Across the street lay everything she loved.The Shadow Ridge Library.The Shadow Ridge Environmental Center.The Pollinator Garden and the Outdoor Amphitheater.
And beyond, the Refuge.The place she’d feared.The place she’d changed.The place she had learned, at last, to let go.
All of it was home, from the white sand to the sky and everything in between, and she would steward it, fight for it, and yes,loveall of it until the day she died.
The dark thoughts, and the shame of them, burned away like mist in the morning.
No more fear.Just love.
Love for Beaufort.Love for Stevie and Drew.Love for chocolate and books, creatures and trees.
Love for Rosemary.
Whether Rosemary would accept her love or not, Corinthia could do nothing but flap her own wings and hope to fly, to give a gift and expect nothing in return, to finally express how she really felt, unafraid of what might happen after.
She was light on her feet.She could feel the lifting sensation in her mind as if it were only one strong, fresh breeze away from being real.Had she flapped her arms just then, she could have almost flown.
The traffic cleared, and Corinthia crossed the road.
25
Corinthiahadneverfeltso frustrated in a crowd.People everywhere, and Rosemary nowhere in sight.Corinthia went on tiptoe, which didn’t help, then hurried from tent to tent asking everyone she knew if they had seen a woman in a billowing blue silk dress.
They had not.
She had the wrapped book in her hands.She had only to wait, she knew, for Rosemary to arrive at Drew’s food truck, but what she had to say needed to be said properly, in the right environment.But how would she track Rosemary down?
She stopped.She stood in the middle of the Wildlife Festival and felt the sand deep below the asphalt, felt the trees beyond the library complex.Of course she could find Rosemary, just like she had found Mr.Thriller on the day of the local author festival.
Hello, she thought, her mind full of forest.Remember me?
The Refuge reared up in her mind like a happy dog greeting a friend.
Awareness unfolded: first of the sand beneath everything, then the trees and bushes connected to it, then the busy birds and snakes and everything else that made homes there, and finally a rush of humanity all around and in the Refuge itself.Corinthia herself was simultaneously just a person standing in the midst of it all, and she was also the breeze that traveled through it, swaying and spinning like a dancer at the concert.
There was George, who had slipped into the bird suit and was having the time of his life.
There was Stevie, atop the highest hill in the Refuge, admiring the view.
There was Drew, in her food truck, slinging D-Lites.
There was Beaufort, curled up at home, dreaming doggy dreams.
And was that… Mr.Thriller?Inside the Shadow Ridge Library, browsing the romance paperbacks?
Corinthia chuckled to herself and kept searching.
So many people.So many animals.So many plants.But there, at last, was the one she searched for: in the Refuge, in a section Corinthia had never hiked, but not too far from familiar trails.
Corinthia set off, following the north star of her own heart.
It would guide her to the center of any Castle Adventure.
The maze wrapped her in its embrace.She was in the arms of the oaks, the loving hands of the lyonia bushes.Overhead the sky shone scrub jay blue.Corinthia did not know how she had ever been afraid of this place, did not know why she’d stayed away from it for so long; she only knew that now she rushed into its embrace like she was being welcomed home for the first time, understood and accepted at last.
The green walls rose around her.Green mansions formed and faded like daydreams: there was Drew’s food truck, there were the library shelves.There was the shape of her own little green house,Lucky Charmschic, and Corinthia felt very lucky indeed.
Past the Ephemeral Wetland.Past the Woodland Theater.Off to a tiny trail that opened up suddenly, as if it were a secret passageway, and led to a white sand clearing shaped like a perfect circle.When she entered the clearing it seemed as if the passageway closed behind her.The path was hidden.
