Thickets.

My mind could not be put into slumber that humid evening. I lay curled-up under a thin blanket, breathing regularly and staring at the ceiling, white in the day but in these early morning hours, pitch black. The house was asleep, the silence was omnipresent and nothing moved but the leaves of the tree outside that gently caressed the window glass. Such moments are never-ending; it seems unbelievable that life is going somewhere.

Suddenly the mattress bounces a little – Mary turned from her side onto her stomach, breathed in deeply and then slept on. I got so used to her that her presence is normal - I tend to forget she is there, as if she would be an extension of my own body. She moved into the house next door about a few months ago, but already I think of her as mine - a sister, a best friend, my daughter, my other half. She often spends the night here in my room, some of her plush toys made their journey across the fence here already, scattered around the bed and some surround our feet, peeking out from underneath our shared blanket.

Just a little further up the hill, boy. You'll be home soon enough.

 I am an only child. No sibling by blood, yet Mary is my sister - by soul. We met by complete accident. I was cleaning up the back yard of the cottage I call home when all of a sudden a cough broke through into my ear. It was loud and clear against the melodically chippering of sparrows posing on the tree branches above me. I turned to see a diminutive figure of a young child with hair dispersed over her shoulders and chest and a large straw hat held in hand. The noon spring sun shone strongly from behind her, the hazelnut hair resembled a waterfall of fluid gold that’s brightness caused my dirty hand to be lifted and cover my smirking eyes. I haven’t noticed her come in; anyways, it is polite to knock or call out when entering somebody else’s territory, isn’t it? I guess I was so mentally occupied with the weeds. So there she was, Mary. Thus she began:

            “Imagine! I was walking through the thickets down there, got lost for a few hours and luckily I found my way back home! Lucky me!” She looked at me proudly. “I never get lost. Mama once beated me for getting lost, as she was so scared something happened to me. Well, nothing did! I found my way back. Anyways,” she stopped to breathe, “I don’t like to be alone, nobody’s home now – can I be with you until mama comes back?” 

Without any kind of response from my side, the little girl laid her hat onto the carpet of grass and kneeled down next to me, smiling. Noticing my gardening gloves that were dirty with earth between us, she winced and got up again in sudden realization, –

“I must get my gloves. I will help you! Weeds are horrid creatures, mama told me they are because they eat everything in the earth without leaving anything good for beautiful flowers to eat.” She turned in direction of her home, but then looked at me again: “Speaking of food, can I get a little something to eat from your kitchen?” 

And again, without me verbally answering but only giving her a long puzzled look, she smiled and left. She first went to her house, then mine. After a while she reappeared, hands in gloves and a cheese-butter sandwich layered between the two floors that form her mouth. It took her ages to eat it, as she blabbered away about everything that she thought of while watching me pull a weed by the roots and throwing it into a bucket. For hours we kept this arrangement: I weeded, she talked. And what a talker! I didn’t say a single word and still the word raid continued. Not that I minded – it was a little entertainment. This entertainment lasted ever since.

Sweet blackberries. Take your red berries… Berries.

The weeding was taken over by dish-washing, dusting, sewing, whatever that needed to be done around the house was completed with her sitting nearby, swinging her bony legs to and fro, her mouth in an everlasting acrobatic composition as it formed words that informed me of her past, family, ideas about life, books and herself as a whole. She never pushed me into talking, which I very much appreciated; a single nod from my part made her chat on and on, but all I could do was smile. Me, the young adult of 17 and her, a girl of not even 9, surprisingly we got along so well though our natures were different the villagers find us funny - I guess it is understandable, as the scene of two girls, one silently working and the other blabbering away as if in a psychiatric office must evoke laughter and grins. 
 

My parents never cared about the increasing amount of time Mary spent over at my place; as I said, it was almost as if she was living with us already, with her toys spattered around my room, crayons randomly lying in an organised pile in one corner of my lair, her straw hat on the hanger next to the entrance door. I wasn’t surprised when in the middle of the night I heard the faint sound of our gate opening and then her entering my room quietly. Then, feeling her lay down beside me and I would embrace her protectively. Her body now curled closer to mine, hot with childish dreams of the imaginary.

This was to be the last day we spent together.

Went looking for my tower off all the rails and the roads…

            “Wake up, Augustine!” Mary repeatedly exclaimed, shaking me intensely until I showed signs of awaking. “You promised to take me to the fair - look, I even have a few coins we could spend!” She put her palm with a few pounds in front of my eyes. I nodded and pushed her hand away. “Let’s buy flowers, how do poppy flowers sound to you?”          

“Mary, poppy flowers are in the fields, you can get them there for free if you really want to, no need to go waste money on them at the fair” I groaned in irritation, nictating my eyes. There is nothing worth hating more in life than an over-optimistic person first thing in the morning, let alone children! My grumpy comment did not manage to decrease her positivity. Smiling widely she replied, in one breath,-

“Oh, please, let’s go to the fields then! It’s mama’s birthday tomorrow… or today?” She frowned - the grim face disappeared as quickly as it appeared with the wave of her hand. “I’m not obliged to know it by memory yet, but either way, I want to make her a poppy flower bouquet! Doesn’t it sound lovely and red already?” she laughed, jumped down from the bed and began skipping around the room in utter delight one defines as happiness.

“Oh, that childish optimism! That blinding feeling of absolute joy! Oh, be gone, those mornings spent sleeping in after long nights!” I thought to myself as I got up. Within a half-hour we got dressed and walked out into the bright summer sunlight with our stomachs filled with cereal and milk. Mary carried a basket for the poppy flowers in the bulge between her arm and forearm.

Have I been traveling so long that I've forgotten how to stop?

It was a day like any other - the sun was shining on the stone road path we were taking to get through to the fields, no traffic, the only change was that there were no neighbours out tendering their porches as they would any other day. But neither of us took notice of it – why should we, we were going out for poppy flowers to make a bouquet! But first we were to pass through the thickets, we have not been there for a long time – no reason, it was derelict, dirty with bugs and the earth was ever-damp, but this morning was different just as that. I haven’t caught the tune of a funeral song chippered by the sparrows, I was far too occupied with the beauty of the day and the sights of nature on a summer morn. Far too occupied…

Why all my breaks are broken? Wheels spinning out of control…

Mary insisted on the poppy flowers all along despite my arguments – she talked, sang, and danced about them while we made our way into the thickets, all I could do was smile and give up. Her hazelnut hair camouflaged beautifully with the surrounding bushes and trees, only occasionally when a beam of light managed to make its way through the canopy did it look gold, making her look unearthly with that bronze halo around her round face of a child. She laughed at my face of fascination, innocently as any little girl would when they feel attention and complete happiness.

Spinning round, round, round…

She turned and turned in front of me, the skirt of her pale green dress following the circled movement of her legs. And that is where it happened - the bang, the yelp, the fall, my run towards her, the blood streaming out of her mouth onto my hands that cupped her face, my worthless call for help, the sight of the red fluid of life overflowing both her opened mouth and my palms and death taking over her ever-lively eyes that stared straight ahead into the darkness of the tree tops. Her body remained, but the once-singing sparrows took flight, just like her Soul and life.

And in the mirror pale and deathly they have become…

Once a life has been spent by the fault of another, there is nothing the remaining can do to make that single life return back to reality, to revive back into this world. This world that is full of paradoxes. Mary’s life was taken by a single gunshot bullet that was aimed at “a deer nearby.” Turned out the hunter was nervous and still did not know his skills – shooting at the creature that’s lively movements “resembled so distinctively” his prey fatally resulted in Mary’s accidental death. It was unnecessary; I mourned just as much as anyone at the funeral, but I didn’t give a good-bye speech. Simple reason: I almost never speak, so why should I have forced myself into doing something that is against my nature? Mary knows I will remember her and that contents me enough.

Look... what have I become?

I was told many times that her death was not my “fault.” I nod, but still I answer: “If I would have granted her wish to go buy the poppy flowers at the fair without trying to change her mind by excess persuasive talk, she would have been alive. Instead, I let my reason win over her imagination and in result, this sense of reality resulted in an accident that caused in her death.” After closing my mouth I receive a pat on the shoulder or a smile as a sign of support and understanding, though doubtlessly some smiles were hypocritical... They do not understand my feeling of blame and guilt, no matter how much they smile or press my shoulder.

As all your wastelands flower and all your thickets grow…

No, the accident surely was not my fault - it was not me who pulled the trigger with a sweated finger with an unprofessional random aim and shot an innocent girl who “by chance resembled a deer by colour though not by figure or behaviour.” But I do blame myself for forgetting to play her game of the unreasonable – usually I would play along and walk an extra kilometre or two to find that they do not sell dried butterfly wings in a flower shop or raw fish in an aquamarine museum. Why haven’t I done so that fateful day? I blame myself for being an adult who is blinded by obligations and is no longer free-minded as Mary.

Taller and taller still… all around me.

I grieve for having Reason, as if I would have let it go out of its chains for a slight second, Mary and her poppy flower bouquet would be seated right there this very moment, rocking her legs to and fro as ever. I see the ghost of her watching me from my wooden desk by the window as I gather her toys and put them into a paper box. She smiles and talks away as she usually does, but once realizing her things are being moved away from my room, she would go silent and after a while dreamily say,- 

“I lost my way across the thickets downhill.” And I would smile, knowing that even though her ashes were scattered on the field to which we were heading, her Soul remains in this world.

THE END