Never Again

by Heather Starsong

  As I tilted my head back for a second draft, my eyes moved to the top of the boulder. I choked, gasped. The lightning had struck the krum tree. Heart pounding, I climbed up to it and knelt amidst its ashes and shattered branches. The thick, curving trunk was split, black in its long burn. There was nothing left of the cave where I had often taken shelter. Had I reached it, even the Elirians could not have saved me.

  I stroked the black scar. “You took the hit for me,” I whispered. “I live and you are destroyed.” I imagined my body lying charred on the rock under the arc of the scorched trunk. It so easily could have been. If I had not slipped. The terror of that night came back and clutched me. Kneeling on the soft bit of earth that had once been the floor of my sheltering cave, I clung to the burned trunk, waiting for the waves of panic to subside. Gradually I became aware of the sound of the stream. A dip, I thought. Perhaps a dip will steady me.

  Back down by the stream, I unbuttoned my skirt and let it fall. As I slipped my underpants down and lifted my foot to step out of them, I froze, standing on one leg like a stork, staring at my inner thigh. The wrinkled diagonal folds I was accustomed to seeing there, angling down from my groin to my knee, were gone. Instead I saw smooth, taut flesh, lightly tanned. A quiver of shock ran through me. I stumbled, coming to both feet, my panties around my ankles, and bent to look at my legs. No longer dry, scaly skin, scars of old scratches and falls, swollen knees, but straight, unblemished limbs.

  My hands were shaking so hard it was difficult to unbutton my shirt. I threw it away from me and looked down. A lean, scarless belly. A patch of bright, curly hair where there had been only straggly gray strands. I brushed my breasts and gasped. They tilted upward. I reached back to touch my buttocks. Firm and round. I held out my arms. The flab that had hung loose from my upper arms was replaced by the clean lines of well-developed muscle.

  Dizzy with shock, I closed my eyes and touched my face. My once drooping cheeks were smooth and lifted. For a long time I stood at the edge of the moving water, covering my face, my mind unable to grasp what my eyes and hands had perceived.

  At last I dropped my hands and looked down at my body. It was the beautiful, perfectly formed body of a young woman, streaked with ashes where I had touched myself with fingers stained from the remains of the krum tree.

  I began pacing around, speaking aloud to the water, the rocks, the lichen, anything that could hear my voice and help me remember I was back on Earth. “They made me young. Young. But I’m not young. I’m old. I’m eighty years old. I didn’t know they did that. I thought they just healed what was wrong inside. What was outside wasn’t wrong, just old.” I touched myself again, stroking the smooth, firm lines, leaving more streaks of ash on my flawless skin.

  All the intensity of the last two days swept through me—the weight of memories, the night of pain, encroaching death, the wonder of the Elirians, my miraculous healing, the death of the tree I loved, and now this momentous change. I dropped down into the grass and curled up in a ball. My old body gone. Gone. Sloughed off like a snakeskin. Yes, it had been frail and faulty, but it was mine. While I loved being healed of my pain and stiffness, and it was wonderful that my heart was steady, and I was glad to be alive, I didn’t want to be young again.

  The grass was soft and cool under my cheek. When did it happen? I asked myself. It must have been when they sang to me and healed everything inside. I felt the inside changes. Why didn’t I notice the outside? Because I was wearing my hiking clothes that cover me completely to protect my aging skin from the sun. Then I remembered the moment on the spaceship when I looked down at my hand and thought something was strange. I drew my hand out from where it was curled against my chest and looked at it. No gnarly knuckles, brown spots, purple veins. Smooth and young. That’s what I had seen, but I was too fascinated by our conversation to attend to it.

  All the time I was there I was absorbed in the miracle of the Elirians and their spaceship. No thought to look at myself. But now…

  What does my face look like? I wondered. I sat up and moved to the edge of the pool to look in. For a fleeting moment I saw Kiria’s eyes looking up at me. Then a light breeze ruffled the surface and erased them. I drew back, chilled by the strangeness of seeing her eyes when I sought to see my own.

  “I was going to dip,” I reminded myself. “That would be a good idea. I’m all over soot.” I stood and brought my hands together at my heart. I never dipped without a prayer, but now I had no idea what to ask of the stream. Finally I prayed, “Wash away the ashes,” and plunged in.

  My emotions were like a lava lamp, only swirling faster—joy, fear, grief, ­feelings I had no name for—one color after another predominating. As I came up, waist deep in the icy, flowing water, I felt anew the incredible vitality of my body. I shouted, gathering up water in my hands, tossing it over my head, letting it fall down on me, sparkling in the sunshine. Clearly my body loved being young. But even the feet of a young body can go numb.

  When I scrambled out, morning sun shone warm on me. Some of my confusion had been washed away with the ashes. I saw the muddy footprints on the rocks and squatted down to wash them away

  People are looking for me, I remembered. What time is it? What day? Where’s my watch? I rummaged in my pile of clothes and found it in the zipper pocket of my shirt where I always put it when I undressed to dip. I must have put it there two days ago. Two days? It seemed centuries since the old woman I had been climbed laboriously up the side of the mountain.

  The watch said nine o’clock. They were looking for me. Robin must have called and found I wasn’t home. When? How long had they been looking? I thought of Robin and felt how anxious he would be.

  I should go down. But then? I would have to relate to people, and I didn’t know who I was anymore. My special place shone in perfect beauty and it was still early in the day. I’ll stay a little while, I decided. Some yoga on the soft tundra might help me find myself.

  I was soon lost in the wonder of my body, how I could bend forward with no pull or ache in my sacrum, how all my postures flowed with more ease and flexibility than I had ever experienced. I tried a wheel, a posture I had been unable to do for years, dropped back into it with perfect control, and pressed my hips up toward the sky, exulting.

  The warmth of the sun dimmed. Clouds emerged over the peaks. They were white with only touches of gray, but a ripple of fear streaked through me. I arced up out of the wheel and stood.

  “No,” I whispered. “I’m not staying too long this time.”

  I took a deep breath to calm myself. One more dip and then I go. An intention? I felt so strange to myself that I didn’t know what to choose. The ­intention I’d made two days ago no longer fit; my limitations had been lifted. What will that mean? Confusion threatened again, but I realized I had a new concept. “May I find the ulada for this new life given me and carry it out with integrity,” I prayed, and plunged one more time.

  My bathing cloth was gone, so I dried myself with my skirt. Only when I saw streaks of ash on my skin again did I realize the skirt was sooty, not beautifully clean as it had been when Lillilia brought it to me. I never asked them how they got my clothes dry and clean so quickly. Even my heavy gray cloak. Perhaps they saw the essence of my clothes, too.

  I shook the ashes out of my skirt and shirt and dressed, glancing anxiously at the sky. Mostly blue, but clouds were forming. After another drink from my water bottle, I gathered up my scattered belongings, socks into the toes of my boots, hat on my head, knee braces—I didn’t think I’d need them—into the top of the pack. Gray cloak tucked under the flap. Boot laces tied together. With one last look around, I strapped on my pack, picked up my boots and staff, and set off.

  As I walked down beside the waterfall that divided around pink flowers the color of Kiria, I looked for my bathing cloth. The bright blue should be easy to spot amid the muted colors of the tundra. Further down there was still no sign
of it, and the stream bank soon became crowded with willows, impassable. Let it go, I thought sadly. It was old and torn and now it’s gone. Like my old body.

  My mood quickly shifted as I crossed the valley. It was so easy to bound from rock to rock, so delightful to leap across marshy places, to squat to smell a tiny flower, to run up the last steep slope to where the stunted evergreens hid me from the main trail.

  I parted the evergreens and looked through. No one in sight. I sprinted across the open space, and was sitting at the edge of the trail snugging up my bootlaces when two young men with big backpacks strode up toward me. They glanced curiously at me and slowed their pace. I looked up at them from under the brim of my blue hat.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  They stopped and looked down at me. “Morning,” the one with the green hat answered. A slow smile spread across his face. The other one, with a red hat, was smiling, too. He had bright brown eyes and was very attractive.

  I tilted my head back, looked into his eyes, and returned his smile. An electric zing danced between us. Shocked, I bent my head.

  He stepped closer. “Which way are you going?” he asked.

  “Down,” I answered.

  “That’s too bad,” he said. “I was thinking it might be nice to walk with you a way.”

  I jumped to my feet, grabbed my staff. “Have a good hike,” I said, and fled down the trail.

  “None of that!” I admonished my wanton eyes as I dashed headlong downward. “Absolutely none of that. I may have a young body, but I’m not young. I know where that kind of thing leads.”

  I was running, easily, lightly, even leaping over roots and rocky places. As my shock subsided, the lava lamp swirled again, and I relaxed into the delight of my motion. I came to the two stream crossings and didn’t hesitate a moment. It was easy to balance, dancing across. At the second one, the one that had daunted me on the way up, I stopped in the middle of the log bridge and drank in the sparkle of the water rushing under me.

  Down and down. Thunder rumbled faintly behind me and I tensed. But it was far above, the sky still mostly blue. I ran, dropping again into the joy of it. At the rocky place just below Sapphire Lake, where I had fallen on the way up, I swung my stick in front of me, and pivoted around it, dancing from rock to rock. So easy! I ran on, lightfooted, past the people in front of me going down.

  At the gateway between the two big ponderosas, I turned and looked back, as I always did, cherishing the last glimpse of the waterfall, the snowy peaks. I can come again soon, I told myself with a sudden rush of gladness. I’m strong now. This does not have to be my last hike of the year.

  Thunder rumbled louder. It was dark over the peaks now and lightning flashed. I hurried into the shelter of the trees. Before long it began to rain. I had stopped to put on my cloak, when I heard male voices on the trail behind me. Instinctively, I veered off the path and dropped into a hollow in the ground behind some low bushes. I peered out as they passed. Eight men, five in the lead with big packs, strode down the trail, heads bent in the rain. My breath caught when I saw the next two. Robin and Greg. The eighth man walked a little behind them.

  “I’m sorry,” he was saying. “I know how you must feel. But we just can’t risk it. There’s been two lightning deaths up there already this summer. We’ll go back up as soon as the storms clear.”

  Robin and Greg looked grim, their legs spattered with mud, their faces pale. My heart ached for them. I should have run out and let them know I was safe, but still I hid, afraid to show myself. Would they even recognize me?

  That must be the mountain rescue team with them. They were looking for an eighty-year-old woman. My long skirt and cloak covered my body, but my face—I still didn’t know what it looked like, but after my experience with the young man in the red hat, I was pretty sure it didn’t look eighty. And they would want to know where I’d been while they searched for me for two days. What could I say? They would never believe the truth.

  I hadn’t thought of that part.

  As soon as the men passed, I slipped from my hiding place and followed them, keeping just out of sight. My mind scrambled, exploring one impossible story after another. I didn’t want to begin my new ulada by lying. But I couldn’t speak of the Elirians, not to the mountain rescue team. If they did believe me, they might tell others and a search would begin. Maybe the Elirians weren’t so safe as Tirini thought. I couldn’t bear to think of my delicate saviors in the hands of cold science or the military.

  But they wouldn’t believe me, I realized. They would think I was crazy. I couldn’t tell them.

  The rain dwindled. Ahead of me, Robin and Greg and the man walking with them stopped where the trail reached the end of Silver Lake, not far from the parking lot. I drew back behind a stand of trees. Greg touched Robin’s shoulder.

  “We’re going to hang here for a bit,” he said to the man walking with them.

  “Okay,” their companion answered. He was a big man with a blond beard. “But don’t go back up. We’ve got coffee and food in the truck.” He bumped fists with Greg and strode off toward the parking lot.

  Robin sank down on a wet log and bent his head into his hand. Greg sat beside him.

  “We should have searched more around where her stuff was,” Robin said. “She’s gotta be up there.”

  “We combed every inch of that valley yesterday, and the stream.”

  “She might have gone up. There might be a cave or something.”

  “Those slopes are practically vertical. She couldn’t have gone up there. You know how she weaves around, hanging onto that stick of hers. It’s a wonder she got as far as she did.”

  “She walks okay once she gets going.”

  “True. But, Rob, she didn’t have her shoes or her stick.”

  “Then where is she?”

  “I don’t know, but I think she’s gone. Think of it this way, it’s how she always said she wanted to die, in the mountains, under the sky. That was an incredible place where we found her pack.”

  Robin kept his head down. “I just don’t think she’s dead.”

  I couldn’t hold back any longer then. I stepped out from behind the trees. “Greg, Robin, I’m here.”

  They leaped up and spun around. “Mom!”

  I ran into their arms. They held me tight, my face against Greg’s shoulder. Their questions poured over me.

  “Where were you?”

  “What happened?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay.”

  Greg moved me away from him, holding my shoulders. My hood fell back. They stared at me. Greg’s hands tightened on my shoulders. His eyes grew huge. I looked up at him, holding my breath.

  “Mom-m?” he finally blurted out, his voice breaking in the middle of the syllable like a young child’s.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  Robin”s face was washed with wonder. He touched my cheek. “You’re alive.”

  “Yes.”

  “You look… like you did when I was a kid,” Greg stammered. “Fifty years ago.”

  Shaken by his words, I lowered myself onto the log.

  Greg sat down beside me. “Mom? Are you okay?”

  “Yes.” It seemed to be all I could say.

  Robin sat down on my other side and took my hand.

  Greg bent to look in my face. “What happened to you?” His words tumbled over each other. “You’re all changed. Young! How could…? What happened? We’ve been searching for you for two days. We thought you were dead. Where were you?”

  “I don’t know.” It was true. I didn’t know where I had been, high above the Earth.

  The big blond man came loping up the trail. “Hey, Greg, Rob! Come on down now. We’ve got soup hot. You’ll feel better—”

  He broke off, his jaw dropped, when he saw me.

  Gre
g pulled my hood back up, hiding my face. “Hey, Pete. We found her. She was walking down the trail behind us.”

  Pete came up to me. “Clara Norwood?”

  I stood up, my staff in my hand. With my other hand I folded my hood over half my face. “Yes.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” I said again. It was hard to talk. I could see he was a caring man, but he was so big, so male.

  “Where the hell were you? We’ve taken this mountain apart the last two days, found your pack and boots and walking stick—” He looked me over. “I see you have them. Where were you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” He pushed back his hat and rubbed his brow. “Well, I’m sure glad to see you alive and on your feet. Let’s go down to the truck and tell the team you’re safe. We have an EMT who can check you out, and some food.” He glanced at me curiously. “You look in pretty good shape, but I’ll bet you’re hungry after being up there for three days. Come on.”

  He led the way down the trail toward the parking lot. Greg started after him. Robin touched Greg’s shoulder. “Maybe we shouldn’t.”

  Greg stopped and they looked at each other. “We’ve got to say goodbye to the guys and thank them,” Greg said. “They’ve spent two days searching with us. It’ll be okay. Just keep your hood up, Mom. We’ll make it brief.”

  I followed them, doubting it would be okay. The hood wouldn’t hide my face for long. I needed a veil.

  The truck was an RV of sorts, with a small kitchen, some chairs, and a couch that was probably a pull-out bed. It was crowded with men and their smells. I kept my head turned away from them, my hood folded across my face. There were exclamations and cheers at my retrieval, a tumult of male voices. I was introduced to them all, but could only remember a few names—Matt with a thatch of dark hair, Chad bald and burly, Herb small and wiry with a red beard, and Pete.

  I found myself seated on the hard couch. The truck was warm. “Can I take your cloak?” Matt asked.