When Jupiter Sighs

by Bethalynne Bajema

  The patch of earth below the machine itself seemed to be ten times more unstable than anywhere else. I bounced this way and that way as I tried to maintain my balance and continue forward. Finally I get a hold of the back of my muse's bench, hauling myself up to sit next to him; afraid I might topple over otherwise.

  “You have to stop playing!” I shout, but he’s hopelessly deeper into the melody than I had become. It must have been countless times more potent to sit at this throne and be the deliverer of such blessed noise, but he needed to know the ultimate outcome of that noise.

  I grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him around to face me. There is one moment, as my eyes lock with his, that I have a flash of sudden fear, or maybe—to be perfectly honest—jealousy. His eyes were washed over in a swirling pattern of colors and emotions I am not equipped to describe. Like he was filled head to toe with the very things I felt there on the ground. It was all passing through him to be sucked in and pushed out, tediously and precisely. This thing was leaving its notes, meter and words imprinted on his very tendons and muscles. It was frightening and at the same time an alluring thought.

  My unwelcome intrusion pulled him from his daze. The colors pass and in their place his green eyes once again are looking back at me. He blinked for a moment, disoriented.

  “What do you want? Don’t you like it?” he asked.

  “Oh yes!” I shout over the din “I like it. I like it too much! My body’s gonna rattle apart out of liking it. You need to stop though! I found out what these plans are for!”

  I set the plans down on the small shelf meant to hold sheet music. For one scary moment he looks as those he’s going to look upon the scroll like a sheet of music and attempt to play what is written there. It was easy to presume that would only double the trouble.

  “Look at these translations beneath the others...” I flip back the small paper windows and point to the soft writing “The Eumenides were right! This is wrong! We shouldn’t be using this. It shouldn’t exist. It’s going to tear everything apart! You're killing the dreamscape! It can't keep up with this thing.”

  He shook his head violently. “How can you say that?! This is beautiful. It’s not something that’s wrong. Listen to it.”

  “I’d love to listen to it but...” and that but is the last thing I could get out as the sky is ripped from above us and the world below disappears into nothingness. At that moment I feel like nothing more important than a hamster in a box and a small child has come to play with me.

  Then the instrument is fading from beneath us. Being taken away to a place we cannot go or at least a place our bodies can’t live in so long as their is breath in our lungs and energy going through our sleeping brains. The bench below becomes smoke and ash and there we’re left to stand as everything continues to fade into something that’s not white, or light, but a brilliant void ten times more vast than any words can express.

  Exhilaration falls to fear, and the memory of what just happened—the music, the thunder, the girl and her doll—become vapor. Not even solid enough to be retained as a memory. And worse.... there’s somebody, or somebody's in the vastness. I’d care not to say aloud who, or what, they were.

  I couldn’t force myself to take a breath or move in any way. And though the butterflies often found my tummy in many situations, their former incarnations had woken up inside this time. A host of caterpillars moved up and down my spine. Little feet scurrying and furry bodies rubbing against my sensitive spinal nerves. The goose flesh came to my arms as a chill crept up my back. I watched in horror as the sky before me split open and spit forth something even more black than the black sky around it. This was not blackness, but nothingness, ten times denser than the void we stood in.

  Three bodies were pressing forward in this dense nothingness. Around them was a flurry of pulled feathers and blood red sand. This was not a nightmare. This was the type of vision and sensation that one woke to a fractured soul from. It was terrifying and just a little bit absurd at the same time. This was only meant to be a little dream about a music box.

  I whisper “I don’t mean to be too familiar, but can I hold you hand?”

  And my muse replies even softer “I was just going to ask you the same.”

  A moment later the blood circulation is cut off in our fingers as our grips are nothing short of holding on for dear life. Holding onto the last thing in this netherworld that truly is real and solid.

  Finally our new guests begin their introductions and I can feel the blood coming from my ears as the sound of their voices is too great to bear...

  The jarring sound of my phone brings me back. It was still sitting next to my keyboard. Still somewhat in my haze I answer it and immediately warm to the low female voice on the other end. The Fabulous Miss Blase calling to keep me up to date on her latest conquest. I am grateful for that familiar voice, but still I politely beg her to let me call her back when I'm less dazed.

  My computer wallpaper has given up its view so the screen-saver can take over. On my screen a softly humming organic machine like train of art moves up and down. This is a not so pleasant image courtesy of H.G. Giger. I tip my mouse to make it go away. I close my media player as well. I didn’t need music right now. More than anything I wanted good and simple silence.

  My eyes scan the computer screen. A number of cyber souls had crept up to say hello. A man interested in my art... a relative trying to draw a little green backed blood from me... a timer telling me I had been still on-line forty sum minutes, did I wish to remain on-line? I had less than ten minutes to respond.

  No, I really did think it was about a good time to sign off, drop out, throw some ice on my head and curse my vivid imagination. But at the last moment another small window pops up and a familiar muse says “I see you.” To which I laugh.

  I hammer the keys. “Do you have a moment? I’ve got a story for you."

  For Terpsichore... my muse.

  Water

  The sound is like cool metal sliding down a length of ice. A delicate noise of such succulent smoothness that it draws you closer, makes you feel sheer and cold. It places you flat against the flawless floor as a river of water slides over you body. It chills the skin and relaxes the soul. It is winter and heaven. These were the words my grandmother would say to me when she tucked me into bed.

  My mother and father would both be busy at their forms, scribbling numbers and perfecting figures in their heads out of reflex. I would sit in the living room watching the colorful figures dance and swirl on the television screen. The program's content was lost on my young mind. My attention was on the old grandfather clock anyway. Sitting there so silently, waiting for the clock to drag its slow hands to the number nine.

  So there I sat, holding my breath as the minute hand slowly clicked along its path. As the hand passed the top number of twelve something within that massive thing would click and grind, coming to life with a moan and finding the small bells that would ring to mark the hour. Under my breath I counted along with the clock till we both fell silent on the ninth chime. My head turned towards my grandmother, the old woman sitting wrapped in her hand-knitted cover. There was always a brief moment of worry that she would have succumbed to sleep and I would be left to my parents for my goodnight ritual.

  Grandmother never let me down though. She would be hefting her heavy body out of the chair, telling me it was about my bedtime. I would go to her and we would both looked towards the dining room; towards the table that was cluttered with papers.

  My parents, both accountants by profession, sat in their equation induced daze. The rhythmic sound of fingers punching away at small calculators was the only communication I often heard from them.

  Our fear was that this night (this night being every night grandmother and I did this) they would wake from that daze and decide to play the mother and father role. They would push grandmother away and lead me off to bed themselves. We got lucky that night. We got lucky almost every night.

  The t
wo of us moved down the hall as quickly as the old woman's legs could carry her. We would be through the bed room door, closing that door quietly behind us and making sure to lock it. I would jump into bed and pull the covers up to my shoulders. Grandmother gently placed her weight on the edge of my bed. She tucked me in by pulling the covers up to my chin. There was always a brief moment as she settled herself down. Her gaze looking longingly towards the window, as if her heart's desire was only beyond the panes of glass.

  This was our ritual. It was what we did together nearly every night. I couldn't know that this particular night the ritual would be slightly different. I couldn't know how things would become more than a story told, but in fact a story lived through the eyes of another. This night...

  I am tucked into bed and I'm watching my grandmother with that familiar dreamy look she gives the world beyond the windows. Minutes pass before her attention turns back towards me again. With a deep breath she finds her memories and begins.

  "It is the sound of cool metal sliding down a length of ice..." were her first words. Her voice was crystal clear, so unlike the gruff speaking voice the rest of the world heard from her. Only I have the privilege of hearing this voice. The voice came with the memories and with the memories came that gaze that she turned on me.

  Such a gaze she had! Her eyes were so bright and clear peering out from that aged face. I could only imagine the things those eyes had seen. Better yet, I wondered what those eyes had seen that other eyes could not see. My grandmother was special because of that gaze. She was a woman who had seen something beautiful and secret.

  A few minutes passed and grandmother was now lost to her memories. It was almost as though she had gone into a trance. The words she spoke were always the same as were the images. I needed to hear this story as much as my grandmother needed to tell it and for that reason her and I were linked in an intimate way that the young and old were not suppose to know.

  The story she told was of a memory from her youth. Back in this time grandmother was known only as Marilyn. Five years would pass before she was to be known as mother; twenty-three years before she would first be called grandmother.

  Marilyn was a young woman around the age of eighteen. A beautiful young thing who often hid behind her long mane of auburn hair. Her features were small and attractive, features that would one day be mirrored in her daughter and granddaughter.

  Marilyn had been at her own grandmother's home visiting for a month in autumn. Her grandmother was a cruel woman and there was no love lost between her and her granddaughter. Each fall the old woman had to suffer the company of the product of her son's marriage. She did very little to make a secret of her dislike for the young woman. To her Marilyn was nothing but a beacon to the demons that belonged in a past the grandmother would rather not remember. To a set of memories that she could not seem to distance herself from. What those demons or memories might be Marilyn did not know. Though now, as grandmother retold her tale in her twilight age, she thought she knew what they might be, because my grandmother suffered the same demons.

  The grandparents and their visiting granddaughter had just finished with cleaning up that evening's dinner. As she washed dishes she noticed the full moon outside. On the third floor of her grandparent's house was a balcony, well at least they called it a balcony. It was actually a finished section of roof over top of a lower floor porch. The balcony was just a flat, open landing with no guard rails to protect anyone from a fall off the edge. But it was situated in just the right spot that the view it offered was breathtaking. Marilyn put her dishes away and made her way to the balcony so she could go whisper at the moon.

  The autumn was a beautiful time out in the place Marilyn's grandparent's lived. The area around the house was heavily wooded and secluded it from the modern world beyond. The trees had all begun their seasonal change from green to various shades of crimson, gold and every color of orange under the sun. The autumn air carried with it the earthy smells of that season: A hint of burning leaves, the scents of a changing nature, and beneath that smell the underlying nip of cold in the breeze.

  Marilyn opened the door and stepped out onto the landing. Perched low in the sky was the full moon. So close was it she thought she could just reach out and touch it. She moved to the edge of the balcony and let her toes dangle over the edge of the landing.

  The wind picked up and there was an odd noise carried on the edge of it. Marilyn stopped breathing and tried to listen harder. At first the noise reminded her of dogs howling in unison, but it was somewhat more shrill. Maybe like a whistle blowing in the distance being somewhat distorted as it was carried along on the wind. She thought she could just make out words in that sound when she was pulled backwards with a jerk.

  "What'r ya doin' girl?! Dontcha hear that noise? Git inside now girl. Git!" Marilyn's grandmother yelled in her sloppy broken English.

  Marilyn pulled her arm from the grandmother's grip. She pushed the old woman away from her and stepped back towards the ledge. "What are you talking about eh?" Marilyn asked "I can hear that sound just fine. It sounds like singing in the wind. There are words in it. I'm sure of it. If I could just hear it a little better."

  The grandmother took a step towards Marilyn, the old woman's face a mask of anger and outrage. She stabbed her finger into the wind and spit her words out through clenched teeth. "That ain't nuthin worth hearin'. It ain't nuthin but the sound of hell that the fool headed girls like yerself hear. Bunch of banshees beyond the river singin' ta git you down there so they can drown you! Steal your memories!"

  Marilyn laughed softly, shaking her head. "Banshees? Well now I have proof that you're nothing but a crazy old woman. Can't speak right. Can't find it in your heart to love your own kin. And you can't even open your ears to hear something so beautiful as the song on the tip of the night wind." Marilyn took another step back and her heel stepped into thin air.

  There was a brief moment when she thought she would fall backwards. A small voice deep within said that isn't all that bad, is it? To fly that short flight before death carries you on over to an eternal flight. Marilyn felt dreamy as she listened to this thought. Her mind was growing a little hazy and she had to admit she liked the idea of flying forever.

  The grandmother grabbed her granddaughter and pulled her forward with a jerk. She took Marilyn by both arms and the look of anger was removed from her face. In fact, Marilyn saw nothing but the look of utter concern and compassion that suddenly overcame the old woman's features. But the look of sudden fear was more worth noting. She tried to draw Marilyn closer to her as though she might wrap her arms around the young woman and squeeze her tightly. Her voice trembled when she spoke.

  "I knows what I'ma talkin' bout Mari. I knows so well it hurts my heart. I ain't no old fool. I heard that singin too many times to count and sometimes I wish I would just go deaf. Call'um what you want, banshee, devil, dark angels, it's still the same. Death is down past that river and the singin will lead you the way. An I don't hate you enough to see you go like that." she said.

  Marilyn eyed the old woman coldly. She was lying and the lies angered her. She gave the old woman such a hard push her withered old body almost fell down to the balcony wood.

  "Lying old witch! You hate me as much as any being can possibly hate. And with that hate comes jealousy. The jealousy that they should come singing to me and not you! They don't sing to you anymore old woman. But I hear them clearly now." and she did. As her grandmother tried to reason with her, the voices in the wind became real and very clear in her ear.

  This was always the point in my grandmother's storytelling when my young mind started to get sleepy. I would stay with her until the end of the tale, but the things she said would slowly become harder for her to describe. I would understand them in a place where my mind was half asleep and the dream world was threatening. This was probably the only way I was able to understand the things she experienced.

  I didn't become sleepy this night though. No, something ve
ry strange happened to me. Something that is hard to put into words, but very real all the same. You see, I became one with my grandmother and it was not a memory I was looking at, it was the event itself.

  As my grandmother described pulling her hand back to slap her own grandmother, my own world seemed to fade to white. Like closing your eyes to sleep except that the darkness is a brilliant white that blinds me. The feeling of the blanket pressing against me fads and in its place the feeling of a cool wind blowing against my skin. I can feel my arm swinging around, coming into contact with the paper dry skin of the old woman who would be my great, great grandmother. When I open my eyes I am there, hiding behind my grandmothers own eyes.