In the River Darkness

by Marlene Röder

  I’m not even afraid anymore. By now, it almost doesn’t matter. I’m so tired. I just want to sleep . . . dangerous, I know, but . . . I can’t do it anymore.

  Sleep. Let me finally sleep.

  L’AUTUNNO

  AUTUMN

  Chapter 15

  Jay

  The calls of migrating birds drove a wedge in the blue October sky. All around us the trees rustled their last autumn songs before the sap solidified in their trunks and they sank into a long, cold silence.

  I captured everything with my recorder, all of this red and gold burning above our heads. But now I could only think what a waste it was that no one but Alina and I got to see this beauty. Just yesterday, Mia had asked me again when I would finally take her to the island. Oh, how badly I wanted to show her everything! The field and my music castle and . . .

  “What are you thinking about, Jay?” Alina looked at me with her head tilted to the side.

  “Oh, nothing special,” I said quickly. “I don’t feel very good today.”

  “Well let’s see if we can cheer you up a little!” Alina replied, and gave a warbling call. A moment later, a kingfisher fluttered onto her shoulder with a strip of flapping silver in its beak. Alina took the bird’s catch away from it, held the little fish by the tail, leaned her head back—and swallowed it whole, just like the herons do.

  I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. I stared at her with reluctant fascination.

  Alina casually wiped her mouth with a hand and grinned at me. “You’d like to be able to do that, too, wouldn’t you, Jay? The kingfishers are calling.”

  The bird on her shoulder sparkled so beautifully in the sunlight. I stretched my fingers out to touch it, and then pulled my hand back again. “I would like to,” I admitted hesitantly, “but I can’t. I mean, you’re their queen! The queen of the kingfishers . . . and I’m just Jay.”

  Alina graced me with a smile that sparkled like fish scales. “We’re much more alike than you think, Jay,” she answered gently. “Believe me, I could teach you a melody that would bend the tips of the willows to the earth. You could make the river spill over its bank and much more, if only you wanted to.”

  Her talk was making me nervous. “But that . . . that’s not possible!” I contradicted her, confused.

  “Who says that?”

  “Well, everyone! Grandma, Skip, my teachers . . .”

  “What do they know?” Alina hissed. “They cling to their pathetic rules and ‘scientific definitions!’” She practically spit out the words. “Those idiots don’t know a thing about real life! And nothing about the river!” Alina lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper that wound its way into my ear. “The only thing that matters is what we want, Jay. That and nothing else makes our reality! Go ahead, try it!” she commanded. “Try to call the bird to you.”

  Obediently, I stretched out my hand. It wasn’t going to work, anyway. And sure enough, the kingfisher didn’t ruffle a feather!

  “You have to concentrate!” Alina insisted impatiently.

  I was trying—really hard. Beads of sweat broke out on my forehead. Every thought in my head droned come, come here.

  There! With choppy beats of its wings, like a wound up toy, the kingfisher slowly made its way toward me . . . and landed on my palm! At first, I was afraid its metallic blue would cut my fingers. But it was so soft. Its tiny claws tickled my skin, and I felt its feather-light heft in my hand. A bundle of fluff. A quivering little bit of life.

  I could crush it between my fingers, if I wanted to . . . just like that. I knew it, and the bird knew it, too.

  “Do it!” Alina whispered, as if she had read my thoughts. Her eyes were green-brown and unfathomable, just like the river. As if the river flowed through them.

  I didn’t know if she was serious. Was this supposed to be another one of her crazy tests, where I had to prove something to her? Did Alina want me to kill the bird for her?

  My left eye, the brown one, began to tear up. Was the river perhaps in me, too? My fingers twitched. You could make the river spill over its bank, you could . . .

  “No,” I said, uncurling them again. “I don’t think I want to!” Then I raised my hand. “Fly, little one!”

  But only after Alina had released the dazed bird with a trill did it take off. Every beat of its wings announced its relief at having escaped death once again. To be alive!

  Alina watched it go with a strange smile. As if she had just confirmed something she had suspected for a long time. I had no idea if I had passed her little test or not. But I sensed that something would happen. Soon.

  My recording device was still running and recorded the silence between us. I turned it off.

  After Alina had left, this horrible feeling overcame me, as if a small animal were gnawing away at my insides. It ate into my heart. I listened carefully to my heartbeat and it sounded dull and hollow. Like rain on a fall day.

  When I tried to raise the corners of my mouth in a smile, I couldn’t manage it. It was hard to breathe, and I was dizzy. Something was wrong with me! Maybe I was getting sick. As fast as I could, I rowed for home.

  Grandma wasn’t there, but instead I found my big brother. “I think I’m sick, Skip,” I groaned weakly. “Measles, at least.”

  First, he hustled me into the bathroom and stuck a thermometer in my mouth. “Hmm,” he grunted meaningfully, like our doctor, when he removed it again. “Well, you don’t have a fever. And you don’t look especially sick, either. Tell me exactly what’s wrong.”

  “It’s as if I’m suffocating.” I didn’t know how I should explain it to him. “I’m getting heavier and heavier, and I’m drowning in sadness.”

  Skip observed me with an expression on his face that I couldn’t understand. Then he suddenly hugged me tightly. He never did that! “Better?” he asked a little awkwardly and let go.

  I took a moment to think about how I felt. “Yeah,” I nodded, astonished, “a little.”

  “What you have is something everyone has to deal with some time or another,” Skip explained to me. “Could it be that you feel a little lonely, Jay?”

  At first, I wanted to contradict him. Loneliness was something for other people, nothing that had anything to do with me. I had Alina, after all. But then I had to admit that Skip was probably right. I didn’t have the measles. I was lonely.

  “Welcome to the world of mere mortals, little brother!”

  “It feels awful, and I want it to go away! What makes it better?” I asked.

  “You just need a girlfriend. You’ll see, it helps!” Skip said and grinned to himself. He was surely thinking about Mia.

  A girlfriend . . . but I already had Alina, didn’t I? I dragged myself upstairs to my room to listen to some of the recording from this afternoon. If girlfriends were the cure, maybe Alina’s voice would help me. After all, without meaning to, I had recorded our conversation earlier.

  As I quickly rewound the tape, all the voices sounded like the twittering of birds. Then I played the recording at normal speed.

  But the only voice to be heard on the recording was mine—and the cries of the kingfishers.

  Chapter 16

  Mia

  The stray dog barked in protest when I left him behind on the shore. “I’ll be back soon!” I called to my dog, and then our boat was already gliding out onto the river.

  “Why are you taking me to your island today, after you’ve done everything you could to avoid it for so long?” I asked Jay, who sat on the bench across from me.

  “I just couldn’t stand it anymore,” he muttered, and for a brief moment, I felt guilty for pestering him so much.

  But only for a moment. A gust of wind rippled the water and opened gaps in the layers of clouds above us, revealing patches of blue sky.

  I enjoyed the sun’s rays on my face as I observed Jay. The river seemed to give him confidence. As awkward as he so often was everywhere else, his rowing strokes were rhythmic and elegant. The oars seemed to s
kim the surface of the water, like the beating of a bird’s wings. We were practically flying, drawing closer to the mysterious island.

  And then there it was in front of us—an elongated strip of land, like the spine of a crouching predator. The trees along its banks were aflame in spectacular shades of gold and red.

  Jay skillfully maneuvered the boat to the island, jumped onto land, and tied the boat to a tree. The whole time I was so excited I could hardly sit still. But now, just before getting out, I felt a warning, prickling sensation on my neck. A few weeks ago—just a few yards from this very place—I had almost been drowned.

  I had to think of all the creepy stories people in town told about this place. Uncomfortable, I stared over at the shore. The yellow leaves of the trees seemed to stare back like thousands of eyes.

  I suppressed the nervous impulse to chew on my fingernails. “What if the island doesn’t like me?” I asked.

  Jay laughed. “Of course the island likes you! I like you!” Impatiently, he gestured for me to get out. It was probably silly, but I still had a strange feeling.

  “Hey, Jay . . .” I stalled, “what does your friend Alina think about you bringing me here? I mean, it’s kind of your island. She seems to not like me at all—though I still don’t get why.”

  Alina is jealous. And angry, very angry. Jay’s remark echoed in my head. Then the image of the dead fish in my room. And the broken cello strings.

  Could this Alina have something to do with that? Whoever had done it—what else might he or she be capable of?

  “I don’t want Alina to get even more pissed off at me because I’m poking around her island,” I murmured.

  Jay wasn’t laughing anymore. “This is my island, too!” he said defiantly. “And I invited you! It’s none of Alina’s business!”

  He stretched out a hand toward me to help me. I hesitated. Then I grasped it.

  My shoes immediately sank into the wet, spongy layer of fallen leaves that covered the ground. It was odd to imagine that I was probably the first stranger to set foot on this island in a long, long time. I felt like an explorer, someone stranded on a faraway island.

  A colorful bird perched on a branch near the shore heightened the foreign, exotic impression. It studied us with its black beady eyes without the slightest shyness—as if it wanted to greet us.

  “Oh, look, Jay!” I cried with excitement. “Is that a kingfisher? I’ve never seen a real one!”

  Jay froze when he saw the bird. And then his face contorted with an expression of rage that I had never seen before. “Get out of here! Leave me alone!” he screamed, throwing a piece of bark at it. The bird fluttered away in a cloud of shimmering turquoise-blue feathers and disappeared in the brush.

  “Why did you chase it away?” I yelled at Jay angrily. “It was a harmless little bird.”

  “It was a spy!” Jay muttered through clenched teeth. There was definitely something wrong with this guy. Shaking my head, I followed him through the undergrowth.

  The island was larger than I had surmised from the water. Countless pale violet flowers bloomed among the tree trunks. Were they some kind of crocus? I wanted to pick one, but Jay stopped me. “Don’t touch them!” he warned. “Those are meadow saffron. They’re poisonous!”

  I quickly pulled my hand away, and we continued.

  The sea of flowers all around us gave me a surreal impression of springtime, even though the leaves had already fallen from many of the trees. It was if time took a different course here and didn’t obey the usual laws of nature.

  Jay had once called it the Island of Bliss. Yes, I could feel it. This island was a strange, magical place . . .

  The wind had gathered strength and rustled through the fallen leaves. Single leaves fell and rocked to the ground at a majestically slow pace, back and forth, seeming to defy gravity itself—like sparks of gold. I followed them with my eyes, not sure if I was awake or dreaming. There seemed to be a tinkling and clanging hovering in the air, or did that only exist in my head?

  “Do you hear that, too?” I asked, and Jay smiled and nodded. It actually seemed like we were drawing closer to the source of the sounds; they were getting louder, clearer.

  We stepped into a small clearing. “What is that?” I whispered.

  In the middle of the clearing stood a huge, bizarre tree. I think it was a willow. Its branches were knotted and twisted around each other, and its leaves rustled in the wind. And the tree sang for us!

  Jay touched the rough bark as if he were greeting an old friend. I thought he might be reaching to hug the tree when Jay suddenly grabbed a rope ladder that I hadn’t noticed before. Jay climbed up skillfully, and with a big grin gestured to me from above that I should follow him. I climbed up after him, high into the crown of the tree.

  At the place where the enormous trunk forked, there was a wooden platform with a crooked railing. I looked around in astonishment with my eyes, and ears, wide open. Now I finally understood where the music was coming from!

  Surrounding us on all sides in the branches, a curtain of rusted forks chimed as they jangled against each other. Carved pieces of wood clapped melodically. Directly above us, a large mobile made from beach finds—glass bottles, a rusted cowbell, and all kinds of other flotsam—twirled delicately in the steadily increasing wind. It was like a polyphonic, ethereal orchestra playing a chaotic melody that only Jay knew and directed.

  “Welcome to my musical castle! Do you like it?” he asked quietly.

  “It’s unbelievable!” I stammered. “Did you make all this yourself?”

  Jay nodded, beaming with pride. Solemnly, he announced, “And now I’ll sing for you.”

  Jay’s singing voice was surprisingly low. His “song” had neither a continuous melody nor a text I could understand. It was simply a melodic rising and falling of his voice of sustained vowels that combined into a strange and fantastic language: “Aaaaoooooo uuuuiiiii . . .”

  Jay rocked back and forth, almost as if he had fallen into a trance. His full concentration seemed to be focused on a point inside him, like beams of light by a magnifying glass until flames suddenly erupt. The whole thing felt something like a ritual ceremony—a little creepy!

  What was that? At first, I thought it was just the clanging of the mobile in the background, but then. . . . Every fiber of my body strained to listen. Goose bumps crept up my back like cold fingernails.

  And then there was a second voice, hovering above Jay’s rumbling bass! A voice vibrating as crystal clear as a glass harp and much higher than Jay’s!

  “What is it, Mia?” Jay had stopped singing and leaned toward me, clearly concerned.

  “I’m alright,” I murmured, but my fingers were trembling. Jay took my hands in his and breathed on them until they were steady. He probably thought I was cold. He was sweet. Why in the world, with all the nice guys out there, did I have to get involved with a jerk like Nicolas? If I hadn’t fallen for him, of all people, everything probably would have turned out completely differently.

  Jay’s face was suddenly very close to mine. He looked just as uncertain and fragile as I felt. We both held our breath . . .

  And then he kissed me. Or I kissed him.

  It was different than with Alex. And entirely different than with Nicolas. Jay’s lips were warm and soft and so wonderfully awkward that I was sure he had never kissed a girl before.

  Kissing him was like kissing for the first time. I left the memory of Nicolas behind me—shed it like a dirty old shell. It was as if I were kissing myself free of him. Jay gave me back my innocence; he let me have his, generously, and without any strings attached.

  Slowly, we separated from each other. Turmoil churned inside me. I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry. I had just kissed my boyfriend’s brother!

  “What was that?” I stuttered.

  “It was a kiss,” said Jay with a blissful grin. Even a blind person would have noticed that he was completely infatuated with me.

  I had to laugh. T
his was all so surreal. Fortunately, Jay didn’t take offense, but started giggling along with me. I loved that about him: you could just do what you felt moved to do, no matter how crazy it seemed. With Jay, I never had to be afraid of doing something wrong. That was probably the reason I enjoyed his company so much, and why I had even let him watch me play my cello.

  But even as our laughter faded, I knew instantly that I wasn’t in love with Jay. And strangely enough, for the very same reasons! I was able to trust Jay implicitly because I didn’t take him entirely seriously. In my eyes, he was still half a child. Harmless.

  Our kiss had been lovely—but something was missing. Something like passion. Jay couldn’t be dangerous for my heart.

  But somewhere deep down, I suspected that people could only get truly close to each other if they were willing to risk something. If something isn’t a little bit dangerous for your heart, it can’t make it sing either, can it?

  And the person who could make such chaotic feelings swirl around in my heart wasn’t Jay—it was Alex.

  “Uh, Jay, I don’t know what just came over me,” I stammered, bright red with embarrassment. I didn’t want to hurt him, but we had to set things straight right away. “I’m going out with Alex, and I don’t want to ruin things with him. I don’t want you to have any false hope.”

  “Shhh!” Jay placed his finger on my lips. “I know you’re in love with Skip. But please don’t say you regret that kiss! I’m not sorry it happened!” he said thoughtfully. “It was nice . . . a little scary.” Jay smiled a little wistfully, with bewilderment. “Grown up, I think.”

  We sat next to each other in peaceful silence, captivated by the fragile intimacy between us. We both knew there would be no second kiss. All we had was this moment.

  And then it was gone, carried away by the cool breeze. We were back to normality. The wind had grown stronger and made us shiver. “I think a storm is blowing in,” Jay said, as if he was taking care to find his way back to a harmless topic. As if we’re in a bad movie, I thought to myself, now we’re talking about the weather!