by Cinda Swans
Claire smiled broadly. "More voices than you know," she said, mysteriously.
The four of them walked out of the town hall meeting room and sauntered down the street to Mark's truck. "Shall we have a picnic, in celebration?" asked Claire.
They piled in to the cab of Mark's truck and cruised to the grocery store. Claire picked out fancy cheeses and stone fruits and luscious tomatoes. Josie and Mark picked out a case of beer. Bri wandered in the bread isle, looking for something good enough.
Claire came up and took her hand. "Let's go to the new little bakery on the corner," she said.
Bri shrugged. She was feeling pleased about their victory, but forlorn, and Claire could tell. She held Bri's hand while they walked up to the check-out, as if Bri were a little girl. It was comforting, but it didn't take away the ache in her heart.
Claire paid for the food, hardly looking at the sum. They left Mark's truck where it was, and walked around the corner. There was a new little bakery. Claire smiled at the man behind the counter with her dark, flashing eyes, and after she picked out two loaves of delicious looking bread, he grinned and threw in a few of the giant, decadent cookies into the bag. He winked at her. "A treat for the lady and her entourage," he said.
They sauntered back to Mark's truck. "Y'all probably want a better look at the scenery," he said.
"But won't you be lonely up there?" asked Bri.
"Nah," he said. "I got my tunes." He rested a hand on Bri's shoulder to reassure her and grinned.
The three women climbed into the bed of the truck with the bags of groceries. They leaned their backs against the sides and stretched their legs out. It wasn't a long drive, but on the cool-but-still sunny day in late fall, it was excellent to feel the wind in their hair.
Bri closed her eyes, smelling the dust of the road from town up to her father's street.
She missed Aeron. She missed him more than she had ever missed anyone. It had been almost six months since he had left, and she missed him not even a little bit less than she had missed him the first night she slept without him by her side. It was agony.
Claire and Josie had been such good friends to her. They comforted her and reassured her. But the worst part - the most inconsolable part - was that she didn't know whether or not she had said goodbye to Aeron forever.
If he was gone, and that was it, then she'd have to get over him and move on sooner or later.
But if he was coming back, then she could steel herself to live in waiting for his return.
She didn't know either way. He had left on a strange journey to discover his mother's land. Bri still didn't really understand what the journey meant, or where, exactly, he had really gone. He had held her hand between his, and whispered in her ear, and he had said, "Bri, don't hold me here like this. I have been waiting for years to try this, to try to find my way home."
"Let me go with you," she had said. But even then, she knew what that meant. Claire had helped her understand. Bri could learn to travel the way Cynthia had, but it would mean that she couldn't come back. She would be disappeared.
That was the trick of it. That was the mess Aeron's father had made of things. It hadn't been his fault, exactly. But he had broken a bloom off of Cynthia's flower, and the plant had never quite recovered. Travel was only guaranteed for one person, one-way. It was an insufficient deal, Bri thought, angered. But what was there for her to be angry at? Claire tried to impress upon her and Aeron that they were very young, and there was a lot left for them to learn.
Claire had also tried to explain to them how - how difficult it would really be, to try to go on living in their current world with that double consciousness- with knowing that much more than anyone else. She spoke in winks and cues, making them wonder where Claire did and did not go when she was away singing operas. Claire was full of mystery and grace.
Bri felt full of no mystery, only longing.
But Cynthia had stayed behind to care for Aeron in his youth. She couldn't take him with her, and she couldn't stay with him forever. Bri felt her pain.
The story was so full of heartbreak, still so full of gaps in information.
Who had the letters been from? she had asked Claire a million times. Where they from Aeron's father to his mother? Were they ancient? Were they talking to real people? Had someone else just been playing a game, putting them in the hollow tree?
Claire dropped hints now and then, but mostly only smiled. "When you can read them again, you might understand," she had told Bri. It felt patronizing, frustrating.
The trees had lost their leaves already, but the light was still golden. Mark maneuvered the truck over the bumpy old roads, and Bri stared up at the lovely sky.
And there was Mark too. Mark had proved himself to be much more full of mystery than Bri had thought. He had done a lot of leg-work to make all the meetings happen, to make sure the city took their proposal seriously. He seemed to have a bit of a politician in him. Bri had flashes of loving his sunny, confident ways. She imagined herself changing, she imagined herself falling in love with Mark. There was a version of herself she could see, happy in his sunny arms.
But her heart ached for Aeron, and Mark was compassionate enough to know. He had told her gently of his feelings for her. He knew he was asking for something she couldn't really give. But he spoke honestly nonetheless, and she appreciated him for that. Maybe she could love him back.
But she had to know - she had to know if there was any way that she and Aeron could be together. And if there was, well then, she would wait as long as it took for the day when she could melt and swoon by his side, in his arms.
She thought of the first night they had made love, when she had agreed to go with him.
That was before she had understood how risky - how impossible that would be. Claire had impressed it upon her: that would, most likely, be the end of her life on earth. She would have to "die" as Brianne Collins. The thought broke her heart.
Mark took the road past her father's house, driving them to a tiny dirt parking area at a trailhead. He parked the truck and hopped out, opening the back of the truck bed for the women to slide out.
"Nice ride?" he asked.
"A little rough on a couple-a those curves," laughed Josie, rubbing her hip bones.
They each carried a few things from the grocery bags, and they set out across the creek and up the hill into the woods.
The walk was as gorgeous as ever. And yet, everywhere Bri looked, she saw Aeron. The two of them had come up here together every chance they'd had while he was preparing to go. It had always been even more shot full of beauty, because loss was so close by. Aeron had taught her more than she ever thought she could know about what it meant to live in the moment. It was the strangest kind of freedom and control, to let go of everything but the here-and-now. It had been so much easier with him, when all she wanted was to know his body, to touch his soul with her own.
She tried half-heartedly to feel in-the-moment now, on a lovely picnic with her friends, but her heart was elsewhere. It fluttered in the branches, a last leaf clinging before the cold set in.
They climbed the final hill before the elm tree. Claire looked around and breathed a deep, theatrical breath. Then she sang lightly,
A beloved land is yon land in the east,
Alba with its marvels.
I would not have come hither out of it,
Had I not come with Noisi.
Caill Cuan!
Unto which Ainnle would go, alas!
Short we thought the time there,
Noisi and I in the land of Alba.
Glen Massan!
Tall is its wild garlic, white are its stalks:
We used to have a broken sleep
On the grassy river-mouth of Massan.
There I raised my first house.
Delightful its house! when we rose in the morning
I would never have left it, from the east,
Had I not come with my beloved.
"What is th
at song?" asked Josie.
"An old Irish song," said Claire.
Bri nodded. "Do you know it, Bri?" Josie asked.
"Sure," she said. She still had the book of poems from Mr. Parker in her bag. She had been carrying it with her ever since taking it from her bedroom.
"What a sad song," said Mark.
They sat down under the protection of the leafless tree and feasted on the food they'd picked out. They discussed the meetings, the details of how the land would be protected forever, now.
Her friends drew Bri into conversation, offering her sliced late-summer peaches and cheese, and she smiled vaguely at them, enjoying their company, but from a distance. She kept looking up into the branches of the tree, hoping for some sign, some word to come to light.
There was nothing.
They sat for a long time, until the dusk began to settle. It got duskier earlier and earlier now. Fall was setting in. Bri pulled the sleeves of her hoodie down over her hands, thinking of Aeron's tattoos, how they looked like they had grown from his skin of their own accord. She had asked him to tell her the stories they represented - they were the epic tales his mother had shared with him as a child. He had them drawn into his skin so that he could never forget what she had taught him - the puzzles and songs in her mythical tales. Bri wished she had written them down while she still had Aeron there to remind her of all the details.
"Guess we better head back," said Mark. "Y'all going back to the city tonight?"
"I don't want to stay here," said Bri, flattly.
Mark nodded, understanding, but a little sad.
They began to pack up their things.
"Well," said Claire, "Now we can always come back - really. The tree won't be here forever," she touched her hand to its rough bark, "but it will be here for a long time to come."
They took a moment to be silent, to appreciate the grandeur of this green and wood growing thing, is mammoth mystery.
Then Claire, her hand still on the tree, winked at Bri. Bri didn't know what it meant - it could have been mocking, but Claire wasn't like that.
Claire skipped away down the hill, singing lightly. Josie and Mark threw their heads back, laughing joyously, and began to follow her.
Bri stayed behind. She needed something more. Her friends could wait for her at the car.
Or not, she thought, a little miserably. She remembered when she had climbed inside the tree with Mark waiting outside. What if she climbed in now? What if she went into that deep, warm, empty place, and refused to come out? Would she eventually get to Aeron's world? Or would she just slowly waste away and become part of the tree? Is that what really happened to you - to your body - when you traveled to Aeron's world?
Bri's mind raced as the footsteps of her friends died away.
Then her thoughts cleared, and all she heard was the beating of her own heart, the creaking and soft tapping noises of the forest's bare tree branches touching the bare branches of other trees. It was a beautiful, human-less sound.
Bri closed her eyes and focused on her breathing. The words to the poem Claire had sung floated into her head, and she hummed them faintly, Caill Cuan!Unto which Ainnle would go, alas! Short we thought the time there, Noisi and I in the land of Alba...
Then there was a rustling. It sounded different than the wind.
Bri opened her eyes and looked up, but she didn't see anything at all. A chipmunk must have been chasing beechnuts, or a bird scratching in the leaves. She closed her eyes again and hummed, That I should remain after Noisi, Let no one in the world suppose!
After Ardan and Ainnle, My time would not be long...
Then the rustling came again, and Bri thought she heard laughing. She looked around and saw nothing. The sky was growing darker. She figured she should walk back to find her friends.
She turned back one last time, still hoping for a sign, but seeing nothing.
She started to walk away.
Then something hit her on the head. She heard more laughing. "You forgot to check inside the tree, silly," said a voice. "What if I had left you a letter? You never would have even gotten it. I guess I just shouldn't have even bothered looking for you!"
She looked all around, and then she saw Aeron, his shape hidden amid the branches in the dimming light. She gasped, and in her shock, she sat down on the ground, looking up at him. She couldn't believe her eyes.
"Well, are you going to sit on the ground? Or are you going to come up here with me?"
She stayed frozen with shock, trying to catch her breath, and then she jumped up and scrambled toward the low branch. With no one to help her lift herself into the tree, it was a terrible struggle to hoist herself up, and Aeron giggled, watching her grunt and scrape her tummy and slip her feet against the tree's bark as she scrambled up onto the branch.
He was high up in the branches, and he wanted her to come up to him. She panted, watching her fingers and toes manuver the tree like when she was a child. She still knew it so well.
And then she was beside him. Even as high up as he was, the branches were still strong and wide next to the trunk. He sat comfortably on a branch with his legs hooked around the next lowest, allowing him to give off an air of security that surprised her.
She paused before getting any closer. "Are you real?" she asked.
He laughed, and then scooted over towards her, and planted a wet kiss on her lips. "Is that real?"
She looked at him still in awe. He pinched her arm and twisted a little bit. "Ouch!" she yelped.
"Is that real?" he tried.
She rubbed her arm and then scooted next to him and held him, awkwardly in the tree. "You made me come all the way up here so you could pinch me. All of this, for that," she said.
"Ah, Bri," he sighed. "And to tell you that I can't be without you."
She didn't answer, looking down through the branches to the far-away ground.
He lifted the backs of his knuckles to her cheek and then touched her chin, raising her face so that he could gaze into her eyes. "You hear that, Bri? I had to go, I had to see for myself. But I don't want to be anywhere you can't be."
She started to cry, water brimming over the rims of her eyes. "I'm afraid to believe you," she said.
He nodded. "It's okay to be afraid sometimes," he said. "But I'm still not afraid of how much I love you."
He kissed her then. It was a weightless kiss that threw her into a wide, reeling space, between universes, where his touch was the only ground, the only sensation.
"I wish we could just stay right here forever," she said.
"No, it doesn't really work like that."
"But what will you - where - did you find her? Did you find your mother, Aeron?"
His face twisted in an unreadable expression. "I found a lot of things. A lot of things that might take me years to understand. I found my mother, kind of. I found that she did go back. But," tears welled in his eyes, "but she's gone now. I mean really gone, passed away. Before I met her again.
"But I know a lot more about her. A lot more that would take me years, Bri, years to explain."
She blinked at him. "So you're here now?"
"With you," he said.
"Forever?"
"No, not forever. For now." He placed a hand on her knee. "For as long as -"
"For now," she said. "You taught me about now. But what about next? Claire and Josie and Mark, waiting at the truck. Do you - " Bri couldn't imagine plucking him out of the elm tree, where it seemed like he had always belonged. "Do you want to come back to the city with us?"
She expected him to say no. She expected that the story would end so that she wouldn't get to have him. He seemed made of air, he seemed like he'd just retreat into a puff of dream forever, leaving her alone in the pysichal world, as she had been, alone without him for months.
But he laughed at her. "Where else would I go?" he said. "I'm with you now."
Then he sang, "Aeron and Bri, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G, first comes love...then com
es..."
Bri laughed and slapped him to make him stop before he got to the next two lines of the schoolyard taunt. "Aeron! Don't freak me out, geeze."
"I'm just sayin'. We're in a tree, doing this." He kissed her again.
"You're going to make me fall and break all my legs!"
"Well, let's get down and go home," he said.
"Home?"
"Wherever. Wherever we can be together, and dream, and travel, and love."
"Home," she said.