by Zoje Stage
They fell into a natural cradle of silence after several repetitions of their song. Eleanor Queen got on her knees and retrieved their offering, safely stashed in a sandwich bag, from the outside pocket of her backpack. In the space between the candles and the pentagram, she laid out three of their precious crackers and three slightly stale dried apricots.
“We share what we have with You,” Orla said to the great tree. “It isn’t much, but it’s heartfelt. Maybe You know—we don’t have much left.”
Eleanor Queen snuggled up next to Orla, focused—in her listening way—on the ancient tree in front of her, and something more nebulous in the beyond.
“My daughter tells me You’re dying. We wanted to be here with You on this longest night, so You would know it isn’t the end. There is no true end—Your spirit will become part of the universe, where You were born.”
“It likes that, Mama,” Eleanor Queen whispered.
“Don’t be afraid. We’re honored we could be here with You in the final days of Your long life. We’re sorry there have been misunderstandings. We hope You’re sorry too…” Her voice cracked and she took a moment to recover.
“I feel something, Mama.” Eleanor Queen gripped Orla’s upper arm in both hands. Orla felt the tension in her muscles, her daughter ready to leap up.
“What?” Orla said. The girl started weeping. “Oh, love.”
Eleanor Queen shook her head. “It isn’t me, it’s the…not the tree…it’s crying.”
Orla wanted to know more but was afraid to push her. Was the thing within the tree crying for Itself? Or did It regret the suffering It had caused? She still wanted to understand Its intentions, and the breadth or limits of Its power. Had It made mistakes? There was little comfort in that, but it remained better than the other possibilities.
“I don’t think it’s trying to hurt us,” Eleanor Queen said. And Orla wondered, not for the first time, if her daughter had some perception of her thoughts and feelings as well. “Or…no…”
“Is it too much? Being so close to It?”
Eleanor Queen nodded, burying her crumpled face into Orla’s scarf. “It’s very, very needy, Mama.”
“Okay, shh.” She held her children, one in each arm, and cleared her mind to be the warrior-mother ready for spiritual battle.
“Ancient one…” She had no idea what to call It, how to picture It, but they’d come for this; she pocketed her misgivings, wanting to sound earnest. “We have tried for You—we are trying. But You’re causing my daughter pain, and my son. They didn’t deserve to lose their father, and he didn’t want to leave them. But we want to reach an understanding, and ease You through this time—Your transition to the next life…”
Though she’d called It ancient, It had become, in her mind, an out-of-control toddler. It threw tantrums and acted on whims. She remembered Mamère—that’s what her father always called his mother, in the French he’d learned from his father, so Orla did too—so frail in her final years after her stroke, the opposite of a toddler. Her skin became translucent, revealing the tributaries of veins throughout her arms and hands. Had she looked at her grandmother’s abdomen, she might have seen all of her inner workings, like one of those plastic anatomy models: The liver tucked under a rib cage. The gray and wormy expanse of intestines. Her ninety-two-year-old grandmother, with skeletal arms more delicate than a baby’s, fingers stiffened by arthritis, could never have summoned the strength for a final fight, or even a display of frustration, or anger, or fear of death. She’d slipped silently into her eternal sleep, mute for the last months of her life.
No, Orla expected wisdom and acceptance from old age, not dangerous fits that threatened to starve her children. She pushed the thoughts away, afraid It would hear her. The thing within the tree needed to be soothed into slumber, placated into accepting Its inevitable end.
“Is this what It wanted?” she whispered to Eleanor Queen. “Our company? Does It feel less afraid?”
The girl concentrated, her eyes traveling up the wizened trunk. “Yes…” But she sounded hesitant. “But…I think there’s more.”
Orla thought of ghosts who needed to have their spirits avenged before they could rest. What could this spirit possibly need? “Do You need us to do something?” she asked the tree.
“We can’t help if we don’t understand,” Eleanor Queen implored. “We want to help; you have to believe us!”
As Orla watched, her daughter concentrated as if tuning into something fuzzy. “Is It talking to you?”
“Yes…I only understand…I just hear one word. Home. Home. Home.”
Something soured inside Orla. Her sympathy. In a matter of seconds it shriveled and turned to rot, and the thing it left behind was rage. She scooped Tycho off her lap and on to the towel and stood up to confront the tree. Home. What a thing to throw in their faces. Did It want them to go back to the house, hunker down there forever? She didn’t think It wanted them to leave, go back from whence they’d come.
“Old things die, it’s the cycle of life!” She kicked at the bark. “You can’t keep us prisoners here, destroy my family, and then tease us—”
“It’s listening, Mama—you don’t have to yell.”
“I have to yell because I’m angry—tell It to speak clearly. We can’t do this forever!”
Eleanor Queen squeezed her eyes shut. Orla’s anger evaporated and she almost begged her to stop. She hated the role her daughter was playing, of interpreter—no, worse. Conduit. And hated that she took it so deadly seriously. Their survival—and the thing’s survival—shouldn’t be the responsibility of a young girl.
“It’s not used to this either,” Eleanor Queen said, her eyes clenched tight. “Being…outside of itself. It had never been so far outside of itself before we came. It felt something, something it recognized, in Papa. And then me. But it had never needed to…communicate. It tried…first showing us its power. But we were scared.”
The specks of flame swooped out of the branches and swarmed toward the ground. They hovered over the indented pentagram Orla had drawn in the snow, then settled in the shape of the circle, the star, leaving them aglow.
Orla knelt near the children, unsure what it meant and ready to protect them, but Eleanor Queen laughed, unafraid.
“See how it’s trying? It keeps trying to figure out a way to make us see and understand. It wants to know us, but…it doesn’t understand everything yet—”
Eleanor Queen suddenly gasped for air and slumped. Tycho looked to his mother with frightened eyes. Orla extended a comforting hand toward each of them.
“Oh, Bean!” It was the most her daughter had gleaned from It, but the information had come at a cost. Eleanor Queen huddled beside her brother, looking as small and frightened as he did. “You did an amazing job—you did so well!” And Orla wouldn’t let her do more. “Why don’t I take a turn now? See if I can explain to It what—and who—we are. Is It still listening?”
Her daughter gave a weak nod and wrapped her arms around Tycho.
33
Orla stood. Left the candlelight and meandered around the tree, trying to find the words to explain.
“One day I went to the Brooklyn Museum. Shaw and I had been married for a while, but we hadn’t started a family yet. He was…I don’t know, maybe doing that play? I don’t remember, but I had the day to myself and there was an exhibit I wanted to see.” Orla laughed. “That wasn’t what left the impression on me. Instead, I found The Dinner Party. I’d never heard of it before. I had an epiphany—that’s why I’m telling you this.”
She looked from the tree to her children before continuing. It seemed as if it had been months, decades, since she’d had a real conversation, said anything of value. How good it felt to reminisce, to talk. “I would’ve called myself a feminist if anyone asked. But I saw this display, this homage to women. And it was the names on the floor, even more than the fancy place settings. All of those names. A thousand women, and I hadn’t heard of most of them. And I th
ought, Why don’t I know who these women are? And if I was someone who genuinely wanted to know and didn’t, what did that say about how many people were actually familiar with those names, those women?
“I bought the coffee-table book—fifty bucks, which was a lot of money to us. But I needed to know who all the women were. And it was reading the introduction to the book—that’s when I really had my revelation.”
She slipped off her glove and placed her hand on the nubbly bark. For a second, something flashed inside her, a quick spark of electricity, and then it was gone. She wasn’t sure if it was her own memory, the emotion that still ignited whenever she thought of the abrupt opening of her mind, a flower exploding into existence. Or the spark might have been some sort of response from the being she was trying to communicate with. Is that what Eleanor Queen had to decipher? Morse code responses doled out in beeps and flashes?
“I had always viewed history…I thought the world had been a place that for centuries denied women access to the full breadth of possibilities of what they could do. And I thought that was why you didn’t hear of many historical women who were scientists, or artists, or philosophers. And I knew—I knew as a woman—there was no reason why women wouldn’t always have been interested in these things, in everything. But society didn’t accept women as intellectual equals, creative equals. They didn’t have the same access; they were told they didn’t have the right temperament, the right abilities.
“But after seeing The Dinner Party, and in the very beginning of the book…I realized women had always been doing everything. They’d never not been participating. Maybe they were behind the scenes or not given credit—a husband given credit for his wife’s work, or a brother for his sister’s. But it made me realize we’ve been involved in every aspect of human endeavor forever, and it’s history that has erased us. It was clear then. I couldn’t believe I’d never seen it: history had systematically erased women from the collective consciousness of human civilization.”
Just as it had the first time the epiphany struck her, tears tangled her throat. The injustice. But equally as powerful, the possibility of a great reckoning. A correction. The reinstatement of women’s contributions. She kept her hand on the tree, hoping it would help bridge the gap between them. This thing—this formidable force—didn’t want to be erased or forgotten either. And with absolute certainty, Orla understood it now as female.
“I looked at everything differently after that. And I couldn’t forgive myself on some level for not seeing it before. It was like…when you see the hidden picture in an optical illusion. And it’s so clear after that you wonder how you hadn’t seen it. I seriously questioned if I could stay with Shaw if he couldn’t see what I saw—sometimes you can’t compromise. And he started reading the book too. And together, we went back to the museum. And he got it. He got why it meant so much to me. Even in ballet—I was lucky at ECCB, because Galina would never put up with stereotypical interpretations, or power structures that didn’t elevate women. She wouldn’t stand for a patriarchal company.”
Orla hadn’t thought about Galina since they left the city. Her old boss was embedded in ECCB, as intrinsic as the worn floors, the scuffed mirrors, the odor of sweat that lingered in every studio. One thing Orla knew: If her fiery mentor ever found herself in such a predicament—pleading with a tree, trying to save her children’s lives—she’d utilize every bit of her steel. Galina might not even need an ax; her bare hands and Russian-inflected commands might have bent the enemy to her will. Orla hadn’t fully considered when retiring, when moving, that a key part of her community had been fierce women. Their presence had allowed her to feel even more powerful, and she longed for them as the cold worked its way up her fingers, the warriors she’d left behind. Just thinking of them renewed a bit of her own strength.
“And then, when we were ready to have a family, we talked about how we needed to make our children understand how society had worked in the past, and why it wasn’t good enough, so they could grow up as fully dimensional as they desired—whoever they wanted to be.”
The dry air was making her throat hurt. She hadn’t spoken so much in weeks. Before leaving the house she’d tucked a bottle of water into the inner pocket of her coat, to keep it from freezing. She took a few gulps and offered it to her daughter, who shook her head, and then to Tycho, who took it from her outstretched hand.
“I don’t think it understands, Mama,” said Eleanor Queen. “I only feel…confusion.”
“I know, I’m rambling.” Worse than rambling, she’d wandered into a gray area that much of society still debated. She needed to focus, to simplify, to create mental pictures that illustrated her words. When Tycho finished gulping from the bottle, she set it beside their other offerings. “Life. Don’t you see?”
She tucked her other glove into her pocket and placed both bare palms—strengthening the connection—against the tree’s rough skin. “This is the first thing I want you to see. The Dinner Party. A table like a triangle—” She glanced at the flaming star, its five perfect triangles. “Thirteen place settings on a side. One of the thirty-nine was for Eleanor of Aquitaine. She was married to two different kings, so in her life she was the queen of two different countries. And when her son was too young to rule, she ruled in his name. Like any powerful woman of her time there were plots against her, and she used everything she had to maintain her influence.”
She concentrated on images, uncertain of how the being absorbed information: a crowned woman standing in golden light, with smaller figures kneeling before her. She didn’t know how to summarize all the books and movies about royal intrigue and the battles for dominance. But on some level Orla believed the being would understand. It, too, was attempting to maintain Its power, and long past a mortal life span.
“I named my daughter after her—Eleanor. Queen. Because my daughter will not be forgotten. Her contributions to the world will not be erased. She is not less than the men who have claimed the great moments of history.”
And she is not going to die here.
She couldn’t say the words aloud lest she frighten the children more. But that was her greatest fear. That Its—Her—energy would consume her daughter, and leave her son behind to starve.
Orla exhaled a great plume of breath and eased onto the towel beside Eleanor Queen. She took Tycho back onto her lap. She’d meant to keep going, to tell Her about her little singing bundle of joy. And Shaw. All the important moments of their lives. So She would know what She had destroyed—first mentally, then physically. Her creative man and his capacity to love—people, ideas, nature. But it was wearying being in direct contact. The spirit pulled the words from her fingertips; her monologue, her breath, traveled in veins of wood, spiraling upward, spreading an understanding to the last green boughs hidden in shadows above her.
Eleanor Queen clutched her arm, pressed her cheek against her shoulder. “Mama, it’s alight inside!”
“What does that mean?”
“I can feel it! It understands! You’re my mother, a great…force? And you created me, and love me. And I’m a force too. And something else—I think it loves me too,” Eleanor Queen gushed. “It’s been alone for a long time. But it feels how we’re connected. Your love, Mama. It understands love.”
Orla squeezed her tight. It was enough, for the moment, that She grasped mother-and-child. The older generation and the young; love. Would She respect how that love needed to protect her progeny? She sent out her gratitude through her heart, through her thoughts—and the wicks of joyous light flew back up into the boughs to dance above them.
She sat there clutching her children with the last of her strength. Orla was exhausted enough to lie down in the snow and sleep. She shut her eyes, but only for a moment.
Tycho’s breathing slowed and the fullness of his weight settled in her arms. Like his dead father. No, like a sleepy boy. The wax sputtered down the sides of the candles. Orla could almost believe the tree was going to sleep too, settling in for
an everlasting slumber—surely that explained the gradual extinguishing of its firefly flames, popping out of existence one by one. Had she eased the spirit on through Its darkest night? She’s been alone for a long time.
“Are we safe now?” The words barely a whisper.
Eleanor Queen arched her back. Yawned. Stretched a little. She leaned in close to her mother. “We helped it sleep.”
Her daughter’s breath felt deliciously warm against her ear. “Her. She’s a her, I know it now. Let’s go home.”
They left the candles to snuff themselves out when they reached the snow. They left their small offering and the paper decoration that belted the tree. Eleanor Queen shouldered her backpack and led them with the flashlight. Orla carried Tycho, who barely stirred, and walked back slowly.
“She liked hearing us talk,” said Eleanor Queen. “I think it…she was matching words, with how we felt when we said them. She’s learning.”
“I think I felt Her, when I had my hands against the tree. A sense of something in there. Is She getting…stronger?”
“Not stronger. More…confident? About communicating with us. Remember when you talked about magic? After we first moved here? And I said we’d find real things? Well, this is both. It’s real, and it’s magic. No one might ever believe us, Mama, but it’s real!” Eleanor Queen did a little skip.
Under other circumstances, Orla would have seen Eleanor Queen’s newfound bravery as heartening—the very thing Orla and Shaw had wanted for her. But Orla couldn’t fully shake that they were both beyond the tipping point, making bargains in the darkness in a desperate effort to get away. And…what if they’d been mad for weeks? There’d be no victory if, in the end, they were suffering under a persistent delusion. She kicked the thought into the little mental room with the things she couldn’t look at. Too much had happened; it had to be real. How else could she save her children?
They stepped out into the shrunken clearing that surrounded their house. Orla had hoped that, in recognition of their progress, the trees would have retreated a bit. At least they hadn’t moved in closer. But then the sky burst into color to welcome them. Even more than the first time, the appearance of the aurora borealis felt like a reward—a celebration. Something inside that magnificent tree had more than just the instinct to live. She had desire.
