“You have to make your own magic.” Tilly’s mother had drunk deeply of the girl-boss bullshit early and was addicted. “There are no wishing wells or fairy godmothers, you have to make the most of every opportunity. Turn that chunk of coal into a diamond!” The platitudes and self-help mantras were exhausting. Her mother wanted her to move in the right circles, with the right people, in the right places, all the time. And her daddy would just smile when she came to him frustrated by the meticulously full social calendar her mother mandated during the school year.

“Summer’s only a heartbeat away,” he’d remind her. “Your mama means well, and she knows how the real world works. We wouldn’t have made it this far without her and we’d smell like sheep all the time.”

Daddy’s family was cash-poor but well-heeled in the way those things are reckoned even today, but they started off as soldier pirates. That’s how Tilly liked to think of them. Among the first European settlers to cross the Appalachians, Daddy’s great-great-great took payment for military service in the Revolution in land that wasn’t the fledgling government’s to give. By and by they’d clung to it and worked the soil-booty for so long now that Alden’s Acres was celebrated as a Pioneer Century Farm. One that Grandmama converted to raising sheep after Papaw passed. A paradise of rolling green fields dotted with trees and patchy forest nourished by the jagged creek that bore the family name once maps were drawn up.

Her love for it built up with each visit like silt in that creek bed. Tilly wished she could live her whole life on the farm instead of just a weekend here and there and ever-shortening summers. But Tilly’s father had brushed the dirt from his boots and wanted none of it. So, Tilly’s regular bedroom was in a house too big for its lot. Neighbors so close she had to pull her window shades at night. At Grandmama’s, a girl could stand naked in the magic that was moonlight, as she did just now.

Tilly swayed a little before the wide-open window letting the night air cool skin still warm from the day’s adventures. The owls never called her indecent. The bats and frogs paid her no mind. Certainly, Peaches, the lemon beagle who Grandmama said was just hers, didn’t wake up from her spot on the bed and scold her for the brazenness of a moon bath. The cool light made it almost possible to feel the activity of her every cell.

Most of the time she felt like she existed along a veneer, on the packaging of a life rather than the actual thing itself. Her school with its just-so uniforms and her curly red hair always pulled in a tight ponytail. Tedious events Tilly was shepherded to with the daughters of her mother’s own friends. And the horror of cotillion classes, those even her daddy believed were silly. Who thought pairing random sophomores together and making them learn ballroom dance after an hour of formal dining was a good idea? An idiot, that’s who.

Five days a week, ten months a year, her world was spun sugar. Fancy and meant to delight, but it dulled her appetite. But here there was rhubarb compote spread thick on dark bread and Tilly needed a balance of sweet and tart. The complex, dirty delight of these hills and trees not the brightly colored and packaged-for-your-convenience sweet.

Tilly sank down on the soft cotton quilt. Here—under her hand, this creature’s velvet ears and pink tongue, this was the center of the real world. Peaches was the best dog. Affectionate and exuberant; hungry to explore each new day in a way that was the only honest way to be. Days that satisfied her beagle always satisfied Tilly, too. They were one heart—girl and dog on a Middle Tennessee farm at the end of a summer day almost too hot to enjoy, but for the relief of wading for crawdads in the creek. Moonlight filled the room up for dreaming and Tilly crawled into her narrow bed. She tucked her feet under the beagle’s soft belly and fell asleep smiling. This summer was going to be magical and not a right person, place, or circle to be found. Everything the other ten months of the year was not.

***

From the rise of the back porch Tilly could see a dog-shaped speck trotting out beyond the near field to the tree line. She’d lingered over breakfast with Grandmama and had insisted on washing all the dishes and wiping them dry rather than leaving them on the drain board. If her last week on the farm didn’t start, then it couldn’t end, could it? It seemed fitting that the early August skies threatened storms just as she herself was brewing with unsettled energy.

“Peaches!” Tilly called out over the sheep when she was done, but the beagle didn’t come running. The grass was unmown except by the cropping of the flock beyond the yard. Grandmama let the rambles ramble except for a patch close to the house, a mote of green, clipped neatly for company. Thinking the dog was obscured by grasses, Tilly picked her way down the slope and up again, leaf hoppers arcing across her path like dancers before a queen. She looked and looked and finally, as she came closer to the creek, she saw a beagle-shaped sprawl under a huge tulip poplar just ahead. A sharp metallic scent on the morning breeze caused her nose to wrinkle. The hound’s sides were heaving and her tongue was wide and flat as it lolled, an external expression of her heartbeat with each pant.

“Hey, sweet girl! What’cha doing way out here?”  

Peaches confined her tongue behind her teeth and lengthened her neck, ears alert. Tilly was close enough now to see what kept the dog’s attention. A soft, grey body lay still, the hound’s paw across its neck. The dog released her tongue again to pant but watched Tilly approach with her head turned slightly away. Suddenly Tilly was struck that this was not her lemon beagle. The markings weren’t quite right, and this hound held itself differently. The dog looked wary, as if concerned about what Tilly would do next.

A distant whistle came from across the creek. The dog in front of her whined but didn’t rise. They stared at each other, and Tilly wondered if the dog was as confused by her as she was with it. The same long series of whistled tones came again, closer now.

“Jack! Come here…come on now…Jack!” A boy was calling.

“Are you Jack?” Tilly asked the dog and was answered by a cocking of the beagle’s head to one side. “He’s here!” she called out toward the bank and soon a face appeared among the leaves. “I don’t think he’ll come, he’s protecting his kill from me,” she said.

“His kill?”

“A rabbit—I think. It’s too big to be a squirrel.”

She could see all of the boy now as he sat down on the far bank and took off his shoes. He looked young, but probably about her own age. He had that long look about him that most boys in her class did. This boy hardly needed to roll up his jeans to cross the creek. They didn’t look uncomfortable, but he’d clearly grown up not out since he’d gotten them. His longish brown hair was covered in a worn ballcap, and his tan skin was the coppery warmth of a summer spent outside. She had the fleeting thought that this boy’s mother probably never badgered him into reapplying sunscreen at the pool. Actually, this boy didn’t look like any of the boys at her parent’s club or her cotillion class. He looked unburdened by that world. He flashed a white smile at her as he climbed through the brush and up the near bank.

“Got you a rabbit? Good boy!” he said as he knocked the leaves off his hat and pulled it back on low over his forehead. The dog nudged at the gray body with his nose and smiled up at the boy. “I’m Clint, who’re you?”

Of course you are, she thought. A perfect name for him, she loved alignments like that. His name wreathed his body like salty butter on sweet corn. But she couldn’t voice her thought out loud, not in company. She answered, “Tilly Alden.”

“Oh! You’re Mare Alden’s little one?”

She scrunched up her nose a little.

“I guess so? She’s my grandmother.”

“Huh. I ain’t never seen you around before. You new?”

“No.” It came out more indignant than she intended. “I’ve been here all summer.”

He snorted a little. “That’s new.” But the smile he gave her was disarming. “What are you doing way out here? There’s a storm coming you know. And you don’t look like the kind of girl who hunts rabbit.”

“What does that mean?”

“Hey, no offense, it’s just, those shoes just look awfully fancy for crossing creeks.”

Tilly looked down at her sparkly blue Kate Spade, Keds. They were her mother’s concession to Tilly wanting casual clothes for this summer outside town. Her mother would think she’d ruined them, she’d replaced the ribbon laces with plain white shoelaces as soon as she got here. The glitter was nearly worn away on the inner right heel where she always scraped her foot climbing the big sycamore. Still, compared to the ratty sneakers that hung from Clint’s hand they looked—resplendent.

“Yeah, well…” No words came to mind as he looked at her curiously. She kicked at a mound of dirt and stepped quickly away when red ants erupted from the remains of their neat home. “I hunt,” she blurted. “Have you seen another lemon beagle around? I thought Jack was Peaches when I came down the hill.”

“Nope, but I’ll help you hunt.” He winked, and she knew that he didn’t believe she’d ever hunted a day in her life. “I bet Jack can find her. They’re littermates you know. They like to visit.” Clint picked up a stout fallen stick and Jack sounded no complaint when the boy affixed the rabbit to it so easily that Tilly could tell that he’d done the same thing a million times. Tilly knew Peaches came from a neighbor’s litter, but she hadn’t seen any other dogs around all summer other than Grandmama’s aussies. They were happy in their work and rarely left the flock.

“I’ve already looked all her usual places.”

“Did you check down by the quarry?” The boy was stuffing sock feet back into his shoes. “Jack heads that way sometimes cause there’s a deer trail that goes down to the pool. He thinks he’s a mighty hunter, ya see.”

“The quarry? Is it close?” She looked at the darkening sky to the west as the breeze picked up.

“Not too far. Come on, we’ll show you.”

***

How had she never been here before? She marveled as she followed the boy and his dog down an overgrown deer path which opened up to reveal a deep gash in the terrain. They’d been walking a good while and the smell of rain was potent. She was beginning to change her mind about following the boy and his dog so easily when suddenly they were there. Kudzu and Virginia Creeper cascaded down from the rim and trees framed the entire thing with a green fringe that gave a lush privacy to the hollow. It was amazing.  But there was no sign of Peaches.

“I don’t see her.”

“Oh, this isn’t really it yet.” Clint looked back over his shoulder at her and waved her on.

They descended to the quarry floor and followed Jack up to an enormous, stacked stone column, a remnant of abandoned industry. As she came around the column a cool breeze sent a shiver over her skin. It had to be twenty degrees cooler here than at the top. She wished she’d known about this place during that awful stretch of heat in mid-July, but she had a few days yet to explore. A delightful trickling sound added to the refreshment of the air and Tilly stopped to touch the cool water that sprang from the earth. It widened quickly becoming a narrow stream that and led them, as if they were welcome guests, from the rocky edifice to a deep pool hidden from the world.

“Is that your girl?” Clint motioned to the form curled up under a lone tree on the far side of the pool.

“Peaches?” she called. The dog rose and sprinted around the pool on a narrow, nearly invisible ledge. She bounded up and jumped leaving muddy paw prints on Tilly’s rosy capris, and now everything she’d brought from home was marked by the season. Her mother would insist she throw it all out, expensive garments ruined by Tilly’s carelessness and her filthy animal.

“How did you get all the way down here?” she asked. The dog pushed against her hand until Tilly knelt on the ground and gave the full ear and neck scratches that the nuzzling signaled. “My sweet girl…” she murmured into the beagle’s soft fur.

“I knew we’d find her,” Clint said. He’d picked up a handful of rocks and was skipping them across the water’s surface. Peaches gave her a lick and took off after Jack, both noses to the ground at the edge of the pool. She watched the matched hounds tracking who knows what until she heard a thump that wasn’t another rock in the water.

“Since we’re here, I’m going in,” Clint said dropping his second shoe and tossing his hat down after.

Tilly stared frozen in place as the boy stripped off his t-shirt and jeans. Finally, her brain flashed a warning that she was far from the farmhouse, with a boy she hardly knew, and she didn’t have her phone. She didn’t get the sense he meant her harm. He’d been helpful, he was a neighbor, and his dog was Peaches’ brother – they were practically related.

“Don’t you swim?” he asked hopping on one foot to shuck off one sock and then the other.

“Um…yeah?” But she couldn’t do that, could she? Suddenly the cool, sheltered paradise felt like a million degrees, and she wanted nothing more than to follow the boy into the pool. “But the storm…” She looked up to give herself a moment to think as much as anything and saw only blue, not a cloud in sight.

“What storm?” he said, ending her examination of the sky. He stood for a moment with his fists at the wide elastic band of his navy underwear, the son of a pirate. His body was thin, with ropy muscles that pulled under skin that was tanned above his boxers and pale below. Clint gave her a smile like summer lightning as he turned away. “Well, come on then.”

A laugh escaped her. Her mother would not approve. Heck, Grandmama wouldn’t either.

She sat on a flat stone and untied her sneakers.

***

Clint wasn’t paying attention to her as she attempted to unzip and unbutton as if she did this type of thing all the time. At least, she didn’t think he was. As soon as he dove in, the boy swam to the far side of the pool. Now he floated, long limbs outstretched, a starboy in a wide darkness lit by the sun. She hesitated with the last button, but he remained still. The boys at cotillion were always peering surreptitiously at the flesh of girls revealed by their party dresses. At school looks were different, but omnipresent. Tilly was rarely noticed in either situation. Still, she could usually feel the graze of their regard.

This strange boy seemed to have forgotten she existed. Even the dogs had finished their exploration and retreated to settle against each other in a patch of grass. The breeze had stopped, and the sun was directly overhead. She’d feel the sun’s attention tomorrow for certain. She should call for Peaches and come back tomorrow with a towel and the right SPF.

She dropped her clothes and tip-toed to the edge.

The water was pleasantly warm against her calves as she slipped a foot through the mirrored surface. She could do this. She pulled in her stomach and raised her arms over her head. She rose up on her toes and tipped, as elegantly as she could manage. Then, when it was too late to change her mind, the pool revealed a chilly heart that took her breath. She shot up to the surface spluttering.

“Just lay back and float.”

Tilly’s heart raced to hear Clint suddenly close by. How had he swum over without her hearing?

“Really. The sun only warms the top bit. It’s like whipped cream on banana pudding, you know? I mean, it’s all good, but that top layer, mostly cream with a hint of banana? That’s the best.”

She pulled her legs up to her chest. That was better.

“Not a fan,” she said. His body was churning up colder currents as he treaded water next to her.

“Seriously? Everyone likes banana pudding.” His foot brushed her knee as he folded his legs and then stretched back out on the surface. “Just lay back.”

She leaned back and let herself go until she reached an equilibrium of sun-warmed thighs and hair drifting sleek around her ears. She felt like Ophelia in that painting in Grandmama’s library, except Tilly was very much alive.

“I don’t. But you’re right, this is perfect.”

“Of course, I am.” He flicked water at her face. “What kind of fancy shit do you like then? Strawberries and caviar?”

“God, no,” she giggled. “That would be nasty. Strawberries and cream are good, but I like peaches best.”

“I should have guessed that.” He paddled his hands and glided closer. “Who names a dog after fruit?”

“It’s a great name. Who names a dog Jack?” She paddled away.

“You’re right. It’s odd, but he looked like a Jack to me.”

“Well, she makes me think of being here and peaches are perfect, so she looked like a Peaches to me.”

He dropped his legs and looked at her then. She felt his attention and lowered her legs, too. This close, and without his ballcap hiding them, she could tell his eyes weren’t brown but a deep green. She felt the path of his eyes from her face to the drops of water running off her hair onto her shoulder.

“You don’t look like a Tilly to me.”

Her breath caught.

“You look more like…I don’t know. Something more,” he said.

Now her heart was racing. She never told anyone her real name. Her mother had insisted on the nickname after conceding to Grandmama’s wishes to give her the family name.

“Tilly is what everyone calls me. I’m not telling you my real name – it’s too awful.”

“Ok. Come on, not-really-Tilly,” he said and started swimming away. “You’re gonna love this. It’s like you and your little hound were meant to be here.”

Tilly followed Clint across the pool and, as they came closer to the far side, saw the stones cut away in semi-regular chunks rising out of the pool-like steps. And the ledge was more than the narrow strip she’d thought, but a mossy beach.

“We can lay out here and follow the ledge back to our clothes once we’re dry.” He navigated the quarried treads out of the pool with practiced ease. The water sheeting down his body narrowed into mesmerizing rivulets as they poured from his hair and the hem of his boxers.

“This is unreal,” she muttered and forced herself to look away at her own hands pushing the water away in little circles as she held herself in place. It was ridiculous to be here, but here was the only place she wanted to be. Tilly swam to the ledge and sat on a submerged tread with only her shoulders exposed. “You must come here all the time.”

“I do.” He had moved farther away and was reaching up into the leafy branches of the tree. He jumped and the branches shook with his attack. “Got ‘em!” He turned with a wide grin and Tilly saw a small yellow fruit in each of his tanned hands. “The last good ones of the year.”

“What are they?”

The boy made his way back to the lip of the pool and shook his hands off after dunking the fruit in the water. “Not really sure, but they taste like peaches.”

He must have seen her skeptical expression because he laughed a little. “They’re not gonna hurt you, I promise. I eat them all the time when they’re ripe.”

Clint set the fruits on a smooth stone where they looked like the perfect centerpiece on a table set for some nature goddess or fairy queen.

“But they don’t keep. I’ve tried bringing a few home to save for later, but they only taste right fresh off the tree.” Clint sat on the far side of the little table and stretched his legs out in the sun. He leaned back on his elbows and closed his eyes face glowing in the sunlight.

“Mmmm. We’ll let the sun warm them on the stone a little and then feast,” he said and laid flat putting an arm across his eyes. It was like he knew she was reluctant to come up out of the darkness of the pool. Watching his arm for movement, she scaled the slippery rocks. The grass on this side was soft and grew through a springy mat of mosses that were delicious underfoot. The shade from the tree would be just enough for her skin to dry but not burn. It really was perfect.

“I know, right?” he said with another charming smile. She must have sighed out loud.

As they lay near each other with eyes closed Clint told her ridiculous things he’d done with Jack and got her to tell stories of the dumb things she’d done back home. They ate the fruit, and it was the most luscious thing she’d ever put in her mouth. He was so easy to talk to. He asked interesting questions and laughed in all the right places. Each time she looked over at him he was smiling, but his eyes were closed. Soon the sun was no longer directly overhead and the treetops that fringed the quarry cast shadows across half the pool. They’d fallen into a long, comfortable silence and Tilly was sure Clint had fallen asleep when he spoke.

“You said you’d stay here if you could. Do you really want to?”

“Who would ever want to leave? I suppose we have to go home eventually since we ate the last fruit, though.” She tossed the blade of grass she’d been twirling at him.

As she reached to pick more, he laid a hand on her wrist stopping her. His fingers were gentle, but the touch scorched. She pulled away and tried to hide the embarrassed flush she could feel spreading across her face and chest by scanning the rim of the quarry.

“But…we probably should go. I mean, it’s getting late.” It was only now occurring to her that this wasn’t a dream, and someone really could catch them laying in their underwear in the moss. “Everyone has to go home, right?”

“I know a way you could come back anytime you needed to, but you’d have to really want it. And you’d have to trust me enough to tell me your real name.” He reached out and ran a finger along her jaw pulling her gaze back to him.

A shiver traveled along her spine, and she leaned in before her brain caught up and she pulled back. “I…um. What do you mean?” The question slipped from her lips as a whisper even as her brain was a frozen mess. “We’ve just met…”

“No. Not that.” He dropped his hand and pushed his hair out of his eyes. “Jeez, what do you take me for? I’m no pirate. It’s just…you said you hate all the things you have to do back in your world, and I know how you can get back to see Peaches, whenever you want.”

“That would be—wonderful, but I don’t have a car or anything. I’ll be back next June…”

 “Right, of course,” he said and looked away.

If she could choose, she would stay, roaming these hills with Peaches and now maybe Jack and Clint, too. “I would, you know. But my mother would never let me.”

“She doesn’t need to know,” he said and sat up cross-legged and facing her fully. She scrambled to do the same. “Look, Tilly, I’m serious.” There was a firm set to his mouth so different from his easy smile. “I like you. You’re funny and smart and we share a love for proper dogs. Won’t you tell me your real name?”

“Why do you need to know? It’s so ugly. I’m probably going to change it officially when I’m old enough.”

“Do you have a heart name, then? There are ways to use hidden names, but the art lays out easiest if we use the name given at birth.”

A very unladylike sound erupted from her. “The art?”

He smiled with a patience of years in his green eyes that didn’t match his face.

“Yes, a charm really. A trifle.” He reached behind his back and then held out a third golden fruit but this one was swollen and ruddy about the stem dimple.

“What the hell?” She stared at it in his hand trying to make sense of what had just happened.

“It’s more like heaven than that, I promise – see?” He took a bite and as soon as his teeth broke the skin the aroma filled her head and her mouth watered. “Take it.”

She did.

***

Tilly traced the monogram on her floral duffel bag as she rode in the backseat of her father’s king cab. That the letters spelt OAK was the only thing she’d ever liked about it, until now. Now her name was a safety hatch. Her mother was still talking about all the things she’d missed and all the other things she’d been signed up for when school started back on Monday. Apparently, her junior year was going to include an impressive layer of civic-minded volunteer work to add even more luster to her bespoke education.

“Ottoline Kenner Alden! Are you listening?” Her mother looked at her in the rearview mirror. “Get that trash out of my sight.”

“Yes, ma’am. But it’s not trash, it’s art.” Tilly pressed the carved pit to her lips and then let it fall down her shirt on its silver chain.

“Honestly! Why your mother let her buy such a thing I can’t understand. It’s gross.” And so her mother went on while her father kept his stony eyes on the traffic heading back into town.

The boy taught her how to form each strange word as he carved her initials into the woody heart of the fruit. She’d practiced stringing together each syllable and inflection, there on the ledge above their pool, with more concentration than she’d given any French lesson. Tilly pressed the pit against her sternum. She knew his true name and he knew hers, and with the promise of the charm she would slip back to the mossy paradise for a few hours with the new moon, when only the stars would see. She could be her whole self under the sky, arms wide. And the fact that she could made the artificially flavored weeks ahead of her bearable. She’d never wished the moon away before, but now the dark couldn’t come fast enough.

<THE END>