The Present (2 page)

And what good does that do me?
Saffron wanted to cry out, although she said nothing.

“A beautiful strand in a pattern we are too small to see. Saffron?”

But Saffron shook her head and turned her face to the ground.

*

Saffron sat beside her Aunt Roe at the loom and would not look where her father sat by his mother. She combed wool for the distaff in her lap and would not lift her eyes. Often she wished she were allowed to plug her ears.

“Leon, it has been a long time, hasn’t it?”

“Leon has been dead for a long time, Mother. I am your son, Auroch.”

“How can you say you are dead? You are sitting right here beside me. Do you think I am dead?”

“No, Mother, I suppose not yet.”

“Look, the chickens are flying!

“Those are eagles in the sky, Mother.”

“Leon, why have I not seen you for so long? How
are
you? Does the fleece grow thick and curly on your sheep?”

“I prosper, Mother. I am your son Auroch. I have a fine daughter.”

“A daughter! How wonderful. I must make a new, rose-colored sling for her. Do you still have the sling I gave you for the first baby?”

“Do you still have a mind, Mother?” Auroch spoke in exactly the same sociable tones that she did. Aunt Roe actually giggled.

“It’s not funny!” Saffron snapped at her.

“I know, dear, but I must laugh sometimes or I will cry.”

“I am Auroch—” Father was saying.

“Auroch the Bullheaded,” Roe put in, smiling—but Saffron could not answer her aunt’s smile.

“I am your son. Mother—”

“How good to see you once again, Leon.”

And so it went on.

For four days.

Father was not called bullheaded for nothing.

And on the fourth day he got, in a way, what he wanted. The winds blow, skies cloud, the winds veer, skies clear; it was like that, like a change in the wind, unaccountable, inexplicable. Somehow there was a turning within Grandmother’s mind. And in that first windshift moment, surely it seemed like the fairest of dawnings to Saffron’s father when he saw his mother’s faraway gaze catch upon him and draw near, when he heard her cry, “Auroch!”

Saffron heard the cry and dropped the distaff, heard the shuttle fall from Roe’s loom as both of them jumped up and turned to look, gasping, ready to rejoice—but within the next moment, stunned to stone.

“Auroch, my son!” This was no joyous dayspring; this was a cry of agony. A fit of sobbing like an earthquake shook Grandmother. “What is wrong with me? I am losing my mind!”

“No, you’re not, Mother, you’ve just found it!” Helpless, Saffron watched her father lurch toward his mother, on his knees to hug her. “It’s all right.”

“I am an evil mother! Evil!”

“No, you’re not.” Father embraced Grandmother in a kind of panic, as if trying to hold the frail old woman and her mind together.

With pain as if bones had broken Grandmother wailed, “How could I forget my son? How could I forget I had two daughters and a son?”

And—it would have been funny if it were not so awful—Saffron heard Father saying, “Mother, it’s nothing. Truly. Everybody forgets things sometimes.”

But Grandmother clawed at herself with her hands, tore the thin hairs from her own head, beat herself upon her breastbone, weeping, weeping, and would not be comforted. And Saffron could not bear to look at her father’s face.

*

“Won’t you come with me, Father?”

“No.” He wore his hard face today. “Haven’t I done harm enough?”

“But Aunt Roe says she’s all right this morning. She has forgotten again.”

“I will not risk causing her any more pain.”

“But I myself may go?”

“If you must.”

Knowing that indeed, she must, Saffron left her father where he sat in the shadows of his tent. Walking toward the Loomcloth encampment, she felt the aching of her heart, but that pang was a sister feeling to the tentative touch of sunlight on her hair. She heard the whispers of the clay-red leaves that still clung to the mountain oaks, looked up into sky brighter than bluestone—somewhere behind that lapis bowl hid myriad stars; she would never turn her eyes away from them again. Everywhere around the mountain valley she heard the soft singing of springwater running.

There, in front of the largest, most ornate tent, Grandmother hunched once again, encircled by lavender, green and blue but herself gray, bleaching in the thin winter sunshine.

Sitting cross-legged on the crisp grass in front of the old woman, Saffron waited for the little fish that were Grandmother’s eyes to swim in her direction, then smiled a wordless greeting.

“Why, hello, dear!” Grandmother’s toothless mouth returned the greeting tenfold. Delighted to see her.

“Hello, Grandmother.” Saffron hesitated, then asked, “Do you know what my name is?”

“Dear,” replied Grandmother promptly.

“That’s right.” With a pang that felt familiar now, yet sighing with relief, Saffron stretched out both arms, offering a pretty thing. “Look, Grandmother, I have a gift for you.” She handed to her grandmother the spindle whorl, into the hub of which she had fitted a strong dowel of wood worked smooth, a spindle.

“A gift! I love presents.” With eager, fumbling hands Grandmother took it.

“It’s not to eat,” Saffron told her.

“Why would I want to eat a flower? It is a flower, isn’t it?” She held it up by the spindle as if by a stem. “So beautiful! But why so heavy?” She put it down in the grass.

Saffron leaned her elbows on her knees, settling in for a chat. “Have you received many other gifts this season, Grandmother?”

“Oh, glories and glories of them! Carved ivory spoons from Leon, and from Mama a red sash, and my husband gave me the most lovely string of cowrie shells…” Grandmother fumbled at the soft folds of her neck, looking puzzled. “I must have left it inside…” She noticed the spindle lying on the ground and leaned toward it, bright-eyed. “What’s that?” She touched it. “Where did this pretty thing come from? Is it a wheel?” She rolled the whorl along the grass while the long end of the spindle wobbled in air. “It seems like a wheel, but where is the other one?”

“I’ll make you another one.”

“Why, little sister, that’s very sweet of you. And clever. How did you learn to make wheels, Ilex?”

Rather than answer, Saffron pointed. “Look, Grandmother, on the far slope.” A herd of roe deer had come out to graze.

Grandmother peered. “What are those red things? Have the calves gotten loose again?”

“They’re deer, Grandmother.”

“No, they’re
deer
!
I must tell Leon.” But she gazed at the russet forms moving in the distance with eyes that seemed to look even farther, toward some distant ocean, a misty island, a cloud on the horizon. She murmured, “But Leon will take his bow and arrows to shoot them, and they are too beautiful. No, I will not tell Leon. I love the roe deer.”

“I love you,” Saffron said quietly, knowing that it made no difference. Unhappy. Wanting something she could no longer have. Yet beginning to sense that she had been given something immensely else instead.

Still gazing at the deer, Grandmother said, “So graceful. So liquid their eyes. I—” The old, old woman frowned, her face struggling. “I knew—somebody…”

Her own daughter, whom she had named after the most beautiful of deer—and that way lay pain. So, as a distraction, Saffron said, “Grandmother, look what I have brought you,” and she picked up the spindle again.

Grandmother blinked at it. “What a funny mushroom!”

“Don’t try to eat it, Grandmother. It’s not a mushroom.”

“I’ve never seen one with such a skinny stalk.” The ancient woman took the pottery circle by the stick, peering at the spindle, a tool she had used since she was Saffron’s age, with all the mystery and zest of life in her pleated face. “It’s not a mushroom at all. What
is
it, dear?”

“It just is.”
Dear
.
With a dawning sense of wonder Saffron realized that Grandmother’s heart remembered everyone she loved, although not by name. More: without her own lapis-bead life hanging too long and heavy around her neck, Grandmother…
I may not be happy, but she IS.
Grandmother was quite happy. And how not? Every day, every moment of every day, Grandmother rediscovered the world. Always new, always now. So it must have been in the vast beginning of which the wise women around the fire had spoken, in the time before time or memory.

“What a beautiful thing,” Grandmother declared, smiling upon a pottery circle with a symmetrical design glazed red, yellow, blue. “So many dear, dear things people give me.”

Saffron nodded. “The greatest gifting,” she said softly, more to herself than to her grandmother, “is today. Each day. The present.”