good points.
Excited to show her the house, Jason unlocked the front door and let her go in first. She entered a mudroom, which was completely covered in honey-toned pine paneling. It was only a half-step up from logs.
Manfred Mann’s Do-Wah-Diddy suddenly broke out. She turned around to see Jason grinning and one of those tacky singing fish plaques crooning and flapping on the wall by the door. Louisa was not impressed.
A Dutch door led them into the foyer, which connected to the kitchen. He had been right about the kitchen; it was large, the largest room in the whole house. But the décor was . . . odd. Pinkish-peach tiles on the floor, purple tiles on the counter, cobalt blue sink, off-white walls. It was a cross between country cute (lace curtain over the window, little birdies and pinecones painted on the yellow cupboards) and rustic country (one wall done in pine paneling and a chandelier made out of antlers hanging over the Formica kitchen table). But the counter space was amazing, the appliances semi-new and functional, and thank god, there was a dishwasher.
“Think you can cook in here?” Jason asked.
Louisa just nodded, not ready to voice an opinion yet.
Off the kitchen was a laundry room with an old, beat-up washer and dryer, bright sky-blue walls, and a second door leading to the front yard. It was trimmed in Victorian gingerbread ornamentation that whispered quaint cottage.
The living room sat in the back of the house and had a large picture window that immediately drew your eyes to the stunning scenery outside—those two towering pines flanking the weather-worn deck, a hill softly sloping down to a dark, curving river, and a forest of varying greens on the other side.
The inside of the living room wasn’t quite so picturesque. The walls were a faded yellow like old newspapers. A malevolent-looking deer head with moth-eaten fur and dusty glass eyes was mounted above an old, plaid sofa. A wooden entertainment center housed a bulky twenty-something-year-old television and displayed a collection of driftwood and unimpressive rocks. The rest of the furniture was old and mismatched. The room nearly screamed cabin.
Jason laughed at her expression. “This house hasn’t been redecorated since before I was born. Don’t worry. You can make any changes that you want.” Louisa once again nodded.
The only redeeming quality of the room was the gorgeous, albeit scratched, dark wood floor.
“Original to the house,” he told her as he saw her admiring the flooring. “If you tried to buff out those scratches, there wouldn’t be any floor left.”
The house had three tiny bedrooms. The master bedroom was off the right of the living room, lavender in color, lace curtains over the windows, an antique dresser, and full-sized bed with a comforter that was probably supposed to be white but had a yellow tint to it. The room had its own half bath with floral wallpaper and a swinging saloon door. Surprisingly, there was also a cedar-lined walk-in closet. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about moths gnawing at her clothes.
Across from the master bedroom, on the other side of the living room, was a second bedroom, the same sky blue as the laundry room with a faded duck mural on one wall and mirrored closet doors, cracked. The space was filled with wicker patio furniture and cardboard boxes. Obviously it was used for storage. Off the living room was a very short hallway that led to the third bedroom, a Caribbean-themed bathroom that was probably as tiny as the walk-in closet, and a utility closet that housed the home’s mechanics.
She may not have been fond of the décor, but yes, she liked the house. It had good bones and a good vibe to it.
“You should go check out the river,” he said. “I’m going to light the pilot light so we have hot water tonight.”
Louisa went out the back door, struck again by the fresh pine scent. Dead, straw-colored pine needles littered the deck. They’d probably need to be swept every day, but the daily chore might be worth it once the patio furniture was set up. She could picture herself and Jason spending their mornings out here, drinking coffee, waking up to the birds chirping . . . or sipping on a beer and unwinding as the sun set.
Five or six feet from the deck sat a fire pit, rows of chopped firewood stacked against the side of the house, just waiting to be burned. Once the sun went down, they could build a fire, roast marshmallows, make s’mores, and cuddle in the flickering firelight. It would be sweet and innocent and romantic. But then she had a sudden thought. Unless there were bats. Louisa involuntarily looked up. Two ravens flew overhead, high in the sky, wings spread, black silhouettes against an endless sea of blue. Birds were one thing, swooping bats another.
A bird feeder stood under one of the pines, a little crooked and empty and sad. If she was going to live here, she ought to put her best foot forward and buy bird seed for the feeder, make all the wild things her friends.
She stepped off the deck and started down the freshly mown hill, her sandals flipping and flopping against the bottoms of her feet. The sun shone down, warm on the crown of her head and bare shoulders. Somehow even the sunshine felt cleaner and purer here.
A cluster of mallards, the females brown and unremarkable, the drakes emerald-headed and striking, lounged by the river’s edge, napping or stretching or with their beaks to the ground, foraging for food. As she neared, the fowl became alert, their heads snapping to attention, their black eyes focused on her. Friend or foe, those eyes wondered. Suddenly they burst into flight all at once, only to land a few feet away in the safety of the water. Foe. But a trio of mallards, one with a large, feathered tumor growing on top of his head, approached her, waddling, unafraid, eager even. They saw her for what she was. Not a threat, but a food source. As a trained chef and food-writer, Louisa had no problem with that. She even welcomed the title. She knew that she and these ducks would be friends and that food would soon convince the rest to trust her.
“Sorry guys, I don’t have anything for you,” she apologized, feeling like a bad hostess. Did ducks eat bird seed too? Maybe she should pick up a couple of loaves of bread for them. She wondered if they had a favorite kind—white, wheat, sesame seed? Did ducks even have taste buds? She would have to google it.
The river was surprisingly shallow, not even a foot deep, with a slow, peaceful current. The bottom was sediment, dark brown, almost black. Its color made the water itself appear black, bestowing upon it the illusion of a greater, grander depth and perhaps a little bit of mystery. Thick strands of neon green seaweed sprang out of the dark river floor in little plots and swayed hypnotically in the current. A thick forest occupied the land across the river. Along the water’s edge, exposed tree roots dipped into the water to slake their thirst. Juniper and hemlock branches, low and full of needle-like leaves, swept over the water. Birds of every variety—sparrows, finches, red-winged black birds, and many more that she couldn’t name—hopped and capered and flew between these roots and branches, frolicking and bathing and quenching their thirst. Maples and ashes, birches and beeches, mingled with conifers, ascending towards the heavens in a mass of undulating verde. The surface of the water was rendered completely different from its actuality by the trees. It reflected back the greens and browns and blues of the forest and sky, but distorted and softened, like an Impressionist painting. Louisa could understand why her husband loved it up here so much.
That was when she heard it, the creaking, like a squeaky door. It came from the woods across the river. Louisa had never heard a tree creak before. Of course, she hadn’t spent a lot of time in nature either. Born in Grand Rapids, educated near Detroit, living and working in Lansing, she had spent her thirty years on this earth in cities with sidewalks and skyscrapers and neatly kept parks with concrete paths. There were all of two camping trips as a child, neither of which she remembered fondly. The first one involved poison ivy and the second one a foot fungus from a public shower. Never would Louisa imagine herself living in a place like this. But Jason had a way of getting her to do things she never thought she’d do. Like getting her to sleep with him on their first date—hell, it wasn’t even really a date. It was the first day they met.