Halcyon

by Rio Youers

  “Here it is,” Mother Moon said. She turned her lower lip down, regarding it with disdain. “Around and around. Doing the same thing day after day. And here’s a simple truth for you, Edith: the only people who mark off time are prisoners.”

  Edith said nothing, although her lips were pursed in a way that suggested she had some thoughts on the subject.

  Mother Moon held up the watch a moment longer, then put it away. As she did, Martin noticed the bottom of the box wobble slightly. A false bottom, he thought, which explained why it was shallower than it appeared from the outside. It also explained the lock. There was something else in the box. Something Mother Moon didn’t want anybody else to see.

  She closed it, locked it, clutched the key as she walked over to the window. The blue sky framed her.

  “You can leave whenever you want,” she said. “But there’s no coming back.”

  “We know that,” Martin said.

  “Of course, we hope you’ll stay with us for a long time.” She gazed out the window, and when she turned back she appeared to speak only to Shirley. “It’s beautiful here.”

  19

  Joe the chef really was terrific. He grilled the fish that Jake Door had caught and served it with sautéed garlic potatoes and green beans. It was the best meal Martin had had since before Laura died. Everybody in the canteen cleaned their plate and many—including Martin—indulged in a second helping. There were fresh fruit smoothies for dessert, cold and delicious, everything grown on the island.

  The canteen was a large cabin with a spacious kitchen at one end and three long tables in the dining area. It comfortably sat thirty, although a third of the seats were empty. They looked hollow, somehow, the people who once occupied them gone forever, never to be discussed—one of the island’s more rigid rules, Martin thought. He sat next to Jake and opposite Brooke, the tutor, a striking young woman with pale skin and hazel eyes. They talked about island life and seasonal fishing and the similarities in the French and Spanish languages. They never once discussed the traumas that had brought them here, although Martin could tell they were just beneath the surface. At one point, Brooke mentioned Glam Moon—how you could hold your hand beneath a tree’s branches and the fruit just fall into it. Jake nodded and got a little misty-eyed.

  “You’ll learn all about the Glam,” Brooke said to Martin. “It’s elevation, and Halcyon is the ladder there.” To which Martin smiled politely, but all he could think of was Jimmy saying to Edith and Shirley: Adios, girls. And remember, don’t drink the Kool-Aid.

  Edith sat to Martin’s right and next to her was Jordan, a blithe, rose-faced girl two years younger than Edith. They responded to one another with broad smiles and lovely peals of laughter. “You’ve made a new friend,” Martin whispered to Edith at one point, and she offered a kind of hopeful shrug. In that moment, her garden seemed a long way off.

  Shirley sat at another table, opposite Mother Moon. Every time Martin looked over, the two were engaged in spirited conversation. Although, to be more accurate, Mother Moon appeared to be doing most of the talking.

  After dinner, they all helped clean—a swift, industrious effort—and then went outside to watch the stars appear. There was a ridge of clouds to the north but it was otherwise clear. Fifteen of them lay on their backs in the meadow and absorbed the night sky. Miles from the nearest halogen bulb or sodium vapor streetlight, it was spectacular—the kind of cosmic vista that offered an intimidating sense of place. You are insignificant, the billions of stars said. You and your problems mean nothing. Smile while you still can.

  “We do this a lot,” a voice to Martin’s left said. He looked and saw it was Alyssa, the music tutor. She’d introduced herself when they first arrived—asked Edith if she played guitar. Martin hadn’t seen her at dinner. He’d been looking for her, too. He remembered her smile.

  Jake pointed out constellations and somebody—Martin didn’t recognize the voice—asked if there were stars in Glam Moon.

  “There are,” Mother Moon replied. “They’re twice as bright, though. And the sky is wider.”

  Brooke—it sounded like Brooke—started singing James Taylor’s “You’ve Got a Friend.” Her voice had a raw but effortless tone, dusted with a growl. Everybody joined in on the chorus. Even Martin.

  The stars winked and blurred. Here on the island, they appeared to hang lower.

  * * *

  Back at their cabin, the girls sorted through a pile of board games and chose Scrabble. They didn’t know all the rules but Martin helped. He watched as they placed their tiles and passed a dictionary between them. Shirley kept score. She looked good flipping through the dictionary’s pages, tapping a pencil against her teeth.

  There was a bookcase in their living room half filled with a mix of fiction and non-fiction titles. Nothing too contemporary or potentially upsetting. No Dennis Lehane or Cormac McCarthy. Martin considered a Buddy Holly biography, but then took On the Road from his suitcase. He opened it at random and started reading the notes in the margins.

  He sat in a soft, humming light and thought of Laura.

  * * *

  He dreamed about her every night, without fail. Some mornings he woke up happy and fulfilled. On others he dampened his pillow with tears. His first night sleeping on Halcyon, he dreamed she was there with him. They sat on an uncomfortable outcrop and watched a large bird circle above the water, even though there was no prey beneath. The mainland was a blur and the waves climbed and crashed, more like ocean waves. “He’s going to eat,” Martin said, pointing to the bird. Then they were in Mother Moon’s cabin and the chairs were harder—bonier—and the fireplace was as black as a missing tooth. Laura stood with the mahogany lockbox in her hands and the flashlight expression on her face. “That has a false bottom,” Martin said, pointing at the box. “She’s hiding something.” Laura opened the box, took out the watch, lifted the bottom. She showed Martin what was inside. It glimmered. He thought at first it was a piece of jewelry. A ring, perhaps, or a pendant. When he got closer he saw it was a bullet.

  * * *

  Three days passed before Edith disappeared into her garden. An improvement, no doubt, although she went deep. There were no clocks to tell how long she was gone, but it was hours. Maybe as many as five. Martin stroked her hand and brushed her hair, assuring her all the time that she was safe, that nothing could hurt her.

  She and Martin went for a walk the following day. It was the kind of crisp fall morning that conjured images of hot, spiced drinks and pumpkin pie. Edith was bright-eyed, if a touch subdued. She wore a beanie and scarf that made her look oddly grown up, and a lot like her mom.

  “Do you like it here so far?” Martin asked. They were in the woods north of the cabins, trying to identify leaves using a book—A New York Fall—they’d borrowed from the bookcase.

  “I guess,” Edith said.

  “Jordan seems nice.”

  “She is, but we don’t really have anything to talk about. She’s never heard of Five Factor or Rihanna. She’s never even seen a movie.”

  “It’s good to meet people with different experiences,” Martin said. “It broadens your outlook—makes you a better person.”

  “I guess.” Edith picked up a leaf and showed it to Martin, who knew what it was but made a show of consulting the book, playing along.

  “Northern red oak,” he said, showing her the picture so that she could compare. Then he asked, “Is there anything you miss from home?”

  “Lots of things,” Edith replied at once. “YouTube. My bed. Netflix. Peanut butter.” She smiled—looked even more like Laura. “But I’ve got you and Shirl. I’ll be okay.” And then she wrinkled her nose. “I’m already bored of Scrabble, though.”

  They kept walking, their breaths fogging the air and the leaves crackling beneath their feet. What Martin really wanted to ask—and perhaps the reason for going on this walk, just the two of them—was if she had a feeling about the island. Calm Dumas had said Edith was a streamer, and that sh
e couldn’t access psychic information on request. Even so, he wondered if she’d experienced any preternatural bad vibes.

  “Do you have a good feeling about this place?” It was the look in Martin’s eyes, more than his words, that conveyed his true meaning.

  “It seems okay.”

  “Will you tell me if that changes?”

  “Sure.” Edith nodded. “But so far, there’s only one thing I don’t like.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “That Shirley has found a replacement for Mom.”

  * * *

  There were things that Martin missed, too. Netflix and peanut butter, for sure, but also cold beer, his music collection, his favorite armchair. He wrote a list. It would help, he told himself, and he was right. Seeing everything scrawled down—two dozen largely inessential items—was both sad and satisfying. He thought of Buddhist monks abstaining from worldly pleasures to attain spiritual awareness. Asceticism, it was called—a lifetime practice. Martin was sure he could go without Budweiser and Led Zeppelin for a couple of months.

  As the days rolled along, he became more comfortable with the Halcyon lifestyle. He learned his jobs and rotations, and adjusted to living without a clock. The faces around him became familiar, most of them webbed with kindness, despite their beneath-the-surface pains. They talked about themselves as much as the rules would allow—where they grew up and went to school, former jobs, favorite books and movies, their hobbies and interests. Some of them talked about Glam Moon as if it were a utopia they could sail to as easily as they had sailed to Halcyon. Martin never challenged them, but he believed that if Glam Moon could exist at all, it would be closer to Edith’s garden than to a place where they could all run naked and feed each other grapes.

  He went through waves of homesickness, but before long the mainland started to blur around the edges. Maybe it was from looking at the stars or listening to the others talk about the Glam, but the idea of surfing the internet or binge-watching House of Cards seemed vaporous, somehow. Ten days in, he wrote his list again and found it notably shorter.

  But what he really discovered was a greater appreciation for the smaller things, which weren’t small at all, but epic, wondrous things, everything from birdsong and star shine to the taste of real food and being able to take that extra half an hour in bed. He spent more time with his girls. They went for long walks, skipped stones across the lake, read books to one another. It was exactly the reset he’d hoped for.

  On the evening of their thirteenth day, Martin stepped out of his cabin with his jacket buttoned against the cold. Leaves danced endlessly. Vague figures skimmed through the reddish dusk toward the canteen, where lights shimmered and the aroma of baking apples carried on the wind. Edith and Shirley were just ahead but he told them to go on without him. He was drawn, suddenly, to the colors in the west. They blazed through the trees, all but smoking. Because he was usually in the canteen, he hadn’t seen a full sunset since he’d been out here.

  He crossed the meadow and took the path north toward the recreation hall, then cut west through rust-colored sumac and a cluster of pines. On the other side, granite boulders formed a natural valley to an outlook, where the lake view opened all the way to the sky. The sunset was like burning oil.

  “Wow,” Martin said. A grin that felt as wide as the view spread across his face. He took three careful steps toward the edge of the outlook, which sloped thirty feet toward the water, then sat on the rocky ground with his knees drawn to his chest.

  “Pretty impressive, huh?” a voice to his right said.

  Martin jumped, looked toward the voice, and saw Alyssa standing fifteen feet away. She flashed her flawless smile.

  “You scared the shit out of me,” he said.

  “Sorry,” Alyssa said, but the smile suggested she wasn’t too sorry. She stepped away from the bushes that had mostly hidden her from view and sat on the rocks beside Martin, shimmying her butt until she was comfortable.

  “I guess we had the same idea.” Martin gestured at the sunset. The sky was a psychedelic blend of red and orange, shot through with ribbons of blushing cloud. The lake reflected it all and shimmered.

  “Great minds think alike,” Alyssa said. She inhaled and her face glowed. “I come out here most evenings, unless it’s too cloudy to see anything.”

  “That would explain why you’re not always at dinner.”

  “The sunsets are more … fulfilling.” She considered this adjective for a moment, then nodded. “They remind me of my husband. We used to drive out of the city, watch the sun sink into the Old Line Valley. ‘It’s like sharing a dream,’ Jackie would say. The winter sunsets were the best, with the snow on the ground and the sky so pink.”

  “Beautiful,” Martin said. He couldn’t remember ever stealing ten minutes to watch a sunset with Laura. Such a small demand on his time. Such a huge return.

  “He was shot by a policeman while reaching for his wallet,” Alyssa said. Her eyes flickered momentarily, catching the colors. “It’s never been easy for black people, but that was a particularly hard time. It seemed there were more folks than usual being shot or roughhoused by police. It got to be that the good cops feared recriminations and drew their firearms quicker than usual. So most of that bloodshed was fueled by fear—on both sides.”

  “That’s usually how it works,” Martin said.

  “There was public outcry … riots. There were football players kneeling during the anthem, protesting the bodies in the street. Un-American or pro-American, you take your pick. All I know is that Jackie was one of the bodies.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that,” Martin said, and he was—he knew what it was like to lose a spouse so unfairly—but he was also taken aback by Alyssa’s disregard for the rules. We do not share our pains with others, Mother Moon had said, making a point to single this rule out from the others. Nobody else on the island had even hinted at their pain. For Alyssa to do it, and so soon into their conversation, caught Martin off guard.

  “So here I am,” she continued. “I figured I’d come out here for a couple of months, find my inner calm, then go back home. That was nearly two years ago.”

  “You must like it here.”

  “I do. I have all the things I need and none of the things I don’t. And let me tell you, it’s a good feeling to put my head down at night and know that I’m safe.”

  Alyssa’s skin was so smooth it was difficult to determine her age. Martin might have guessed late twenties, but the gray threads along her brow suggested she might be tucked into her forties. Not that it mattered. She was beautiful, and the sunset brought a blush to her face that made it difficult to turn away.

  “So what brings you here?” she asked. Maybe it was the reflection of the red sky, but he thought he saw a touch of mischief in her eyes.

  “You’re just a rebel, huh?”

  “You don’t really know someone until you know their pains.”

  “Very true.” A gull hooked overhead, its voice abrasive. Martin looked at it—watched it disappear into the sun-glare—and wondered where to start. “An accumulation of things: not feeling safe, worried about my girls’ future, unfulfilled professionally, disillusioned emotionally. I felt these things for a long time, but they were really brought home when my wife was killed in a school shooting.”

  “Oh, hon.” She touched his forearm lightly. It was a sweet, instinctive gesture. She knew his pain, after all.

  “You don’t recover,” Martin said. “You don’t heal. Not fully.”

  “Never,” Alyssa agreed.

  “But you arrive at a point where you know you have to move forward. There’s no choice but to move forward, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And I wanted to do that with a more solid foundation, to give my girls a hopeful look at life. But that’s next to impossible when you turn on the TV or go online and see so much fear and anger everywhere. Then the opportunity to come here—to escape all of that—presented itself, and I decided to gi
ve it a shot.”

  “Recharge your batteries, huh?”

  “Right. And it seems to be working. I mean, I like it here. It’s basic but rewarding, and the girls are doing better than I could have hoped.”

  “Edith’s great,” Alyssa said, showing her beautiful smile again. “A little introverted at times, but such an adorable girl.”

  “Yeah, she can get lost in her own thoughts. And Shirley … hey, I was concerned for her back at home—she had some dark moments—but she’s really broken out of her shell.”

  “I haven’t spoken to her much,” Alyssa said. “She’s quite attached to Mother Moon.”

  “I wasn’t sure what to make of that to begin with. But Mother Moon is having a positive effect on her, so I’m reluctant to intervene. I guess Shirley has found the strong female influence she was looking for, and that she needs.”

  “Everybody loves Mother Moon,” Alyssa said. “But don’t let Shirley drift too far. Every now and then Mother Moon has her ‘pets’—people who latch onto her, and follow her like shadows. Then all of a sudden they leave the island. Never to be seen again. Has a kind of black-widow feel to it.”

  “Okay,” Martin said. “That’s worth bearing in mind.”

  “And sweet as she is, Mother Moon has her moments, for sure. I’ve known her to lock herself in her cabin for a whole week. And there are times she just disappears—goes back to the mainland. She can be gone for up to a month.”

  “Where does she go?”

  “On a pilgrimage for Glam Moon,” Alyssa replied. “That’s what she says, although I have no idea what that actually means. She always comes back thin and pale, though, like she’s been through some ordeal.”

  “It’s her religion,” Martin said. “Maybe she fasts, or wanders the land like Caine in Kung Fu.”

  “Who knows?” Alyssa smiled and looked at the fading sunset. The first stars glimmered in the darkness overhead. “I wouldn’t deny a person their faith, but personally I’ve never bought into the Glam Moon thing. It sounds like an acid trip Mother Moon had when she was younger.”