The-Hummingbird-s-Cage(94)

There was a slim fingernail of a moon. Not enough to cast shadows or illuminate much. I stared up at the Mountain, lying as quiet and still as a great hibernating beast. It was completely blanketed in fallen snow that filled and tempered its deep ravines and blunted the long, rocky ridge along its crest. It wasn’t watchful anymore, or even restless in its sleep. The point of light near the crest was faint now and for the first time it was flickering, like a flame about to go out.

Behind me, Jessie opened the front door and stepped onto the porch. She was already in her thick bathrobe, her bun undone for bed, her gray hair plaited down her back. She stood beside me, silent, her gaze following mine to the mountaintop.

“This was a good day,” I said softly.

She slung her arm around my shoulders and squeezed.

“There’ll be more, sweetie.”


*

In my room, I dressed for bed and turned out all the lights, save for the one on the nightstand. I sat in the rocking chair and held Bernadette’s present, with its shiny silver wrapping, in my lap. It had a familiar shape and heft. For a long moment I stared at it, then began pulling at the paper.

Long before the paper was torn away, I recognized it.

It was my old tea tin. The secret one from the house outside Wheeler where I kept my Life Before. The one I hid from Jim under a loose floorboard in the storage space under the stairwell.

And it should still be there—on Insurrection Day, I’d done exactly as Bernadette had told me, and taken nothing from the house. Not even this.

I opened the tin and, one by one, pulled them out: The first-place certificate from the high school poetry contest. The clinic receipt from the baby I’d miscarried. The letter from my mother. The warning note from Terri.

They were gathered on my lap, as familiar to me as my own face. Except this wasn’t my face anymore. The features might be the same, with the same curve to the cheek and jaw, the same coloring. But there was a different woman behind them now, looking back.

I stared down into the tea tin and saw something else. Something that wasn’t there before. Had, in fact, never been there.

It was a small piece of white paper, folded and lying at the bottom. I picked it up and smoothed it out.

The handwriting was familiar, too. It was my Oma’s, and it contained a single word: Mut.

Courage.





Part III


   What Is Past,

or Passing,

or to Come





What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed?

And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven

and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower?

And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand?

Ah, what then?

   —Samuel Taylor Coleridge





Rattlesnake





black bitter tang of copper gravity wrenching me down down down slammed against hard rock screams shards of glass twisting inside my skull screams


*

Laurel

eyes don’t open don’t open but then they open on red on red on red everywhere red my hand inches from my face red fingers twitch on red rock twitch like dying animal inches from my face

blink and blink eyes blur sting with red and salt and wet and warm running in the sockets


*

Laurel

pulsing roar in my ears push and push can’t move rock won’t let me go let me go rock move move move let me move twitching fingers hand jerks hard pushes out pushes away dead air rock won’t let me go


*

let me go rock

Eyes close tight no screams now no screams. Laurel.

Lungs spasm, hurt, buck for air. Shuddering breath rolls into me, throws me onto my side. Temple, shoulder, hip scrape warm sandstone. Eyes open, red rocks everywhere—above and below and beside and forever.

Blink hard against the blur. Against the sun. Against skull full of nails shredding my brain.

And there’s Laurel.

Dangling weightless, little cornhusk doll, from Jim’s upraised fist, over the mesa’s edge.

Laurel, back in her summer clothes of many colors. No parka, no snow, no trees, no valley, no farmhouse. Only mesa, sun, heat.

And Jim, his back to me. In his summer uniform, shiny oxfords, Sam Browne, just like that day in June when we last saw him.

In his other hand, the machete, slick with blood.

Something more than human strength surges in me, my limp arm twists, limp hand flops to my side, palm flat, to push off.