Last Journey

The oar dipped into the water gently, smoothly. She sat cross-legged, watching as it broke the placid surface, ripples spreading outward from it in all directions. A life is like that, she thought to herself; the smallest thing you do sets off ripples that spread further than you ever know, than you could ever have believed.

As if in answer to her thoughts, the Old Man who was steering the raft looked over his shoulder at her and smiled. “Pretty,” she said, watching the sunlight play over the ripples. It made the dark water dance and sparkle.

The Old Man lifted an eyebrow. “Some have found gold in these depths. Some say these depths are the only place true gold is to be found.”

“And what do you say?” she asked idly, dangling a foot over the edge of the raft so that she could dip her toes into the water. It was cool, soothing. Something about these waters calmed her in a way she could not explain.

He winked at her, his single blue eye sparkling more brightly than the sun on the waters. “Ah…well. Speaking only for myself, ofcourse, I say there is gold to be found everywhere—often where you least expect it. If you don’t insist on defining the word too narrowly, that is. As a very wise man once wrote, ‘All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost.’” He chuckled. “I say gold can be found in the watery depths, and in the fires of the earth, in the burial howe and in the mead hall, on the funeral pyre and in the birthing chamber. It is found hanging from the branches of trees, and in the mouth of the poet, and in the ravings of the madman. There are no limits as to where one might look—or at least, the possibilities are limited only by your imagination.” 

She wanted to follow his words as she usually did, to let them take her on a journey. She longed for pen and paper so that she could weave the wonders he showed her into words, into a poem or a story. But the rich depths of his voice lulled her, and she was getting sleepy again. She stared at the rippling patterns of light and blinked, trying to force her eyes to stay open. The water  extended around them in all directions for as far as she could see, ending in a veil of impenetrable grey mist. She could not see through the mist however hard she tried, despite the fact that the sun was shining brightly. It seemed like they had been rowing for weeks or months already, and no land had ever come into view. Yet this was not the ocean; the water was far too calm for that. “I love it here,” she said. Suddenly, it was difficult to force her mouth to form words; her tongue felt heavy and thick. “But I don’t want to stay. I can’t. I want to go forward. Or no—I want to go back. Back to the others, to my family. The ones I’ve left behind.”

 “Do you indeed?” He looked over at her again, his one-eyed blue gaze piercing her so deeply that she had to look away. She studied her hands, painfully aware of his gaze on her, and of the unbearable compassion in it. It was like a weight, like a magnet pulling at her, but she refused to look at him again. If she looked, she would want to stay, and then she would be lost. “Yes,” said, trying to keep her voice from wavering. “Yes, I want to go back.”

 She felt, rather than heard, his sigh. “As you wish.” 

He loosened his hold on her then, and suddenly she was back in the hospital room. The bed was uncomfortable, its mattress thin, its sheets over-starched and scratchy. It was more of a cage than a bed, really, metal sides raised to make sure she didn’t fall out. A cushioned cage for sick people. Pain descended on her suddenly—all of the pain that had seemed less than a dream while she was with him. Her lungs tightened so that she could barely breathe; the air seared her when she inhaled, setting her to coughing violently. 

“Nurse, she’s awake!” She heard a familiar voice, a female voice, speak as if from a great distance. A hand grasped hers; somehow she knew this, although she could not feel its touch. It tugged at her, trying to pull her closer, to hold her fixed within the world of the hospital bed and the pain. The voice itself pulled her deeper into that world; it was a voice she knew well and loved well.  Her daughter, she remembered suddenly. Sherry. But it was like remembering someone she had known long ago, in childhood or another lifetime. She opened her eyes with an effort, and a blaze of brightness made her shut them again quickly. The light hurt, it burned. After a moment she tried again, peering out cautiously from beneath her eyelashes, and the haze of light gradually gave way to shadows and shapes, and then a face. Sherry’s face, bent close to hers. Brown eyes filled with tears. The hand clasped hers more tightly. Stay, begged that grip that she could not actually feel. Don’t go, don’t leave me. The familiar voice again, choked with tears. “Mom? Mom, can you hear me?” 

She struggled to answer, all the while knowing the struggle was futile. Her body was broken, her command of it gone. She could think clearly enough, through the haze of pain, but she had somehow lost the ability to make her lips move and speak, to make her limbs work. How had this happened? Dimly, she remembered an accident. She had been driving home after a kindred blot, had looked down briefly to answer her cell phone, and then had abruptly returned her attention to the road to find the headlights of a truck bearing down on her, blinding her. It had been raining, and while trying to swerve out of the way of the truck she had skidded and it had hit her. Not a head-on collision, but a good, solid side-smack. She remembered the impact, as loud as an explosion. She remembered flickering in and out of consciousness as her car had skidded wildly out of control, hit the guardrail, and continued over the edge, flipping end over end until it hit the bottom. And then the smell of gasoline, and flames, and the pain as she was cut and pulled from the car. She tried to wriggle her toes experimentally and felt nothing. She didn’t know if her legs were simply gone (had they amputated them to free her from the car?) or if she was paralyzed and unable to feel them. An attempt to move her fingers met with the same result. Tears tried to come to her eyes, but even that would not work; she could not even cry. She was a broken doll, lying in a bed that was really a cage. Soon it would be exchanged for a box, or if her wishes were carried out, for the fires of the crematorium; she knew, somehow, that she could not live long, not with the pain that engulfed her. She knew she did not want to, if she had either lost her limbs or the ability to use them. 

“Mom?” As if from far away, she heard Sherry pleading again. Familiar brown eyes searched hers, and the familiar pretty face that bent close to her was streaked with tears. She tried to form her questions: Do I have legs? Am I paralyzed? But again her lips would not move, her body would not cooperate. “Mom!” Sherry’s voice rose in panic. So young, she thought desperately, unsure whether she was pleading with herself or with the Old Man. She’s only sixteen, just a baby really. How can I leave her? But how can I stay? 

“You cannot.” His voice came to her clearly; he sounded nearer to her than Sherry was, although she could not see him. It was filled with more depths of sorrow than she could ever have imagined existed. “Your body is more than broken; it is irreparably damaged. It cannot survive for more than a few days at the most, and even that is uncertain. You will not regain full consciousness during that time, nor will you be able to speak. Your limbs are still there, but your spine was severed; in fact, your body was cut nearly in half.” His voice was unbearably gentle, despite the bleakness of his words. “Life support is what keeps you alive now, but only for a time. Borrowed time.”

 No!! everything in her wanted to scream. It wasn’t possible, it wasn’t fair. She had a daughter to live for, and a job she loved, a sister, and friends. A wonderful kindred to worship with. Ripples….She thought of her high school students, all those faces she would never see again. The Saturday afternoon movies with Sherry, and the evenings spent cooking dinner together while helping Sherry with her homework. The Friday nights out for a drink with her sister Jen. Her dog and cat, her furry kids. The monthly blots with her kindred, raising a horn of mead in a circle of her closest friends while hailing the Gods. Hailing him. Resentment rose in her as she thought of all the journeys he had promised to take her on, the stories that were still waiting for her to write them. All gone because she had looked down for a second to answer her cell phone and some trucker had been drinking and not paying attention to the road. All taken from her. Gone. She tried to cry, tried to scream and struggle, but no tears came, and her limbs remained motionless, lifeless. Somehow, not being able to cry was the worst of all. It left her feeling empty and desolate, like the broken shell of her body. No wonder the Old Man had been reluctant to let her come back.

 Another hand touched hers, and this time she could feel it, its warmth, its solidity. It was his hand, pulling her back to him. She struggled at first, wanting to stay, wanting against all hope to believe that she could. She had so much to live for, so much….But it was already fading, receding from her like a distant shore, the sound of her daughter’s voice becoming less real to her than the grip of his hand. Struggle was pointless. Finally she surrendered and went to him, and the hospital and the pain and her daughter’s tear-filled eyes faded, became dim, like a faraway memory of something that had happened to someone else, or a dream that dissipated like smoke on awakening. This was the reality—the raft, and the Old Man who steered it across the placid waters. She breathed in the cool air that smelled faintly of pine and amber, and peace flooded through her. He paused in his rowing to lay a hand on her shoulder. She looked up and into that brilliant, singular blue gaze, the one eye that penetrated to the depths of her being. When he spoke at last, it was even more gently and tenderly than before. 

“It is done,” he said softly. His words were like the ripples on the placid waters, like their dark depths and like the play of golden light on their surface. “There is nothing to go back to now.” 

Her eyes filled with tears, and along with the grief for all that she had lost there was an immense relief that at least here, on the other side, she could still cry. She let the tears come, let them consume her in great wracking sobs, and he gathered her to him and held her, her face nestled against his shoulder, his arms holding her tightly, keeping her safe and secure, his lips in her hair. 

When she had cried for what seemed an eternity, and he had held her and comforted her through all of it, she heard the croaking of ravens overhead. She pulled back from him a little, just far enough to see the glimmer like sunlight in his dazzling blue eye. His gaze twinkled, as if they shared a private joke just between the two of them. “We are going home,” he said. “The ravens will show us the way. Look.”

 He turned her a little, his arms still around her, and she saw that the mists had lifted. Ahead of them lay a blaze of brilliance, like a streak of gold along the horizon, and beyond it, a fiery array of rainbow colors. Blues, purples, oranges, yellows and greens competed to dazzle her senses, flickering like living flame. Bifrost, and beyond that…home. She sighed deeply, feeling the deep sense of peace return to her. Yet there was something eating at the edges of her consciousness, something that troubled her. She had to concentrate fiercely to remember what it was. “My daughter,” she managed at last. “What will happen to her?”

 “She grieves for you, and although she is young, part of her will always grieve.” His voice was low and deep, the sadness in it resurfacing—that unbearable sadness that was always there just beneath the surface just as the waters around them were dark where the sun could not reach. But then she felt, rather than saw, him smile as his lips touched the top of her head. “But she has a loving aunt who will raise her, and a loving circle of friends to turn to. Your kindred will look after her as well, in your memory as well as for her own sake. And you can visit her in dreams, and in trance if she develops your talent for that. As I think she will.” She heard the smile in his voice now, the undercurrent of joy that always coexisted with the sadness. “She will not be alone, any more than you will. On that, you have my word.”

 She turned to look at him again, to see the light dancing in his eye that at once reflected and seemed brighter than the light dancing on the waters. And she smiled. It was hard to leave, hard to let go.  But ahead on the horizon, home waited.

 © 2005 by L. Beth Lynch