The Golden Helm: More Tales from the Edge of Sleep

by Victoria Randall

  Deep in its inmost secret places, it began to prepare a gift for her.

  The wedding was held on a summer morning, with sunlight shining through the leaves of the tree as she stood beneath it to recite her vows. The tree gave shade and murmurous silence, and its arching benediction; it may be that meant more to Laura than the minister’s blessing. The guests wandered to and fro on the grass and drank punch out of thin glass cups. Tom beamed with his arm around Laura, sweat standing on his brow under the hot sun, as the reception line meandered past. The tree nodded, giving approval, scattering dappled gold. But in the dusk it could not repress a twinge, as the couple ran off to the waiting car. Laura’s face shone so brightly; the tree could not but envy the source of such joy.

  Winter came again, and yet again. The tree grew as trees grow, thicker and taller, and in its slow uncomplicated heart reveled in the passing seasons. Sun warmed, wind tossed its leaves, rain watered, and Laura was there. Always there, coming and going with her swift delicate movements, sitting in the evenings under the tree, on the bench Tom built for her. Sometimes in the mornings she came and sat there to shell peas from the garden, her head bent and the silky strands glittering in the light.

  But with the passing days, that were only contentment to the tree, it began to sense a sadness in her. It was a lack, something she never spoke of, not to Tom, not to the tree, scarcely even to herself. Once she leaned back with a sigh and leaned her cheek against the rough trunk, and said, “Oh, tree . . .” But she never finished her sentence.

  But the tree guessed what it was she lacked. And it labored over the gift it was preparing for her. It bore apples every year, and every year she made pies and sauces and apple butter out of them; but it had in its heart one special apple for her alone. On its strongest limb, just outside her window, a bud began to swell.

  It swelled and grew into an apple, golden where all the rest were red, sweet-smelling, dusted with fine bloom. The seeds buried in its flesh were unique, created for her alone with all the love the tree could muster.

  One morning before anyone else was stirring she leaned from her window and saw the apple. She gazed at it for a moment; the tree swayed toward her with its offering. Reaching out she plucked it. “Lovely,” she said as she inhaled its fragrance. She bit into it.

  More seasons passed, and Laura seemed to bloom. Tom grew solicitous. Her mother did as well; they would follow her out to the bench in the garden with sweaters or shawls when the air held the slightest chill. She laughed them away, her cheeks flushing; she had never looked more lovely. On a rainy night in February she bore her children, twins, a boy and a girl.

  Leif and Erica grew swiftly, as human babies always did. They played around the roots of the tree with their puppies and kittens; they raced through the garden, they pushed each other on the new swing their father hung to replace the old frayed ropes. They seemed to share secrets no one else could understand. Their mother smiled indulgently; that was normal for twins, everyone said.

  The earth turned; snow fell and sun melted it. The tree turned its leaves up to gather nourishment, down to scatter light. On Laura’s eighty-seventh birthday, the family held a reunion at her house. She sat under the tree like a queen, quilts spread on the bench, robes over her lap, in the thin spring sunlight, and looked with delight and content on her descendents. Pink-cheeked girls and matrons, sturdy boys and tall strong men, toddlers scrambling and running around the edges, four or five babies, all with a preponderance of green eyes.

  “To think,” she said to Tom, who sat smoking his pipe beside her, “that I once thought we would never have any children. It looks as if we’ve done almost too well.”

  “Prolific bunch,” he agreed.

  “You might say that,” she said, glancing at Lisa, a young cousin who was pregnant without benefit of marriage. She sighed. “Why are they always in such a hurry? What shall we do with them?”

  “She will be all right,” he said, following her glance. “She’s a beautiful young woman.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Even so . . .”

  The tree felt a pang of guilt, a pinch of remorse. Nature spreads its seeds broadcast, and does not stop to think what becomes of the squirrel that carries them, or the bird that drops them as it flies over a forest . . . Many seeds are thrown out, so that a few may survive. The tree knew that in its innermost cells. It knew many things of which it never thought; it preferred to take life as it came, without forethought. Yet there must have been some purpose in its plan . . .

  “I have been happy here,” said Laura, leaning back against the tree with another kind of sigh. “I wish I could be buried here, beneath my tree. But that would be selfish. I will leave it for the generations to follow.”

  “It’s too soon to think of that,” he said, laying a hand on her blue-veined one. “Much too soon.”

  The tree could sense the longing, the desperate casualness of his words, and knew them for false. It too felt the touch of winter coming on. But its love had been hopeless from the beginning, save for what few gifts it had to bestow; it already felt well acquainted with sacrificial loss.

  Laura died the next fall, and was buried on a hill not far away. Apple blossoms sometimes blew across her grave, even when no wind stirred, and a fragrance clung about the air. The tree suffered, and its grief was long, but all griefs must heal at last . . . And there were apples to drop into willing hands, small creatures to shelter from rain and sun. But the tree never loved another girl as it had loved Laura.

  * * *

  Laura’s descendents spread like blackberry bushes run wild in the summer. You might catch the gleam of a particular shade of gold hair in the Tyrolean Alps, or be started by a flash of green eyes in a Mediterranean seaport.

  Then the biowars were unleashed at last, that all men had dreaded for so long, and in a matter of days destroyed almost all living things.

  In that hour the descendents of Laura discovered an amazing ability: to survive.

  They dug in their heels, bowed their heads, and rooted deep into the soil, drew sustenance from it when all else was poisoned. They existed in a state of hibernation, dreaming long troubled dreams. When the air grew clean again, they awoke to a world barren, open to them, uncluttered.

  That is how we came to be the way we are today, for the world was much different before the biowars, and before a tree fell in love with a girl. Nothing remains now in the field where the farmhouse stood; there is neither tree nor ruins, only buttercups and blackberries running riot. But we still remember and honor the first, the oldest. Leaf and bough and heart, we do not forget.

  The End

  Parenthood by Choice Inc. Invests in a Time Machine

  The woman’s tongue flicked between her lips; it could be that she was nervous. She leaned forward; her hand, dry and cool, caressed Mary’s arm. She spoke fluent Aramaic, though with a strange accent. “You’re so young, my dear, only sixteen. You have your whole life ahead of you. I’m here to help you explore all your choices.”

  Mary lowered her gaze. “My mother was my age when she had me.”

  “But you don’t have to live your mother’s life. You don’t need to limit yourself. There are other possibilities.”

  “I said yes to God,” said Mary.

  “Anyone can change her mind. You have that privilege.”

  “Of course. But—”

  “You don’t have to decide right now. Think it over. But don’t wait too long.”

  * * *

  He floats in his mother’s womb, knowing and not knowing. He is the Logos, the Word, the Colossian factor, for in him all things in heaven and earth are created and cohere. He plunged from the incandescent brilliance of his home down into darkness, where he is vulnerable, tiny, helpless. His flesh is translucent, his heart just beginning to beat, the red blood coursing through miniscule veins.

  * * *

  It had been early one morning, as Mary and her mother prepared the meal, that she had heard a humming sound coming from t
he town. Everyone had run into the street to see. There in front of the weaver’s house, raising a cloud of dust, appeared a dark angular device, like some kind of strange chariot. From it descended a woman gowned in white, her hair cut short. She paused and looked around at all the interest she had aroused, then raised a hand palm out and spoke in their language.

  “My name is Damia,” she said. “I come from a distant land. I bring you new tools and opportunities, healing medicines and wisdom that our physicians have learned. I will be happy to share these with you. I can help pregnant women especially.”

  Mary looked up at that, for the new life in her was only a few weeks old. She had not even spoken of it yet to her mother, though she must do so soon. What could this strange woman have to offer her?

  * * *

  “Stay away from her,” her friend Rachel said a week later. By now her friends all knew Mary’s story, or as much of it as she had chosen to tell.

  “Why?” Mary asked.

  “Because Miriam, you know who I mean—she went to visit her. She was pregnant, and when she came out she was no longer.”

  “No, truthfully?” Mary said. “How can that be?”

  Rachel shrugged. “There are herbs, I understand . . . But I’ve heard that the woman has instruments as well, knives so subtle they can separate flesh from flesh, babe from mother . . .”

  Mary shuddered. “How is that helping anyone?”

  “She’s teaching Miriam to use the herbs as well, and says she will take her to the city to work as a healer. She says that will be a better life for her.”

  “That cannot be,” said Mary. “At such a cost . . .”

  She was passing the weaver’s house where the stranger was staying, her water jug on her shoulder. Her mind was absorbed in her own thoughts, of Joseph and the coming babe, and she absently acknowledged the woman’s greeting.

  “Come in, Mary,” Damia said with an inviting gesture. “Come in and talk for a little.”

  Mary hesitated, but made an effort to be compassionate to the stranger. “Is there something I can help you with?”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps there is something I can do for you,” the woman said with a smile. With a hand on her arm, Damia drew Mary in and closed the door.

  * * *

  Mary glanced at the machine in the back of the shop, half hidden under a blanket. It was strange, angular, shadowy. Damia’s coming had changed life in the small town. Possibilities never conceived of hovered in the air. Women talked about it at the well, but only in elliptical sentences, half unspoken.

  “You could do so much with your life,” Damia went on in her soothing voice, her words sibilant in the quiet afternoon. “You could achieve greatness, share your wisdom, become someone of importance. You do not need to choose a life of subservience, of giving all the time. It is not necessary to suffer.”

  No, thought Mary. It is not necessary, though in her first ardor she had embraced it. The thought slid into her mind that all she would have to do is lie down and submit to the subtle instruments, and she will avoid all the pain that lies ahead.

  For motherhood is pain, she knows: lost sleep, lost pleasures, and now this woman says, lost dreams. She can avoid the years of caring and guiding, to end with the agony that she senses will follow, the grief like a sword in her heart. All she has to do is agree, and it will all be taken care of. The thought twisted through her mind, dark and seductive: it would be so easy.

  Damia leaned forward once more. “You do not need to suffer.”

  Mary drew back from her. The woman seemed so solicitous, so concerned for her welfare. She was older and wiser. There seemed to be a depth of wisdom in her eyes that belied her unlined face.

  Mary started at a prick on her shoulder. She saw the needle withdrawn and felt an instant’s dismay. Then a great weariness fell on her. She did not want to move; even speech seemed like too much effort.

  With a sigh she leaned back and felt Damia’s arm supporting her. She felt sleep like a blanket creeping over her. The woman swayed a little, to and fro, in a hypnotic rhythm.

  Mary pushed away and struggled to her feet, although every muscle in her body protested. “No,” she said. “I must go.”

  “You must sit down,” murmured Damia. “You might fall.” She put a hand on Mary’s arm, and suddenly Mary found herself in a banquet hall, facing a long table. Damia was beside her, and supported her as she sank down on a cushion.

  “You have known hunger,” Damia murmured in her ear. “Look here.” She swept her arm out, indicating the dishes before them, savory lamb, pickled eggs, round dark loaves, and the rich aroma wafting from them. “You will never be hungry again. You have only to submit to me.”

  Mary gasped and stumbled away from the table.

  Damia took her arm, and again she found herself standing in another hall. Gray-bearded men in long robes stood about her, among them some in Roman tunics. The eldest moved to clasp her hand. “Truly we are honored to have you here,” he said. “Your wisdom is unmatched, you are a pearl among women.”

  Mary looked into his eyes, and saw a well of darkness there. She drew back her hand, murmuring, “I—thank you, but you are mistaken . . .”

  Again she stood in an open space, a marketplace. Drumming filled her ears, the pounding of hooves. A phalanx of soldiers galloped toward her, as around her people scattered screaming and crying. Mary stood frozen. Damia put a hand on her arm, and suddenly around Mary stood a line of soldiers, helmets plumed, swords bared. “You need fear nothing,” Damia said. “You will be protected always.”

  Mary caught her breath on a sob. She twisted away, and found herself in the weaver’s house again, in the quiet darkness. She felt a cool breath on her cheek as if a window in heaven had opened briefly. She glanced up, but saw nothing. Still she sensed that an angel leaned above her like a hawk, wings folded, wanting to strike at the woman beside her. She drew renewed courage from the feeling.

  “I must go,” she said.

  The room shifted, shadows looming and dissolving before her. A dark shape stood in her path, barring the way to the door.

  Mary’s head swam. She bit her lip and took a step, then another. She reached out blindly and felt someone take her hand, although she saw no one. With resolution she walked toward the shadow, toward the door.

  “You are turning your back on so much, on your whole life—” Damia said. “Come back, please.”

  Mary looked at her and saw the distress in her face. She really did believe she was helping, she really thought her solution was the best one. Mary felt a great sorrow for her. She reached out and touched the woman’s arm. “I have made my choice,” she said. “I made it long ago.”

  Damia reached out toward her. “But, my dear—”

  “From now on,” Mary said, “all generations shall call me blessed.” She walked from the room, into the bright white sunlight.

  * * *

  He floats in his mother’s womb, aware and unaware, protected still. He is vulnerable and at peace as he flexes tiny limbs, basks in the warmth of her love. This threat has been averted.

  The cross still lies ahead.

  The End

  Beyond the Caverns of Madness

  He realized he was doomed the moment he entered the clearing. Great stone monoliths surrounded it, and a miasma of despair hung so thickly in the place that he could nearly see it, hanging like great webs of moss from decaying branches. Ahead he could hear a faint muttering that rose and fell in intensity.

  All his life John Riley had been fascinated by archeology, and loved following hints and clues to their sources in ancient ruins. He had studied the writings of the great archeologist L.S.B. Leakey and traced some of his footsteps, but he appreciated even more the work of the controversial Howell Hunter, who claimed to have discovered the grisly fate of the lost American colony on Roanoke Island. In his travels Riley had come to visit an aunt in New England who he had not seen for many years, and during his visit had renewed his interest in the w
ritings of the noted occultist H.P.Lovecraft.

  He had decided to search for the actual locations of some of Lovecraft’s famous tales. His studies had taken him to the little town of Cobham, where he had found employment in the local university. The inhabitants of the area were remarkably reticent when he asked them about some of the local legends, but one or two of the old men had hinted in whispers that the sites, described in the tales as centers of nameless ceremonies and obscene rites, actually existed.

  One old timer had directed him to this clearing, just west of the ancient Cutter farmhouse off Oakholm Road. “Whatever you do, fella, don’t go up there after dark,” the old man had said, fixing Riley with a frowning eye. “Some of the boys have tried that, and ended up stark raving mad.”

  “Don’t worry,” Riley had said. “I won’t go without protection.” But he did not believe one word in seven of the ghastly legends. One local tale asserted that the mighty Cthulhu himself lay asleep in the water off the coast, only awaiting the call of his disciples to rise and lay waste the countryside. Another averred that the lesser gods of this accursed pantheon met every full moon in the clearing near the farmhouse to lay their plans and advance their cause.

  Riley thought it was more likely a stray band of the KKK who met there, but he had the scientific curiosity of his calling and was anxious to see for himself. He took the precaution of obtaining a .38 pistol, and thought that was more than enough defense in case his instincts were right.

  He had driven out to Oakholm Road that afternoon, looking for the landmarks he had been given. He had found the grotesque, double-trunked elm, and pulled the car over a little way beyond it. As it was late in autumn the days were short, and he had not penetrated far along the wooded path before he had to switch on his flashlight.