Wakening from the Dreaming Forest There (Peg Powell, PG)
Title: Wakening from the Dreaming Forest There
Author: athenejen
Fandom: Pamela Dean - Tam Lin
Rating: PG
Warnings: None.
Prompt: 92) Nine-tenths of our suffering is caused by others not thinking so much of us as we think they ought. -- Mary Lyon. Interestingly, the essence of the story turned out to be the exact opposite of this sentiment, in a way.
Summary: In which Peg is pursued, and decides.
Author’s Notes: Enormous thanks to farwing for her super-speedy, helpful beta, and to gehayi for organizing this round of femgenficathon. The title and cut tag are from the poem “Lost in the Forest,” by Pablo Neruda. The concept of this fic was very loosely inspired by the stories of Daphne and Metis from Greek mythology. It is one possible version of Peg Powell’s story, and may not make much sense if you haven’t read the book. The style and structure are both a bit experimental; all feedback and constructive criticism is welcomed and cherished.
~
Peg Powell falls in love for the first time at the very beginning of her freshman year, sitting at a smooth-worn desk second from the back, near the window. Professor Medeous strides into the classroom, book in hand, and proclaims: “Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilleus and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians.” Her voice is sonorous and compelling, her hair flares out behind her before falling down her back in a red-and-black glistening stream, and her face glows sharp and delicate as she speaks. But that is not the moment Peg falls in love.
Then Medeous repeats the line, in liquid, flawless classical Greek.
By the time Medeous ends the stanza, Peg knows her heart is no longer her own. She is not sure if her love is for the poetry or for the language, for the story or for Medeous, but it hardly matters.
By the end of her semester of Greek 2, Peg can feel how each vowel thrums differently through her bones, and she knows she’ll be declaring Classics at the end of the year.
She does, and then spends the rest of the brisk Minnesota spring afternoon reclining under her favorite elm tree, gazing in soft-focus at the chapel tower through the leaves. She thinks of the many trees that surrounded her in her childhood, and smiles.
When she muses on taking Homer next year, on reading the whole of The Iliad for real, her entire body trembles, and with each breath she takes, she breathes out pure desire. For oh, she wants. And she hopes it will never stop, the way it burns her straight through.
She names the elm tree Aeneas.
~
The day after All Hallows Eve, her sophomore year, Peg Powell sits beneath the rustling poplars of the Upper Arboretum, back curled up against one of the largest. She thinks about the party last night, and the way she can’t seem to remember how she got from Janet’s room back to her own; or rather, she’s not sure how she did so in a way that would muddy up her good brown boots and the ivory lace hem of her nightgown, given that Janet and Molly and Tina live just down the hall.
She leans her head against the tree trunk and lets her mind drift⎯her best memory trick⎯but all that does is make her heart flutter weirdly fast, as if rebelling against her mind slowing down.
She hears the rustle of brittle leaves, and opens her eyes to see Kit Lane fold himself gracefully onto the grass next to her.
He smiles at her, mischievously, and addresses her: “Exquisite figure, as of heaven’s shaping! She of the white arms, how goes it?”
As she looks at him, his expression goes serious, and he reaches out with a long hand to cradle her face in his palm. The pad of his thumb brushes feather-light over her cheekbone, tenderly, and his ethereal features seem closer and closer each time she blinks.
She can feel his breath warm against her lips; his smooth dark hair smells faintly of lavender.
And oh, she wants. But she sees the lines of his past threading hazily through him, the shape of the letters ancient and by now so familiar, and she knows he would burn her straight through.
She smiles back, and then goes back to gazing at the patchwork sunlight sifting into the grove.
She names her poplar Herodotus.
~
Peg Powell sits in the dimmest corner of Taylor dining hall, letting tears drip one by one into her cereal. It is her junior year, another Hallowe’en come and gone.
She can’t take the anger of Antigone; she can’t deal with Aristophanes’ sarcasm.
And she can’t face the fact that she’s started sleepwalking again, and is far more sure than she would like to be that her roommate’s prescription of herb tea and bedrest is doing nothing to prevent it. This morning she woke up disoriented and distracted by flashes of memory⎯all hooded skies and pinpoint stars and wet, wet grass⎯and with a little pile of books from the Victoria Thompson collection stacked neatly on her bedside table. Books that certainly had not been there the night before.
Her knuckles are turning white where she’s clasping the table too hard, but she can’t seem to stop.
Nicholas Tooley slips into the seat across from hers and regards her soberly, or at least as sober as he ever gets. “Peg.”
“Nick.” She smiles at him through her tears.
He gently pries her fingers off the table, then clasps both her hands in his.
“Ay me! for aught that I could ever read, could ever hear by tale or history,” he begins, quietly. She whispers the next line along with him, “the course of true love never did run smooth.”
As he continues Lysander’s speech of mildly ironic reassurance, projecting amusement and empathy in equal measure, she watches the branches of a willow tap repeatedly against one of Taylor’s narrow basement windows. She listens to the melody of his voice, lets the heat of his hands on hers comfort her. And oh, does she ever want.
But she knows, she knows, she can hear it in every assonance and consonance and alliterative phrase, see it in his lively brown eyes⎯he would burn her right up, and straight through.
Afterwards, she goes outside and puts her palm to the willow’s trunk, runs her fingers over the supple branches and withered leaves, and breathes in the scent of its bark, damp and alive.
She names it Ariadne.
~
It is the second to last week of her senior year at Blackstock College. Peg Powell is hunched over her desk, frowning at her pages and pages of thesis notes⎯Herodotus as mythological literature. She looks up when her roommate Sharon sticks her head through the door, saying, in an astonished voice, “You’ve got a phone call.”
Admittedly, her astonishment is understandable, as this is the first phone call Peg has gotten in all four years they have roomed together. Her parents are more of the letter-writing type.
She heads down the hallway and picks up the phone. “Hello?”
“Peg!” Her father’s normally mellow baritone has gone almost reedy in his obvious agitation. “You have to come home right away. Your grandfather passed away last night, all of a sudden. The doctors think it was a heart attack. The funeral’s in two days, and the will-reading right after. Your mother needs you. Please come home.”
Peg catches the first train east in the morning, and just barely makes it back to Philadelphia in time for the funeral.
At the gravesite, she finds herself wishing for more trees, less grass. Between the arboretum and the orchard and the landscaped garden, Grandpa Jacobson’s estate had so many different trees, Peg still hasn’t managed to memorize them all. She thinks they should have buried him there instead of in this well-trimmed expanse of a cemetery⎯it seems strange to think of him resting for eternity in someplace so very flat and manicured.
She lets her parents go on to the will-reading without her, opting instead to climb the one majestic maple near the gate of the cemetery. It refuses to be named, and instead they just exist for awhile, together.
When her parents come to retrieve her, they both look more shocked than she has ever seen them. She drops back down to the ground, and looks at them expectantly.
Her father says, “Peg. Peg, he gave you the arboretum and the orchard.” He holds out a business card. “It’s up to you to decide if you want them. The orchard makes for a decent living, but if you want to keep them you’ll have to move to the estate, and there’s a lot of upkeep to take care of. It might be easier just to sell and invest the money, especially if you decide to go to graduate school. But it’s your choice. Here’s the executor’s card. Just, when you decide, call him.”
Peg goes home that evening and eats dinner absentmindedly, barely noticing her parents’ conversation at the other end of the table. After dinner she clears the table, helps her mom put away leftovers, and then walks up the stairs and sits down at her desk.
She pulls the half-finished draft of her honors thesis out of her suitcase and stares down at it. She knows that if she finishes it, if she goes back to Blackstock and turns it in, she’ll never escape Medeous’ orbit.
She thinks of the maple tree, of the orchard she ran wild in as a child, of Ariadne and Herodotus and Aeneas.
She stands, gathers up all the pages into her arms, and walks downstairs to her father’s study. He’s drowsed off in the armchair near the corner, finger still between the pages of his book to hold his place. She walks past him and moves to the fireplace, and without ceremony, throws her thesis into the fire.
The flames flare bright, blinding. The fire crackles and sizzles and turns her breath to smoke. She shudders, and then smiles.
She goes to the phone in the hallway, pulls out the executor’s card, and dials the number.
She doesn’t breathe in again until she hears his voice, “Wilson Spencer, attorney at law.”
“Peg Powell.”
“Ah.” He sounds unsurprised to hear from her, despite the late hour. “So, have you decided? Are you going to keep the arboretum and the orchard?”
And she replies, desperate and grateful and calm, “Yes.”
~
Additional Notes: The quote at the beginning is the first line of Lattimore’s translation of The Iliad. Kit’s greeting addresses Peg as the Phaiákian princess Nausikaa, from the Fitzgerald translation of The Odyssey. Nick’s words of comfort are, of course, from William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Author: athenejen
Fandom: Pamela Dean - Tam Lin
Rating: PG
Warnings: None.
Prompt: 92) Nine-tenths of our suffering is caused by others not thinking so much of us as we think they ought. -- Mary Lyon. Interestingly, the essence of the story turned out to be the exact opposite of this sentiment, in a way.
Summary: In which Peg is pursued, and decides.
Author’s Notes: Enormous thanks to farwing for her super-speedy, helpful beta, and to gehayi for organizing this round of femgenficathon. The title and cut tag are from the poem “Lost in the Forest,” by Pablo Neruda. The concept of this fic was very loosely inspired by the stories of Daphne and Metis from Greek mythology. It is one possible version of Peg Powell’s story, and may not make much sense if you haven’t read the book. The style and structure are both a bit experimental; all feedback and constructive criticism is welcomed and cherished.
~
Peg Powell falls in love for the first time at the very beginning of her freshman year, sitting at a smooth-worn desk second from the back, near the window. Professor Medeous strides into the classroom, book in hand, and proclaims: “Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilleus and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians.” Her voice is sonorous and compelling, her hair flares out behind her before falling down her back in a red-and-black glistening stream, and her face glows sharp and delicate as she speaks. But that is not the moment Peg falls in love.
Then Medeous repeats the line, in liquid, flawless classical Greek.
By the time Medeous ends the stanza, Peg knows her heart is no longer her own. She is not sure if her love is for the poetry or for the language, for the story or for Medeous, but it hardly matters.
By the end of her semester of Greek 2, Peg can feel how each vowel thrums differently through her bones, and she knows she’ll be declaring Classics at the end of the year.
She does, and then spends the rest of the brisk Minnesota spring afternoon reclining under her favorite elm tree, gazing in soft-focus at the chapel tower through the leaves. She thinks of the many trees that surrounded her in her childhood, and smiles.
When she muses on taking Homer next year, on reading the whole of The Iliad for real, her entire body trembles, and with each breath she takes, she breathes out pure desire. For oh, she wants. And she hopes it will never stop, the way it burns her straight through.
She names the elm tree Aeneas.
~
The day after All Hallows Eve, her sophomore year, Peg Powell sits beneath the rustling poplars of the Upper Arboretum, back curled up against one of the largest. She thinks about the party last night, and the way she can’t seem to remember how she got from Janet’s room back to her own; or rather, she’s not sure how she did so in a way that would muddy up her good brown boots and the ivory lace hem of her nightgown, given that Janet and Molly and Tina live just down the hall.
She leans her head against the tree trunk and lets her mind drift⎯her best memory trick⎯but all that does is make her heart flutter weirdly fast, as if rebelling against her mind slowing down.
She hears the rustle of brittle leaves, and opens her eyes to see Kit Lane fold himself gracefully onto the grass next to her.
He smiles at her, mischievously, and addresses her: “Exquisite figure, as of heaven’s shaping! She of the white arms, how goes it?”
As she looks at him, his expression goes serious, and he reaches out with a long hand to cradle her face in his palm. The pad of his thumb brushes feather-light over her cheekbone, tenderly, and his ethereal features seem closer and closer each time she blinks.
She can feel his breath warm against her lips; his smooth dark hair smells faintly of lavender.
And oh, she wants. But she sees the lines of his past threading hazily through him, the shape of the letters ancient and by now so familiar, and she knows he would burn her straight through.
She smiles back, and then goes back to gazing at the patchwork sunlight sifting into the grove.
She names her poplar Herodotus.
~
Peg Powell sits in the dimmest corner of Taylor dining hall, letting tears drip one by one into her cereal. It is her junior year, another Hallowe’en come and gone.
She can’t take the anger of Antigone; she can’t deal with Aristophanes’ sarcasm.
And she can’t face the fact that she’s started sleepwalking again, and is far more sure than she would like to be that her roommate’s prescription of herb tea and bedrest is doing nothing to prevent it. This morning she woke up disoriented and distracted by flashes of memory⎯all hooded skies and pinpoint stars and wet, wet grass⎯and with a little pile of books from the Victoria Thompson collection stacked neatly on her bedside table. Books that certainly had not been there the night before.
Her knuckles are turning white where she’s clasping the table too hard, but she can’t seem to stop.
Nicholas Tooley slips into the seat across from hers and regards her soberly, or at least as sober as he ever gets. “Peg.”
“Nick.” She smiles at him through her tears.
He gently pries her fingers off the table, then clasps both her hands in his.
“Ay me! for aught that I could ever read, could ever hear by tale or history,” he begins, quietly. She whispers the next line along with him, “the course of true love never did run smooth.”
As he continues Lysander’s speech of mildly ironic reassurance, projecting amusement and empathy in equal measure, she watches the branches of a willow tap repeatedly against one of Taylor’s narrow basement windows. She listens to the melody of his voice, lets the heat of his hands on hers comfort her. And oh, does she ever want.
But she knows, she knows, she can hear it in every assonance and consonance and alliterative phrase, see it in his lively brown eyes⎯he would burn her right up, and straight through.
Afterwards, she goes outside and puts her palm to the willow’s trunk, runs her fingers over the supple branches and withered leaves, and breathes in the scent of its bark, damp and alive.
She names it Ariadne.
~
It is the second to last week of her senior year at Blackstock College. Peg Powell is hunched over her desk, frowning at her pages and pages of thesis notes⎯Herodotus as mythological literature. She looks up when her roommate Sharon sticks her head through the door, saying, in an astonished voice, “You’ve got a phone call.”
Admittedly, her astonishment is understandable, as this is the first phone call Peg has gotten in all four years they have roomed together. Her parents are more of the letter-writing type.
She heads down the hallway and picks up the phone. “Hello?”
“Peg!” Her father’s normally mellow baritone has gone almost reedy in his obvious agitation. “You have to come home right away. Your grandfather passed away last night, all of a sudden. The doctors think it was a heart attack. The funeral’s in two days, and the will-reading right after. Your mother needs you. Please come home.”
Peg catches the first train east in the morning, and just barely makes it back to Philadelphia in time for the funeral.
At the gravesite, she finds herself wishing for more trees, less grass. Between the arboretum and the orchard and the landscaped garden, Grandpa Jacobson’s estate had so many different trees, Peg still hasn’t managed to memorize them all. She thinks they should have buried him there instead of in this well-trimmed expanse of a cemetery⎯it seems strange to think of him resting for eternity in someplace so very flat and manicured.
She lets her parents go on to the will-reading without her, opting instead to climb the one majestic maple near the gate of the cemetery. It refuses to be named, and instead they just exist for awhile, together.
When her parents come to retrieve her, they both look more shocked than she has ever seen them. She drops back down to the ground, and looks at them expectantly.
Her father says, “Peg. Peg, he gave you the arboretum and the orchard.” He holds out a business card. “It’s up to you to decide if you want them. The orchard makes for a decent living, but if you want to keep them you’ll have to move to the estate, and there’s a lot of upkeep to take care of. It might be easier just to sell and invest the money, especially if you decide to go to graduate school. But it’s your choice. Here’s the executor’s card. Just, when you decide, call him.”
Peg goes home that evening and eats dinner absentmindedly, barely noticing her parents’ conversation at the other end of the table. After dinner she clears the table, helps her mom put away leftovers, and then walks up the stairs and sits down at her desk.
She pulls the half-finished draft of her honors thesis out of her suitcase and stares down at it. She knows that if she finishes it, if she goes back to Blackstock and turns it in, she’ll never escape Medeous’ orbit.
She thinks of the maple tree, of the orchard she ran wild in as a child, of Ariadne and Herodotus and Aeneas.
She stands, gathers up all the pages into her arms, and walks downstairs to her father’s study. He’s drowsed off in the armchair near the corner, finger still between the pages of his book to hold his place. She walks past him and moves to the fireplace, and without ceremony, throws her thesis into the fire.
The flames flare bright, blinding. The fire crackles and sizzles and turns her breath to smoke. She shudders, and then smiles.
She goes to the phone in the hallway, pulls out the executor’s card, and dials the number.
She doesn’t breathe in again until she hears his voice, “Wilson Spencer, attorney at law.”
“Peg Powell.”
“Ah.” He sounds unsurprised to hear from her, despite the late hour. “So, have you decided? Are you going to keep the arboretum and the orchard?”
And she replies, desperate and grateful and calm, “Yes.”
~
Additional Notes: The quote at the beginning is the first line of Lattimore’s translation of The Iliad. Kit’s greeting addresses Peg as the Phaiákian princess Nausikaa, from the Fitzgerald translation of The Odyssey. Nick’s words of comfort are, of course, from William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.