Dancing In The Shadows of Love (32 page)

‘Will only the silence of death make the madness leave you?’

My muscles lock with the tension of keeping myself from breaking up, but I manage a tremor of assent. He smiles mysteriously. ‘Look at the fire.’

My gaze shifts to the glowing amber coals and the air gets heavier, sweeter. I sway towards the dying fire, close, too close, so some part of me smells the singe of burning hair. I’ve been cold for so long, I relish the sudden heat on my cheeks.

A breeze springs up, rustling through the leaves and stoking the somnolent coals into new life. A life which flickers and flares into an all too familiar sight. Hardly believing what I see, I stumble to my knees, crying, ‘Marty!’

And, before he leaves as quickly as he left me a year ago, I reach out to touch him, to hold my beloved son just once more. I want to tell him all I never had the chance to say before: my hopes for his future; my dreams for his life. To say I know the child he’d been would grow into a man, a good and decent man, loving and loved.

Oh-so-loved. For, without him, my life is hollow, as thin and faded as the waning crescent moon hanging forlornly above us. The crackling coals merge until I see a face, a child’s face, with Marty’s eyes and Marty’s mouth.

‘I love you, Mom,’ he says. ‘We’ll meet again, but not yet…not yet…’ and his precious image melts back into mere flames.

I thrust forward, wanting to embrace him close to my heart, so it can beat anew, instead of lying there cracked, my life’s blood trickling out with every memory. The pain jolts up my arms, searing a path directly into my chest, but I hardly notice it. ‘Don’t leave me, Marty,’ I scream. ‘Oh God, please don’t leave me alone!’

I jump up, kicking the coals apart, searching for him, desperate for him to stay.

But my son leaves me, as he did before.

This time I’m left clutching nothing but a smouldering stick. I chant my grief in a crescendo of pain as the blisters on my palms sear their way into the cavern of my chest, incinerating my broken heart into a pile of lifeless charcoal. ‘Marty,’ I cry. ‘Marty! Marty! Mar—’

‘Hush, child, hush.’ The stranger’s touch on my cheek is gentle and calming. ‘Be quiet and listen.’

Slowly I contain my grief. In the stillness, I hear the distant beat of a drum, faint and faltering, an erratic rhythm slowly surrendering into the peace of acceptance. It is my heart, I realize, the wound I’d feared mortal now cauterised as my life begins to creep back into being.

Dazed with emotions I’d thought diminished forever in the moment I last held Marty’s hand, I look around me, hardly taking in the shadows cast by the faint moonshine.

‘I’m not dying anymore.’ Even I hear how surprised I sound.

‘An end is not loss.’ As he speaks, the stranger nudges more logs on the fire. ‘It’s simply…an end.’ He stands up, dusting charcoal from his palms. ‘Or it’s a beginning. Give me your hands.’ Obedient to his authority, I place my hands in his and, no longer feeling the aching blisters, my attention is held as he speaks.

‘The balsamic moon gathers wisdom into the soul.’ I must strain forward to hear his whisper. ‘Look up,’ he continues, ‘and see your future.’

Ten minutes ago I would have seen nothing but the remnants of a soul shorn of hope, too weary to go forward. When I look at it now, somehow the thin crescent is no longer sad and waning, but holds a glimmer of new life.

In a gasp of gratitude, I seek out the stranger, but he’s no longer with me. I am alone again, only the blood pulsing fiercely in my veins keeping me company.

For a moment, the old fears rise to devour me. Then the victory screech of an owl almost drowns out the last, fated squeal of its prey. The owl will live, gaining strength from the gift it encountered in the inconspicuous moonlight.

And, so too, will I.

Calm again, I put my fears aside. Easing the last tension from my spine, I stretch and yawn widely. Tomorrow I will visit Marty’s grave. Then I will return to my life, desolate no longer, but abundant with memories.

For tonight, though, I will sleep peacefully, perhaps dreaming of Marty again. Perhaps not, for I no longer yearn to see him. He is with me whenever, and wherever, I want: in the battered Spiderman cup lying discarded at my feet and in the shadows cast as the moon moves inexorably onwards into a new day, a new cycle. It is over, and it is here, beneath a balsamic moon, that I am born again.

(This story first published in ITCH-e November 2010)

Copyright © Judy Croome (2012)

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Without limiting the rights under copyright described above, no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author. Contact [email protected]. Book Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine, newspaper, or on the web.

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Dancing in the Shadows of Love

Second Kindle Edition: 20 April 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9870090-5-0

Published by Aztar Press
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Published by Aztar Press

Johannesburg, South Africa