by Torey Hayden
“The importance of what was happening only started to register when I went to take down a mobile that was hanging over the little gable-end window. I saw the lake through the window, the sun skittering over the ripples near the shore. Suddenly I wondered what it was going to be like not living on the lake anymore. A terrible sense of loss washed over me in that instant. Then Dad shouted up the stairs and the feeling passed. I was soon lugging my suitcase to the car.
“My dad said to hurry up, that he had to be back in Rapid City by lunchtime, so I put my suitcase in the car. Then I said, ‘Wait a minute. I’ve got to get Felix.’
“My dad said, ‘Who’s Felix?’
“‘My kitten. You know. I told you about him in the summer,’ I said. ‘Just a minute. I’ll get a box for him.’
“My dad shook his head. ‘You can’t take a cat with you, Laura. We live in an apartment building. They don’t allow any pets.’
“I started to cry then. It was Felix I’d done all this for. He was the only reason I’d told anybody about what Steven had done. How could I now leave him behind? But I had to. There was no choice.
“The Meckses didn’t come out to say good-bye when it was time to leave. They remained in the house. As I got into Dad’s car, however, I could see them gathered around the window in the living room, all of them, even Steven. They didn’t wave; they just watched. On the front porch Felix sat with his ears pricked forward, watching too.
“I remember pausing at the gate, looking at the house, at the Meckses in the window, at Felix on the step, and I knew at that moment that whatever else might happen to me, that however happy I might be again in the future, I would never be happy in quite the same way as I had been there. Leaving Kenally Street was childhood’s end for me. Even at twelve I recognized it as that.”
“‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ my dad said to me as we left the Black Hills behind and sped down the interstate towards Rapid City. ‘Remember how I mentioned Marilyn to you the other week?’
“‘Yeah,’ I said.
“‘Well, Marilyn and I decided to get married.’
“‘That’s great! When?’
“‘Well, actually,’ he said, ‘we’ve already done it.’
“‘When?’ I asked, stunned.
“‘I meant to tell you. There just hasn’t been a good chance.’
“‘How could you not tell me something like that, Dad?’
“‘I meant to.’
“I spent the remainder of the journey bewildered. Trying to reconcile this unknown Marilyn into my long-held fantasies of living with my father was impossible because I knew absolutely nothing about her except that she had black hair.
“As it turned out, this was probably just as well, because nothing could have adequately prepared me for the person who greeted us at the other end. When we pulled into the carport at my dad’s apartment building, out came this girl. She was only five years older than my brother Russell, tall and slim and pretty in an insubstantial way. She had this little puff of black hair on top of her head, done in a bouffant like Jackie Kennedy’s, and her eyes were very round and filled with a dazed sort of happiness, like the expression on a Tiny Tears doll.
“When she saw me, she cried a little too enthusiastically, ‘Welcome! Oh, welcome, welcome! So, you’re little Laurie! And oh, and aren’t you pretty? Look at your nice hair!’
“I stared at her in disbelief. She was probably the only person in the universe to ever say I had nice hair, because basically it was a long, greasy straggle the colour of dog sick.
“My dad had told me I could have my brothers’ room, since both of them were away from home by then. He took my suitcase in and put it on one of the two twin beds, telling me I could choose which one I wanted. The room was smaller than our bathroom on Kenally Street and crammed full of Grant’s and Russell’s things. The window looked out onto the brick wall of the apartment building next door. I remember sitting down on the bed and looking around me and thinking that somehow this wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
“I never went back to the house on Kenally Street. Ever. The Meckses packed up the rest of my things, and my brother Grant stopped by and picked them up for me. I didn’t go with him. I never saw Ma or Pa or Steven or Felix ever again.
“Once I was settled at Dad’s, I had to go through my belongings and get rid of lots because my new bedroom was just too small. There was no space for my collections or my projects. For a while, I set some of my horses up on the dresser beside Grant’s model planes, but I always felt funny when I looked at them. One night when Dad and Marilyn were out, I collected the horses all together and threw them one by one down the wall incinerator in the apartment building. I don’t know why. Maybe I just outgrew them. I don’t know for sure. All I do know is that I had this overwhelming urge to get rid of them, so I did, and I’ve never really liked horses since.”
Chapter Fourteen
A shriek of pure panic rent the darkness. Sudden and electric, a lightning bolt of sound shook James from a deep, dreamless sleep and sent him hurtling for the doorway well before he was awake enough to know what was happening. Frantically, he groped for the light switch in the hallway.
“Becky? Becks? Wake up, honey. You’re having a bad dream.” James said as he came into the spare bedroom where she was sleeping with Mikey.
Mikey was already sitting up in his bed. “It’s not a dream, Daddy,” he said through the darkness. “She’s having a terror.”
“Becks?” Sitting down on the edge of the bed, James drew his young daughter close. “Daddy’s here.”
“I’m gonna put the light on,” Mikey said and climbed out of his bed. “That’s what Mum always does.”
Becky clawed at James, clutching his pajama top so fiercely that the hairs on his chest were caught in her grip. The overhead light came on. Becky’s eyes were wide open, but she didn’t look at James. She didn’t respond to his voice. Instead, she screamed and thrashed against him.
“Shh-shh-shhh,” James whispered. “I’m here. Daddy’s here.”
Mikey stood beside the bed, his face puckered with worry. “I wish she wouldn’t do that,” he murmured.
“She’s all right. She’ll go back to sleep in a moment and she won’t even remember it.”
“How come she never remembers?”
“Because that’s how it works,” James said. “Know how I know? Because when I was a little boy, sometimes I had night terrors too.”
“How come it happens?” Mikey asked.
“Well, it usually happened to me because I got way too tired, and that might be what’s happened to Becky too. You two had a long journey today and we stayed up pretty late.”
“Oh.”
“But sometimes it happened to me,” James said, “because I was feeling upset about something and didn’t know how to say it. Has anything been upsetting Becky lately?”
Mikey drew his shoulders up in an exaggerated shrug. “I dunno.”
Slowly Becky’s distress quieted. She blinked vacantly and James could tell she still wasn’t awake. “Shh-shh-shhh,” he whispered and smoothed back the hair from her face. “Close your eyes, sweetheart. It’s time to sleep.”
At last her eyes drifted shut and she fell silent. Very gently, James lay her back on the bed and pulled the covers up around her.
Rising, he turned to look at Mikey. “You too, cowboy. Come on. Under your covers.” He tucked his young son in, pulling the blanket right up to his nose.
“Will you leave the light on?”
“Let’s turn this overhead one off because it’s too bright. I’ll leave the hallway light on instead. How’s that?”
“Okay.”
James laughed. “You look like a Furby, lying there. All I can see is sticky-up hair and two great big eyes looking over the edge of the covers.” He leaned down and kissed Mikey’s forehead.
Mikey didn’t smile back. “I’m looking like I’m a Furby ’cause I’m scared.”
“And wh
at makes Furbies scared, huh?” James asked gently.
“I don’t like it when Becky does that. It’s got me all woke up now and I’m scared to be here by myself.”
“Well, you’re not by yourself, cowboy, because Becky is right there. And I’m just down the hall. Really close.” He smoothed Mikey’s hair. “But I’ll tell you what. You scoot over and I’ll lie down with you until you’re not feeling scared as a Furby anymore, how’s that?”
“Will you stay ’til I go to sleep?” Mikey asked.
“Yes, ’til you’re safe and sound asleep again.”
James lay down in the twin bed and pulled the blankets up. Mikey snuggled in close. Cheek pressed against Mikey’s head, James’s nose was filled with his little-boy scent, a faintly saline mixture of baby shampoo and something warmer, like the smell of sunshine on an old wooden floor.
They lay in cuddly silence for several minutes. In fact, Mikey remained still for so long that James assumed he’d fallen back asleep. He shifted in preparation to go back to his own bed.
“Daddy, don’t go,” came Mikey’s small voice.
“Are you still awake?”
“Yes. I can’t sleep.”
“Why’s that?”
“I’m scared.”
“With your daddy right here?” James asked and drew his small son in closer against him. “There’s nothing to be scared of.”
“Daddy?” Mikey asked after several quiet moments.
“Yes, Mikey.”
“I wish we lived here.”
James hugged him tight. “Yes, I wish you did too. With all my heart. You’re my best boy and girl in the whole world.”
“Why can’t we?”
“Well, because you’ve got everything back East. Mum’s there and your school and all your friends.”
“We could go to school here,” Mikey said.
“But you’d miss Grandma and Grandpa. And all the cousins. And going to the beach.”
“I don’t like Uncle Joey,” Mikey said.
“Why’s that?”
Mikey sighed. “I don’t know.”
“Does he do anything to make you not like him?” James asked.
“No. I just don’t. I like him all right in the daytime, because he buys us stuff. But not in the nighttime. That’s when I want you.”
“Yes, that’s when I want you too,” James said. “And in the daytime as well. It’s hard, isn’t it, when Mum and I don’t live together. When I live out here and we don’t get to see each other very much. I feel bad about those things.”
“Yeah,” Mikey said. “Me too.”
Long after Mikey finally fell asleep, James remained in the small bed with him. It was he, now, who was wide awake.
He had instantly recognized Becky’s night terror for what it was, not only because it was quite a common phenomenon among the children he worked with; but because, indeed, as he’d said to Mikey, he had suffered them himself for a while when young. He didn’t remember anything about them other than vague, formless sensations of fear. His parents’ distress when talking about his night terrors had always been much more upsetting to him than the experience itself.
But when had Becky started having them? How was it that Sandy had never felt it significant enough to mention to him? It made him feel isolated and impotent.
And certainly the little conversation with Mikey afterwards hadn’t helped any. What was he doing out here, so far away from his own children? How could he spend his days helping other people’s children and so completely ignore the distress of his own? How did he balance his own needs and his kids’ needs against the needs of others? That was the real question.
James finally slipped silently from Mikey’s bed. He spent a moment looking at the two sleeping children. Smoothing out Becky’s bedding, he bent and kissed her. She turned away in the darkness. He then kissed Mikey, who never stirred.
He went out into the kitchen to make a hot drink. While the milk was warming, he noticed the folder of stories Laura had given him sitting on the kitchen table. James picked it up and riffled through the typewritten pages. He couldn’t sleep. This seemed as good time as any to take a break from reality. So taking his cup of cocoa into the living room, he sat down in the recliner and began to read.
The year Torgon was nineteen, she and Meilor celebrated their betrothal at the midwinter feast. Then came the month of snow and with it the coughing illness known as Old Man’s Chest. Word spread among the workers that it flourished in the holy household and the benna herself had fallen ill with it. And so it happened that in the last month of winter the holy benna died.
All the acolytes were sent home to observe the official mourning period with their families and await the selection of the new benna. When Mogri returned to her home among the workers’ huts, she was dismayed to find her mother at the loom, making, of all things, the feasting robe for Torgon’s wedding.
“Mam, it is not seemly that you should work. It is the benna’s mourning period.”
“Dwr loves busy hands as much as he loves bennas,” Mam said off-handedly and continued weaving. When there was no answer, she turned. Seeing Mogri’s worried face, she stretched out a welcoming arm. “Do not heed everything they teach you there. What happens in these next days is only meant for higher born. It will have little consequence for us.”
What Mogri’s mother meant, of course, was that the holy choosing would have very little to do with workers. They’d be allowed to watch the ceremony from the palisades and, if luck was with them, at night the sector gates would open and the workers could go in among the feasting tables to clear up what the higher castes had left. But that was all.
Then the unthinkable had happened.
Mogri and Torgon had been sleeping in the back room midst bales of wool for Mam’s weaving stacked high around their pallet to keep the winter draughts away. The midnight knock, when it came, had terrified them. Certain that it would be drunken warriors come to take their pleasure among the worker girls, the sisters had clung together, pulling the hides up over their heads in hopes that if their father could not keep the bar across the door, no one would find them there.
Neither of them expected to see the light of holy candles fall across the mud-packed floor, nor glimpse the holy Seer, clad in flowing robes, the golden circlet on his head, looking like a god himself as he came in the room. But there he was. Da pulled back the hides to show him where they lay and the Seer’s sacred dagger glinted in the light. He reached down and wrapped his fingers through Torgon’s hair. Seared into Mogri’s memory of that night was the look on Torgon’s face as the Seer pulled her to the ground to cut her hair: a look of desolate bewilderment, a look hares have when they are trapped and know that certain death awaits.
It had felt most peculiar to Mogri when returning to the compound to know that Torgon resided now within the holy cells as the divine benna. Theirs was a close family and she and Torgon had been inseparable. They’d played together and shared their food, fought and argued and suffered all the petty jealousies that any sisters do. Mogri had thought many things about Torgon during their growing years together, but holy had not been one of them.
Three months passed and in that time Mogri did not see her sister once. The Seer explained that the new benna communed with Dwr. and awaited the coming of the Power. This unsettled Mogri. The new benna sounded strange and austere, as if she were someone Mogri had never known.
Then one night while Mogri was on her pallet in the acolytes’ sleeping area, she heard a noise in the washroom, an odd, uneven rasping sound that did not filter clearly through the thick stone walls. Mogri rose up on one elbow to listen better.
On the adjacent pallet, Linnet moved. “What’re you doing?” she whispered through the darkness.
“I’m listening to that sound in the washing room.”
“Aye, I know. It’s disturbing me too.”
Then Minsi on the other side asked sleepily. “Why are you talking?”
“Someone�
�s being noisy in the washing room,” Linnet said.
“Ignore it.”
“I’ve tried. I can’t. And it’s woken Mogri too. Whoever’s in there should be cuffed.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Minsi replied. “It’ll be the divine benna or the Seer and you can’t cuff them.”
“I’ve cuffed the divine benna plenty in my day,” Mogri offered.
“Aye, as a sister. But she’s not your sister now. So go back to sleep. Both of you. And stop your talking or it’s we who’ll be cuffed.” Then Minsi rolled over on her other side and pulled her cover up.
What was the noise? Mogri could not ignore it. It came now as a more syncopated sound, but remained too muffled through the walls for Mogri to make out.
Perhaps the Power had come over Torgon, Mogri thought. She had no idea what the Power really was, only that holy bennas had it. So who knows how it might show itself? Perhaps it would cause Torgon to fall down and writhe the way Mogri had seen a man do once within the marketplace.
Or perhaps it was not the Power. Perhaps Torgon had fallen ill and these were the sounds of her emptying her stomach.
If Torgon had fallen ill, Mam would be so upset. She’d always fretted over Torgon so. At the slightest sneeze she’d burn the cleansing oils until the house and everybody’s clothes would reek and once she’d even brought in the wise woman for Torgon’s chest. It had cost Da more eggs than he could find in a full turning of the moon. Mogri still remembered going with him to the cliffs to pilfer from the nests of the high-flying hawks.
If there was something wrong, Mogri knew she should try to help. Mam would expect that of her.
Did she dare? They were forbidden to leave the sleeping quarters without permission.
Cautiously she rose and tiptoed noiselessly through the rows of sleeping acolytes and out the door. Silent as a shadow she moved past the rooms where holy women slept, past the Seer’s cells.