Last night she led me through a forest, one I knew she had never walked through before. We perched at the cliffs’ edge together and beheld the landscape of trees stretching out below, awash in a pale yellow glow. How many autumn afternoons had these trees witnessed? How many more leaves had they lost? Was the price of life and its memories always going to be losing a part of yourself?
By the time I looked away from the peak above the trees, she had already begun her descent, rustling through the leaves as she moved. She turned back to beckon me forward when she noticed I remained rooted in place. I clung to her hand, desperately trying to retain some of the warmth that the wind flowing through these solitary trees was taking from me. She wore that look on her face, the one I got whenever I was about to make a mistake. Her brow furrowed slightly in worry, just like when she taught me how to ride a bike, or when I told her about my first kiss.
Come along, her face seemed to tell me. More awaits on the other side.
The descent was much steeper than it seemed from the mountaintop, and our legs were about to give out when we reached a clearing in the woods. We decided to rest on a felled tree as branches down the slope caught the last remains of daylight.
“Ho there! Halt!” a voice called from the denser woods below. Leaves crunched under a foot as a shadowy figure made its way up to the clearing. Fog was slowly creeping up to us, enveloping the unknown figure and — was that cigarette smoke?
“Down here, young lady!”
I looked at the moss-covered rocks below, at the branches and beige leaves cast off and long forgotten, but saw nothing.
“No, not there! Over here.”
Then I saw him. A badger, standing on his hind legs beside the birch tree. He couldn’t have been more than two feet tall. He stared up at me sternly; his cigarette smoke described a few circles before the cold, damp air pulled it inland. Only in these Nordic backwoods of the world could you feel this kind of chill, a chill that made your very bones feel wet and brittle.
The badger took a drag. The cigarette’s glow cast onto its wet nose, probably the only source of heat in this desolate land.
“You are not supposed to be here,” he scolded, laying contempt in his voice so thickly that I felt like I was the one who was two feet tall, staring up at him.
I glanced back up at her. I felt lost. All she had for an answer was the same half-worried, half-amused expression, waiting for me to go on. She must have looked the same way watching me stumble along, trying to learn how to walk on uneven footing. The one that wanted to hold me close and keep me from tripping, but knew I had to fall and learn how to balance on my own.
“Did you forget again?” the badger asked.
I must have looked like I felt lost — and I did — because he quickly added, “Follow me. And don’t come down here again.”
***
Resting my head against the curve of your neck, I beheld the willow branches stirring in the river current. Nowhere did I fit more perfectly than right there; nowhere had I ever felt safer. One hug from you and I could survive the end of the world.
But when I looked at you, you looked back at me with a deadpan stare, as if you could see nothing at all.
Please, I begged you, just look at me. I was right there, before you, yet I felt as if I was begging from the other side of a never-ending hallway. I remembered how I used to lay in your bed, just like we laid now below the willow tree, and I’d crawl up to level my eyes with yours. I wanted to rewire my brain — to solve crossword puzzles as fast as you did, to dance with as much grace, to treat the world with as much patience, and to fight with as much courage.
Could I ever see the world as you did?
Listen to me! Why can’t you listen to me?
But you were behind an impenetrable gate, guarded by Cerberus himself.
Tell me what’s wrong, tell me what to do! Tears welled up as my pleas went unheard. Pain erupted in my chest and bloomed across my body in waves, my heart the epicenter of the aftershocks erupting again, and again, and again.
I sank back down on the ground in defeat.
Lying there panting, my breath turned into fog. The wind quickly picked up a strange scent — was that burnt tar?
***
“She’s gone now, you know?” the badger said. His cigarette hissed as he put it out against the wet tree trunk.
I know. God, I know, I thought, as I followed him through the thinning forest. There was nothing to stop the coastal wind anymore, carrying the sharp tinge of salty air.
What I would do — give up my life, sell my soul to the devil — to solve one more crossword with her, to lie down below the willow tree with her again, head resting in the crook between her neck and shoulder for just one more minute.
She was alive in all the ways I was not. And now fate has cruelly made it so that I am alive in all the ways she is not.
Mother, don’t leave me.
Mother, why have you gone?
Mother, the idea of your death has made me grieve you even while you still breathed, and I wonder if there are any tears left in me. My well has dried up. Now an ocean is rising.
The badger had led me to the river’s mouth, at the point where the land meets the sea. There I woke up, and Mother didn’t come with me.
