by Mindi Meltz
Eva waits.
“The tree told me,” Fawn adds. “It wouldn’t tell me until I called him by that name. As if the tree knew him better than I did. As if the tree knew his real name, and I didn’t.”
Everybody knew him by that name, thinks Eva. Except you. Because you refused to. But she doesn’t say so.
“Daughter. What are you doing up there? You look ridiculous. You’re afraid of heights. Come down!”
Fawn doesn’t smile. “I’m trying to see what he saw. I’m trying to imagine what he wanted, when he looked out there. Why he left.”
For the first time since the loss of Kite, Eva feels a little angry with Fawn. But she knows it’s not Fawn’s fault that she is angry. It’s the fault of these memories that have been haunting her, these other emotions from long ago, that don’t belong to this life.
“Fawn,” she says, as calmly as she can. “I have come here to find you. I have something to say to you. But if you will not come down, then I will speak to you from here.” Fawn tilts her head slightly to listen, and that is enough for Eva. But suddenly she feels nervous. Nervous! Nervous in front of her own daughter—nervous like she felt when she was fifteen years old and her husband-to-be came to her door for the first time and looked up and down her body, from her breasts to her knees, and back up.
What is it, exactly, that she will say, that makes her so afraid?
“I want to tell you,” she begins. “I want to tell you, daughter, that it isn’t your fault. It isn’t your fault that Kite left. You have not failed as a mother. You have not failed in protecting him. He left because he had to go. Being a good mother to your child does not always mean keeping him with you.”
Already she can see that Fawn is crying, but she knows she has not yet said what she means to say. She knows because she herself is shaking now.
“You kept me safe,” Fawn sniffs, barely louder than the ghosts of leaves touching each other in the sudden breeze, but Eva can hear her. “All by yourself, you kept me alive, you rescued me from the City.”
“Yes,” nods Eva. “That’s the story you learned. And it’s true in a way, but the City is not all evil. Your brothers are there, and others who are related to you.” Eva’s whole attention is focused on her daughter in the tree, and she’s not aware of her own face, her own tight throat. “Others who loved you. People like us, living the best they can. And there is magic, and there is knowledge. There is music, beauty, and joy.”
She can see Fawn listening, and she can feel that still she has not told anything that Fawn does not know deep down. She still has not said it. She takes a deep breath. “It’s not your fault that I left.”
Fawn takes a breath, too, and turns away, looks out over the still untouched forest, over the beautiful womanly mountains, to the haze of that hungry mystery where Kite has gone to find the truths that no one told him. “I know,” she whispers.
“No, you don’t,” says Eva. “You feel guilty. You feel that you are bound to me forever. And I made you feel that way. Because I used to—I used to resent you. When we came out here, and I found out how hard it was, and how much I had lost, sometimes I regretted it. And I blamed you, because you were so delicate, so sensitive, and in so much danger from your father, that it was because of you that I finally left. But you weren’t the only reason. You were only the final reason. I blamed you then because it was easy. I never expressed that to you, or I never meant to. But you felt it anyway. I could tell by the silence you kept, and by how hard you tried not to cry when you were afraid. And later, when finally I was grateful to you—so grateful to you, Daughter, for bringing me back to what was deepest, what was most true, what was most vulnerable and sensitive and alive within me, and for inspiring me with your precious gentleness to leave that place behind, return to the earth, and become stronger than I’d ever been, it wasn’t enough to take that first guilt away from you. You still felt it. You still feel it.
“I think it isn’t only the City you’re afraid of. It’s failing. You’re afraid of failing to keep me happy, failing to keep your family safe, failing to hold everything together, the way you think I held it all together for you. But it was you, Daughter, who kept me strong. You were my earth, my center. You were my gentle, steady rock, all through those storms, all through the hunger, all through the fear. Do you understand?”
Fawn nods, still not looking at her, her face clenched in tears.
“Tell me, do you understand?” Eva repeats.
“I don’t know,” says Fawn.
Eva sighs and tries to keep the earth beneath her feet.
“I wish I could know that he’s safe,” whispers Fawn, leaning over the tree now, the big branch she’s straddling pressed into her stomach as if it could keep her guts from overflowing in grief. Eva knows that feeling.
Not since Fawn was a child, cowering beneath the form of her father, has Eva felt such a powerful urge to wrap her in her arms. The feeling punches her breath right out of her, makes her double over, makes her eyes swim. But she straightens up and says, “You never know if your child is safe, Fawn. You don’t know if Chelya is safe right now. I don’t know if my sons are okay. I don’t even know if you are okay. But I do know that you have to stop living as if he has died, and you don’t deserve to live. You have to know that it is okay to feel joy. It is okay to let Rye hold you, it is okay to let him touch you, it is okay to feel that pleasure again. It is okay to live again. You don’t have to blame him, or yourself, or anyone, and you don’t have to choose between loving him and loving Kite. You don’t have to choose like I chose. That isn’t a choice I ever wanted to pass on to you.”
Then she makes herself turn away, and she walks back down the hill to the house.
Lonely says goodbye to each member of the family in turn, on the day of the full moon.
Rye is the easiest, not because she cares for him least, but because everything in their friendship feels easier now, including letting go. Before dawn, she watches him through half-closed eyes as he pulls on his boots to go out and check the traps. By the time she wakes enough to speak, he is out the door, so she pulls as many clothes around her as fast as she can and runs after him. The cold feels dry and shiny on her face, and makes her breath come fast. He turns to watch her coming with a small, complicated smile on his face. The moon is sinking behind the trees and the shadows hover behind him in expectation. His beard looks solid and old, like granite.
“I’m leaving today,” says Lonely, out of breath.
He nods, and looks down at his boots like a boy. Neither of them knows what to say, until they both think to put their arms around each other, and then they rock back and forth like that for a moment, their bodies gradually relaxing. In his embrace, Lonely feels the thrill of that first rescue, his arms lifting her up out of a dream into warm, luscious humanness; she feels that first taste of tenderness; she feels the romance of such longing, and the innocence of the summer sun in the field where he knelt before her and tore from her body one of the sweetest kisses she ever knew.
He stands back and looks at her. “You seem stronger, more confident, these days.” He pauses. “And you also seem heavier, and sadder than ever.”
Lonely doesn’t know what to say, so she says, “Thank you. For being my friend, I mean.” Then she feels bold, because she’s leaving, so she adds, “For being my brother. For loving me.”
Rye smiles. “Will you be back?”
“I don’t know.”
He looks at her and takes this in. She wishes she could say more, but her mind feels strangely empty. Her heart is elsewhere, and the thought of how long the journey will be to find it exhausts her.
“This winter,” she says finally. “It does end, right?”
He laughs, and she laughs, too, though not quite as sincerely.
“If you look carefully,” he says, “you can already see signs of spring. Even now.”
Lonely looks past him at trees that look dead to her, and cannot imagine what he means.
“I wish you all the blessings of nature on your journey, Lonely. And I wish for you that you discover your true name, because that one does not suit you. If you ask me, that is. It is not how I will remember you.”
“How will you remember me, then? By what name?”
She is joking now, after all, for these things that once tormented her seem laughable at this moment, though perhaps the laughter is bitter—perhaps she only laughs because she has come to accept some things as unchangeable. But, of course, he is taking her question seriously. He is looking out toward the fields where once her Unicorn waited for her. She thinks now, suddenly, that the reason she waited so long to leave here again—the reason she waited so long to continue on that search which she once believed to be her whole purpose in life—was not because she didn’t know where to look for Sky or because she was afraid or because she felt hopeless, but because of the loneliness that overcame her when she imagined continuing on without that magical body to carry her. That gentlest of beings loved her utterly and unconditionally just by moving eternally beneath her, bringing her forever home to herself, and forever onward. The Unicorn had left her here, and so, obediently, she had stayed. But now she knows that the Unicorn is not coming back.
“Meadow,” Rye says, and it takes Lonely a moment to remember that he is telling her the name he will remember her by. “That’s how I think of you. Like meadows. That kind of freedom, like childhood, like the wind. I’ll call you Meadow. I wish I’d thought of it before.”
“I wish you had, too,” says Lonely.
“Goodbye, Meadow.” He kisses her on the forehead, and turns away.
Chelya is digging up roots in the greenhouse. It has taken Lonely all day to make herself begin these last conversations. The house feels so safe, so warm.
“Where’s your mother?” she asks Chelya.
Chelya shrugs. “I guess she needs a lot of time alone these days.”
Lonely looks around, as if she might suddenly see her. She hasn’t had a real conversation with Fawn since the morning they came home from the birth, but at least Fawn shows a sad kindness toward her now, and no longer avoids her. “I’ve—Chelya, I’ve come to say goodbye again.”
Chelya looks up, but doesn’t seem surprised. “But you can’t leave now,” she says. “It’s getting dark soon. Leave in the morning?”
“It doesn’t matter. Where I’m going, it doesn’t matter.”
Chelya nods slowly and puts down her spade. She hugs Lonely, but her body feels tired. “At least you’re really saying goodbye this time,” she says, and smiles. But it’s the same smile that Lonely sees on everyone’s face. It’s the smile that says, “Kite is gone, and this smile is all I have to spare.”
“Is food going to matter, then, where you’re going?” Chelya asks.
Lonely looks down. “I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you take some, just in case?”
They go down to the basement together and gather dried meat and fruit. In the back corner, Kite’s books are still piled exactly as he left them. Lonely can’t see them in the dark, but she feels their presence, as if in that tiny, whispering language of intimate black lines, they contain the secret of who he was, why he left, and whether or not he is ever coming home. As they walk back up the stairs, Chelya says,
“I’m sorry I don’t have anything else to give you this time.”
And Lonely realizes with a little shock of shame that she was almost expecting that, some gift of magic from Chelya, some mystery that would later make sense and bring her closer to what she longed for. It isn’t that she needs anything. But she misses that time in life when so much was possible, when so much was still left to be discovered. Why does she no longer feel like that? Maybe because nothing—no mystery, no gift—could compare with that dress, what it meant, what it led to, and what was lost.
“It’s okay,” she says, recovering herself. “I feel like you’re always giving to me, always helping me. I wish I could give you something.”
“Oh,” says Chelya, shrugging. “But I don’t need anything.”
They’re back in the main room now, and Chelya lays their bundles out on the counter and begins wrapping and packing them into a bundle Lonely can carry on her shoulders. Lonely thinks again of her lost Unicorn, and is overcome with the memory of what gifts she’s been given in this life. The horse, from Yora. Her very life, from Rye, and from Delilah, who saved her with the body of the boar. Whatever she needed, whenever she needed it.
“I want you to be happy again,” she cries impulsively. “I want you all to be happy.”
Chelya turns to her and smiles bigger than before. “Thank you. I want you to be happy again, too.”
“What will it take? Give me your wisdom, Chelya. That is your greatest gift to me.”
Chelya shrugs, as if embarrassed. “Gratitude probably. Trust. Loving each other.”
Then it hits Lonely again: why Chelya is the way she is, and why Lonely is not. “You come from love, Chelya. All around you is love. You were born of love. And so life feels right to you, doesn’t it? It makes sense. But I didn’t come from that. Chelya, I was born of…I was born of misunderstanding, and violence. I don’t know how to live. I don’t know where I belong—if I belong. That’s what’s wrong with me.”
Chelya doesn’t look up or stop her motions. She ties the bag tight. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Lonely,” she says evenly, almost casually.
“I have nothing to give.”
“But you have given something, Lonely. I mean, you’ve given my mother something, and in that way you’ve given me something.”
“What? What have I given her?”
Chelya shrugs again. “I don’t know exactly, but it’s true.”
Lonely stares at her.
“Are your parents dead?” Chelya asks. Lonely feels surprised, and then sorry, to realize that she never told Chelya anything—when Chelya was so eager, especially last summer when she still seemed like a young girl, for the stories Lonely could give her. It was the very first thing she had asked, as Lonely ate her first meal of this world with them: Where do you come from? Where are you going? Maybe Chelya hasn’t changed so much. Maybe she has only changed with Lonely, because she finally accepted that Lonely would not open to her in the way she opened to Lonely. So now she is closed. But why? Why has Lonely kept herself a secret? What has been so important, so frightening, so special, that it could not have been told to these loving ears? The thought of such betrayal is terrible to Lonely now.
“Oh, no,” she stammers. “No, they—My father is dead. But my mother. My mother is still alive.” It’s the first time she’s said it. “But she hates me,” she adds. “She cursed me.”
“Oh.” Chelya looks at her in a way that embarrasses her, with a kind of compassion that Lonely finds painful. “But,” she says, “people only make curses when they feel hurt and helpless, and they don’t know what else to do.”
Lonely looks away. This is why she didn’t want to say these things aloud.
“You should love her. That’s what I have to say to you, Lonely. You should give your mother your love. I think she needs it.”
“But you don’t know who—I mean, you don’t know her. It’s too late for that.”
“It’s never too late.”
Then before Lonely can think any more, Chelya’s arms are around her, and Chelya’s tears bless her cheeks, and Lonely, strangely dry-eyed, wraps her own arms slowly around Chelya, feeling that she is embracing a star.
Chelya climbs to the loft ahead of Lonely and whispers to her grandmother. Then she climbs back down and gestures to Lonely, and Lonely begins to ascend. After this, she will only have to say goodbye to Fawn.
It came to her, only last night, that the full moon is what she’s been wai
ting for. For it was on a full moon that she dreamed of her beloved before she ever knew him—both times. It was on the last full moon that she saw him again, felt him again, for an instant. Even the wind has not been able to explain that miracle to her, but she knows: it is the full moon that opens a door between worlds. It is on the full moon that she will enter the forest for the last time, return to the fire circle, and not come back. Either that world that holds him will open for her or…Whatever happens, she will not come back.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Eva. I wanted to say goodbye to you alone.”
Eva is lying in Kite’s bed.
“Sometimes I lie here,” she explains, “to see if Kite might open his dreams to me.”
“Has he?”
“I don’t know,” Eva says, sitting up and patting the bed next to her. “Sometimes, lately, I get confused. I don’t know if I’m seeing his dreams, or the dreams of my sons, or the dreams of other men I left long ago.”
Lonely sits down, disturbed as always at being forced to remember Eva’s age—and at having to imagine that Eva might one day not be so wise, that she might one day look around her in confusion, not seeing, and then finally forget everything, and be gone. She knows that this can happen because Eva herself has said so, though when Eva says it, she is always laughing.
Lonely looks around at the room she has not visited since that wild night long ago, when she watched Fawn and Rye become one tangled cry of body and soul together. That time is gone like another lifetime. No wonder, she thinks now, that Eva gets confused. Why doesn’t everyone? How can we make sense of all these separate pieces of a life, a life that changes form so quickly, so completely, that we cannot even be sure it is still our own?
They both stretch their feet toward the warmth of the chimney where it rises through the center of the loft.
