The Wind Rose

by B. Roman

  Six

  At home later, Isaac confronts David about his moodiness almost ruining the celebration of his and Janice's engagement. “I'm telling you now, David, if you don't agree to see Dr. Hilyer voluntarily, I'll take steps to make you do it.”

  “You can't force me, Dad,” David yells. “I'm old enough to make my own decisions.”

  “Well, the decisions you are making lately are not those of a mature young man. And while you're under my roof, you'll do as I say!”

  “Well, then, I'll get out from under your roof!”

  “Don't be ridiculous. This is your home. I don't want you to leave, David. I just want you to -”

  “To what? Do as you say? Be what you want me to be? What you approve of?”

  “What's that supposed to mean?” Isaac snaps, defensively.

  “You know what I mean. You never accepted the fact that I'm different. Ever since I went deaf you refused to accept me as I am.”

  Isaac is heart stricken. “That's not true and you know it.”

  “Do I? Why did you never like me to sign or even learn to read lips? Always pushing medications and vitamins and surgeries on me.”

  “I wanted you to get well. To hear again. Is that so wrong?” he pleads with his son.

  “No. You wanted me to be perfect!”

  “That's ridiculous. And unfair.”

  “But it's true. Mom was the only one who accepted me, who helped me accept myself. Until you killed her!”

  Isaac is crushed by this accusation. A knife through his heart from his own son. He thought they had resolved the issue of the accident that killed his wife, David and Sally's beloved mother. He sinks into a chair, all the energy drained from his face and body.

  “The truth is, David,” Isaac confesses with a weary voice, “I felt guilty for your deafness. You inherited the gene from me. It runs in my family and yet I never was affected. It skipped me and inflicted you instead.” His voice picking up energy, Isaac emphasizes, “That's why I wanted to do everything to get you well!”

  “Your way! Without giving me the chance to decide for myself what I want, what kind of treatment, if any, I want!”

  “That's the problem,” Isaac bellows. “You don't want any treatment. It makes no sense at all!”

  The yelling and fighting are more than Dorothy can stand and she storms into the living room to confront them.

  “Stop it, both of you. Isaac, you're being rigid and narrow-minded. And David, you're being disrespectful. And that, I won't tolerate. I love you both so much – and – and – an -”

  Dorothy's speech suddenly slurs and a panicked expression fills her eyes. The right side of her face droops sadly downward, and her right knee buckles, dragging her down to the floor.

  “Dorothy! What is it!” Isaac and David both grab her and support her to the couch. All she can do is make indistinguishable utterances.

  “Dad! What's wrong? What do we do?”

  “I think she's having a stroke. I'll call 911.”

  Seven

  Paralyzed on her right side, with her left side mildly affected, Dorothy's prognosis is only fair. She could regain some, but not all, of her motor skills with medication and extensive therapy, according to the doctors. But, after a few days in the hospital, Dorothy insists on coming home for rehabilitation. The family rallies around her, happy she is once again in familiar surroundings, and for a few days there are no fights, no conflicts. The Nickerson family bonds together as they once did in happier times, in their love for each other.

  As always, David yearns to converse with his aunt and visits her in her room, which was once his own room, on the third floor of the Nickerson house, with its expansive view of the ocean and the family cemetery. Situated cliffside at the far end of the property, adorned by uniquely shaped cypress trees, is his mother's grave watched over eternally by the marble angel that came to life one fateful day…or did David just imagine that, too, like all the other bizarre incidents everyone thinks he has hallucinated?

  The nurse has just finished bathing Dorothy and combing her silver hair. At the sight of David, Dorothy's eyes light up and she smiles, a bit of color coming back to her cheeks. Pleased that her patient is comforted, the nurse leaves the two of them alone.

  Dorothy cannot speak clearly, but she can sign with a shaky left hand. “Hello, my dearest nephew,” she moves her fingers slowly but correctly. “Why the sad face?”

  “You always wanted this room,” David reminds her, “but this is not how I want you to have it. I hate seeing you like this. If I hadn't messed up so much with Dad this wouldn't have happened.”

  “Not your fault. Just life.”

  “Aunt Dorothy, I never did tell you everything about the Moon Singer. I kept getting sidetracked.”

  “I know. Me, too,” she signs. “Tell me now. I have nothing – but time.”

  David straddles the hardback chair next to Dorothy's bed, and rests his arms on the back of it.

  “Remember when you suggested I try to communicate with Mom, tell her what I was feeling, all the hurt and anger over her being gone? Well, I went to her grave. I took the crystals like you told me. I used them the same as I did the first time, and I had another - another adventure - only this time I didn't go to the Island of Darkness, I went to a strange city called Coronadus.

  “So many things happened there. There was a woman who was very powerful. She believed in a lot of the things Mom believed in. She looked just like Mom. I - I think she was Mom.”

  Outside Dorothy's room, Isaac and Sally overhear David's conversation with his aunt, and the preposterous story he is telling her. Isaac is furious and when David comes out of Dorothy's room, he confronts his son, pulling him by the arm out of Dorothy's earshot.

  “I don't appreciate you eavesdropping,” David snaps, the animosity returning.

  “I wasn't. Sally and I just happened to come up to see Dorothy and heard you. What kind of craziness is this – adventures, crystals, Island of Darkness. And seeing some woman who you believe is your mother? What's got into you, David?”

  “It's all true, and Sally knows it. Tell him, Sal. Tell him that you know.”

  “Oh, David. I've stuck by you and I believe everything, except…” She starts to cry, “…except the part about Mom. I don't know why, but I'm scared to believe it.”

  “Yet you believe all that other silliness?” Isaac fumes in exasperation. “I don't know about you two.” Clearly in conflict, Sally goes to her room and closes the door.

  “I wish you would talk to Dr. Hilyer, David. You're irrational.”

  “But, Dad,” David implores, “don't you think it's possible that there are other places, other dimensions beyond this one? That we can communicate with people from other worlds?”

  “Men have been trying for hundreds of years,” Isaac says, emphatically, “and no one has been successful. There are no UFO's or ET's.”

  “I'm not talking about aliens or other planets, Dad. I mean people like us but in another time and place – the afterlife, maybe, or a parallel universe…”

  “David. What's happening between us? We used to be so close. You've changed so much. I hardly know you anymore.” Deflated, Isaac shakes his head and retires to his room.

  “Dad, when you've been through what I've been through, it definitely changes you,” David calls after him, but Isaac is behind the closed door and does not hear him.

  Back in his aunt's room, David takes her hand. Though she can't say the words, the look in Dorothy's eyes speaks volumes of love for him.

  “I know you believe me, Aunt Dorothy. And I promise you I will find a way to prove it to everyone else. And I'll find something to make you well again, the same way that Sally walked again. And this time, I'll do it right.”

  Eight

  David works at his computer with single-minded focus trying to design gridwork patterns that will recreate the energy of the Singer and Rose crystals. Each time he puts together a grid, he receives a computer message ins
tead, each one more cryptic than the previous one:

  “There will be no star wars in the next millennium. No one will have to fight to touch the stars or claim them as their own”… “There is no ultimate truth, for the Universe is constantly revealing itself and all its mysteries, which are infinite and unknowable.”

  But one elaborate grid pattern evokes a message that is chillingly akin to what Ishtar once told him:

  “Humanity should always be greater than technology.”

  At this, the hard drive crashes and the monitor goes dark.

  David wonders if the problem is evidence of the century-end computer glitch that everyone fearfully anticipates because computers were never programmed to numerically recognize a new century let alone a new millennium. Computers run everything from trains to nuclear power plants to bank systems, to milking cows and running the White House. At the stroke of midnight on December 31, the theory goes, all computers and all systems run by computers will fail completely, with disastrous results worldwide. For several years, computer programmers have been working at a feverish pitch to correct old encoding systems in computers that impact financial, political, social and business structures.

  But David's computer is a new model with a fail-safe encoding system built in. No, it's not the Millennium bug.

  “What are you trying to tell me?” he demands, and swats the monitor with an open hand.

  A vivid memory springs to David's mind, of his adventure on Coronadus when all of the machines came back to life after lying dormant for years. Coronadus had once been a teeming metropolis of scientific and technological sophistication and innovation. But all the knowledge was used for self-aggrandizement, power, and military aggression. When finally the psyche of Coronadus lost its ability to distinguish between what was morally right and what was profitable, a catastrophic war nearly destroyed the entire civilization.

  For years after, Coronadans lived simply, rejecting any and all technology, happy in the stillness and serenity of the organic life – until David arrived with the Singer crystal that reactivated the dormant industrial relics of the pre-war society. Not only did all the machines and electrical power systems re-awaken, so did the Coronadans' lust for power and material things.

  Now David realizes that one important thing was missing from the Coronadus culture: music. Except for a strolling minstrel or two in the town square, there was nothing in that majestic city that supported any art forms at all, no galleries or theaters, no concert halls or music conservatories. As David had always heard from Dr. Ramirez, “the measure of a great civilization is the value it places on the arts.” Music is the source of all life, of all things sustainable, he believed, “possessing a divinity everyone should experience.”

  Maybe, like the Coronadans, I have to go back to the beginning, to the place where things were simpler.” David muses. Then maybe I'll find the solution to my own problems.

  Nine

  As David and Dr. Ramirez study the weather systems

  around the country, the forecast looks favorable for the coming weeks. But an unusual wind system hovers over the Port Avalon area of the satellite map.

  “This is really strange.” Dr. Ramirez's comment streams across David's screen in red letters.

  “What is?” David sends an instant reply.

  “I tested the vibrational frequency of Port Avalon this morning,” the doctor replies, “and it resonated to F# Major, a very calm earth frequency. Now, this disruption in the weather. Something is out of tune in the universe.”

  David looks up from his monitor with a perplexed expression. With Dr. Ramirez, dissonance in music also means chaos in the world. It is a reflection of man's moods, his consciousness. The professor openly harbors animosity toward contemporary music and believes it is in large part a cause of the unrest, violence and disruptive behavior in society.

  He once recalled to David what a respected music icon had said in a recent magazine interview: “The music industry is a cesspool. I'm ashamed to be a part of it. The videos, especially, have corrupted our children. The way the girl singers dress, the obscene gestures on stage, it's soft porn. Behind the scenes it's overrun with greed, drugs, and untalented and unprincipled thugs.”

  “Come on, Doc,” David had protested. “Everyone in the music biz can't be a corrupt thug.”

  “Not everyone in music, David, just the people who run the business. The power brokers. We are at their mercy.”

  Sounds like Nathan Fischbacher and his greedy corporate cronies, David ruminated. Fischbacher, the snake of a businessman who once ran Cole Shipping, stole his father's designs, and almost swindled the town of Port Avalon out of their economic livelihood. People in power. Must they always be evil? David hoped it wasn't true.

  * * *

  Even in the fall, Port Avalon's weather is usually mild, never stormy. But as though validating Dr. Ramirez's concerns about something being amiss in the universe, the clear blue sky suddenly turns black and foreboding. The sight triggers anxiety in David and he quickly leaves his computer station to stand close to the observatory's panoramic windows. Without warning, a wild palm frond flies into the window. Instinctively David ducks, forgetting that the windows are double-paned and virtually unbreakable. Still, the shock of the flying debris unnerves him, especially when another frond and other objects sail by in quick succession.

  For 20 minutes a sustained wind of 60 miles per hour pounds the coastal town, bringing with it a blinding rain that dumps six inches of water, overflows in ditches and sweeps onto heavily trafficked roads. Fender benders abound, and one major accident sends four people to the hospital in critical condition. Numerous trees topple, bringing down power lines with them as they crash onto homes and cars. Then, as suddenly as it came, the storm abates. The sky is again that beautiful serene cloudless blue typical of Port Avalon in the autumn.

  “Dr. Ramirez! What's going on?” David beseeches the professor. “How can this be happening!” David turns toward Ramirez hoping for an explanation, but sees him slumped on the floor next to his chair.

  “Doc? Doc!” David calls, checking the man's pulse. Ramirez is white and his skin clammy. “I'll call 911!”

  But the professor comes to and shakes his head no, stopping David from calling, saying that he is alright.

  “I really think I should call someone. You look awful. What happened?”

  “I'm not sure,” Dr. Ramirez says, as David helps him up and into his chair. “I was just entering some data and, well - I just blacked out, I guess.”

  “Yeah. You and the sky,” David quips.

  “What do you mean? The sky looks fine, David. Clear and calm.”

  “It wasn't that way a minute ago. Listen. I think you'd better go home. Do you want me to drive you?”

  “No. No. Thanks, David. I'm okay now.” He sips some mineral water from the ever-present sports bottle on his desk. “There. That's better. Thanks. But I will go home early. You should, too.”

  “I'll be leaving in a minute,” David says. “I just have to close down our stations.”

  Ramirez leaves the lab, but David decides to follow after him just to be sure he's really okay. David turns off his computer, then goes to the professor's station. A dizzying string of mysterious codes on Ramirez's screen disappear swiftly as David shuts the system down.

  Ten

  Dr. Ramirez's house is on the same route as David's. Once he is certain that the professor has arrived safely, David drives home to be sure that everyone there is okay. Aside from a mess of small tree branches in the front yard and some overturned flower pots on the porch, the Nickerson house seems to be untouched by the storm. He jogs up the stairs to check on Dorothy. She is sound asleep with her nurse in the room reading. Isaac is at a meeting, the nurse tells him, and Sally is at a friend's house.

  David decides to evaluate the damage done to the ecosystem on the beach. He finds a lot of kelp, dead jellies and starfish littering the sand. Large slabs of wood, pieces of pipe and roof shin
gles lay in a disturbing heap on the once pristine sand.

  Heather is there, and she rushes to his side, instinctively about to give him a hug. Surprised by the gesture, David stiffens and pulls back from her.

  “David,” she signs. “I was so worried about you. I'm glad you're okay.” Heather loves David and longs for an indication from him that he feels the same. She learned sign language in the hopes it would bring them closer, and educated herself on the use of technical equipment designed for the hearing impaired. David respects and cares for Heather, and enjoys sharing their passion for the Beach Watch program, but for reasons she cannot understand, he resists anything more than a platonic relationship.

  Heather catches David's eye and says, “There's going to be a meeting of the Beach Watch members tonight at seven. Can you come?”

  “Sure. What's the agenda?”

  “The storm, for one,” she says. “And the effects of all the new development on Port Avalon's coastline. We're preparing for the next City Council meeting.”

  David nods. “I'll be there.”

  “Well…I have to go now,” Heather says, hoping David will go with her.

  “See ya later,” David waves her off casually, and Heather backs away a few steps, reluctant to leave. Seeing the far-away look in his eyes, a look she has seen before but could never penetrate, she turns and leaves, disappointed as usual.

  When he is certain Heather is out of sight, David removes the Wind Rose from his pants pocket. He had sensed something was happening but he didn't dare reveal the compass in front of Heather. Bianca had told him never to let anyone know he had it, and he kept his promise faithfully. It is as he thought. The needle is spinning on the antique navigational instrument, spinning like it had in Coronadus when it caught the magnetic field of the Singer crystal David carried in the pouch on his belt.