Beneath the Distant Star

by Lisa Shambrook

  “What was she looking at?” asked Jasmine.

  “The old oak,” replied Thomas.

  “But there isn’t one any more…”

  “I think she still sees the old one…”

  They set off, chasing Meg up the hill.

  As they reached the top, Meg stood beside the tree stump and brushed her fingers across its silvered wood. Then she wandered to the old oak bench and sat in the corner cut into the fallen bough. Jasmine and Thomas joined her.

  “You run fast,” said Jasmine.

  Meg nodded.

  They sat on the log at the top of the hill in quiet reverence. “Is this for Joan?” asked Thomas.

  “In a way, Tommy,” said Meg clasping her hands in her lap.

  Meg remained quiet. Jasmine stared across the field and down to her house. She grinned at her bedroom curtains flapping in the breeze. Thomas nudged Jasmine and nodded towards Meg. Silent tears slipped down Meg’s pale face, and the light wind wafted her hair behind her.

  “You okay?” asked Jasmine.

  “Are you missing Joan?” asked Thomas.

  Meg smiled. “I’m not sad, I mean I am sad, I am because Joan died, but I’m happy too, she’s with her Thomas now.”

  “Do you believe in life after death then?” asked Jasmine her eyes darkening.

  “I’d like to think so,” said Meg. “It makes sense to me.”

  “Then you think Freya, my sister, might still be somewhere, somewhere up there in the ether?” asked Jasmine.

  Meg shrugged. “I don’t know, I don’t know what happens, but there are too many stories from people to dismiss it.”

  “I want Joan to be with Thomas,” said Thomas.

  “She believed she would be,” said Meg.

  “So you believe in extra-terrestrial things?” asked Jasmine. “Like extra sensory perception and things like that?”

  Meg smiled and unclasped her hands, placing them on her knees and facing Jasmine and Thomas. “I’ll tell you something, something special, that not many people know…”

  They gazed at her.

  “There used to be a huge oak tree here.” She gestured in front of them at the tree stump.

  “I remember it, vaguely,” said Jasmine. “There was a storm, and it got hit by lightning. I was about eight.”

  “It did, but before that it was huge and beautiful and…” Meg stared up into the sky and raised her hands to encompass an arc. “It spread across us, right here…” She turned to Jasmine. “I used to come here, when I was upset, when I was sad, when I needed to get away. Thomas said you do the same.”

  Jasmine nodded.

  “One day, I was so upset and didn’t know what to do, things were horrible at home and I ran away up here. Mum was ill and I was lost at school. I was distraught.” She paused. “I came here, and touched the tree, the old oak. It almost electrocuted me! That’s the only way I can describe it!”

  Thomas grinned, having heard the story before.

  “The tree spoke to me, it spoke to me…” Meg whispered.

  “What did it say?” asked Jasmine, captivated.

  “Well, it didn’t say anything, but I felt everything!” Meg told her. “Like an electric shock, lots of them all at once!

  “The first time, I had no idea what was happening…and then when I was upset and I touched the tree, it showed me things. I felt it, I felt everything! Then when things got really bad at home and Mum started going—well, she was ill—the oak began showing me my parents.”

  She had Jasmine’s undivided attention. “And?”

  “I learned things I couldn’t have known,” she told them. “Only things that happened at the tree, but the oak showed me Mum, here, by the tree, like you and I, Jasmine. She used to come here when she was young too!

  “Mum ran away. I was scared we’d lost her, but at the same time I didn’t want her back, not like she was, and I was scared, scared that…” She paused and took a deep breath. “I was scared I was like her, that I was broken too, like she was.”

  “Your mum looks fine to me,” observed Jasmine.

  “She is now, but back then she had a breakdown. She suffers clinical depression, severely so, but on the right meds she’s good,” explained Meg. “But at the time, before diagnosis, I thought I would be the same. The tree showed me I could be who I was, and I wasn’t her. It gave me hope.”

  “The tree gave you hope?” asked Jasmine with just a hint of cynicism.

  Meg nodded fervently. “It did.”

  “And then it got hit by lightning, and now it’s gone,” said Jasmine.

  Meg got up and walked to the tree stump. She knelt in the dry earth beside it and dragged her fingers across the smooth grey wood. “It gave me hope…”

  Jasmine stood and sighed. “Well, it’s gone now, so I can’t see it helping me.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t just the tree that changed things?” said Meg. “I actually had to see things and change them myself…”

  Jasmine shrugged and clumped across the grass, kicking dirt with her claret boots. The bottom edge of her lacy black skirt caught again as she grabbed the trunk of the closest tree. She growled and detached herself from the tree, and clung to the narrow trunk, swinging out and twirling. A thought sprang into her head and Freya danced before her. She let go of the tree and loped back to Meg and Thomas.

  “I’m never going to be Freya—no matter what I do, or how hard I try,” she began, lifting her hands in front of her in a gesture of despair. “I was never Freya, she was the little angel and I was the demon—always getting into trouble!” Meg got to her feet and stood, letting Jasmine continue. “Mum’s stuck in the past, she can’t let go. She wants me to be like Freya, but I never knew her, and I’m not seven!”

  Meg put up her hand. “Can I tell you something?” Jasmine nodded. “Freya wasn’t the little angel you think she was. She was always getting into trouble, and landing me in it too! We were best friends in school, and she was the cheeky one, the one that got away with everything, I didn’t get away with anything, everything I did always got found out!”

  Jasmine eyed Meg, uncertainty staining her face. “Mum makes out she was perfect.”

  “Well, she would, wouldn’t she? We often view things from the past as better than they were!” said Meg. “You and Freya had the same cheeky smile, she loved your smile, loved it so much! She was always talking about you at school, she adored you, her little baby sister! You see that cheeky grin she had? That was Freya. I saw that in you all the time when you were a baby, and again now.”

  “Now?” asked Jasmine.

  “I knew you were Freya’s sister when I met you again after so long, that was easy.” She paused. “But, I could also tell that you’re very different.”

  “Mum wants me to be the same. She wants me to be Freya.”

  “You can’t be Freya, not then and not now, and she knows that,” said Meg.

  “Then why does she always point out Freya in everything I get wrong?” Jasmine glared at the grass. “I can’t be her, because I’m older—and she should stop measuring me against her because she has no idea what Freya would be like at my age.”

  “And that’s the problem,” said Meg. “I really think that’s her problem. You have what Freya never will, life. You got to be eight-years-old, nine, ten, eleven—fifteen. Freya never can.”

  “And that’s my fault?” Jasmine shook her head.

  “No, it’s not, and like I said, that’s where the problem is,” said Meg. “You’re doing all the things Freya can’t, and that makes your mum sad. It makes her remember all the things she lost when Freya died. What she needs to remember is that you’re different, individual, unique…”

  “I’m me!” insisted Jasmine.

  “You are, and it took me ages to learn that about myself!” Meg told her. “We didn’t know about my mum’s illness for a long time, and I thought she was going crazy, I thought she was broken. I started feeling sad and bad, and linked it all to Mum. I told you earlie
r, I thought I was broken too, that I would end up the same as her. What I didn’t realise was that I was me, someone different. I was not, am not, my mother…” Meg took a deep breath and touched Jasmine’s shoulder. “I’m myself, and only myself, no one else, just like you’re you and not Freya.” Jasmine nodded. “But, but, Jasmine, you don’t need to fight it, you don’t need to prove you’re not Freya, you just need to be yourself. Your natural self, not the self that needs to show she’s different, not someone who fights a ghost. Just be you.”

  Meg smoothed a twig out of Jasmine’s dark hair. “You don’t need to dye your hair black and red, or even chop it off to avoid being Freya. You don’t need to do the opposite of what your mum wants just to be different.”

  Jasmine dug the toe of her boot into the earth and shovelled dusty dirt. Meg took Jasmine’s chin in her hand and brought her face up to meet hers. Thomas drew a nervous breath, people didn’t touch Jasmine, she very often overreacted. Jasmine met Meg’s eyes. “How?” she whispered. “How?”

  Meg shook her head. “Just be you, don’t fight it. Be you, and one day your mum will see you and not Freya. She loves you, you know. Don’t ever doubt that, your mum loves you. I didn’t think mine did, but she was ill, she couldn’t help how she neglected me. Grief is an illness too, but one day your mum will get over it. So, don’t think she doesn’t love you, she does. She truly does.”

  “But when?” asked Jasmine. “When will Mum ever see me as someone on my own? She sees me as someone who shouldn’t even mention Freya, can’t even wear Freya’s jewellery, even though it’s actually mine! She’s too busy looking for Freya.”

  Meg shook her head again and let go of Jasmine. She took a step back and stared at the dishevelled girl before her. Jasmine stood silent, running purple nails through her tousled raven black and scarlet red hair. Her hands shook and she shivered suddenly as a chill rushed down her spine. Her flouncy, torn skirt bounced at the hem above her boots, and the lace rustled in the breeze. The girl bore her soul standing there, desolate and lost, and Meg suddenly reached forward and pulled her close into a hug. Her embrace surprised Jasmine, but its suddenness and warmth filled her, and her arms crept up and around the older girl’s back.

  Jasmine returned Meg’s hug, collapsing into her sister’s best friend’s arms. Meg murmured softly. “Your mum needs to stop searching and discover what she already has…”

  That night, in bed, Jasmine replayed Meg’s words and her embrace. She sat up and leaned against her ebony and red cushions, rearranging them to support her. She clutched her furry black cushion to her chest and considered Meg. Meg had known Freya, she’d liked, maybe loved her, and she didn’t measure Jasmine against her memories.

  Jasmine closed her eyes and slipped back into Meg’s warm hug. She wondered if Freya would have hugged her like that. She glanced over to her desk where the silver locket sat in the hint of moonlight. She didn’t need to open it to see Freya’s face, but as her sister’s features filled her mind, she fused them with Meg’s.

  At twenty-one, Meg was tall and slender. She wore her short, fair hair in a bob, and her smile was one that befitted a woman who cared. Jasmine tried to imagine Freya as a woman, and not the seven-year-old permanently locked into images on the mantelpiece. Tears filled Jasmine’s eyes as she saw an older sister, gazing at her with a cheeky smile and green eyes.

  ◆◆◆◆◆

  The same night brought a tangle of dreams that woke Jasmine in the early hours. Nightmares that invaded her sleep and closed with her sitting on her windowsill staring out into the indigo sky.

  She shivered in the early morning chill and tried to recall her desire for an older sister, but all she could see was Thomas. His pale face at the funeral shone in the darkness of the night and Jasmine wondered how deep the loss of Joan ran. Then his face loomed again and she saw fear fill his eyes, tears glisten. She could smell hot metal and she heard a train thunder past. Guilt consumed her as she realised how close she’d come to being a cause for yet more pain. She recalled his anger and his silence. How she’d been berated by his eyes, and how her arrogance had smothered any feelings of reproach. If she could have caused pain and loss for Thomas, how much greater would her mother’s anguish have been?

  She leaned back, clasping the fluffy cushion to her chest and resting her chin in its comforting fur. She balanced on the sill, gazing out into the stars and her eyes flickered to the flush of violet rising from the east. Morning began to wake and stretch her fingers to banish the night, but the stars refused to move still twinkling and glittering as the sky lightened.

  As the band of violet turned pink, the warmth of May infused Jasmine and her thoughts returned to her sister. She imagined Freya asleep in the bedroom next door, or away at university, or married…all those futures that could, would, never happen, and for the first time in her life she wept for her sister.

  Friday dawned and Jasmine dressed in her school uniform.

  Tuesday had seen a story in the newspaper, but it had been a few pages in and except for bystander reports no accurate details had been available. The police and the High School had refused to comment, and so the story was only a hint of what it could have been. However it was still a story and Jasmine dreaded the attention it might garner. She could barely keep her breakfast down.

  “Do you want me to drive you in today?” Mum asked and lightly touched her daughter’s shoulder.

  “No, I’ll get the bus,” Jasmine replied and smiled at her mother’s touch.

  Mum moved her hand. “I’m not working ‘til ten. I can drop you off first, if you want?”

  Jasmine shook her head and missed the warmth that had enveloped her shoulder. “It’s okay…” she began and glanced at her mum. The tenderness in Mum’s eyes brought tears to her own, but she was determined not to cry. “I’ll be fine.”

  Mum gazed at her. “I can phone in, if you want…” she offered.

  “You, or me?” asked Jasmine.

  Mum didn’t understand and shook her head. “What do you mean? I could phone you in sick…”

  Jasmine smiled. “Or you in sick, to stay with me…” she tried to explain.

  “You’d want me home with you?” asked Mum.

  Jasmine shrugged and shook her head. “No, it’s okay, I’ll be fine. You go to work.”

  Mum dithered, unsure of how to respond. Jasmine grabbed her bag and glanced at Mum. “I’ll be good.” She and Mum danced around each other as she hitched her bag on her shoulder and walked to the front door.

  “Call me, if you need me…” Mum called suddenly as the front door closed behind Jasmine.

  Tears smarted as she closed the gate and headed down the road. Unable to stop her feet from walking she plodded straight past the bus stop, ignoring the students already waiting for the school bus, and continued down the street. At the corner she cut left and climbed over the gate into the field. There, she skulked along the edge of the field back towards her house. She ducked and hurried along the back fence until she reached the wall, then she slid down to the ground. She stuck earphones into her ears and allowed music to drown her angst.

  When she was sure Mum had left for work, Jasmine tossed her bag over the fence into her garden and traipsed up the hill to the old oak stump. There, beneath the clouds, she slumped onto the bench and heaved a deep sigh.

  The week overwhelmed her and she released another noisy sigh. Too many thoughts raced through her mind and she tried to hide them away, but too many swamped her and she closed her eyes. As her galloping thoughts finally slowed to a trot, she sat up and considered the week. It had been rough.

  She brushed her fingers along the smooth wood of the log she sat upon, the seat carved into the fallen bough of the original old oak. She stared at the grey wood and remembered the old tree that had stood tall and majestic upon the hill.

  “And now you’re dead too…” she murmured, stroking the wood. She chuckled and gazed at the stump a few feet in front of her. Jumping to her feet she scurried t
o the stump and fell to her knees pressing her hands into its surface. It was soft and smooth—and, beneath the blanket of moss, dead, most certainly dead.

  “Well, Meg got something out of you, but I don’t think anyone else ever will!” She reached across the oak’s remains and rested her head. She waited, prostrate, then sat back up and laughed. “Nothing!” she giggled, “You’ve got nothing! There’s nothing left for me!”

  She stood and dragged her feet back to the bench, where she sat and hugged her legs. She rested her chin on her knees and stared from beneath her thick fringe. She frowned and stared harder.

  A few metres away stood a tree, not a very big tree, certainly nothing as huge as the sprawling oak that used to stand before her when she was small. Now she had grown and this tree stood like a gangly teenager. She’d never given it a thought over the years, and just the other day when Meg spoke about her old oak, Jasmine had wandered around this little tree and recalled Freya.

  Jasmine’s spine tingled.

  She gazed at the thin trunk and its crowning spray of branches. New lime green leaves unfurled, covering the boughs and it pointed upwards in a joyful celebration of spring.

  Jasmine rose from the bench and approached the tree. She bit her lip as she moved beneath its canopy and its leaves rustled lightly in the breeze. She gazed up into the leaves and branches. The entire trunk was as tall as she was, its lowest branches jutting out just above her shoulder level, and she could span its whole trunk with both hands if she so desired. She stared up at the clusters of new golden green leaves, and reached up to stroke a lobed leaf. She grinned.

  “So, why have I never noticed you before, standing right here in front of me?” she asked the tree.

  There was no doubt this tree, this small tree, was an oak.

  “Where did you come from?” she asked. “And how old are you?” She ransacked her memory banks; she had no recollection of the tree when the old oak still stood, and the old oak fell when she was about eight-years-old. “So,” she surmised, “you must be about six or seven—still a baby!” She grinned. “A baby oak.”