Pippin

By Amethyst Turner

Soft and brown

Mellow and sweet

Pippin dear

You're such a treat

The prettiest dog

I ever did meet

And I'll miss you

If you'll miss me

XXX

Life with Leafy and Orion was good enough.

Amethyst and Pippin, the dog she thought looked a little sad all the time, hit it off. They spent hours curled up on her mat in the corner of the tent, practicing reading words in the books Leafy gave her to look at. Orion even let her take the mastiff for walks sometimes, if she promised to stay near the lake.

There were a lot of things she liked about the forest. Sleeping outside, for one. There were stars and stars and stars in the sky that she had never seen before. They hid behind the shadowy leaves of trees, but some nights, Orion took her to his favorite spot to stargaze, on top of the hill where the sky was clear and bright.

She also liked the animals. There were foxes and birds and chipmunks and toads. Leafy told her how Adam named all the animals and how his grandson, Noah, saved them all from a big storm that killed everybody. Aimee wasn't sure if that really happened. It was all in a big story book Leafy liked to read out of, and he said everything in it was true. Amethyst wondered if Alice In Wonderland was real too.

That was another good thing about the forest. You could walk in the same mile every day and find something new. Wonderland, she thought, would be like this. She found things that made her wonder if magic was real. Butterflies, a chipmunk with blue eyes, a flurry of snow in the middle of summer.

Leafy believed in miracles. Orion said he didn't. He told her about his daughter Sophia, the one that disappeared. He said that if miracles were real, she would have come home.

The story made Aimee wonder about her father, if he missed her the same way Orion missed Sophie. She didn't think so. Orion said he loved his daughter so much he almost killed himself when she went missing. Amethyst was pretty sure her own father wouldn't do that. She asked Orion if he liked beer. He said no. Maybe that was part of it too.

Although most things were good, some things were bad, too. She always had to be doing something, or else grief set in. She missed Minka like she thought Orion must miss Sophie. The pain was so intense and persistent that she found herself walking, running away sometimes, running back to where she thought the circus was, until she came back to her senses.

She found it curious that she didn't miss her parents in this way. In fact, she only thought of them fleetingly anymore. Their faces were fading.

She missed Scrubbles and Molly and Brandon. Leafy made her a doll out of fabric and the fluff from a pillow. Aimee named her Kochanie and squeezed her tight when the pain got bad.

Along with the good and the bad, some things were just new. Like bathing in the lake, and eating around the firepit. Fire, she learned, was pretty but deadly. Leafy warned her of hell and the oceans of fire there. Orion told him to shut up and stop scaring the kid.

Orion and Leafy were new, too. Aimee hadn't known that two boys could be in love, but now that she thought about it, she didn't see why not. Leafy said that his storybook was misunderstood. Other people who liked the book, he said, believed that love could only be between a man and a woman. He didn't believe that, though. He thought God appreciated love, no matter what form it came in. God was the main character in the book, which made Aimee want to read it. She knew who God was, Jesus too.

She heard the two of them kissing sometimes when she was outside the tent, reading with Pippin curled up at her feet. They never kissed when she was looking.

Amethyst practiced things she learned in the circus, too. Cartwheels, handstands. Leafy hung up a stretch of rope between two trees, low enough down that it didn't hurt if she fell off. She thought Rubin would be very proud because she'd begun to attempt backflips by herself. She couldn't do a full one yet, but figured she'd be able to soon if she kept working at it.

Orion watched her flip sometimes and said she was "amazing". Amethyst didn't know if she was amazing, but she liked that he thought so.

XXX

Davey punched his pillow, burying his face in it again. Nope, still not comfortable. Fluffing it against the headboard, he tried again. God, since when had his pillow become a rock? Frustrated with his pillow's incompetence, he slammed it down on the mattress and sank down under the sheets so his head was just below it.

"What in god's name are you doing?" Annelise's sleepy voice asked. He heard her sit up in bed, felt her eyes on his back.

"Nothin'," he answered. "Go back to sleep."

She didn't. Anne leaned over him, her pregnant belly separating them. She put her hand on his shoulder, sighing. "Are you okay, Honey? You seemed a little upset today." When he didn't answer, she asked, "It's not the baby, is it? Because I--"

"It's not the baby," he mumbled into the mattress. "I'm fine."

He could feel Annelise growing frustrated. "Well something's wrong, so if you're not going to tell me what it is, that's just your problem."

Davey sighed. He rolled over, looking up at his wife with half closed eyes. Her hair was scattered with sleep, her eyes hard with anger. He took her hand and decided to explain. "You remember that case I was working on a little while ago? With the little girl who ran off with the circus?" She nodded. "I didn't find her."

"I know," Anne said. She laid back down next to him, twining her fingers around his. "You're still upset about that?"

"I don't know," he sighed. "I just really hope she's alive. Y'know, I went over to her house to find something to scent Clark on? And there were all these beer bottles on the floor and in the sink and broken glass all over. And in the corner of the living room, they had this little cardboard box..."

"A cardboard box?"

"I think it was her bed."

She turned her head to look at him. Lifted her sleepshirt and placed his hand on her bare stomach. "Maybe it's better that you didn't find her."

Davey was quiet for a minute, listening to his wife breathing and trying to feel proof of his daughter's existence. It was still hard to believe, that this tiny person growing inside of her belonged to Davey. They hadn't decided on a name yet. Anne liked Agnes, Davey liked Alice. His mother liked Gertrude Jr.

Amethyst was a pretty name, Davey thought. You'd have to love somebody a whole lot to give them a name like that. What happened?

XXX

Libby liked the name Emma for a girl, Timothy for a boy. Richard liked Joseph for a boy, Rose for a girl. So they decided it would be Emma Rose or Timothy Joe. TJ for short.

She didn't hate being alive so much anymore. In fact there were some things she actually enjoyed these days. Richard bought her a book of poems, which she liked to read to the baby after Richard left for work and they were alone. Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson and the likes. She felt the first kick when reading 'Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening". "And miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go -- oh!"

But she lived in fear, too. Fear that Amethyst would return, and life would go back to its dreary normality. When the man with the hound, Mr. Summer or something, reappeared on their doorstep in mid July, Libby slammed the door in his face. No, he could not have that blanket again. No he could not "try again".

If Richard caught wind of this, he would be livid. Still, Libby couldn't take the chance. If she was found, her chance at happiness would go out the window.

She had this recurring where dream she, Richard and her little girl were playing catching in the park. What a happy family the three of them looked to be. The little girl toddled after the ball, falling to her hands and knees to crawl toward it, when suddenly she morphed into someone older, a girl with blonde hair and jeans and soft, pretty features. The older girl caught the ball and it caught fire in her hands. She threw it at Libby, and she awoke.

What Libby hated most about this dream was how pretty the older girl was. She could only assume she was Amethyst, years from now. But why? She wasn't particularly pretty. Richard had his own subtle charm, but not to the scale of this girl. Her daughter.

She didn't tell Richard about the dream. He didn't like to talk about Aimee because it upset him.

Richard still drank heavily, but didn't hurt her nearly as often any more. As the scars she had inflicted upon herself faded, so did her bruises and scratches he had given her. If he did hurt her, he now apologized profusely and bought her chocolate or flowers the next day to try and make up for it.

But she felt less . . . numb, now. She could feel the sting his hands left on her, could feel the pain beneath the surface, in her heart.

She recognized this feeling from when she was just a girl, denying things to herself. No, I don't want good grades anyway. No, I don't like him so it doesn't matter if he has a girlfriend. No, I don't think I'm good at drawing anyway. Who cares if Ma doesn't like my pictures?

No, I don't want him to love me. It doesn't matter if he doesn't.

But then again, she thought with a smile. What if he does?

XXX

Forget the words
To the songs that we've heard
The passages read
All the names in a world
That have brought us this pain
From the wounds we've sustained
A cold calloused heart
Sitting still in this cave of a chest
So abandon a life from before
A boy and his innocence...

-This Beautiful Life, Dear Hunter