The River Wife (7 page)

It was the beginning of the summer when the sound of the river grew quieter to me than the sound of his voice, where the proximity of him made me consider how close they all were, people, to the forest. How long would it hold? Was it just him or would others soon be able to see me? I knew I must travel down to the greatest lake to be sure.

I could have been afraid. I found the size of Wilson James in the cottage larger than I ever remembered Father being. But I had no fear of him. I wanted instead to lean against the arm of him so that I might feel the warmth under his shirt, put my head on his shoulder and watch the fire smoke weave faces in the air.

‘I am suddenly weary,’ he said, resting his head against the back of the chair.

‘Then I will tell you a story,’ I said.

The story that came to me was the story of the white swan and the black swan, and as Wilson James sipped the second cup of sadness tea, I began.

‘It is said that one of the great rivers of the world is made from the tears of people who have wept over the anguish of time—too little time, time going too fast, time passing, time moving on. One summer day there came to the river a young woman who had promised herself that she would love no-one but Time itself. She washed her golden hair in the river, and sang the songs of day and night as the moon slipped between the branches of the trees and the sun turned the river white with its brightness. So long did she wait that Time stepped from the river in the cloak of a young man and said, “Why are you waiting? You grow older each day. One day your youth will fade and none will marry you. Why do you wait?”

‘ “I will marry only Time itself,” said the young woman.

‘ “Why is it Time that you want?”

‘ “I would live forever and see all things that pass and hear all songs that are sung if only Time was my husband. I will never lament the passing of time as others do, my children will never die and I shall be eternally happy.”

‘ “If you step into the water I will take you to Time,” said the young man.

‘The young woman liked the face of the young man, as it had a purpose in it she recognised as her own. So she stepped into the river. Deep did he take her, down into the coldest parts of the world, and long did they walk through the tunnels of the earth until they came to an underground lake so vast none could see its boundaries. Reflected in the lake were stars as bright as those in the night sky. It is said that the stars above the Lake of Time are the lights of children coming to the earth. The longer the child lives the more the star fades, for this is where Time begins and ends.

‘ “Long have you travelled, and many have been the days since you left the world behind,” the young man said. “Look into the water. You have walked with Time all these days and have I not been a gentle companion? Have we not talked and sung? Have we not been happy?”

‘And the woman looked into the water and saw she had grown old beyond recognition.

‘ “All women are married to me from the moment they are born. I am in your face as it grows from child to woman, in your womb that carries the children who will walk in your footsteps upon the earth, the grandchildren who will bury you and the land that will change about you in the passing of the seasons. But you have turned away from these things, these gifts of mine. Now time is in the furrows of your face, in your womb that will carry no children, in your eyes too old to weep tears and in your hands lined by the longing for things that cannot be caught.”

‘And in saying this he dropped the garb of a boy and took the form of a black swan that slipped onto the surface of the lake.

‘The woman stepped into the water and for a moment she felt the hand of the child she had never borne, the warmth of the grandchildren she would never hold, the cheek of her husband as he slept beside her; she smelled the summer grass and the fall of rain and the salt of the ocean before she slipped under the lake’s surface and was washed far away through the caves of the earth to the sea. There her spirit rose up into the sky and fell as rain and came at last to the great river, and there sat a young woman. The spirit of the old woman stepped from the river and said, “What is it you wait by the river for?”

‘ “I had thought to catch Time and make him my husband so that I might become eternal,” the young woman said.

‘ “Daughter,” said the old woman spirit, “go home to your village. Choose a man who will love you all of your life, bear children who will bring laughter to your days, enjoy the grandchildren who are the late fruit of the tree you have planted, remark at the seasons and the skies that change as the days go by, and with every breath know that you are married to Time from the moment you are born and by your side Time walks every day. While Time may bring the gifts of life, it is not life. Life is what you do with the gifts Time brings.”

‘And with that the old woman was transformed into a swan as white as snow, and to this day you will not see a black swan and a white swan swimming together, for one is Time and the other is Life and they have their own work.’

By the end of the story Wilson James was asleep by the fireplace and the colours of his memories floated about him like the dust of pollen in spring air. Much later, when the day had almost passed, I went out and found the logs that stood still beside the house where my husband had stacked them and I made of them a fire of deep warmth, for Wilson James had grown very pale as he slept. I sat beside him as dusk fell over the river, and so many memories did that fire bring to me of Father and weather and the Winter King coming in from the snow.

Wilson James slept on there in the chair and I slipped from the cottage to my place in the river. In the morning I found him still sleeping and I was happy to have him there at dawn with none to gaze upon his face but me. His sleeping face, his resting fingers on the blanket I had settled about him, his breath, his eyelashes, the skin beneath his shirt, his legs and feet. The smell of him was gentle and keen all at once but I did not dislike it. If I had known he was to sleep so long I would have had him lie upon the bed—but then he did not know he was to sleep at all.

I took the leaves from the bottom of his cup and placed them upon a shell on the ledge above the fireplace and patterned them into the shape he was seeking. I left them there where the warmth of the morning sun would reach them. He was still asleep at midday. I thought it best I did not make his tea so strong from then on.

When he awoke at dusk he thought only a few hours had passed, not a whole day, and I did not tell. He unwound himself from the chair and stretched. ‘I missed your story,’ he said.

‘One day I will tell it again.’

When he left he did not reach out and touch me, but his eyes touched my face.

‘I’m sorry I fell asleep,’ he said. ‘I feel quite strange.’

‘Tell me.’

‘As if the forest is talking to me.’

‘Then perhaps you may find your story yet, Wilson James.’

W
hen it starts, love hides its ending well. But the symptoms are there of what will bring the dying and, like a withering branch or a greying leaf, the symptoms and the cause can be two very different things. I went about my work and Wilson James, with his footfall on the riverbank, remained. When I saw him it gave me rise to think again of him asleep in the chair by the fire, and though I left the tea leaves in a basket by his door, in case he wished to heal his sadness, I did not visit him and went first upstream and then down and then across the dark wetlands and forgot for days on end the cast of his eyes.

When I returned home, I looked for the light of his house beyond the trees but the light had gone. The tea was not upon his doorstep and his house was closed shut against the night and the day. Music with a lone mournful voice ran up and down inside the house like a bird felled by an arrow. For many long days it was this way, and I saw nothing of him. At night a faint rim of light marked the windows and I saw the merest flicker of a shadow and knew he was within. When he came out upon the riverbank at last an ache lay upon his cheek and the smell on his skin was of something dying.

I waited upon the stone steps that led to the river path, and when he saw me he smiled against his sadness.

‘Ah, you have returned again,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it is a sign.’

I said, ‘There is a new reflection of yellow flowers at the lower bend.’

‘Is there?’ he said. ‘You must show it to me.’

We took the rocks and found the bend. He gazed into the flowers shimmering there at the water’s edge, the breeze quivering their heads a little and the reflection making of the flowers twice what they were on land. The river had taken a new current to its centre, turning the water like the hair of a drowned woman warrior. We sat together, though the scent from his skin was strange and unsettling, and Wilson James placed stones one upon another until they tilted and fell. I wondered at a life measured by a span of years. I saw that if words were what he sought then the years were short to find them all and catch them on his page.

He said, ‘What are you seeing?’

‘I am seeing the late morning upon you.’

‘Thank you for not being truthful with me,’ he said, his hand curled against his mouth, his shoulders heavy that day with weariness as if he carried a burden in his arms.

The river wound its song about us and the small creatures of forest and water went about their days as heat began to fill the air. The ferns bent to the river and whispered shade and light, shade and light. The grasses stood upright, unfolding from the earth, reaching for a breath of breeze to give them movement. Bushes white with flowers bowed and dipped, rustling with the wings of birds seeking nectar. Far above, the heads of the tallest trees rumbled with coming weather. And no word passed between us for a long time.

‘I must set about my tasks,’ I said at last. I looked at him still sitting there.

‘Are you going away again?’ he asked, staring into the river.

‘This is my home. I never leave.’

‘I do not always see you. I have never seen your father.’

‘We are always here,’ I said, ‘beside the river.’

I looked into his blue eyes, the shadow of hair that marked the edge of his jaw, the way one of his hands lay over the other between his knees. I thought how Wilson James’s face would look if he saw me slip into the water.

‘Are you my muse?’ he asked. ‘Have you brought me a story?’

‘You will find your story, Wilson James. I cannot find it for you.’

Standing upstream in the river alone I watched the scales form on my feet and hands. Silver, green and gold.

‘What story have you brought me, Wilson James?’ I whispered. ‘Is this what it is to be human?’ I asked the river. ‘To feel this restlessness?’

L
eaves shivered and the shiver passed on, reflected in the surface of the lake. The sky lay low on the hills and the air was so quiet in the mist that no sound other than our breathing came to us. Across the sheen of lake came bubbles of light floating towards us, rainbow domes of swirling pink, gold, palest green, mauve, the finest fabric water can make, each bubble holding within it the breath of the lake. They passed us by, that fragile flotilla, and drifted onto the shore, still whole, still rainbow lined.

‘What is that?’ asked Wilson James, his breath no more than a whisper, as if his voice might burst the fragile membranes that held the rainbow spheres afloat. ‘Where have they come from? Is it something in the lake causing it?’

‘They are the dreams of children that have risen from the Lake of Time,’ I said, for that is what my father told me. As a fish I had watched them form beneath the lake’s surface, the cold and warm currents spiralling in long strands until they slipped free and rose into lines of bubbles transporting the sky’s smallest rainbows.

Wilson James closed his eyes. The bubbles vanished mutely one by one. When he opened his eyes again Wilson James said, ‘How old are you?’

‘That is not a question I can answer,’ I said.

‘I thought not,’ he said.

Brushing off the crumbs of food he had eaten, he said, ‘You do not feel the cold, you are not dressed for this place and yet you seem more of this place than the trees.’