The Weight of a Thousand Oceans

by Jillian Webster

  She gazes around the cot and the wood placed beneath his body, ready to burn. “I really wish I didn’t have to do this … I would give anything not to do this.” She reaches her hand out to his chest. Waiting. Climbing up onto the cot, she kneels beside him and places her ear next to his mouth. Her tears fall onto his pale skin.

  She holds the sides of his face. “Please come back, Grandpa. Please?” She listens for a while and then pulls back, staring at him … willing him to breathe. “I guess this is it.”

  Turning towards the ladder, she hesitates. She turns around and lays her head against his chest, wrapping her arms around him for the last time. “I’ll love you forever, Grandpa. And when forever is over, I’ll still keep loving you.”

  After setting the pyre alight, Maia steps back as the fire begins to rage, holding onto his glass of whisky. The smoke is thick, black. The smell overwhelming. She forces herself not to cover her mouth.

  Then the ashes begin to fall like snow. They cover the ground and the roof of their cabin. Large flakes coat her hair as the blaze devours the pyre.

  She takes one last sip from his glass and then walks as close to the fire as she can. Shielding her face, she tosses it in. “For you—one last drink.” She backs away and collapses to the ground.

  Huck walks up next to her with his head down, his fur now covered in ash.

  She kneels in front of the pyre, watching as her grandfather, the only person she’s ever loved, disappears. And she does not move.

  So the fire burns.

  And the ashes fall.

  Sixteen

  Lying on her back, a single strand of a spider’s web floats above her. Its silk glitters in waves as it dances in the bright sunlight streaming across the cabin. Maia stares at it until her vision blurs.

  She lifts her grandfather’s pipe and takes another long, slow drag. A heavy barrage of smoke swirls from her parched mouth. She curls her tongue, puffing repeated rings of smoke.

  Her head is pounding. Huck wanders over and sniffs her face. She lies unmoving, gazing up at the ceiling. He whimpers, then spins in a few circles before curling up next to her.

  A few decaying vegetables sit soft and sunken on the table next to a pot of molding soup—another unsuccessful half-attempt to eat.

  She rolls her head to the side and stares at the tiger. The tiger stares back. She rolls her head away.

  A few flies buzz in circles above her. She’s in the same clothing she wore when she burned him, her messy hair still half-wrapped in a loose bun. Dark ash is smeared down her face, with tear lines etched in the layers of gray tracing from her eyes into her hairline.

  Her hair, her clothing, her floors, her yard—all sit buried in ash. It has been days. His bed is still unmade. His whisky still sits at the table. She closes her eyes and sucks in another drag, willing her heart to stop.

  But it beats on.

  She curls into a fetal position and stares at the broken tiger on the ground. His face spins left to right, left to right. This is what she has been doing for days. She stares at the tiger and the tiger stares back … calling out to her, reminding her that her mother was brave, that she was a fighter. And Maia is not. She looks away.

  Flashbacks play like movies across the ceiling. She smiles and a tear follows its designated path into her hair. Her grandfather smiles back at her.

  Hello, my darling.

  She watches as she and her grandfather dance in the living room. He smiles as she lays her head against his chest. He kisses her forehead. They walk through the trails and he looks back at her and winks. He places her hand on a tree and then sweeps his hand across the sky. Together, they look at the stars. He reads her a book by the fire. She cuts his hair on the front porch with Huck sleeping peacefully by the door.

  His face. His smiling face … his worried face. Scared. The color of his skin drains and his cheeks sink. Blood lines his lips and then drips from his mouth. Fire, flames, ash. Ash. ASH.

  She lights the pipe again, her world continuing to spin. Her stomach churns and she rolls onto her belly, lifting herself onto all fours. She sways and buckles to the ground. Her stomach twists. She moans and tries again, pulling herself up on her hands and knees. Her body is heavy, burdened with gravity. As she slowly crawls towards the porch, her hands slap against the floor and her knees dig into the hard wood.

  Out on the porch, she inches towards the railing, an arduous affair as her head hangs like a block of cement. Falling to the ground, she repositions her face along the edge and vomits over the side. Huck paces behind her. She stays on the deck and stares at her grandfather’s charred remains until her eyes glaze over, and then she slips into a deep sleep.

  Squeak!

  Maia’s eyes peel open. She reaches out in a desperate attempt to shield herself from the late afternoon sun. Somehow, she has made her way back inside the cabin and is lying on the floor. Her head is still pounding.

  Squeak!

  She sits up, grimacing. “No.”

  Sitting on the railing just outside the open door sits a little black fantail.

  “NO!” She pulls herself to her feet. Lightheaded and disorientated, she grabs the bottle of whisky from the table as the little bird continues to chirp. “NO! Get out of here!” she screams and chucks the bottle as hard as she can.

  It flies over the bird and lands in the blackened grass. Surprisingly, the fantail does not move.

  “Aaaaarghh! This is all your FAULT! GO AWAY!” She grabs the fractured tiger painting off the floor. Without thinking, she whips it towards the little bird.

  He soars into the sky, while the painting does not make it out of the doorway. Hitting the wall, the glass shatters across the floor.

  Maia stands, gasping. Her mother’s painting lies facedown in a pile of its own broken glass, like a body in a murder scene. Its frame has cracked in half at the seams. She steps forward, oblivious to the shards of glass strewn across the floor. She bends over and lifts the canvas. The pieces slide off the tiger and onto the ground. “Shattered,” she says quietly. “Everything I love has fallen apart.”

  She sighs and looks around the empty cabin. Her stomach grumbles. Dusk is soon approaching, but the fire does not roar in the living room. There is no food being prepared. There is no one else here, and there is no hope of anyone ever being here again.

  She places the tiger on the table, slowly running her fingertips over the oils … his whiskers, his eye, his fur. What was the point? Such a beautiful creature and now … everything’s dead.

  She backs away from the table. Rubbing her arms for warmth, she surveys the gloomy cabin. Her grandfather’s unmade bed in the corner. His worn leather chair in front of the barren hearth. His pipe lying on the floor. Empty. Empty. Empty. Sober for the first time in days, she steps forward, then steps back again, unsure of what to do.

  She wanders to the old mirror by the front door and her breath catches in her chest as she takes in her reflection. A concerned, wretched version of herself stares back at her. Skinny, pale, and covered in ash—covered in the remains of her grandfather. She slowly reaches up to her cheek, tracing the tear lines carved into the layers of gray. The light in the cabin continues to fade.

  Shivering, she loads their fireplace full of wood. Within a few minutes, a comforting roar blazes from inside the hearth. She does the same with the wood-burning stove and heats several buckets of water for a bath.

  The empty glass jar still sits on the mantel from their last conversation. She walks over to it and holds it with both hands.

  Place my remains in this. Take me everywhere, Maia. Spread my ashes over this land, the only land I’ve ever loved, and know that I am no longer contained inside a body. I am floating on the wind. I am swaying with the wildflower. Whenever you look at the stars, remember how even though many have burned out, their light still reaches us. This is like my love for you. Even though my body is gone, my love will never fade. I am always with you.

  She steps outside and briefly pauses al
ong the edge of the porch, staring at the scorched remains of the pyre. She is overwhelmed as she walks to the site … so many ashes. There’s no way to tell between her grandfather and the burned wood. But funerals aren’t for the dead, they’re for the living. She drags the jar into the ashes, scooping up as much as she can from the spot where he was laid, and replaces the lid. Then she heads to the bathhouse behind the cabin, grabbing his bottle of whisky from the yard on her way.

  She places the jar and the whisky next to a few lit candles on the bathhouse’s wooden bench and slides the entire thing closer to the large ceramic bath. She leaves the door unlatched for Huck, knowing he loves to come in and soak up the heat given off during bath time.

  The glow from the candles highlights the heavy steam twisting and curling from the water. Maia peels off her soiled layers of clothing one by one and drops each piece into a pile she vows to burn, knowing she’ll never be able to look at the clothes again.

  Testing the water’s temperature, she lightly dips one toe. Perfect. As she steps inside the bath, pleasure from the water’s heat floods through her. The black ash coating her legs melts off in ripples as she lowers herself down. Huck nudges his way through the door and plops next to the tub.

  Grandpa loved this antique claw-foot bathtub. He built a bathhouse almost nicer than the cabin just to house it. Maia rests her head along the curved ledge of the bath and gazes through the skylight in the cathedral ceiling. She can barely make out a single twinkling star. What a place this is. He was right; she would never want for anything here.

  She can’t help wondering now how much he really supported her leaving. Maybe he knew his time was limited … he had to know. He would have known that he could appease her childish dreams and have peace in his last days by “agreeing” to let her go. By letting her figure out how limited her options really were. By hashing out every last idea and seeing once and for all how deeply dangerous and flawed they were. How could she ever leave this place on her own? They hadn’t even gotten that far in their plans anyway. Options. They had only discussed options of “what” could get her there. Not “how.” Never “how.”

  But then, he always seemed so genuine. After all that time just the two of them, wouldn’t she be able to tell?

  “Huck?” She leans over the ledge of the bath and reaches out to him. Water trickles along the underside of her arm and drips onto the ground. Huck tenderly licks the tip of her finger. “This is it. And that’s fine, isn’t it? Grandpa had given me his blessing, but I can’t do it without him.”

  She leans back again and watches as the single star flickers through the skylight. “I can’t. I can’t do it without him.” She repeats this to herself as she closes her eyes, knowing with each passing can’t, not only that she can—but she must.

  Seventeen

  Countless iridescent blue specks illuminate the expansive forest like stars. Maia sits cross-legged in the dark on an old mossy bridge still standing from when her ancestors built it. A full moon shines between the canopy of branches. Beneath her, a shallow creek glides gently over a jumble of rocks.

  She faces a large waterfall. Roaring, white, intense. She can barely make it out in the black of night but its sound is unmistakable. Comforting. The white noise helps drown out the voices in her head.

  This is her favorite spot, a place of peace where she can just be. She has been coming here her entire life, whenever she’s craved solitude. The best part about this place is visiting at night. All across the ancient forest, little blue lights shine forth as thousands of glowworms nest on trees, cliffs, and between rocks. Everywhere she looks, constellations of blue shimmer back at her.

  It is nothing short of magical.

  She pulls the jar of ashes from her pack and slowly unscrews the lid. With tears in her eyes she whispers, “I’m not sure where you are now, Grandpa, how it must feel? Do you still feel pain?” She looks around, almost expecting an answer. “I’ll just leave a bit of you here, so that you may always feel peace.” She tilts the jar and scatters her grandfather’s ashes softly into the creek.

  This is not the first place she has taken him today. She awoke before the sun and searched his workshop for a sturdy piece of wood, then spent all morning in his chair carving a headstone. As the morning light filled the sky, she dug a grave in the corner of their yard and filled it with the ashes left from what remained of the pyre. And then she knelt on the ground before it and sobbed.

  Her eyes swollen, she wandered into the cabin and stuffed a pack full of food and a few jars of water, her light sleeping bag, a small lantern, and her bow and arrow. Then she grabbed her grandfather’s ashes and locked up the cabin to begin her tour of the island.

  She took him along their favorite path, where they had taken countless walks throughout their twenty years of life together. It was the first time she’d been on this specific trail alone. It had always been their trail. She followed the same route for hours as it snaked through misty forests covered in layers of moss. She hiked up along the mountain’s edge, where she stopped as they often did for a rest and enjoyed the breathtaking views across the endless green expanse. Then she headed back down again, past rivers and streams that lead to the ocean.

  * * *

  “Come on, Grandpa. Hurry! Hurry!”

  Her bare feet jump from boulder to boulder along the river’s edge. Her grandfather’s much younger voice chuckles from behind her. “I’m coming. Don’t you worry, child, I’ll catch up!”

  She picks up the pace, thrilled at the slightly cooler summer breeze compared to the recent string of stinging hot days. Behind her, a sweet-faced black puppy nips at her heels.

  “Huck! Ow! No, Huck!” She picks him up and giggles as he licks her face. “This is the best birthday present ever, Grandpa, thank you!”

  “He’s not your birthday—we’re not keeping him!” her grandfather yells from a distance.

  “But I’m ten now. I’ll take good care of him.” She sets the puppy on the boulder next to her where a brown sludge coating the surface of the river laps around its base. Huck stares up at her with large eyes and a wagging tail.

  “Young lady…” Her grandfather joins her along the shore of the winding creek where large mounds of rubbish has stacked on top of itself for miles. He steps over a half-buried white plastic chair. His younger skin is still furrowed with lines from the sun, but his middle-aged face is much more filled in—his hair only a salt and pepper version of where it ended up years later. “It’s not up for discussion.”

  She puts her hands on her hips and pouts. Huck whimpers until she picks him up again. She kisses the top of his head as he squirms in her arms.

  “Young lady.”

  She turns and grins at her grandfather standing along the creek’s shore. His arms hang at his sides and he drops his head in defeat. He peers up at her and smiles.

  * * *

  Maia knelt along the shore and dragged her fingertips along the mostly clear creek. She and her grandfather spent two years cleaning the rubbish out of those waters so they could flow again. Two years of pulling and digging and hauling load after load of old, slimy garbage from those waters, and not without giving her grandfather plenty of grief.

  * * *

  “What difference is this going to make? Why are we doing this anyway? No one is even around to notice it.”

  “Trust me, child. Every little effort you make matters. It makes a difference. One day you will come back and there will be new life here.”

  “When, in like a million years?”

  “Mark my words, young lady, it matters. Every little bit matters.”

  * * *

  A small frog hopped from his spot in the sun into the sparkling water. “It matters,” she whispered as she smiled. She poured a line of ash into the dampened sand. “So that you may forever feel my gratitude.”

  Exhaustion setting in, Maia then wandered up to her favorite cliff. Scooping up another handful of ash, she tossed it over the edge. Caught on the wind
, it swirled before her. She squinted through the bright sun, extending her hand. For a moment, she could almost see him reaching out to her from within the ashes. Then the wind carried him away, leaving her gazing out into a vacant sky.

  Despite her consuming weariness, Maia pushed on, stopping by her and Huck’s favorite swimming hole. “So that you may forever feel joy.” The field where she and her grandfather loved to picnic. “So that you may always feel fulfilled.” Finally, after spending the night curled up in the glowworm forest, she returned in the very early morning hours the next day, ending her quest right back in front of their cabin. Maia reached into the jar and gently spread some ashes across the footpath leading to the front porch.

  “So that you may always feel love.”

  * * *

  Now standing in front of the dark cabin, her lantern casts strange shadows across its face. There’s no smoke coming from the chimney. The only time it has ever stood empty was when she and her grandfather were out for the day. Even when he was ill, she would keep the fires going—in their fireplace, their stove in the kitchen, even the small rocket stove in the corner, often boiling water or soup or broth. Life was always happening.

  With Huck trailing behind her, she walks up the front steps and into the cabin. The inside is cold, damp. Shivering, she places the lantern in the living room and gets the fireplace going, then the kitchen oven. She starts to boil water for tea but finds herself pouring a glass of whisky instead.

  Her grandfather’s jar sits on the table, a small portion of his ashes remaining. Maia finds a tiny bag. Prying it open where it’s cinched, she pours in the last of the ashes. She closes the sack with a knot and then another. After she is fully convinced that it is sealed tight, she places her grandfather in her pocket.