Juniper Woods Quotes

November--with uncanny witchery in its changed trees. With murky red sunsets flaming in smoky crimson behind the westering hills. With dear days when the austere woods were beautiful and gracious in a dignified serenity of folded hands and closed eyes--days full of a fine, pale sunshine that sifted through the late, leafless gold of the juniper-trees and glimmered among the grey beeches, lighting up evergreen banks of moss and washing the colonnades of the pines. Days with a high-sprung sky of flawless turquoise. Days when an exquisite melancholy seemed to hang over the landscape and dream about the lake. But days, too, of the wild blackness of great autumn storms, followed by dank, wet, streaming nights when there was witch-laughter in the pines and fitful moans among the mainland trees. What cared they? Old Tom had built his roof well, and his chimney drew.

Summertime, oh, summertime, pattern of life indelible, the fade-proof lake, the woods unshatterable, the pasture with the sweetfern and the juniper forever and ever . . . the cottages with their innocent and tranquil design, their tiny docks with the flagpole and the American flag floating against the white clouds in the blue sky, the little paths over the roots of the trees leading from camp to camp. This was the American family at play, escaping the city heat.

Childhood does not last forever,' said Juniper. 'Although I believe the childish soul can endure for an eternity.

We have lived in Oblya before it was even Oblya... When there was only the long, flat steppe that fell into the sea with nothing to stop it. Since the days of the bogatyrs and their gods, when you couldn't pass by a stream without rusalka calling to you sweetly, when you left your third-born sons in the woods for the leshy, and when you prayed in four directions to please the domovoi that lived in the cupboard.

Beatriz breathed in the sweet aromas that lately appealed to her. Those at the forefront were of various honeys in the wooden honey pots anchoring the tablecloth: lavender, orange blossom, and eucalyptus. But the room was a cornucopia of visual and olfactory treats. Marcona almonds were roasting in Reuben's old wood oven, and from the kitchen downstairs wafted scents of all the spices they would be offering their customers fresh over the counter in cloth bags: cinnamon stalks, cloves, anise, ground ginger, juniper berries, finely grated nutmeg. Nora and Beatriz packaged all the spices themselves. They would also offer ribbon-tied bags of Phillip's tea creations served in the café: loose leaves of lemon verbena, dried pennyroyal, black tea with vanilla. All around the room, on the floor, shelves, and counters, were baskets and baskets and baskets of irresistible delights: jars of marmalades and honeys and pure, dark, sugarless chocolate pieces ready to melt with milk at home for the richest hot chocolate. Customers could even buy jars of chocolate shavings, to sprinkle over warmed pears and whipped cream, or over the whipped cream on their hot chocolates. They sold truffles white and dark, with or without rum, biscuits with every variation of nuts and spices, bars small or large of their own chocolate, and dried fruits dipped in chocolate.

James Juniper is the wild sister, fearless as a fox and curious as a crow; she goes first into the tower. Inside she finds a ruin: snowdrifts of ash and char, the skeleton of the staircase still clinging to the walls, greasy soot blackening every stone. And three women... One of them is pale and fey, with ivory antlers sprouting from matted dark hair and yellowed teeth strung in a necklace around her throat. Her dress is ragged and torn, black as a moonless night. She meets Juniper's eyes and Juniper feels a thrill of recognition. Juniper always loved maiden-stories best. Maidens are supposed to be sweet, soft creatures who braid daisy-crowns and turn themselves into laurel trees rather than suffer the loss of their innocence, but the Maiden is none of those things. She's the fierce one, the feral one, the witch who lives free in the wild woods. She's the siren and the selkie, the virgin and the valkyrie; Artemis and Athena. She's the little girl in the red cloak who doesn't run from the wolf but walks arm in arm with him deeper into the woods. Juniper knows her by the savage green of her eyes, the vicious curve of her smile. An adder drapes over her shoulders like a strip of dark velvet, like the carved-yew snake of Juniper's staff come to life. Juniper's smile could be the Maiden's own, sharp and white, mirrored back across the centuries.

The grandfather clock gonged three. Papa spoke a word that sounded like a spell, though I couldn't be sure. It was neither kind nor cruel. It was simply a wheel going into its grooves. All I knew then was that I was falling through time, years opening up into a black abyss that swallowed me whole. When they spit me out I was sixteen again, Dr. Bakay's hands on my budding breasts; I was thirteen, eating my bird-mother for supper; I was elven and Papa was dragging me down the stairs and into the foyer so I could tell fortunes for men with lust in their eyes. I was nine and lying awake at night at Papa's footsteps made the wood ache and groan.

After the light turns off under Grandma's door, I make my way out the back and across the yard, around the pound and then into the woods. Exploring the area at night, running on the trail without getting lost isn't a novice activity at all. It took me weeks of daily runs to brave it without shining a flashlight the whole way.

SNOW Plentiful snow deepens the path to the woods. Hay, hawing, shakes the juniper, Gray squirrel and titmouse trick in hectic moods, Fluff buffeters of down and fur. Jay skates on ice-blue air with bluer flight, Dives in down-soft whirl and comes up light. The dried and dead hackberry dangles white, Tall trees droop down while ground grows up, And the powder-white snuff blows from the wind’s lip…

The late fall weather was perfect for the picking of herbs, and they scoured the woods and moors. Barber especially wanted purslane; steeped in the Specific, it produced an agent that would cause fevers to break and dissipate. To his disappointment, they found none. Some things were more easily gathered, such as red rose petals for poultices, and thyme and acorns to be powdered and mixed with fat and spread on neck pustules. Others required hard work, like the digging of yew root that would help a pregnant woman to hold back her fetus. They collected lemon grass and dill for urinary problems, marshy sweet flag to fight deterioration of memory because of moist and cold humors, juniper berries to be boiled for opening blocked nasal passages, lupine for hot packs to draw abscesses, and myrtle and mallow to soothe itchy rashes.

It’s still early, and there’s a stillness to the air that reminds Juniper of walking the mountainside just before dawn, in that silent second after the night-creatures have bedded down but before the morning-birds have started up. It feels secret, stolen out of time, like you might see the ragged point of a witch’s hat or the gleam of dragon-scales in the shadows. Juniper closes her eyes and pretends the wood-pulp pages around her are wet and alive, pumping with sap instead of ink.

She turns back once before she sweeps into the recesses of the office, her apple-seed mouth unshriveling very slightly. “It’s not that I don’t understand. Every woman has once wanted what she shouldn’t, what she can’t have. I wish…” Juniper wonders if Miss Stone was ever a little listening to her grandmother’s stories about the Maiden riding her white stag through the woods, the Mother striding into battle. If she once dreamed of wielding swords rather than slogans. Miss Stone gives her shoulders a stern little shake. “I wish we might make use of every tool in our pursuit of justice. But I’m afraid the modern woman cannot afford to be sidetracked by moonbeams and witch-tales.” Juniper smiles back as pleasantly as she knows how and Bella whispers, “yes, of course” beside her. But there’s a look in Bella’s eyes as she says it, a struck-flint spark that makes Juniper think that her sister doesn’t intend to give up her moonbeams or witch-tales at all; that maybe, she too, wants another kind of power.

Home is twenty-three acres on the west side of the Big Sandy River. Home is dogwoods blooming like pink-tipped pearls in the deep woods and the sharp smell of spring onions underfoot, the overgrown patch where the old barn burned and the mountainside so green and wet and alive it makes her eyes ache. Home is the place that beats like a second heart behind Juniper’s ribs.

Juniper had her grandfather’s hunger for growing things. He’d tolerated her visiting his woods as long as he could, but there could be only one Forest Lord. He’d told her kindly but firmly to find her own wood. She could not go back, or he’d kill her. “Be sure to write, let me know how you’re doing,” he’d said, and meant it. After all, they were family.

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I avoided Ione, moving with weary feet to meet my father and half sisters in a cluster of other Blunder families. Most faces I had not seen in years, but I knew them by the tree insignias sewn into their tunics and gowns. Spindle, Hawthorn, Juniper, Beech, Gorse, Ash, and so on. It was the history of our kingdom—an ancient homage to the Spirit of the Wood—to take the name of the trees.