nature – Mirror Lake Muse

Everlie’s Tree

Everlie stood in a vast expanse of open country, her hair flowing in the wind. Anyone may have thought she was completely alone. Yet, a perceptive person may have followed her intent gaze, and noticed her faint smile. She was looking at a tree. Her tree. And she was sending her thoughts to it.

The tree was in the centre of an otherwise unforested meadow, which was a riot of wildflowers in the summer, and desolate in winter. The coldest days could never have kept Everlie away, though. She had made a friend – and Everlie took care of her friends. She knew friendship’s value precisely because of its rarity. Most of her friends had six legs, and needed help when they fell into puddles of rainwater. She took her job of Ant Rescuer very seriously. She delighted in her friends with wings. She had a few friends with four legs, but none with two.

Oak had no legs, and no other friends as far as she could tell. She could perceive these things. Yet, one day she had felt perceived, too. She’d been scooping frantic insects out of a nook in Oak’s trunk, full of yesterday’s rain, when suddenly there was an atmosphere. The field hushed. The grass swayed and strained, as if to listen. Wind rushed in vortices around her small frame, and a single leaf fell from Oak. As it touched her cheek she heard something. Except, it was something from the outside, on the inside.

Most wonderful of humans…Everlie. You are welcome here.

Of course it was Oak. Who else could it be? And if he could send, surely he could receive. So she thanked him, and asked him how his day was going. What’s it like not to move? Do you know what a day is? How many days have you been here? Do the birds’ nests itch? Is there anything you need?

She had heard a laugh, as if you could hear your great-grandfather laughing. As if you knew that he loved you, just from the sound. She sat down gently, and for a long moment she rested her hand on Oak’s rough, cracked, ancient bark. Thus had begun their friendship.

Four summers on, Oak was Everlie’s tree. A grin only he could produce blossomed on her face as he greeted her arrival. She ran like a deer across the empty field, excited to hear about everything he’d been up to since yesterday. Did the barn owls visit you again? How did the moonlight feel last night? Wasn’t the full moon just the brightest! What has the earth been saying?

He captivated her with stories of his world. A world he made sure she knew she was part of. As the sun arced across the sky and made fireflies out of flecks of pollen, Oak sent to her.

Have you made your plans yet? You can’t let too much summer go by. The winter will not be kind, my dear one.

The smile left her face as if wind-driven clouds had stolen the sunlight.

But it’s my last summer with you, she sent, softly.

Yes. And we will grieve. A time for tears. But as wide as this field is, and as tall as I am, we are not big enough for you. You have outgrown us. It is as natural as the river. You were made for more, Everlie.

Yes.

More will never be here.

No.

I know what awaits you in the autumn. It is what will get me through the winter. Make your plans.

And as the wind wrapped itself around her, she knew Oak was right. She wondered in that moment if her heart was as heavy as Oak’s mighty frame. Maybe it was even heavier.

Everlie was expecting the slap when she got home. She had lingered too long. But as her father stumbled dangerously close to the fire, with dull eyes and stinking breath, she bared her teeth at him and roared. He had no response for that. She took a deep breath until she felt her inner strength return.

She tipped the washing-up water over her sleeping brothers. It was mid-afternoon. The look in her eyes silenced them quickly. They could see where the sun was, and they could see just how much they had not done today. And Everlie was not going to do it all. She accepted their hate, the same way they accepted her meals.

She got busy with a knife and a potato. More will never be here.

Everlie cooked for her brothers and her father. Not because they appreciated it, or did anything for her. But because nobody else was going to. Not even themselves. The pain emanating from the small raised bump at the end of the garden, where they left flowers and awkward silences once a year, had made sure of that. She had been so small, she had no memories of her mother’s voice. Not even on the inside. But her mother’s hardworking fingers had felt a lot like Oak’s leaves, as they had traced her cheeks and run through her hair.

Everlie knew that after dinner, she would cease to exist as far as the others were concerned. So she just went to sleep. The sun had barely dropped below the treeline, but that was okay. She’d be there to welcome it back as soon as it returned, and in the solitude of the morning she would make her plans.

III

The sun was still a promise when she woke up. Just in time to wave to the last, straggling moths as they escaped the dawn and took cover from the birds. She took another deep breath and brought to mind all the reasons why she had to go. Why she had to leave her brothers, her father, and the bones of her mother. Even Oak. And Oak was right, it had to be soon, or she would still be on the road when the first snows came. She used sticks and stones to represent to herself the route she would take, placing the larger stones at key points along the route where she might find help and hospitality. I can do this.

A shadow passed over her three-dimensional map and stopped, rippling slightly. Her father could not quite hold himself steady.

“There’s no cider” he said. He turned his cup upside down to illustrate the point, and stared at her. Through her. He didn’t realise he hadn’t asked her a question, as he waited for a response. He didn’t realise a lot of things.

“The cider doesn’t just appear, dad. You need to go to the village. And don’t buy cider, buy apples. Please.” She cast her eyes across the fraction of land they had lived all their lives on, and gestured at her brothers. “For them!” she said, in a forceful, forlorn whisper.

He said nothing. Then a storm came over his face, and Everlie stepped quickly out of arm’s reach. She watched as he kicked every last stick and stone from its place. In seconds, her map once more existed only in her mind. As dust from the dry earth swirled between them, an agonised look came over him that she had only ever seen in the face of a dying animal.

“I wish you didn’t have her eyes” he murmured.

Everlie stared at him open-mouthed as he turned away, a bruise blooming within her that would never fade. As he disappeared in the vague direction of the village, she knew she would never see him again.

Everlie spent the last hours of the morning turning all of their supplies, everything she could forage, and everything she had saved for herself, into a meal for her brothers that was the finest she would ever cook them. She’d been drying the rarer herbs and spices for weeks. She set the stew to simmer on a fire she had built fresh and high. When they woke up it would be steaming, the smell would be heavenly, and she would be gone.

As she looked at their sleeping forms, Everlie wept.

A hush like the first time she’d communicated with Oak descended upon the clearing, and she knew it was time. She gathered all of her clothing, her water carriers, her flints and tinderbox, her knives and her rough-hewn wooden cutlery; everything useful that she could carry went into her very old, but very tough, backpack. The sun was in her face as she surveyed the scene. There was one thing left to do. She walked to the end of the garden.

Courage

Oak’s voice. All the hurt Everlie was carrying released itself in the sound she made as she fell to her knees. Oak had been trying to find the strength to send all the way to her home ever since they had met. He’d finally succeeded, just as she had found the strength to leave.

Oh, Oak.

I am sorry it took such time, dear one. There were nights-

You were always here. Always.

Kneeling beside her mother’s grave, Everlie did not feel courageous. When Oak towered above her, she did not feel small. Here at the small bump at the end of the garden, she felt like one of the ants. Another deep breath, another goodbye. She did not know if sending could reach those who had died, but she sent anyway.

I love you, mum. I hope…I hope you understand. Your bones might stay here but I will carry you far away in my heart. I’m going to the city. The city, mum. And I am going to make you proud.

Everlie kissed the earth that held her mother, and carefully laid a flower from Oak’s field in the centre of the rise. And then she left.

It was the first time she had walked towards Oak and not wanted to arrive. If only time could stop… She shook her head. If time stopped, she’d never achieve anything. She would be frozen. Oak had taught her so much. For a being who could not move, it was remarkable that the most important of those things was Keep Going.

So Everlie kept going. Her future was on the other side of goodbye. Oak had been careful to impress upon her the many joys that future would hold. She wouldn’t have believed how well-connected a tree could be to the outside world, but from one, dependable spot, he had opened her up to a faraway dream and told her how to make it a reality. Like the water that sustained him from the deep earth, he had absorbed all of her tears. And like the cackling ravens that scavenged the meadow, he had made her laugh. Throw back her head and howl, in fact. She wondered where in the city she would find such a friend. But Everlie knew how to take care of people, and surely if she just did that, she would create a friend. Like watering a plant.

Nature had done all it could to prepare the field. There were rabbits darting about among the reds, yellows, blues and golds of the wildflowers. The sun, not quite overhead, was casting an otherworldly glow across the expanse, under skies of the deepest blue that were cracked with mackerel clouds. There was that hush again, as she stepped into the shadow of Oak.

I know he sent, before she could speak. I know. But you are going to be okay. Never forget that you possess more strength than I. And I have seen three hundred years of storms.

I don’t feel like I do she sent.

You don’t need to feel it. Believing is enough.

You have never lied to me, Oak.

No. I have not. So believe me now when I tell you that you are worth immeasurably more than you have ever dared imagine. The city will show you your worth, and there will be love. There will be music. There will be laughter. And, because you will be there, there will be hope.

Fierce tears streamed down Everlie’s face. You gave it to me. I can’t just take it!

Yes, yes you can. And you must. People need hope. And I did not give it to you, I awakened it within you. There is one thing you must take, which I give to you joyfully and freely.

Everlie looked up at Oak, and the war between a smile and a sob on her face just expressed itself as pain.

What is it? she sent.

A small, browny-green acorn dropped softly to the bare earth at her feet.

Pick it up. You will know where to plant it. In seven years, it will be able to send. And I will be with you.

Solidarity

My father believed he was abducted by aliens. I think that’s the one fact that kept me from falling apart under the colossal pressure of my visions. He didn’t elaborate too much, and I didn’t want him to, because that might have meant I, too, had to open up. We shared a mystical solidarity, we both knew we’d seen things, and that was that. We weren’t in denial, I wouldn’t even call it fear. No, more like…respect. A deeper sight. It was like finding form in words for our experiences would destroy what the meaning was. When I was much younger, it was different. I was full of questions.

“Why doesn’t everybody else see when the ghosts walk into the room, dad?”

He sat bolt upright, I remember the look on his face, kind of like he was watching some really terrible news story break. He turned his face towards me slowly, and his eyes were bright, alert.

“Amy, what ghosts? What have you seen?”

“Shadows walking” I said. “And things that haven’t happened, but I’m awake when I see them.” I looked at the floor. “Sometimes they do happen, after.”

His eyes narrowed, and his mind seemed to tick like the beautiful clock in the hall. Slowly, he said to me “These shadow people, do they speak to you, or take you anywhere?”

“They don’t” I said. “They look at me, they know I’m there. They make funny faces. I think they want to talk to me, but I don’t think they know how.”

He nodded slowly, processing. It wasn’t for a while after that that he let me in on his secret. We were on a camping trip, just us, and it was night time. We could see about a trillion more stars than I was used to in the city; I was in awe.

“Is that where the shadow people come from?” I said, pointing at the sky. He said he didn’t know for sure, and there was a pause.

“Amy, some things do come from there. I want you to be careful. Do you believe in aliens?”

“Yes, dad. I don’t think they’re like the ones in films either, do you?”

“No” he said, “they’re not.” He leaned towards me. “Some took me once.”

I gasped. “Really?”

“Really” he said.

“Were you scared?”

“No, I knew they were good aliens.”

“What did they do?” I asked.

“I think they healed me, Amy. I think they stopped me from being sick. Maybe so you could be born, because you’re so special. I don’t really know for sure.”

Wow! I lay back. “What did they look like?”

“They were like mirrors, Amy. They were like walking mirrors. They reflected everything, and you could only really see them when you looked out of the corners of your eyes. Amy, listen to me. This has to be our secret, okay? If we tell anyone, they might not like to hear it, and that could be bad. So, I tell you what, if I have a dream about the aliens, I will tap you on the back when I give you a hug in the morning. And if you see shadow people, or things that haven’t happened, you tap right back. But me, you, and these stars” he said, pointing up like I had, “we’re the only ones who can know, so we just have our code, okay?”

“Okay, Dad.”

He smiled, but it quickly faded. “Amy, one last thing before bed.”

“What, dad?”

“If they ever tell you anything, in words, you have to tell me what they said. But only out here, when we’re alone.”

“Okay, dad” I said.

So a few times a week, I’d tap him on the back and he’d be extra reassuring. There were not many times he tapped his hand on my back, but I always hugged him tighter. Then his smart black shoes would click as he turned and went to work, the remains of breakfast piled neatly in the sink. I’d go to school. I grew up in awe of him, knowing he went to work with his secret but it never affected his accuracy rates or popularity, never hid his easy smile behind a black cloud of desperation.

Me, I’d go to school to be met by the stares of people both real and shadow-formed. My sense of being different – the cloying abnormality I felt pooling at the tip of my spine like rank, muddy rainwater – must have rippled out from me and impressed itself on the minds of my classmates. Nobody wanted to be my friend. I would stare out the window at a sky that never seemed to be anything other than grey, muting the already-dull playing fields until the whole scene looked like undifferentiated matter, broken only by the mournful, looping flight-paths of the birds. My pen would grow slack in my hand, until suddenly the teacher’s reproachful, weary voice would ring out, and the class would laugh. Startled and ashamed, I’d look down, often to find doodles of the shadow people all over my workbook.

At least I could doodle. Art was absolutely my salvation. Without it, even with the ever-present solidarity of my father, I might have succumbed to the creeping insanity that pulled at the edges of my mind, and been hospitalised. The art teacher was the only person other than my dad who got excited by me. She had messy, auburn hair that was really quite beautiful, kind eyes and a head full of dreams that somehow, our school never seemed to be able to kill. She wondered constantly at my ‘imagination’. If only she knew.

“You’ve got quite a mind, Amy” she said, after the class had drifted away and I could breathe again. “The world out there is nothing like this school, you know. There will definitely be a place for someone like you in it.”

I kind of shrugged in reply, but I could have cried. That was beautiful. I wasn’t sure if I believed I would ever really feel at home in any place the world might have for me, though. I carried on working hard in her classes even as I failed repeatedly in all the others, and under her tutelage, my skill in many art-forms grew, and I ended up designing jewellery for a living.

They never did tell me anything, the shadow people. They kept their silence like the stars we shared our secrets beneath. Every year we’d go camping, and every year, too, I’d have less to say about my visions. I didn’t want everything to be about that, it was enough that he knew. So at the campsite we’d just immerse ourselves in the escape from the city. He let me drink beer before I was the legal age, which we did around the warmth of the fire in the evenings – the long shadows silhouetting his face, and the stubble that he grew on these trips. I liked the way the shadows from the fire conformed to traditional shadow behaviour.

In the daytime we’d walk under the blaring, almost self-aggrandising heat of the sun. I always thought the sun had a hint of arrogance, which opposed the gentle grace of the moon. We’d observe the wildlife in the reserve, paying minute attention to the movement and habits of the birds, deer, lizards and squirrels. We both had the highest respect for nature.

We’d eat meals together, of pasta, avocado, aubergine, basil, and wholesome soups of parsnip, carrot and potato. When the sun set, we used to watch it fall from the sky, like some kind of renegade angel, from the same, special spot. Dark used to grow on dad’s face for a time as it grew around us. I think he was abducted at nightfall.

“Are you okay, dad?” I often asked, sometimes more out of insecurity than concern.

“I’m fine, Amy. Don’t you worry” he’d reply, as he turned to face me. “I wish we lived out here though” he would smile, and I’d laugh because we both knew that living somewhere destroys its magic, and he loved his job back in the city.

“’Can’t get a good mocha out here, dad.”

I paid more attention to my father’s ageing than I did my own. There’s more of a weight of gravity to the passing of time as someone gets older, I think. I watched thin lines ripple out on his skin as if his smile was a glittering pebble thrown into the mountain spring of his face. I knew he missed mum. I was luckier than him, having no memories of her to mourn, only the idea of a Mother. He lost his soulmate. I think that’s why he put so much energy into caring for me; it helped him transcend her death. It was a choice I deeply appreciated – he could just as easily have resented me, got bitter and drunk.

My own growing up was less graceful, more of a war with myself and my demons to be honest. It was then that his abduction took on the depth of meaning that it holds for me. It was then that his abduction kept me from falling, when nothing else was capable of reassuring me. I would cry at night.

“What does it mean, dad? Does it even mean anything, or is it just torment?” I choked the words bitterly, hugging my knees and looking fixedly at the wall. His face took on an empathetic seriousness.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, sweetheart, it’s that life is ninety percent uncertainty. Unknowable and unexplainable. Painful and absurd. You just have to take the ten percent that you do get to decide the meaning of and find one hundred percent of your happiness there. I don’t know what the visions mean, I really don’t. Are they getting worse?”

I nodded, and pushed my hair back with a sudden, frustrated movement. “How do you do it, dad? How do you deal with the ninety percent?”

“I think of your mum” he paused, breathing deeply, but his eyes bright, not haunted. Just remembering. “I think of what it means for two people to find each other, and be in love. I think of the age of the universe, and how nothing is new under the sun. I think what can I contribute to the world? and I think of you, Amy. My hope for the future.”

That always used to get me. You know when someone says something like that and means it, there’s not really much you can say in reply. I cried and dissolved in his strong hug.

“The ten percent is worth holding out for. Remember that.”

So I grew up. My teens could be rendered into an anime series. I lived alongside the supernatural, but was unable to interact with it like the characters in those programmes. I never teamed up with, or fought, the shadow people – just endured their gaze, and tried to be as invisible to them as they were to everybody else. I set about finding my ten-percent.

I still had no friends. I had stopped expecting to have any by then, but the angst was stratospheric. I lived inside a storm, a storm my mind made that, with hurricane force, drove people away from me. Only my dad really understood me. Only his abduction anchored me in reality, only his belief in me pushed me to find that place my art teacher spoke of. I lived half my life in books, and painted the rest. Books were my escape into a world that was expected, normal. Obviously I never read sci-fi. People use those books to escape into a world much like mine, thinking it would be the coolest thing in the world. It isn’t. So I escaped into the kinds of books that would give me a taste of a life like theirs.

I knew my dad was dying before he did. Before his doctors did. I saw it. I realised he was my ten percent, and I loved him ferociously. Under the stars, after many beers, on our final camping trip, I hugged him tightly and slowly tapped his back. My tears felt unbearably hot as they dampened his collar.

“What did you see, Amy?”

“Dad” I sobbed. “I think you’re going to die.”

“You saw that?”

I nodded, my chin rising and falling into his collarbone. “I saw you get ill. I saw your funeral.”

His body was tense. He knew I didn’t see things that didn’t materialise.

“We’ll deal with it” he said, his words so heavy they almost dropped like lead before reaching my ears.

And we did. He faced his death with the equanimity that had seen him through life. We were as close as air and lung, and we shared his final months the way we had always shared everything. He imparted so much wisdom to me in those days – in the words he spoke to me in the dark of the night, but also in the way he stood, the way he stirred the onions in the frying pan, the way he cried. It was all so mindful, so rooted in now, so present. So lacking in any distraction or indulgence. He spent his days getting weaker in body, but doing everything he could to strengthen my resolve.

“Amy, don’t be too dualistic about life and death” he said, gently. “They’re not so different. The line between them is blurred.”

“I don’t understand, dad” I said, quietly.

“You will” he said. “When I am just as alive in your thoughts as I am here now, and you live your own life and experience the impermanence of everything, you’ll know what I mean.”

I do. And I am resolute. So I see shadows. Well, my dad got taken. By aliens. He had something happen to him that forever put him outside of others’ experience. He had to deal with the constant questioning of his own sanity, and an absence of explanation or meaning. He lost the love of his life and raised me alone. Yet he smiled, and he took me camping every year of my life, he drew the artist out of me, and he held down the job that paid our bills without ever once succumbing to the sense of loss and desperation that he must surely have felt.

That is why I smile now. It’s why every piece of jewellery I make has his initials incorporated into its design, hidden like a message to the shadows – I am carrying on. I am living my ten percent in his honour, and as long as I can keep in my mind the image of his experience, all those years ago, before I was born, I never become so absorbed in the horror of mine that I give up. I find the strength to deal with the ninety percent.