After Forever Ends by Melodie Ramone
Feeling a little foolish, I stepped backward away from the circle, “Congratulations on your newest little boon. I’ve been hearing you chatter. You sound so happy. Maybe someday Oliver and I will have a family together. I hope to. I’d really like that. I really would. But for now I suppose I’ll just be happy for you. Good bye.”
I picked some rosemary from the garden to use for our supper and poured some more birdseed into the feeder before I headed into the house. When I got in, I straightened up our tiny living room and went into the kitchen to cut some vegetables. I was chopping my heart out when I suddenly froze. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something appear on the countertop. Chills ran up and down my spine. “Did that really just happen?” I asked myself. Perhaps it had been there all along. But, no. I knew it had not been there when I had come in the room because I had taken the knife I was using right out of the drawer below where it now sat. I turned slowly toward it and I actually screamed.
It was the plate I had just left in the garden.
I dropped my knife on the floor and ran out of that house. I jumped from the top step down to the ground and landed in the grass crouched down on my toes and on the tips of my fingers. I sprang up and I ran as fast as I could to that faerie circle. I skidded down the slope in my trainers and fell, landing on my bottom right before it.
My plate was gone. Sitting in its place were the pair of pink socks that I had lost the very first night I stayed at the cabin, neatly folded. I picked them up slowly with shaking hands and noticed something inside. I stuck my fingers in, felt around and drew whatever it was out of the fold.
“Holy shite,” I muttered with my hand over my mouth, “It’s true!”
“Silvia?” Oliver was calling from across the garden. I could see him coming out of the house. I‘d just missed his arrival, “Are you home, Love?”
“Oliver, come here!”
“There you are!” He wandered over and bent to kiss me. “What’s up, Sil? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“What are these?”
He took them from my hand and turned them over. “They’re keys…” He paused and drew in a deep breath, “Blimey, Sil! These are the keys I accused Alex of taking the night I chopped down the door! He swore he didn’t! He was all ticked off for me saying he did! Where’d you find them?”
I held up my socks and pointed into the circle. I was speechless.
“Did you leave them sweets?”
I nodded.
Oliver grinned, “I think you’ve met the Lord and Lady! They’ve been waiting for you to come to them, haven’t they? And I’d bet they like you, too, since they gave you back two things and not just the one!” He was beside himself. Smile splitting his face, he slapped his hands against his thighs and looked to the sky, letting loose a triumphant howl. Then he turned back to me, “Now do you believe?”
I looked around the garden, “Do I have a choice?”
Oliver took me in his arms, “Did you ever?”
No, I guess I didn’t really have a choice, especially not after that.
I learned to make candies after that day just so I could leave a variety of sweets in the circle for the Lord and the Lady. Oliver’s socks would come up missing still from time to time, but nothing of mine, not ever again until after the children arrived.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Time passes and so did another year for us. Sometimes life falls into a rut, even for the young who are living with elves. Oliver went to school during the day half the week and the other half of the week at night. He worked odd hours around his schedule, as did I. We didn’t see much of each other. It was lonely, really. I didn’t have much else to do but coursework, so semesters peeled by one after the next. I had my Masters of Science and Bachelors of Accounting degrees with no real motivation to apply either. When I was offered a grant for graduate school, the board of governors asked me what my intentions were for the future. I gave them the first answer that popped into my head, “Obviously, I have my Masters of Science and I intend on continuing with Microbiology. I’ll complete the program for Biophotonics…” Blah blah blah. My response was ultimately meaningless as I was losing interest in all of it. I was only going to school because Oliver wasn’t around and there wasn’t really anything else to do.
I didn’t know quite what was happening to my brain then. Hormones, I suppose. The ageing process had taken hold and I was no longer the ambitious girl I’d always been. I didn’t care anymore about much but relaxing. I'd lost my edge. I had no need to compete with anybody. I was satisfied and the things that had once driven me no longer were important.
I was still curious, though. Curious about everything imaginable, but I wasn’t much interested in being the one who discovered why some people get cancer at twelve and die while others who smoke cigarettes and dwell in polluted cities live to be one hundred. Someone else could find it out for me, tell me and I'd apply it. Where or how I would I never considered.
It was madness! There I was with two degrees in my hand, a graduate student with an exemplary average, ready to begin my career and I had no bottle left. I had always known I wanted to be a medical researcher. I had dreamed of the day when, like Carolyn Porco when she discovered the moons of Saturn, I'd be the one to learn something that no one else on the planet knew. I was right there on the precipice of it. I was not only a microbiologist, but about to be a Biophotonist, one of the elite in my field! I could have been sorting out ways to save the world, but I didn't want to.
What had always fascinated and intrigued me now was a bore. A nagging at my coat tail holding me back from my new pursuits, which included little more than spending time in my garden growing my plants or sitting under the big oak in the side lawn reading books.
I had lost my mind. Oliver was gone so often I think I would have been depressed, except I started talking to the trees.
I can’t explain it. But those trees, they seemed as if they wanted me to talk to them, so I would. For hours. “You know,” I told the one I liked to read beneath, “I’ve never loved a place as much as I have loved it here. And you’re a part of it. Every day I come out that door and you’re standing here. Every time I look out my kitchen window I see you. I’d like to be your friend, but I’m not sure how to be friends with a tree. A bird you can feed and leave water for. Same with squirrels and foxes. And a hare will always come for your cabbage, but what can I do to make a friend of a tree? I use your shade, you keep the rain off of me. I sit right here all the time on your roots and you never complain. So tell me, what can I do to reciprocate your kindness?”
Insane, really. Twenty-three years old, I was. Twenty-three years old living in a primitive little house, not wanting any kind of a career or future, still in love with the same boy I’d always been. And we were still broke, let me tell you. Oliver and I had no money at all, but what was already spent. Everything we owned was second hand but our clothes. I didn’t have a television or the internet because I still didn’t even have electricity. I wrote to my family and friends only occasionally and rang less than that. I had every reason to be bored out of my skull and want to run away. But I loved it there in the wood with Oliver and I never wanted to leave.
The wood was my home; my heart had become the winds.
I wasn’t feeling very well that day. I hadn’t felt very well for a couple of days. It was almost like I had the flu, but not. I was nearing the time of my monthly cycle and thought that was the problem, as I was bloated and nauseous and had terrible pressure in my lower abdomen and side. I rubbed my belly and groaned a little and then I lay back against the tree and looked up at the sky. The clouds were passing more quickly. There was a storm on its way.
My only sadness was that I still didn’t have any muffins. I hadn’t said a word to Oliver, as I promised myself I wouldn’t. But I was still a little worried that I might never have one. All kinds of people were making muffins. There were billions of muffins popping out of ovens all across the Earth. I only wanted one. It did
Maybe I was being selfish, I thought. After all, I had been duly blessed. I had a home, a husband who loved me, food to eat and faeries in my garden…maybe I shouldn’t even have wanted a baby. I was still happy that the Lord and the Lady had their boon. I wondered if it had been a boy boon or a girl boon or maybe even twins. I wondered if Oliver and I might have twin muffins. He had told me once that twins usually skips a generation, but maybe we could.
I could see them in my mind’s eye, running around in the garden, two naked little muffins chasing the butterflies and digging in the dirt with their tiny muffin hands. Two muffins made of chocolate that looked just like Oliver or two muffins made of cherries that looked just like me. Or maybe one of each or a single muffin that had both ingredients, mixed like a chocolate dipped cherry.
I wondered if it could be done. I mean, make a real muffin somehow using chocolate dipped cherries. Maybe I’d try it.
Right then I knew I had to pull my wits about me. I was going mental. I was allowing too many muffins to be dancing in my head. The answer was obvious. I’d simply ask Oliver for a dog. It wouldn’t be the same as a muffin. It would be more like a chip, but it would be something I could mother. And, oh, I had this desperate need to mother something.
Something was happening to me for sure, but I was not at all aware of it. I just felt different. I felt like something inside of me was changing and I was sort of floating away. I was thinking about things I never thought about before, things aside from muffins. Like my mother.
She had been dead for nearly nineteen years. I hardly remembered her and I hardly thought about her. Why? She had been my mother! She must have been important to me. I must have known her, needed her. Certainly I loved her. Didn't I? I put that thought straight out of my head. I had to have! All children love their mothers! I shouldn't have been any different! Then why couldn't I remember her?
My father had told me so little of her, but there were things he had. I knew she had been well loved by people, that she'd had friends. I knew that she was intelligent and patient and that she had loved me. He'd told me that more than enough times, “Silvia, your mother loved you so bleedin’ much,” He'd say in a tone as if he were addressing a wounded animal, “She never would have left us if she'd been given the say.”
So I knew that, at least. I knew she hadn't abandoned me on purpose. She hadn't been a suicide or run off because she just didn't care. Still, I just couldn’t bring her face to my mind. I'd seen pictures, so I knew what she looked like, but I couldn't see her. She had red hair, but not like mine. Hers had been light, almost blonde. I remembered that. I remembered her hair, shiny and soft. It was curly like mine, too, but she cut it short, just above the shoulder. Sometimes she wore headbands, thick cloth ones, to keep it out of her face while she worked in the house. Was it cooking or cleaning? I couldn't remember, but I could recall that she always painted her toenails red and she…she?
I strained to remember another detail. What else about her? Nothing. That my father seemed to be ruined after she died? Yes, that was about it.
Then there was my father. So dull, passionless. Constantly buried in his work. Surrounded by words. Words. Words. Pens. Ink. Books. Click, click, click on the keyboard, always writing, always working. That was my father. No interest in anything past his nose. I was certainly past his nose. He never came to visit on hols, not that I had expected him to. He had nothing to say when I rang him. I thought about tossing him a bell from time to time, or even popping in on him for a visit, to ask him about my mother. I had so many questions, but I wondered if he would even tell me anything at all.
I wondered if I really cared.
It bothered me, though, the way I had so little emotion toward him and was so curious about her. And, still, I didn’t miss either. What was wrong with me? Why was I so disconnected? What had happened to my family? Why was I so cut off from my own blood? I had a sister that I adored, but our only contact was the phone. She had never come to visit me anymore. I had a cousin. His name was Oliver as well, and I loved him dearly when we were children, but I had not seen him since I left Scotland. Not that I would have gone and looked him up. What would I have said? “Hello, Cousin Oliver! It’s Silvia and I’ve got nothing to say, just feeling so bored I’ve gone loopy!”
No, nothing seemed to matter from before I came to the wood. It wasn't worth reaching back to find anybody. That had been a different life all together and I had a new one now. I was where I would always stay, even when I wasn’t feeling so well and even in the rare event that Oliver and I weren’t getting on.
We’d had a fight the night before, a right nasty one, too. We disagreed from time to time, but it was rare either of us lost our tempers or shouted. It did happen where we would, but that night was the first that anything had ever come close to violence. Any time we ever had a fight it was almost always about finances. That time was no different. Oliver had gone absolutely ballistic on me when he found out that I’d phoned my father and asked him for money.
“We don’t need his money!” Oliver shouted at me. His hands were balled into fists, “Damn it, Silvia! I could work extra hours to make that much! I told you not to ask anybody! You completely disobeyed me!”
“All you do is work extra hours as it is! It’s not enough, Oliver!” The stress of not being able to pay the bills was too much for me. Any calm I might have had cracked right there. It hadn't been an easy thing to ask my dad and I was already ashamed and defensive about it, “Even when both of us work extra hours sometimes it’s not enough! Do you think it’s a better idea if we can’t pay for one of the cars and they come and take it? We owe so much money on this house and you just keep building on to it…”
“Would you rather have it so small you can smell my breath across the room? Is that what you want?” He threw his arms into the air, “Well, Christ, Silvia, if I‘d known that I wouldn‘t have spent most of my trust fund trying to make an acceptable home for you!”
“That’s not what I’m saying! I’m saying…”
“You’re saying nothing!” He was furious. His dark brows were furrowed, his frown so deep it actually distorted his face, “You’re telling me that what I do isn’t good enough! I built this house for you, Sil! Do you really think I want to work ten hours a day, go to school all night and come home to put up walls around you and then hear you bitch about not having space for your shoes?” Now he was ranting. He kicked the back of a chair and it turned on to its face. It scared me so badly I began to shake. Oliver continued, “Ever think of that? I work my arse off every day of the week, including Sunday, because I’m the only one who ever chops the fucking wood! I’m still disregarded! Christ, Silvia!” He kicked the chair again. It spun toward me, “I could be hanging around with my friends! It would be a hell of a lot more fun than this! “
That stung. All I had done earlier was mention that I needed more cupboard space. I hadn‘t known he would feel I was complaining. However, I reacted to the insult with anger and quickly changed the subject back, “Would you rather have had me not ask my dad and have them come and take my car because we couldn’t make the payment? I‘d have to quit school, I‘d lose my job! I work too, remember?”
“And use your money how?” He roared. He was unwilling to listen to any sort of reason. He just wanted to blame, wanted to take his frustrations out and I was the only one there, “I don’t know where your money goes! All I know is that it’s all spent and at the end of the week you have none left and you take mine! I don‘t know where that goes, either! All I know is that we should have minimal expenses and we never have any fucking money!”
“What are you accusing me of?” I couldn’t believe he said that. He knew where every penny was spent. I kept careful accounts on our expenses.
“You shouldn’t have asked him!” He yelled, going back to my father, “I told you not to!”
“No!” I
“You’re controlling!” He snapped, but I had knocked him down just a notch, “You’re tight fisted unless it’s something you want and then you just go off and spend as you like without consulting me! It’s my money, Silvia!”
“It’s our money, Oliver! Ours! And every penny is spent keeping us from being swallowed by our debt!” I was livid by then. How dare he lecture me on a budget when he was the one who wasted money on things we could have done without, “And you like to eat as well, yeah? Do you want to work all day, go to class, and then have to shop, too? You can add that in if you want to keep track of your money, Oliver!”
“Fuck this!" He grabbed his coat off the couch and started for the kitchen.
“Oh, no!” I thought, “He isn’t going to start with me and then just walk away!” I headed him off. He knew what I was up to, but was a second too slow in figuring it out. We raced to the counter and I snatched up his keys before he could grab them and ran with them to the back of the house.
He was right at my heels, “Give me my keys!” He roared.
“No!” I screamed and slammed the bedroom door in his face, taking a few steps back.