by Ben Woollard
“Don’t forget you saved my life,” he told me right before he left. “That means that you’re responsible for me, so you better not forget to come and see me.” I laughed and promised that I wouldn’t, then he left to find the future that was waiting for him.
I spent my time gathering supplies together and sitting in the plazas watching all the people pass. I was fascinated by them; everyone was unique to me, yet had parts of them reflecting everybody else. People seemed a bit confused about where things were starting to head, and lots of them packed up and started moving out into the settlements, forming trains on the roads leading to the outskirts and beyond.
When Momma was feeling ready for it, we joined those trains and began to journey out to Linhof. We went slow, neither of us in a hurry, and both of us still feeling somewhat weak from everything that’d happened. We bundled ourselves in all the linens and blankets at the house to keep warm, and stopped a lot to sit and rest. We camped out under the stars and neither of us slept well. When we finally got to Linhof both of us felt ragged, like we’d walked for weeks instead of days. I knocked on the door of our hut when he arrived and Theo came out, and I saw Tammy looking on from inside. He hugged me and I introduced them both to Momma.
“Pleasure to meet you ma’am,” they both said and shook her hand. We went inside and huddled in the stove’s warmth and talked about our plans for the future.
We spent the rest of the winter building another house to the side of the current one. Tammy and her family helped us fell the trees and cut them into planks, so we didn’t have to buy the materials. I spent some time working for some of the other settlers, too, in order to try and save up some money. When spring came the snow melted away and the green shoots started bursting forth, the trees explosions of iridescent colors, the whole world turned into a painting. I went to the local mason and asked him if he could make me two stones with Shiloh and Grandpa’s names engraved upon them. He said he could, and the stones were made within a month.
Me and Theo found a place up on a hill nearby our ‘stead that overlooked a meadow, spread out in colored palettes waving in the wind. We all gathered there, Theo, Tammy and her family, me and Momma. even Sheldon came, and we gave Shiloh and Grandpa a proper funeral. Everyone brought flowers from the meadow and laid them down upon the graves. We all spoke to them as we did so, saying the last words we never had the chance to tell them. I was the last to speak, and I stood up by the graves as everyone started back down the hill. Tears streamed freely from my eyes. Looking back, all that had happened since those first rumors of The Singulars seemed to be a whirl of chaos, nothing but the pain of senseless loss.
“You were right Grandpa,” I said through the lump in my throat. “It’s all just an up and down. What can we do but love each other while we’re still around? Before everything we thought was stable falls down in the gales.” I felt wracked with bleeding wounds, and I knew for all the peace and stillness I’d found in those blessed moment of my life, those wounds would never heal.
Yet still inside me was the light glowing in the center of it, and I knew that it wasn’t just in me, but in all of us, that no matter how much darkness might be festering in the human heart, that light was there to open us and make redemption clear as day. Despite all the pain that choked me, it was still alive and undiminished, and I could feel it suffered with me, was me, and all of us, the source of everything. I saw the paths I’d walked upon, the deaths I’d seen and heard. All the faces of the past peered out at me, and they smiled through the haze. I smiled back at them through tear-red eyes. Surely we’ll meet again, I thought, and we’ll tell each other gladly all we’ve seen and been.
The wind stirred gentle on the hillside where I stood before those stones, and with it I felt hope and strength returning to me. I stood and bowed to my family’s graves, then walked slowly down to where Theo stood alongside Momma and the others, holding Tammy’s hand. They gathered round me, the faces of the living, and I smiled weakly at them. All around us were the melodies of nature, the moment falling ever forward like a rushing stream. I looked about at all those circled in the field and spoke out to tell them everything I’d ever learned:
“May we bear that light that forged us,” I said to them. “And may we all remember: for all the pain that does bewail us, the golden rising dawn’s ahead.”
