Never Again

by Heather Starsong

  Never Again

  Heather Starsong

  Barking Rain Press

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events described herein are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Never Again

  Copyright © 2015 Heather Starsong (www.heatherstarsong.com)

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’’ by Dylan Thomas, from THE POEMS OF DYLAN THOMAS, copyright ©1952 by Dylan Thomas.

  Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

  Edited by Robin Wilkinson (www.writingthatsings.com)

  Proofread by Harrison Fountain (www.orangepeals.com)

  Cover artwork by Michael Leadingham (www. michaelleadingham.com)

  Barking Rain Press

  PO Box 822674

  Vancouver, WA 98682 USA

  www.BarkingRainPress.org

  ISBN Trade Paperback: 1-941295-26-6

  ISBN eBook: 1-941295-27-4

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2015940917

  First Edition: August 2015

  Printed in the United States of America

  9 7 8 1 9 4 1 2 9 5 2 7 4

  Warnings

  There are warnings enough—

  That first cold night in August

  When Andromeda swings up in the East

  And crickets are silent.

  The early dusk of September,

  Heavy dew in the garden,

  And blurring eyes, and aches,

  And names forgotten.

  Never again, never again

  The summer of strength and beauty.

  Friends waver and vanish—

  O chill north wind of warning!

  Look long, love deep

  While you may.

  Too soon December.

  Katharine Day Barnes

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Epigraph

  Also from Heather Starsong

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Epilogue

  About Heather Starsong

  About Barking Rain Press

  Other Titles Available from Barking Rain Press

  The Chronocar

  Of Machines & Magics

  The Celibate Succubus

  Curiously Twisted Tales

  The Last Stand of Daronwy

  Postponing Armageddon

  Revenge

  To Suffer a Witch

  The Unremarkable Squire

  Also from Heather Starsong

  Leaves In Her Hair

  Coming Soon from Heather Starsong

  The Purest Gold

  www.HeatherStarsong.com

  Prologue

  It is not unusual for an old woman to remember being young. But it is strange for a young woman to remember being old. As I did.

  This thought comes to me as I lie face down in the midst of my little vegetable garden, having snagged my cane, lost my balance, and fallen. I am not hurt, but shaken. The tilled earth is soft, and it feels like too much effort to get up just now.

  My head is turned to the side. From this position my garden is upside down. I have a worm’s eye view around the roots of bushy lettuces, the orange tops of carrots under their ferny leaves, tomato plants towering over me, hung with bright fruit. There are weeds everywhere.

  It’s all undone, all the work I did in my garden when I was still young, before I went up the mountain. It’s hard to believe that only four days ago I walked freely there, high above tree line, ran lightly, leaping from rock to rock.

  I turn my head. Dizziness spins through me and my eyes go dark. I am in the spaceship, the Elirians around me, touching me with their strange, seven-fingered hands, transforming my body.

  Greg comes running. “Mom, what happened? Are you okay?”

  I open my eyes. I’m not in the spaceship; I’m in my garden. “I’m fine,” I say. “Just resting.”

  Greg bends over me. “What the hell are you doing? You shouldn’t be trying to work in your garden yet. You just got home from the hospital yesterday.”

  He is frowning, his lips pressed together. I guess I’m hard to care for. The change was so sudden I forget I can’t move easily anymore, can’t squat to tend my garden, that I must lean on my cane and be careful.

  Greg lifts me to my feet. I smell the faint tang of his sweat. In spite of his impatience, he is gentle, supporting me with his strong arm as he helps me into the house and settles me in my rocking chair. I lean my head back and close my eyes.

  I know they are far, far away now, across the galaxies, but still they seem near. I remember the soft touch of their radiant fur, see their luminous eyes, hear their melodious voices singing, Write your story.

  It seems a small thing to do in the face of great need. But now they are gone, I would do whatever they ask. After all, they are far older and wiser than I.

  I am too weary to write now, and the story isn’t finished, but I can start remembering. It all began when I climbed the mountain on my birthday.

  Chapter 1

  The path was steep, crisscrossed by roots of tall evergreens that towered above me on either side. Early morning sun slanted through the trees, dappling the path and casting long shadows ahead of me. Using my stick for balance, I climbed with difficulty, my knees stiff and aching. My toe snagged on a rock and I stumbled forward. As I caught myself and straightened, my heart wavered, skipped a beat, stopped for a moment, then raced. I leaned on my stick, almost blacking out. At last the familiar dizzying feeling passed.

  I took a deep breath. Crisp, cool air, smelling of pine needles and moist earth. Another step up, then another. I can make it, I told myself. I will. Just this one more time.

  Each year on my birthday, I had made it somehow, never knowing if I could, up the long side of the mountain, passing from wonder to wonder, to my special place. That year, the year 2011, it was my eightieth birthday.

  My heart was still uneven, racing in short bursts as I continued to climb, watching carefully now for rocks and roots. A shiver of fear ran though me. Only a few days ago my cardiologist had warned me I was at high risk for heart attack when it raced like that. Was I crazy to try to climb so high and far?

  Behind me I heard laughter and shouts, and then in a moment I was surrounded by little boys in blue Cub Scout uniforms. They had arrived in the parking lot just as I was leaving, bursting out of their van and scattering like seeds exploding out of a dry seedpod. I had turned back to watch them, laughing with delight. Those little boys jumped and ran, punched each other, shouted, ran back and forth across the parking lot as if running were nothing, jumped as if they had to, as if it were an essential part of their being. The two young men accompanying them were calling them together as I started up the trail.

  Now they surged by me, still running, jumping over the rocks and roots. I laughed again; I couldn
’t help it. They were so exuberant, so alive! At the same time a sob caught in my throat. I used to jump like that, run, dance.

  One young man kept up with the boys; the other slowed and walked beside me. “Beautiful day,” he said, smiling down at me.

  I pulled myself together. “It is indeed,” I responded. How handsome he was, his tanned young face under a wide-brimmed hat, his clear eyes.

  “How far are you going?” he asked.

  “As far as my legs will carry me.”

  “Have a good one.” He quickened his steps and moved on, and soon the whole group was out of sight around a bend in the trail.

  Alone on the path, I stopped and questioned myself again. Maybe I should just go a little way, sit by Silver Lake a while, and then go home. Not push it.

  But if I didn’t go this year… Sudden tears stung my eyes. If I didn’t go this year, then I would never go again. I’d give up, tell myself I was too old.

  Wind moved through the pines, a soft, soughing sound that felt like the voice of my sorrow.

  Shall I never walk again in the beauty of the high country, never go again to that magical place I loved beyond all reason, never again dip in the icy crystal stream, lie on the soft tundra, the stern jagged peaks around me, the deep sky above?

  I’d already lost so much. If I lost this too, would life still be worth living? Would I just shrivel?

  No.

  With an impatient gesture, I rubbed a tear off my cheek, took a firm grip on my staff, and started walking again. I must not give up.

  One more steep part and the trail leveled out, opening into a view of Silver Lake and the peaks above. There was still snow up there, even this late in the summer, white against the deep blue of the sky. I tilted my face up. No blue anywhere so deep as the blue of Rocky Mountain sky.

  When the trail branched, I followed the sign that said, “Sapphire Lake, 2 miles.” My heart had steadied, going back to its normal ka-thunk, ka-thunk, and my legs were losing their stiffness, finding their rhythm. I’m okay, I thought with a surge of joy. I’ll make it.

  I knew this trail. I had walked it every summer for more than forty years. Each rock and tree, each turn in the path, each new vista greeted me with the welcome of a long-beloved friend. The path ran for almost a mile along the side of Silver Lake, wide, smooth, and mostly level, leading through ancient evergreens with a mantle of moss and flowers at their feet. Little rivulets trickled out of rocky crevices and crossed the path. Here and there the glimmer of the lake shone through spaces between the trees. On the other side of the path, I noticed a tall, lightning-blackened tree standing among the live ones. An image flickered through my mind from a dream that had waked me two nights before. There was a forest like the one I was walking through now.

  I stepped to the side of the trail, leaned on my staff, and closed my eyes. The dream filtered back, at first in scattered images, then in its entirety.

  I was floating in the sky, disembodied. Far below I could see Earth, blue, marbled with white clouds. A voice somewhere near or within me said, It is time to return to Earth.

  No.

  It is time.

  When the voice spoke again, I felt a pull from Earth. I resisted, then surrendered and began to fall, slowly, slowly, drifting between stars. At last I came to rest on a mountaintop, taking on the translucent shape of a human body. A path opened before me and I followed it, my body becoming more substantial as the path led me always downward over tundra and rocks, past lakes and streams, until I came to a forest. There in the trees near the trail stood a tall, black-robed figure, his face hidden by a deep hood. He opened his black cloak, and I went into it. Darkness, peace. Wrapped in his embrace, I knew he would be there when I needed him. He was my way home.

  When he unfolded his cloak, I saw that the path led to an opening in the forest. Below in the valley was a village. I could see people moving around their houses, fenced gardens, beasts in the fields. I walked a short way, then turned back to Death, for so I knew him to be. He nodded to me and I went on my way, reassured.

  It was a good dream. I stood awhile longer letting its comfort wash over me, then glanced up at the black tree that reminded me of Death. “I’m glad you’re there, but I’m not ready yet,” I told it as I stepped back onto the trail. “I want a few more years to walk in these beautiful mountains.”

  As I went on, I thought of the first time I had walked this trail. I had recently left behind the wreckage of my first marriage and moved to Colorado with my two teenage children and a new husband, Jon. Jon and I found this trail in late summer. I remembered how happy I had felt, deeply in love, walking hand in hand with him. Little did I know then.

  Soon I reached a place where the trail divided again, the left fork looping back around the lake, the right going up. Up I went, my steps quickening, my spirit soaring. The trail grew steeper, still leading through the forest. It crossed a small bridge over a creek that rushed down from above, its voice loud among the quiet trees. Further on, two big ponderosas, one on each side of the trail, made a gateway for the ending of the forest and framed a dramatic view of the peaks and the waterfall spilling down the precipice below Sapphire Lake. I paused to look through, remembering the first time I had come there, how awed I had been. I still was.

  Now I climbed along the edge of a wide valley. The river from Sapphire Lake flowed down the center, shining in the sunlight. I walked in wonder, beauty all around me—the sparkle of sunlight on pine needles, the seed-heavy grasses bending in the wind, the bright wildflowers. I stopped to trace the lacy gray-green pattern of lichen on a rock by the side of the trail. Further on, I pressed my nose against the trunk of a ponderosa. It smelled like butterscotch. I pulled off a bubble of sap and walked on, sniffing it on my fingertips.

  At a sharp turn in the path, I came to a rocky outcropping with micro worlds of tiny flowers and mosses in its crevices. A resting place.

  I was hot. I dropped my pack and wiggled out of my gray cloak. That cloak, deep-hooded, made of tightly-woven Welsh wool, imbued with the smoke of many campfires, was a treasured possession. I always carried it with me, even though it was heavy, as it could keep out a light rain, or a chill wind, or serve as a blanket when I rested on the ground. You never knew what might arise in the mountains.

  Now I folded it and tucked it under the flap of my pack, then sat, legs straight in front of me. My knee braces, tubes of supportive elastic, always bunched up and pinched me when I walked. I straightened them, pushed my wispy white hair back under my hat, took a drink from my water bottle. I mustn’t stop long, I told myself. I need to reach my special place before noon to have time to enjoy it and still be on my way down before the thunderstorms come.

  Just before the last steep ascent to Sapphire Lake, a little path leads off the trail to the bottom of the waterfall. I followed it, stepping over brush the forest rangers had put there to conceal it, down through the trees, squishing through the marshy place at the edge. The cascade poured out of the lake high above, rushing, roaring, sparkling in many channels around islands of flowers, past my feet and on down into the valley.

  Once long ago, twenty years or more it must have been, I had come there alone, crossed that turbulent waterfall, barefoot, almost knee deep, bracing myself with my stick against the tumult of the current, my skirt hem soaked, then scrambled up the almost-vertical rocky slope on the other side, on all fours at times, to come to the lake. Ah, long gone that agile woman who would dare such challenge. It seemed impossible that she could be the same woman as I, standing at the water’s edge, stiff-kneed and cautious.

  I stood a while, drinking in the sweet air off the tumbling water, then turned back on the hidden path to the main trail. The last bit before the lake was the steepest part. I used to just stride up it, I thought, impatient with myself as I stopped halfway to catch my breath, my heart pounding, my knees aching. If only my knees didn’t hurt. Never mind. I
can still do it. It just takes a little longer.

  The very last part before the lake was rocky, rising in big, irregular steps. I set my staff carefully, but as I tried to maneuver an especially high step, my leg buckled and I fell forward, banging my knee sharply on the edge of the rock above. I gasped and crouched there a moment in shock, then, dragging my injured leg behind me, crawled on two hands and one knee to the side of the trail. There a spreading fir shaded a soft patch of earth. I leaned against its trunk, drawing my wounded knee up against my chest. I felt nauseated, shaky, near tears, and my breath came in little short bursts. Putting my attention there, I worked to slow it. Long inhale, exhale.

  My long denim skirt was torn. Gingerly, I moved it aside. No blood. The knee brace had protected me from scrapes, but my knee throbbed from the impact.

  Maybe you won’t make it today, a voice within me commented. After all, you’re eighty and this is the second time you’ve stumbled. You have to admit you’re not so steady on your feet as you used to be.

  My heart took off in a series of rapid beats, and I had a moment of panic. I moved my leg, stretching it out and bringing it back to my chest.

  I’ll be all right, I answered the inner voice. It’s not broken. In my pack, I found my water bottle and a pouch with ibuprofen. Three magic little orange tablets. They always helped.

  After resting a little longer, I pulled myself to my feet, holding onto the tree trunk. My staff still lay among the rocks in the trail. Carefully, testing my leg with each step, I walked to it, glad no one had come along and tripped over it while I was recovering.

  I climbed the rest of the rocky place on all fours, and so came at last to Sapphire Lake, 11,500 feet above sea level.

  There was a place I always rested, just above the lake on a bit of grassy slope. I slipped off my pack, stretched out my legs, and breathed in the view. High, rocky peaks with patches of snow towered above me. Below me, the lake shimmered in the morning sunlight. A light wind rippled its surface and colors flowed across it, green, blue, even purple in the shadows.