The sketches were like Janna herself – direct, often humorous, honest, and with an underlying sensuality of line and shading that made Raven ache with memories. He could hear her rueful laughter in the drawing labeled „God’s Own Washing Machine,“ which showed jeans and shirts slung over any handy railing while rain poured down over them, washing away salt and sand. He could see Janna’s honesty in the sketch of a totem labeled simply „Before.“ She drew the Haida icons without embellishment or softening, accepting without evasion the Haidas’ comfortless view of man in relation to the universe.
Page after page turned beneath Raven’s careful fingers until there was only one page left. He turned it and felt his scalp tighten in primitive response. At first the sketch looked like the others, but there were aspects of it that teased his mind until realization came. There were shadows that suggested a man’s watchful eyes, a seemingly random collection of curves that became a face superimposed on the sea, a mist-wrapped mountain that evoked a man seated, thinking, a very powerful man with black hair and granite strength and eyes that flinched from nothing.
And all of the men were Raven.
Raven’s features in infinite variations, his eyes and mouth repeated in forest and mountain, ocean and totem, Raven smiling or intent, asleep or in the grip of passion, calm or at the instant of hottest ecstasy, gentle or fierce – Raven, always Raven. It was as though nothing lived, not even the sea itself, that wasn’t animated by Raven’s own breath, his own life flowing into everything, becoming part of it.
He looked at the drawing until he could no longer see it, and then he put his face in his hands and wept, knowing that he had finally heard a love song for a raven.
Mist condensed with the falling sun, giving the land a mysterious gloaming that was as haunted as the vanished rose illusions. Janna had stopped a hundred yards from her cabin and turned to look at the long, wandering trail she had left on her walk out of Eden. She didn’t know how long she had been standing there watching the ragged black stitches she had left behind in the sand, stitches that were being unraveled by the returning tide. Now there was nothing left but shadowy hollows where spindrift gathered. The next wave would wash away even that, leaving nothing at all.
„If I could, I would paint sky and mountains, sea and forest, and they would all be you.“
The soft, deep voice sent shivers over Janna’s skin and made her doubt her sanity in the instant before she spun around. Raven was standing within reach, as though he had condensed from the primal night and her own dreams.
„If I could,“ Raven said, „I would have the wind calling your name in all times and seasons, and the mist-veiled forests would have been created just to match your eyes. But I’m not an artist or a god. I’m only a harsh-voiced raven flying over an empty Eden, crying for what I wanted so much that I was afraid to believe that it was finally mine.“ His big hands came up, framing Janna’s face, trembling as they touched her softness and warmth, „I have no beautiful songs to fill your silences, no worlds to remake in your image, no special way to tell you that you’re the other half of my soul.“
„Raven – “ Janna’s voice broke. „I don’t need special gifts or songs or anything but you. Just you, Raven. I love you.“
The words swept through Raven, transforming him.
He lifted her high in his arms and held her close, telling her with his strength and his gentleness and his whispered words how much he loved her, feeling his love returned with every touch, every breath, her vital warmth enveloping him as he held her.
Beyond them the last of the footprints leading from Eden dissolved into the mist and moon-silvered sea. Neither Janna nor Raven noticed. They had found the only Eden that mattered, and they would hold it forever in their arms.
Elizabeth Lowell
***
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Love Song For A Raven Page 16
