Ring of Years

by Grant Oliphant

  Sara is the one she hates most. The only one she hates, really. Sara frightens her. When Sara is around. she has to scrunch down real hard on the wishing space to protect it and keep the image of her mother from disappearing.

  But she can’t go on scrunching down forever, not now that it’s time.

  There’s a rustling in the seat next to her as whoever’s watching her shifts position. “Peter?” she whispers, her throat dry from disuse.

  Startled movement as the person realizes she has spoken. “No,” a woman’s voice stammers. “No, honey, it’s not Peter.”

  The woman touches Selena’s arm. She looks over and by the gleam of the outdoor light recognizes her caretaker. “Tracy,” she says. She’s glad it’s her—Tracy always seemed nice enough.

  “Yes,” Tracy answers, beaming. “You’re awake.”

  “I need to see Peter.”

  “Peter’s busy, honey. We’re getting ready, you know.”

  “I know. Please?”

  Tracy hesitates, then gives ln. “Okay, sure. I’ll go get him. I’m positive he’ll want to see you, know you’re awake. Promise you won’t move? I could get in a lot of trouble if you move.”

  “I won’t move,” Selena promises.

  Less than a minute later Peter bursts into the room. He leans over the chair, and when she peers up at him, smiles so broadly she feels lighter somehow. “Thank God you’re okay,” he says, “thank God.” And he pulls her up into his warm arms.

  “It’s time, isn’t it?” she says in his ear.

  “Yes, it is. Time at last.”

  “The promise you made me?”

  “Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten. You can count on me.”

  She hesitates, not wanting to offend him but needing to know.

  “What is it?” he asks, picking up on her uncertainty.

  “You didn’t keep the promise about Sara, about keeping her away.”

  “I couldn’t help that, Selena, but this I can. Sometimes things just happen, but this won’t be like that. Trust me, okay? I’m not going to abandon you, no way. All right?”

  She nods and lets her head sink down onto his shoulder. The wishing space seems bigger now. and for at least a moment she can almost imagine that these are her mother’s arms folded around her.

  Her mother, welcoming her home.

  * * *

  Peter gently tugs at Selena’s arms. He wishes he could stay in this position forever, drinking in the lush fullness of the moment—the warmth of the girl’s body against his, the tickle of her hair on his neck, the quiet sigh of her breathing. He feels alive again, like he hasn’t since the shooting, and happier than he has been since Tethys left and bequeathed her final secret not to him but only to Sara. He knows this is what it means to be truly loved, to have the trust of someone who depends on you completely. He was so afraid that Selena would still be unconscious when the time came to leave, that she wouldn’t be able to see for herself how much she could trust him. But he doesn’t have to worry about that now. She’s awake, and she does trust him, and her faith and hope radiate off her little body like the warm glow of a lantern, filling him with newfound confidence and strength, a beacon guiding him homeward.

  All he has to do now is keep his promise.

  And that’s why he pulls away and entrusts Selena back into Tracy’s care. “I’ll be back soon,” he tells her. “You rest up and start getting yourself ready. It won’t be long now, I promise.”

  The hope in her eyes as she lets him go makes his heart swell. Yes, he thinks, this is what it means to be valued.

  The others—all except Victor and Diana, who are on guard duty outside—are gathered downstairs in the darkened living room, where he left them when Tracy came and told him about the girl. He and Sara had been directing them in a meditation, and now they are continuing it on their own, staring into each other’s eyes by the dancing light of a dozen candles.

  “Where’s Sara?” he asks no one in particular.

  Several hands point in the direction of the kitchen, which is where he finds her. She’s sitting at the table, poring over the checklist on her clipboard. Poor Sara, he thinks, such a creature of process and detail. What does she know of love—of real love, of the deep and penetrating trust of a child? All she knows is her clipboard, her world of commands barked and obeyed.

  She glances up as if annoyed by his intrusion, then turns back to her list.

  “She’s awake, I take it?”

  “Yes, thankfully.” He takes up the seat opposite her and points at the clipboard. ‘‘I’m surprised you’re still going over that thing. Everything’s done—we’re ready to go.”

  “We’ll be ready when I say we’re ready,” she answers, not even looking up.

  “But what else is there to do?”

  Now that the girl is awake, he sees no reason to linger. They have waited long enough. All Tethys instructed them to do was wait until the third night after her departure. That moment has come. Nightfall is upon them, the moon is up, and as far as Peter is concerned, they have fulfilled their assignment. Now he just wants to get on with it and keep his promise to Selena.

  His child. That’s how he thinks of her now. When you make a promise to your child, you keep it.

  “What else is there to do?” Sara repeats sarcastically, lowering her clipboard to glower at him. “How about wait until it’s late enough that we don’t have to worry about someone seeing us? How about taking our time so we do this right? Or isn’t that important to you anymore, Peter? With the girl back, you just want to rush ahead with this, is that it? What, you think I’ll just forget about her and let you—”

  “I made her a promise.” he interrupts, confused by her tirade. Why does she have to bring up the girl? How is that even relevant?

  “Fuck your promise!” Sara explodes, her face red and getting redder. “I will not jeopardize our safety because of a stupid commitment you made to some pissant child who’s only here because we hoped—” She stops, seeming to catch herself. “It doesn’t matter. Just get out and let me work, would you?”

  She holds the clipboard up between them, dismissing him. Peter, brimming with sudden rage, slaps it aside so that it goes clattering across the floor.

  “Who hoped?” he demands. “What did you hope?”

  Sara’s eyes fill with hatred. “I can’t tell you,” she says slowly, obviously relishing each word.

  “It’s about that tape Tethys gave you, isn’t it?”

  He regrets the question the moment he asks it because it’s just another opportunity for Sara to slap him down, to rub his nose in the fact that Tethys trusted her more than him.

  “Yes,” Sara replies with obvious delight. “It is.”

  Peter turns away in pain. It’s like a blow to the gut, like having your insides yanked open and brutally kicked. Why did Tethys do this to him? Why did she create this barrier between them? He desperately doesn’t want there to be any barriers—his love for Tethys, and her love for him, are what have given his life meaning. But now it seems that he overestimated her love, maybe mistook her true feelings altogether.

  Oblivious, Sara just orders him to pick up the clipboard.

  “She said something about the girl, didn’t she?” he asks quietly.

  “I said, pick up the clipboard.”

  “That’s what’s on the tape, isn’t it, something about the girl?”

  “The clipboard, Peter. Now.”

  She snaps her fingers and points, and that’s what does it, what brings everything into focus for him. Her imperious tone, the gesture of command you’d use on a dog or disobedient child, the way she stares down her nose at him with the full expectation that he will comply—the many facets of disdain. And she disdains him because she considers herself loved and him unloved, or loved less, which is the same thing. But she’s wrong about that, he realizes; so very wrong, because he has the girl. That’s what comes to him in that moment—he has the girl. He is not unloved.

  It f
ills him with an eerie calm. “Get it yourself.” he says, and strides out of the room with a determination as grim as any he has ever had. He will keep his promise, and not Sara, nor Tethys herself, will keep him from it.

  * * *

  Sara waits until he’s gone to retrieve the clipboard. That’s a lesson she picked up from her days training pets—never let them see you clean up their messes. They’ll start thinking that’s what you’re there for otherwise, to clean up after them, and they’ll just go on shitting wherever they like.

  Sara fingers the gun again. She has no intention of letting Peter shit all over her.

  This was not wholly unexpected. She knew someone would get antsy once darkness came and their commitment to Tethys had been met. She hadn’t expected it to be Peter, her so-called peer, but that’s only because she hadn’t banked on the girl deciding to come out of her fake “coma” so soon. Now that Selena is back among the living, naturally Peter is eager to get moving, so that he can keep his idiotic promise.

  Sara shakes her head in disbelief. Who the hell promises away salvation? Because she’s quite sure that’s what will happen if he crosses Tethys on this. It’s a fine line he’s treading, and on the other side is the abyss.

  Not that she cares if he plunges into it. She reminds herself that her responsibility is to the others, to the group, and to herself of course. Peter and his precious girl-toy can go to hell together for all she cares. Just as long as they don’t get in the way. And if they do, well, she always has the gun.

  But she still worries about the others. What if they start getting anxious, too? What if their impatience gets the best of them and they start siding with Peter? Will she handle that with the gun, too?

  She hopes it won’t come to that. She will do what she has to, of course, but she would prefer that there not be any violence, any anger. She could show them the tape, but that would be a betrayal. Tethys instructed her not to show it to anyone until the time came, if it ever did.

  That’s why she’s waiting now, why she’s making everyone else idle away another few hours in purgatory. Tethys was so hopeful that her plan with the girl would pay off. Sara had never seen her want something so badly, and the last thing she wants to have to do on her arrival in Atlantis is tell Tethys that her plan failed.

  She does not want to be the one to disappoint her that way.

  And so, for at least a few hours yet, she will wait. There’s still a chance the plan will work; there’s still a chance the girl will come.

  The other girl. The one Tethys talks to on the tape.

  20

  Butterflies

  “Wait up, Daddy!”

  Through the tattered screen door, Natalie can see her father strolling across the expanse of meadow grass in front of the cabin. She fell asleep—she doesn’t like to call it a nap—and awoke to find the house empty. Panic took her at first, until she looked outside and saw her father on his way to the barn. Calling to him again, she swings the door open and dashes outside in hot pursuit.

  It is one of those warm, slightly breezy, sun-In-your-hair kinds of days. The air is ripe with the buzzing of insects and the scent of pine and earth. Yellow and orange butterflies flit against the backdrop of the deep green woods.

  Natalie likes this place. Her father doesn’t bring her here often—this is only her second visit—but it’s fun being here, just her and her father. Her mother never comes because she hates it here. But Natalie likes it, she likes it a lot.

  She skips across the grass—it feels almost like bouncing—to where her father is waiting for her, a big smile on his face. “What are you doing?” she asks.

  “Waiting for you,” he replies.

  “Seriously.”

  “Seriously,” he repeats. “But since we’re out here, I also thought I might do some work on the fence.”

  The “fence” is really just three strands of wire strung from tree to post around the grassy area. At the far end, two of the strands have fallen to the ground, victims of neglect and the occasional deer.

  “Can I help?”

  “Sure.”

  They work for an hour, maybe longer. By the time her father calls it quits Natalie has long since deserted him and is chasing butterflies around the yard.

  “They’re pretty, aren’t they?” her father asks.

  “Beautiful,” Natalie agrees. She loves the way the butterflies move, never in a straight line, never in a clear direction.

  “I have an idea,” her father says. “Let’s try and catch some.”

  “For my bedroom?” she asks excitedly.

  “I don’t see why not.”

  He disappears inside the barn and a few minutes later re-emerges with a net and several other items in his arms. Anxious to start, Natalie grabs for the net but her father pushes her away.

  “Not yet.” He lays his horde on the picnic table and immediately begins taping the net to the end of a long wooden stick—an old broom handle, Natalie guesses. “I use this net for fishing,” he explains as he works. “You scoop the fish up in it after you reel them in. it’s not long enough to catch butterflies. Sneaking up on butterflies is tricky work, so you want a net with a long handle. That way you can trap them before they even know you’re there. OK, that looks good. Here you go.”

  Natalie takes the elongated net with a sense of wonderment. It’s like having an arm that can reach anything, and immediately she starts chasing butterflies around the yard. Her father comes up to her several minutes later, chuckling.

  “Catch anything?”

  “No,” she says, disappointed. “They keep getting away.”

  “That’s because you’re trying to nab them in the air. You need to wait until they land. Here, let me show you.” He takes the net and walks stealthily to the edge of the yard. Slowly he extends the net in front of him and then with a rapid movement flicks it out over a tiny splash of yellow on a blue-green bush. The butterfly tries to take flight but her father drops the net to the ground, trapping it.

  “Yeah!” Natalie shouts. “Can I try?”

  “Sure,” he says. “But first, let’s take care of this one.”

  He returns to the picnic table and seconds later comes back carrying a clear glass jar with some cotton in the bottom. “What’s that?” Natalie asks.

  “Just something that’ll put the butterflies to sleep.”

  Inside the jar, the butterfly struggles wildly, a whir of yellow flying up against the lid, flapping against the sides, perching uneasily on the fluffs of cotton. Gradually its movements slow and eventually stop. Natalie figures it doesn’t like taking naps any more than she does. She doesn’t want to make the butterfly suffer, but it’s so pretty—she really would like to be able to show it to her friends.

  “Sorry, Mr. Butterfly.”

  “Don’t worry,” her father assures her. “It doesn’t hurt.”

  “He just looks so sad.”

  “Butterflies don’t get sad.” He chuckles again and makes a face. “Didn’t you know that, baby doll? Butterflies never get sad.”

  * * *

  It was only years later, after she became the butterfly, that Natalie understood what a monstrous lie that was. Trap anything in a jar and force it to inhale its own death and, sentient or not, it will suffer. She can understand why parents would tell their children otherwise, to hide from them the true nature of the world into which they have brought them, but she thinks it might have been better if her father had warned her, had not tried to make something gentle of their act of taking.

  She is speeding along Route 28 through the tumble of hills that stretch north from the city. following the route she was able to wrest from her father. She called him from her car after dashing out of Maureen’s place, and of course he couldn’t come to the phone this time. not for something as unprecedented as a second urgent call from his clearly disturbed daughter. But he did grudgingly sketch out some directions to his secretary, who grudgingly passed them along to Natalie. “He says he’s not sure of
this, it’s been a long time,” the now snippety secretary relayed in her best stop-torturing-my-boss voice. “But it’s the best he can do. Good luck.” Which of course was code for: You’re insane, leave us alone.

  Natalie tries not to dwell on it. She has what she needs, directions to a place barely remembered. The butterfly expedition is her sole memory of the hunting lodge, other than the comments her mother, who hated the place, used to make about it. She said it smelled of testosterone and bug shit and that hanging out in the woods picking ticks out of her hair—sometimes when she was arguing with Natalie’s father she said crotch or something worse—wasn’t her idea of a good time. Only after she moved in with Ralston did it become obvious that her complaint wasn’t so much with the rustic life as with her husband’s version of it.

  So the lodge wasn’t a frequent family destination, and all Natalie remembers of it is the episode with the butterflies. In her remembering she tries to have her younger self look away from her father and see the cabin from the outside, but the image never comes. She has no recollection at all of its appearance.

  It isn’t relevant of course. According to her father, via his secretary, the lodge was torn down right after he sold it to make way for new construction. But something in Natalie would just like to know where she’s heading even if it’s not there anymore.

  Ahead of her, beyond the beam cast by her headlights. the road loops away into a darkness relieved only by the paling moon, which hangs low on the horizon. Natalie wonders what she’ll find out there in the heart of all that gloom. Maureen was convinced that she would find nothing, that all of this was a last-ditch fantasy constructed by a desperate mind. Natalie supposes that may be possible even as she knows it isn’t. This is Selena’s moon, she thinks. And by the light of this moon, she believes she is following a path marked out for her as clearly as if it had been posted with signs.