Mayfly Page 3

  "Marianne."

  It was his voice, all along, low and soft, calling to her.

  "You know me." She meant it as a question.

  "Your name precedes you."

  "How?"

  "You're important, Marianne."

  Pleasure filled her, and something else. Pride. She thought it was pride. Someone like that saying she was important, right out of the blue.

  "No. No, I'm not."

  "But you are."

  His voice was gentle. She thought he sounded British. Yes, it was British.

  "I've never met a British person before."

  His smile grew briefly sharper; a sudden baring of teeth instead. "Older than that, my dear Marianne. Time destroys all things. It has broken my people apart and scattered us like stars, into places like these." He gestured to the wide field and dark green horizons. "I haven't spoken to one of my kind in a long time." Then he was sweet again. She hadn't realised her heart had been racing until she felt it slow, soothed by the change, and the muscles that had tensed to run relaxed again. "That is why you're so precious. Time has barely touched you. Your light is at its very brightest. Marianne."

  The way he spoke her name made it sound special. Not some hand-me-down thing.

  "I'm not really. I'm not anyone."

  "You know in your heart that isn't true."

  "No, it's only…no."

  "You don't have to lie to me. Not here. This is a sacred place. Lies draw darkness to them, while the truth feeds the light."

  "It doesn't mean anything. Everyone lies."

  "Who told you that? Come now. It isn't true at all."

  He looked up. A shadow glided through the shifting clouds, making the cottonwood fluff swirl wildly. In its wake, a shadow, like night, followed. She felt a strange unease deep in her stomach.

  "What is it?"

  "Nothing to concern yourself with." He waved his hand and the creature banked away and vanished into the silvery clouds. It wasn't night, here. Wherever here was. It didn't seem like day, either. Something in between.

  "What is this place?"

  "My own little home. I thought I might be alone forever, and then you opened the gate."

  "This doesn't look like any place I know."

  He laughed, eyes bright and full of energy, and began to speak. He spoke for a long time. She knew that. His voice twined through her brain like music without lyrics. She strained to understand, leaning forward when she couldn't make her feet move. From time to time she thought she got it, but it slipped away like jelly off a spoon any time she tried to repeat it to herself. It was beautiful, whatever it was. It spoke past her brain, to her heart. She knew that, too.

  Throughout his speech, the seven lights teased in and out of view. She watched them, feeling a surge of longing to go join them.

  Stupid.

  "You're not stupid. You know what's true." His voice whispered in her ear, but he still stood under the tree. "Go. Dance with them."

  She leaned forward, then shook her head, surprised that she'd moved even that much. "I don't do that kind of thing."

  He laughed. She felt his hand on her shoulder and shivered. "I understand. Perhaps one day. Will you come back? Tell me you will."

  "I can." It felt like a mistake. Why did she do it? Why did she agree? But when he smiled she did, too.

  "I can scarcely wait. Ah, it's time. Off you go, my dear."

  "How do I come back?"

  "You can open the gate. Only you. Once you do, the light will be there to guide you."

  "What's your name?" It seemed suddenly, desperately important that she know.

  "You can call me Ewan."

  It wasn't his real, true name. He smiled when he saw her realise it.

  "Clever, Marianne. It's the name that you can call me, just for now. Until you're ready."

  "Ready for what?"

  "To find your true home."

  Home.

  She heard a horn blare. She whirled, seeing the driveway around her and under her feet. Ewan and the lights were gone.

  Chapter 3

  The clock radio clicked a second before the music started. Her hand slammed down, cutting off Madonna's mournful crooning.

  Quiet was restored. She heard the wind and the birds. Quiet enough to hear a truck passing on the road. Quiet enough to hear the wash of an airplane. When she held her breath, she could hear her heart beating.

  She smiled and swung out of bed. There was still good cereal left from grocery day.

  She caught the end of the news while she emptied the cereal box into her bowl. Marshmallows ballooned half-heartedly in milk, almost overwhelming the misshapen oat bits. She took it and some orange juice—part of this nutritious breakfast—to the table. After a bite or two, her attention wandered. She grabbed a book from the top of a stack ready to go back to the library. A beefy guy bent a woman back, enraptured by her cleavage. She flipped through it until she got to maidenheads and thrusting manhoods. Her mom liked some racy stuff. Maybe she could take them in today and find something for herself that didn't involve turgid staffs.

  "Morning sweetie. You're up early."

  "The sun comes right into my room."

  "We went out and got you those blinds."

  "Forgot to close them, I guess."

  The smell of coffee filled the trailer. Her mom stood next to the cupboard, turning her cup around in her hands.

  "Do you have plans today?"

  "Maybe go to the library before work. Books are almost due."

  "I need the car."

  "I'll take the bus."

  "Sorry. You know. I really…"

  "It's okay, Mom."

  She watched her pour, a few escaped drops sizzling on the coffeemaker's hot plate. Coffee smell was replaced with burned coffee smell.

  "You want some?"

  "No thanks."

  "I probably shouldn't offer. It's probably not healthy."

  "Probably not."

  Her mom sat down at the table, hands folded around the cup. Marianne had a dim memory of her mother painting it. She remembered the smell of the paint and the raw ceramic. The word for coffee was repeated in different fonts, done in avocado green and brown. Their stove had been the same shade of green.

  "You got paid yesterday, right?"

  Marianne pushed one of the marshmallows around in the milk, angling it to make a rainbow with four others.

  "Well, I have an interview out at the mill. Can you imagine? It'd be good money. Union. Get on there and we'll be laughing. Just need gas money."

  "I was going to get new running shoes."

  "Yeah, you're right. That's more important than a job interview. Christ, Marianne…"

  "Sorry. I'll get it."

  "It's not like you don't get yours. Who paid for that cereal?"

  "I said I'll get it!"

  "You watch your tone with me."

  "Sorry." She pushed her chair back.

  "Don't you dare waste that food. You'll be begging for it one day."

  She finished the bowl and dumped it in the sink.

  "Rinse it, please. I don't want the whole place smelling like sour milk."

  Marianne left money on the table, slipping out while her mother was getting ready. It was stupid. If her mom landed a good job at the mill there would be money for a good pair of runners. Even if she didn't, the ones she had would last another season.

  Season. She snorted, kicking a roundish rock ahead of her. The clouds billowed under the sun, and where there was no sun it was cold enough to make her pull her hoodie closed. School was done. She wasn't going to university. She didn't have another season of track.

  The rock skipped into the grass at the side of the driveway, clicking against the white stone that she'd been playing soccer with that first night. She picked it up, rubbing a bit of mud off of its pale surface. The trees looked so normal in the daytime. Just the same scrawny pines as everywhere else. But at night it would change. Every night for the last week, it had changed.r />
  She smiled. It changed, and everything felt good when she visited him.

  She found some pulpy sci-fi novels at the library. Brain popcorn. She liked Charlene's phrase. Before she left for work she dipped into the romance shelves to find some books for her mom, searching out newer ones that she likely hadn't read. So many bare, muscular chests. So many bare and elegantly extended legs

  Turgid manroot. How is that hot?

  The evening rush at the gas station gave way to a long, dead period. She took out the list of busywork. Wiping down the seats, she decided. It was better than cleaning the toilets.

  Kneeling in the booth to scrub at the base, trying not to think of how long it had been since the last time it was done, even there she found her mind drifting to the trees. The trees and the lights and Ewan.

  She straightened, barely feeling the water soaking into her jeans. Ewan. It was close enough, he said, to his real name. Call me Ewan. The way he said it took up all of her thoughts. It shook her like those stupid girls in her mom's romances. She really got it, then. She understood it. It was different than what she felt with Bobby, even back when they first started dating. She got why women wrote about it. It pushed away all of her petty days and fights with her mom, and work, and school, and everything.

  A honking horn returned her to the present. Charlene waved to her from her brother's car. Marianne waved back and went to turn on the pump.

  They hung out for an hour or so. Marianne turned the TV over to music videos since there were no truckers to complain that they couldn't watch the game. What game never mattered. Baseball, football, hockey: as long as men were playing sports, they'd gulp down their shitty food with eyes glued to it. Marianne knew what offside meant and regretted the brain space that could have been used for biology; her exam score had been shit.

  "There's a thing at the pit tonight. Wanna come?"

  "I don't really feel like it."

  "You never want to hang out anymore. In the winter you were studying all the time. I thought we'd have more chances now."

  "We're literally hanging out right now."

  "Cause you're trapped at work. Can't get away."

  "I'm not trying to get away. I just...don't feel like going to the pit."

  Charlene stabbed at the ice in her coke with her straw. "Did something happen last time? You just took off that night. Bobby says you've been weird lately, too."

  "No. Nothing happened."

  "I think it's gonna be our last summer. I mean, the last real one that we'll have."

  "You're going away?" Marianne's heart sank.

  "Yeah. Mom and dad decided finally. McGill."

  "That's really far. I mean it's great. It's a great school!"

  "It's going to be awesome. I wish you were going, too."

  "Maybe in a year or two," Marianne said, trying not to rain on Charlene's big day.

  "But we can have fun this summer! I want to do everything that we used to do."

  "Saturday morning cartoons."

  Charlene laughed. "Yeah. With leftover Chinese food."

  "We should."

  "Soon." She sunk an ice cube. "Sure you don't want to come?"

  "Yeah."

  "Are you sick or something?"

  "Not that I know of."

  "You kinda look pale."

  "Oh, god. I'm already like a corpse."

  "I don't know." Charlene laughed. "Sorry."

  "I'm okay."

  "Call me, okay? We can hang out."

  It felt lonely after she was gone. She flipped through one of the books she got from the library, waiting for the clock to tick over, so she could go home. She sort of missed her textbooks. Studying really ate up the hours. If she'd done more of it…

  Her mom was still gone when she got home. She dumped the books on the table and grabbed her walkman and wallet of CDs, shoving them into her backpack. No hoodie. She wouldn't need it once she got into the trees. It was never cold there. She let the screen door slam behind her and jumped off the porch, jogging easily to the driveway.

  She paced along the grassy shoulder, wishing for the way to open and the light to come down. Ewan said she opened the gate. If it was true, she still didn't know how to do it. Lurking around would be awkward to explain if someone happened to notice. But then, who'd notice out here?

  A truck roared past, stinking of exhaust and pine. In its wake, a little storm of wood chips fluttered down into the ditches, pale as snow. The smell dissipated. Silence swallowed her. It would be soon. Her hand tightened around the straps of her backpack.

  She felt the touch of a wind warmer and softer than any she'd ever known before. Nothing up here, for sure. No matter how deep the summer, this far north an edge of cold always followed. She closed her eyes. It smelled rich and green. It smelled sweet, better than perfume.

  The lights came down toward her, their brightness bubbling and flashing like laughter. A wave of well-being washed over her. She wiped her eyes quickly and hurried to catch them.

  She was laughing by the time they arrived at the cottonwood tree. They liked to play tag, darting around, impossible to reach, but she tried anyway. Once she passed behind the trees she was tireless, never running out of breath, not even sweating. And she could see, even though it was night, and she knew it was night. She really did. But it didn't matter. It wasn't a real night or day; she could leap over tumbled trees easily, eyes on the flickering lights. By the time she got to the cottonwood she had to pause to get herself under control.

  Ewan stepped around the cottonwood tree. Her laughter trailed off all on its own.

  "Oh, my dear, don't stop. That's the most beautiful sound I've ever heard."

  She pulled off the backpack, holding it in front of herself. "That's...Really? My friend said I sounded like a horse."

  "Your friend is mad." He took her hand, examining her. "You're beautiful."

  "Yeah, sure."

  "Why would you deny it? The light in you is blinding."

  She could barely meet his eyes. It really was like those stupid books, except that the women in them always knew what to say back. And they weren't wearing band T-shirts.

  "Come now. Many a maid has come to my door. I've seen great beauty and great ugliness. But hair strung with gold? Eyes as warm as a spring sky? Skin like snow, and roses in your cheeks? I know beauty, Marianne, and you are beautiful."

  He touched her chin. She shivered all over, like when Bobby was trying to make up for something. Or the way it was when he first asked her out: fluttery and unsettled.

  "Crass young men don't deserve precious things. They don't understand what they have in their hands." His eyes drifted over her, so kindly. "What's his name?"

  "Bobby."

  "Ah, crude beast, to treat with indifference so flawless a gift, besmirching it with grubby prints."

  He let her go. Then, it seemed, she stood there before him for a long time, listening to his voice. It was hard to tell here. The music that filled the air ran sometimes like music always did, but sometimes it came to her through molasses, and each note stretched out longer than it should.

  She felt a little tremble of sourceless wrong. What was it? Wrong. What was wrong?

  His fingers brushed over her hair. She took a breath. It was the way it always was here.

  "It feels like forever."

  "Because you're young." He smiled. "The youthful hue sits like morning dew, upon my Marianne."

  "That's Marvell."

  "So it is."

  "We studied it."

  "But did you sing it?"

  "Sing?"

  "The voice is a marvellous instrument, and the words of a poem are the notes of the heart."

  She walked slowly beside him as he brought the stanzas to life. She'd liked it when she'd read it at school, but his voice breathed life into it. She lifted her face to the sky. The cottonwood fluff caught in streams that danced along with his voice, carried high up into the air before swooping down again.

  "You sound way
better than Mr. George."

  He smiled. There was no way he could really be shy, but his look was sort of like that. Not modest. He was too confident for that. Self...

  Self-deprecating.

  "How did you learn it? You've been here longer than that."

  She wondered if she'd overstepped. He smiled.

  "Sometimes we hear echoes. Or sometimes a person like you comes along and brings their words to us."

  They sat down on a log. A creek bubbled under their feet. The tree was somewhere behind them. At the edge of the meadow, the forest began again, endlessly, until it met the misty sky.

  Music.

  "I brought you music." The lights danced around her.

  "Did you?"

  "The last time I was here you said...You asked about music."

  "Indeed."

  "I brought my player." She fumbled with her bag and pulled it out. "It isn't like the music here. Classical or—" She wanted to say world music or ethnic music or something, but it wasn't like that either.

  "The music that the trees make, my dear Marianne, and the sky and the sea. Everything in my world sings."

  "Guess it won't stack up."

  "Play your music, Marianne."

  She put in a CD. It didn't spin up, and the display remained blank. She tapped it, then opened the back, poking at the batteries.

  "I just put new ones in."

  "You've come a very long way."

  "What? What does that mean?"

  "This isn't your world. It exists beside yours."

  She looked around. "But it's...close."

  "And far. The rules are different."

  "It's nicer here."

  He smiled and picked up a CD. The lights gathered close, all of them examining it curiously. Her eyes followed the rainbows that spun around the surface.

  "I'm sorry you can't hear it. That's a good one."

  "You can give it to me." He held out his hand. "Please. Share with me."

  She didn't know what he meant, but she took his hand.

  Music washed out of her, bouncing between the trees and rolling back, a storm of guitar and drums and screaming, primal voices. The lights shrieked and scattered.