Juniper time

A glad thought, an earnest hope, a sweet memory

I walked through the yard the other day, mentally marking where my herb garden is going to go, and a sudden thought rushed upon me: This is my Juniper time.

Some of you will know immediately what I mean by that. You’ll have read Monica Furlong’s Wise Child, almost certainly more than once. I’m happy it’s still in print; it’s been around for a good long while. I first read the novel in 1993, when I was working as an editorial assistant at Random House’s children’s division. My boss was Monica’s editor on Robin’s Country, and the consensus in the offices was: You’ve never read her?? Oh, you’ve got to read her other books, they’re wonderful.

And they were right.

I began with Juniper, the prequel to Wise Child, set during the title character’s childhood in Cornwall in perhaps the 5th century A.D. It’s a delicious tale shot through with magic and intrigue and clashing cultures. In Wise Child, originally published in 1987, Juniper has grown up and moved to early-Christian Scotland, where she is feared and frowned upon for her pagan ways, but is sought out whenever the villagers have illnesses better treated by herbs and roots than prayers. She adopts a solemn and suspicious young girl (called Wise Child by her neighbors) whose father, Juniper’s childhood friend, is adventuring at sea.

I’m no cailleach, but Juniper’s little white house with its books and blankets and herb garden and thumping loom—it’s a picture I’ve carried with me for my whole adult life. About twelve years ago, on the umpteenth reread, I blinked and realized I’d more or less recreated Wise Child’s education for my own kids.

“After breakfast,” Juniper went on, “you must have a look at Daisy and the rest of the garden. Then we’d better do some lessons.”

“In magic?” I asked. I was both curious and scared.

Juniper laughed.

“I thought we’d begin with reading, writing, astronomy, fairy stories—that kind of thing. Later on we’ll do a bit of Latin.”

“Girls don’t learn Latin,” I told her. “It unfits them for marriage.” (I was quoting my Uncle Gregor’s views on the education of girls.) “And I never heard of a school that taught fairy tales.”

“All learned people learn Latin,” she said. “It’s bound to come in useful. Fairy tales, on the other hand, are about real life.”

It’s true: whenever I read the fairy tale of Wise Child, I find a grounding, a tangible wisdom I can tuck like a smooth stone into my pocket and carry with me in the world.

Whenever the subject of Juniper comes up around my daughter Rose, laughter rises to her eyes. We have such a funny memory from when she was around eleven or twelve. I had tracked down a copy of Colman, the third (and considerably less enchanting) book in the series, and I gave it to Rose to read first. She tore through it and brought it to me, saying sorrowfully, “I’m so sad she died."

I gasped in shock. We’re a spoiler-free household, and it utterly rocked my world that Rose had revealed the ending—and what a wrong ending! Not Juniper!

Rose, for her part, was equally taken aback by the dismay on my face. We muddled through a few moments of thick confusion before I understood that Rose was referring to the author, not the character. “See? It says it right on the back of the book!”

It’s not at all funny that Monica Furlong died in 2003. I remember how everyone grieved. But the way I misunderstood Rose’s meaning—well, that did strike us as hysterical. She was quite justifiably offended that I would think for one second that she would tell me a beloved character died before I’d even opened the book.

Whew. Juniper lives on. Is that a spoiler? An allowable one, I hope?

And here I am in my little white house, plotting a modest herb garden and hoping for a good long season of Juniper-time. No spells, just ordinary everyday magic. Here and there, a small, smooth stone to tuck into a pocket.