She didn’t know much more about Halcyon than what she saw on the flyer Max had shoved across the varnished coffee shop counter three months ago. She’d been too afraid to read much about it, to hear about artists who’d left there full of new ideas, determination, purpose. The way she saw it, it was better not to get her hopes up. But now it was happening. The space that had opened up for her felt too good to be real. More than she deserved.
“All art begins as a passion, an idea set deep inside the soul of a person,” the flyer had read. “Often, all that person needs is space to bring the idea to fruition. Halcyon is this space. It is a refuge to pursue the art that makes you feel alive.”
Not until now did Jenna have a spark of memory about “halcyon.” She was probably thirteen or fourteen and had walked into her father’s office on the second floor of their house without knocking. He was hunched over his desk, scratching out music notes and drawing new ones on a score. Treble clefs, bass clefs, 3/4 counts.
“What are you working on?” she’d asked.
He glanced over his shoulder, then turned back to the sheet music before him. “I’m writing a new piece for my summer concert series. It’s called ‘Halcyon Days.’ It’s going to be beautiful if I can just figure out this coda . . .” And with that, he retreated again to the space in his mind where no one could reach him. Later, he explained to her the story behind “Halcyon Days.” The beautiful widow. The kingfisher. The unusual calm.
When she pulled off the highway at the sign for Singer Creek, her hurriedly scrawled directions told her to drive ten miles south on a thin two-lane road, then turn off onto another road for a few miles. Her directions didn’t mention that this road was white sand instead of asphalt and just wide enough for her car. Leafy tendrils and vines encroached along the edges and tall trees lined the road, meeting above to form a canopy that blocked out the last of the daylight.
This must be wrong, she thought. But as she inched forward, just past a sprawling oak with Spanish moss drooping down to brush the top of her car, a driveway opened up. Not even a driveway really, just a blip of space carved out between trees. She pulled in. Down the path, her headlights illuminated a sign hung on a tree, suspended from a scrolled arm of iron and squeaking back and forth in the breeze. Welcome to Halcyon.
“Don’t worry,” a voice behind her said. “You’re in the right place.”
It was full dark now, and constellations of stars popped out bright against the heavy sky. Jenna had just climbed the steps to the screened porch on the front of the dining hall where the schedule—if it could even be called that, loose at it was—had told them to meet.
The woman who spoke to her was bent over at the edge of the porch in a triangle pose, legs in a V, one arm reaching down to her blue yoga mat, the other stretched up high. Despite her obvious confidence, her body was at the wrong angle over her lead knee. Jenna was tempted to tell her she needed to realign her torso to get the most benefit from the stretch, but she kept her secret to herself.
“Were you expecting a classroom?” The woman straightened up, stretching her arms over her head.
“No, I . . . Well, I don’t know what I expected. Definitely not a campground.”
On the walk from her cabin—small, clean, comfortable—to the porch of the dining hall, Jenna had passed a lake ringed by other cabins like hers, each with its own small deck extending over the water. A fire pit was situated at the edge of the lake, and before darkness fell, she spied a couple of small buildings—studios, she presumed—up the hill past the dining hall. Halcyon was like its own little world in the middle of the wild jungle of the nature preserve.
“Good guess,” the woman said. “That’s exactly what this is. Or was. It used to be a summer camp for children whose parents wanted them to be future environmentalists or something. A group of philanthropists bought it back in the nineties, dumped a bunch of money into it, and invited artists to come play. I’m Casey, by the way.” She extended her hand and Jenna took it. “You’re Jenna Sawyer from Nashville, right? Former photographer, now coffee extraordinaire?”
Jenna stared at her, unsure if she was the butt of a joke she wasn’t aware of. “How’d you know that?”
“We’re selective about who gets in. We have to be. Hundreds apply for each session. We only take ten. And anyway”—she gestured to the camera hanging around Jenna’s neck—“you’re the only photographer we have this session. I figured you’d be pretty easy to pick out.”
Jenna fidgeted with the camera strap that suddenly felt like it was biting into the skin of her neck. “Calling me a photographer is probably a stretch.”
“You are. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here. The whole point of Halcyon is to reconnect, right? Dive back in. Like I said, you’re in the right place, like it or not. Now, if you’ll excuse me for a minute . . .” She grinned, then greeted someone else approaching the porch.
“Hundreds apply for each session.” Must have been some mighty big strings Max had pulled to get Jenna in. She already felt way out of her league.
Quiet conversation and laughter floated all around her on the porch where a handful of lamps lit the space in a comforting glow. Palm branches pressed against the outside of the screened walls. A ceiling fan whirled above, disrupting cigarette smoke rings and rustling pages of open sketchbooks. A handful of
