by Ilie Ruby
“I have a boat,” he is saying. “Stand up.”
Melanie hears the moan escaping from deep inside her. A static sound, cut by the burn in her throat. He tries to get her to stand, but she falls. She has hardly eaten in five days.
As the canoe approaches the shoreline, the small Boy Scout cabin can be seen through the trees. The branches look menacing, as though trying to hide the broken concrete walls and tin corrugated roof so rusted with holes that tree branches have burrowed through it as though it was part of the earth already. Far off to the left, under a shell of willow leaves, an old motorboat is anchored near the shore, bobbing in the waves. As Grant guides his canoe toward the island, it scrapes the rocks and Grant jumps out into the frozen water, stabs his paddle into the mud, and pulls the canoe to shore as he slugs through the large white stones that are moving up and down in the waves. He helps Echo out of the canoe and then Lion grabs his arm, and without hesitation, Lion, too, jumps out of the canoe, his eyes fixed on the cabin, his heart pounding. He turns to Grant. “That’s all I needed you for. Stay here and wait. I’m going in for her alone.”
“Don’t be a hero, Lion,” says Echo, shivering.
“Wait,” Grant says, eyeing the boy’s face, noticing the steely glare, the hint of adrenaline making his eyes wide and glassy.
Lion is so lit up with rage right now, Grant is worried he could kill.
The rain is coming stronger now, slicing through the water. Echo is standing on the shore listening to the thunder, letting the flinty rain cut at her skin, vowing not to be afraid, and watching the lightning illuminate the golden snake slithering across the dark water. She reaches down and picks up a large white stone. Septaria of all sizes litter the muddy sand around the building. Their white glow is unearthly, making the island look as though it was a planet, or floating on a mountain of clouds.
Grant runs after Lion as he pushes his way into the old cabin and is hit by a shock of putrid air, the stench so rancid he can hardly breathe. Rain spills through the roof, flooding the dirt floor. Unopened boxes of cereal litter the area, along with an old coffee thermos. Inside there is nothing but bare gray concrete walls, the smell of mold, what looks to be an old steel sink hedged against the wall with a rusted faucet. There is no glass in the window above the sink. Instead, branches that have broken into it are growing through the building, biting through the walls, slowly breaking it into bits. Then, in the center of the room, a small mattress. Sprawled across it, Victor and Melanie are lying in a puddle of moonlight. Victor has his arms wrapped around Melanie, whose eyes are closed. Melanie lies across Victor’s lap in a soiled brown dress, her hands and face bone white. Grant sees the look of surprise on Victor’s face. Victor pulls Melanie’s small body against his chest, clinging to her.
“You goddamn sonofabitch!” yells Lion.
“Go away!” Victor yells, pointing his gun. Melanie’s limp arm falls across his leg. “Don’t move. Don’t come any closer,” says Victor.
“Get the fuck off her!” Lion yells.
Victor stands up, aiming his gun at them. “I was going to bring her home. All I wanted was the truth about Luke. But I found out for myself.” Lion takes a step closer and Victor points the gun at Lion. “All I ever wanted was my family. But the things that that little boy could do. The birds. Fixing the birds. He was a freak. He wasn’t mine. Do you know how many fucking times she cheated? Charlie Cooke. I showed him. I had to come back for my family. All I ever wanted was my wife and my girls, and to know the truth about the kid’s father. Leila wouldn’t tell. Tell me, goddamn it. Say it! It was Charlie Cooke, wasn’t it?” he shouts at Melanie.
Melanie’s eyes flutter open. “Please, Dad. Let me go. I have a son.”
A hush falls over the room, but for the rain. “Luke wasn’t my son,” Victor sobs, shouting at Grant, his soiled T-shirt wet with sweat. “If he was mine, none of this would have happened!” he cries. “I followed those kids that night. I could see the canoe. I stood in the rain, watching. I could have saved him. If he were mine I would have. Did I hate him? I did. I hated him!” Victor yells.
Melanie crawls away from Victor, trying to stand.
“You fucking bastard!” Lion breathes. He rushes at Victor, grabbing Victor’s leg in the tussle.
Victor breaks free, holding his gun. He points it at Lion. As the rain thunders down on the tin roof, Lion freezes, staring at Victor with disbelief as though he has already been shot. Victor raises the gun. In the split second that the gun goes off, Melanie lunges at Victor. Lion falls back, and Melanie’s body sinks to the floor. Victor drops the gun.
Standing between the two bodies, Victor keeps looking back and forth, first at Melanie, then at Lion. When Lion moans and starts to get up, Victor reaches for the ground to try and retrieve the gun that has flown out of his hands. That is when Grant Shongo feels the kick of action inside himself. And it all feels so natural, the hot metal blade under his thumb, the wooden handle. Grant pulls out his knife and just as he has always feared, it sinks easily into Victor’s body. He pulls the knife out and drops it, watching Victor’s body crumple onto the floor.
Lion rushes over to Melanie, staring at the bullet wound and the seeping blood. He tries to lift Melanie’s head. He kisses her face.
For a moment, Echo and Grant lock eyes. Then Echo’s gaze falls to Melanie’s pale face.
“She needs a hospital,” he says.
“No. There’s no time,” Echo whispers. “Melanie. She’s the one you have to save.”
“I can’t,” he tells Echo.
“I can help you,” she says. “Look at me. I will help you.” He stares into her eyes, noticing that same warmth and clarity, feeling her hand on his shoulder, calming him, just as it always had. It all unravels in his mind. Melanie. Victor. And Luke, his dead brother, who has been coming to him all this time, just for this very moment, a spirit who was caught here because his loved ones would not let go—who remained because he could not leave until his sister was safe.
LION WILLIAMS ALWAYS KNEW he’d end up okay, no matter what life threw at him. Even when he found himself in the middle of the Rodney King riots, a crowd of people dodging tear gas, and heavy shots of water spraying in his face. Even after he had his teeth kicked in, and one of his arms sliced open, and someone scraped him off the pavement and carried him to the back of the Chinese restaurant while the rest of Los Angeles was being flung into police trucks, he knew he’d wind up okay. It’s that guardian angel, Matrina, which somehow always got him through. But as he holds his dying wife in his arms, he can’t touch the feeling.
He’s crying terrible sounds. They keep coming out of his mouth. All the pain he’s had to take in his life was nothing compared to this. Melanie is like a paper doll. He can wrap his entire hand around one of her bruised arms. He stares at the welts under her eyes. Tears stream down his face. Matrina, he thinks. Where are you, Matrina?
Lion hugs the body. She is becoming cold. He will not let go of the body. He keeps rubbing her hands, blowing on them like she’s just come in from a snowstorm. He touches her swollen lips.
Echo touches Grant’s shoulder. “Do something now. You have to try.”
Then Lion looks up at Grant, a glint of hope in his eyes.
Grant’s face feels hot, the back of his neck warm. He stares out at the foggy coast and the resilient Diamond Trees that light up the black water as if they were stars lighting the night sky. He nods to Lion, motions for him to move away.
Lion gently puts Melanie down. Grant kneels beside her.
He holds his palm an inch over her body, trying to stay calm. The pulse is faint. The energy cycling through her veins is frantic. Her heart is working too hard. She can’t take much more of this. “Dying,” he whispers, looking at his hands. He is losing her just like his father lost the girl. The story of his lineage is repeating. Maybe if a man doesn’t learn, the Creator turns his progeny to ash. Maybe that is the way the spirits work.
“Keep trying,” Echo cries, of
fering him strength, certainty.
Grant has to reach inside himself. Overcome the past, let go of his father. The rain is pouring now, thunder striking the sky. Memories of his father are flooding back. All of the birds. All of the hiding he has done for so many years. He is afraid of losing Melanie. The girl is innocent, paying for the sins of his own father. She deserves better. He knows he must try again.
“Lion, hold her like this, under her neck, just this way. Talk to her. She can hear you.”
Lion is trying, but he can’t speak. Grant whispers a prayer. His father’s words come back to him. Words about the ancestors, words that he’d forgotten long ago. He whispers to them. He tries to listen to what they have to tell him. She will bring healing, just as he will, to those spirits who have passed on, and to those that are waiting to cross over. Grant is a bridge. And so is she. Each person is a bridge, is what they mean to say.
He can hear Lion’s low cries, but can’t make out the words.
Grant focuses on Melanie again. He works on the resuscitation points. He presses down on Melanie’s left little finger, the first entry to the heart, and then to the points under her arms, then back to her finger. He tells Lion to keep doing this. The moonlight gliding in through the roof encircles them like a protective fence, but Melanie’s pulse is still weak. Grant can feel the heat pouring from her heart, faster and faster. He can see the waves of guilt spilling from her chest, rushing out of her body. All those years of self-hatred, pushing down on her like heavy rocks. But she is fighting.
“Mel,” says Lion, tears streaming down his face. “What’s happening?” Grant can feel her soul trying to wrestle itself from the flesh as her body seizes. Outside, tendrils of moonlight drift through the trees as the waves reach toward the sky.
Closing his eyes, he imagines he is standing on the top of Bare Hill, letting the wind whip his face, feeling alive. Feeling in touch with himself. He tries to connect with her soul. He needs to know whether it is time for her to go. He looks at Lion, unsure.
“No. Don’t fucking look at me like that,” says Lion.
“Tell her it wasn’t her fault. Just do it,” says Grant.
Lion leans over Melanie’s face, whispers to her. “It wasn’t your fault. Luke wasn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything, Mel. We need you here.”
“Keep talking,” Grant says. “She’s still here. Tell her about Lucas. She’ll fight for him.”
“Lucas needs you. I’m gonna buy us a house,” Lion says, cradling her, kissing the backs of her hands. “A new house with a big kitchen and a big bedroom for Lucas. Lucas, Mel. He is the reason you’re here, remember, that’s what you said?” He is telling her about the time when she painted snowflakes across Lucas’s bedroom when she was so pregnant she could hardly walk. Her eyes were so blue. She was so lit up, so beautiful without an ounce of makeup. Lion’s thinking of her crummy overalls and his big purple undershirt, how by the time Melanie was finished she had white paint covering her face and arms. He had stepped in some of the paint and walked across the room. “Do you remember how you turned my big old shoe prints into white snowflakes all across the floor?”
The little blue light above the heart is fading. “I’m losing her,” Grant whispers. I couldn’t save my mother. My three babies. I can’t save Melanie.
Echo rushes over, kneels next to him. She cradles Melanie’s head in her hands. Melanie’s face looks like that of a china doll, the white skin, and the long lashes. Echo wipes the hair away from Melanie’s eyes and rubs her face, trying to bring back warmth. “Don’t think this way, Grant. Listen to me. Keep trying.”
There’s too much in the air swirling around Grant. It feels like rocks piled up on his chest. Light burns his eyes. He can’t focus. Melanie’s body is a shell in his hands, the heartbeat irregular, and the cells all contracting in an uneven way. He tries to calm her nervous system, but she’s fading. I can’t block everything out. And then: I can’t do this.
Then Grant can hear voices whispering all around him, praying. He can feel the dousing wind on his chest, moistening the air as a black bird dives through the broken window and settles on the rafters above them. Melanie’s heart is gun-metal cold. Reach, he hears a voice praying above him. For thirty-three years he has tumbled over the fields of his family’s lore like a branch in the wind, watching seedlings drop into the sweet grass, the softness of their fall, a whisper of all they know about the fallen snow. Yet still they rise and reach as he has done, over and over. Now there is a voice in the air saying Reach. Reach. He hasn’t yet lived with this kind of knowing. He thinks of flying with Luke near the water’s bed, the colors around them flowing into red and gold. He imagines painting the surface of everything he sees with his own colors. He is more than a mirror of his father. He lets go of what he knows. There is a voice nearby, saying Risk. Risk.
He closes his eyes, focuses inward, locating the beat of his own heart. He centers himself in the hazy air. He is standing in the cool mist, the smell of mud and trees all around him. This is where he must stay. He lets his mind blacken until there is nothing but silence. He must let go of everything, all those fears, and all those worries. He must let go of his father. In order to let his strength come through, to do what he is meant for, he must let go of the man who gave him the gift.
Reach, he tells her. Grant begins again at Melanie’s right shoulder, and then moves toward the narrower part of the heart. He calms the fibrillating muscle. Then he directs the pulsing energy through the blood so that it caresses the valves. Light washes the arteries, the valve that controls blood flow from the left ventricle to the aorta. Grant fills one chamber with a light, and then the other as the blood begins to flow smoothly. Both sides of the heart relax and fill, then contract and empty. He works on the aortic valve, flooding light through their leaflets as they open to let out blood. Grant focuses on them in their perfection, gently massaging the heart muscle with the light, focuses on the node that starts each heartbeat, setting the pace, until it’s regular.
“Melanie. It is not your time to go,” Grant says. He opens his hand and drops the bullet into the dirt. Then a bolt of lightning strikes the island.
Echo glances out at the shore, at the silhouette of a man tossing a wedge of light across the water.
Grant whispers. “Father.”
NO SKY. HEAVY FEET drumming against the floor. Women reach for the shadows. They are tearing pieces of Melanie to offer to the night skies. They hold each other in a circle with Melanie in the center, the keeper of their grief. They are wailing the names of their loved ones, those that were massacred in the fires all those years ago, when their homes were desecrated and only some escaped. Melanie can feel their wet black hair on her skin as they force her to breathe life into their mouths, to take grief from their hands. Voices plunder her body. Melanie is wind-blind.
Melanie’s heart is fraying into threads of light, and then she is lifted into the skies. She can see Lion and Grant and Echo beneath her, calling to her. But she is lifted higher. She calls her own name to her reflection in the lake, which she now sees below her. Her dress is caught like a kite in the branches of the Diamond Trees.
The water dripping from her lips. A red dress. A dress that fills up the whole sky. The waves flood over Luke’s face. Shifting prisms of emerald glass become liquid. Luke clings to the round stones sliding toward the surface of the water.
Melanie dives in, comes up holding the debris in her hands. Strands of yellow hair, wings. He becomes a small bird. The sinuous chord of her heart snaps; her heart unweaves. The bird takes off, its wings expanding in light.
There is someone else now nearing the lake’s edge. Words, like feathers, fall across Melanie’s face, tickling her neck.
From where she is, way up here, resting on a mountain of clouds, Melanie sees Joseph O’Connell standing on one side of the silver river.
24
WHEN CLARISSE MELLON DRIVES to the Feed & Grain to check on Joseph, she doesn’t think about what excuses
she’ll make. She has driven through the rain, fearlessly, barely able to see the road. Now she is knocking on the door. When no one answers, she lets herself into his house. She calls to him. No answer. She lets herself in and finds Joseph sitting in his kitchen, as lost and pale as she has ever seen him. “You’ve come for me?” he asks when he sees her. He tries to get up.
“For you,” she tells him just before he collapses.
Joseph O’Connell has never had a spiritual dream in his life. He fancies himself more of a chronicler of sorts. An observer mostly. He knows Grant Shongo has been a healer since he was a child. But Grant has yet to realize that everything comes with some sacrifice. Pain is a gift. Joseph’s been up all night with it. Now it’s turning to fire in his head. He doesn’t want anyone, especially Echo, to find him like this, dying here in the kitchen without dignity. There will be no hospitals for him. No doctors. Nature must take its course. One side of his body is numb, immovable. He stares up at Clarisse.
He can’t make it.
The floor is rising up under him. He is ready, ready. He feels the cold floor against his cheek. Then, a blinding light and floating. He can hear birds twittering beneath him and above him, circling in graceful arcs. More limber now than he’s been in decades, he climbs up near the ceiling, notices the spider webs billowing into the corners. Underneath the fibrous white cloud, he looks down and he sees his body lying on the floor, the left arm bent strangely backward.
Joseph is blinded by a buoyant yellow light that wants to cradle him. Distant voices and faces he hasn’t seen in years. Echo’s mother is standing on the periphery of the lake, her dress, pink, the color of hope, and her hair spun into coils of auburn light. She has the clearest brown eyes, just like her daughter. Echo’s father is a hazy figure in the distance. Joseph reaches out. They’re so welcoming. It’s so warm here. It has been so long since he was this warm.