Chapter 5 #5
He didn’t say a word, but his muscles stiffened as if he had to flee from me, so I pulled my hand back.
“I buried Lea here.” He kept staring at the Atchafalaya Basin.
My heart clenched. I wanted to throw my arms around him to comfort him, but he didn’t seem to want that.
“I came to this place and it was as desolate as I felt. Isaac and I had argued because he didn’t want to take Lea to the bayous.
He just wanted to leave her behind. He was always so terribly afraid that we would be caught, sent back to Canada, and put into different homes by Child Services.
” He shook his head as if in shock. “But I... I promised Lea. She was still a child, Will.”
Just like you back then , I thought.
“Children’s final wishes are like promises.
They are sacred. You have to fulfill them…
” He swallowed. “I stole a motorboat and took her with me. Then, I motored down the Mississippi tributaries to the bayous and kept moving until I heard her whispering inside me. This is good. I want to stay here, Nathaniel…”
My throat tightened. I imagined him making that difficult journey as a child, all alone, his heart filled with dark sorrow.
“I didn’t burn her. I couldn’t bring myself to do that.
” He turned to me, his misty gray eyes shimmering in the night.
“I left it to the earth and the swamp. On the other side of our island. That way I could convince myself that over the years she would become part of this silver-green swampland.” He looked at my face for a moment, then took a strand of my hair and tugged at it so gently that it hurt.
“According to legend, Spanish moss is the hair of a princess who was killed by her father’s enemies on her wedding day.
The grieving groom is said to have cut off her silvery-blonde hair and hung it in a tree, and the wind carried it across the entire country.
” His fingers hovered in the air as if he wanted to stroke my cheek.
“It’s a sad story. Sad, but beautiful.”
“I also cut off a tuft of Lea’s hair and hung it on a tree. Crazy, right?”
“Nothing you do out of love can be truly crazy.” I smiled even though I was full of tears about Sparta’s suffering, about injustices in the world, and everything that had made my life a mess.
Nathan looked at me and dropped his arm. With his fingertips, he touched the bracelet that he had given me twice. “If you’d like, I’ll show you where I took Lea.”
He was so close to me that I could feel his broken aura against my skin.
All his contradictory feelings danced through my senses.
Sadness, anger, and fear, but also love.
I knew how much it cost him to overcome what he wanted to do.
He guarded his grief like a treasure, locking it up so tightly that it was in every fiber of his body, in his blood and his soul.
“That would be nice,” I said quietly.
No more words were needed. I climbed into the boat after him and he started rowing. When Pan asked where we were going, Nathan simply replied that we would be back soon.
I viewed the surroundings with mixed feelings.
Nathan had put on a headlamp that had been in the sturdy box in the boat from the beginning.
The light cast a bright triangle in front of us that refracted off a fine layer of mist. It seemed as if myriads of water droplets were floating over the swamp and the black trees were covered with the ghostly hair of a long-lost princess.
Now and then, an owl called out of the darkness, and then birds fluttered, startled by the light and the splashing of the oars.
Nathan himself was a dazzling point in the night with the lamp.
At some point, he stopped and draped the headlamp on a bench so that a small patch of water glowed like a moonlit rectangle, no, like a moonlit grave. My heart was pounding.
“Here,” he said. He sounded mechanical, without emotion.
“And only you know the place?” I asked guardedly.
“Yes. I only told Isaac that I fulfilled Lea’s last wish.”
I moved from the bench behind him and climbed next to him, causing the boat to rock. We stared at the water together, and at first, I didn’t know whether to speak or remain silent, but finally, I asked, “The story you told Sparta about Sam…how did you know what to say?”
Nathan looked at the bright strip of water in front of us.
“I’ve told stories to many dying people.
It’s not difficult, Will. You simply have to incorporate what they loved in life and find a happy ending for everything.
Stan loved his son dearly. Sam had to have a happy life, but I also had to continue the circle to include his grandchildren.
Living on in our descendants or a memory gives life meaning.
Not to be forgotten is what most people desire.
To leave something behind in your children or the world.
Ultimately, Stanton loved Coldville, the Coldville that it used to be before…
” He paused and looked at me, and I realized how much I had underestimated him.
He was much more than what I had always seen in him.
Alongside his grief, he harbored so many wonderful secrets and treasures.
“Did you…did you tell Lea a story too?” I asked haltingly.
A wistful smile crept across his face. “Yes, of course.” He regarded his sister’s empty grave.
“Lea loved this world. She loved life despite everything we had been through. So, I had to take away her fear of death and invent a world in the afterlife for her, a world where she would hear my voice, where she would meet Mom, Dad, and little Jacob again. I told her time wouldn’t matter there, and that Isaac and I would be by her side before she could count to three.
‘When you get there,’ I said, ‘we’ll actually already be there.
’ That made her smile. Of course, I had to tell her with my hands.
” He eyed me for a long time until my heart began pounding, but then he looked away again as if remembering his fear of me, as if it was a blade held to his throat. He swallowed loudly.
“You always talked to Lea,” I said into the brief silence. “Even in the Palace of Shards. You said earlier that the dead don’t need our words.”
“Words are only for the living. I truly believe that. We talk to the dead, but we do it for ourselves. Because we need it.”
“You could…”
“Shh!” Nathan suddenly put his finger to his lips. “There’s something out there.”
I thought he meant deer or wild boars moving from land to land through the swamps, but I heard something else. The roaring rattle of a motorboat that sounded almost like a wild grunt in the distance. Suddenly, a voice emerged from the blind mixture of fog and darkness. “Willa? Nathaniel?”
“Ian,” Nathan whispered. There was a sudden glint in his eyes and he grabbed his headlamp and put it on. “I don’t want to go back to the others yet, do you?”
I shook my head, my veins tingling. He doesn’t want to go back. He wants to be alone with me.
He quietly adjusted the oars and dipped them gently into the dark water.
There was hardly a sound as the boat glided through the swamp, but the motorboat came closer.
For a few seconds, I thought Isaac might have found us and that Icarus was trying to warn us.
Then, I remembered Nathan’s words. Isaac didn’t know this place, and without exact coordinates, no one could find it.
Nathan rounded another narrow strip of land and headed into a new floating forest where the silver moss glowed like lanterns in the headlamp light.
He had to weave us through with an oar, but eventually, he stopped on a bank and motioned for me to climb out of the boat.
When he got out, we pulled the small boat into the thick undergrowth by the water.
“He won’t be able to get here quickly with the motorboat,” Nathan said quietly and I thought I heard a smile in his voice.
“Come on!” As he dimmed the headlamp, he hurried ahead as if he knew the destination.
Only a narrow strip of light fell at his feet, illuminating a path.
I stopped for a moment and listened to see if I could still hear the motorboat, but there was something else.
Something raced over branches and trees, sounding like an uncontrolled gallop of riders charging through the underbrush on their horses before an eerie grunt pierced the night.
“Wild boars. A whole pack!” Nathan gasped. “Quickly!”
Our hands automatically found each other as we ran along the path, not knowing if the herd was in front or behind us.
With one hand, Nathan turned off the headlamp and the sudden darkness enveloped us.
Shadows flew past: trees, stumps, webs like giant spiderwebs, and the pale shimmer of the moon.
I followed Nathan as if blind. The ground was uneven and we stumbled over dead wood but didn’t fall, just held on tighter.
I could no longer tell if the noise was coming from the wild boars or us.
I didn’t even know how dangerous they could be.
“Faster!” Nathan shouted, and at that moment, I heard them behind me and glanced over my shoulder.
My heart skipped a beat. With glowing eyes, they rushed forward, not ten yards behind us, a wild jumble of grunting, snorting, and cracking branches.
Nathan pulled me onward, and when I thought I could feel the pigs breathing down my neck, he yelled, “To the right!” There was a brief jolt as he let go of my hand and grabbed my arm as we both fell onto the porch of a wooden hut.
I was half lying on Nathan when I saw the herd running past the hut.
They didn’t take the slightest notice of us as if they were following a silent order.
Perhaps they hadn’t been chasing us at all but had just been startled.
Baffled, I watched them go and Nathan started laughing loudly.
He laughed so hard, his whole body shook.
I slid off him. I realized that I had never heard or seen him laugh before.
It made him young. And so normal, not dangerous or angry, that the longing inside me grew so great that it could catch fire in the blackness.
I joined in, and at the same time, I wanted him to kiss me and rip the summer dress off my body.
“Oh, Will! You should have seen your face.” He was out of breath from our flight and laughing. The beads of sweat on his forehead shone like silver in the faint moonlight and his black hair that had come loose from his ponytail fell wildly and boldly across his face. A dark pirate.
I stared at him, my heart pounding so longingly in my chest that I thought I would lose my mind if he didn’t finally touch me. I needed to feel his hands on me to extinguish the burning inside me. The burning that had crept into my body like a fever over the last few weeks.
Without thinking, I stood and grabbed the hem of my dress.
Nathan suddenly became serious. “What are you doing?” he whispered roughly. He was still lying on the porch, his weight supported on his forearms.
In one movement, I pulled the summer dress over my head. Then, I stood before him wearing only worn boots, underpants, and sweaty, bare skin.