Swallows swarmed the sky, discharging the ruthless joy of spring in a dance so ancient that it was vanishingly old when the first sauropods lifted their thick limbs to the music of the sunlight, as thick and generous it is today, burning like the pitiless love of god. We were arriving in the Grove where the People were camping at the moment, and they didn't seem surprised to see us appear with no warning, but there was real joy and warmth as they welcomed us home. That night there was a celebration outside the Sacred Grove, with bonfires and songs, to welcome us back to the People. It was held outside the Sacred Grove because of the fires, and because I could not enter, still. I was not ready to be cleansed. Perhaps less than ever.
I didn't join in the songs. I didn't want to, feeling myself clinging to the outside of the world, with no way back in. I just watched Ash next to me in the firelight, singing with the wide open breath of his heart, melting into the shared warmth of our Family as easily as a gull on the deep wind off the sea. He noticed me looking, and stopped singing for a moment, to grin at me, like he hadn't a care in the world. I kissed him. He didn't seem surprised, not even when I slid my fingers up around his neck to pull him in tighter. Then I took him by the hand, and led him away from the fire and the singing, into the expectant darkness of the forest. Because I needed him. Because cleaving to the living is a way to hold fast against the vast tide of the dead.
Ash continued to be sweet to me afterward, bringing me little gifts, a necklace he had made of tiny seashells, fresh fruit when I was working in the gardens in the heat of the day, or just a kiss. He was so kind, and so infuriating, as if his kindness, his soft, beautiful eyes and his sweet mouth were enough to heal the ragged black scar across the world. And because I wanted so much for them to be able to. The nights we ripped down the spangled sky and wrapped it around ourselves, those night I needed so badly to escape, when I wept and laughed and raged in his arms, bit him or bathed him in kisses. Those nights were never long enough, and the days returned with the damning beauty of everything, the sway of the trees together in the wind, the final twist of the swallows flight to land in her nest, the blunt stumble of butterflies through the air. Even the spectacular clouds, lounging across the horizon, made it clear that this was not my place, that I was an awkward fit in the world.
I went hunting for days alone, south to the kudzu barrens for goats or north along the shore, craggy and taciturn, almost able to leave myself behind by moving quickly through the forest, with no one to speak my name, to jerk that leash. But I ached for him, and as the days passed that empty place inside grew to blot out everything else, and I had to go back, to see him. Sometimes I would watch him from hiding, collecting squash in the forest garden, or playing foot-ball with his friends, the flash of his teeth when he laughed, hoping that would be enough, that I could turn and go again. But I never did.
I spent time with the old women of the Council of the Wise, Grandma Jay, Aunt Maggie, and the others. They had so many stories to tell, and they told me new ones, things I had not heard before. Their stories made me feel better, they had a shape and fit into the world in a way that I could not. I realized that that they considered my place to be among them. There were no initiations, no ceremonies. When I came to listen, the simply made a place for me in their circle.
We had much to do, thought, more than the scattered harvests and gathering. Many of the People had perished in the Year of Struggles, and we had taken in Crabtowners who had escaped the siege. Dozens chose to stay with us now that it was safe to return, and more Crabtowners had made the same choice Pop had, to abandon the city by the seas for a new life, and came to join us as well. So, the council organized many chats, to teach the newcomers about the People, and to learn their stories. We told many of the old ones, like The Land of Ice and Little Gentlemen, The Four Noble Truths and the Bodhi Tree, or The Tower at the End of the World, and we occasionally learned new ones, like Baba Yaga's Hut. I told the story of The Women Who Walked Through A Mountain. I didn't want to tell everything that happened, how I was afraid in the dark, but I was ashamed to lie to these women who had accepted me at their council, so I just told everyone what we had done and what we had seen there. The old women nodded when I was finished, which made me feel proud and silly at the same time, because I was not sure where the wisdom was in my story.
We spent many hours telling stories, even when there was little to eat, because that is who The People are. We collected the stories of our lives on this Earth, and of the shattered peoples of the whole coast, and we maintained a new covenant, a new way of living, forged from what shards of wisdom still remained, although each year we were less, like all the people of the coast. But that was who we were, and who we would remain as long as any of The People lived, or anyone who was prepared to join us and carry on what Blind Oak and Aunt Maggie and Grandma Jay and the others had begun. Because, at the end of everything, after all that had happened, and all that we had done over the centuries, all the destruction and death and horror, we felt the remains of humanity were worth keeping alive, that they meant something.
I also spent hours by the sea, watching over the waves, studying the dead hulks of the ancient shipwrecks, home to gulls and cormorants and a million clinging, floating, swimming things, letting the salt air roll over me and pickle the raw red scars, scabbing them with the grit of a thousand million years scrubbed into the oblivious ocean. Ash at least knew enough to leave me be when I went to my rocky perch on the shore.
Pop came down to the beach to talk to me sometimes. I could tell he was worried about me. He tried to be cheerful, and I tried to humor him, but it quickly became a burden.
"Allie, you don't have to be afraid of the Bloom, you know, we broke them, and for a good long while. They won't be bothering us again any time soon. It is safe now."
I looked at him, there, the creased face, uncertain eyes meeting mine. This was the man who had raised us, taught us everything he knew, or everything we would listen to, who had stayed up with us when we were sick, scolded the children that had teased us. I just wanted him to leave me alone. I didn't feel like mincing words with him.
"You don't know what I fear".
I looked away. I didn't want to see the hurt on his face. I was ashamed of myself for hurting him, but he could not see me now, who I had become, and where I had traveled. He was quiet for a long time, looking out over the waves, and then I saw him nodding out of the corner of my eye. Eventually, he rose and left.
--
The fall came and we were all busy, harvesting and storing enough for winter. The Harvest Thanksgiving was on us before I knew it. That year was a good year, a year of renewal. Trade with Crabtown was brisk, and Pop was often away. They had a lot of work undoing the wreck of the siege, and bought whatever food we had to trade. The People didn't settle together that year, but traveled in small groups to our various campgrounds, rebuilding tree shelters and sacred groves that had been burned in the struggles, planting and tending our crops. There was work for everyone.
--
Two of the older boys were watching from a distance, pointing and laughing, and then grabbing each other to pantomime a clumsy kiss with a shrill "MWUAH!".
- "Oh Ash! You are such a a big buff buck! I just loooove you!"
- "Oh Allie, your poisoned arrows have got me right in the heart! I love you like a big doofus!"
- "MWAH!", and then they burst into shrieks of laughter, pushing at each other and shrieking more and more declarations of undying love "I will make you a castle on the moon for your pet slug!" "I will wash your butt in star juice!" Ash made a sour face, but I couldn't help laughing under my breath, their good humor was so infections. Eventually Ash grinned, threw a stick in their direction, and shouted, "Back home, both of you, or I am going to come dunk both your heads in star juice!", but they could tell he didn't mean it. They wandered off with occasional proclamations of operatic passion or a distant "MWUAH!", carrying through the trees.
"See, Ash? You have made me the laughing stock of The People. I am going to have to go and live in a hut in the mountains until I am old and everyone has forgotten my name."
"This would never have happened if you washed your own butt." he responded solemnly.
I smiled, squinting at the sun slipping toward the sea, in and out of clouds, drawing a good day to a gentle close, one of the most peaceful days I could remember. A day where you could feel warm wrapped in your own skin, and your skin wrapped in the world, like a great tapestry stretching to every horizon.
"Ash, I need to go and finish something. Will you wait for me by the river?" I tried to use as indifferent and casual tone as possible, because Ash is sly, and can be a real hen when he wants to. He looked at me thoughtfully, taking on his own tone of forced indifference.
"Sure Allie. Anything I can help with?"
I turned and looked him straight in the eyes. "No, Ash. I need you to wait for me, and not ask any questions. Can you do that? For me?"
He nodded, studying my face carefully. "You know I can. I will wait right over here." He gave my hand a quick squeeze, rose, and walked off toward the river.
"Thanks" I said, softly, but I don't know if he heard me.
The air under the canopy of trees was just slightly cooler, rich with the smell of pine needles, moist earth, and the ripe perfume of autumn. Splayed rows of trunks, from brooding giants to slender saplings, stood staggered across the earth, eventually fading into the dappled green and tan shade of the forest, filling our world from the sea to the mountains. My path lay across the tangled roots of the trees, along a path I had walked alone over a year ago, leaving the others at the river the night that Apple died. I still expected to find him again, the same as always, perhaps stepping from behind a tree with his shy smile and skinny, pale arms, perhaps to show me some complicated toy he had created out of branches and old rubber and steel bits from one of the long-dead iron beetles, or maybe to ask if Willow and I would be at the Chat that evening. But there was no one in the forest, no humans, no stalking shapes in the shadows, just the trees, the legion ranks of the forest, their rustling business only occasionally interrupted by human presence. It was strange to think that this forest was once the home to throngs of people, busy, so busy, rushing and dreaming their dreams, with so much fire and steel to call with the flick of a finger.
Grandma Jay said that they still walked the earth when she was young, along the roads, along the rivers, with hushed voices, like the rustling of leaves, walking quietly, without their machines, without their dreams. Where they were going was never clear, and Grandma Jay never answered when we asked her to tell us more.
I felt as if they might be here still, amid the ruins of all that they had built, and ruined, and finally abandoned. That they might be here somewhere, waiting in their thousands and millions in the forest, all of them hushed and greenish brown, mossy and slow, just around some strange curve in the wood. I stopped and stood, listening for something, for Apple, for the great weight of the dead in this place of ruin and renewal. The moment swelled and seemed to choke off any sound. The air was still. No birds sang, except muted voices from some unpaceable distance. I became aware that I had been holding my breath, but did not breathe. And the forest did not breather. We were one, waiting, the steamy air binding us in a bundle of leaves and hair and skin and mulch.
A butterfly as big as my hands, blue as a thunderclap, bounced out onto the pathway, bobbling from side to side, and I was transfixed, dumbfounded, staring helplessly. The blue butterfly continued on its way very much like a blue butterfly should, and me with my mouth gaping open, as if to breathe it in, draw in some understanding hanging in the air around me. But nothing came. The butterfly continued on its way. The forest breathed in. I breathed out. It was as if my lips had brushed against something for a moment, unaware, and it had drifted away on my breath, like a seed drifting in the wind.
I continued on, and found my arrow where I had left it, planted in the pathway, with one tattered feather still clinging to the shaft. I pulled it our, held it for a moment in my hands, and broke it in two. The pieces fall to the ground, but I was already retracing my steps.
At the river I slipped off my clothes, and unbundled the branches Three Moons had given me, the ones used for the cleansing ceremony. In the water, I scrubbed until my skin was raw and burning, splashing myself with the cold green river water again and again, and then I dove deep, struggling toward the rich muck at the bottom until my lungs burned, and I came back up for air, gasping and spitting, in the splintered dazzle of the early moon rising over the trees. Ash was waiting on the opposite bank, with the blanket.
I turned for a last look back, at the numberless trees, at the infinitely slow swell of the forest that had swallowed them all, Apple, my mother, the Bloom warrior, all of them. They were gone forever. Perhaps they would wash up on some distant shore, or melt into the mist that rises from the forest in the morning, and drifts away into the sky. But I would not see them again. I splashed my face in the cool, water, as old as the earth, and as new as the crash of the falls, washing away tears.
A flight of starlings raced across the light sky, from darkness to darkness, and I stopped to watch them, those heavenly creatures that had lifted my heart so often. I marveled at how far, how immense the long burning curve of their flight had been. And how far the journey of my heart to join them.
I turned away again, a final time. Ash was waiting on the shore. I waded out with nothing but the last drops of water on my skin. They skittered down my body into the soft earth, where dragons lie, curled and sleeping , and were gone.
-----
We were moving again, to one of the the winter groves. I had come to say my yearly farewell to the open horizon of the ocean, the cries of the gulls and cormorants, the vast backdrop of my life. A flock of painfully white terns started, peeled itself up from the water, flew, and doubled back, the whole of them rippling with each change of direction, a smooth spasm of collective indecision, then surged and flowed smoothly down the coast.
The weather was warm and the sea was as still as glass, but the Autumn storms and their flat gray skies were coming more often, lashing the waves higher, tearing new chunks from the shore and swallowing them whole, into the bottomless sea, the renewer of all things. Storms came and went, but the comforting pulse of the sea continued forever. Insistent. Patient. The murmur and hiss of the waves against the fainting earth, mumbled words carried from far across the horizon, the muttering of an indecipherable god. I listened carefully to the slap and hush of the waves on the bare rock, newly exposed by the hungry sea, and watched the subtle ripples undulating through the matted seagrass, every twitch and sway whispering through the shallow water.
The Earth, they say, swims in a sea filled with waves and ripples, as invisible as the ocean currents, twittering and chattering, flitting across the face of the sky like a flock of starlings, darting through our lives like a bird in an out a winter window. A properly turned ear will catch the wow and flutter arcing from around those other curves, those other spheres. Not their meaning, of course, which would require an eon of patience to encompass the merest phoneme, but the voice of the mutterer, the song of the sea and the sailor and the sails ringing in the wind.
And so we all float in the sea. Not water, but a sea of distance and movement, carrier of messages, bearer of news, the sea that came before, and remains between, and will eventually swallow the Earth and our bones. Not to ashes or dust, but to the restless unknown.
A patch of tiny ripples twitched over the glossy surface of the water as a breeze trailed its fingers along the skin of the sea, a sigh breathed on the face of the mumbling depths. Somewhere, at the top of the world, in an ocean speckled with shattered archipelagos of ice, a dark behemoth raced through the coldest darkness of the earth. I could feel the sweep of that mountain of muscle, tuned over thousands of generations to release its power into the depths, racing across the world. It rose and launched itself upward, barnacled, spinning out an iridescent spiral of gelid water. And I felt the double thump of that titanic body crashing back down into the sea, vibrating to the corners of the oceans. I felt it in my chest, and the answering kick in my belly, the steady work of my heart, the thud and the rush of the sea. The throb of life. The next wave.