The River Wife (12 page)

Why had he come? What would I do if he could not leave? If he left what would he take with him when he went?

I rested my cheek against the fur on the bed and tried to find the smell of my husband, remembered him coming as a bear into the house and dissolving into a man with his wild hair, his big laugh, his shining face. Together we had once been happy as the snow fell and the house was quiet with the tumble of burning logs in the fireplace, our daughter asleep between us in the quiet of afternoon, then waking and urging us outdoors to see the first stars, bending her face over the moonpool in the morning, saying ‘Mother, Mother, wake up, the day is here.’

The weight of stories lingered with me as autumn turned its face to winter and beckoned home.

W
ilson James chopped wood for my house and stacked it on the pathway. He left bread on a stone by the river for me. One morning I waited for him and we stood together, the breeze cool on our faces. Though the water between us was calm again, my heart seemed to race inside me as if it was in a hurry to go somewhere on its own.

‘Have you ever listened to the conversation of ants?’ I asked him.

‘No, I can’t say I have,’ he said.

‘They always talk of family.’

‘I don’t think I have small enough ears to hear them.’

‘They speak loudest in the morning,’ I said.

‘Tell me one of your stories.’

‘What story would you like to hear?’

‘Oh, something about a man and a woman,’ he smiled.

‘Well then,’ I said sitting upon a rock. Wilson James took another nearby, laced his fingers and stared into the river.

‘Once there was a woman who had two shoes and one of them she laid in the river. The shoe nestled between the river grasses and slowly over the days the woman sang to the shoe so that she might have a husband. The shoe grew first a baby and then a boy and then a young man until at last the woman came to the river and found a fully grown man sitting on the river’s edge.

‘ “If you bring me the shoe to match this one,” she said to the man, showing him the shoe that was the pair of the one she had placed in the river, “you shall marry the spirit of the river and you and your children will have eternal life.”

‘The man said, “And where might I find this shoe?”

‘ “It is in the last place you will look.’

‘The man looked up and saw the moon, who was late going to bed that day.

‘ “I could ask the moon, but as that is the first place I have looked I am bound to be unsuccessful, so instead I shall ask the sun,” he said.

‘The sun was not happy to be troubled by a man but said she had seen a shoe just like that on the banks of a great river which flowed from this very river and was no more than a few days’ walk. The man was well pleased and set off downstream. But the way was hard and the pathway treacherous beside the wild river. As the man walked his skin grew fur and soon he had transformed into a wolf. The sun passed him by and laughed at his travels.

‘ “You will never find eternal life as a wolf,” she said.

‘The man now spoke to the moon, who was that night full on the horizon and so close enough to talk with.

‘ “The sun has tricked me. Where might I find the shoe I am seeking?”

‘ “I have seen one just like it in the depths of this river, but you must swim deep to find it.”

‘In the light of the moon the wolf swam in the river but no shoe could he find. He was washed downstream in the water’s flood and as he journeyed his fur was washed away and he was clothed instead in the shimmering scales of a fish. At last he was swept into the ocean and washed to the shore and his fish form slipped from him as he lay on the cold sand. There on the beach a white bird spoke to him. “If you climb that tree over there you will find the shoe you seek,” she said. “But remember it is in the last place you will look.”

‘And so the man began climbing the tree. When he was only a small way up his hands grew sharp, and soon his arms and legs were black and shiny, and he was transformed into a small beetle. The wind blew at him and rain fell and many times did he cling to the tree for life. At last, at the top of the tree, he found the bird who had laughed at him. She fluttered her wings in the breeze.

‘ “Fly to that mountain over there and look into the waters of the blue lake and you will see the shoe, and there you may choose the gift of eternal life, if you so wish it.”

‘The man was transformed into the shape of a great raven and flew high into the sky and far across the land to the last peak, where the bright light of ice glowed white in the sky. Though it took all his endurance to fly so far, at last he gazed into the lake. But, instead of his own reflection, he saw only the sky.

‘ “I am nothing,” he said, dismayed. “The lake does not even note my presence. I began as a man and I have journeyed the pathways of beast and fish, insect and bird, but now I am nothing.”

‘ “What form would you seek?” said the woman from the river, appearing beside him at the water’s edge.

‘ “My own true form,” said the man.

‘And so the man became the shoe he had grown from in the river.

‘ “You see,” said the woman, “you are what you were seeking.”

‘And the man stood up out of the shoe and took her hand, and it is said that indeed they married and many were their children and each had the gift to change shape into wolf or fish or insect or bird. And so the man, as he had wanted, went on forever.’

‘So when women look for shoes they are really searching for the ideal man?’

‘I do not know. I have never had to look for shoes.’

‘I have noticed your shoes. Did your father make them?’

‘Some he did. And others were gifts.’

I wanted to tell Wilson James that there were other stories which might be told—stories of battles, of the growing of food, the making of peace, the taking of husbands and wives, the raising of children, the making of relatives, the bringing of rain, the care of the dead—and all these stories are in the river, if he had ears for listening.

‘So if I found a shoe in the river and put it on would eternal life be my prize?’

‘Would you choose it?’

‘I am sure there would be a great price to pay.’

‘Why?’

‘There always is.’

I
do not know quite the moment when I befriended love again. Was it the day he brought me green orchids from his walk across the high reaches? Was it the day he caught his first fish, a brown trout that he cooked and brought to share with me for lunch, and I cried and he said he was sorry, he didn’t know but he was trying to know. Or was it right back there on the day we sat at the lake’s edge and watched the rainbow-coloured vessels float across the water? Was it already there when I traced my hand along his cheek as he slept under the ferns? Or had it been there, this hope for love, since I dreamed as a young woman that a man would come for me, a human, as my father had come to my mother, and though I did not know his face or his voice, or the eyes he would watch me with, still I anticipated his arrival.

What did I know of love? I knew the words of sunrise and the language of full moon, waning moon and dark. I knew the sound of a leaf settling on the forest floor after a long descent. I knew the calls of birds and beasts. I knew the caress of water. I knew the first fronds of spring, the last gold of autumn. I knew the tenderness of blossom and the fragrant damp of earth. I knew the silver of river rock, the chatter of rapids, the winged music of small creatures. I knew the fabric of mist, the invisible hour before dusk and how the sun looks from deep within the river. I knew the gift of a daughter swimming beside me, the call of her voice, the stretch of her hand, the curl of her body on a rock in the sunshine.

Love, I came to see, was not simply a river; it was an ocean few crossed with ease. Perhaps it was not the crossing that mattered but the boat that was built to travel in.

The rain of the world had returned again to the forest. The land pooled and bubbled. Rain came early and talked late into the day. The land grew soft and every path shimmered. Then at last, though it had not come for years, snow fell deep in the valley. One morning I stepped from the river into a pale sky and the banks and boughs and every blade of grass and branch of fern were hidden with the sudden brightness of snow. All day it fell, as silent as love itself, and the upright forest curved and leaned and arched forward, heavy and white, every surface defined, each twig, stick, leaf upon the ground textured by the pattern the snow had made upon it. My footsteps were soft upon the world’s new surface.

Wilson James came down to the river and stood on a patch of green moss while all about it was white or black and he said, ‘I am not prepared for winter. I don’t have enough warm clothes.’

I took him to the house and said, ‘There, in that trunk, my father once kept his books and journals. But now, if you look, you will find clothes suited to this weather and I think they will fit you, though they are not perhaps what you are used to.’

Wilson James put on the coat which had kept the weather from my father and he said, ‘He really was a man, wasn’t he? A long time ago. But he was here.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And he would be glad to see his clothes worn again.’

And so it was that Wilson James came to wear the skins of my father, the hooded cape he had sewn, the gloves, the long coat that made him near invisible as he passed between the trunks of trees.

Not long after that first snow had melted I returned from upstream and found Wilson James sitting outside my door wearing my father’s coat. He had a notebook on his lap and he was writing.

‘You have found my home,’ I said.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked. ‘It was suddenly right in front of me. I shouldn’t have come here without you.’

My world was slipping from me or I was slipping from it and this man was part of it. I had no-one to help me. I wanted to understand.

‘I can go again if you like. I brought you bread. And this,’ he said. ‘Our jam. I would have brought it before but I wasn’t sure you’d eat it. That you should eat it.’

‘I will try.’

He cut the bread and spread the jam on top of it, as Father did with honey. The jam tasted like a memory of sunshine. My veins ran with the sweetness of it. I was laughing and then my head ached and I did not feel myself. Wilson James made tea for us and only after I had drunk it did I realise he had used the tea for sadness and I began to cry.