I can’t see a thing anymore, she whispered to the child, but I like to come nevertheless.
She took the child’s hand so as not to stumble, and they walked a little further, into a place of improbable darkness. The woman who could not see anymore phished and phoshed. Her eyes were the same watery blue color as the Grandmother’s from the North Pole.
THE MOTHER RECALLED the Arctic Cloudberry — rare, brief of season, difficult to pick, unlike anything else. And how the Grandmother from the North Pole would make a Cloudberry Cake. Cloudberries were always the Grandfather from the North Pole’s favorite. Grandfather was said to have made Arctic Cloudberry cordials back home. The mother recalls currents and lingonberries and elderberry saft.
She would like the child to write the names of the berries in the atlas. She would like the child to keep track for her. Cloudberries grow in the remote fir and silver birch forests in the north or in the far bogs. They can also be found in the mountains of Lapland. In late July they appear on the forest floor, and by early August they are gone.
THE HONEYBEES HAD disappeared three years ago now, but to celebrate the child’s birth, Aunt Eloise made funnel cakes shaped like beehives nonetheless. Happy Birthday, she sang to the child, and while she sang Uncle Lars did a sprightly dance. The cakes were curved, and all agreed they were most splendid in all the Valley. She made tiers of hives, replete with little marzipan bees. Everyone sighed. They were the most beautiful cakes anyone had ever seen, and Aunt Eloise and the child closed their eyes and pictured the bees.
After the candles were lit and the song was sung and the child had made her wish, it was not long before a single bee — regal, gilded — landed on her birthday crown. And then another came. And then another.
Word spread quickly as Aunt Eloise had a talkative streak, and before long, beekeepers all across the country came leaving their offerings for the child.
The beekeepers traveled a glowing corridor to the child’s door, holding cakes they themselves had baked. They moved as if through a golden tunnel, or a honey lozenge, to the child.
The mother, drowned in amber, accepted the offerings on behalf of the child and quickly closed the door.
Bees use the sun as a compass. They search for the place of continuous nectar flow, and all season beekeepers from across the world left their farms and made their way to the Valley.
A wooden aqueduct holding aloft a fleet of six beeswax boats floated by.
A golden halo of pollen appeared to hover above the child’s head.
THE VIRGIN SMILES at the mother and child. She wants them to come to the clearing in the forest, to her shrine near the hive. She is holding a honey cake. There will be three schoolchildren there to play with, she promises. She is wearing a beekeeper’s suit. Gloves and a hood. With a smoker she puts the bees to sleep. Come to me.
WHEN THE MOON was full and the weather was right, she would invite the child out to the night garden. The garden at night scared the child who was afraid of the dark, so she would always stay inside. It was time again for applying the fish emulsion, the ritual feeding of the roses with the bodies of liquidated bass and trout and sunfish. It was quite a sight — the mother working through the night.
When the child looked out the nursery window, she saw fireflies plastered to the outline of her mother, and she watched her like that for a long time. Small things of all sorts seemed to attach themselves to her and cling. When the raccoons came, as they always did with their awful tiny human hands pressing, the child would be jealous and she would try to force herself out the door.
Come see the Luna Moth, the mother cried with delight, but not even that enchanting, silk-producing creature with its huge pale green wings could entice the child. Instead she held vigil at the screen door and waited for day to come. From the door, she could hear the mother singing, “Tomorrow will be my dancing day,” and it soothed her.
And in the morning, resplendent and smelling of fish and roses, and wiping away bits of fur and fin, she would bring the child out into the daylight to live their daylight lives, and the men and the boys would follow them, and hum and trip and fall around the mother, and touch the child’s hair, and this alarmed the child for they lived in a household without men or boys.
How sad are the men, the mother thought, in love with fish and figment and oblivion and the night.
THE MOTHER WAS drawn to the glow of the votives and she would kneel before them, and the child too loved the small flickering flames in their cups.
Once after Midnight Mass, the mother told the child a story of when she was a girl. She had never forgotten, though it had happened long ago now. She was out late, when all of a sudden the dazzling body of a wolf appeared on the path. The silver fur. The sleek head. She motioned to it, ablaze on the trail, and slowly neared it, and her hand slid beneath its head. How to describe such velocity? How to describe this passage in the night? This transit? This portal? He had carried her across the threshold and introduced her to the other world. Never had there been such an initiation as that. Thinking about it, even now, she shuddered. She had never told a soul.
For a long time she forbade herself from even uttering the word “wolf.”
That night they put a candle in every window and waited.
5. oracle
BUNNY BOY, THE cat who had smuggled a tiny rabbit into the house without being noticed, now munched on it in the corner. When the mother saw it, there were rabbit pieces still in view, but the next time she checked, they were far and few, and then finally it was as if no rabbit had been there at all. Where did you put that rabbit, Bunny Boy? the mother hissed, as she lifted a rug and peered under chairs, but if it was there, even a whisker, she never found it.
Somewhere in the house what is left of that rabbit is stashed away and hidden. Somewhere, while the mother and child sleep, its carcass is turning to stone.
THE CONCRETE RABBIT appeared to the mother the next morning. See what you’ve done Bunny Boy, the mother scolded — now we have to live with this hare, standing erect, holding a basket, guarding his kind forever, in all seasons, in all weather, night and day.
But despite her dismay, after a while she and the child found themselves going to the rabbit with their troubles, their thoughts, their ideas, their dreams. They brought him water and they washed his feet and they moved him when it was sunny and put him under a tree. They brought him lettuces and carrots. In April or March, they set before him little Easter chocolates. But no matter what they did, the rabbit’s expression did not seem to change.
After a time, when the neighbors got wind of the rabbit’s existence, they began to sneak over to visit him with their petitions. Soon, word of the rabbit traveled through the Valley, though what he signified, no one could be sure. An old woman who visited the rabbit wished to conceive a child though she was a hundred years old. A man, who loved a woman who did not love him back, became a regular visitor. A mother whose child had disappeared rubbed the rabbit’s paw. Widows, in increasing numbers, sat by his side. All day a steady stream of Valley folks made their way to the place. The Concrete Rabbit listened. They called him Sir. The pilgrims thought that indeed Sir did love them — how could he not? — they who came with every problem the flesh posed. They felt great tenderness and pity coming from him, and because he never closed his eyes, he always appeared attentive and empathetic. Who ate the chocolates they brought him, no one knew.