Girlwood Read Online Free PDF

out of the ground like thorns. Polly felt a strange mix of horror and anticipation as they passed each marker; Baba wouldn't have come this way, where everything was going to change, unless she was leading Polly straight to her sister.
    Finally, Baba slowed her pace, walking along a dangerous drop-off because there was a dense thicket of devil's club everywhere else. Baba used devil's club to treat lung ailments and bronchitis, though the plant looked more like a weapon than a cure. The shrub was eight feet high and armored, every foot-long leaf edged in spikes, each stem equipped with sharp yellow spines.
    Yet her grandmother brushed her fingers along the serrated plant, and then suddenly dropped to her knees. In a
flash she was gone, disappearing beneath the barbed-wire shrubbery through an opening Polly hadn't even noticed.
    "Baba!" Polly shouted, but heard only silence. "Bree?"
    The devil's club had its own aura, a dark green swirling mist. Polly crouched down and tried to follow her grandmother through the thin gap between plant and earth, but within seconds the leaves closed in around her. Something tugged at her scalp, and Polly realized her hair had snagged on the spiny leaves.
    She tried not to panic. She wasn't trapped, she told herself; she'd crawled into a gleaming green cocoon. She couldn't move a hand to free her hair, so she took a chance and lunged forward, leaving a few curls like earrings on the lobes of the leaves.
    Scalp stinging, she had just room enough to squirm forward on the ground, caterpillar-like. The tunnel seemed to go on forever, but eventually she saw light flickering between the leaves. A few more feet and she had to blink to adjust to the oddly bright sky.
    At the end of the tunnel, Polly slowly got to her feet. In front of her stood her grandmother, surrounded by a grove of giant, glowing larches. Even without their auras, the larches were dazzling in their fall colors—every needle like a dagger of spun gold. The tree beside Baba was nearly 200 feet high, yet its most spectacular feature was what most people
didn't see: a white, pulsing light around it in the shape of wings—thousands of them fluttering along the trunk and branches—as if the larch could lift off into the sky at any moment. There was no way Polly could have missed a dazzling spirit like that, yet she hadn't seen it from the other side of the devil's club.
    "What is this place?" Polly asked. "Is Bree here?"
    The grove was lit up like midday, and Polly could see every tree trunk; not a single one had been tagged. Baba looked delighted. The larches were her favorites—a feathery conifer that was green in spring, light and airy all summer, and blinding gold in fall. Unlike pines and firs, a larch changed color and dropped its needles every winter, revealing a tangle of bare black rigging that allowed the plants beneath it to thrive. Larches looked delicate, yet they grew at lightning speed, producing the strongest wood.
    "I showed Bree this grove once," Baba said. "A long time ago."
    Polly pretended to dust the dirt from her jeans, but she really wanted time to chase back the moisture in her eyes. She'd thought the woods were something only she and her grandma shared. She had never considered that Baba and Bree might have their secrets too.
    Finally, she looked up. "I thought you were bringing me to her."
    "Well," Baba said, "this would be a good place to stay, wouldn't it? The hares are always plentiful, the bearberries grow like mad, and water's not far away."
    Baba gently tapped the trunk of the great tree. "You know why people say 'Knock on wood,' don't you?" she asked. "It's not superstition. It calls the spirit of the tree for help and guidance. Knock lightly and you won't be alone."
    But Polly felt alone, even with Baba there. She might have hated her sister these last few months, but she still hadn't thought that Bree would leave her.
    "This is where I first met your grandfather," Baba went on.