by Kate Everson
Chapter 6: Life and Death in the Dunes
Was it death or life that drew me back to the Dunes?
Was it her corpse, her broken body smashed on the sand that called me to return? All I knew was I had to be there. I had to walk barefoot and bewildered, round and round, searching for something. Some meaning. I had to know.
What was it that killed her? Was it some angry god, jealous of the attention she was getting? Did he have to strike her down, rip her head off, smash her into a million pieces?
It seemed so heartless, so callous.
Had I loved her too much? Was it somehow my fault? My mind could not understand why this had to be. My heart only knew it felt lost without her.
She had been my fortress, my rock, a place I could go for comfort and strength. When I had felt abandoned, she was always there. When I needed to feel some sense in this senseless world, she brought it to me. I had hope.
But now? Where was hope now?
If a cruel wind could whip her to shreds, what would it do to me? Perhaps I was already as lost as her.
I remembered what she had meant to me. Like a mother, but more of a goddess, strong, aloof, yet queenly in her presence overlooking the Dunes. Powerful as a dragon, yet in her thinly lidded eye, I saw caring. She cared for me. She loved me. Like no one else could.
Oh, I was lovable, of course, I had to be. Otherwise, wouldn’t I have been thrown away at birth? Found in some dumpster, wrapped in a garbage bag, like last night’s leftovers.
But no, I had been raised, gone to school, fed, clothed, looked after. I was, after all, a living breathing being that required a caregiver until I could look after myself.
What had gone so terribly wrong? Why had I run to the Dunes to find her? And given myself over to her, like nothing in the world had ever mattered or ever would again. Had I no sense of self worth? Was I nothing, to give myself over so completely to a tree? A tree goddess. And I had loved her so much. Totally.
And now, that was ended. Gone. Smashed.
Yet … there had to be more. Something inside me could not accept that all was lost. I wandered the Dunes looking for clues.
She was still there, smashed on the ground. Headless. Beheaded. Killed. But was it death? Or was there another birth?
I had to know.
There was little life on the Dunes. A few dead trees sticking up out of the dry sand, a clump of struggling plants and some animal tracks, searching, like I was, for sustenance. On the hills, there were turtle nests. All destroyed. The beasts of the Dunes leaving nothing behind but broken egg shells.
Did you have a good lunch? I wanted to scream! Did you think that you could just take, take, take? All for yourself, and nothing left for future generations? All you care about, you beasts of the Dunes, is your own self. Your self. What good is your self to anyone else? Especially me!
Oh, I knew they couldn’t help it, those beasts. They were what they were. All just trying to survive, finding today’s lunch, and be damned with the rest of the world. Eat your fill. Live and kill. Kill to live.
But isn’t that what I had been doing too? Was there anything I ever did that didn’t benefit me directly? I ate, I slept, I worked, I played, I , I, I. Was I any better than the beasts?
The soft shells of the turtle were white and innocent, never born, never allowed to exist outside of their small nest in the Dunes. What had they done to deserve death?
I traced their softness with my fingers, feeling for the life they never had. It was gone. Never existed.
What kind of life did I have? Was I any more vibrant? Just because I breathed, walked, talked in this world, was I any more valuable, any more alive really?
At least with the turtle eggs, they had given life. Some creature had fed its small frame with nutrients and moved on, perhaps to raise its own brood. Or perhaps, even it too, had been food for another larger creature of the Dunes. Who knew?
As I walked barefoot in the Dunes, feeling the sand through my toes, I searched for answers. There were some tiny stones with markings on them. Fossils. Dead insects hardened into the stone forever. Their skeletons making a pattern that would forever remain.
It was a kind of beauty. It told a story, somehow, of what it was all about. Fossils. Death forever remembered.
It seemed to have a face. I could see eyes, a mouth, maybe even a sideways nose in the round stone.
Almost like it was smiling at me. Almost like … could I dare believe… that my goddess was shining through some other element. Speaking to me.
I held my breath for a moment. Desperate. I did not want to make mistakes out of desperation. I wanted to know the truth.
Was it really her?
Gently, I put the stone back down on the sand. Beside her, I placed a tiny bouquet of flowers, the top of a milkweed plant just coming into bloom. The fragrance of the blossoms would make her happy. Wherever she was.
She faded into the sand, as I walked away. I could not see her any more, but I knew she was happy. I felt like I had done something, remembered her, honoured her.
I walked through the Dunes, over the sandy hills, looking at the flowers and hearing the birds like never before. There was life here. There was also death. But it was part of the whole thing, the way it is, from the beginning to the end, and then the beginning again.
I felt like my life would be like that too. I would honour the life that was given me. I would remember her. I would honour her in my life. I would take what she had given me and make an imprint.
My life, my body, my self, would not be about me alone any more. No matter what had happened to me, or would happen, I had this. I had been imprinted. I was no longer here just for me.
I prayed to the goddess to give to the world all that she had given me.
There were the cottonwoods themselves in the Dunes, struggling to survive. Every time I visited, I noticed more and more of them had fallen over, gone forever. But today, their seeds were blowing through the sky, covering the Dunes like snow. The seeds lay on the sand, caught in roots and twigs and stones, lying on the weeds of the marsh, flowing through the air like mercy.
Life is. Over and over again.