The Necessity of Stars

by E. Catherine Tobler

  It was easy to envision her beneath the trees, walking the paths worn into the undergrowth. Easy to dream her in the halls of the house, staring down at the remains of the moat that circled the walls. Sometimes I pictured her on her knees, digging in the dirt, digging until the soil was hard beneath her nails. I often had trouble remembering the facts of my days, so it was easier to make my own, to picture Eleanor with the softly blooming iris and aquilegia, so that I could remember it all as her creation. Someone had made this space, who better than her? Without a creator, the garden felt unmoored. Surely it had been composed with the same care as Monet’s Giverny, every house window framing a singular painting.

  To imagine her hands cupping the pale petals of the Félicité et Perpétue roses was to remember that the nearby garden gate the roses tumbled over was the path toward Delphine’s hands next door. To think that Eleanor had washed the horizon with the gently blooming trees, arranging the pink, the cream, the lavender, with glimpses of sometimes-blue sky between was to reassure myself that people had done good works and could do them again.

  But the darkness.

  The—

  I could not remember the word.

  The darkness moved again and my chest hurt and I decided that if this was it, it was fine. Delphine would find me in the grass and she would wonder over my bare feet, but she would call the proper people and they would bundle me away into the—

  “Shadow,” I said, remembering what it was called as the shadow rose from the ground. It took on dimension, like a cloud rising from the grass. It bubbled up as if it had a thunderstorm in its belly, and I could all of a sudden pick out shapes and forms from the darkness. It was not merely a shadow, but contained a face.

  I took a step back, the cold grass prickling my foot. I could not breathe and I could not think as the face emerged from the shadow. It was not human, but it contained enough similarities that I found myself picking out eyes, a nose, a mouth that was more pincer than lip. A broad shoulder curved into a broader wing, wings the color of oil on black water—the more I looked at the figure, the more it felt made of black pond water and not shadow, because it was fluid, perhaps trying to contain itself to this form. Branch-thinarms tapered to even thinner hands, with only three fingers, one perhaps a twice-long thumb.

  The figure moved toward me, and I moved away, and it felt like a dance. I didn’t feel pursued so much as I felt studied, and I studied in turn, because I knew I would not run away. I didn’t feel I could run—this body has not been that reliable—but I didn’t want to run, despite not understanding what I was looking at. I had never been one to run, of course—I had met with Prime Minister Johnson and First Minister Campbell, and once upon a time they said only Bréone Hemmerli could go to the Kingdom because only I had been able to untangle what each side truly desired. (It wasn’t so complicated or difficult to respect a peoples’ inherent worth, after all.)

  “My name is Bréone Hemmerli,” I said into the morning air, “and I am the Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations.”

  At the sound of my voice, the figure took a step back. I took a step forward. I felt curiously small, because the shadow was broad and tall, even if the arms were oddly thin—tree branches, I thought, and the idea stole my breath, because tree shadows, but the shadow moved again and I moved too. The shadow moved parallel to the pond, the water directly behind. I could not see through the shadow—the figure was solid, whatever else it might be. It reached, not for me, but for the nearest tree, which moved from its grasp, which fell apart into a second shadow form, that slithered through the iris beds and away. The first shadow stared at me.

  It felt strangely accusing, and I was back to not breathing, because I was staring into eyes unlike any I had ever seen. One burned blue, the other bright, the iris encircled by rings. Ironic, that—the iris of the eye, the iris of my garden. My brain raced to make sense of it all, and I could only remember that I was barefoot—of all things to come back to—and it was then my body finally failed me. I fell to the grass and could not breathe, could not think. There was a dark weight upon my chest and then nothing more until Delphine slapped me across the cheek.

  The canopy of trees behind Delphine’s head was so bright. Watery sun tried to pierce the gray sky, but could not quite. I sat up much more quickly than I ever should have, and promptly vomited into the grass. Delphine’s hands fussed with me, and I couldn’t understand what she meant to do, only that I didn’t want her doing it. I pushed her hands away and away again, because she would not stop.

  “Bréone— Stop it, Bréone— Bréone....”

  It was then I realized she was crying, and I stopped trying to push her away. I saw she’d brought the cart with her, and I helped her get me into it—we joked that we would be wheeling each other about one day, and here it was. My backside was damp from the grass, but Delphine didn’t care. She hauled me up and into the cart, and then toward the house. The house—why had I been outside the house?

  I couldn’t remember.

  3

  Memory is a form of fiction—a story that keeps the days threaded together in proper order. Experts in memory function say your first memory probably never happened, that it is a fiction you've told yourself so many times you've simply come to believe it as truth.

  The first thing I remember of my life is this: I am standing in a pond, the water gathered around my waist, the lily stems tickling my legs. There are no leaves on the trees that arch over the pond—it is winter, and yet the pond has not frozen. Every branch above me is bare, but for the spruce and pine. My feet curl into the mud bottom and I am filled with a desperate need to get away. From what? From who?

  When I try to wade out, I am rooted in the mud. The lily stems no longer tickle; they coil around my ankles, and up my legs, and they haul me down. I am pulled into the water and it stings in my nose, in my sinuses. The world doesn’t go instantly black; I thrash in the water and the bubbles are so bright, I mistake them for stars. They glow. I reach for them, but cannot close my hand on anything.

  When I do slap the grass that marks the shore—I’m almost there, I’m almost free—the lilies haul me back. They grab me by the shoulders and haul me beneath the water, and that’s when the world goes dark. There is no sound, there is no breath, and I know that I am dying.

  And then I am not. I am on the edge of the pond, spluttering water, trying to make sense of the net of branches above me. They are clouds of darkness, blooming nebula as my eyes try to readjust. And then they are solid, only trees after all.

  Is it real? I can tell you where that forest is—the trees stand in burned ruin now, the warming earth making every season a fire season—but I cannot tell you if I was really there. I have no memory of my parents traveling with me when I was a child, and if they did not take me, who would have? Stories are supposed to comfort—even a horror story tells us by the end that all will be well for we have slain the monster. But if this memory is only a story, it doesn't comfort.

  Relating this story to Tura who sits across from me offers no clarity. Tura listens, but does not offer opinions. We share the same table every day, the wrought iron table in my garden, with its two chairs, each cushioned now because my bones complain otherwise. I remember a time when I didn’t need such comforts, when I could tuck my legs beneath me and know no pain at all. Tura does not look comfortable in the chair, but has never asked for another; their body is part insect, part tree, long branch arms and longer branch legs wedged into the wrought iron chair that perfectly complements the tea table. Tura’s strange mouth can neatly sever a cucumber sandwich in two.

  Tura has a concept of memory, described it to me as clothing, as armor, as the thing you put on to defend yourself from the world. Memory protects us, Tura says; memory keeps us from burning ourselves on the hot coal we once picked up; memory tells us not to stray from the path and into the woods, for wolves linger there. Stories again, see. Do I remember that from a story, or did a wolf find me in a c
learing and did we share the same breath? Memory, Tura says, allows us to become what we like, what we need to be in order to hide what we are.

  I have never hidden what I am—even when I have wished so desperately to hide away from everything. Tura tells me they have and often. Tura tells me how most recently they were the gnarled oak poised at the edge of my garden. The tree that stood there for as long as I can remember is no longer there, it is true, and here sits Tura across from me. Was the oak Tura after all, or was it memory that took the tree away?

  Perhaps I dreamed the oak, for I told myself stories of it often, how it was the last tree to have survived the wreck that befell the Forêt de Rouvray. A tree that escaped the tile works and pottery kilns that consumed its brethren, a tree that had uprooted itself and walked its way to Irislands, because it found my carefully curated grounds to be a sanctuary.

  “Hiding is our way,” Tura said. “We believed your world was dead—where better to hide?”

  The dead world should not have troubled me—I was born into this world, after all, a world whose resources were worn thin, a world whose people had turned their backs on nature and had been rejected by nature in return. Once, the stories said, Earth didn’t burn all the time. Once, rains were not torrential and flooding.

  “But we arrived and found you,” Tura added, leaning forward to pinch another bunch of greenery from one of the many thriving bushes between their fingers. They nibbled the sweet leaves and took a sloppy swallow of tea, before leaning back in the chair. They were as comfortable as I had ever seen them. “Maybe you are here for a reason. Maybe you can help us after all, and we can help you.”

  4

  The following morning, I could not easily remember how Delphine had picked me up from the grass (her hands on my body, watery and indistinct, but insistent nonetheless), but my body ached from the fall, so I told myself it had to have happened. I had a vague memory of Delphine making me tea—we had not gone to a doctor, because this happened often. I could remember her telling me to be careful, but if that had been yesterday or another day entirely, I could not say. The days often blurred together if I didn’t keep to a structure, and if I had fallen yesterday, there’d been a break in the structure. I had fallen outside—in the grass—but I didn’t know how I had come to be outside, because I always stayed inside now. Inside was, if not safe, controllable.

  Staring down at the garden didn’t provide an immediate answer, but it did make me shudder. I didn’t understand the reaction—looking at the garden usually brought me pleasure, but today I felt only fear prickling up my spine. Don’t go out there, I thought, and laughed at myself. The garden looked perfectly normal, the morning sun struggling to break through the gray cloud cover. The iris shivered in a slight breeze, and so did the trees, their leaves all a flutter. The tree shadows crisscrossed the face of the pond, new lilies having burst into bloom everywhere. I was certain they were new—and that was as curious a feeling as being certain I didn’t remember what had drawn me to the garden.

  “Come on, Bréone. You remember.” My skin ran with goosebumps. I looked at the tree shadows again and a muscle spasmed in my back.

  I refused the memory. Turned my back on the window and made my way to the bathroom instead. I washed, finding pieces of grass between my toes that I deliberately ignored as they washed down the drain. I hadn’t walked barefoot in the garden in years, and it made no sense that I’d done so now. When I was clean, I was certain I had imagined the grass. Imagined Delphine carefully touching me the way she once had.

  I dressed while watching the news, which was perhaps a mistake; there was rarely anything good through those channels, given the state of the world. This morning seemed especially bad, as there had been a terrorist attack in London. I sank to the foot of my bed, watching the confusion unfold—it was early yet and not even the news anchors knew exactly what had happened.

  News coming out of London was always vague these days, isolated and secluded from the rest of the world. But the Kingdom remained a target, a delicious target, because no one knew exactly what went on inside its island borders. (The talk was ridiculous, of course, the public having turned the Kingdom into The Island of Doctor Moreau.) Many were dead, that much the news anchors were certain of, but the perpetrators remained at large. They wouldn’t easily leave the Kingdom, for no one arrived or departed without intense scrutiny.

  The live cameras were drone-based, news organizations still allowed some manner of access, and they swept over a park that looked like Hyde Park, if memory served. (Did it serve? In the moment, it seemed to.) A structure in the park was burning, the fire rapidly spreading through the parkland itself, and police were still trying to gain control of the crowds, as fire teams rushed toward the flames.

  “It appears that a bandstand suffered the direct hit—a strike from the sky? A ground-based explosion? No one is sure, but as you can see, the surrounding parkland is now also burning—first responders are streaming into the area now, trying to contain fire and people both. This is Harshad Navuluri—now let’s throw it to Jane for the seven day forecast with continued flooding across the—”

  I snapped the screen off, because the burning park was reminiscent of something, something I could not put my finger on. I finished struggling into my clothing and walked back to the window, where I overlooked the garden once more.

  The blackness on my grass.

  As if it had been burnt.

  And then it had moved—and had a face.

  “No,” I said, but I moved from the window, out of my bedroom and downstairs. I paused in the kitchen only long enough to slide my feet into shoes—plastic and bright orange because they were my gardening shoes even if I hadn’t gardened in years. I stepped outside and the air was warm, almost muggy.

  Nothing in the garden moved. There was not a breath of air, every flower and branch utterly still. I walked toward the deep rows of iris, but not even they moved. It was as though someone had pressed pause on the world.

  It was then I noticed the lack of birdsong. Every hair on the back of my neck stood up. I must have made a grave mistake leaving the house; the birds are the first to let you know something is amiss. If you cannot trust your own aging mind, perhaps listen to the birds. Had there been birds yesterday? Yesterday? What did I mean?

  The silence almost nauseated me. It was unnatural. Without the birds, seeds would not move, and while they never intentionally carried pollen from one flower to another, they often still did it. I saw no bee, no fly, nothing moving at all, not even a ripple on the surface of the pond.

  Though nothing in my garden resembled the destruction in Hyde Park—no darkness, no flames, I felt momentarily paralyzed as a thicker cloud moved across the face of the sun. The entire world dimmed and I could hardly breathe. My skin prickled as it had when Delphine drew my hair across my shoulder, just as she had drawn weeds from the pond. There was nothing amiss, other than my own mind, and perhaps it was this that made me sickest of all.

  Carefully, I turned around and marched myself back to the kitchen, where I closed and locked the door, and set to making coffee. Coffee was harder to come by these days; the land where it was easily grown had been rendered largely useless, and what coffee did grow was under threat from fungi that loved the warmer temperatures, the more humid air, even at higher altitudes. The UN had connections, of course, so we were lucky in this respect.

  I drank my coffee and the garden didn’t move, and by the time I’d finished my cup, I convinced myself I’d imagined the entire thing. By the time I reached my desk, though, I had to wonder. My screen was flashing with a message, from Secretary-General Sugden. I sank into my chair and touched the screen to put him through.

  “Bréone, have you seen the news?”

  Sugden often was one to beat around the bush—he loved to hear himself speak, above all else—but when matters were dire, he generally cut straight to the point. He looked frantic, as I have so rarely seen him, as if he had been wrestling with something th
e entire night through. His face was creased with worry, but also exhaustion.

  “Some,” I said, and my spine prickled again. The blackness across the greenery was familiar. Why?

  “This may be something I need you on, Bréone,” he said. “Are you prepared to travel if need be?”

  “To—” I broke off. I left the rest unspoken—the Kingdom—but he heard it anyhow.

  “Yes,” he hissed into the silence that fell between us. “I will tell you more as soon as I am able—I need someone with your skills, Bréone.”

  He closed the connection and I sat for a very long time, wondering what the hell he meant. Are you prepared to travel if need be? Only a Bréone Hemmerli could go to the Kingdom because only I had been able to untangle what each side truly desired.

  Eventually, I turned my screen back to the newsfeed. The footage out of London was on repeat—the drones had been disabled soon after, Navuluri said, Kingdom officials issuing a media blackout going forward. There was speculation they hadn’t intended to allow any media access at all, but someone had made a mistake.

  The networks reran the scant footage they had acquired, over and over. Nothing new came out of London, no grainy footage from a mobile phone, nothing. Before the crackdowns, we would have seen dozens of eyewitness accounts, shaky footage taken en media res, but not now. Now, the Kingdom monitored everything, transmission towers hidden in every city to squash what communications they disliked. Worse, they tracked their citizens, able to instantly and accurately pinpoint locations of anyone transmitting. All governments did this to some extent, but the Kingdom had ceased to see its citizens as people long ago. The laws hadn’t stopped everyone—nothing ever did or would, if they wanted a thing to be known badly enough—which is what made it all the more curious, that no one was transmitting anything.