After three days of sitting and thinking and drinking stomach-churning amounts of beer, Henry had another visit from the insurance man. He brought a check for Henry: $25,000.00 for a life built and destroyed, for forty years hard labor, for forty lives lost. Henry sighed heavily and thanked the insurance man for his time, for all of his help through all of this mess. In a gesture of kindness that people often make but seldom mean, the insurance man offered his services, should any further troubles come along. "Good luck" was really just about the best thing that he gave Henry before he left, a back-road dust trail following him out. Henry looked at the check for a little while. He ran his gnarled fingers through his unkempt and uncut gray hair, he tapped the toes of his dirty tennis shoes in the dust of the front lawn as he thought, and finally he stood up, his decision made. He kicked aside the beer cans that had piled around his chair, folded the chair and tucked it away in the basement, closed the empty cooler and put it on the porch.
Henry went in the house, took off his shoes and socks and looked at his filthy bare feet, toes twisted and calloused, broken and healed and unrested for the past forty years. Henry stripped down, past his stained undershirt and past his worn out underwear, down to the unwashed nakedness that conveyed in every sense the overworked emptiness of his life. He ran a hot bath. He washed. Clean, he fumbled in a long-closed closet and brought out the only button-down shirt he owned that hadn't been ravaged by farm life: a faded blue oxford with the buttons missing from the left sleeve. Dressed, he called his bank and got some answers; he tucked a note to his wife under a stack of dishes on the kitchen table. He found his wallet and made sure his driver's license wasn't expired. Henry stood on the front porch for a few minutes and looked at the scar where his barn had stood, he thought about milking times that would come and go, summers that would never happen, hay wagons that would rot where they sat. Then he did the thing that he had been waiting forty years to do. He left, followed by a trail of dust and the shadow of a life on fire.
A Gift of Roses by Charlee Vale
I.
The roses were dead.
She wasn't entirely sure what that meant. Something—it tickled her faded memory and made her want to know. It was important, but not so important. If it had been, surely she would have remembered.
The oak tree outside her house sprinkled leaves across the ground. Autumn had colors like burning, and the old woman's thoughts were as scattered as the leaves. I am old, she thought, but I must not have always been so. The leaves are very beautiful this year. Fiery colors. Why does fire look like sadness?
Days flowed past. The colors of autumn turned toward to the browns and whites of winter, and the wind blew cold, toward the days so frozen she could no longer go outside. But she stayed at the window, her clouding eyes picking along the shape of the oak tree, and grasping at why it tugged at her memory. When she could no longer bear to think of the tree she looked beyond it, waiting. It felt she was always waiting. Something was coming.
From wake to sleep she would sit, tracing the veins in her hands and mourning her unremembered youth.
Autumn faded to winter, and as the cold deepened, the fire, everything, grew harder to see. The tree, the distance, faded first. Then the things she saw around her, until finally only shapes remained. The fire became a mesmerizing blur of color.
She kept the roses near enough to see, tracing the veins in her hands as she put her face as close as she dared. She could not remember where they had come from—three roses, their stems tangled inextricably together—nor where she had gotten the crystal vase in which they were planted. But looking at them made her want to remember, and so she looked.
The wind howled past the window, and the woman's eyes glazed over with blindness until all that was left were shadows. She listened to the wind, because she could only hear it now. The wind brought memory: voices from lives long past, a ghostly touch of a hand, and a song.
She sang to keep herself warm. She sang to remember. She sang because there was nothing else left.
On the day the wind stopped, the woman remembered the roses. She reached out, and with her hand found the crystal that held them. Her fingers were unsteady, and as she reached out to the petals, she felt the light settling of powder on her fingers. The roses were gone.
The old woman sighed, for she had loved them. She knew, even with her memory gone, that the roses had been with her for an eternity. And in that moment, she thought she could almost smell the roses as they had been when they were new.
Abruptly there was light—a light she could see even through her blindness—a beautiful, golden glow. She recognized this light. She almost remembered.
It was only after she remembered that she began to burn.
Pain seared in her fingertips like a brand. Fire, real and vital, rushed through her veins, burning from the inside. She screamed. Lines of pure heat poured into her heart, and the old woman knew that no one in the world had endured this pain. But was this a dream? Or death? Surely none living had survived this.
The fire in her body grew to a storm. It consumed her, until all that she knew disappeared, and she opened her eyes. A crystal clear world lay before her.
Her hands, she saw, were new. She rushed to the aged mirror, and the reflection showed a girl fresh with life. She laughed because surely this must be heaven. Overcome, she rushed to do everything, touch everything, see everything she hadn't in years—her beloved oak tree, the wavering heat of the fire. She tripped outside and laughed into the air, the snow whirling behind her like glitter. Her skin burned with the cold, and her cheeks flushed, as the skin of youth could do.
She turned her face to the sun, and smiled. Surely, she had been lucky. This cannot have been the death everyone feared. She had been blessed.
When she returned to her home, the crystal vase was where she had left it. Three roses were within, their stems twisted eternally around one another, petals vibrant with life. The young woman smiled. The roses had been her faithful friends, companions, for as long as she could remember.
The woman reached out, and the new leaf of the rose was sharp. She drew her hand back, and saw the line of blood, like a smile, spreading across her finger. How odd, she thought, to bleed when I am dead.
A cold breeze blew through her house, and she shivered. Suddenly she felt it, that thing that had been tugging at the edge of her mind. The happiness she had felt drained out of her. She reached up and found her face wet with a single tear.
She was alive, and she remembered.
II.
Three years.
Three years the young man had been searching, following the clues, scouring the earth. He was close now, so close he could feel it.
Even under the trees, the heat was incalculable, causing sweat to drip down his face, down his back, into places he didn't know sweat could reach. Mud pulled at his feet, sucking him down and only releasing him with a groan. It seemed the very earth was groaning, trying to stand in his way, but he would find it. He would save her. He'd sworn it.
Conjuring all the strength he wished he could give away, he pushed forward through the branches and vines. Her face floated in his mind: beautiful, pale, and running out of time.
Light pierced the emerald haze ahead—an opening in this tangle of jungle, so uncharacteristic of the lands around it. Something had to be here. After all the searching, it was closer than he had expected, to that place where they shared a home, a love, a life. He broke through the wall of leaves, felt the smallest breeze cool the sweat on his skin, and sighed.
The young man stepped onto a plain that stretched for miles. He could see the edge of the jungle from which he had just emerged looping around in a perfect circle to enclose this place. Unlike the forest, where the air stayed still and heavy and sank the lungs with its weight, the wind continuously moved here. Fluctuating, undulating, forcing the grasses into a rippling jade sea. Another mismatched landscape—from the jungle to the plains.
In the visible distance, at
center of this giant ring, a copse of pine trees stood untouched by the vitality of this wind: still, and greener than any evergreen he had observed. The wind whistling by sounded like whispers. The intangible words both prodded him forward and caused him to doubt.
The green of the trees shimmered in the air. Despite the wind, the air was as hot as the deserts he had travelled. He stared across the open expanse, maze-like paths forming, collapsing, and forming again in front of him. Each pathway seemed impossible, like navigating the open waves.
It took a long time to cross the plain—too long—but the sun in the sky never moved. Here, at the heart of the world, things were frozen. He was stepping toward the center of time, of life itself. With each stride the waves of grasses seemed to grow thicker and more restless. He was battered with every step, battling against grass and gust until he collapsed next to the trees like a drowning man reaching the shore.
The winds slowed, and the grasses stilled. The young man sensed that in this place his body was heavier, both injury and exhaustion clinging to him along with gravity. As he struggled to his feet, every doubt he had had on this journey roared in his ears. Everything screamed at him to turn back, but he couldn't, not now. However, standing at the edge of the pine trees, he hesitated. The darkness of the shade, so in contrast to the sun-drenched plain on which he stood, frightened him.
Her face—the only one that mattered—swam up from his memories. Her life was in his hands. He stepped out of the sun.
The wind stopped as if he had stepped through a door. This was a mountain wood. The air tasted fresh, and sunlight sprinkled through the trees, painting the ground with whorling patterns. The air between the trees was eerily quiet; no winds whispered here. He took a step, pine needles crackling sharply under his feet. The young man felt a pull toward the center of the trees. Everything he had been searching for was so close, yet he shivered.
The world seemed to glitter, and the young man dared not touch any of the beauty around him—not until he had reached his goal. Evergreens gave way to dogwoods, cherries to birch, and seemingly every kind of flowering tree. Petals fell through the air as though it were spring; the ground became soft with grass, and vibrant clusters of flowers dotted the way. The seasons crashed together here, plants growing regardless of their set time to bloom. Everything thrived. It was then that he smelled the water.
With the scent of that water, all other smells were erased: the dampness of earth, the sweetness of flowers—this smell pure and entirely intoxicating. This fragrance was the promise of fulfillment, happiness, and long life. It was rich like the largest meal, fresh like the sun in spring, and below all of that a dark bitterness. The young man sensed more than knew that this place would be both his salvation and his ruin, and he did not care. It reached inside him and pulled, yanking him forward.
Then there were roses. Roses everywhere. They surrounded the pool, grew in it, from it, over it, in every color imaginable. The pool lay in a perfect circle: like the jungle, like the plain, like this wood. The water was clear as the air surrounding him, the only evidence of its existence the reflection—the trees, the roses, the sky.
The young man had found the center of the world.
He had never dared to dream what this eternal pool might look like. That it was overgrown with the world's symbol of beauty, he shouldn't have been surprised. He might have hoped for something grander, but what was before him had existed long before his time, and would exist long after his time was forgotten. Whatever he had expected, it wasn't a shallow pool surrounded by the purest of nature.
The air around the pool felt charged, crackling on the verge of thunder. It was a beautiful hesitation, the world on the edge of infinite possibility. He had to take a drink. Just one. He had come so far. A cluster of white roses blocked his path. He pushed them aside to walk through and cried out. His blood shone on the leaves, running down and marring their whiteness.
Looking down at the roses, he noticed what he hadn't before: the woods were deadly. Every leaf, every petal, razor sharp. Painfully, he knelt—for even the grass was edged—and forced his arm through the branches. His hand still dripping blood, he dipped it into the water. Breaking the near invisible surface he plunged deep, the red spreading though the water, staining it.
His hand tingled, then began to glow. His blood moved backward, returning to his hand and clearing the water. Energy shot through his limbs and the exhaustion of his journey vanished. He felt the heartbeat of the pool move through his body, healing everything that had ever been bruised, hurt, or even thought of being so. The grass underneath him now felt soft to the touch, so he let himself lay before the roses. His hand drifting in the pool, he rested.
It was a true rest; the first he had had in a long time. When he woke—his hand wrinkled from its soak in the water—he searched the sky and shadows to see if the sun had by some chance moved. It hadn't. The thought crossed his mind that he could stay here forever. Forever in the sunlight and forever young, but also forever alone. No. No life without her.
She needed the water. After all, what had this all been for if not that? But at the center of the world, nothing is simple. Each time he dipped his bottle into the pool, it came out empty. For hours he tried to fill the bottle, each time unsuccessful. Even when he scooped the water with his hands it disappeared. He tried everything he could think of, and nothing worked. The effects of the water began to fade and slowly the pain of the woods returned to him. Still he forced himself to continue into exhaustion. It was only then that he truly noticed the roses.
Everywhere the water touched, the roses were streaked with lines of fire. They glowed. As he watched, the fire faded, seeping into the flowers, and he knew. The water itself could not be taken from this place, but it was absorbed into every living thing in the woods. The roses—everything—were sharp as glass to keep them from being stolen, but it could be done.
He picked three: the most perfect roses he could find among the thousands. One red, one yellow, one white. He took their stems, twisted them together, and threw them into the pool. The roses lit up like glowing embers, soaking in the immortality of the place. When he pulled them out, the roses had fused together—a single plant. He watched as the fire faded, and his hands once more were cut, blood welling from his palms.
He stooped and placed his hand in the water, wanting to be healed before his return journey. But as the red of his blood spread through the pool, he felt nothing. He watched, and the pool cleared—his blood erased as if never there. A coldness settled around the man. He had stolen from the center of the world, and he knew with certainty that it would give no more to him.
When he lifted his hand from the pool, it was dry. He looked at the center of the world, for the man knew that he would never be allowed to find it again. And with great sadness, he took the roses and walked away.
The journey back was far shorter, yet every step felt longer. The roses cut through everything he tried to wrap around them. He used every spare thing he had, until his hands were all he had left. The cuts healed, and re-healed, and new ones formed. He knew now what it would cost to save her. With every new pain he called her face to his mind, to his memories, and let his thoughts carry him toward home.
Finally, he saw her.
III.
The little wind was born in the plains surrounding the center of the world, and like many winds, loved to race around the circles that were its home: through the blizzards of the outermost borders, through the jungle, and into the center of the world where the sharp edges tickled. But of all the circles, the little wind's favorite place to fly was the plains. The grasses made great playmates to practice the tricks of wind, and they helped steady the mind when learning about the world from the big winds, the old winds, and every other wind. For all winds are born here, and come here before they pass on.
The little wind grew, and when three years had passed outside the circles, the young man came. He was a very ordinary looking man, but he was the first man th
e little wind had ever seen. And so, he looked extraordinary.
It took the young man a long time to walk through the circles. The little wind supposed that was the penalty for being confined to the ground. The wind much preferred to fly and felt very grateful not to be bound to the earth. This wind had a curious nature and followed the man on his journey—heard the rumble of his thoughts, and sensed the determination with which he walked.
The other winds laughed at the man, called him foolish, and tried to make his journey more difficult. This made the little wind sad. The other winds didn't act this way—they were never cruel to each other. After all, the man was so tired, and he had come so far to visit their home. Why should all the winds be so cruel to him?
But the little wind didn't know how many men had stumbled into the circles, selfishly looking for the center of the world. As the little wind followed the journey, he heard whispers. The old winds told him stories of destruction, of men past, and the little wind grew sadder still. This man did not seem selfish; he, too, seemed sad.
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