The Sea, It Beckons

The beach was full, an odd sight; not because there was never anyone on it, but because it was the dead of night, so dark that it was difficult to tell the black water apart from the black sky, since they were both dusted with stars and filled with the tinsel-silver light of the moon.

Someone had taken care to set up lanterns closer to the shore, determined flames in wicker and plastic lamps stuck to poles dug deep into the sand. Their light carved rosy haloes out of the darkness. There were more lanterns in the festival, strung up between the noisy stalls on the boardwalk. Nimue walked just beside the boardwalk, where she could smell the sea, where the water was no more than twenty feet from her. She’d never thought the sea smelled like salt and tonight it smelled almost wintery with its freshness, as though the dark pulled from it every summery note.

There were several silhouettes on the beach, dancing in front of the lanterns. A few couples were walking in the surf, their shoes dangling from their hands. Nimue had abandoned her own shoes long ago and tucked them into her mother’s bag while she walked. She’d left Tristram to debate whether or not taking off his shoes was worth it, and then to argue with their mother about how wise it was to remove one’s shoes if one were staying on the boardwalk. No one had broken a bottle on it yet, Nimue noticed. But she hadn’t wanted to be a part of their argument.

None of the silhouettes were familiar. Nimue almost didn’t notice the ones approaching her until they were only a couple yards away, and then she wondered how she could have missed them. She wondered for a moment, with some dread, if someone from school had recognized her alone in the festival. But it was no one she knew; a band of five people stood before her, and as soon as they realized they had her attention, they began to dance and sing. Nimue was so shocked and stunned by the abruptness of their routine that she did not realize for a moment that it was not all of them singing at once, only two of them, or three. The resonance in their voices sounded like the hiss of the sea, though she couldn’t remember if it had been that loud a moment ago. She recognized none of their words, but the song was arcane, lulling, and oddly hungry. Their dance was odd to watch and would have been embarrassing if she did not see the ripple of muscle in the lantern-light. They leapt over the sand, trailing it from their toes, from the folds of their clothing.

“The hell?” Tristram’s bare feet pounded on the boardwalk. He dropped into the sand, fumbling with the laces of his sneakers, twisted together in his fingers. He wobbled unsteadily as he strode toward his sister. “You said you were going to look for a drink. Of course you’re down by the water- what?”

“Dancers,” Nimue said, as though Tristram weren’t staring at them.

“Really,” Tristram said. The look he turned on the performers was at once inviting and dismissive. Their mother often said Tristram could charm the birds out of trees, and it was apparent in every feature of his face, in the wide smile and his fine-boned nose as he tilted his head down. He had laughing eyes, bright and amused, though one couldn’t be sure, looking at him, if they had done something to amuse him, or if he had found his own amusement outside of present company. He swept his gaze over the dancers and his smile widened. One of the dancers, a singer, Nimue thought, watching her lips move, glanced at Tristram’s smile and returned it, with several degrees more warmth. But she did not cease her singing. Their voices were less the hiss of the ocean and more a swell, rising and falling together as though buoyed on a wave. Tristram leaned forward and spoke lowly in Nimue’s ear. She almost leaned away from him; he smelled of cider and his whisper was cold and pointed as an icicle. “Are they homeless? Do they want money or something?”

Nimue did not think it was money that they were after.

Tristram moved Nimue and himself further from the boardwalk, or at least turned them against the stares of anyone who might notice that they stood before a band of nimble but disorganized dancers. They were a little closer to the sea and, as if the sea were climbing the shore toward them, Nimue smelled sand and waterweed and the nearly bloody scent of water. Nimue could still smell cinnamon doughnuts and ginger cake and lemon tea from the boardwalk. Tristram had one hand holding his other elbow, his shoes still dangling by his side, though he was swinging them almost rhythmically, though Nimue didn’t think the song the performers sang had a rhythm. Nothing consistent, anyway. It seemed to skip and flow, as though they sang around rocks.

Something fluttered at their feet. Nimue let herself look at it for a moment and realized, with some surprise, that it was a fox. Though she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen a fox that colour, starry white and mottled with grey like the skin of a seal. She stared at it hard, trying to figure out if it had been there before. Its paws were dug deep into the sand, as though the beach had shifted around it. It returned her look with a hint of cleverness and tilted its head as though to tell her listen. The song’s not over.

Nimue nudged Tristram to try to point to the fox, but he knocked her hand aside and continued to gave politely at the dancers. He looked away once, to the watch on his wrist. It was an hour behind but it told Nimue that she had been listening to the song for nearly twenty minutes. She frowned, aware that the performers could see it. She hadn’t realized she’d been listening that long.

The song began to wind down. Nimue was not sure how she knew, only the it was like a rolling tide slowing and gentling. When it finally came to an end it seemed to linger like salt spray. Tristram nodded and clapped his free hand against his leg in an approximation of applause. “Nice. That was great.”

One of the dancers, a fair-skinned and raven-haired man so tall that he seemed to bend forward out of habit of speaking to everyone shorter than him, leaned forward and blinked silky black eyes at them. “Thank you. That’s kind.”

“I’ve never seen a dance like that before,” Tristram said. If anyone else had said it, it might have sounded like an invitation to share. When Tristram said it it was a polite and detached observation.   

The black-haired man turned to Nimue. The fox in the sand turned with him. The performers assembled in front of Tristram and Nimue like carolers. “I would like to know what you think, love. Did you enjoy it? Did it please you?”

Nimue folded her arms over her chest, felt the uncomfortable stickiness of her skin in the summer heat, and dropped them again. “I don’t really like the share the things that please me with complete strangers.”

Tristram’s elbow was sharp in her ribs. He hissed, “Nimue.”

The black-haired dancer did not look offended, though. He smiled, his dark lips stretched widely. He tilted his head at her, as though she had won something. Nimue tried to recall if he’d been one of the ones singing, but she couldn’t. “That is your right, Nimue.” When he said her name a shiver rolled over her shoulders, as though someone trailed icy fingertips from one shoulder blade to the other. The dancer’s gave drifted from Nimue to the woman beside him. She was older than Tristram, though only just, with raggedly cut hair and hawthorn-berry lips. There were flowers strung through her hair, white, like narcissus, though Nimue didn’t think narcissus grew anywhere near them. They hung on dark green strands, like dried waterweed. The woman looked back at him for only a second, but the fox trotted closer to them. It turned an identical gave on Nimue.

Tristram was patting his pockets, as though he’d only just remembered what he’d told Nimue and realized that because the dancers had performed for them only, he had to offer them something. “I don’t have any change on me,” he said. “I mean, if I found our mum I could buy you all a drink or something. There’s cider and ale. There’s a good pint back down the boardwalk. But you performed for the wrong people. We don’t carry anything in our pockets.”

“We’d accept another singer,” said one of the dancers. She had definitely been a singer. She had a face wizened as an old rose bush. Her hands moved lightly through the air. Her hair drifted and slipped over her shoulders. She was wearing a wispy white shirt, one that looked like the sort of thing Nimue’s grandmother might wear, but it was sprayed with salt. The wet patches were just visible in the lantern light where they clung to her arms and ribs. Nimue saw that her nails were softened as beach glass, glittering as if with sugar. “We’ve been losing singers for some time. Dancers we’d also accept, but we need voices with us.”

The fox bowed its head and looked for a moment as though it might burrow its head into the sand. Then it leapt on something in the sand, though Nimue hadn’t seen anything move. The performers looked sad and fierce, like a band of knights afore a cave. But the darkness was behind them, the dark ocean heaving in the dark sky. Nimue wondered how many of them there had been to start, of it there had been a start. If they’d been shedding some of their number and making them back so long they could not know themselves where they started.

Tristram opened his mouth and Nimue could tell he was about to say something that would reveal how absurd he found the request, how he believed, truly, that they were joking. So before he could, she said, “You’re not from around here, are you? And you’re not travelling by car?”

Tristram tapped Nimue’s elbow and almost scowled. “Don’t be stupid. They didn’t walk here if they’re from out the city. They’re not travelling on foot.”

“They could, if they don’t have too much luggage,” Nimue said.

The black-haired performer raised a brow and turned. The other performers stepped aside and pointed down the beach, where there was another silhouette on the sand, closer to the surf than the boardwalk, undisturbed and black against the lantern light. There was a sled resting atop the sand, a collection of suitcases on it. They looked as though, full, they would be too heavy for a single person to cart across the sand, even on a sled. But there was only one figure at the hind of the sled, hands curled around the sled’s handles. He was turned forward, away from them, but there was a stillness about him that spoke to Nimue of intent.

Nimue’s stomach twisted and flipped as she tried to look more closely at the shadowed face, then looked at the shape and length of the fingers on the sled instead.

“You really are hitchhiking, huh?” Tristram said. “Christ, that’s bold. What about in the winter? It’s the summer and the nights get cold anyway. How can you dance, or even travel?”

“Tonight is the shortest night of the year,” said the blonde dancer with hawthorn lips. Tristram looked to her instantly, taking in the soft angles of her face and icy beauty, but the dancer was looking at Nimue when she spoke.

“Obviously,” Nimue said, watching the figure at the sled. The figure didn’t look at her, but Nimue thought she saw the slightest tilt of the figure’s shoulders, as though she had been heard. She wanted the figure to know that she knew what night it was, that she knew a lot.

“Look, if you wait a minute, I’ll bring my mum over, honestly,” Tristram said. “She didn’t see your dance but she’s got our money on her. I’ll buy you a round if you want. Or something to eat. Maybe you can sing again for her, yeah? She’s just a little bit back on the walk. She’d be totally- wait just a minute.”

Tristram turned and trudged up the sand, leaping onto the boardwalk. He didn’t bother to put his shoes back on but walked on the worn wood. The boardwalk was loud, but as though he’d closed a door between the beach and the boardwalk, it was quiet on the sand. Nimue could hear the sea breathing on the edge of the sand. They hadn’t gotten closer to the sea, but it seemed louder anyway. The black-haired dancer’s eyes followed Tristram away, then returned to Nimue when the crowd had closed in on her brother.

“Will you sing with us, then?” he asked. “Or dance? I think you’d prefer to sing, though.”

“That’s quite an assumption,” Nimue said. “I don’t want you to ask me-” She nodded at the figure behind the sled. “I want him to ask me.”

The performers turned back again to the silent one holding their belongings. The figure reminded Nimue almost of the ferryman that brought souls across the river of the underworld. She saw now that the white and grey fox at the performers’ feet was not the only one. There were a couple more on the sleigh, though their fur was wet, plastered to them like a pelt. Their black eyes flashed as they turned toward and away from the lanterns.

“He won’t speak to you,” the older singer said. There was a huskiness in her voice as though she did not have the energy for anger. “That isn’t his purpose. He is here to bring us where we need to go, that’s all.”

“Where is that?” Nimue asked. “To my brother and I? To me? What for?”

One of the singer’s looked taken aback, but the black-haired dancer spoke calmly. “We did not choose you, exactly. We ask every one for a singer. We go up and down the water to ask. We try to collect singers and dancers. Every summer. We dance. We sing-”

“We have to go back before the winters freezes everything over,” the blonde dancer said. Nimue wasn’t sure that the dancer was worried about “everything”, but she didn’t ask what the dancer really was worried about, or if it had anything to do with her.

“I know you,” Nimue said, speaking from a memory. “I remember you last summer. You came to the docks and sang. My dad was on his boat. He heard you.” They didn’t ask after her father, and she didn’t tell them who he was. “You had more then. And it wasn’t you. Different singers and dancers, but it was your kind, wasn’t it?” “Your kind” didn’t seem polite, but the performers were noble and unbothered by it.

On the boardwalk, as though sound were bleeding through the invisible door between the festival and the beach, Nimue’s mother sounded annoyed and as though she were fighting Tristram, who was probably pulling her down the boardwalk. The figure behind the sled slid his hands back so the heel of his hands were nearly pushing against the handles. He tapped a finger once. Nimue saw it, though she did not hear it.

The performers did not see it. The elderly dancer nodded at Nimue. “We are using up the night. There is only so much of it left. We need to leave now. Are you coming to sing with us?”

“Are you going to bring me back?” Nimue said.

“At the end of the night, maybe,” said the black-haired man. He exchanged a look with the fox, who looked judging and hard. “Maybe in the winter. Maybe next summer.”

“Maybe next summer,” Nimue echoed.

Tristram was almost upon them, with their mother. Their mother sounded aggrieved to have been pulled this far along the boardwalk, and more aggrieved to be led toward the sand. “I did not agree to talking my shoes off. Tristram- Tristram! I’d rather you were getting drunk with your friends if you’re going to spend the night dragging me hither and-”

“Do you really need me?” Nimue asked.

“I don’t think I should share with a complete stranger what I do or do not need,” the black-haired man said.

Nimue almost appreciated his words. It made the thrumming in her hands lessen, but she could not stop from fidgeting with the bangles on her wrist. “Next summer, really?”  

The figure on the beach gave the sled a push. It moved a few inches across the sand, not far at all, but enough to send a jolt through Nimue’s chest. The performers took a step back across the sand. Nimue thought maybe the figure had heard the hesitation in her words and wished that he hadn’t. She wished he would give her another minute, but he moved the sled another couple of inches. The ocean suddenly seemed hungry behind him.

“It might be,” the black-haired dancer said, gently. But no one looked as though they believed him.

“You’ve only just asked me,” Nimue said, frantic and angry at her jitteryness. The performers were moving across the sand toward the sled, with much more organization than they had danced with. The lanterns on the shore rendered then like ink. The ocean heaved onto the shore.

“And now you have just to decide,” one of the dancers called back. Nimue could not tell which it was, and she was distracted from trying to deduce who it was by the fox throwing itself toward the shore. It cleared the front of the sled, then turned abruptly and sped back to it, as though something in the water had spooked it, though Nimue saw nothing on the shore. The other foxes on the sled moved restlessly, looking less like a nest and more like a tangled, shifting knot. The sled’s driver whistled at them, clear and colourless as water, and the foxes settled. The one that had raced toward the water still looked that way, its ears pricked up in the warm wind.

Tristram pulled his mother to the edge of the boardwalk and hopped into the sand. “Here, mum.”

“What did you and Nimue want to show me?” Their mother asked.

Tristram and his mother looked at the empty sand and the couples crowded around the lanterns on the shore.

Tristram looked up and down the length of the sea. “Nimue?”

Art by Barbara Florczyk

Textby Lucie MacAulay

My Chime Child

My Phelim was a chime child, born on the stroke of midnight, a miracle of all sorts. My seventh son as well, a favourite of the Fair Folk some said, and I kept an eye on him from his birth day, watching him when he mounted a fairy mound or skirted the edge of the wild woods tangled around our pasture. He was a solemn child and a silent one; when he emerged red and shining into the world I asked the midwife if he was ill. I had never had a child so silent come into the world, nor one that did not twist in the goodwife’s arms.  Searched for blue lips, a blue face, the signs of strangulation in my son but I saw only his dark small lashes, thin as black thread, curled atop swelling cheeks. His breathing was hushed as the sea on a windless day.

He continued to be quiet. He spoke few words growing, and while I understood, for the few words he spoke were always more important than the many words my other sons and my husband ever spoke, my husband found it disconcerting. I did nothing to assuage his worries when I impressed upon him that it was a good thing that Phelim could get by one one word where everyone else needed five. Silence was not for this life, my husband said. Silence was for the grave. And to mimic the grave whilst alive beneath the sun was a mockery of life. He tried to coax sound from Phelim with threats, and when Phelim did not yield, with the birch switch. Each slap of the switch against Phelim’s back had me biting my tongue. I could not bear to hear it but it felt like betrayal to retreat to the garden. So I listened from the other room. I had heard the switch before, against my other children, but when my husband beat them their cries drowned it all. This was a lone sound, a slice in skin and in the silence, a bloody pendulum. A sound like earth splitting, the chaotic pulse of the ocean. When it was done I heard Phelim climb to his feet unsteadily, like a foal with spindly legs, but there was never a sob to hear.

Phelim continued his chores while the blood dried on his back and let me wash it away with cold water and said nothing but to thank me and apologize for the ruination of another shirt. He apologized for my husband as well, though my husband was never there to see it. He was a birch switch himself, a thin sapling, a bone whittled soft and smooth by time, pliant and unbreakable. It was not hard to love Phelim for that, except that my love was hand in hand with my fear for him. But fear strengthens love as much as it hardens the task. And it was nothing to my pride.

They came late on a summer night. When one day was tipping into the next, a tumble of stars wheeling above our wheat and the drapery of the woods. The sort of day had passed in which the sky was blue as cornflower, the air crisp with the scent of apples and grass seed. It bled into a night sleepy with birdsong and warm with firelight. There are always lanterns on the farm and in the garden on summer nights. My boys had always stayed up late in the summer, unless a sharp word from my husband has sent them to bed. But there were no sharp words for any of them this night but Phelim. It neared midnight and he was inside with my husband and the birch switch. I was alone in spotting the first of them, though I did not know who they were at first. Now that I recall it, how could I have mistaken them for an ordinary band of knights? Who else has steeds the colour of smoke, with manes dark as the soil in the bottom of a river? Who else wears armour black as laquered ebony, or cloaks the colour of silver ferns? Who else, in the heat, would drape beech white caparisons upon their horses’ flanks and who wore, fastened to their coats, bronze pins twisted in such mesmerizing shapes? Who else blinked with eyes of different hues, one eye a dark deep brown, like the shadows of the woods, and another like moonlight on the surface of water?

The procession came from the woods, though I had not heard them until they appeared at the edge of our fields and flowed toward us. They did flow, a river of them, rippling horse muscle and heavy cloaks. They were mostly men, and my sons, who would normally had pressed their chests forward and their shoulders back, tilted their chins up at though they could look down upon men on horseback, did nearly shrink back. They could sense the arcane and wilderness in these men. And it was not until one of them looked directly at my sons that I did realize what riders were approaching our cottage. I would not dare hold my arms up in front of my children. I would not dare challenge the Hunt before they had spoken.

One rode ahead of the rest, in an evergreen cloak that bled over the flanks of his monstrous, jet horse. The horse was pressed against others, but no horse rode abreast of him. They danced in restlessness as they slowed, and in the horses’ sweat I could see muscles that spoke of days of racing, or nights of racing. The green-clad knight was straight as though he were a tree erected in the saddle- so proud! His features- sharper than any knife blade. His mouth was a cruel line cut in his pale face, set with both amusement and the weight of great age, a face that was a warning as much as it was intrigue. His hounds snapped at his feet, at the horses’ hooves, but he paid them no mind. They were silent docks, though their teeth struck against one another with a sound like flint against stone. I was drawn to them all, these knights, at once. It is easy to be drawn to the Fair Folk. It is easy to mistake their beauty for sugar, but monsters often wear beautiful faces. I was weary and foolishly enchanted at once. I was glad my husband was indoors so he would not see my flushed cheeks and twisting fingers.

If Phelim had been outside he would not have spoken a word. He would have let his silence bring this conversation into neutral ground. He would had stood upon this land and told the Fair Folk with only his glance whose it was. My son Noein leapt to the ground beside me just before the knights were close enough to heard and whispered furiously in my ear, voice a well of admiration and apprehension. Should we get them wine, mother? Will their horses want water?

I meant to shake my head, but had to consider the questions carefully. It would not do to refuse the knights anything, but they had asked for nothing as of yet. We had no wine fit for them, and their taste in wine was probably more than any human could offer. We had only the wine we bought from a neighbour, dark as a seed deep in the soil, dark as shade, but not enough to tempt the knights, surely. They were used to drink that I could not imagine, and I was nothing but an initiate in the ways of conversing with them. I could not begin to think of how to explain that I did not have wine fir for them. I considered sending Noein inside to retrieve some, so that I might explain it better, but the pulse of the birch switch against Phelim’s back in the house distracted me. It might not be clear what was happening, for Phelim was, as always, silent, but my husband did make up for it. No more than a few seconds at a time passed without a shout, a jeer, or insults that made the night more jagged than birdsong did. I heard only some of it, but it was enough to make me flush anew in front of the strangers. Did Phelim think he was worth the salt on the table? Did he think his flesh any more valuable than the swine on our plates? He had another’s eyes, not his, and a body too frail and thin to work the land properly. A disappointment, Phelim had been, since he’d been born that night so many years ago.

Shame filled my throat with heat as the shadow of the black horse descended on my garden. There was no gate to the garden, only a gap in the fence, though the knights did not come through it. Of course the knights could hear what was passing inside, but they said nothing of it. Their black and silver eyes were fixed upon myself and my children.

“Madam,” said the green-clad knight in a voice as clear and cold as water. His face was dark and even more sharply cut by the light of the lanterns. He looked like a god, a creature born of the fire and the forest atop a steed as dark as rock. His gaze made me shiver. “I have a thirst, as do my men. And our steeds. We will take any water you have, if you have some to spare?”

I did not believe it wise to be inhospitable and I did not believe in it, moreover. I treated them as I would have any guests. I did not have to tell my children to mind their tongues, though I wished I had taught them to mind their stares. I was astonished none of them choked on flies as they gaped. Once their maws were shut and my daughters were ushered out of the way, though they did not stop gazing at the men, we watered the horses and watered the knights. The hands the took the drinks were young and graceful, as fluid as water themselves. They were not the hands of those that handled timbre or rock or churned dirt. There were calluses upon their palms from gripping reigns, and red strikes across their fingers where they had twisted their fingers too tightly in the manes of their steeds. They looked shaped around the riding of these horses. The knights looked grateful for the water, young and easy as my boys. They requested water for their hounds too, and though their hounds were silent they snapped their jaws warningly as my boys came forth with water and left it at the horses’ hooves for the hounds to drink.

The green-clad knight did not thank me but he did look satisfied. He tapped his belt as though he would produce a coin from it, from one of the pockets of his tunic. Instead, he said, “Our hounds are restless and easily distracted. And they have grown in number. I need someone to tend them for the next year before the winter weeds them out and returns them to a manageable number. Would you be able to spare one of your sons, Madam, for the task? I should return him again, when we ride back in the summer.”

I said nothing at first. I had given him water and it was not enough? I would rather have given him all of our wine and water. But how to refuse these knights and this man? I did not think his hounds would tolerate it if I refused him. These knights were not known for their benevolence. They did not move as midnight stretched around us. “I do not know how I can spare one of my sons, sir. Not with the harvest approaching. My daughters can not do all of the work. And I am not sure you would want one of them.”

It was too much. I snapped my mouth closed as soon as I had finished speaking. I had not meant to say so much, but it was too late. I had challenged them. They did not look challenged as their gazes wandered. The green-clad knight’s eyes lifted to the window beside our front door, as though he could see through our curtains. There was ice in his black and silver eyes. “Daughters speak more than sons. Sons often speak too much anyway. A quiet son, I would take. The hounds prefer the quiet. He would have no trouble at all.” He looked down upon me again. “Have you a quiet son?”

It was an offer to take my son. Both an offer and a demand. He could hear the birch switch as clearly as I could. When Phelim did appear outside and ask quietly what hounds were baying it was quite clear that he was to go with them.

I have known sorrow, but there is very little that compares to missing one’s children. And Phelim, my silent child, my precious child, my chime child, I missed him dearly. I wished to see the knights descending out of the forest again when the trees bled yellow and scarlet over the horizon, when the frost climbed the windowpanes and the snow feathered the frozen soil and the trees on the roadside. I wanted to smell horses in the air when spring arrived, but I only smelled the carcasses of animals that had died and frozen in the winter, thawing, and the green, growing scent of buds and blossoming brambles, and the musk of frisky animals. I missed his silence when I heard my other sons cry beneath my husband’s birch switch. I thought perhaps, in the summer, when he returned, it was their cries that had brought him back to us.

There were fewer hounds this time, as the green-clad rider had said there would be, and the same number of knights, though this time my Phelim had joined their number, atop his own black steed, dressed no less resplendently. He trailed after the green-clad rider, who stopped at our fence and did not cross the threshold but smiled with cold generosity at myself and my children. It was much too late to be calling, to be returning my son to me, but I would accept him at midnight or midday. “I did say I would return him, did I not, Madam?” the green-clad rider said. “Your son has been as silent as I have needed him to be. I would say that his time with us had sharpened that silence. If you find his quiet refined do not be alarmed.”

He gestured, and Phelim dismounted and strode toward us through the line of horses. My sapling boy had become a tree, lean but strong as a birch tree. In that year he had changed remarkably. I knew he had changed in more ways than that when I looked into his face and saw his eyes.

But I could not slight the knights. No matter how the sight of my Phelim frightened me now. “I am glad you returned him, sir. Thank you for doing so,” I said.

“You are welcome,” the rider said, and began to turn his horse away. He paused on the other side of the fence and turned back to Phelim. Phelim looked up at him, as though the rider had called, though he had not. The armour of the rider’s shoulder reflected light into his sharp face. “Remember what I said. Remember where you have been,” the rider said to Phelim. Phelim said nothing and though he was quiet, I was surprised. It was rude not to answer. But the rider did not look offended; perhaps it was he that had taught Phelim to become even more silent. Then the knight looked into the window of my husband’s cottage, as he had the year before, as though he could see my husband in the window. “Farewell, Madam. Good night.”

Then they departed. The hounds gnashed their teeth once more in my direction, soundlessly, though Phelim looked down upon them. When he did, they set their jaws and bounded after their masters. In a few moments the knights had vanished into the forest and there was nothing there to say that they had come and gone at all. Nothing but my new son, looking up at the sky as though there were something to see in it. He was quiet as the grave as we went indoors, as he took off his cloak, as he unstrapped the light armour around his shoulders. He was silent as he looked as my husband with his new black and silver eyes and when midnight struck he pulled a dagger from his belt and slit my husband open from neck to navel. My husband was silent as he fell across the dinner table. Phelim wiped the blade on the tablecloth as I wiped tears from my eyes and said not a word.

Art by Joao Ruas

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Relative Distance

Memphis’ life story was this: once upon a time there was a boy who lived on a farm with his father and mother, who he loved beyond reason. In the summers he took his boots off at the paddock and walked through the weeds and side stepped the cow patties and lounged in the hay for hours until the smell was too obvious that he’d been lounging in hay for hours. In the winter he scraped frost from the windows of his father’s mustang. In the spring he duct taped the shutters on the windows closed to keep the storms from blowing the shutters indoors, and still the screen door banged against the outer wall of the house and the windows rattled and the gale howled. In the autumn wind-spiked rain shot holes in the mud and pasted the leaves to the floor of the woods. When he was fourteen he found his father beaten to death in front of his house, the door of his mustang wrenched open, the key in the ignition, and no sign of his mother. The next day he told the police he had no relatives, nowhere else to live. A week later his mother still hadn’t returned. Two weeks later he moved into the apartment above the church in Everwoods.

Everwoods was a town that never seemed to wake, if you came from outside the town. If you were born within it you knew that Everwoods was always awake, and awake it was so lethargic it bled solemnity and boredom onto the surrounding highways. It was a place like teeth, houses and municipal buildings slotted next to one another precisely and closely. It was comfort and asphalt, clean and efficient. No one worked on Sundays and Memphis didn’t notice. Memphis never drove his father’s mustang, which sat on the street outside the church where it was not legally allowed but also not in the way, back to his father’s farm. He didn’t tell anyone where he’d lived before, and no one asked. Because where Memphis had never been, he was now always there. Working nine to five every weekday and extra hours on Saturday, he fitted as neatly into Everwoods as though he’d been born there, never mind that he looked other, that it was clear he was from elsewhere. What else explained the wildness in him? The air of shade and green creepers and animal musk and wild plums? Memphis was polite; Memphis worked hard; Memphis didn’t have a family or a girlfriend or a boyfriend or anywhere to return to or anywhere to go. These were facts of life.

Memphis left Everwoods after his shift. Possibly the next day. He left his shift, anyway, and no one saw him return. No one saw him leave the church, but the mustang was gone, and the apartment above the church empty. Memphis drove twelve of the fifteen hours to Kila Glade, the radio in the mustang fading in and out of stations and static. He drove until he didn’t recognize the road signs, then kept driving. He paused to pee by the side of the road and to observe a fox going in the opposite direction who did not look up at his footsteps but did look up at the sound of his piss hitting the ferns. He drove another three hours to Kila Glade. In those hours the sky turned from silver blue to a colour like the dark caves under the ocean, threaded through with stars. He looked up at them outside the driver’s side window now and again, when he slowed and could be almost sure he would not hit anything that bounded out of the woods. He was looking at them again when he pulled into Les’ driveway. If he hadn’t managed to tear his eyes away from the silver-dusted sky he might have crashed into Les’ Camaro. It would have put some strain on the cousins’ reunion. But Memphis didn’t look worried at all, even when Les barrelled into him as he got out of the Mustang, or when he introduced me.

He told me later he didn’t know Les had a girlfriend. They hadn’t spoken for a while before his parents died.

I told him it was funny, because until Memphis and his mustang pulled into Les’ driveway, I hadn’t known Les had a cousin. Then I told him I was sorry for his loss. I wanted to tell him I was sorry he couldn’t look at the stars a little longer, but Les was already dragging Memphis inside.

If Memphis hadn’t paused so often, it would have been harder to deduce how everything about Kila Glade surprised him. The roads surprised him because they twisted and sloped, tripped and seemed to make an effort to steer vehicles into ditches. The floorboards that moaned beneath his feet made him pause, made him look down as though he might find he’d stepped on a person, then shuffle his feet thoughtfully over the warped wood. He was beguiled by the lack of a telephone system, by the emergency siren that we were to ring to alert the ranger of fire or accident. He was bewildered by the three generators in the basement that were enough to power every electronic in the house, should we need it. He could no comprehend the way we built fences and nets around our zucchinis to keep out the voles and hares.

What made him stop most often was the smell. When he stopped and breathed deeply, I tried to breathe deeply too. But I only smelled grass seed and hollyhocks and leaf mould.

“You used to smell like this,” Les said to Memphis once. He was looking at Memphis’ car as though blaming it for the way Memphis smelled when he came to us, the way he still smelled to me. I didn’t hate the mustang as Les did. Memphis and leaned against it sometimes when Memphis felt like looking up and I didn’t think I could finish an entire bag of crisps by myself. Memphis didn’t look bothered by Les’ words, but I think he must have been. Maybe his father’s farm smelled of hollyhocks and mould. I wasn’t surprised he smelled of cleaner and tarmac then; time had probably washed his father’s farm from him.

“Everwoods doesn’t actually have any woods in it,” Memphis said. He looked at the mustang too, then leaned against it for a moment. It seemed to want to hold him up, like a large dog or a horse. “Nothing there except libraries and houses.”

“Isn’t it in the middle of the woods?” I asked.

“It actually takes a long time to get to the woods though.” He sounded tired, like he’d already tried it and hadn’t the energy to do it again. “All that walking.”

Les spread his arms wide and grinned. “Walking is all we do here. Unless you want to get somewhere, then you drive. That’s the same everywhere you go.”

Memphis replied, “Not in Everwoods. You have to drive there, to get anywhere.”

I scratched the back of my calf. Mosquitoes another thing that baffled Memphis when he first came to us. His elbows were angry with bites. “That sounds awful.”

Memphis turned. He’d been wearing Les’ clothing since he’d arrived, and if Les didn’t have so many plaid shirts and wool jumpers he might have cared, but he was probably caught in the improbable way Memphis looked in his clothing. The way his browned skin and darker hair didn’t manage to blend into the dark woods at all. He looked flattened in a cubic space. He had. Now, with his leaner arms and broader shoulders, redder cheeks and forehead, he lost his dubiousness. “Only if you’re trying to go somewhere,” Memphis said. He rubbed the mustang’s hood like he would the head of a fond dog and went to shake out the rug.

Les took Memphis into the base camp of Kila Glade for supplies every two weeks. Memphis wasn’t good at boundaries, Les said, not ones that came with signs. He knew how not to spook a calf or a beaten pup, but a restricted access sign on a metal fence was as good as non-existent in his eyes. When Memphis was gone to base camp too long, Les loaned me the Camaro to follow him. Almost half a year after arriving at Kila Glade, Memphis didn’t realize the fenced off field behind the general store had been staked by the general store owner’s son Abram.

The afternoon was hot and long, stretched like taffy, green and black with moss and gnats. There was so much dark golden light that the fence behind the general store looked like a fishing net in the dusky underwater light of the sea. When I climbed out Abram already had a fist buried in Memphis’ face. Memphis might have fallen if Abram didn’t grab his shoulder and hold him against the fence next. The agitated bull calves were retreating to the far side of the fence, trampling the grass as they went. Abram didn’t seem to notice. “Do you not understand?” He jerked a hand at the fence.

Then Restricted Access sign was hard to miss. If you weren’t Memphis. The anger in Abram’s face was hard to misunderstand. If you weren’t Memphis. Les had once said that he worried Memphis wouldn’t understand the world: what he meant was that he thought Memphis would fumble with the world and cut himself. “I didn’t see it. It’s just a fence,” Memphis said.

Abram looked happy to cut him. He didn’t waste his time on words. When he swung his fist it looked as though someone else had planned it, as though the universe had calculated the swing, had drawn Abram’s hand back and let it loose, guided it to Memphis’ jaw. Memphis looked as though he’d accepted it, as though he’d already accepted the consequences for what he’d said then and everything he would ever say. Memphis did fall, into the grass and the gravel that collected at the edge of the fence. There was a dust in his eyelashes, chalk on his cheek. Gravel rolled out of the creases in his t-shirt. He stood up and Abram took the opportunity to kick him below the ribs.

“Abram,” I said when Memphis sucked in a breath, opening his mouth to a spike of grass.

Abram rested the toe of his boot against Memphis’ working throat. “What are you doing here?”

“Picking him up.” I was already backing away from the fence. There was a door a few feet away that no one had unlocked. I didn’t have a hard time imagining Memphis climbing the chain links to hurl himself over the side. But why, Memphis? “Come on. He won’t do it again. Les won’t let him back on his.” Les also wouldn’t be happy that Memphis had pissed off Abram, or that Abram had winded Memphis.

“He’s yours.” Abram pulled his foot from Memphis’ throat. He wiped his mouth as a breeze blew chalky dust up from the gravel, and the smell of warm loam from the woods. He nudged Memphis in the leg with his boot to get him moving. “You’re lucky you got a girl to look after your ass.”

Memphis pushed himself up on his palms, then climbed to his feet. He waited until Abram opened the gate and then came outside. The bull calves were watching, shifting uneasily, caught between wanting a view and wanting to avoid the commotion. I walked past Memphis’ mustang and opened the door of the Camaro for Memphis to get inside. Memphis paused at his mustang and looked between the two of them as though he could not comprehend how they cold occupy the same world.

I tapped the top of Les’ car and jingled his keys. “Can you drive or no?”

Memphis’ chest was heaving. He had both hands by his sides, though I could tell he wanted to hold his stomach. He licked his lip. “No.” He blinked. There was dust in one of his eyes, I thought. Or I’d missed another punch Abram had thrown. One eyelid was swelling, the white of the eye beneath it was rosy. “It’s all hazy.”

There was a haze- twilight was fading fast. The sun was dipping over the trees and brushing them with murky gold light. But I leaned against the closed driver’s side door and tapped the top of the Camaro again. “Then come on. We’re going back. We’ll pick up the mustang tomorrow.” Les wouldn’t let it be if we came home without groceries and the Camaro.   

Memphis looked for a moment as though breathing had become negotiable. I hadn’t noticed how much he’d been moving until his shoulders went still. He looked frozen by the suggestion. When he looked at the mustang he put a hand on the side view mirror.

I said, “We’ll come back for it tomorrow morning.” I opened my door but didn’t get in. After a moment Memphis came round the side and slipped into the passenger seat. While I wrestled with the Camaro’s capricious gearshift he shifted and played with the seat adjuster.

“I think I miss Everwoods,” he said. It wasn’t what he meant, but I don’t think I could have helped him with what he did mean.

We paused halfway back to Les’ place and pulled over. The road was small anyway. If anyone wanted to pass us they would still have to be careful about it, but it was easier to pretend we had holes ourselves up somewhere private. With the windows almost all the way up I could smell his detergent and his sweat and the dirt crusted on the toes of his shoes. I left the windows that way when I reached across the gearshift to kiss him. This close his collar smelled like grass seed, and he tasted like zucchini flowers and blood, so he made a little more sense after all.

A little later, when the sun really was gone and the trees had become black veins and pillars and claws I pulled away and watched Memphis do up the buttons of his over shirt. He had the keys of the mustang in one hand. He wouldn’t let anyone touch it, even to go back for it. They were probably the only things he’d carried all the way from his father’s farm.

“Are you going back to Everwoods?” I asked, because Les wouldn’t, and Memphis wouldn’t volunteer an answer unless I asked first. He still might not. He was in a quiet mood.

Memphis looked down at the button on his shirt. He wasn’t frowning but I knew he didn’t want to. He wanted something Kila Glade didn’t have either, for all its smell of grass seeds and hollyhocks and leaf mould. He wanted something impossible, something that he’d dreamed up inside him and might begin to resent the world for not making real. Left alone, Memphis had dreamed up beautiful woods and beautiful pastures and gales and mud and plums. If he could turn inward and live there, he would.

“Not Everwoods,” he said finally. “Is there some place on the other side of Kila Glade? I could keep driving.”

He was already gone. He hadn’t left and already he was going. He had probably been leaving since he’d arrived. Bits of him were shifting at a time. “You could,” I said. “You want some place else?”

“Somewhere between Everwoods and Kila Glade. Some place like that.”

“Some place like you.”

Memphis went quiet again. He would stay quiet the rest of the night. He would explain the incident with Abram to Les with as few words as possible and let Les rage on his own. He wouldn’t talk about the kiss of his mustang or where he was going next. He surprised me by saying, “Maybe I’ll go somewhere you can walk into.”

I don’t know if I believed it. Memphis would never go anywhere the mustang couldn’t go as well. I didn’t tell him he wanted to go somewhere impossible. That places like that weren’t found, but made. He’d already made it.

But the next morning the mud had fossilized his footsteps away from Les’ and the mustang sat keyless in the general store’s parking lot.

Art by Frederico Infante

Text by Lucie MacAulay