Dark Winds Over Wellington

by Tabatha Wood

  “So, are you often here? Do you have to travel far or...?”

  “I go all over. I’m pretty much always moving.”

  I went to ask her another question, but she got in first.

  “So, how did you meet Chris?”

  So that’s what she wanted to talk about. Maybe she was as curious about my relationship with him as I was about hers. Maybe she really was an old girlfriend and she suspected I had been a secret lover on the side.

  “I met Chris when I moved here from the U.K.,” I told her. “He was one of the first friends I made, one of the few people who talked to me at school. All the girls in my class had been horrible to me, and I was sitting on my own in the yard. Chris just came up and said hello. That was it really.”

  She smiled.

  “That was Chris. Always there for those who needed him. Sacrificing himself.”

  Another strange thing to say.

  “Umm, yeah. We were both part of a bigger group that ended up going to the same college and then the same university, so we all just drifted around together. He introduced me to climbing, I taught him how to knit.” Now it was my turn to smile. “He was crap at it, though. He always used to gain stitches instead of dropping them. I never knew how.

  “People always thought we were a couple, but we actually never were. We just got on really well. He understood me better than most other people. Always knew what to say when I was down. He made me laugh like no-one else ever could.”

  Freya nodded, taking it all in.

  "He was my best friend. We lost touch for a little while, when I was with Patrick, my ex, but then we found each other again a couple of years ago. He hadn’t changed at all. We talked a lot about how our lives had gone. He said he was considering getting engaged. He was going to propose. I was surprised, I honestly never thought he would ever settle down, but he seemed to be absolutely head-over-heels in love with Sam.”

  I stopped, suddenly overcome with melancholy. Freya took a drink and locked her eyes with mine. She stared at me so intently it felt like she could somehow see inside me. For a moment it seemed like her whole eyes were completely black. My head felt strange; both pressured and hot.

  “You miss him, don’t you?”

  My mouth opened and words came tumbling out, without me even thinking about them. Feelings that had previously been so difficult to process, let alone share.

  “Oh, God, I do. So much. It was so strange when he went. Like, his being here, he was so… large, you know? Not just physically, but in everything he did for people. He knitted us all together, we were the stitches he gained and never dropped. He made things make sense.

  “When I heard he had gone, when his sister told me, I thought it was impossible. Some kind of sick joke. No-one that kind, or important, or that special to so many people could just… leave. There would be a gaping hole left in the world without him. His heart was too big. I knew he was sick, I’d always known, but despite everything he went through, I thought, I always believed, that he would win. That maybe I could help him beat it.”

  I had to stop. I could feel a lump rising in my throat, heat in my eyes. I blinked and took a long drink, stared at the dark coffee rings staining the wood of the table. I didn’t know why I had told her all of that. I felt naked and raw, like she had stripped something out of me without my consent. I couldn’t look at her. I was afraid I would see those dark pools in her face where her eyes should be. That I hadn’t imagined them.

  “How about you?” I asked her, keeping my voice as steady as I could.

  “Oh, like you, I knew him for quite a long while, but mostly we kept in touch through writing and stuff. I didn’t get to see him very often.”

  “I don’t remember meeting you. I’m surprised he didn’t introduce us the day you took the photo.”

  “Chris didn’t ever introduce me to anyone. He was very ashamed of knowing me so intimately.”

  I looked up in surprise.

  “Really? That doesn’t sound like him. I can’t imagine him being ashamed of any of his friends.”

  “Well, our relationship was complicated. I don’t think most of his friends would have understood. He always tried to keep me away from people, especially those he was close to.”

  I screwed up my face and frowned. What on earth was she talking about? Chris wasn’t like that at all.

  “Okay. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to doubt you, but that really doesn’t sound like him.”

  The conversation felt off to me, this whole thing felt off. I didn’t feel comfortable any more. I needed to leave. I started looking for a way to make an exit without causing too much fuss.

  She fixed her eyes on mine again, staring deeply and intently. No longer dark, now sparkling stars of green and brown swirled in pools of liquid amber. An ethereal map of unknown galaxies. They were beautiful, and also utterly terrifying.

  “Chris knew who I really am, Lydia,” she said quietly. “I think, deep down, you do too.”

  She held me in her gaze and I felt smothered. My chest was tight and my body tense, each breath was hard to take. I was paralysed, my limbs like stone.

  “I... I don’t know what you mean,” I whispered shakily.

  “Yes, you do. I know you’ve given up. That the cancer is eating you up inside. I know you’ve looked long and hard at your life and wondered why you ever bothered to fight it. I know you miss Chris, so much, so very much, and you want to go join and him. Wherever he is. You would follow him to the grave if it meant you could see him again, could talk to him one last time.

  “I know how you filled your pockets with rocks one night and walked out into the cold sea. You intended never to return, but you changed your mind at the last minute. You dragged yourself, soaked and shaking, back to the shore.”

  I gasped. No-one knew about that. I had never spoken of it, not to anyone.

  “You’ve been to the Waiting Room,” she continued quietly. “I know that I don’t scare you. Not even slightly.”

  I blinked. The world shifted. Suddenly, finally, I could see past the mask she was wearing. I saw her for who and what she really was.

  She had been with me since my drunken fall. Since I’d opened up my skull.

  She had been there when I lost my father, and my only child.

  She was there when I received my cancer diagnosis.

  All this time, she had been waiting for me, patiently and quietly. Waiting for me to give up.

  Anger rose up inside me before I even realised it, replacing any trace of fear. How dare she be here, sitting and drinking coffee, knowing the destruction she caused? The fear and the shame and the pain she brought. Conversing with me as if we were old friends. I hated her and everything she’d done.

  My rage empowered me; I felt stronger than I had in many years.

  “Yes. I know exactly who you are,” I hissed quietly. My teeth clenched, my voice full of disdain. “I know what you do and what you take. I should have guessed.”

  “You don’t need to be angry with me, Lydia. I don’t make the choices. I’m just a chaperone. You only see what’s left behind. You don’t know how much I care for those who follow me and what I do to ease their passage. You all have to meet me eventually; why treat me as an enemy when I am here to guide?”

  “Stop pretending that you care! I don’t want any kindness from you! You fucked up my life, and Chris’s! I’m angry because I want to be angry, damn it! Of course you’re my enemy, what else can you be? My friend?”

  I sneered at her then, but she just smiled.

  “Yes. I can be, if you let me. You’re not afraid of me. Really and honestly not afraid. That changes things.”

  “Changes things, how?” The staff and other patrons in the cafe were all going about their business, ignoring us completely. Oblivious to our quarrel. It was as if we weren’t even there.

  “You said you don’t want to leave,” she said quietly. “Do you mean that?”

  I paused for a moment, unsure how to respond.
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  “What are you asking me?”

  “If you stay, will you make the most of the time you’ve been given? Will you let Chris go and make new memories, without him? Will you stop torturing yourself about not replying to his message that night; how you told yourself your text could wait until the morning? It was late. You were sick. There was always going to be another time?”

  I felt the tears on my face, tried hard to blink them back. I thought I’d mourned enough. I didn’t want to cry in front of her.

  “You couldn’t save him, you know. It wouldn’t have changed a thing. He reached out and you caught him, time and time again. But you can’t heal someone’s pain by taking it away from them. You can only be there for them when they need you. You can listen to them. Acknowledge them. See them when they want to be seen. You did that for Chris. You did enough.”

  She took a sip of her coffee and leaned back in her chair. Kept me locked in her stunning yet devastating gaze.

  “Grief will keep you in all kinds of prisons, if you let it. And yet it is, at its most simple, love. Two seemingly opposite emotions, yet both arrive in your life unexpectedly, and flip your world completely upside down. You grieve now because you loved him.”

  I scoffed loudly and shook my head in disbelief.

  “Of course I loved him! I loved him and you took him! How can you talk like that when you stole him from me?”

  “My presence is inevitable, Lydia. I don’t take anything. I am merely there at the end of all things. Your existence presents to you a multitude of pathways and many choices. Some of those you get to share with others, but most you have to walk alone. Your souls are not pennies you can keep in glass jars; you have to spend them to keep them free. To let yourselves grow. Whatever happens, whatever hardships you face, life continues on until you meet me. With you, or without you, life always goes on.”

  I put my hands over my face, I couldn’t stop myself. I felt my cheeks and palms grow damp. The sobs in my throat almost choked me. I wanted her to stop, but she continued.

  “Most people do not get to decide how and when they die, they only get to choose how well to live. I am here to offer you that choice. As your guide, and, yes, your friend. Because you came here and you faced me. You met my gaze and did not cower. Because you are not afraid of what comes next.”

  Her words felt thick and heavy, they smothered me and enveloped me, and yet they also brought me calm. Death gave me comfort. She offered me peace.

  “Don’t make this decision for anyone else, make it only for yourself. I can only tell you that you matter. That you are important, even if you do not ever see it, or realise how or why. The stones you cast on the waters of the world, they send out ripples all around you. Those ripples reach out and touch others in ways you can’t imagine, you cannot see.

  “You thought Chris was the glue who held you all together. Did you never stop to think it was you too?”

  I struggled to breathe, to clear my throat. To push all my anger, my fear, and my denial, down deep into the darkest part of me. A hundred thoughts raced through my mind.

  Thoughts of my friends, of the secrets I had kept from them. The weight of them like great stones around my neck, dragging me and holding me down. Why had I never been honest?

  Thoughts of my mother and how scared she was, how much she needed me. How much I needed her. She could never find the words to tell me, and I never went ahead and said them first.

  Of Chris; how I had loved him so utterly and fiercely, even though I knew he could not, and would not, ever love me back. How he was never really able to let himself love anyone properly. Not even Sam. Especially not himself.

  Of Eric; how he was always there for me. I should have gone to him, hugged him, laughed with him in person. I could have pulled him close and kissed him. If I had only bloody tried.

  Finally, I thought of myself. Of all the things that Freya had told me. I was twenty-seven. Single. Childless and dying. I’d focused so blindly on the things that had gone wrong for me, the things I’d lost, I’d forgotten about all the things I’d had. I’d wasted so much of my time. There was so much more I could have done.

  “It is your choice, Lydia,” she whispered. “Only you can make it. Look into my eyes and tell me, honestly. You can come with me now, I’ll stay with you until the end. Or you can stay. Make yourself a new life.

  “Which do you want?”

  As my head swam and my body shook, I spoke my final words to her.

  “I want to live.”

  I woke up alone on the golden sands next to Oriental Parade. I had absolutely no idea how I had got there. The sun blinked and shimmered on the gentle waves, and I looked out across the harbour to the sea. Freya was gone. I’d see her again, that much I knew. But not now. Perhaps not any time soon. We had made an agreement. There were promises to keep.

  My mobile beeped, alerting me to a message. A text from Eric.

  “Just checking in. How are you doing today?”

  How was I doing? I felt light. I felt happy. I felt well. I had so much more than I’d had yesterday. I had hope.

  I smiled as I dialled his number. It was about time we talked together properly.

  The line connected. I heard his voice. It was a beautiful day.

  The Things You See

  January 17th

  I went into the city with Mummy today. We walked for ages. We went all around a place called Lambton Quay and Mummy told me about the big earthquake that happened a really long time ago. Over one hundred and sixty years. The earthquake moved the earth so much that it lifted up some of the land and people had more space to build things in the city.

  We saw the remains of an old boat all the way down in the bottom of a big shopping mall. You could see the boat through the glass floor. Mummy said the shop was once a big bank and people had built the bank on top of the boat. She said it was a really special boat and couldn’t be moved. I thought it was a bit silly. The boat was all wrecked and broken up like a pile of old rubbish, but Mummy said it was important history.

  We walked to the big round building that Mummy said is called the Beehive, but no bees live inside it. She said it was full of fat cats and morons and people who have no idea what life is really like for people in New Zealand.

  But Mummy is wrong. I saw the bees in the Beehive and they scared me a lot. I tried to tell Mummy but she didn’t listen to me, and I got told off for shouting. She gave me one of my little pink tablets and I fell asleep on the way home.

  January 19th

  I can’t stop thinking about the bees. Mummy keeps telling me I’m being silly and imagining things, but I know I’m not. She says I am taking things too literally again and the Beehive is only called that because of the way the building looks.

  She told me that I need to concentrate on staying calm when we go out together or we won’t be able to keep going out. She said I can be difficult and embarrassing and then she started to cry again. I said I didn’t mean to be difficult or embarrassing, I just wanted to tell people what I saw. I don’t understand why they didn’t see it too. Mummy shook her head and told me to go and watch one of my cartoon DVDs so she could have some peace.

  Doctor Ames says that keeping this diary is good for me as it helps me process things, but I have to be really honest when I write in it. I swear that I am telling the truth about the bees, but I’m scared in case this is another thing that I can see that other people can’t. I need to convince Mummy to take me back to the Beehive again.

  January 23rd

  It has taken me a few days of asking, and asking, and asking, but finally Mummy has agreed to take me back to the Beehive so we can do one of the free tours of the building. She said she will take me so I will shut up about it. She also said I have to be on my very best behaviour and not cause any kind of fuss. She didn’t want another situation like what happened at the hospital when I said I saw the girl with the sharp teeth. I did see her though, even if Mummy didn’t believe me. Just like I saw the ladies w
ith the frilly hats and funny voices walking through the city.

  Doctor Ames says I have a very vivid imagination and I seek to personify my anxieties, whatever that means. She said the pink pills will make that stop, but I’m not sure if they have. I was never very good at knowing what was really real and what I just thought was real. Only Mummy seemed able to tell me that, and now I know for sure that she is wrong.

  January 25th

  Mummy and I went to the Beehive and went on the tour of the Parliament building. We had to let the scary men at the door scan all our bags and our bodies, and Mummy made a silly joke, like she always does when she is nervous, although I don’t know why she was nervous.

  We had to leave our bags with the people who worked in the building, and I almost got upset about that because I don’t like anyone touching my stuff, and I really don’t like not having my things with me. Mummy said I could look after the special token that they gave us after taking our bags, so I knew no-one else could take mine by mistake. I wasn’t very happy about it, but I tried to pretend like I was. I knew she wouldn’t take us on the tour if I didn’t.

  The building looked very impressive, and very expensive. I liked the marble floors and all the pretty glass windows. There were lots of pictures on the walls and other things to see, but we didn’t get chance to see all of them up close. My favourite part was when we were allowed to use the funny old lift to get to the big chamber where all the government people sit.

  There was no-one in the chamber when we went on the tour though. I wanted to sit in the big chair at the top of the room, but I wasn’t allowed to do that. I couldn’t sit on the fancy one in the other room with the letters E and R written on it either, even though I said those were my initials and it should be my chair. The tour guide laughed, and so did some of the other people on the tour, but I knew it was fake laughter. They didn't laugh with their eyes. Mummy gave me one of her stern looks and I stopped talking. I remembered what she said about not causing a fuss.