Fiction by david woodward
I was told that she had a child. She was orbiting a small town not too far away. So, I took off in search of her. But when I got there, she was gone. All that was left was the matted-down vegetation where her yurt would have been. Her vegetables, in their concentric circles, had all been plucked, the empty ring still visible. It was late fall. The cosmos along the outer perimeter were still going strong. I imagined they would self-seed. If no one disturbed the area, her area, they would come back next year. I imagined her reborn. It was too much for me to handle all at once. I promised myself never to come back to this holy site. I wasn’t even sure if I could continue on in search of her. Perhaps she wasn’t meant to be found. I don’t think she wanted to be found, not even by me, perhaps especially by me. If I truly meant something to her once, that was what it was probably meant to be. Once.
Once upon a time I met truth. She called herself Blue. She made me a better person. But she left a hole, and the hole was growing. So, I dug. I dug with my bare hands where her yurt would have been. It had contained her. I thought it still did. I dug until the fading of the light. I built up the soil along the sides of the circle so that it looked as though it was the site of a meteor crash. It wasn’t very deep, but it was rather impressive. I lay in it and felt her warmth, her spirit, her strength. I was awakened by the morning light.
As I rose from my grave-like hole, I felt something in my hand. It was a piece of paper, all crumpled up. I looked around, suspiciously. Had someone put it in my hand while I slept? Had I discovered it during the night and held it throughout, unconsciously? I uncrumpled the paper and found a note inside. It was addressed to me. It was hard to read because it was filled with earth. It was as if it were an old relic, an archeological find. Had I unearthed this last night? I was so exhausted by the time I fell asleep anything was possible. With difficulty, I began to read what was on the note. Was I even awake?
We had produced a beautiful girl. I was not to worry. She’d be well taken care of. I was necessary. I was part of a plan. One she didn’t know existed. She would be watching me from to time to time. She’d encircle my being while I slept so as not to disturb me, or fate. Groggily, my heart pounding up into my ears, I gazed around and into the deep forest behind me. I felt like I was between worlds, between consciousness and unconsciousness, between the earth and sky. I floated into the woods without my body. There was a mystical presence in the trees. They pointed one way but told me to go the other way. I couldn’t disobey. I don’t know if it was weakness on my part, or strength on her part, but I knew I was outmatched by something. I drifted back into my body where I lay in her hole. I felt a little more complete.
Her name was Lapis Lazuli. She had Blue’s cyan eyes but my kinked hair. She had a feisty personality, just like her mum. She was going to challenge her. Blue thought that they were perhaps too much alike. But a challenge is good. It would give her insight into who she really was ― into the pain that she doesn’t always want to recognize. The pain she harbors deep in the earth. The pain that rises with her vegetables, her cosmos. The pain that she showcases for the world to see. The pain she turns away from every move she makes. Perhaps she will settle down one day. Lapis Lazuli, herself, will not necessarily be present in this new settlement, but she will play her part, perhaps the biggest part. Blue envisions that her daughter’s gift ― their daughter’s gift ― will be to present to Blue who she really is. She is ready. Her mind has never been so open.
After reading the note, I felt as if I never really knew Blue. I couldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams that she had felt this way. If only I’d known. I recall that she liked to read Ralph Waldo Emerson to me. He was Thoreau’s teacher. In fact, his “Waldon Pond” was on Emerson’s property. He wasn’t so alone. He would have discussions with Ralph Waldo on many occasions. Until, that is, the teacher began to tire of him. Blue used to laugh. She imagined the senior Ralph telling a young Henry to go back to his pond, my pond, when he overstayed his welcome. Perhaps Henry David inspired Ralph Waldo’s “Society and Solitude.” Blue would read me some passages from it. I can still hear her young, raspy voice in my ear to this day.
But people are to be taken in very small doses.
If solitude is proud, so is society vulgar.
Society exists by chemical affinity, not otherwise.
Solitude is impractical, and society fatal.
But let us not be the victim of words. Society and solitude are deceptive names.
It is not the circumstance of seeing more or fewer people, but a readiness of sympathy, that imports.
A sound mind will derive its principles from insight . . . and will accept society as the natural element in which they are to be applied.
Perhaps she was caught between solitude and society. Perhaps this conflict drove her to me, to giving life ― a need for a fresh start. From seeds to daughter, she was preparing herself ― for her Self. Perhaps she saw both sides all too well. How could she reconcile the two? How could she reconcile the pain and the joy that dwelled within such a charismatic being? I can still see her so well. She is the cosmos that encircles me in my sleep. She is the first ray of sunshine when I awake to greet another ambiguous day. I will grant her wish and not look for her, or our daughter. But if our paths should cross one day, I will be ready. I will understand better what she needs. I will give her what I can. In the meantime, I will listen to the earth. I will love her with all my strength, her strength. And now our strength lives in the seed that we had planted in that mystical yurt surrounded by those concentric circles built from love, the cosmos surrounding us, watching us, protecting us.
When I got back home, exhausted and confused, yet elated and proud, I found another note. It lay on my pillow in my small one-bedroom apartment. It, too, was covered in dirt as if it had just been unearthed from an archeological dig. It read:
I am losing all sense of who or what I once was. I have known this much for a long time. Everyone that I have encountered in my life has played bigger roles that they will ever realize. I have not met many. And one is the biggest. It is the biggest number of all. From one seed came Lapis Lazuli. Only one could have given me that special gift. I knew that special one was you.
I remain forever in the forest, in the trees, and in the sweet, sweet earth. One day we will be reunited. The earth has spoken. It speaks of all the shades of blue. It speaks of you.
Blue.
david woodward aka un-known lives just south of Montreal with his wife and son. He has been published or is forthcoming in the engine(idling, North Dakota Quarterly, Cosmic Daffodil Journal, Petrichor, Unlikely Stories, Broken Tribe Press, and elsewhere. un-known can be found at dwakaun-known.bsky.social.
Photo by Luca Bravo on Unsplash
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