We camped together above a waterfall that night, just as you and I had, listening while Slipstream and the donkey ate. Sonia had brought along the remaining bottle of last year’s fruit wine, a sweet mango. We finished it after our fish, as our little fire burned down.
“We have to make sure it’s out before we sleep,” she said. “Too dry this time of year, before the rains come.”
“Sonia, who was the child?”
“Spirit child, witch child. They hate them almost as much as they hate outsiders.”
“But she was so good. I could feel it in her, good in a way they know nothing about.”
“Good in a way they’re afraid of, because it threatens everything they believe in, their whole way of life.”
“She was like you, a bit. Only not so hard.”
“Hard is what life among them has done to me. I never wanted to be this way.” Sonia reached out and laid her hand on my knee, and as always, I didn’t know whether to recoil or embrace her. She had that effect on me. “I’m the only witch they’ve ever allowed to grow to adulthood.”
“Why?”
“They thought they needed one witch to protect them from the eyes of outsiders.”
“You were a spirit child then too, like that one? What are they, spirit children? She didn’t smell like burning flesh.”
“We only harden as we age. If I was to burn now I’m afraid I’d smell just like bacon,” she said ironically. Then added,“If I answer all your questions now you’ll never come back next year, and I need you to. It’s the only way to stop the burnings.”
“We don’t have witches,” I said.
“I know, but you are one now, and you’re returning. I’m sorry, husband. I hadn’t intended for you to see a thing like that; it’s why I kept you hidden.”
When I woke in the morning Sonia was gone, as she’d said she’d go. I went home down the hills without my wife, wondering what lay ahead of me, and whether, by having married her, I’d given up my right to you forever. But my night’s dream came to me as I walked the leafy trail, saw at last the sea, the town. A seemingly prophetic dream that filled me with exhilaration and dread. You’d be back, Alia, and I’d marry you as I’d hoped, keeping my other marriage secret. I’d never go back to the mountains to my first bride, never begin the trading that she and I had hoped for so fervently. But you and I would have a child, and it would be a spirit child, the first one ever born by the sea. Sonia’s legacy after all, having changed me so irrevocably. Which would be better? To give you up, Alia, my one true love, or to father a child that might be destroyed by a fear, by a hate that had never existed in our town before, that its birth might elicit? Sonia had awakened me to my own witchery, both terrifying and promising. The full saddlebags had been a cover. It was my new fearsome eyes, the child I’d father, that were my real trading goods. But what would I have to bring back to her mountain village to end the cycle, allow people to see the gift and not just the difference, the gentleness as well as the fearsome power?
I prayed to my grandfather, but he didn’t hear. He too had tried to open a trade route between the mountains and the sea, had been catapulted for his arrogance into the future time when such things might be possible, destined to end his years in the loneliness of those who can travel forwards, but not back to their home time.
And you, Alia?
You live in the middle, in a secret forest village in the foothills. You retain a measure of Sonia’s wisdom, and teach it where you can, as you taught me. Still, your eyes are human. You haven’t lost the innocence of the sea people, and are thus protected from the fear and ignorance of those who need the protection of witches but fear and hate their power. You wait, wondering whether I’ll ever find the path home to you.
Bus Owls
THERE WAS ONE YEAR that southern Ontario was subjected to an influx of Great Grey Owls. They came from the north and for a few months or a year adorned all our fences and posts, watching us, seeing what we would do. Some people watched, photographing and writing about this massive silent invasion, but in the main, it was we who were being watched for once and not the other way around.
Or so Stella thought on her way home from Toronto, taking the Greyhound. In Oshawa the bus always stopped to let people off or on. Stella liked it when her schedule coincided with the express bus, which stopped only at Scarborough Town Centre. But if not, there she was in the ’Shwa again, adding half an hour to her trip home. On the good side, in ’Shwa she could get off the bus and have a breath of fresh air and a smoke. Stella still smoked in those days, the ones she is remembering, the ones she is describing here. It was before everything changed. Now, post change, it is no longer possible to smoke cigarettes, no matter how much she misses them.
Sometimes missing them is akin to heartbreak. Sometimes missing them is like losing her best friend in all the world. Sometimes missing them is like having to grow up forever and never look back. Not even once, for a single backward look would inevitably coincide with the first cigarette. It is like she swore. It is like she made a vow, she isn’t sure to whom. It is like she made this vow when she wasn’t looking, for had she been looking, she would never have made it. The sacrifice, the murder even of her smoking self is so large, so violent. It is like she made the decision to quit in her sleep.
She remembers how she told herself the new story, this ground-breaking story about art and tears and luck and being young again, and saying goodbye and never looking back, not even once, for you know what happened to Lot’s wife. Because of her decision, the stars perform new constellations. Because of her follow through, a new season approaches. Because of her forthrightness, her dog begins to talk. Because she cared, the children all get new ice skates for Christmas, and actually turn off their computers long enough to put them on and go outside to the pond on the point to skate beneath these strange new stars that appear, even, to dance a little above their heads.
In a way she has had to leave two lovers. She and her man were co-dependent, but in a nice way. In the evening they would sit together, discussing books and movies, watching movies and reading, sipping beer and wine and tea and smoking really a lot of cigarettes. She cannot do this anymore. She stares at him now across naked hallways. I do not love you any less. If anything I love you more. Love us more. Love the world more.
Now her evenings are spent blogging on all the world’s activist sites. She can’t help it. She has so much to say. She always did have so much to say, but she used to say it to him, while she smoked a cigarette. Now she can’t do that anymore, so she says it to the world. The typing keeps her hands busy, hands which she would otherwise use for smoking. Typing hands cannot smoke, it is true. She has expanded her audience, now that she no longer smokes. She talks to the world, and not just to him.
She can no longer write anything of any length. A beginning, middle, and end, stretched across ten entire double-spaced pages seem a minor impossibility. The thought of revising her new novel yet again elicits unexpectedly suicidal thoughts. She runs away. Whatever made her think finishing the novel was important? It is true the novel is her life’s work, a book she spent thirty years of her life drafting various versions of, a book that really would only require a few relatively short and easy months to fine tune, but no, she balks. She is like a horse throwing its rider. Absolutely fucking not, no way, not ever.
She feels no regret. Yet the pragmatic part of her thinks: thirty years, the thing is good; it seems a pity to waste it. Perhaps she could apply for a grant to hire a nice young assistant to implement the necessary nips and tucks. A young assistant who never smoked, and to whom menopause is so far in the future that she has no issues with her attention span at all. Someone who can sit and write for hours each and every day with no thought of commensurate financial reward beyond a few skimpy arts council grants, if any, and some thought of possible publication. In her spare time the assistant could do the shopping and laundry and vacuuming and make dinner to boot.