Halcyon

by Rio Youers

Another knock, more insistent. Valerie made a discontented sound in her throat and rubbed her eyes.

  “What’s going on?” Shirley mumbled.

  “We have a visitor.”

  Valerie eased herself away from Shirley and stood gingerly. Embers shimmered in the fireplace, offering a scant pink light. Valerie used this to pick her way across the living room. Whoever was out there knocked a third time and Valerie resisted the urge to yell at them. Instead she forced a smile onto her face and said, “I hear you,” in the sweetest voice she could muster.

  She flicked on the light, squinted at the sudden brightness, then opened the door.

  “I’m sorry to bother you this late, Mother Moon,” Alyssa said. Her eyes were wide but tired and she had blood daubed on her cheek. “I’m looking for Shirley.”

  Shirley came to the door a second later. “What is it?”

  “Edith. She had a night terror, I think. Your dad told—”

  “Is she okay?”

  “Yes.” Alyssa nodded. “She’s resting, but you should probably be there when she wakes up.”

  “You’ve got blood on your face,” Valerie said.

  “Oh.” Alyssa smeared one hand across her cheek, wiping the blood away. “Edith cut herself. Not deeply, but I don’t think it was an accident.”

  “How can you be sure?” Valerie asked.

  “It looks…” Alyssa paused, as if trying to make sense of what she was about to say. “It looks like she was using her blood to write something.”

  “She was purging,” Shirley said.

  Alyssa stared at her blankly.

  “Something’s going to happen.” Shirley slipped into her sneakers and stepped past Alyssa, into the cold, damp night. “Something bad.”

  * * *

  Edith lay in Martin’s bed—where Alyssa had been sleeping—with her eyes closed, breathing steadily. Every now and then her nose would twitch or her brow would wrinkle, but other than that she was expressionless.

  “She’s deep,” Shirley said to Valerie.

  Alyssa had bandaged Edith’s left forearm, and done a good job. Aiden Lythe—Halcyon’s doctor—had removed it only to see if it needed anything more. It didn’t. He bandaged it again and took Edith’s temperature.

  “She’s fine,” he declared, wiping the thermometer and placing it back in his medical bag. He looked at Shirley. “Does she have night terrors often?”

  “She used to,” Shirley replied. “She found a way to cope with them … mostly.”

  “Okay. That’s good.” Aiden zipped his bag. His hair stood in messy quills and he was still wearing his pajama pants. “I assume you know that night terrors are nothing to worry about. She’ll probably sleep peacefully now, and won’t remember any of this when she wakes up.”

  “She won’t,” Shirley agreed.

  Valerie thanked Aiden for coming over. He waved it off, then suggested they all go back to bed and left. The front door closed behind him and there was a long stillness, broken only by the sound of Edith’s steady breathing. Valerie sat on the bed beside her and smoothed the hair from her brow. Alyssa stood by the door with her arms folded. Shirley paced for a while, then sat on the other side of the bed.

  “Is it possible to get word to Martin?” Alyssa asked. “Does anyone have contact information?”

  “He’s probably staying with my Uncle Jimmy,” Shirley replied. “I don’t know his number. And there’s nothing Dad can do anyway.”

  “He should still be told.”

  “Nolan has a number,” Valerie said, “in case of emergencies. I’m not sure this is an emergency; Aiden said she was fine. But we’ll see how Edith feels when she wakes up.”

  Alyssa nodded. She unfolded her arms, shuffled her feet. Valerie regarded her briefly, but most of her attention was on Edith, looking at her closed eyes, wondering what was behind them.

  Alyssa said, “I’ll go take care of the other room. Sweep the broken glass. Change the bed—”

  “Leave it for now,” Valerie said without looking at her. “Go back to your own cabin, Alyssa. Get some sleep, for heaven’s sake. And thank you for your help.”

  “I should stay,” Alyssa said. “Martin asked me to look after Edith. I don’t want to let him down.”

  “We’re here now,” Valerie said. “And you’re not letting anyone down. You’ve been wonderful.”

  Alyssa hesitated, then offered a reluctant nod. “Sure … okay. Come get me if you need anything.”

  “We’ll be fine.”

  Alyssa opened the bedroom door, but before leaving she asked Shirley, “What did you mean when you said something bad was going to happen?”

  “Nothing,” Shirley replied at once. “I’d just woken up. I was confused.”

  Alyssa paused a moment, as if she were waiting for a more truthful answer, then turned and left. The closing front door again signaled a protracted stillness, until Valerie, leaning close to Edith—almost close enough to kiss her—asked Shirley:

  “How deep is she?”

  “I don’t know. Deep. I’ve seen her like this before. It could be a long time before she comes out.”

  “Sweetie, I don’t care about her coming out.” Valerie peeled open Edith’s eye and stared longingly into that crackling blue iris. “I just want to know how I get in.”

  * * *

  Shirley stayed in the room for maybe an hour and then went to bed. Valerie didn’t move from Edith’s side. She kept looking into the girl’s eyes, even into her mouth, as if she could crawl in and burrow all the way to Glam Moon. “What can you see?” she whispered, not just once but many times. “Show me, little girl. Let me in.” Sunlight spilled through the window and painted long shadows across the room. Valerie heard blackbirds singing, a woodpecker knocking, Gilda Wynne brushing leaves from her front steps. The island slowly woke with its characterful little creaks and moments, but Edith remained deep in her own world, barely moving.

  Exhaustion won out. Valerie slumped across the bed next to Edith and slept, but distractedly. She woke up to a brighter room. Edith hadn’t moved a muscle. Valerie peeled her eyes open again and looked inside but saw nothing.

  She shuffled into the girls’ bedroom. Shirley was still asleep. Valerie shook her awake and pointed at the bloody letters scrawled across Edith’s bed sheets.

  “What does pav mean?”

  “Whu? I don’t—” Shirley blinked and shook her head.

  “P-A-V. Pav.” Valerie jabbed a finger at each letter. “Your sister wrote it in blood. It must mean something.”

  “It’s connected to the premonition. Could be anything.”

  Shirley got out of bed a short time later. She ate breakfast, then cleaned up the broken glass. Valerie had resumed her position at Edith’s bedside, occasionally whispering to her—the same gently cajoling things. Her persuasive prowess had no effect, though. It was like trying to crack a safe using positive thoughts.

  Alyssa came late morning, obviously expecting Edith to be awake and to look after her as promised. Shirley led her to Martin’s room to show her that Edith was, in fact, still deep, except she said asleep, knowing it would prompt fewer questions.

  “She doesn’t normally sleep in this late,” Alyssa said, touching Edith’s brow with the back of her hand, perhaps to feel for a temperature. There was none, of course. “Are you sure she’s okay?”

  “You’ve never seen her after a night terror before,” Shirley said. “She’s always like this. It’s like she … retreats.”

  “I think we should get Dr. Lythe to check her over again.”

  “He already did. She’s fine.”

  Shirley sent Alyssa away. She said Edith would only want family around when she woke up, and there was no mistaking the hurt expression in Alyssa’s eyes. Valerie watched from the window as she walked back to her cabin. If she returned later, Valerie was not aware of it; Edith emerged from her garden midafternoon and, for Valerie, the rest of the island disappeared. She gave the girl thirty seconds to orient herself, then
swooped to the edge of her bed.

  “Oh, Edith, you looked so pale and precious. I thought the slightest thing might break you.” And how she hoped that was still the case.

  28

  Edith shut out the voices for a moment, and the faces—Shirley’s and Mother Moon’s—floating in and out of her vision. She focused on the far wall, on the dark knots in the pine paneling and a painting of two orioles. Gradually, she let the real world back in.

  This was her dad’s room. She couldn’t remember how she got here.

  “You were in your garden,” Mother Moon said. Her eyes gleamed. They were usually so kind but now they just looked hungry. “You were deep.”

  Edith drank two glasses of icy water and felt better, more with it. A little later, she asked about the bandage on her arm and Shirley led her into their room, showed her the word she’d painted on the bed sheets. It stirred no memories.

  “You obviously needed to get it out,” Shirley said. “You cut yourself to write it.”

  “Pav.” Edith looked at the letters and frowned. “It doesn’t mean anything to me now.”

  Back in the living room, Shirley placed two logs on the fire. They caught quickly and roared. She and Edith sat on the sofa. Mother Moon took the armchair closest to Edith and said to her:

  “I’d like to see your garden.”

  Edith gathered her hands into her lap and looked down at them. She couldn’t recall what she’d seen through the window, but she remembered being in her garden and hearing Mother Moon’s voice. Knock-knock, little girl. Let me in. It was persuasive enough to reduce the distance between there and here, and Edith eventually poked her head out of her hole.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “We all need shelter,” Mother Moon said. She displayed a warm smile but that hunger was still in her eyes. “A place to feel safe and secure. That’s why I founded Halcyon: a refuge for the broken. But it hasn’t been my refuge for a long time, perhaps because I unselfishly offered it to others, or because I’m just so used to it now. Either way, I need a place I can call my own, and where I can heal.”

  “Show her your garden,” Shirley said.

  “Are you broken?” Edith asked, looking at Mother Moon.

  “Very.”

  “But you seem so … strong.”

  “That’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.” Mother Moon smiled again. “I wish it were true, but my ghosts … they never stop haunting me.”

  “You need to build your own garden.” Edith stood and crossed to one of the house plants on the bookshelf, plucking a plush leaf from its stem. She returned to Mother Moon, placed it in her hand, and said, “One leaf at a time.”

  Mother Moon looked at the leaf for a moment, then dropped it on the floor. “Yes, I understand.” She linked her fingers as if she were about to pray, but there was no reverence to her tone, only a slippery kind of coolness. “I need something to work from, though. You can’t make a jigsaw puzzle without looking at the picture on the box.”

  “This isn’t a jigsaw puzzle,” Edith said. “There is no picture.”

  “You know what I mean.” The smile reached Mother Moon’s eyes and they shone. “Show me the garden.”

  “Do it, Ede.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “The same way you connected to my mind.” Shirley drew an invisible line between her forehead and Edith’s. “You make a bridge.”

  “It’s not that easy,” Edith said. “And I never built a bridge. I visualized. I reached.”

  “Then reach again. Reach for me, and pull me in.”

  Edith looked at Shirley, who nodded. Everything’s fine, Ede, that nod said. Trust me. She recalled sitting beneath the willow tree in their backyard with Calm Dumas, and how Calm had opened a window into her world—her jungle. Edith had seen snow-capped mountains, a trickling stream, a couple of the odd creatures that lived there. How are you doing that? Edith had asked, and Calm explained that she used the electricity in her brain to power a connection, then projected onto the “place between”—the crossover, which was Dad’s name for when two radio signals blended together.

  That’s where people like you and me are, Edith, Calm had said. On the crossover. We’re constantly picking up two receptions, and sometimes the voices are very loud.

  “Please,” Mother Moon said.

  Edith looked down at her hands again. She moved her palms four or five inches apart, as if they were holding an invisible grapefruit. “I don’t even know if this will work.”

  “It will.”

  “I think you have to be able to see the place between.”

  “I will see it,” Mother Moon said, and tears suddenly sprung from her eyes. She dragged a trembling breath into her lungs. “I’ve been training my mind for years.”

  Edith nodded and raised her hands, still cupping the invisible grapefruit. The fire crackled and the wind cut across the front of the cabin, making the door rattle. She shut all of this out and focused on the space between her hands.

  It took almost no effort. She felt the flow of energy at once and had to spread her hands to contain it. Threads of light popped between her fingers. She smelled summer rain and saw the air separate.

  “Okay,” she said. “The window’s open.”

  The branches of her tree nodded lazily and threw soft, spiraling blossoms into the sky. A hummingbird buzzed close to the window, as if it might venture through, but then zipped away in a sweet flash of blue.

  “I don’t see anything,” Mother Moon said. Her eyes were wet. Her hands were tangled claws.

  “You didn’t see the hummingbird?”

  “No. I don’t see anything.”

  “Keep looking,” Edith said.

  * * *

  Valerie didn’t move. She barely blinked. The rest of the cabin dwindled to a backdrop of washed color where nothing breathed and even less mattered. It was all about the window that Edith had opened, the size of a beach ball now.

  The place between, she’d called it.

  Valerie focused with everything she had. She looked not just with her eyes but with her mind. Her left eye watered with the effort. A cold pain needled the back of her skull. All she saw, though, was the girl’s yellow T-shirt, her throat, strands of her hair. No flowers or trees. No goddamn hummingbird.

  “I’m not getting it.”

  “Relax,” Edith said. “Take deep breaths.”

  Valerie wiped the wetness from her left cheek and took several jerky breaths, each of which announced how fraught she was. The wise, composed mother figure was absent now. She imagined herself desperate and unseemly.

  “Maybe we should take a break,” Edith said.

  “No. Keep going.”

  Time passed with the slow weight of a sinking anchor. Valerie felt every minute. Her vision blurred and doubled. She clenched her jaw and looked harder.

  “These flowers are some of the first things I made,” Edith said.

  You didn’t make any of it, you little cunt. Valerie forced a smile that ached and wiped more moisture from her cheeks. Both eyes were streaming now.

  “What color are the flowers?”

  “All colors.”

  “I’m not … I just…” Valerie adjusted her position, then she looked from Edith’s side and still saw nothing.

  “Maybe it just won’t work for you,” the girl said.

  Maybe I should pry off the top of your skull and splash whatever’s inside across the room. How about that? You think I’d see your precious fucking flowers then?

  “It’ll come,” Valerie said. “I know it will.”

  She sent Shirley away just in case she was interfering with the signal. Edith insisted she wasn’t but Valerie didn’t want to take that chance. Shirley busied herself in one of the bedrooms and the sound of the light switching on sometime later informed Valerie that it was getting dark. How long had she been trying now? Two hours? Easily. She sighed, wiped her eyes, kept looking …

  “I’m getting tired,
” Edith moaned. “My arms are aching. Can we rest for a little while?”

  “I’m getting closer. I can feel it.”

  She felt no such thing. If anything, she was losing focus. And maybe that’s what she needed to do, because that’s when it happened. She blinked tiredly, thinking that when she finally got to bed she would sleep for days. Just the thought of—

  Something flickered between Edith’s hands. Valerie snapped her attention back to the window, then instinctively averted her gaze, as if she might scare it away by looking too hard. She caught the same flicker a moment later, then it bloomed into a seam of light that stretched from one of Edith’s palms to the other.

  Valerie whimpered, then covered her mouth.

  “You see it?” Edith asked.

  She nodded, but didn’t want to move her head too much. Over the next several minutes, the seam flexed and widened, and the light from a different world shone in Valerie’s eyes. She saw a huge yellow sun and magnificent trees. She watched a bear cub cuff at its reflection in the river. Any hint of tiredness—all thoughts of sleep and bed—vacated her mind.

  Big tears spilled from her eyes.

  I found you.

  How could the girl think this was her world? There were too many perfect details to have been created by a ten-year-old: the way the birds bristled and pecked at their feathers, the exact shadows printed on the landscape, the tall flowers nodding their soft, colorful heads in the breeze.

  * * *

  This was not the Mother Moon that Edith knew—the kind, calm lady who’d welcomed them to her island, and whose smile felt like a warm towel after a cold swim. It was like she’d suffered a knock on the head and was mentally distanced from the woman she used to be. She mumbled and licked her lips. Her eyes were burning circles that should have sizzled with all the tears she cried. Desperate, Edith thought. That’s not quite right, but it’s close.

  Maybe crazy would be closer.

  How she looked was nothing compared to how she felt. Not content to simply see Edith’s garden, she reached through the window with one trembling hand. The coldness was immediate. It felt like a blast of freezing air—an ugly, wicked wind that would wilt the flowers and kill the grass. Edith tightened inside. The fine hairs at the back of her neck lifted.