Clews had changed since the last time he had been there. The barbershop where he’d gotten his first haircut was now a hair salon, and what had once been a tobacco shop now sold computers. But Mrs. Ross still greeted him when he walked into the pub, and some of the boys he had known from school were there, sitting around the tables, drinking their pints.
They were talking about how difficult it was to find men willing to go out on the boats.
“All the boys want to go to university now, like you did, Brendan,” one of them said. What had his name been? Jory Hammett. He’d been a year behind Brendan, and on all the sports teams.
Although Brendan hadn’t ordered, Mrs. Ross put a large bowl of fish soup in front of him. “Eat up, dearie,” she said. “You look as though you need it.”
“So, you’re needing men on the boats,” he said. “What about me?”
Jory looked at him for a moment. “Aye, you’ll do. Think you can wake up early enough?”
He laughed for the first time in days. “I think so.”
As soon as he could, he got a haircut—not at the hair salon, none of the fishermen went there. Instead, Jory’s wife Gwenna ran a clipper over his head. Afterward, he stared at himself in the bathroom mirror, running his hand over what felt like a bristle brush. He no longer looked like Dr. Brendan Thorne. For the first time since he’d left for Oxford, he looked like he belonged in Clews, on one of the fishing boats or sitting in the pub. It gave him a sense of belonging that he had not felt for a long time.
Fishing kept him occupied, gave him an income. When he wasn’t out in the boat, he worked on his father’s house, patching the holes he found in the roof, clearing the brush that had grown up around it. It was some ways out of town, at the edge of the forest, and he grew to like the silence. He could hear birds, squirrels. And sometimes, if he sat still long enough, a fox would come out of the forest and stare at him, its red fur vivid against the tree trunks.
When winter came, he chopped firewood for the stove and started reading the books he had read as a child. He’d forgotten how much they had meant to him. Whenever he thought of Evelyn, he chopped more firewood or went for a walk through the forest, hoping the physical exertion would help. It did, at least for a while, although he could never banish her from his thoughts for long.
One morning, as he sat at the kitchen table eating a breakfast of fried liver and onions, it came to him. He would write a book. Not an academic book. No. There were already too many of those. It would be a book about knights, and giants, and love: The Tale of the Green Knight, but for children. He had to write these ideas down. He’d left his laptop in his office at Bartlett; it had been given to him by the college anyway, and for months now he hadn’t missed it. But he needed some paper and a pen. There would be paper and pens in his father’s desk. He went into the study and opened the desk drawer.
After his father’s death, he hadn’t gone through the desk, hadn’t wanted to disturb anything. He had simply left. It felt strange now, looking through the remnants of his father’s life. There were only scraps, receipts for books his father had bought, bills he must have been intending to pay, grocery lists. In one corner was a photograph of his mother on top of a stack of letters she’d written, probably sent before they were married. He would look at those, but not now. On top of what looked like a sales ledger was another letter, with a note scribbled in pencil: Forward to Brendan. It was from Evelyn.
He felt a sudden sense of vertigo, as though he were looking down from a great height. How could she have sent this to him? How could it have gotten into the desk? But the postmark—it had been mailed years ago, a month before his father had died. Carefully, he opened the envelope and pulled out a sheet of heavy cream-colored paper with ERM monogrammed on the top. On it she had written, not very neatly:
Dear Brendan,
I’m so, so sorry about what happened that day. I saw something—I never told you, but sometimes I see things. A hundred years ago, they would have called it second sight. I’ll tell you about it if you want me to, although I don’t like to talk about it much. Can you forgive me? If so, please write back. I’d really like to hear from you.
Love, Evelyn
His hand was trembling. What did it mean, this letter from the past? It felt as though she were speaking to him across the years. But of course she wasn’t, really. This was the letter she had mentioned sending, and it was only a coincidence that he was just finding it now. He wondered what she was referring to, what she meant by “seeing things.” But the letter had nothing to do with what had happened in Virginia. That had been about Isabel, about not telling Evelyn when he should have. About concealing the truth from the woman he loved and wanted to spend the rest of his life with. He set it down again.
The drawer held a couple pens that looked as though they might still work, but nothing to write on. He would have to go into town to buy some paper. On his way out, he tidied up, washing the dishes in the sink and drying them with a tea towel, deliberately not thinking about the letter. Concentrate on the book he wanted to write. Yes, that was what he would do.
As he walked into town, he realized that it felt good, having something to work on again.
When the first draft was finished, he bought a secondhand laptop at the computer store. Every night, after a long day out in the boat, he would sit at the kitchen table typing, trying to tell the story the way his father had told it to him. Trying to make it a story that children would want to read.
And then Magill and Magog roared with fury, until the clouds shook. But Elowen raised her hand and cast the strongest spell she knew. “Be stone!” she cried, and the giants turned gray and hard. She had transformed them into stone. Gawan swung his sword and struck their heads off. Those heads rolled down the hillside, and you can still see them if you go to Cornwall, gray stones that look like giants’ heads.
Then Gawan turned and saw Elowen lying on the ground. He knelt beside her, raised her head, and said, “Why do you lie here, my love?”
“The spell was too strong for me,” she said. “I’m dying, Gawan. But I shall see you again. In another life, we shall be together, although we cannot be in this one.”
“That you shall not!” cried Morva. “Not for a thousand years. You have killed my father and brother, and so I curse you, queen of Cornwall. You shall not be with your beloved until a thousand years have passed.” She cast her own spell and then clapped her hands, disappearing in flame and smoke.
Yes, that was it. That was the voice, the pacing he was looking for.
The day he finished the manuscript, he celebrated with a glass of his father’s Glenlivet. Tomorrow he would go into town, e-mail it to Peter Cargill at Arundell Press. He knew they published a line of children’s books, and Peter might help him get the manuscript to the right editor.
That night he dreamed again, for the first time since returning to Cornwall. He dreamed that he was standing on the hilltop, among the standing stones. There, between him and the sea, stood Elowen. No, it was Evelyn, in faded jeans and a gray cardigan. Evelyn, he called. Evelyn! But she couldn’t hear him and turned away. Evelyn! he cried, desperately.
He woke before dawn. Had leaving Bartlett been the biggest mistake of his life? If he had waited, tried to contact her the next day, or the next week, or even the next month—if he had just given her time—would she have come back to him? Would she have told him that she understood? He didn’t know. But, he thought, I have to try. After breakfast and a shower that left him feeling more like himself, he walked into town.
Although he hated to do it, he went into the new bookstore, which had a coffee shop and free wi-fi. First, he e-mailed the manuscript to Peter. Then, he e-mailed Evelyn. He could still type her address automatically, without thinking. My dearest Evelyn, he wrote. I’m so sorry. Please say you can forgive me. Or, if you can’t, please write anyway to tell me why not, and feel free to call me any names you like. The more the better, just so I hear from you. Love always, Brendan.
They would not live happily ever after, because no one did that. But they would be together, and that was enough.
This book is dedicated to
star-crossed lovers everywhere.
Theodora Goss won the World Fantasy Award in 2008 for her short story “Singing of Mount Abora.” Her publications include the 2006 short-story collection In the Forest of Forgetting; Interfictions, a 2008 short-story anthology coedited with Delia Sherman; and Voices from Fairyland, a 2008 poetry anthology featuring critical essays and a selection of her own poems. She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Crawford, Locus, and Mythopoeic awards and has appeared on the Tiptree Award Honor List. Her work has repeatedly been showcased in “Year’s Best” anthologies. She lives in Boston, where she teaches literature and writing at Boston University.
The Thorn and the Blossom: A Two-Sided Love Story Page 7