“Come over here, Jane, and let me warm you up,” a woman’s friendly voice spoke at a distance behind her.
Jane spun about startled. In a shaft of sunlight that tore through the forest canopy stood a tall woman with raven dark hair. She wore brown boots, blue jeans and a red sweatshirt imprinted with a university logo and big white letters that spelled: NEW MEXICO.
Her face startled Jane, a face known all these years only in photographs — the curved nose, large Persian eyes and swarthy complexion. A breeze lifted long strands of hair across that lovely eagle’s face.
“Mother?” Jane murmured.
“You were expecting me, weren’t you?” She came forward with a brown bath towel in her hand. “Here, let me dry your hair before you catch cold.”
Jane stood unmoving. Blood beat in her ears with the fearful trembling of her heart. When her mother put her arm around her, solid and warm and smelling of sage and blue heather, Jane jolted as if struck.
“Hey, calm down. It’s all right.” Her mother spoke soothingly, with a lilt of a laugh. “I know this is shocking. I know. But let me get your hair dry. It’s chill out here.”
Jane stood astounded as her mother vigorously rubbed her scalp and hair with the fluffy towel. With one hand, Jane reached out and touched her mother’s hip. She felt there the slide of muscles as the woman shifted her weight to reach the sides and back of Jane’s head.
“There.” Her mother draped the towel over Jane’s shoulders like a shawl and, with her fingers, combed back the drying hair now untangled of faerïe knots. “That’ll have to do. Come on, let’s get out of this breeze and sit by that sunny oak over there.”
She took Jane’s hand firmly and walked her to a root ledge on the bright side of the tree. They sat in the sunlight.
“Look at you, Jane!” Her mother smiled tenderly, her white, even teeth holding a gloss of sunlight. “You’re practically all grown up. It’s obvious you’re going to be a beautiful woman.”
“Is this really you?” Jane scowled against the brilliant sunshine. “I mean, you’re not some trick, someone pretending to be my mother?”
“Don’t you recognize me?” She rubbed her nose against Jane’s. “It’s me. Your mother. Diane. Well, that’s just my nickname. I was born Parvina Khostaria in Tabriz, Iran to your grandparents, Sadiq and Mirabai. I’m sure your father told you about them. They were scientists at Los Alamos — a nuclear physicist and a mathematician. But I never knew them. At a picnic, when I was a baby, lightning struck them. So, I understand how you feel losing me. That’s why I came.”
A huge sob rose in Jane, swollen with lifelong sorrow.
“Don’t cry, Jane.” Diane Riggs stuck out her lower lip with feigned sadness. “If you cry, you’re going to make me cry. Come here. You need a hug.” She pulled Jane to her warm, soft body and held her tightly while Jane sobbed. “I’ll bet your father doesn’t hug you enough.”
When Jane’s grief finally let her speak, she asked, “How can you be here? You died.”
“Yes, that’s true. I’m dead.” Diane stroked her daughter’s hair. “But being dead is not what you might think.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s not so easy to say.” She kissed the top of Jane’s head. “And even harder to understand.”
“I want to know.” Jane pulled herself away and gazed hard at her mother. “Please.”
“No, it will just confuse you — and me, too!” Diane studied her daughter’s face with shining eyes. “You’ve gotten so big. You were just a toddler the last time I held you.”
Jane stared and stared, not believing her eyes. She studied the delicate arch of her mother’s eyebrows, the curve of her eyelashes, and the small pores of her skin. She was perfect to the smallest detail. She was real!
“I don’t remember you,” Jane confessed. “I know I should, and I’ve tried. So many times, I’ve tried. But I can only remember your face from photos.”
“You were barely three, Jane.” Yellow leaves spilled between them, and Diane’s sable hair lifted in the breeze. “It was hard for you, such a young child.”
“Father helped me understand.” Jane brushed the gossamer hair from her mother’s face, touched her lips, ran the tips of her fingers along her jaw. “You really are here, aren’t you?”
Diane swallowed a laugh and nodded.
“You look so happy.” Jane blinked back tears. “Did you miss us — father and me?”
“I’m dead, Jane.” Diane playfully pinched her daughter’s cheek. “It’s different for the dead. For us, nothing is missing, and so…” She tossed her hands up jubilantly. “There’s nothing to miss!”
“We miss you.” Jane struggled to stay composed, but her voice cracked. “Father’s been alone with me since you died. And even though I don’t remember you, I miss you. Every day I think about you.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t with you.” Her smile softened. “I wish I could make it up to you.”
“Then, tell me what it’s like for you,” Jane pressed. “Are you in heaven?”
“Not the way you think of heaven.” She giggled at the thought and launched a look up beyond the trees and their painted leaves into the blue. “I could never have imagined what it’s like.”
“Is it good?” Jane addressed her mother’s sun-struck profile. “Are you happy?”
“It’s not that way, Jane. Good and bad — happy and sad…” She faced her daughter with a beaming expression. “Those are the feelings of the living. For the dead, there are no opposites. No here and there. It’s different.”
“How, mother? How is it different? I want to know.” Jane plucked at the sleeve of her mother’s sweatshirt. “I can’t believe you’re actually here with me. This is so unbelievable. You don’t know how bad I wanted this, how hard I worked to see you.”
“Oh, I know, Jane. You’re a full-fledged witch.” Diane lifted her eyebrows and whistled with amazement. “That took a lot of courage. I’m proud of you.”
“You know about that?”
“Sure. I’m dead, but I still care about you. I keep up.”
She took her mother’s hands in hers. “What will it be like for father and me when we die?”
The darkness of Diane’s eyes brightened clairvoyantly. “Not good or bad, happy or sad. Just — wonderful!”
“Really?”
“Do I look miserable?”
Jane squirmed with the relentless awe coursing through her. “I still can’t believe you’re here! I’m touching you, mother. But you’re dead. How can this be? I’ll go crazy if you don’t tell me.”
“Well — I don’t want you to go crazy!” Diane sighed, then took a deep breath and brushed the loose wisps of jet hair from her face. “Where to begin?” She rubbed her chin and hummed as she organized her thoughts. “You really want to know?”
“Yes!”
“Okay, then. The first thing you have to understand is this. What the living think is real — what the living call reality — it just doesn’t exist. It’s an illusion, Jane. It’s like…” She nodded up at the sky. “It’s like watching the sun rise. The sun really does seem to move across the sky, doesn’t it? But it’s actually the earth that’s turning, spinning east at a thousand miles an hour. We don’t see that at all. To us, the sun rises and then it sets.”
Jane accepted this by resting her head against her mother’s shoulder. “So, death is an illusion?”
“In a manner of speaking. In fact, the real illusion is time. There is no time.”
Through an incredulous frown, Jane studied her mother’s left hand, which held Jane’s right. It looked elegant, though the fingernails were clipped short and unpainted. “But if there is no time, what about history?”
“An illusion.”
“But we get old. Is that an illusion, too?”
“Yes. All change is an illusion. Of course, the motion we see around us — birds flying, leaves falling, our hair blowing in the breeze — these are such powerful sensations that try
ing to deny them seems utterly ridiculous.” Diane eased her daughter off her shoulder and turned to face her. “The truth is, Jane, there is only now. One eternal, unchanging moment. Now. In this ‘now’ are all the many particles of matter, all the many atoms...” She bit her lower lip and asked with a lopsided grin and one squinted eye, “You know about atoms?”
“I’m in eighth grade, mother. I know about atoms.”
“Right. Well, all the atoms in the universe and all the many possible arrangements of those atoms, they all exist ‘now.’ There is no before. There is no after. There is just a very complex arrangement of atoms now.”
Jane considered this. “Are you saying there are some arrangements of atoms where I’m sitting to your left and you’re sitting to my right? And there are some where we’re sitting under a different tree? There are lots of us. Right?”
“You’re a clever one.” Diane put a gentle hand to Jane’s cheek and smiled into her eyes. “Yes. Every possible configuration of atoms exists in the real now.”
“But then…” Jane passed a glance over the leaf-strewn ground. “Why are we ... here? Why aren’t we over there?”
“Oh, we’re there too. Other versions of you and me.” Diane smiled into the frayed sunlight under the trees. “We just don’t see our other selves, just like we don’t see the earth turning a thousand miles an hour toward the east. That’s the illusion, Jane. We’re standing on the earth. We’re a part of it, moving with it. The same is true of all the places we could be in the forest — of every atom among all the atoms in the universe. That’s a lot of possibilities that we don’t see. And we don’t see them because we are in the now, just as we are standing on the earth. If we went up in a rocket ship and looked back at the earth, we would see that the earth is indeed turning. And if we could somehow get out of this now, we would see that what we call ‘now’ is just one part of a much larger ‘now’ made of a great many possible ‘nows’ — and you and I are in a lot of them. All of them together make up the one big now that is reality.”
Jane watched her mother’s lips moving and listened with such fascination to the sound of her voice, a slightly husky voice, that she hadn’t fully heard what her mother had said. “I don’t get it.”
“I told you.” Diane laughed and wrinkled her nose at Jane’s befuddlement. “It’s not so easy to say — and it’s even harder to understand.”
“What about my memories?” Jane asked. “I remember riding here on my bicycle. I remember yesterday and last year. Isn’t that time?”
Diane gleefully stuck the pink tip of her tongue between her teeth and shook her head, amused at her daughter’s zealous effort to understand. “All your memories are merely a physical pattern of nerves in your brain. They are a pattern in the now. There is no past — just many other patterns of atoms that we call the past. The same with the future. Past, present, future are all one, like separate musical notes in a song. But there is only one reality, one song. One eternal moment. The single song of all.”
“This is way too weird. It makes my head hurt.” Jane pressed her knuckles to her temples. “What does all this have to do with being dead?” She reached out and held her mother’s face in her hands. “How did you get here? Where did you come from?”
“I didn’t ‘get here.’ I am here. I didn’t come from anywhere, either. Neither did you. You just think you did.”
Jane crossed her arms. “I don’t get it. I just don’t get it.”
“That’s okay. You live in the illusion. All you have to know is that it is an illusion.” Diane put her arms around her child and held her close. “Reality is so much more than you can see or even guess, Jane. And I’m here to tell you that.”
“But why? Why didn’t your parents come back for you? Why am I so lucky?”
“Luck is exactly what it’s all about for creatures in the mirage of time.” Diane pressed Jane firmly against her chest so that she would hear her heartbeat and the breath of her words before she spoke them. “Luck. Chance. Probabilities. Some people win the lottery. Some people swerve on an icy road and smack into a tree. The deception is very convincing. But here I am to assure you, it is indeed a deception. Reality is a great deal bigger than this one arrangement of atoms we call the world.”
Jane spoke to her mother’s heartbeat: “Will you stay with me?”
“No.” Diane tightened her hug. “You and I are a very lucky configuration of atoms. But we’re not that lucky.”
“Will you come back?”
“No. But we’ll see each other again — in a different arrangement. A very wonderful arrangement. But that’s a very different and much bigger ‘now.’” Diane released her daughter and stood up. “Let’s go. It’s time you got home. Your father is going to worry — and he’s worried about you enough lately.”
Jane grabbed her mother’s knee. “I don’t want to leave you.”
“Of course not.” Diane knelt and stared softly into Jane’s tearful eyes. “You love me. And I love you. I’m sorry we can’t be together longer. I would have liked to watch you grow up and live your life.”
“Then stay!”
“I can’t — anymore than I can make the earth stop turning and the sun stand still.” With delicate strength, Diane lifted Jane to her feet and made her voice go deep and theatrical with exaggerated sorrow, “We are such small and fragile creatures, Jane.” Then more quietly, “And everything we see is an illusion. The best we can do is to say ‘yes’ to the illusion and love it — the good and the bad of it — love it with all our hearts.”
“That’s what I thought on the switching tower last night.” Jane’s sparkling eyes searched her mother’s face for understanding. “You heard my thoughts?”
After brushing back her daughter’s hair, Diane lifted Jane’s chin. “Love the illusion — the good and the bad of it.”
“Okay.” Jane pouted. “I’ll love it. But I’m not going to like it.”
With a hearty laugh, Diane led Jane to her bicycle. “I’m glad we had this talk. I wasn’t sure what we were going to say to each other. I thought maybe we’d be too amazed to say anything at all!”
While her mother picked up the soaked clothing from the ground and folded it into the backpack, Jane gnawed her lip. “I still don’t understand why you can’t stay. Why do you have to go if there is no time? Just stay with me.”
“I am with you.” Diane zipped up the backpack and enclosed her daughter in another hug, a giant bear hug that swung her off her feet. “You sweet lugaboo! You’re the most curious and persistent lugaboo I’ve ever known!” She lowered Jane and stepped back, regarding her with shining eyes. “I want to tell you everything. But telling can never be the same as knowing. And you already believe too much in words! A lot like me.” She kissed her daughter’s cheek and pressed her close one more time. “You will always be my Jane — and I will always love you.”
“Mother — ” Jane opened her mouth to speak, and so many questions rushed forward they collided into silence inside her chest, leaving her just standing and staring as her mother stared back, dark eyes shining.
“Oh, by the way.” Diane reached into the pocket of her jeans. “The faerïe asked me to give you this.” She opened her hand and revealed a hazelnut with a green thread tied around it.
“Oh, no.” Jane groaned. “It’s the second favor I owe the faerïe. Where did you see them?”
“They’re around,” Diane replied with a knowing nod. “And there’s no avoiding them. So, you better be sure to pay them back — or there will be dire consequences.”
“What do they want?” Jane took the hazelnut from her mother’s hand and turned it about. “There’s no note.”
“Ah, that’s because they told me to tell you.” Diane lifted Jane’s backpack and began strapping it to the carry rack on the bicycle. “When you complete this favor, your debt to them is paid in full.”
“What is it?”
After securing the backpack, Diane handed the riding helmet to her daughte
r and removed the brown towel from Jane’s shoulders. “The favor they require of you is difficult. But, talking with you today and seeing for myself what a capable person you’ve grown up to be, I’m confident you can handle it.”
“All right.” Jane strapped on her helmet and straddled the bike. “I’m ready. Tell me what the faerïe want me to do.”
A smile illuminated Diane’s dark eyes. “Be happy.”
Jane gazed with disbelief at her mother. “It’s going to be hard to be happy without you.” She glanced down at the hazelnut in her hand, and when she looked up her mother had disappeared. The forest ranged empty in every direction for as far as she could see.
“It’s going to be hard!” she shouted. And then, softer, “But I’ll do it. For you.”
The End
A. A. Attanasio
Thanks for accompanying me and Jane on our supernatural journey! If you enjoyed our adventure with Jeoffry, Hyssop Joan and the faerïe, please join me again in the other fantasy novels I’ve written:
Killing with the Edge of the Moon (An enchantment with the faerïe in a modern Celtic romance.)
Wyvern (A bold escapade with a young soul-catcher from Borneo kidnapped by pirates in 1609.)
The Perilous Order of Camelot (With the help of Merlin, young King Arthur grows up in a world of supernatural powers set against him.)
The Dominions of Irth (Three epic fantasy novels explore Irth, a realm of wizards, witch queens, and magical amulets threatened by black magic from a mysterious world — Earth.)
Radix (A saga of a young man's odyssey of self-discovery on an eerily alien Earth thirteen centuries in the future.)
Demons Hide Their Faces (Seven seriously strange stories.)
I’m always glad to hear from readers. You’re the best friends and teachers a writer can have! Please send me your comments, critiques, and creative suggestions to [email protected].
aaattanasio.com/
The Conjure Book Page 18