Hummingbird Salamander(89)

It’s my fault. I liked him. I let him come into the house. I fed him lunch sometimes. He seemed so sad, and he was beautiful and so smart. He felt safe to talk to because he wasn’t family or one of my father’s friends. But, once, he came to the house when I wasn’t there, let himself in, and saw something he shouldn’t have seen, in a place he shouldn’t have been. My father was even less merciful when younger.

I was away on vacation. I hadn’t told him because I didn’t think it mattered. My father didn’t let me go back, after. I was kept under what you might call “house arrest.” My father feared I would find some way to go to the police. But even then I was already working on my plan. I couldn’t involve the police. I couldn’t do anything.

I didn’t know you would kill your grandfather. I didn’t even know you existed until you killed your grandfather.

I broke with my father over this, and many other things. I held on to the guilt. I used it.

Roger Simpson murdered your brother and made it look like drowning. I’m sorry.

I don’t know if you’ll read this. I don’t know if you’ll make it this far. But I needed you to make the journey to feel it, to understand it.

Maybe you ignored the gifts I gave you. Maybe you never understood why I chose them. Maybe that’s why you never read this letter.

Nothing can ever change what happened. But you can judge me and find me guilty. I’m at peace with that. Who better to judge me than the sister of the person my family murdered.

We try so hard to escape. But we cannot escape the world. That is the point.

Salamander.…. . Hummingbird



A photograph, along with the letter. Folded, as if it had been in a wallet for a long time. I knew it was the original. Maybe the only one. Browning from the years. Silvina and Ned standing in front of her family’s house up on the ridge. Silvina is smiling, but Ned’s look is ambivalent, complicated, half in shadow. I can’t read it. People I didn’t know stood to either side. Employees? Gardeners? More people Ned had known, at least in passing, that I hadn’t known at all.

“The fools on the hill,” I recalled, or thought I recalled, Ned saying once. “The fools on the hill.” But said with a kind of envy that was regret. Like he really meant the fools on the farm. The only time I remember him saying anything about them.

I liked him. I let him into the house.

Did I hate Silvina? No, I didn’t hate her. Did I hate Roger? Yes, but he was dead. Langer had delivered my revenge for me.

He seemed so sad, and he was beautiful and so smart.

You could say anything in a letter. Tell the truth. Tell lies. Half-truths. Create whole lives for people that weren’t real. Harder to do that with a photograph, if easier every day. I knew doctored photographs, had analyzed so many of them at the day job. This one was real.

A bitter vindication. That I wasn’t random. That I wasn’t just bait or distraction. That maybe that was also true, but there had been a connection between me and Silvina. That I had known her, in a sense. If only through Ned.

I didn’t feel remorse about Shot. Not really. In time, Shot would’ve killed one of us, made me into him even more than he had. I felt regret, but that was different. No one was ever going to save us but me.

What else did I feel? I don’t want to tell you. You might not understand. The dominant thing I felt.

What I felt was relief.

While all the world was in motion, colliding, nonsensical.

Imagine what it feels like to have an answer. To come to rest.

Because I knew what she wanted me to do.

Go back to the beginning.





[94]


The giant salamander felt through its skin even though it didn’t want to. The giant salamander kept receiving the world even if it didn’t want to. Even if the world poisoned it. How if the world was right, the salamander was healthy. If the world was wrong, the salamander was sick. If the world was wrong, Silvina was sick. I was sick, but not because the world was wrong.

Salamanders live in two worlds: the terrestrial and the aquatic. Humans can’t do that. Humans find themselves caught between, having to choose. Salamanders don’t have to choose. Part of both. Leaf litter and the banks of forest streams, in vernal pools, swamps. Foraging by night, capturing prey hiding in crevices.

To minimize danger, salamanders hide in rotting logs and under rocks. The stone foundations of old houses, like memories. If seen, the two wide yellow stripes of the road newt warn off predators. The yellow is produced by chromophores bound to proteins in the skin. These visual pigments pulse light at a specific wavelength visible at night. The pigments are toxic. The yellow lines are poison. When attacked, the salamander expands its spine and its ribs pierce open the poison cells into the skin, releasing venom in a powerful sting.

The attacker is injured, but so is the salamander. It must repair the skin to avoid infection. It must hurt itself to defend itself. So it knows its enemy by the self-inflicted damage. Knows, on some level, the state of the world.

When the moon is right, the road newts creep in great numbers to their natal forest ponds. Always the same pond, returning to the place where they were born. They know. They just know. That home may be changed beyond recognition. It may no longer be a safe place, or never was a safe place. But the newt has no choice but to return.

In the water, they lay eggs, and when the eggs hatch, the immature salamanders breathe through gills. Years are spent in this miniature stage, to prepare for their transition to the harsh terrestrial world. They must have every advantage to survive in their mature form. The hazards until they, too, return to the pond of their birth are many and unpredictable. Many never make it back.