Excerpts from Forest Song: Finding Home

Forest Song: Finding Home is the story of Judy Baumann�s struggle to escape to her true home in the woods and to grow into her power there. A cast of magical characters, including a wise woman, the woman�s consort, a family of fairies, an ancient oak, and bevy of animals each help her in this enterprise. The story, situated between Germany and Poland, begins in 1929 and ends in 1933 when Judy becomes a woman.

The tree�s halo glimmered, white and vivid, and bounced like ball lightning over the crown. It peeked through the leaves and shimmered down the trunk and glowed through the ground along the roots. My psyche floated downward, following the light deep into the cool, damp forest soil, and, as I journeyed, I heard the tree�s voice, as muffled as if I were listening from the womb. She spoke not a word but only crackled and hummed a hymn so relentlessly repetitive, so astoundingly familiar that I couldn�t help but weep. I awoke to the breeze of Malgorzata�s wings tickling my face like ladybug feet.

Excerpt from Forest Song: Finding Home, p 86

"This place looks like a rain forest gone to snow," Tranoc quipped about the herbs and the notes still stuck to every surface in the house. He made the sound of some bird he had heard in some jungle, and, aping his avian mating dance, I mimicked his plaintive cry. Communicating only with the jungle bird's call, we built a blaze together with the coals we'd brought back from the Kupa?a fire.

Excerpt from Forest Song: Finding Home, p 304

"I can't," she pleaded into my eyes, holding her belly and moaning. The cold rain splashing at her face swelled the flood of her terrified tears. Suddenly she shrieked. I didn't know what to do! I threw myself at her, shrieking too. Rain pelted us, stung us with its icy, prickly points. The wind was merciless. I almost didn't realize that her shrieking had stopped and that she was merely panting. "I'm in labor," she mewled. "Oh, Judy, the baby's coming." The wind and I were keening so loudly that it took some time for her words to cut through.

"Cross your legs," I screeched, and, she laughed in spite of herself. She laughed like a madwoman through the next wave of pain, screaming with it, howling with it, panicky tears streaming down her rain-drenched face. And I answered her cries, howl for wild howl, scream for panic stricken scream. I was sure both of us were losing our minds, and I had no idea what to do about that either.

Excerpt from Forest Song: Finding Home P 171

But I did not sleep, at least not for hours. In the little black bed I came face to face with the merciless blankness of the room. Without Heidi to share it my pillow was a wasteland. Without Matka Lasu's warmth I shivered in the sheets. There was no fire to crackle orange light across the lumpy shadows of the room. No Zorya sparkled in the cloud-cluttered sky. I rocked and quietly sang to myself, but I could not shut out my thoughts.

Excerpt from Forest Song: Finding Home p 216

I failed to notice the change in the flakes until they had woven an opaque curtain of tiny ash-like dots. The ugly black fence looked broken and gray with all the snow clinging to it. The little white house had all but disappeared within the folds of the blizzard. I leaned into the storm and trudged through the drifts hugging the yellow throw around my body, drawing on resolve and the image of a fire glowing in the little kitchen stove. When I reached the gate I called and waited. Nobody came. I stamped the stinging cold from my feet and, chafing my hands, I called again. Again nobody came. A face flashed at the frost-flowered window. I called twice more before the door flew open.

Excerpt from Forest Song: Finding Home p. 207

Suddenly I felt alone by the fire, naked and primal, as if time and place had evaporated and, deposited in a prehistoric wilderness, I was staring in awe at an event that had already repeated itself countless times before my birth, an event that would occur countless times again for millennia after my death. Grand Mama had been sixty-three when she�d died. I�d thought that was ancient at the time. I couldn�t imagine being that old. But that moment when I watched the sun come over the hill I understood how short the human lifespan is, how myopic our vision has to be, given how little we�re allowed to see in a single life. I felt fragile and humbled, almost endangered, not like a goddess at all.

Excerpt from Forest Song: Finding Home by Vila SpiderHawk pp 183-184

Blessed are the spiders, one of them intoned, for we live in harmony. The other spiders joined the chant, for it was a call to worship. The wind is our harpist, and on her breath the past and the future weave like cords of music smoke through the cables of our webs. The hum of wisdom is always at our feet. We are part of its thrum from the time we draw first breath until we cross through the lacing of our webs to join the Great White Spider. I climbed back up the thread and stepped into my web. I felt its vibration in all of my feet. I heard the wisdom song with every atom of my soul.

Excerpt from Forest Song: Finding Home by Vila SpiderHawk P 198

"Das ist alles," she said with a thick Polish accent. She blew a stray lock of hair from her eye and sighed again. It was the first time she'd spoken my mother tongue and the first time I'd noticed that we'd been communicating in the language of the woods. "It's done," she repeated in the tongue we'd been using, kicking off her shoes and putting her feet up on a crock of sauerkraut. "And you were a wonderful help. Thank you, Judy." Her smile was weary. Resting her head on the back of the chair, she rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. "We'll need everything we have and more this year. It's begun."

"What's begun?" I climbed up into the other chair and cuddled Heidi in my lap. I'd been busy and had neglected her.

"The terrible hunger. The terrible blame. The terrible violence." Her eyes were as dark as the sky before a snow and, though the fire leapt like a child at play, a chill hung by its legs around my neck and ran its ice fingers down my spine. I wrapped myself in the yellow throw. Fatigue drained all strength from my muscles. Against my will I was falling asleep.

"What can we do?" I tried. Then summoning the last of my will, I tried again. "Matka Lasu? What can we do?" She jerked awake.

Excerpt from Forest Song: Finding Home P 138

"Kochanie, people come in and out of our lives. Sometimes they stay with us for only a moment. Sometimes they're with us for years and years. But long time or short, they inevitably bring us a lesson or a blessing to remember." She held me at arms length and offered me her hankie, on which I blew my nose. "Don't ground yourself in people or in time or in place. Time passes: places change, and people are explorers. They don't tend to stay put, and when the time is right, we all wander into death. Everybody dies, Kochanie, even Tranoc." She grabbed a fistful of dirt and handed it to me. "Ground yourself in Matka Ziemia, our Mother, the Earth. Wherever you are She'll be under your feet, supporting and guiding you." Sitting on the forest floor, she took me to her lap. I'd grown since the last time we had sat that way, and I didn't quite know what to do with my legs. I settled on letting them sprawl on the ground. "The trick is to let people come and go, let time pass and let places change. Life is not static. And so we love what is, and when it changes, as it inevitably will, we go on, grateful for the lessons and blessings those people, those times, or those places brought us." She kissed my forehead and each of my cheeks. "Love always means knowing when to let go."

"Then I don't want any part of love," I pouted, paradoxically hugging her neck.

"If you can't feel the thorn," she whispered in my ear, "you can't feel the velvet of the rose." She squeezed me again. 'Come now, Kochanie. Let's give those tears to the stream."

Excerpt from Forest Song: Finding Home P. 300

In my dream a white light shone from the ground. I stepped into it and the darkness swallowed it. The sky and the woods were beetle-eye black. A second light shone. I stepped into it, and again the obscurity guzzled it down. A third light shone, then a fourth and a fifth, but the moment my foot touched its circle of heat, the blackness sucked the glow into its gluttonous throat. Lacking landmarks and stars, I followed the lights, always trusting a new one to show my next step, and time after time a new light appeared, proving my trust to be right.

A cold breath ruffled my hair, distracting me from my wait for the next light. I jolted forward and, in the opaque night, bumped into something solid. I pushed backward into another solid form and, before I could think of running left or right, two other beings were pressed against my arms. Panic rampaged through my veins, inundating my organs with the slush of freezing fear.

Excerpt from Forest Song: Finding Home by Vila SpiderHawk pp 266-267

I stood by a rock on the far side of the hill. I felt huge, as tall as the tallest tree, big enough to make ripples with my fingertips in the black silky liquid of the sky, big enough to cause the stars to dart like little silvery fish. My senses were preternaturally keen. I could taste and smell the rotting of the leaves beneath the new-fallen snow. I could smell the stale slumber of the hares in their musty earthen beds, could feel their dream-chased twitches. And I knew that if I really concentrated I could meld my soul with theirs and become as one with them.

�We are all made of star stuff and kitten breath,� Matka Lasu had said. And in a moment of blazing lucidity I discovered a basic truth. Every living thing is born of earth and sky. We are all the same, as family members are the same. Waiting on the side of the snow covered hill, I felt as if my blood were the sky, as if the stars coursed through my veins, as if I had merged with all the hibernating things, and were sleeping their winter dreams. Their breath was my breath, their fears my fears, their appetites, their divine lust for life, my own. A strange tingling flickered between my legs, a rapture of desire that I didn�t understand. Excerpt from Forest Song: Finding Home by Vila SpiderHawk, p 181

Excerpt from Forest Song: Finding Home, p 181

I dreamed Heidi and I were in a crystal forest. Sunlight washed through the glittering limbs casting rainbows at our feet as sparkly as jewels. Birds and insects chattered around us and, under their humming, like a chorus of souls, a wordless song of ethereal longing. Tiny white and purple petals fluttered around us, settling in our hair like fragrant dew. And, when we held out our hands to gather them, they turned to butterflies at rest in our palms, their wings opening and closing as if they were in prayer.

Excerpt from Forest Song: Finding Home P54

I ran and ran pushing my body forward faster than I'd ever run before, and yet I felt like I was slogging along in the slow motion of a dream. Fatigue burned my muscles. My breath came in ragged gasps. My throat was dry, as if I'd swallowed hot coals. Nonetheless I refused to rest until we'd nearly reached the wood line.

Excerpt from Forest Song: Finding Home P 71

I entered the forest calling his name, and, sure he was teasing, I braced myself for a roaring burst of him from behind a rock or a tree. Nothing happened. I yelled again. There was no response. I screamed, drawing out his name so I had to breathe between the syllables. My voice cracked. A twig snapped. I twirled around with a grin, but Jochen wasn't there. Every crunch of the leaves, every whoosh of a bird caused me to spin, first with hope and then with fear as the truth of my situation seeped into my mind. I didn't know what to do. If I stood still the bandits or wolves or bears or child-eating plants would get me. If I moved, Jochen wouldn't know where I was.

Excerpt from Forest Song: Finding Home P 73

The tree's halo glimmered, white and vivid, and bounced like ball lightning over the crown. It peeked through the leaves and shimmered down the trunk and glowed through the ground along the roots. My psyche floated downward, following the light deep into the cool, damp forest soil, and, as I journeyed, I heard the tree's voice, as muffled as if I were listening from the womb. She spoke not a word but only crackled and hummed a hymn so relentlessly repetitive, so astoundingly familiar that I couldn't help but weep. I awoke to the breeze of Ma?gorzata's wings tickling my face like ladybug feet.

Excerpt from Forest Song: Finding Home P 86

Once assembled, we sat in a semicircle around the tree and briefly explained the situation. Then in gloomy silence, we waited for Pan D?b or Ma?gorzata to come up with something we hadn't considered. Twin butterflies flirted a few paces away. A carpenter ant scaled the mountain of my knee, trekked across the vast plain of my white georgette lap, and climbed down to the back of a beetle. A black and silver spider slid down her sticky thread, tied it to a fern, and shinnied back up. A warbler whooshed into flight. A snake scratched across the forest floor, shedding its skin. Matka Lasu, Tranoc, Ma?gorzata, and I watched it all, heard it all, and sullenly sighed. Pan D?b was the first to speak.

Excerpt from Forest Song: Finding Home P 97

The silence was like another presence in the dark of the almost expired fire. More than the absence of crickets and birds that catches the attention in autumn, more than the lack of flowing air, more even than a fire without hissing or crackling, it was a silence that indicated more than death. It was a living thing afflicted with a sickness of the soul, and it was waiting to infect us all. The crones knew its face, and Matka Lasu did too, and I think, at bottom, so did I. But I don't think even the Goddesses knew how bad the plague would be.

Excerpt from Forest Song: Finding Home P 152

My first memory is of the forest�s call. Oh, no, it wasn�t the wind in the trees or the splashing of rain against arthritic trunks. Those sounds were there, in their proper seasons, along with the singing of the birds by day and the chirping of the crickets at night. But there was something else curling through all that, wispy and fragile, that I sometimes could not catch, something as sweet as wistfulness that would whisper near my ear as I lay in my bed. Sometimes late at night I�d awaken with a start and stand on my bed near my slot of a window and watch the shimmering white halo dance like angel wings around the crowns of the trees, and I�d promise, �I�m coming. I�m coming soon.�

Excerpt from Forest Song: Finding Home p. 12

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