Warrenville is and was the kind of East Coast rural that could’ve been cut and pasted from the deepest bits of the Iron Belt and slapped somewhere George Washington once laid his pretty head when the British were still a pressing issue. Nestled between two high-ways, it’s about an hour from Boston and two to New York, but home to little more than rolling fields and rustic and rusting barns that might’ve been that picturesque red, once, but the wind-beaten and time-worn wood shingle suits them better.
Warrenville's mostly hills. If you’re driving through (and everybody’s only ever driving through) ...
... you’d bet cows outnumber people by about three to one, although chickens have supreme reign. It didn’t need more than a one-room schoolhouse ‘till 1960. There’s no grocery store: if you don’t grow or slaughter it, you've either got a neighbor who does or you’re one of the live-in outsiders who better not shop too long at a place in town anyway. Matter of fact, there’s no pharmacy, either. No doctor, although a dentist just moved into what the town calls a strip mall but the locals call an ugly mess built on faulty gas lines, so we’ll see. Not like the water’s got fluoride, given as it’s all wells or well-filtered cowponds, so it’s not the worst idea. Warrenville does have three long-lived vets, though, for all the cows and in case of emergency, and eleven churches and nine boneyards and two gas stations where you can play lotto and get cigarettes. One even got a Dunkin’ tacked onto it, just in case you forgot this was still true New England, and they also went and put a dollar store where the old ice cream place used to stand and that’s been doing fine. Better than the packies, even, the classic choice for buying eclectic crap by the cash register on weekends, although they’ll never truly die. Not much to do but drink, after all, not once the corn’s reaped and the snow rolls in.
And Warrenville put all of this more or less along what you could call Main St.: one long road with about three names and which cuts clean from one highway to the other. It’s even paved all the way, which was good for the trucks that roar through but bad for the rest of us if it rains. It’s the slugs and the worms, really: they come out when the asphalt’s wet, not knowing any better, and the barreling pick-ups turn them straight to slime everybody else is left to skid through. Nevermind the bottle glass, which at least grinds down with gravel or dirt, but there on the tar just sits and glitters.
Anyway, most follow Main St. and never even know they’re here, which is near the wisest bet. GPS doesn’t work. You’d think it might, on account of the proximity to civilization the dense woods try so hard to hide, but it dies when you cross the town line and doesn’t come back ‘till you’ve hit the next exit.
Now the wisest bet is, of course, to never come to Warrenville at all. Like that’s never really a choice you get to make.
And then there’s the matter of Nimue: huntress of many names, bearer of one infamous sword.
I did not expect to find the Lady of the Lake at the bottom of a small bog-pond bastard, chiefly notable for its leopard frog population and year-round swarms of gnats and gnat-like beings. But she, like so many, seems to have fallen on hard times.
At first meeting I was awestruck, of course, like anyone when meeting a celebrity of such high caliber. She was gracious, and radiant (figuratively); an all-around pleasure to speak to.
Then the second time I found her a bit smothering. Pent-up, perhaps.
The next few times I fear I brushed her off a little coldly, not wanting to hear yet another embittered retelling of the same old legends, and the taps ran nothing but silt for days. When I drove to the gas station to get a gallon of water, I found the road leading home had inexplicably flooded as well, although it hadn’t otherwise rained since Encounter 0.
Anyway, I’ve been avoiding walking towards the pond now (even if I miss the tadpoles) and the Crows have been bringing pearls instead of the usual tiny stones. It’s a welcome change in pace: they have a certain iridescence to them that outshines most beauties.
We creep into the woods at midnight to pry pearls from the roots of hickory trees older than our greatest grandmothers. We hide them in our deepest pockets and skirt the edges of mushroom circles; dance along mossy stones until the golden light left on spills through skeleton boughs and guides us home. We leave our treasures on the workbench with a bowl of milk and a drop of honey, and when we return in the morning, find a Dryad’s gift waiting.
Found in kitchen drawer on napkin: dated March 3rd, 1998
They appear most often behind the basement door. Have deliveries sent to front porch ONLY.
Copelandia psilocybe (tan cap, dark edge), the classic red toadstool, and puffballs tend to be the nastiest. Leave milk & honey on the eastern window & close all the curtains till morning.
If the horseshoe falls off the door, have Smith down the way forge a new one. Bury the first one out back by the treeline. Keep the deadbolt drawn.
A large wine stain obscures several further points, followed by:
DO NOT cut the birch tree out back. It’s not rotted. It’s just waiting.
