Akilina: Out of the Woods

by Patricia A Bowmer

Halley held the white stick in her left hand as they walked. She relaxed with her innermost knowledge that the baby was safe, was waiting for her. Like before, she could feel its pulse in her forehead. So beautiful…my angel. Absently, she rubbed her fingertips together and was perplexed when the word soft fell into her mind.

  The pull of her mission to save the baby pulsed through her body and pushed her forward onto the yellow tundra.

  As they moved into the tundra, what remained of the path disappeared. It didn’t matter – they had no need to follow a particular trail anymore. They simply followed their feet towards the tall grey mountains.

  The yellow grass tickled their ankles, swaying with the movement of their bodies, but not breaking.

  Eden stopped once and looked back.

  “Look,” she said, pointing.

  Halley followed the direction of Eden’s gaze. The sea of yellow grass carried no trace of their onward journey. It was as if it had never been parted. That meant they couldn’t be followed. But it also meant Halley couldn’t follow her own path back to the woods. She felt like crying.

  After a few hours walking, Halley stopped and stretched. “The mountains are a long way away,” she said. “I think we’d better rest for the night.” The blisters on her right foot had burst and were stinging with each step, and her legs throbbed with the burning sensation of overworked muscles. “There, that’s a nice spot.” She pointed towards a flattened area, where the yellow grass was matted down.

  “Or…” Eden turned in a slow circle. “Or…how about under that bush with the pink flowers?” she said, gesturing to a more sheltered spot. “That would be more fun, like a real clubhouse!” She sobered. “And no one could see us there.”

  Halley agreed. The threat of Trance finding them was also on her mind, even if they were hard to track.

  Eden popped her head inside the bush shelter. She was out again in a flash, scooping up several handfuls of fallen pink flower blossoms, and tossing them onto the ground inside the shelter. She popped her head back in and surveyed her work. “There – that’s prettier! Look.”

  Halley looked in. “It’s beautiful.”

  With the onset of evening, it was getting cooler. Halley re-zipped on her trouser legs, and donned the long-sleeved orange t-shirt. “Here, you have this,” she said, handing Eden the orange windbreaker from her bamboo backpack. “It’s going to be cold tonight.”

  Eden held it up. “How’d it get so dirty?”

  “I slept outside. That was my first night. I left it too late to find shelter – stupid, huh? It bucketed down rain.” Halley felt her cheeks grow warm with embarrassment. “Sorry it’s so dirty…but it’ll keep you warm anyway.”

  “Oh, I don’t care. I think it makes me look like a cheetah! And I think you were very brave to sleep outside in the dark, all alone.”

  Halley laughed. “Come on, Cheetah, let’s get inside.”

  They curled up in the nest-like hollow inside the bush. Eden’s pink blossoms formed a soft bed. Halley took the side closest to the shelter’s entrance, to protect Eden from any unexpected night visitors.

  As the sun set, they became surrounded by the riotous night cry of cicadas. The sharp, high-pitched chatter took Halley back to the hot summer nights of her childhood. She fingered a flower blossom, turned grey in the dark, and remembered the old army cot with the thin fabric bed (“Don’t step on the middle, you’ll go right through,” her father had warned her a million times). She’d bring that old green cot out onto the porch when it was too hot to sleep inside. It felt like camping out, but she was safe at home. Her bedroom window led to the porch and she left it open so she could climb back in quickly if she got scared. Listening to Eden settle in, hearing her breathing deepen with the onset of sleep, she realized something. She’d never had to climb back inside; she’d never got scared.

  She’d been like Eden then. In the nights of her childhood, when she’d slept amongst cicadas, everything was possible and nothing was frightening. She’d been thoughtlessly brave, and she had never, ever pondered the future. She was simply alive, acutely aware of everything, and that was enough. The mulberry tree, with its lush berries that existed for the sole purpose of being skwooshed under bare feet, staining the soles of her feet a vibrant wine color; the taste of nectar from the yellow honeysuckle growing on the fence – she would pinch the end off the tiny flowers with her fingernails, and pull the pin-shaped stem through the thin flower to relish its sweetness; the simple pleasure of walking tip-toe along the four-inch width of the neighbor’s fence, until the neighbor shouted at her and she had to wait until next time the neighbor was out to try it again; the majesty of leaping from the garage roof, a superhero, rolling into a tumblesault when she hit the grass.

  Sleeping on that old army cot on the porch, she used to ponder the song of the cicadas. Were the insects singing with joy at the moment they emerged from the prehistoric shells they left attached to trees? Or were they screaming with despair when their short lives ended? The young Halley didn’t know the answer, but she decided to believe the cicada’s call was a sound of joy. It didn’t really matter if it were true or not.

  It was all so simple then. She listened to the cicadas. It is now, too. It’s still simple. As she drifted towards sleep, a small smile softened her face, and her hands gently embraced her belly.

  Halley woke early, her first thought taking her by surprise. I’m not tired. This is the best I’ve felt in years. It was still dark in the shelter, but she could see minnows of light between the edges of the leaves. Feeling drawn to witness the first holy light of dawn, she crawled outside.

  It was the fragile, miraculous beginning of another day. She stared up at the sky, and realized she hadn’t thought of daybreak in quite that way in a long while. It was nice to have her old self back.

  A little of the night chill remained. The light was soft, the horizon a magic of deep reds and oranges, becoming more vibrant as the dark receded and life returned to the world. Dawn tickled the openness of the plain, spreading gradually, like spilled water. It burnished the yellow grass to gold. Halley watched the endlessness of the view appear; it was invigorating, open and free. The world was renewed; she was renewed. The day was abundantly clear, so clear she could see for miles. The mountains were etched with detail, high and fine. Individual trees stood out, and it became apparent how many different types of trees formed the abundant green. A thin mountain trail was also visible, a dark brown line on a grey and green background.

  Then the sun shoved its way above the horizon. Its appearance was a poor climax. It was a bully. It sucked the vibrancy of color from the sky for itself, leaving behind only the usual, mundane blue. Somewhere a bird spoke, and its loud caaa-caaa-caaa coincided with the moment Halley’s reverie broke.

  The world became real again. Hard-edged.

  The early sunlight already felt hot on the top of her head.

  I wonder what time it is. We’d better get moving. It’s going to be hot today. She lifted her arm to check her watch. But the watch was gone. There wasn’t even a tan line to mark its place.

  It must have fallen off days ago, maybe in the river or on the rocks in the river gully. She didn’t feel any real sense of loss. The catch on that watch had never locked properly, and it was old and scuffed. That’s why she’d chosen to wear it on the walk with Fernando – it didn’t matter much if she lost it. And the old-scuffed-ness fitted how I felt about me that day. That’s the real reason I wore it. She was glad it was gone.

  Still, an uneasy sensation moved in Halley’s stomach. It certainly wasn’t because she’d lost the watch, or because she didn’t know what time it was. Rather, it was because this part of her past had disappeared. It felt like it swept away with it a fraction of her. She’d worn that watch ever since she’d met Fernando. It was part of their relationship.

  Suddenly her eyes felt scratchy and tired, and she closed them tightly and rubbed them hard with her fists. Maybe she hadn’t slept as well as she’d thou
ght.

  When she opened her eyes, she noticed again how clear the light was. Far in front of her were the mountains – that meant the woods were somewhere behind. She felt compelled to look at them, to hold onto them like a child would a favorite security blanket. But when she looked to where the woods should have been, they weren’t there.

  They simply weren’t there.

  Her blood pulsed through her veins with force. She cocked her head to the side. I didn’t think we’d gone that far yesterday. She tried to stay calm. Telling herself to move slowly, trying to contain the feeling that was burrowing even deeper into her belly, she looked left and then right, to the back and to the front, and then, even more disturbed, made a concentrated sweep of the view, turning in a slow full circle.

  No matter which direction she looked, she couldn’t see the woods. Like the watch, they were gone; the woods too had disappeared.

  For a moment, Halley felt weightless, unanchored, as if she were held to the earth only by a thin filament of anxiety. She tried to think carefully about what had happened, to reason out these twin disappearances. The watch could’ve just fallen off, but how could the woods just vanish? Okay, maybe we turned a corner and I didn’t notice, maybe we traveled further than I thought yesterday.

  She knew she was just making up explanations; these things were not true. The only truth she could be sure of was that the woods were gone. That meant she couldn’t go back. She began to speak aloud.

  “I always thought…I always thought I could return. To the woods. To my life before.” True, yesterday when she’d left the woods, she’d said she wouldn’t return. It was so easy to kick around the idea of irrevocable change when it wasn’t real, when she still had a choice. She’d believed, if she were honest with herself at the deepest level that she could return if she really wanted to. But she’d been wrong.

  “God…” she said.

  She felt her heart strike against her ribcage like a broken thing.

  I can’t get back to where I started. I can never go back. That means…Fernando… I can’t get back to Fernando!

  The world grew blurry. She rubbed the center of her chest with the heel of her hand, as if she could rub away the sudden pain she felt there. It was as if she had split open along mid-seam.

  I didn’t think when I walked away that day…I didn’t think it was forever. I never even said goodbye.

  Her eyes moved restlessly along the horizon. If she kept looking, some part of her was sure she’d be able to find the woods, find the path back. When that didn’t work, she began to pace back and forth.

  Forever. Goodbye.

  The words revolved around each other in her mind like herself rolling down a hillside, round and round, filling all the space. She clasped her hands together so tightly that it hurt. She stopped pacing.

  She was stuck. She was pinned to the past, pinned to this place and unable to move forward, like her boots were, all of a sudden, too heavy to lift. There was still a long, thin, unbreakable thread connecting her to Fernando, stretching out from the very center of her chest. Stuck. I don’t want to be stuck anymore. She didn’t want to face the thought, but she knew. I’ve got to say goodbye to Fernando. It was the only way forward, to lift anchor, to cut the cords which bound her to the past.

  One of her hands went to her mouth, and she bit her forefinger, hard. As if by causing one pain she could distract herself from another. She hated the pain. She wanted to be over it, over Fernando. She knew for that to be, she had to face it all; she had to face the love she still felt for him.

  In her memory, Fernando’s black eyes shone. She felt her face soften – his eyes looked as they had when they’d first met, laughing and alluring, lit with tiny points of diamond. He was tall and handsome and well-built and a tango and the color red. She felt him hold her small hand in his large one, felt him rub his thumb tenderly over her knuckles. Felt her cheek nestle into the hollow of his shoulder, in the soft pile of his grey wool sweater, where she’d always felt safe. She saw his long eyelashes resting on his cheeks as he slept. She heard the music play, in the dark, in the living room, as they danced alone together. It had begun in love. In the beginning, there had been beauty; there had been the oneness of them. She removed her hand from her face.

  It had not ended in love.

  She forced herself to remember his expression just before he’d turned and walked away. He hadn’t believed her, hadn’t believed in her. Sparrow. He had always called her Sparrow. She hated it. She took a deep breath. Because of what their love had become, she had to say goodbye to all of it, even the good, even his laughing eyes on the first day they’d met. Even the tango.

  For a moment, she tried to hold on – she tried to take his point of view, to forgive him. It must have been tiring to have to lead all the time. To put up with my bad moods. I must have been hard to read, especially when I was so angry, and then I swallowed the anger back down to not speak of it.

  Halley breathed in the clear sweet morning air, and let that thought rest at the back of her throat for a moment, and then she coughed it back up.

  Hell with that. I’ve given him too much of my thought-space, created too many explanations for his behavior that came down to saying I was at fault. She shook her head. What we had just wasn’t good for me. Even the good bits. The good bits only felt so good because it was so bad the rest of the time. I have to let it all go. I don’t need to forgive him all his faults. I don’t even need to assign them, or to assign blame to him or to me. I just need to leave the woods between us.

  She knew then: even if she could see a way back, she wouldn’t take it.

  “Goodbye, Fernando.”

  She said the words aloud, before she meant to. She said them looking back the way she’d come, even though she couldn’t see the woods anymore. The words held a strange resonance, as if they could be heard everywhere: Goodbye, Fernando. As if her goodbye would reach him where he stood and he would hear it and they could simply be free of one another. The words were said without anger, without any current of harsh judgment or bite of fury. The words were said softy, with simplicity and with honor for both of their humanity. In voicing the words, the action was taken, and the past was the past. The woods were gone, and this was okay.

  She felt the sadness, felt her tears draw a clear path down her dirty cheeks for the Halley she’d been and the life she had shared with Fernando, for the watch, and the music, and the love – and beneath it, just below the sadness, she found something new, something entirely unexpected.

  It was what seemed to be a tiny layer of freedom. “Ahhhh,” she said. Even though it seemed tiny, this layer of freedom, she dug deeper into it, as a child digging both hands into the sand for the first time. She squeezed it and savored the sensation, wet and wild and full, and she knew it was endless. She was free! She had set herself free.

  And free, she was different. She hadn’t really thought about who she’d become through her journey in the woods. Now she did. Standing alone in the clear light of dawn, instead of looking back at who she’d been with Fernando, she let herself be one with the person she’d become since she’d walked away.

  I didn’t think I could do that, find my way through the woods alone, without a map or a compass. She saw herself again climbing up the river gully, knees bloody, expression fixed with concentration. On the steep trails, uphill and down. Before the woods, I believed I was a sparrow. Small and incapable and unable to choose for myself – that’s what sparrow meant to me. He just gave my own view of myself voice.

  That had all changed.

  She looked up at the blue sky. An eagle was flying. She thought about it. An eagle would not fly two feet behind anyone, holding its head down in shame. It wouldn’t say thank you for mistreatment. It would never mistrust its own judgment. I am an eagle. I won’t hide from the truth anymore. I’ll make my own choices. I’ll lead myself where I need to go. I won’t be afraid, or, if I am, I’ll simply go on.

  A sense of power flowed t
hrough her with these thoughts, and she saw it was power in both her light and her darkness. Knowing she would not return to the woods was good, she found. No, it was great! She was someone else, someone new, going somewhere else, somewhere important. Her body felt strong and capable and her own, and her mind felt clear.

  Then, from long habit, she glanced back down to see what time it was. The watch was still gone, but this time, she noticed something else. Her stomach lurched. My ring – I’ve lost my ring too!

  The ring was gone.

  She suddenly realized she’d noticed its absence once before, the day she’d entered the woods to go searching for the baby. The alarm she’d felt at the loss of the ring had been replaced by the urgency to find shelter.

  I can’t even remember what the ring looked like, or where I got it from. All I know is I didn’t get it from Fernando. She bit her lip. It went on this finger, she thought, slipping the forefinger and thumb of her other hand over the ring finger on her left hand with something like reverence. That’s where a wedding ring or an engagement ring would go. But I’m not…I’ve never been…

  Her head began to pound. It was as if saying goodbye to Fernando had freed her to remember. I didn’t lose that ring at all – I took it off! She breathed out hard – she could see the moment:

  She was removing the ring, a gold wedding ring that shone in the sunlight, and placing it into a small red, heart-shaped box. After putting it in the box, she took it out again, as if to look at the engraved inscription. But she didn’t read it.

  Instead, she quickly put the ring back in its box, and stood a long moment looking at it, thinking how small and insignificant something so important could appear. Two years of marriage. Now it was over. Shaking her head, as if to shake off the hold the ring had over her, she placed the box inside a drawer, and shoved it towards the back, pulling some other boxes in front of it.

  As she closed the drawer, she’d felt a presence in the room with her –