The bonfires seemed to grow taller by the minute, the smoke dissipating in the air and we watched as the adults seemed to dance around the fires, passing cups of mead and wine around. My fingers were sticky from the honey cakes, but I wasn’t allowed to go down to the river and wash my hands - not tonight. Those were my grandmother’s rules, for tonight the forest was for the adults. My forest.
It didn’t seem fair. One year when I had entered the forest after spending the summer with my father, there were broken leaves and twigs that were unhealable - allf from the solstice festival. It wasn’t fair.
“What do you think they do?” Julian sat next to me, our knees bumping one another as we looked down from atop the hill, taking in the festivities that we were too young to participate in. My white dress was filthy, covered in grass stains from rolling down the hill throughout the day, stained in honey and some mead from when I was carrying it to Marta earlier.
“I don’t know.” I sounded just as sullen as I felt. What good was it being the granddaughter of Jeanne des Montagnes when village secrets were kept from you?
The laughter from below filtered up the hill towards us and I fought the urge to cry. I hated being left out - hated feeling useless and inconsequential. I was always alone when I visited my father, and now, one of the summer’s I got to stay at home, I was still left out. It was as if I didn’t exist to them the whole summer.
“It’s like this every year.” Julian spoke, and I wasn't sure if he was trying to console me, or if he simply spoke without thinking. His fingers dug into the grass and I watched him pull tufts of the earth out.
“Don’t do that.” Julian only gazed at me. “You’re hurting the earth.”
He huffed in annoyance, but stopped nonetheless.
“My mother says that they’re hunting.”
“You asked her?” I had asked my grandmother, but she certainly hadn’t given me an answer, and I was almost positive that they weren’t hunting. What did they need to hunt for?
A figure circled the largest fire, her skirts sweeping low, and even from this distance, I would know Jeanne des Montagnes anywhere. A bell rang out, echoing over the hills and suddenly the women dancing around the fire picked up their skirts and fled, giggling in that silly manner that all the girls seemed to do.
A minute later a second bell rang, and suddenly the men of the village fleed in the same direction the women had run off - all towards the forest and the river. I stood up quickly, ignoring the fact that I was certain that no amount of bleach would save my dress and that my grandmother would be furious at the prospect of throwing it away.
“Where are you going?” Julian’s voice was sullen.
“I’m going to go and look - are you coming?”
It always took Julian a while to decide whether he was in or not, but if he decided that he was in, then you had a decent lookout partner.
“I don’t know Marie, after last time if your grandmother catches us, I’ll be scrubbing pots for the rest of the summer.”
I shrugged, rubbing my bare heels against the grass, itching to fly down the hill and hide in my forest, invisible to the antics around us. “I’ll say that it was my fault. I’m leaving for my dad’s next week anyway.”
Julian eyed me warily, determining if I would really take the fall for us, and once he saw my words to be true, he stood up next to me, his scrawny height towering over mine. I was still faster.
“Race you?” I threw the question out with a grin, and before I heard his answer, my feet were flying down the hill as we thundered towards the treeline, the forest beckoning me forth. The wind felt wilder, the energy somehow more hedonistic, and as the breeze rattled through my strands of hair, I felt giddy and excited. I would not be left out - would not be excluded from the village festivities, no matter what age I was.
It only took three more leaps before our progress was halted by the looming figure that was my grandmother ensuring that the Summer Solstice rituals remained a mystery until we were of an age to understand what they partook in. Julian had scrubbed pots for the entire duration of summer, whilst I cleaned out the pigs pen right up until an hour before I had to leave to see my father.