On the first of March–on the coldest night that winter had seen–a baby girl was born. The evergreen trees bled into her eyes, and the bark, black and textured, weaved its way into her hair. The snow stained her skin porcelain while the frozen red mud from the riverbank flushed her cheeks. 

When she was born, the forest claimed her as own. In body, she was a child of the northern woods–pale and raven-haired with cold, cutting eyes. But in spirit, the girl belonged to summer. 

“She’s a sunchild,” her grandfather chuckled to himself on one muggy, mid-July evening while the girl played tag with the fickle fireflies. “A daughter of summer, through and through.”

And the white-haired man was right. The girl’s voice ran rough like the river she swam in with him. The song of the cicadas was nothing to the sound of their laughter, and the grass, warm and wet with morning dew, yielded to her light footsteps and his heavy ones. The midday heat freckled her face and burned her grandfather’s work-hardened back, but they paid no mind to the pain. 

When the sun went to bed beneath the lake, the wind chimes from her grandfather’s cabin called for her to come home. But the waters, painted gold by the sunset, were too inviting for her to resist. “One more jump, and then I’ll go back,” she’d beg her grandfather each night, hands clasped together imploringly. “Please?” 

He was a man of few words, her grandfather, and so, his answer was always the same. Each and every night, he’d smile with all the warmth of summer, and say, “Alright. One more jump.” And so, as her grinning grandfather disappeared up the dirt road, the girl would dive off the dock and float through the incandescent waves of that gilded lake. 

She was a daughter of summer, that girl. How could she be anything else when she had the sun in her smile?

But now, on her twelfth summer, that glowing grin was gone. 

“Today,” the white-haired man whispered to her earlier that morning, “today is our last day.” She didn’t know much more than that, but the forest told me that it had something to do with the cough he couldn’t shake and the shaking in his hands. In their twelve years together in this forest, the girl had never seen grandfather–the mountain of a man that he was–stumble up the dirt road the way he did now. 

She was kept in the dark about her departure until today. Her grandfather didn’t tell her why they had to leave the wind chimes and the water and the woods–leave them in the dust of their rusted pickup truck. His confidentiality confused the girl. Never had the two kept secrets from each other. Never–until now. 

Now, on the seventh day of her twelfth summer, the girl walks down the old dirt road with bare feet and a broken heart. 

Her grandfather–the very man who brought news of her birth to the forest–had removed her, in body and soul. He ripped her roots from the mud of this riverbank without remorse. She may have been the sun child, but to him, she was a child nonetheless. To him, she was not owed any sort of explanation. 

But on she went, with her head hung low and full of questions he wouldn’t answer. Down, down, down. Down that dreaded dirt road, down to the dock–to the only home she had ever known. 

When she reached the back of the dock, she stood–alone and unsmiling. The wood whined under her weight–under the weight she carried on her sunburnt shoulders. She used to sprint across the scalding planks alongside her grandfather with the speed of a Fourth of July firework, but not now. Now, she swayed slowly and solemnly in the dying breaths of a summer breeze. 

“I don’t know why it has to be this way,” she sighed, taking a terrified step. A chill like no other crept up her spine as she spoke to the cloud-covered lake, “But we can’t come back.” Her young heart grew colder, and her shivering sighs sounded older–older than her twelve years. 

She stepped closer to the edge of the dock. 

The crown of bronze bark she used to wear was missing now, lost to the long dirt road–a road she knew she would soon ride on–a road leading back to that grimly gray house beside the southbound highway. The phantom weight of her crown haunted her aching head, and she felt the lake pull her by the bloody scraps of her aching heart. 

She stepped closer once again. 

The forest was quiet at her birth, save for the northern winds whistling across the frozen lake. Since that freezing night on the first of March, she had only ever known the warmth and wonder that weaved through those woods. Her birth brought life to that lake, and, in return, that lake enlivened her. Today, though, the sun did not share her heat and the raven resigned herself to her lonely nest. Today, those same northern winds whipped wildly through her soul. 

Another step. Her grandfather’s wind chimes wept for what was now lost. Another. The forest folded in on itself. Another. Grief swallowed grief whole. Another. She collapsed into a gyre of mourning for what used to be hers and her grandfather’s. 

By the time she reached the edge of the dock, saltwater pooled in her evergreen eyes. She realized then that she’d never cried there before. Never had a tear of hers been shed in this forest. The dock greeted her with that same old groan, but today, as she drowns in sorrow, sounded more like a goodbye. 

God, did the girl hate goodbyes.

“One more jump, and then I’ll go back,” she whispered to the lake like she had so many times before. 

“Just one more jump.”

And so, I dove–the daughter of summer with the sun in my smile–into the lake one last time. I came to the surface, my body still whole, but I felt more dead than alive. My corpse, cold and hollow, drifted back to the cabin where my grandfather silently waited with keys clutched in his shaking hand. He drove my body down that dirt road without a word, dusting away twelve years’ worth of our footsteps with thick, ugly tire marks. 

It’s been five years since I last swam in my lake, but my hair remains bark-black, and I still have that evergreen gaze. My body still belongs to that forest, but on that final day, my grandfather removed my soul. He ripped my young roots from the mud of the riverbank without remorse. I may have been the sun child, but I was a child, nonetheless. I did not understand why we had to leave. How could I? The clock ticking down on my grandfather’s head and heart was the same clock ticking down on my youth. It was invisible to me until our last day. 

And it was that juvenile ignorance–that innocence–that cost me my spirit. My soul was lost to the lake on that last day. It sank down into the depths of the black diamond waters, never to be seen again. 

That was the day that the daughter of summer died.