Seasons Between Us

by Alan Dean Foster

  Below her, Jesse is a bonfire light, white-hot touched with gold and green. She gathers that light in her hand softly, gently, prising away the tangles that keep it clinging to flesh the way ivy clings to a wall. She breathes in, and that light flows into her, warm and bright and flashing like a kaleidoscope; she exhales and the light flows through her, pouring through her heart and down her arm and into the waiting flesh.

  The body has gone cold and stiff; it’s been hours since Nathan died, and there’s the wound that killed him in the first place. One life is not enough. She did not tell this to Jesse because this part doesn’t matter, not to him; this part is her sacrifice. She reaches for a little bit of her own light and the lights of the world around her: the green sparks of the growing grass, the little mice that tunnel through the earth near the far garden, the worms and insects in the ground around them. She reaches farther and farther still, and she can just grasp the farthest lights that are the trees growing at the edges of the clearing, their roots dug deep into the soil, their branches grasping at the sky.

  Not her own family, safe in the house—those bright lights she shies from—but everything else.

  The rocks aren’t the only reason their lawn is so bare, their gardens so sad and sparse. And the clearing that surrounds their house, a wide perfect ring where no tree grows? They did not cut the trees down—not living, anyway.

  Every fire needs its fuel. Even this.

  She feels more than sees Nathan’s wound knit together, as the congealed blood liquifies and drains from where it has pooled in his lungs, at the bottoms of his legs, along his back. She pours the light into him, more and more, feeling every bit of it, every leaf and branch, every blade of grass, every insect and mouse and—Jesse. The brightest light of all, passing through her like a wildfire, hot and fierce and then gone.

  Jesse.

  When Avery opens her eyes, dawn is near. All around her, the grass has turned crisp and yellow, and the trees at the edges of the clearing have gone red as if to welcome autumn early. Soon, the leaves will fall.

  In the grave, Jesse is still, silent, unmoving. She cannot look at him, cannot imagine piling all that stone and soil on top of him.

  Beside her the bloodstained blanket twitches and shifts—then Nathan inhales.

  Avery draws the blanket back. His face is unnaturally pale, his lips near purple from cold, the flesh around his eyes so dark it seems bruised. Soon, she knows, the shivers will begin as his muscles try to quiver their way back to warmth and life.

  She tries not to resent him for that life; for being himself and not his brother. What Jesse told her is true: it’s not Nathan’s fault, not any of it. It will be a few weeks until he feels fully well again, but she’ll be there to care for him, just like she promised. And maybe she’ll come to care for him too, or maybe he’ll leave, but either way he’ll live.

  In the house, Avery sees movement. Her mom, she knows, will have put on the kettle for tea, and Aunt Jenny will be rustling through the cupboards, mixing ingredients by eye for her famous buttermilk pancakes. She wants nothing more than to go to them, to have them hold her in their arms.

  But for now, she’ll wait until Nathan wakes. She’ll wait to welcome him home.

  Author’s Notes to My Younger Self: Always be learning something; always be making something. Yeah, sure, your life may be on fire, but this way at the end you’ll have ashes and a cool craft.

  Blue Kueh

  Joyce Chng

  Madam Kong passed away last night.

  It was bizarre. We’d just visited her in that morning. She was cheerful, even chatty. She even gave us her famous blue kueh she made daily for sale at the market. We laughed, glad to see she was well. Her flat in Katong was immaculately kept and clean. Madam Kong was one of our more at-risk cases because she lived alone. Her sons only visited her on weekends, but her next-door neighbour, Lim Ah Soh, checked on her once a day.

  Gladdened, we left her flat. The sun was shining, hot, and the sky was a breathtaking blue. Everything felt good. Then, that evening, her eldest son called to inform me his mother had suffered a stroke and was unconscious. By midnight, she was dead. Ah Soh had found her lying in the middle of the living room. It was already too late.

  Our centre manager tried to shrug it off, saying that “it happens.” The cluster we served was ninety-percent elderly from sixty-five onwards. Yet, a pall of sadness hung over the office while we tried to process what had actually occurred. All the social workers and volunteers attended the funeral wake in the evening. It felt surreal. The sons were weeping their eyes out, their children playing hide-and-seek among the tables, their giggles an odd counterpoint to the atonal chanting of the Buddhist monks. A strong breeze made the plastic sheets covering the table tops billow but failed to cool the humid Singapore night. One paper plate of nuts and sweets went flying. A small white butterfly perched on the picture frame with Madam Kong’s portrait for the entire evening.

  The same sadness followed me home. I recalled Madam Kong’s positive attitude, her can-do spirit, and her delicious savoury kueh. They were desserts made with love and care. She grew her own butterfly pea vine where she harvested the flowers to make the vivid blue dye for the desserts. I helped her water it once or twice when her arthritis made it too painful for her to walk. Madam Kong showed us the dried flowers once. The vine grew lush and thick, tendrils curling around the metal railings. It bloomed profusely. Now she was gone, nobody was going to water her plants. To make the matter even sadder, her sons had decided to sell their mother’s flat.

  As I walked along the pathway leading up to the apartment block where I lived, I came across rows of lit red candles and plates of sweets and fruits. One or two people were throwing paper money into a metallic burner, and the smell of burning was intense. Fire roared. Embers swirled about. It was then I remembered it was the start of Seventh Month or the Chinese Hungry Ghost Festival. I was not the superstitious sort and I simply continued on my journey home.

  My house was quiet. The rooms were dark. My daughters, Celeste and Jolene, weren’t back yet from school. They had projects. I went about dusting the surfaces before going into the kitchen to prepare a late dinner at 8 p.m. I turned my phone on, and it pinged with a message from earlier in the day. The sound was unnaturally loud, and I jumped.

  It was a text from Mr. Lim, my optometrist, to collect my contact lenses. After thirty-odd years of refusing to get contacts, I was finally doing it.

  Celeste rolled her eyes when I told her about the contacts. She thought I wasn’t fashionable enough. I was “too auntie” for her. Since when did being in my forties mean old age? I was still fit and healthy. I watched my diet and exercised diligently. Was I old? To the elderly at the centre, I was still very young. Some of the ladies called me “girl.”

  The contact lenses were a newfangled product heralded as the next best thing in eye care. The lenses combined everything: progressive, bifocals, and anti-astigmatism. Called NewSight™, they were designed to give wearers a better quality of life. Reading would be a breeze now. Besides, customers got to choose the colour too. Mr. Lim was practically waxing lyrical about the lenses.

  They were also expensive.

  “Aiyah,” Mr. Lim was saying, “Not expensive. You get three-in-one! Four, if you include the colour!”

  I stared at the contact lenses in their clear solution. They looked small and delicate. The fragility was what turned me off in the first place. “What if they fall out or break? What if they break in my eyes?” I questioned Mr. Lim relentlessly before I made my decision.

  “You just have to keep a strict hygiene routine,” he told me. “Clean, clean, clean.”

  I had somewhat managed to get past my fear of hurting my eyes. Wearing the contact lenses under Mr. Lim’s supervision felt simple. I could do it. It didn’t hurt at all. When I blinked and stared at my reflection in the mirror,
I saw my eyes—blue eyes—looking back at me. I looked good.

  Armed with boxes of saline and new confidence, I stepped out of the shop. It took some time to get used to everything looking sharp and clear. I could see. I could read the small print on the receipt. I felt brand new all over again, like when I was a teenager. Glasses no more!

  When I got home, the elevators were all occupied. I waited, fiddling with the plastic bag. I felt someone walk up to me, a presence behind my back. Thinking it was one of my neighbours, I glanced over my shoulder—

  —And I saw Madam Kong. Bright as day. She was wearing her favourite t-shirt with pink flowers and her blue denim shorts. She was carrying a box filled with her blue desserts. Her famous kueh. Her smile was the same cheerful smile I saw two days ago.

  Before she died.

  “For you,” she said in her husky voice and handed the box of kueh to me. “You must be hungry.”

  Reflexively, I held out my hand. . . . Then I stopped myself. She was dead.

  The elevator chose this moment to open its door. The box dropped. Madam Kong disappeared. I blinked. Twice. There was the box, its contents spilled out, the kueh squished.

  Confused, I fled into the lift and stabbed the button for the twelfth floor. I tried to rationalize what I had just seen. It was a trick of the light. The box of kueh had already been there, left behind by some inconsiderate neighbour.

  Madam Kong was dead. I attended her wake one day ago. Her sons were crying their hearts out.

  Celeste and Jolene didn’t question me when I rushed into our apartment. They were busy with their schoolwork; Jolene had her headphones stuck in her ears, lost in her own world, busy sketching on her tablet, Celeste trying to complete a report on her laptop, frowning away as she typed.

  I couldn’t sleep that night.

  “Wah, stylo milo,” Beng, one of the social workers, commented as I stepped into the office, and Wei Ling glanced my way. My head throbbed. I hadn’t slept well. I boiled my experience down to wearing new contact lenses. My eyes were sti ll trying to get used to them.

  “Aww, thank you,” I said, placing my bag on my worktable. The office looked sharper. I winced at the cobwebs hiding behind the air-conditioning unit. Miniscule cracks in the wall. “What’s on today?”

  “The usual. Daily exercise and home visits,” Beng said, checking the schedule on the whiteboard.

  “Hey, did you dream of Madam Kong last night?” Wei Ling chimed in. “I did. It was weird. She gave me a box of her kueh.” Wei Ling was also close to Madam Kong. Madam Kong affectionately termed Wei Ling ‘goddaughter.’ Wei Ling would sit next to Madam Kong and listen to her talk about her sons and her grandchildren. She did that with many of the elderly residents. She was kind and patient.

  But I froze, the memory of seeing Madam Kong flooding back again. For me, it hadn’t been a dream. The office was suddenly very cold.

  “It’s also Seventh Month lah. Hungry Ghost Festival, you know?” Beng chuckled nervously. “They are all visiting their loved ones lah.”

  Wei Ling laughed it off, but Beng crossed himself when he thought nobody was looking.

  Shaking the rush of fear, I stood in the office doorway and watched the elderly arriving for their daily exercise. Some walked in slowly with their canes. Some were in wheelchairs pushed by their carers. Attendance normally fluctuated. Mondays and Fridays were usually packed. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays were quieter. Sometimes, attendance was poor because of medical check-ups and doctor’s appointments. The centre was okay with that, because we were a non-profit organization, but we still worried when we noted unexplained absences. However, there seemed to be more people today.

  It was a Tuesday.

  Wasn’t that Uncle Rahid? He passed two months ago. Did Mrs. Santhi just sit beside Madam Maisarah?

  Mrs. Santhi died last year.

  I shook myself and my vision cleared. No. The only elderly here were the expected ones. The living.

  The rest of the day was a struggle. I kept seeing past faces at the centre. People with whom I’d sat, paid visits, spoken, chatted, and held hands—who had long since passed away due to the confluence of old age and illness. Nonplussed, I took out my contact lenses and wore my glasses. Everything went immediately dull. The colours remained the same, but they were not as sharp and crisp as before. Normal. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. The impossible faces disappeared.

  I was irate. I called the optometrist on my lunch hour.

  “Hey, Mr. Lim,” I said, trying not to sound angry. “I think your contact lenses might have side-effects. I am seeing things.”

  “Aiyah, the product doesn’t make people see things,” he said. “You might be stressed from work. I will call you back later.” The call went dead.

  Annoyed, I flung the phone back into my bag and flopped back into my armchair. It squeaked alarmingly. Still uneasy, I decided to make myself a mug of hot jasmine tea. The office was quiet. Most of the social workers and volunteers were out on afternoon home visits. I was the only one left to man the centre.

  A plastic box of blue kueh sat on the staff pantry table. Suresh, the administrative officer, was quietly working on a spreadsheet at his table.

  The cover of the box was lightly coated with condensation, as if the kueh were warm. Some of the senior citizens occasionally gave us food as a way of saying thank you. Only last week, Madam Maisarah made us mee siam, spicy rice vermicelli noodles sprinkled with chopped chives and fried bean curd.

  “Hey, Suresh, did anyone buy kueh for the team?” I asked. We often bought food to share with each other. Suresh looked up from the spreadsheet and shook his head slowly.

  Horrified, I stared back at the box of blue kueh, the blue of the butterfly pea flower.

  I wore the contact lenses again.

  This time, I saw more ghosts. More than I wished for.

  I saw the old man whom we tried to help a while back, a quiet gentleman who, the residents complained, was a hoarder. He collected newspapers and old glass bottles. He was hanging mobiles of broken glass on the fruit trees planted in the communal garden area. The glass shards spun in the sun: emerald green, dark amber gold, and glowing ruby red.

  He’d died at home, surrounded by squalor and broken glass shards.

  The old gentleman was laughing joyfully, his mien totally different from his reticent self. Tiny figures flew about him. They . . . they looked like birds, like brown Eurasian sparrows, but not really. Fairies?

  Fairies?

  Somewhere, monks chanted Buddhist sutras. Another funeral wake.

  I walked on.

  Mr. Gan, playing with his beloved toy terrier.

  Mrs. Viknesh, feeding the pigeons cooked rice.

  Gloria, talking to the community cats.

  Mrs. Dorothy, holding hands with her husband, her beaming face turned to him as if they were madly in love with each other.

  Mr. Zarid, just taking a stroll.

  So many, so many.

  Even shadows huddling together under the large angsana tree. I caught glimpses of faces, hands, feet.

  All dead.

  These were couples, singles, widows, and widowers, whom the centre had known and come to love. For many, the centre served as a home away from home, a place they could socialize and make friends. Many were lonely and lived alone. Our case files attested to this sad fact. They would tell us stories about their lives, their dreams, their lost hopes and sacrifices, their children, their wishes.

  Is there life after death? Why are they appearing to me?

  Why do I see them?

  Why can I see them?

  I touched my eyes, my hands shaking.

  It was too much. My world spun. Fleeing back into the office, I removed the contact lenses and packed them in their saline solution.


  “Should I stop wearing the contact lenses?” I asked Celeste idly that evening.

  “What for? You just got them.” Celeste rolled her eyes. She thought Mummy was nuts.

  “I am seeing things,” I said, and stopped myself from continuing.

  Celeste was back at whatever she was doing, sketching on her tablet. She wanted to be an artist when she graduated. Jolene was in the kitchen, cutting cucumbers for dinner. It was her turn to cook. They were managing well without their dad. A year into the divorce, things seemed to have picked up. They were seeing the counsellor regularly at school. But Celeste and Jolene were generally optimistic and would talk to me if they needed help. It wasn’t easy raising two teenagers and working at the same time. I still had to pay their school fees, the house’s expenses, and groceries. Luckily, I had help from my parents. Not all were that fortunate. I felt bad for splurging on the contact lenses.

  “You mean ghosts?” Jolene shouted from the kitchen. “My mum, the psychic! You can have your own show on YouTube, you know. Earn extra money from your fans!” I could see her grinning, a mischievous look on her face. She knew how to push my buttons. “You know, it’s Ghost Month, what? They are all around us!”

  I shushed her and then burst out laughing at the delicious absurdity. I shouldn’t be superstitious.

  We spent the night talking about work, school, and our plans for the future. I was determined to be with my daughters as much as I could. I thought of the elderly at the centre. They missed their children. They felt forgotten, neglected, tossed aside. Would Celeste and Jolene forget about me when I am old? Would they put me in a nursing home?

  Would I walk alone as one of the lost spirits, bereft of home?

  There was another box of blue kueh on the staff pantry table.

  “Did Madam Kong’s sons make this?” Wei Ling said, nibbling into one. “They are delicious!”

  “Her sons . . . don’t make them,” Beng said, frowning as he picked at another kueh. “As far as I know, she didn’t teach them how to make kueh. She only started making kueh after her husband died of cancer four years ago.”