After Forever Ends

by Melodie Ramone

  “You can come here, you know.”

  “I know. It’s just that I’m all tied up most of the time, especially on the weekends. Will you tell Xander to ring me, please?”

  I’d tell him, but I never knew if he did.

  Oliver kept up with Lance and Merlyn. We even occasionally gave Headmistress Pennyweather a ring. Everyone was fine and busy like we were. Life was moving at warp speed. I think it does for everyone when they get into their early twenties. There’s just too much going on to give anything the attention it deserves. Wasted years, those are, all action and very little meaning. At least they were to us. We thought we were living, but I think now that we were only sleep walking. We were like robots programmed to achieve goals. We focused, we toiled, we got the job done, did what was expected of us, and we took no pleasure in any of it. While we were busy succeeding at every challenge we undertook, there was not as much music, there was not as many jokes, and we didn’t laugh as much as we once had. I’d say that at twenty-one, Oliver and I were the most grown up we’d ever be in our entire lives. Thank God we eventually got over it.

  When we forgot or got too busy to ring, Oliver’s mother would come looking if she hadn’t heard from us by the weekend. “Anything could happen to you out here in a place like this!” She’d tell us, “I wish you’d go get a nice flat in Cardiff!”

  “We can’t afford rent in Cardiff," Oliver would say.

  “If you’d just let your dad and me help you…”

  “Forget about it, Mum. We’ll do this on our own.”

  As difficult as it was to live there sometimes because of its remoteness, Oliver and I had no intention of ever leaving that little cabin. I don’t think it ever would have crossed our minds if it wasn’t being constantly mentioned by her. What no one but Alexander understood was that life at the cabin was interesting. It was not long after we had moved in that I began to truly understand why Oliver swore the place was magical. There were more than a few nights we’d look over and see and a small tan and white owl perched in our kitchen window, peering at us with its huge yellow eyes as if it wanted to know us better. Oliver called him Alfie. “Hello, Alfie,” He’d say as he walked past with a bowl of something, “How are you tonight? Come in if you like.” Alfie would just watch him with his huge eyes and not make a move in either direction. “Suit yourself, Mate,” Ollie would tell him, “You know you’re always welcome.”

  It wasn’t just Alfie, either, who visited. None of the animals seemed shy in the wood. Hares would hop about unbothered by the goings on of people in the lawn. Foxes would sit at the edge of the garden and clean each other’s coats. Miniature deer would come up from the wood and climb on to our front porch and linger. They’d peek inside the windows, leaving nose prints and smears on the glass. The grass along the path would dry and dull, but it was always green on the lawn. Flowers would grow in patches where there was no grass. It gave a person the sense that they were in a place that defied standard. That you were somehow straddling the divide between what was convention and all that was possible. In the wood, the lines of reality were always blurred.

  What went on inside the house was something to behold as well. Things would move around when you weren’t looking. I’d leave my purse on the kitchen table and find it on the sofa five minutes later. Or Oliver would accidentally drop his keys on the floor while carrying in groceries and leave them while he set down the sacks. He’d turn to pick them up and they’d be on the counter. Or sometimes, items would magically appear, like the time I found the most beautiful pink rose lying on the porch. I ran to the bedroom and kissed Oliver for the gift. He swore he hadn’t given it to me. That rose lasted for nearly six months in a simple vase of water. One morning I came out and all the petals had fallen and were lying, still beautiful, scattered across the table. Oliver was not joking about the socks wandering off, either. His socks were constantly going missing, but he’d set out into the garden and talk to the trees or leave sweets in the faerie circle and they’d show up later sitting neatly on the table. The ones I lost the night before we married had never come back.

  Sometimes I was still sure Oliver was playing with me, but usually I had my doubts. The third summer we were there, late at night, when it was very, very quiet, I began to hear a man and a woman speaking so faintly that I could hear their voices, but not understand a word that they said. It always sounded like it was coming from the front of the house, but when I went out there they would stop talking. After a while I started hearing them in the garden as well.

  I mentioned it to Oliver one night. “I think I’m going mad in my old age,” I told him.

  “You’re not going mad, “He looked at me very seriously, “If I told you, you won’t believe me.”

  “You hear them, too?”

  It’s the Lord and the Lady of the Wood,” He mumbled as he shook his fringe out of his eyes. “They’re having a baby.”

  “A baby?”

  “Aye. A wee baby. They call it their boon. They have loads of them, but they get very excited every time a new one comes along.”

  I took a second to consider this before I dismissed the possibility out of hand, “Who are the Lord and the Lady? Ghosts?”

  “No, they’re not ghosts. They’re faerie folk. Elves. I don’t know much about them other than they live here in the wood. They have forever-like. They knew my Grandparents and theirs before them and so on.” He seemed a bit tired as he flipped the page of a textbook, “Don’t look at me like that, Sil! I’m not mad! I’ve known them my whole life. I’m actually surprised that you can hear them. Not everybody does. My parents never have. I hear them like you do mostly and can’t make anything out they say, but they’ve spoken to me twice since Grandpaddy gave me the shard.”

  “The what?”

  “The shard. It’s a little piece of wood, longer and thicker than a sliver. Grandpaddy’s Grandpaddy gave it to Grandpaddy when he was a boy to keep. One day he gave it to me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the Lord told him to. Or so he said. Nana gave me something else, too.”

  “What?”

  “That ring you’re wearing.”

  “My wedding ring?”

  He nodded, “There’s a story behind it. The Lady gave it to Nana and told her to keep it for her grandson, the Boy from the Olive Tree, whose love would have hair the colour of autumn flames and eyes like blue ice.” He twisted his bottom lip, “When my parents called me Oliver, she figured the Lady must have meant me. Just before they died she gave it to me and told me the story.”

  It was an emerald ring set high in an odd design and very old. It was a beautiful ring and probably quite expensive.

  “You were very young, weren’t you?”

  “Oh, aye, I was just a kid. Mind there was something in the way she explained it that made me know it was a treasure, so I put the ring up and kept it safe until I gave it to you.” He looked at me a long time, “I knew it was you the ring was meant for as soon as I laid my eyes on you. Hair the colour of autumn flames and eyes like blue ice. Nana told me the Lady had said that, those words exactly. Plus the second you said you were Just Silvia Cotton I knew for certain I was hopelessly in love with you.”

  We smiled at each other, remembering that moment.

  “What did the Lord and the Lady tell you when they spoke?”

  Oliver sighed. He looked at me for a long time before he spoke, obviously deciding what information he was going to share, “The first time they told me that they’d chosen me to protect the wood. They asked me if I’d honour the promise of my forefathers and keep it safe for them and the creatures that live here. I said yes.”

  “And the second time?”

  “What they told me they said you wouldn’t understand until you were ready. They told me not to tell you because you have to understand it in your own time.”

  For some reason I was able to accept that. Something inside of me didn‘t want him to tell me, not then. In the deepest part of me I knew
I had lessons to learn.

  Both of us were quiet. I watched him flip another page in his textbook and lift a glass of water to his lips. I whispered, “What does it all mean, Oliver?”

  “I dunno,” He looked back up at me and smiled gently, “Love magic, I think. The Lady of the Wood says Love is the oldest and greatest of all the magic in the universe. I guess we wait and see. We’ll know in our time.”

  We didn’t speak of it again for a very long while. Not for many, many years. In fact, we didn’t discuss it again until near the time when he left me.

  Oliver and I both earned our four year university degrees respectively. Oliver had made up his mind about his future and was going to be a paediatrician. He had always known that he wanted to go into medicine. Oliver, you see, was a healer. It wasn’t anything he did by choice, it was just his way. He knew what to do and what to say to make people feel better when they were hurt or sad or frightened. Even when they were angry. He was drawn to children, always had been. Perhaps it was because of his kindness and his own refusal to never stop defending innocence and trust that led him to it, but he had made his decision to enter into paediatrics after a course in veterinary science where all he did was fiddle with poop. Bringing home two chicken sealed the resolution.

  I was not very excited when he drew the cage from out of the truck, “Chickens?”

  “Yeah,” He grinned, “I figured we’d grow them.”

  “Grow chickens?”

  “No, eggs.”

  I stifled my laughter, but not my smile, “We’ll grow eggs?”

  “Oh, you know what I mean!” He laughed at himself, “They’re hens. They’ll grow the eggs and we’ll steal them-like.”

  “Oh, goody,” I teased, “And what’s next? You bringing home a cow?”

  “I was thinking about it.”

  “I don’t want a cow.”

  “Why?”

  “They stink.”

  “So do chickens.”

  “I never said I wanted chickens.”

  “Oh, right then! Brilliant! No cow! Can I keep the chickens?”

  I pretended to ponder the question. “They were free, weren’t they?

  “They were!” He grinned proudly.

  I wrapped my arms around him, “You may keep your chickens, Oliver.” I kissed him, as I always did when he arrived, “Welcome home.”

  “Glad to be here, Love.”

  That was the way every afternoon went more or less, except after that one I was knocking chickens off the porch with a broom most days. I hated those blasted chickens. All they did was run around clucking and depositing feathers and cack all around my garden and porch. The one didn’t even produce eggs, but neither Oliver nor I could work up the nerve to kill it and eat it. We invited the foxes in sometimes, but even they weren’t interested in that useless hen.

  I was always home before Oliver since all my classes were in the morning. As a girl, I had been certain I wanted to go into some field of science as a career. I thought microbiology sounded fascinating, but after getting my Bachelors of Science, I started to wonder what I really wanted to do with my future. I was beginning to think that maybe I didn’t want a career and nothing else. After the talk Oliver and I had about the Lord and the Lady and their many boon, plus Oliver suddenly wanting to be a paediatrician, I thought maybe I wanted children, too.

  I began to read all of his Early Childhood Development texts instead of studying my own.

  I hadn’t said anything to Oliver, but I was beginning to wonder why we hadn’t baked any muffins yet. We’d been married for over four years without a single discussion about or use of any kind of birth control. It wasn’t as if we adhered to the rhythm method and we certainly spent a good amount of time playing at the stove. Let’s face it, in a house without electricity once the sun goes down there isn’t a whole lot else to do. I knew that a few of my classmates had had babies. Sandra was one of them, now living outside of Belfast with her husband and new son. She’d gotten married only the year before and had been pregnant before she said bang. I’d called and congratulated her after she sent me the photos of her child who looked, to be honest, sadly a bit like a small Bill Clinton. That set aside, I told her how lucky she was.

  “Thank you, Sil! He’s magnificent! When are you and Oliver going to have one?”

  “Oh,” I answered casually, “We’re going to finish school first, you know. We haven’t really thought very much about it.”

  “Well, it hurts like hell,” She told me, “So you may as well wait.”

  “I don’t envy that,” I told her with a forced laugh, but the truth be told, I was stone cold jealous. I had a head start on her in the baby department, after all. I wanted to know that there was life brewing in my womb. I wanted to feel a baby grow and move inside of me. Why Sandra? Why not me?

  I was only twenty-two the year her son was born. I kept telling myself to stay calm. I was young! There was plenty of time to have loads of babies. But after I got my next period spot on time, I went to the doctor to discuss my apparent infertility. He told me he could run a few tests and that would tell him more, but I appeared perfectly normal and healthy. It might not be me at all, he said, perhaps Oliver had a low sperm count or maybe he was even sterile. Or it might be nothing at all and I just had to let nature do what it needed to do.

  Nature doing what it needed to do was one thing, but the thought of Oliver being sterile seemed impossible. Oliver? I couldn’t imagine it. He was so capable, brimming with excitement and life all the time. Oliver was gentle and so full of love…he would be an excellent father…how could he not be able to make muffins? Nature might do its thing, but nature doing that to him would just wrong.

  When my tests came back normal, I knew two things. I knew that I wanted muffins very badly and that there was no way I was going to mention anything about it to Oliver. Oliver was working himself weary between his job and his education. He had enough on his plate. If I told him I wanted a baby, he would do anything to give me one. He always gave me everything I wanted. If he found out he couldn’t, it would crush him. It would be the first time in his mind that he had failed at anything. He was under enough stress. I knew he couldn’t take it, not right then. And even if we managed to make a muffin, I wondered if having one would be enough alone to set him over the edge.

  He never said much about our financial situation, but it was taking its toll on him. Oliver had grown up with money around him. He’d never wanted for much. After we’d gotten married, his parents had asked us to live with them and when we’d refused, they had repeatedly offered to help us. He absolutely would not let them. The day he allowed his dad to pay the taxes on the land for us, he swore it would never happen again.

  “It’s not that much, Son,” Ed seemed a bit offended that Oliver didn’t understand he was happy to do it. “You can’t do everything on your own all the time.”

  “Like hell I can’t!” Ollie insisted, “This is a onetime thing, Dad!”

  Still, I knew being broke didn’t suit him. He hated every second of it. Oliver was used to getting up and going where he wanted and doing what he liked when he had the urge. I knew he felt stuck and he despised that feeling. Still, because of it, he channelled all of his focus on university so that he could get a degree as quickly as possible. Once he had that, he would work his way into a position where he had the two things he wanted most; freedom from owing anybody anything and money he had earned himself to prove that he never needed anything from anybody in the first place.

  A baby could really put a damper on those kinds of plans, if not cause a complete derail. Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea at all. I would never have wanted to do anything to make him unhappy. His smile and the sound of his laughter were what I lived for.

  It struck me that I had never seen Oliver sad. Not once, not really. I wouldn’t do a thing to change that. Our situation was fine, I resolved. If nature decided it was going to be just him and me alone forever, I would be satisfied with that. My
goodness, Oliver was enough on his own! Sometimes just being in the same room with him made me so cheerful I thought I could fly. After all the time we’d known each other the passion we shared had never waned. If anything, it had intensified. I wasn’t even sure that I could love a baby more than I loved him. Maybe it wouldn’t be fair to bring a child into our lives and have it be a third wheel. I had to consider that as well before I forced the issue and the poor little creature suffered because its mother couldn’t love it enough to see it past its father. And what if I couldn’t? What if I was a horrible mother and Oliver was a wonderful father? I was not threatened about him loving our child more than me, that muffin deserved for him to, but what if he loved me less for not being the parent I should have been? What if a muffin ruined it all?

  Now, I knew I was just being daft. I knew I could and would love our muffin with all of my soul. How couldn’t I? Look at the recipe; a bit of me, a bit of Oliver, bake it in the oven and out comes a living, walking, talking, thinking and breathing creature that we had made together. How could I look at that little being and not realise it was muffin magic?

  Magic. We had so much in our lives, but wouldn’t it be wonderful to see what we could make together? Magic was everywhere.

  I found myself thinking often of the Lord and the Lady and their many boons. I was happy for them. For some reason, they were becoming more and more real in my mind and more and more present in my everyday life. I decided if I were hearing them, and I was quite certain I was not mad, that they had to be real. And even if they weren’t, I was going to give them the benefit of the doubt.

  One day I took a plate of Turkish Delights out to the Faerie Circle and placed it in the centre, “I don’t know how much to give you or what you like, but I love these things, personally, and Oliver hates them. I think it would be selfish to eat them all myself, so I brought you about ten. If you fancy them, please enjoy them. I can bring more. If you don’t fancy them, I’m sorry. Please just leave them and I’ll bring you something else. Do you fancy Snickers? I know Oliver brings you Snickers, but I don’t want to if you’d prefer something else.”