Hester(67)

I describe how words and letters rise in front of me like clouds in the sky—weightless and transparent—and I begin to see that voices come in colors and shapes that change, but the color of each letter in a sampler or on a sign is always the same: A is red. B is blue. C is yellow.

“Your voice is red and gold.” His face lights when I say it, and yet I want to weep. “My mother warned me to beware of these things. She said the colors could be construed as a curse, or some sort of witchcraft.”

“I think it’s a gift,” he says. “Or it’s a gift and also a curse—as full of pain as it is of glory.”

Can the colors be both a blessing and an affliction? Perhaps he’s right and the colors are like the two of us—accuser and accused, pain and desire come together across time and oceans to heal our wounds. Perhaps this is the secret that I’ve been trying to see all along, that together we are whole.



* * *



AS FIREBUGS IGNITE and the moon wanes, he comes to me with his handkerchiefs and his rough grip on my wrists, with stories of his uncles and snippets of tales scribbled in his notebooks. He whispers that he sees his father in the folds of cloth draped across his eyes, and I whisper that I have heard my mother speak to me in my dreams.

“I’m working on a story about a young man who looks over a garden wall and longs for a beautiful girl who’s forbidden to him,” he tells me one night.

I’m in my sleeping gown, curled against the wall at the top of my bed. A single candle lights his face as Nat describes succulent trees, thirsty plants that reach across the page bursting with color and longing.

“There’s a plant with gnarled branches and large red blossoms,” he says. “The girl loves the plant like a sister—she even sits beside it and combs the blossoms.” He turns a page in his notebook. “But there’s something wrong.”

“What is it?” I ask.

“The plant she loves is filled with poison that can kill with a single drop.”

My needle stops.

“And what will you do with that poison?”

“I haven’t decided,” he says. “Either the plant she loves will kill her, or she’ll eat the blossoms bit by tiny bit until the poison is in her blood and she’s become poisonous to the man who loves her.”

“That’s—horrid.”

He props himself on an elbow, one bare shoulder in the air.

“You gave me this idea, Isobel. You and your colors and that gorgeous Garden of Eden—the blessing that’s also a curse. The pain that’s also pleasure.”

“I never believed such a thing before,” I cry. “It’s you who taught it to me.”

I cannot bring myself to look at him. But I know that desire comes with a price. I know now that pain can be pleasure, and pleasure can be pain.

“Are you not pleased with me?”

“I’m saying I don’t want to read about love that kills.”

“Perhaps I haven’t explained it well.” His tone suggests this is doubtful. “Or maybe you don’t understand that literature is meant to reveal deeper truths about men. Intuition and colors are fine delights, but in pursuit of my craft I have to look beyond them.”

I’m still young, and he has been to university and understands much that I do not. I don’t want to quarrel, and I certainly don’t want him to see my tears.

I bite my lip and slip out of bed. In the yard, toads fill the night with mud-green croaks and groans. Crickets and cicadas sound bright pink high notes. Firebugs rise from the brush at the edge of the yard.

Nat finds me under the bright half-moon and puts an arm around my waist. I wipe a wrist across my tears so that he doesn’t see them.

All this time I’ve waited for another letter that would confirm that Edward is alive. And every week, when there’s been no news, I’ve thought of my bonfire and the way I trampled the ashes of my husband’s church coat into the dirt. And I’ve wondered if I could have made my own wish come to pass.

“Isobel, you’re in my veins now—you know it, don’t you? You’re in my blood.”

Now is when I should tell him about the captain’s letter.

“And when Edward returns?” I ask instead. “What then?”

He brings my hand to his lips. His words come through my parted fingers.

“Isobel, when he comes back it will hurt me terribly. This is the price I’ll pay, but I’ll love you from afar as I always have.”

He has never spoken of love before.

“Do you love me from afar? Even when you are right next to me?” I keep my voice light. I’m thankful that it’s dark and he’s looking up at the sky.

“From the moment I saw you on the dock with your red cape and your red hair flying, I was drawn to you. And you knew it, and you drew me closer.”

He touches my face.

“Your red hair, your fierce spirit—I told you, I felt as if I’d summoned you from my own mind.”

“But that’s a story,” I say. “And I am here, and very real.”

“You are. You’re very real.”

He pulls me close and puts his lips to my ear.

“I looked at your cloak,” he says. “Why have you stitched a red-haired witch flying through the air?”