Seeds of Elder Days
By rosaliekempthorne
- 285 reads
She sows seeds of the past. She sows memories.
Her life is a quiet one. She made it that way on purpose. So that she could think, so that she could shut out all the clamour and noise, and just be at peace with the world. She found an old house, a glorious villa, set on rich farmland, a long way back from what’s already a backroad. She grows roses there. And sunflowers. And long afternoons with the sun moving only slowly, and a book in her lap.
She calls it retirement.
#
Her sister from the future calls her sometimes. The line is always crackly, as two distant temporal points try to connect to each other across archaic wiring that was never designed for such a job.
Luna has her own opinions. “What are you afraid of, Maddy?” She has that snap to her voice, that ringing condemnation that is still somehow friendly and sisterly, “Because you know I got your back, right?”
“Of course, I do.”
“So, come, play.”
“Play?”
“Build then. Decorate.”
“It’s not a game, Luna.”
“I know.”
She doesn’t. Does she? There was a time – funny how she can still use that word in her head without its reverberations of relativity, infinity, catastrophe.
Well, at least no-one knows.
“This is a terrible line. When are you calling from?”
“2047.” Luna’s voice is all scrambled up with background noise.
“You okay?”
“Yes, of course I am.”
“Be careful out there.”
“Hey, you’re in 2018, aren’t you?”
“A day at a time, remember? And no, I never cheat.”
“Fine. Will you visit Mum for me?”
“No.”
#
No.
She can hear her own voice played back in her head. So harsh and final. She hadn’t meant it to sound like that. Although the feelings are harsh, and the decision is final.
She remembers:
The gap hovering open, just enough to so she could see through it, so she could see the silver figure in the web of light. The way already collapsing, but finding the courage to step inside. Knowing the risk. Because it might just implode on itself, at any old moment, for no particular reason, with her on the wrong side of it. She might be able to get back, she might not. Always that risk.
And seeing this figure, all sharp edges, distorted by a wealth of silver crystals. A music playing through her bones. And this being the woman who’d been flesh and blood and raised and taught her everything. Who’d taught her how to weave the universe around her fingers, had taught her when not to, had taught her how to know if a boy is interested, and what he’s interested in, and when the smart move is just to walk away from him.
Well, how did you let this happen then?
This crystalline harridan wasn’t her. Not the way she’d wanted her to be. Her thought patterns were stretched out into the sea of light. They were twisted. They were full of horizons and calculations, full of the distances, and the chances of paradox. But she couldn’t go anywhere, not now, and if she could she wouldn’t understand a reason to. All calculations, and higher maths, and abandonment of two young women who hadn’t been ready for it.
How are you doing, Mum? Does it hurt in here? Tell me that.
It doesn’t matter. That’s all you need to know. Matter no longer matters. Do you see? Madeleine couldn’t be quite sure: was that an answer to her question, or just the ramblings of a mind both expanded and full of holes?
You came here on purpose.
How far have you gone, Madeleine?
Does it matter?
How far? Tell me.
Is there pain? Just focus on an answer.
Yes.
Is it worth it?
Yes.
I miss you. The real you.
Come with me, Madeleine. Tell me. How far?
Three hundred years.
A drop in the ocean. My child, you don’t know the size of the ocean.
I don’t want to.
It goes on forever. And forever is exquisite. Oh, trust me.
#
She doesn’t. Didn’t. This mother who has left her. What was once a mother. By 2047 there’ll be less left than ever. But Luna can always come back if she really wants to see that.
It’s a summer morning, and the sky is radiantly blue. Madeleine works out in her head how many more days there are going to be like that. No-one she knows is likely to see the change: so that’s something. But their grandchildren’s’ grandchildren are sure as hell going to notice it.
Meanwhile, outside, the roses live in sunset colours, and in blood reds, and pale yellows, in pristine whites. And they’re joined by a soft bed of jasmine, by bobbing sunflowers, and cultivated purple-headed thistles. The ground is full of daisies and marigolds and violets, a newcoming clump of sweet peas.
She’s content with that, and with the vegetable garden where beans climb a trellis, and pumpkins lounge in the sun. All her corn is marching in a row; intermixed with peas and brussel sprouts and cauliflowers. She can see her chickens scrabbling around in the dirt, trailing their feathers like fine dresses.
There’s a town about twenty miles out. She knows a few people out there. Mostly the shopkeepers, and the librarian. Books are such a solace. So, when she goes to town she goes armed with her library card, and brings back as many as she can. Dopey romances fill a good portion – something soft and forgiving that she can just sink into, feeling the sun on her shoulders, and a touch of wind in her hair.
Wendy from the library is just about a friend of hers, these days. When she goes into town she times it so she can arrive at the library just before Wendy’s lunch break, and they go to the burrito stand, order too much, go down to the fountain and sit there eating and chatting. Wendy has such a full life, having a husband and two children, a lover, three cats, a dream to one day shake all this off her like an oversized dress and become an actress instead. She talks so easily: comparing her men, wondering if they know about each other, trying to predict how her children and going to grow up, trying to decide if she’d want them to give her grandchildren.
“I’ll be too old for the acting by then. But I’ll be ten times as determined. It’ll be character parts, maybe villains, by then. But those can be the best parts.”
“They’re doing a play in the community centre soon, to raise money for the pool. You could audition.”
She gazes away from herself, into the blueness of the sky. “Oh, Maddy, it’s not the same, is it? It’d be so convenient if it could be the same. But it just isn’t.” Tears dance around the edges of her eyes.
#
Luna calls. “You better stay out of 2047 for now, okay? Everything’s in flux.”
“What’ve you done?”
“What? You think I’ve done something.”
“Have you?”
“No.”
“It’s vulnerable. You know how vulnerable it is. Are you okay?”
“Yes. The 40s are resilient.”
“No-when is resilient. Not really.”
“I’m fine.”
“If it comes adrift?”
“I know when to reach you.”
“There’s a beacon.”
“If I need it. I know. You used to take the wildest risks, don’t you remember? You told me the drift would be worth it. The drift would just open your eyes. Is this because of Mum?”
“No.”
“Because of 2013?”
“No.”
“Are you lying?”
“I don’t know.”
“I saw her in 2035. She could still say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Sort of. It was more like a ‘y’ or an ‘n’ that she could kind of suggest. That’s as far forward as I could find her in one piece.”
The line is full of crackling, it’s full of those disembodied voices, those hints of the would-have-beens, all those possible timelines that didn’t make it, all the billions of nearly-lived lives. With this much static, with this much crackle, there’s instability in the era – however light her sister wants to play it. She’s in the centre of the maelstrom. Maybe she still believes she’s conducting it. Maybe she knows better.
Madeleine feels old. It’s hard to remember that she’s only twenty-eight.
#
This she remembers:
2013.
It’s New Years Eve. It’s a wild time. And she’s young. There’s a garden on the roof, and she lives in a warehouse flat with three others young wildlings. All she wants to do is party. Like it’s 1999. Like it’s 1620. Like it’s 1923. Like it’s 1867. In 2013 there are coloured lights all hooked up all over the place, there’s a keg, there’s bottle of whiskey and wine. There’s loud music pulsing all the way across from one edge of the rooftop to the other. The leaves shake.
Madeleine indulges. She sits on a low wall, dangerously swinging her legs over a five storey drop, singing along, tapping her ankles against the wall, sipping now and then from a brimming whiskey-and-coke. She looks back across the ages, seeing the mayhem that’s swept this day in history in this place, for so many years. The plumage changes – oh, sure it does – and music and the styles of dancing, but the energy of it has been here for centuries, one way or another.
She has a companion who’s just drunk enough, that she thinks: why not? Let’s try it? She leans over at him: “Hey, buddy.”
“Duggan. I think that guy over there’s called Buddy. Do you want me go and intro you, and then you can find out…?”
“Having fun?”
“Yeah. Yeah. This is the best Christmas ever for me.”
“New Year’s.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah. New Year’s.”
“Christmas was the best Christmas ever for me. The best ever.”
“Ever, you say.”
“Ever, ever, ever.”
“You like history, Duggan? There’s been some amazing Christmases in history.”
“Like the first one?”
“Good example. You wanna see something cool? You can’t tell anybody.”
He looks down at her chest for a moment.
That’s what you think ‘something cool’ is going to be?
He says: “Sure.”
“You can’t tell.”
“A gentleman never tells.”
Oh, please! And he can tell. She’s picked a drunk on purpose. He can shout in out across the rooftops and blast the internet with it if he wants. Who’s going to pay attention? So, she sweeps back just a little bit of the veil, just enough to let his ordinary eyes see through it, and she directs them, down through the static, to a street, circa 1930, the hubbub of his great-grandparents and their friends running riot along an unkempt street.
His eyes widen.
“See. History.”
But he reaches for it. Funny, how much she can predict, and how much she can calculate and juggle, but one lunge forward towards an unexpected image, and that she hasn’t accounted for. He overbalances. Naturally. And he falls. His trajectory is a tumbling, deadly straight line for the ground. Madeleine sees the threads shimmer, she sees them ready themselves to change, to unravel and re-weave as this one soul falls through time’s gaps, his descendants along with him – a massive, massive family, all with faces and bodies and variegated futures.
She does the only thing she thinks can be done. Instinctively. She reverses it. She winds him back in along the axis of space-time, holding herself aloof from the unravelling as long as she can. When he’s upright on the wall, eyes opening, about to reach, she leans over and pushes him squarely in the chest, dropping him harmlessly onto his back, on a roof just a few feet below him.
Time rebounds on her.
Dancing nearby, Luna looks up.
On the street below everything speeds up. Blocks worth of traffic suddenly rear-end each other, blocks of them, all at once. Horns all go off. Shouting goes off. There’s a couple of fights breaking out. At ground level, an empty shop and a little flat both suddenly catch fire.
The town hall clock starts chiming right then.
There are fireworks.
#
So, gone are those days when she’d decorate her flat in its own overlapping time zones. Gone are the days when she’d date outside her century. One thing her hypocritical mother did teach her: the likes of us can do harm. More harm than we mean to. And we get careless if we let ourselves.
Like you did, Mum.
She takes Wendy through her garden instead. Her friend seems impressed. “I had no idea you had such a green thumb. I’ve never even seen flowers like these ones before.”
Sunflowers, violets, marigolds, roses; but many of them wear a past face, or they wear a face that was never quite worn, a face of what might have been but wasn’t. An evolutionary twist that could have been, if different seeds had landed, different petals not been eaten by some ancient herbivore or other. The other memories lurk there, anchored in the roots, creatures and events: the could-have-beens.
Wendy tells her: “You’re amazing.”
“Thanks.”
“You keep so quiet about it, but you should be famous.”
“God, no. Ick.”
“Ick? I don’t get you. I want my face up on billboards, and my name in lights. It’s never going to happen, is it?”
She who could – maybe – make it happen. “The only way is to try.”
“When they’re older. Sure. When they’re older, and they can spare me. When Roger and Evan find out about each other anyway.”
Because if you set your house on fire, you don’t really have any choice except to run out the door.
Madeleine says: “I made scones.”
“You! You’re so unsung. What kind of scones?”
“An old recipe.”
“I’m in.”
And they walk the long way, through all the flowers, with the sun on their shoulders, back into the house.
Picture credit/discredit: author's own work
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full of flavour and the seeds
full of flavour and the seeds of what if and was and ever will be.
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