The road led to a divide, with two crypts below, and two more rows of crypts above. It was the highest one She wanted, of course. The Queen of Heaven’s home on earth must be closer to heaven, as everybody knew, including Marielle, though she didn’t have much of a sense as to how to get to that otherworldly realm, but just like most people she imagined it as up.
Off in the distance, a red fox, one of the few remaining here, darted between the graves, easy to see because of how he contrasted with the snow. Above, perched on a bare tree branch, a lone crow squawked, a kind of audio beacon for his mate. Marielle gave him a jaunty high-five and got a sharp raven-type “hi” back . She trudged up the rest of the steep hill puffing, finally reaching the top, and paused to catch her breath. It sure was pretty here, and even more quiet than down in the city earlier. It reminded her of the farm where she’d grown up, the air so crisp and clean, sounds travelling for long distances, but mostly the silence that she had loved; one that you wanted, not one that you felt was forced upon you. She gazed along the row of family crypts, all lovely structures from another era when people appreciated beautiful things that were more permanent and everything wasn’t made out of plastic.
Marielle liberated the black Madonna from her burlap bag and clutched her in her arms, checking the glow factor as she neared each crypt. The Virgin went nuts with light, and Marielle knew this one had to be the place.
She examined the field-stone crypt she stood before. The massive structure, built into the mountain, was two stories high easy, and she figured the inside had to be bigger than her apartment. Little spires and a tower, and all that pretty filigree work on the wrought iron door… She wouldn’t mind living here herself, and wondered why they didn’t open some of the abandoned ones to the homeless, and people who had a hard time financially, like she’d read they’d done somewhere in Europe, but she knew most North Americans couldn’t handle the idea of breathing people living in a cemetery.
I must go in!
Marielle looked at the Madonna, who might have been a black sun for all she could figure. She’d never seen such a brilliant light before, as if the heavens were on fire with darkness, even blacker than the night sky out in the country. Marielle began to think, well, surely they lock these places to protect what remains, but when she looked up she noticed the lovely door was already ajar, so she guessed this was another sign, since there seemed to be signs everywhere today.
She started up the seven steps, shoving snow aside with her boots as she went, until she reached the door and pushed it open with her forearm. The darkness inside made her hold the Virgin before her like a flashlight, but Marielle wondered if maybe she wasn’t trying to hide from the unknown behind Her vestal skirts, although the Madonna wasn’t long enough for skirts. Marielle felt surprised to find there wasn’t much in here, just some drawers on the sides that probably held coffins, and a wrecked kneeling bench against the back wall, the straw stuffing coming out of the kneeler, an old crucifix on the stone wall above it. “Well, we’re here,” Marielle said with finality. “I guess you’re home.”
The Virgin stayed silent now, just glowed Her lustrous light, like She was taking it all in, trying to figure out what to do next … Marielle studied the celestial face and damn, but wasn’t her mouth open all the way now? Teeth showing, the biggest smile you could imagine on those holy lips. “Guess you’re glad to be here, huh?”
Nothing. It was as if the Madonna decided she’d said enough in the past and now, well, it was time to just let things unfold as they should.
For something to occupy herself with, because she was pretty cold now, and she had to wait till the Madonna figured things out and decided the next step, Marielle walked over and looked at the four drawers to her left. “Beloved Mother Anne” and “Brother Paul”, “My husband Joseph”, “sister Martha”.
She moved the few steps across the crypt to study the drawers over there and that’s when she suddenly noticed Famille L’Esperance. Family of the Hope. Esperance. That was her last name! Maybe these were her relatives, at least the French side of her family! Family she didn’t know she had. But that didn’t seem likely because she wasn’t even born here, her mom’s family came from Ireland and her dad’s from France and they both settled in New Brunswick so none of these L’Esperances were related, were they? She looked at the drawers one by one until she came to the last. This was just an opening, a gap in the wall, waiting for the coffin of the next L’Esperance to be interred.
A sudden fear shot up her spine, cutting the biting cold, making her teeth chatter and leaving her back instantly sweat-soaked like she was still menopausal. She wanted to run from the panic, despite legs and joints that now ached. Her chest hurt, right around heart level. She felt desperate to hide from the terror. Maybe the Madonna had led her here, to her death! Maybe she was meant to die in this crypt, in this icy cold, far from home, alone, with just a lousy Virgin statue she’d been talking to and imagined lighted itself up. She saw a picture in her head, herself half reclining on that ratty old kneeling bench, clutching the cheap black statue, frozen to death…. Maybe she was losing her mind, coming up here in the middle of the night, a woman her age making this kind of ‘pilgrimage’, if anybody sane would call it that, she might have a heart attack any second, overextending herself like this, maybe even a stroke—
Silence!
Marielle’s fear dissolved like ice instantly melting. The quivering, the heart palpitations, the rapid breathing, all of the physical pain. Suddenly she felt normal, younger, not fearful, not alone.
Look!
She looked down at the Virgin, who still glowed, and it occurred to Marielle that not everything had to do with her, maybe the Madonna had her own agenda.
Something caused her to glance up at the cement wall above that empty hole. A round medallion, with a face. She held the Virgin closer so she could use Her light to see just what this was about, and the face on the black medallion was familiar, the same face as the Madonna she held!
“Well, I’ll be…. I guess this really is your home!” Gingerly Marielle placed the black figure inside the opening, the darkness of the hole brought to light by the glow She emitted. For long moments she stood staring at the Virgin who had been so pregnant with hope and possibilities in a world of grim realities. Maybe that was her message all along, that life isn’t perfect, but sometimes miracles happen, to the body, to the mind, to the spirit. Sometimes there’s a future.
By the time Marielle left the crypt the sun had risen in the mid-morning sky. The crow had been joined by his relatives, and they called to each other in their own mysterious language no human could figure out.
She took a more direct route out of the cemetery and got home in time to meet Jean at the mail boxes, where she picked up a Christmas card. Jean was headed out to the shops. “I’ll join you,” she said cheerfully. “I’m headed that way anyways.”
He nodded and smiled, staring at her as if he noticed something different. Like now she glowed.
They walked to the vegetable store and she left him near the eggplants, then headed to the payphone. She dug into her bag, picked out some coins and dropped them into the phone slot, then punched in the number imbedded into her memory. “Thomas?” she said, “It’s mom. I’m thinking we should get together for Christmas.” While she listened, she stared at the stainless steel of the telephone casing and noticed the lower part of her face reflected and the smile spreading across her lips. “Sure, I’d like to stay there. Maybe for a while. We’ll see. Yeah, it’s possible. Anything’s possible.”
Thought and Memory
by Alette J. Willis
Memory came first, scratching at the cedar shingles in the hot August haze.
Jo lay in the dim interior of the old one-storey farmhouse she and Eileen had bought last fall, trying to ignore the sound that so obviously wanted her attention. The humid weight of the Northern Ontario
summer pressed down on her chest, making it hard to breathe as she stared unseeing at the wall before her. She had lain on the overstuffed sofa for days without end and had every intention of remaining there, not remembering, not thinking, not feeling, for the rest of her life.
The phone rang. Jo ignored it. The insistent jangle had broken the thick silence a few times since the police officer had come to the door — but she refused to think about that now.
The noise on the roof grew louder.
Jo’s eyes focussed of their own accord and she found herself gazing at cream wallpaper with pale green vines that twined in and out of ragged patches of discolouration. She followed a stem until it ran up against the seam and disappeared into the next sheet.
Re-wallpapering the living room was on the to-do list stuck to the fridge but they had given it a low priority, below putting drainage tiles under the north section of the market-garden, fixing the small greenhouse, and insulating the roof of Eileen’s studio.
The seam crossed through a rectangular patch of darker wallpaper where a picture had hung. After the police officer had left, Jo had taken down all of Eileen’s paintings and stacked them against the far wall with their backs towards the room. Why was she remembering all this now when she had worked so hard to forget?
She closed her eyes and saw an unlit country highway at night. Then, in the glare of the headlights, the stricken stare of a deer caught on the road. Only its eyes were Eileen’s eyes. The car swerved, lost control, headlights came up ahead, too large, too fast. An image pulled not from memory but from imagination. A wave of vertigo swept over her. She opened her eyes and found herself staring at the place where the wallpaper seam met the ceiling. The scratching came from behind that point. Whatever was making the noise was trying to claw its way into the house. Despite the heat, she shivered. So much needed shutting out these days.
Rusty nails creaked and protested, rotten wood gave way with a muffled crack and then a soft thump as a shingle was thrown off the roof onto the grassy turf. Rat-a-tat-tat, like machine gun fire on the wood beneath. More splintering, some scrabbling and then a thud. Whatever it was had forced its way in and was hopping across the attic towards the middle of the ceiling. The scratching began again, closer now, just a thin layer of drywall between it and the living room. Jo sat up, heart pounding.
A trickle of dust fell to the floor as the black edge of a claw penetrated through. Jo hugged a pillow to her chest and pulled her feet up onto the sofa. Methodically, the creature tore away bits of plaster. And then silence. And then a long scimitar-shaped beak appeared followed by the black-feathered head of a raven, Corvus corax.
It looked at her through one eye, then the other, then the first again, slipped through the hole and swooped down to the floor, landing a couple of metres in front of the sofa.
Jo looked at it warily. She wasn’t as a rule afraid of ravens, or of any corvids for that matter, but this one was large and sitting on the floor of her living room staring at her. It turned its head back and forth again as if trying to figure out how to sustain eye contact with a creature that had eyes in the front of its head.
“It’s easier to talk to people when they’ve had an eye poked out,” it croaked. “Evens things out.”
Somehow a talking raven was easier to deal with than one that didn’t talk. It indicated to Jo that through grief and sleep deprivation she had simply gone mad. Eileen would have been amused at her conjuring up birds to escape reality.
The raven chuckled in short rasping barks. “There is no escape,” he said. “I’m here for the opposite reason.”
“Which is?” Jo asked, sagging back into the sofa’s sweaty embrace.
“I’m here to make you remember.”
“What if I don’t want to remember?”
“Oh, it is a selfish being,” he said to himself, hopping onto the arm of the sofa.
“I think I’m entitled to be a little selfish right now, under the circumstances.”
“Under the circumstances,” he mimicked. He pecked a hole in the upholstery and began ripping out wads of stuffing, tossing them into the air and watching them float to the floor.
“I don’t care about this sofa either, so if you’re hoping to get a rise out of me it’s not going to work.”
“It’s not going to work,” he repeated, pecking another hole.
She flung the pillow at him but he flew up and it landed harmlessly on the floor next to a meditation cushion.
“An unkindness of cushions,” the raven observed, landing on the round, pleated, purple zafu and slitting it open.
“Stop. That’s Eileen’s.” Jo pushed herself off the couch and lunged towards the bird.
“It was Eileen’s,” said the raven retreating to the mantelpiece. “So she does remember, and she does care.”
The small burst of energy had exhausted itself and Jo slumped back on the couch. The bird jumped down onto the paintings.
Jo tried to muster some more anger, but she was too tired.
Seizing the edge of a painting, the raven spread his wings above his head and began to wave them in long powerful strokes, sending dust bunnies skittering into corners. He levitated a couple of inches and then let the canvas drop. It landed face up on the floor: a self-portrait Eileen had done mixing reality and fantasy in her trademark way. It depicted her standing outside under the cold glare of a hopeful moon holding a glistening paintbrush, her glorious naked body radiating its own inner energy as fireflies tugged strands of her hair into a halo around her face.
“Remember,” cooed the Raven.
It was the first painting Eileen had done after they had moved up north to escape the hot smoggy Toronto air, following some romantic idea of country living. Jo had been thrilled to discover that the stand of stunted oaks at the back of their thirty-acre property was the local crow roost. Every evening the birds would stream in over the house and perch in the trees, cawing low gossip to each other until daylight drained away.
Jo dragged Eileen out one evening when the moon was full and the smell of autumn was just on the other side of consciousness. They doused themselves in citronella and snuck across the field to spy on their avian neighbours. There must have been a thousand birds in the small wood, most sleeping singly but a few preening each other and muttering softly. Even Eileen was intrigued by this alien society cohabiting their land.
The moon was high in the sky when they got back to the house. Eileen, taken by the quality of the light on Jo’s face, unbuttoned Jo’s shirt, wanting to see the soft skin of her breasts by moonlight. Jo protested at first, afraid of being exposed to any lingering mosquitoes, but Eileen had a soft touch that always managed to get right up inside of her, melting her resistance to anything. They made love on the grass in a fug of citronella to the accompaniment of cricket song.
Their passion crested and subsided, washing Jo up onto the still warm earth, her arm draped across Eileen’s silky belly, listening as the pounding in her ears subsided to a distant throb. Eileen pulled away, springing to her feet and stretching like some feral feline. Jo watched her roam hungrily about the edge of the lawn marvelling at how clearly the moon highlighted her long supple legs and provocative curves.
“You know,” said Jo. “We’re still linked even though I can’t reach you. Me, you, the sun and moon, we’re all woven together.”
Eileen sauntered towards her.
“Sunlight strikes the moon and becomes moon rays, which hurtle four hundred thousand kilometres to rebound off your skin and penetrate inside my eyes, binding us together in a web of light.” Joe reached out and stroked the inside of Eileen’s ankle.
Eileen spun out of her grasp and disappeared inside the house. Jo had just about mustered enough energy to go after her when she reappeared carrying an easel and paints and the square mirror from the bedroom, which she brought over to Jo.
<
br /> “I want to capture that, what you said about the sun and the moon and me and you. Hold up the mirror so I can see with your eyes.”
Eileen had written “Moonshadow Muse” on the back of the canvas. Jo traced the words with her finger. She brought the painting into the bedroom and hung it back in its place above the bed.
“I do enjoy the visual arts,” croaked the raven, hopping into the room. “I am an artist as well, you know. Though my masterpieces are of the narrative variety.” With one flap of his wings, he jumped onto the dresser, landing in front of the mirror. He peered at himself and gave a loud “korak.” A second raven stepped out from behind the mirror.
“There you are,” grumbled the first bird. “Late again.”
“It seems I’m just in time to hear you take credit for everything,” said the second bird, puffing out her neck feathers.
Jo wondered what part of her subconscious had brought forth bickering ravens. They were beginning to give her a headache.
“It’s not us,” said the second bird. “You’re dehydrated. Better get yourself a glass of water.”
Jo stayed sitting on the bed. “Who are you?” she asked.
“Thought,” said the second bird.
“Memory,” said the first, flapping up onto the curtain rod.
Eileen had told her the Norse myth of Thought and Memory not long before — Jo forced her attention back on the birds.
“Why are you pestering me?” she asked. “Shouldn’t you be whispering into Odin’s ear or something?”
“He won’t listen to us anymore,” Thought said. “Not interested in the goings on down here.” She scratched gloomily at the surface of the dresser.
“He’s too busy hanging from his tree, waiting for the end of the world,” said Memory, tucking one leg up, and then flipping over so that he dangled from the curtain rod by one claw.
Tesseracts Nine: New Canadian Speculative Fiction Page 20