Akilina: Out of the Woods

by Patricia A Bowmer

  “You may as well see it all,” the woman growled, and cast her robe to the ground in disgust.

  The woman’s figure was slender, delicate, evenly proportioned, and long-limbed. Under the black, hooded robe, she was dressed in filmy white.

  “This is why they all leave. I’m repulsive.” She made a fist and thumped it hard into her chest. “Is this what you wanted to see so badly? Look then…”

  She spun in a slow circle, making a mockery of herself, and then stopped and crossed her arms defensively across her chest. The sleeves of her white shirt slipped back to reveal a warm olive complexion. The contrast between her whitened hands and the olive skin just above them was strange and wonderful.

  Halley stared in astonishment.

  “But…but you’re beautiful. Don’t you see?”

  “Beautiful!” She bit the word out. “If I were beautiful, I wouldn’t be alone. He would never have left me.” She kicked at the robe on the ground. “Even this can’t hide it, not from me. I am an ugly monster.”

  Halley swallowed.

  “What…what is your name?” she asked.

  “Gail. I am Gail.” The woman looked away.

  “Gail,” Halley said thoughtfully. “Like the wind. A typhoon wind. Strong and wild and powerful. It fits you.” Halley paused. “Look at me.”

  Gail would no longer meet her eyes.

  “Look at me,” Halley repeated. “Please…”

  Gail looked, and Halley almost wished she hadn’t. Nonetheless, she held the gaze. “You look at me with fury,” she said. “But it isn’t me you’re angry with.”

  Gail stiffened. “Don’t tell me who I’m angry with! It was you that let him treat me as he did! You that let him abuse me and belittle me and…and lessen me! How could you!”

  Gail slapped at Halley, aiming hard for her cheek, but Halley was too fast, and grabbed her wrist before the strike hit. She lowered Gail’s arm, gently but firmly.

  “I hate you! It’s easy for the likes of you, with your bracelets and your eagles. What about me!” She disappeared into herself. “What about me?”

  They moved away from each other. Time passed.

  “I hate this,” Gail said to herself. “I hate this changing. It’s like stripping off my skin to become someone new. She talks about dissolving and stupid plants re-growing where others have died. But it hurts to be dissolved.” Gail shuddered and held her stomach again. “It hurts to change. It’s a hateful process, this burning up like a phoenix to be reborn. No one ever talks about how the phoenix feels when he’s set alight!”

  Gail talked to herself but she could be clearly heard. Halley and Eden held hands and listened.

  Slowly, as if her thoughts were shifting with the moving sun, her tone began to change. She no longer raged against Halley. She rested her chin on folded hands and stared out across the yellow grass. She sounded puzzled. “Why would she take that from him, all of that time? The way he demeaned her…the way he rolled his eyes at her suggestions…” She lifted her chin from her hands and her eyes narrowed. “The goddamned backpack he gave her – she carried it for all those years.” She shook her head. “Love…she called it love…bullshit. That wasn’t love.”

  Their shadows, which had disappeared when the sun was directly overhead, returned, and grew long. Halley watched the woman as she spoke. She was so lovely. Though she resembled Fernando in both her complexion and her mannerisms, in Gail these things were more radiant. More authentic.

  Halley listened to her speak; it was as if a slow, rich stew were cooking on the back burner of a stove top. Simmering. Its subtle aromas starting to fill the air. Finally, the stew was ready – but perhaps it was more like a hot curry – when it was ready, it had quite a bite.

  Gail exploded to her feet. “It’s him I hate!” she shouted. “It’s him and Nick and all of them that came before them too! How dare they treat me that way! It was nothing to do with her – it was them! It was always them. They disrespected me from the start, every man who ever claimed to love me.” Her words ran on and on. They flowed like hot lava, pouring forth with unstoppable force. “Never again. I’ll never call that love again…”

  Slowly the sun mellowed, and sunk low in the sky. As they watched, the sky turned first a brilliant shade of pink, then orange, and finally it fired itself an angry red. The red was mellowed by the blue of the heavens. Their shadows grew dim and then merged with the growing darkness. Gail had run out of words.

  I hadn’t realized it hurt so badly, Halley thought. She was about to speak when Gail held up her hand.

  “Don’t say it. Don’t say, ‘Forgive me.’ ”

  There was a catch in her voice. Gail took a deep breath. “You were right. I’m not angry at you. I don’t need to forgive you anything. I’m angry at him…at them…at the ones who hurt me.”

  Halley felt a lightening, as if something dark were being lifted from her, like a snake shedding its skin. Gail moved as if this lifting away hurt her, and Halley looked at her with compassion.

  “Come – let’s walk,” Halley said, emotion choking her voice. “We’ve still got something to do.”

  The three of them moved away together through the tall grass.

  It was early evening. The terrain undulated with small hills, and the three of them walked slowly. The landscape reminded Halley of the pattern on her silver bracelet, and she twisted it around her wrist in slow circles. After some time, she began to hum.

  “What’s that?” Eden asked. “It sounds nice.”

  “I don’t know what it’s called. Dad used to play it on the piano, when I was a little girl. He always stopped playing if I listened openly, so I’d put my ear against the wall in my bedroom when he played.” It made me think of seagulls flying over big surf in winter. She began to hum again.

  Gail walked behind them, her silence discomforting. The moon rose as they approached the white hillock.

  “Maybe we should keep away from there,” Eden said. She stopped. She whispered, “I’m scared. What if those really are bones? What if she really did kill those people?” Eden looked behind her at Gail, as if assessing the distance between them. “Wouldn’t it be better to just get away from her? We could run… she’d never catch us…”

  From behind them, Gail’s voice growled.

  “I would catch you if I wished to.”

  Halley sensed this to be true.

  Gail continued. “But she’s right. It’s best to leave things alone you don’t understand. Leave the bones be. Go some other way.” She paused, like she was searching for a threatening tone that she’d forgotten how to put into her voice. “You’re putting Eden in grave danger by going there.”

  It was the first time Gail had acknowledged Eden’s presence, and to Halley this was something of a breakthrough. She suppressed a smile. “Why do you want to keep us away? What are you hiding there? I know it’s not bones.”

  Gail didn’t answer.

  “Oh stop it. If you wanted to hurt us, you’d have done it a long time ago,” Halley said.

  She turned away from Gail and began to walk, Eden close beside. Gail cursed under her breath. Suddenly Halley broke into a sprint. Gail made to catch her, but it was too late. Halley felt their eyes on her as she pulled away. She reached the hill and began to climb, the white objects slipping and sliding around her.

  “You were right!” Eden said. She was standing at the bottom of the hill, breathing hard.

  In the moonlight, it was clear that the hill was not made of bones at all. Halley picked one of the shaft-like objects to examine. It was a smoothened tree branch. The white of the branch stained her skin. Putting it down, she rubbed her hands together, but the white didn’t come off. There were no trees nearby. The sticks must have been carried all the way from the woods. Their white color explained Gail’s hands; she must have accidentally stained them in painting the tree limbs. The rounded objects were conch shells, carefully positioned to keep their hollows hidden. It was impossible to fathom how far it, and
the others like it, had been carried, or where they’d come from. She motioned down to Eden, who, after a brief pause, scrambled up next to her.

  “Listen,” Halley said, holding the shell to her ear.

  “I can hear the ocean. Cool! It’s just like at the beach.”

  Halley picked up one and listened. The sound took her back many years, and she smiled.

  Gail remained on the level ground below the hill. She wasn’t smiling.

  Halley took the shell away from her ear, and looked down at Gail’s stationary figure. “What does it mean?” she asked.

  Gail looked down at the ground.

  “Gail, what does it mean?”

  In a barely audible voice, she replied. “I built it when he left. To keep the others away.” Her speech was stilted and broken. “I thought…if I frightened them away first…they couldn’t hurt me…I couldn’t be hurt anymore…”

  In the moonlight, Halley saw her eyes glisten.

  “How will I protect myself now? Who will keep me safe?”

  Halley felt tears come to her eyes. She rubbed them away. “Gail, this hill wasn’t protecting you. Your anger wasn’t protecting you.” She replaced the conch shell gently on the ground. “You’re causing yourself more pain than his leaving did. Than anyone else ever could. This must be healed. We’ll help.”

  Eden nodded.

  Together, they took the hill to pieces. They listened carefully as Gail told her story; this speaking and listening was the path she needed to travel.

  It took time.

  The moon rose higher. They continued to work. They continued to work all night long.

  The sticks were not bones. Nevertheless, they required burying to release their power. With their bare hands, Halley and Eden cleared a place in the yellow grass at the base of the hill, and dug a deep hole in the soft earth. Dirt filled the space under their fingernails, and caked on their cheeks where the sweat ran. Gail watched. It was understood she was not to help with this part. She had been enough in the earth.

  When the hole was finished, Halley called to Gail. “You can help now. Climb up the hill and bring the sticks down, one by one.”

  And so, with the first light of dawn, with ceremony and with care, they laid the white sticks of Gail’s fury side-by-side in the hollow. They placed them close together, so that they were touching, as if even this propinquity was healing.

  Strange. With each stick she carries down, I feel lighter. I feel a battlement coming down that was not so much a protection, but an imprisonment. Now I’ll be truly free.

  When the sticks had been placed in the hole, the bare fertile essence of the earthy hill was revealed. This stood sentinel over them. On impulse, Halley removed from her belt the long white stick she had carried from the woods. She still thought of it as the unicorn stick. She placed it amongst the other sticks, where it shone with light reflected from the first light of dawn. It was right for it to be there. It restored purity to the sticks, removing the poison of Gail’s fury. The three of them filled their palms with warm earth, and gently and quietly, they covered the sticks.

  When the hole was full, they placed the conch shells on top of the mound they had made, positioning the mouths of the shells open to catch warm rain. Halley had a vision: wildflower seeds landing in the openings and sending up tiny green shoots. In time, this place would be a paradise of blooms and colors. In time, this compost would birth new life.

  The work completed, they climbed to the top of the now earthy hill and sat in silence. The sun lit on her white clothing, and Gail finally spoke. “I thought I would never heal.” Tears coursed freely down her cheeks. “I thought I needed him to return to mend me – to guide me from this place.” She looked at Halley, and then at Eden, her brown eyes liquid. “But it was you I needed. The care you have given me, the time we have spent together burying these bones – how wonderful, that this could heal me. Thank you.” Gail looked to the mountains in the distance. “I must go now. Farewell.”

  She rose to her feet, tall and beautiful and white, and walked down the hillside. Her light garments whispered around her.

  “Where will she go?” Eden asked softly.

  “I don’t know…but somehow I’m sure she’ll find her way,” said Halley, watching the birds cavort overhead.

  It was a warm morning. They closed their eyes to rest in the light of the sun. As they slept, long and calm, Halley dreamt she could smell the sweet scent of newly blooming wildflowers.

  She was smiling when she woke up. Her body seemed to be smiling as well, with a sense of being filled to perfection, a perfectly-stretched-brand-new-helium-balloon feel. Something heavy was gone from her, something that had been pulling her shoulders up towards her ears for a long time, making her frown with her forehead all night long. She knew what it was. The anger she had healed in Gail had also resided in her – and it was finally gone.

  Still lying on her back, Halley stretched her arms overhead, lengthening her body, listening to the crack-crack-crack of her vertebrae releasing, arching her lower back away from the ground. When she sat up, she was facing the earthy hill they had cleared the night before, the hill which had held the “bones and skulls”. It was already coated in a fine hair of grass shoots, each hair tipped by a pinhead of dew. Life came back quickly when the soil was freed of encumbrances. She longed to linger here, to let the healing sink deeper into her bones.

  But she couldn’t: there was more to be done. With pleasure and great relief she noted the pulse had returned to her forehead; the baby was making itself felt again. Waiting for her. Was okay. For now. But she had to get to it. The way was the mountains.

  But the dawn made things very clear; it told the truth about the height of the mountains, about their granite-hardness. They would be unforgiving. Hugging her knees into her chest, Halley felt fear insert a probing finger between her seventh and eighth ribs, as if it were looking for a soft spot.

  They got moving quickly, as if by hurrying Halley could contain her fear. But it was too late. It was as if she had sprung a leak, punctured by the first sight of the sharp teeth of the mountains; she was gradually deflating. Her feet became harder to lift as they approached the mountains and her stomach felt full of small, rough pebbles.

  The ground too was becoming harder to navigate, rockier underfoot and stumble-provoking. The yellow grass had been supplanted by taller shrubs, and in the distance, small trees had begun to appear.

  As they approached the trees, Halley’s eyes were drawn to an unusual grouping of them. These looked newly-planted and they formed a straight line, perpendicular to the path, as if they had been laid out this way with a purpose in mind. The trees were all the same height, the same width. She stopped, feeling her feet throb from the distance they had already covered.

  The row of trees had come into leaf. They were planted in soil from the same plain, were apparently the same age. Yet their foliage revealed marked differences in their vitality. On some, large green leaves filled the branches, exuberant with life. On others, the leaves were small and stingy. On a few there was no growth at all; these particular trees looked wasted and sad. These ones would not survive.

  The differences in their growth captivated her. She stared longer, and Eden watched in silence.

  Gradually, Halley saw that though they lived in much the same place, there were subtle differences in the environment of each tree. Some of the trees bore the brunt of the wind, while others were sheltered. Some stood close to their neighbors, gaining strength, while others kept their distance. There would be variations in the way water flowed from the mountains and differences in soil drainage; this would cause other divergences. There might be slight disparities in the nutrients in the surrounding soil.

  Where they fell as seeds, where they had to grow makes such a difference to their lives.

  The leaves on the smallest, least vital tree seemed to nod at her sadly in the light breeze, to imply, “Yes. And you’re just like me”.

  Halley shook he
r head. The sorrowful tree was wrong – she was nothing like it at all. Not anymore. The trees were fixed in their positions. They couldn’t move. But me, I’m free. I’m searching for more nutritious places.

  The trees provided the inspiration Halley had needed. She no longer felt punctured; she felt ready to deal with whatever came next. The morning sun suddenly felt hot and delicious on her shoulders.

  She had just begun to walk again when she heard the unmistakable sound of hoof beats. The ground trembled underfoot, making her look around in alarm. Quickly, Eden moved to Halley’s side, and reached for her hand. The hoof beats became louder, almost deafening, and a moment later the animal slid to a stop near them, snorting and breathing hard. Halley eyes widened in fear and she stumbled backwards. Staring down at her was a very tall, very white, very wild-eyed horse.

  The horse stood pawing the ground with its forefoot, nostrils flaring in and out. Its warm breath blew out with force, hitting Halley on top of her head, and causing her throat to constrict.

  “What’s wrong? You’re not afraid of horses, are you?” Eden asked. The small girl reached up to try to stroke the broad expanse of its face. At first, the horse shook its big white head, No, it said, No. Eden waited patiently until it lowered its face shyly, and gave her a well-meaning nudge in the belly that nearly knocked her off her feet. She giggled. The horse’s breathing began to quiet.

  “Be careful! It could kick you…or bite…” She motioned to Eden. “Keep away from it.”

  “Don’t be silly. She looks big, but she’s really a pony at heart.” Eden stroked the horse’s neck, scratched the always-itchy spot behind its ears. The horse turned into the scratch, rubbing into Eden’s fingers, More, More, it said. It blew air through its nostrils in pleasure.

  Halley took a reluctant step forward – she didn’t want to act like a coward – but the horse threw its head high in the air and snorted.