The Silver Bough (39 page)

“If you’d been there—but you weren’t. I thought it wouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes. I’d catch up to them, I’d speak to
her
—and then I’d come back.”

“So what happened?”

“I can’t explain it. Even though they seemed to be strolling along, and I was walking as fast as I could, I never could catch up to them. Kay never paused or looked back, no matter how I shouted. I didn’t realize how long I’d been chasing them until I was right out of town, in the middle of the dark countryside. And then…not only did I realize that I was totally lost, but I had a moment of clarity when I understood that not only was I trailing along after phantoms, but that there was something sinister going on. I’d been lured away from
you
—the very person I should have been looking after—I wondered what might have happened to you. So I turned around and tried to make my way back to you, tried to find you—and it just got darker, and darker—until, in the end, I heard your voice. It was
you
who found
me
. You saved me,” he finished, simply, squeezing her hand.

She could think of nothing to say.

“So what happened to you?” he asked, and she told him about her adventure in the library.

“Mm, I can’t help wishing I’d been there. So now I’m forever in Nell’s debt, for saving you. Here we are, this is my road,” he said.

She saw a small sign announcing
PRIVATE ROAD
emerging from the mist, and realized at the same moment just how thick the fog had become. Looking back, she could see only swirling white clouds, masking everything else.

“We won’t get lost as long as we hang on to each other and stick to the road,” he said, reading her thoughts. “It’ll take us right to my door. It’s less than half a mile now.”

“What happens if you hear your wife calling to you from over there somewhere?”

“I’ll cling all the more tightly to you. And if you see anyone, or any mystery lights, don’t go following them, all right? We’ll keep each other safe.”

She realized as he spoke that she didn’t feel frightened. Whatever was to come, they would face it together.

They made it to the house without incident. Inside the large and welcoming farmhouse kitchen—it reminded her of Nell’s, only without the decorative stencil work—she gazed at the windows and saw nothing but the pale mass of fog on the other side of the glass. Behind her, Dave cursed softly.

She turned around. “What’s wrong?”

“Electricity’s out. Damn. I really wanted some coffee. Shall I open a bottle of wine?”

She shook her head.

The silence stretched between them. He looked pensive. “I could probably rustle up something to eat…otherwise, there’s water. Normally, I’d put some music on…”

“Why don’t you play me my song?”

“What?”

“Your new song, I mean. You did say it was for me.”

He glanced away. “So you did get my letter.”

“Well?”

“Oh, well, it needs a lot of work yet. I’m not really sure about the bridge…and a couple of the words…Besides, I’m a lousy singer, and it should have a string section and a piano. It has to be orchestrated—”

“So it was just bullshit, your letter.”

“No!” He looked hurt. “God, Kathleen! I poured my heart out to you—”

“You really wrote me a song?”

“Yes.”

“And you won’t even sing it to me?”

He sighed, capitulating. “OK, but be gentle with me. I can’t sing for toffee.”

“Hey, I’m your biggest fan! Besides, nobody’s ever written me a song before—how could I not like it?”

The sitting room was smaller and darker than the kitchen, but the walls lined with shelves full of books, records, and CDs, the comfortable-looking chairs, couch, floor cushions, and oriental rugs on top of a pale, thick-pile carpet, gave it a cozy, appealing atmosphere. Dave picked up the guitar resting across the arms of one chair and sat down with it. She settled down nearby to listen.

The song was about someone walking home at night and losing his way; stopping to ask a stranger for directions, he finds that she seems to know who he is and where he lives, and she takes him by the hand to guide him home. The road they travel is at once familiar and strange, and the house she takes him to is
her
home—a place he’s never seen before, but which he knows at once is where he wants to spend the rest of his life.

He had a pleasant, unemphatic voice, not especially melodic, but he could carry a tune. She was completely unable to judge the song by any objective standards. How could she compare it to others when this was
her
song? When it was so simply and openly about his feelings for her?

When he finished he looked at her, and she didn’t make him wait. She opened her arms and looked at him with all the love in her heart. “Let’s go to bed.”

 

From
The Woman’s Dictionary of Symbols
and Sacred Objects
by Barbara G. Walker
(HarperCollins, 1988)

 

M
UCH
of the reverence paid to the apple arose not only from its value as food, but also from the secret, sacred sign in its core: the pentacle, which is revealed when the apple is transversely cut. Gypsies claimed this was the only proper way to cut an apple, especially when it was shared between lovers before and after sexual intercourse. At Gypsy weddings it was customary for the bride and groom to cut the apple, revealing its pentacle, and eat half apiece. Such marriage customs may suggest the real story behind Eve’s sharing of an apple with her spouse: an idea that developed quite apart from the biblical version, in which there is no mention of an apple, but only of a “fruit.”

A
FTER MAKING LOVE
, Ronan fell asleep, but although she was tired and physically sated, Ashley was too preoccupied with thoughts of what was to happen next to do the same. It wasn’t that she wanted to back out, but what had she gotten herself into? All his talk about “your heart’s desire”—what did that mean? What
was
her heart’s desire? Was it, could it be, this strange man lying warm and close beside her? Did she need to have a particular wish in mind when she ate the apple, or would blind faith be enough?

She listened to his breathing as it slowed and deepened, and when it became a mild snore, she edged away from him, slipped out of bed, and padded quietly out of the room, pausing to shut the door softly behind her.

She felt starved. There was a box of Cheerios in the kitchen; she carried it back to the couch, turning on the TV as she passed from force of habit before remembering what her cousins had said about there being no reception in the area. Nevertheless, she clicked through channel after channel of hissing grey visual static, just in case, until she was rewarded at last by a picture, an outdoor scene on a beach with glittering white sand and brilliant sea beneath a wide blue sky. She opened the box and seized a handful of Cheerios while gazing with mild, detached interest at the scene.

Scottish Cheerios were different from the ones she was used to; they had a sweet frosting. She was surprised, but too hungry to mind, and she munched away as she tried to figure out what she was watching. A movie or a commercial? She couldn’t identify the soft music in the background, although there was something hauntingly familiar about it, and she thought she almost recognized the scenery, too. She had an idea it was a beach where lots of stuff had been filmed, maybe an island in the Caribbean, or maybe Hawaii.

People—all fit and healthy and young—strolled past occasionally in couples, or ran down to the water in small groups. By her third handful of Cheerios she was growing impatient. What was the point of this undramatic scenery? Cut to the chase, she thought; show us the star, or make the pitch. Even if she’d tuned in to a local community access channel, and this was somebody’s vacation video, there ought to be somebody who’d pause and mug for the camera. Only the fact that there was nothing else on, and that it seemed too much trouble to pick up the remote and switch off, kept her watching.

Finally, the camera began to close in on one of the young people on the beach. A girl in a bikini, a young woman with long blond hair, almost a standard-issue beach babe, except that her breasts were smaller than the Hollywood norm, and she could have been Freya’s clone.

The half-chewed Cheerios turned to sugared sawdust in her mouth. She tensed and leaned forward, blinking in disbelief. As if in response to her wish, the camera zoomed in closer and closer, and with every magnification the likeness to Freya was more staggeringly complete. That was her best friend’s slightly heavy-footed walk, her smile, even the tiny mole beside her left eyebrow…

What
was
this? Could it be, somehow, film from a family vacation? But Freya’s family didn’t go to exotic beach resorts, and no
way
was that pale sand and azure water on the Texas coast—if Freya had ever been anywhere like that in her life, Ashley would have known all about it. So how—where—when…? Ashley gave a soft whimper of disbelief and struggled upright on the lumpy old couch. Was it possible that her friend was still alive? That the reports of her death, the funeral, all the grief, had been some gigantic con? A guy came running up, grabbed Freya’s hand, and off they ran together, laughing, to splash through the surf. Their backs, receding from her, were golden-brown and dusted lightly with sand, so real and close she could practically smell the suntan lotion, and it hit her: this was
now,
not something filmed in the past, but the present moment, a glimpse of Freya’s present, ongoing life. To ancient Celts, heaven was to be found on an island in the west.

With a sharp whine, the television screen went blank; at the same moment, the table lamp and the light in the kitchen both went out, and she cried out as the room was plunged into darkness.

She made herself stay where she was, getting her bearings. It wasn’t as dark as all that; the living room curtains were heavy, but the kitchen window was uncovered, and she could make out a faint, murky glow. Gradually, as her eyes adjusted, she realized it was no longer nighttime. Hours had passed; she must have slept, even though she thought she hadn’t.

“What’s wrong?” A pale, naked figure appeared in the doorway.

Her face felt stiff as she tried to smile. “Nothing. I was startled. We’ve lost electricity.”

He came farther into the room and held out his hand to her. She let him pull her up off the couch. As soon as they touched, her nervousness went. She kissed him where a crease line from the pillow marked his cheek, and felt beard stubble against her lips.

“Come on,” he said gently, drawing her back to the bedroom. She went with him eagerly, but as she began to caress him, he caught her hands to stop her. “Get dressed.”

She pouted. “Why?”

“It’s late. There’s no time to lose. We have to go.”

Unease roiled and clenched in her stomach, matching the tension in his voice. She watched him gathering up the clothes he’d abandoned so hastily a few hours earlier, and she thought of Freya running on that beach, wherever it was, wherever
she
was.

“Just before the electricity went off, I saw my best friend on television—she was on a beach—I think it was real, and I think it was now—but she’s dead.”

“This upset you?”

“Ronan, she’s dead! She’s not romping around on some island paradise—”

He straightened up, holding his shirt. “Don’t you believe in Heaven?”

She scowled at him uncertainly and shrugged. “I guess.” Her belief was halfhearted, at best. At worst, when someone said Heaven she thought of cartoon angels standing around on fluffy white clouds; she was more than half-afraid “gone to Heaven” was no more than a euphemism, a weak attempt to comfort children for the loss of pets and grandparents, not a rational explanation.

He pressed her. “Do you believe there’s a life after death?”

“Well…I think there has to be
something
,” she admitted, for how could there be nothing? How could this earth be all that there was? A soul’s existence could surely not be bound and limited entirely by one single fragile body.

“And your friend was a good person?”