Siena smiled to herself, and fell asleep, the fire and the rum so warm. When she woke the moon had risen, the youngsters gone home to their families. Siena too should walk back to her igloo, but on the way she saw a glimmer of water beneath a heap of deadfall. She investigated further, stepping in it, and was shocked; the icy water came almost to her hips. Siena would’ve fallen as if she’d stepped off a creek bank, which was precisely what she’d done, except the mounds of deadfall and garbage prevented it. She hauled herself out before her muscles could seize up from the cold.
Had there always been a creek here? It was as if she’d forgotten it even existed, but how could that be so? It was so full of garbage it was obliterated from sight, but that didn’t account for its absence from her mind.
Siena saw another daughter catcher then, hanging just out of reach as if blown by the wind. She didn’t care what the young people said, to Siena it radiated evil. Her thoughts after all were full of malice when she made them; some tiny secret part of her wished terrible things upon the townsfolk because of what had happened to Noelle. But by the old laws of mirrors Siena knew this was a dangerous thing to do, that she brought judgement upon herself when she wove malice into her magic. People would talk about her even more than before, and she’d grow even more bitter and solitary because of it, and weave even more hate into her webs, and the villagers, sensing her hate, would call her an evil witch, and so on, in an unending circle of fear and hate.
Still, she hiked her skirt and shinnied up the tree and pulled it down. There was love in the webs too, the yearning she felt for Noelle, or they wouldn’t work to find the kids the love they so craved. She took it home to her stick and Styrofoam shelter. Peter was right, she had gone mad. The villagers were right about her. How could she not have seen it? Still, the shelter was a step up from the stick piles she used to burrow beneath. When had she built it? After she’d talked to Sally, she thought. And after she realized birds took better care of themselves than she did.
In the morning she hoped the youngsters would invite her for tea again, but they would be in school. The same two geese flew overhead. They took a long time to make their decision of where to build their nest, or else they just wanted to drag out their weeks of dinners out and movies and sex, before the long work of raising a family began. Seeing them, Siena wished again her men hadn’t left. She wished her husband had stayed behind and helped her dig for her daughter’s body.
She wished he’d believed, as she’d believed, that they could still find Noelle, that their love could find a way. Siena allowed herself a little resentment then, towards her missing husband. There was a streak of weakness in him, she’d always secretly felt, an inability to hold on, hold out. If he’d stood beside her it would’ve been easier to say, “You shouldn’t have stoned Noelle. She was just letting her hair down, letting off a little steam. Things would’ve felt better for you if you’d done it a little more yourselves.” She could’ve spoken before it even happened, but when she already felt it coming, said something like, “Noelle’s a little frisky, it’s true, but great care must be taken of the free-spirited; they teach us all that joy is still possible. To judge them is to judge ourselves. We’d do better to imitate than to decry.”
But she hadn’t. Or if she had, she hadn’t done it enough. Or if she’d done it enough, it hadn’t made enough of a difference. They’d still stoned Noelle. She’d still gone mad or missing or both.
Siena went to investigate the missing creek, had a memory then, of a time when the creek had been beautiful. One spring it had flooded its banks so that when she and her daughter and her son, maybe nine and eleven then, had sat on the swing at the edge, their feet dangling in the risen water. The current was fierce that spring, and they had slipped into the water and been pulled with huge force around two bends until the place where several fallen trees slowed the stream.
Screaming and laughing, the three of them, laughing because of the speed of the current, screaming because the water was still icy with melt-off. Everything so green. Each spring it felt like that, as if a winter of starvation was being assuaged. Siena remembered how that day had been so much better than the expensive asphalt-paved fair. A better thrill, and free. She and her children had looked into one another’s eyes, wide with excitement, barely believing anything could be so wonderful. And then done it again.
How could she have forgotten the creek? It must have been the trauma. But it seemed not only she but everyone in the village had forgotten.
Siena’s heart could not break any more than it had already broken; it had calcified, scarred over. The truth was, she no longer had the strength or hope even to leave and try and find the men. But what was there to stay for? She’d never find Noelle. Noelle was mad or missing or both.
“They don’t have her in a basement,” the girl with black braids said. She was sitting beside the dead fire.
Siena stared at her.
“I heard you say they did one time,” Peter’s friend said. “You were walking, talking, didn’t notice I was here.”
“Just like now. So how do you know?”
“It’s a feeling mostly, not that that’s much help, I’m sure. But it’s pretty strong. I’m Liz, by the way.” Siena stared at Liz. Was she a witch? Witches were always taught to pay great attention to their intuition. “Do you have another?” Liz asked.
“What?”
“Spider web. My friends took the others, and there weren’t any left that I could find.”
“Is that why you’re not in school? You came down here looking for a spider web?”
The girl nodded.
“What’s his name?” Siena asked.
“I’ve known him since kindergarten but he acts like my brother. I can’t get him to see me as potential girlfriend material. Noelle’s spider webs are a charm. She’s the patron saint of love.”
“But I make them, not Noelle.”
“You make them for her,” Liz said. “So she’ll feel your love and come back. So in that way they’re still hers. And I bet she makes them work for us, from wherever she is.”
“Did you know Noelle?” Siena asked.
“We all knew her,” Liz said. “We used to come down here and party. She was a little older. It was a few years ago, back when you still lived in the…” the girl’s voice trailed off, as if she were embarrassed for Siena.
“House?”
“Yes,” Liz said.
“Who lives in my house now?” Siena asked.
“It’s empty. No one will buy it or rent it.”
“Maybe if I stop hating them, they’ll give her back. I just can’t figure it.”
“What did your mother say?” Liz asked.
“Don’t beat yourself up so much.” Siena laughed at the memory. She’d always been hard on herself, and her mother had always told her to love herself. But then her mother had died, and Noelle had disappeared, and then the men had left. Since then Siena had been hard on herself for pretty well every minute of every day.
“Here. I have one in my pocket. If I give it to you will you go back to class?”
“Yes.” The girl held her hand out for Siena’s gift.
“Did you know there’s a creek under all that garbage?” Siena asked as Liz got up to go.
“Really? They’re connected, the missing creek, missing Noelle. I’ll get the others and we’ll clean it.”
“Thanks,” Siena said.
But what did she mean? Thanks for helping clean the creek or thanks for believing Noelle was still alive?
Liz was as good as her word. Over the ensuing weeks the teenagers came and built igloos out of Styrofoam they could stay in when their parents kicked them out for being lippy. They made stick piles and burned them. They carted bags and bags of bottles to the recycling bins on Thursday mornings, until every blue box in the village was full. Even Sally Fish came to help; occasionally she found an object she could sell at her weekend sale.