In the River Darkness (16 page)

Her soft hair tickled my chest, and I stroked her freckled back. I kissed my favorite spot at the hollow of her neck. The skin there shimmered as translucent as the mother-of-pearl inside my shell. How delicate and soft she felt. So soft . . .

I had to think of sex and how it would be to sleep with Mia.

“But don’t make me wait too long!” I whispered.

With a jolt, Mia shook me off, as if my embrace had suddenly become too suffocating for her. She stood up and went over to the window.

“What’s up with you?” I asked with irritation.

But Mia just looked past me and out the window.

That was the image of her that would always stay with me in my memory: Mia there at the window, with her arms crossed in front of her breasts. Her nipples glowed red like wounds. Her face was as impenetrable as black water.

Her eyes filled with sadness.

Then Mia shook her head, and the water withdrew again. “Oh, it’s nothing! I was just thinking of something.”

Later on, I saw this scene play out in my head over and over again. I wish I could have pressed the stop button like the one on Jay’s recording device, rewound, and done everything over again. And done it right this time.
Please, Mia, talk to me! I can tell something is bothering you! You don’t need to play the superwoman for me—what’s going on?

There were so many opportunities to ask! I should never have given up. Instead, I let myself be content with that meaningless answer.

Was it cowardice? Was it just easy and comfortable? Did I not want to start up another fight right after we’d made up? Whatever the reason, it doesn’t matter anymore. There’s no rewind button in life.

The one thing that’s certain is that I didn’t keep asking, even though I had felt that something was deeply wrong all along. I wasn’t there for Mia when she needed me.

And so our summer passed. Irretrievably. The first wilted leaves were already being carried away on the surface of the river like extinguished gold sparks.

Did I already sense how close autumn was? Maybe. Because I do remember looking out the window and wishing I could magically put all the cherries back on the branches of our tree.

In that night, I dreamed of Mia. In my dream, her body was a red cello. She plucked her strings and sang, but I couldn’t hear a sound, no matter how hard I tried.

“Sing louder, Mia! I can’t understand you!” I called.

And then she started to cry. The tears running down her face became a powerful flood that carried her away, still singing silently. Away from me.

I ran alongside the river, waved, screamed her name. But she moved farther and farther away, relentlessly . . . she got smaller and smaller until she disappeared into the gray horizon.

And I was left behind on the shore.

My memories of sunny, golden summer days have left me. Probably frozen. Just like the dreams of a marvelous rescue. Maybe I just dreamed up my entire life, and this hole in the ice is the only true reality. It’s as if I were dissolving. All that’s still left of me is this tough strand of life that stubbornly clings to a jagged edge of ice. Like ivy on a stone.

My fingertips are already completely numb. I can feel how my blood is gradually flowing more slowly, as sluggish as the river, until it finally freezes into ice, too. Do I still have feet? I don’t feel them anymore. I don’t feel anything anymore. Just cold, cold all the way through to my heart . . .

I know the river will win in the end! Its black water laps at me; I feel the gentle, inevitable tug of the current that wants to pull me under the ice. Like strong, dark hands. Stronger than me . . .

Dully, I stare at a wilted leaf that’s trapped in the reflecting ice in front of me and think that that’s my future.

I broke our blood oath. Nothing can save me now.

Soon, very soon, I’ll have to let go. Then I’ll slowly sink down to the bottom in a cloud of air bubbles. Down to the fish, where it’s dark and quiet.

I’m not even afraid anymore. By now, it almost doesn’t matter. I’m so tired. I just want to sleep . . . dangerous, I know, but . . . I can’t do it anymore.

Sleep. Let me finally sleep.

The calls of migrating birds drove a wedge in the blue October sky. All around us the trees rustled their last autumn songs before the sap solidified in their trunks and they sank into a long, cold silence.

I captured everything with my recorder, all of this red and gold burning above our heads. But now I could only think what a waste it was that no one but Alina and I got to see this beauty. Just yesterday, Mia had asked me again when I would finally take her to the island. Oh, how badly I wanted to show her everything! The field and my music castle and . . .

“What are you thinking about, Jay?” Alina looked at me with her head tilted to the side.

“Oh, nothing special,” I said quickly. “I don’t feel very good today.”

“Well let’s see if we can cheer you up a little!” Alina replied, and gave a warbling call. A moment later, a kingfisher fluttered onto her shoulder with a strip of flapping silver in its beak. Alina took the bird’s catch away from it, held the little fish by the tail, leaned her head back—and swallowed it whole, just like the herons do.

I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. I stared at her with reluctant fascination.

Alina casually wiped her mouth with a hand and grinned at me. “You’d like to be able to do that, too, wouldn’t you, Jay? The kingfishers are calling.”

The bird on her shoulder sparkled so beautifully in the sunlight. I stretched my fingers out to touch it, and then pulled my hand back again. “I would like to,” I admitted hesitantly, “but I can’t. I mean, you’re their queen! The queen of the kingfishers . . . and I’m just Jay.”

Alina graced me with a smile that sparkled like fish scales. “We’re much more alike than you think, Jay,” she answered gently. “Believe me, I could teach you a melody that would bend the tips of the willows to the earth. You could make the river spill over its bank and much more, if only you wanted to.”

Her talk was making me nervous. “But that . . . that’s not possible!” I contradicted her, confused.

“Who says that?”

“Well, everyone! Grandma, Skip, my teachers . . .”

“What do
they
know?” Alina hissed. “They cling to their pathetic rules and ‘scientific definitions!’” She practically spit out the words. “Those idiots don’t know a thing about real life! And nothing about the river!” Alina lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper that wound its way into my ear. “The only thing that matters is what
we
want, Jay. That and nothing else makes our reality! Go ahead, try it!” she commanded. “Try to call the bird to you.”

Obediently, I stretched out my hand. It wasn’t going to work, anyway. And sure enough, the kingfisher didn’t ruffle a feather!

“You have to concentrate!” Alina insisted impatiently.

I
was
trying—really hard. Beads of sweat broke out on my forehead. Every thought in my head droned
come, come here.

There! With choppy beats of its wings, like a wound up toy, the kingfisher slowly made its way toward me . . . and landed on my palm! At first, I was afraid its metallic blue would cut my fingers. But it was so soft. Its tiny claws tickled my skin, and I felt its feather-light heft in my hand. A bundle of fluff. A quivering little bit of life.

I could crush it between my fingers, if I wanted to . . . just like that.
I knew it, and the bird knew it, too.

“Do it!” Alina whispered, as if she had read my thoughts. Her eyes were green-brown and unfathomable, just like the river. As if the river flowed through them.

I didn’t know if she was serious. Was this supposed to be another one of her crazy tests, where I had to prove something to her? Did Alina want me to kill the bird for her?

My left eye, the brown one, began to tear up. Was the river perhaps in me, too? My fingers twitched.
You could make the river spill over its bank, you could . . .

“No,” I said, uncurling them again. “I don’t think I want to!” Then I raised my hand. “Fly, little one!”

But only after Alina had released the dazed bird with a trill did it take off. Every beat of its wings announced its relief at having escaped death once again.
To be alive!

Alina watched it go with a strange smile. As if she had just confirmed something she had suspected for a long time. I had no idea if I had passed her little test or not. But I sensed that something would happen. Soon.

My recording device was still running and recorded the silence between us. I turned it off.

After Alina had left, this horrible feeling overcame me, as if a small animal were gnawing away at my insides. It ate into my heart. I listened carefully to my heartbeat and it sounded dull and hollow. Like rain on a fall day.

When I tried to raise the corners of my mouth in a smile, I couldn’t manage it. It was hard to breathe, and I was dizzy. Something was wrong with me! Maybe I was getting sick. As fast as I could, I rowed for home.

Grandma wasn’t there, but instead I found my big brother. “I think I’m sick, Skip,” I groaned weakly. “Measles, at least.”

First, he hustled me into the bathroom and stuck a thermometer in my mouth. “Hmm,” he grunted meaningfully, like our doctor, when he removed it again. “Well, you don’t have a fever. And you don’t look especially sick, either. Tell me exactly what’s wrong.”

“It’s as if I’m suffocating.” I didn’t know how I should explain it to him. “I’m getting heavier and heavier, and I’m drowning in sadness.”

Skip observed me with an expression on his face that I couldn’t understand. Then he suddenly hugged me tightly. He never did that! “Better?” he asked a little awkwardly and let go.

I took a moment to think about how I felt. “Yeah,” I nodded, astonished, “a little.”

“What you have is something everyone has to deal with some time or another,” Skip explained to me. “Could it be that you feel a little lonely, Jay?”

At first, I wanted to contradict him. Loneliness was something for other people, nothing that had anything to do with me. I had Alina, after all. But then I had to admit that Skip was probably right. I didn’t have the measles. I was lonely.

“Welcome to the world of mere mortals, little brother!”

“It feels awful, and I want it to go away! What makes it better?” I asked.

“You just need a girlfriend. You’ll see, it helps!” Skip said and grinned to himself. He was surely thinking about Mia.

A girlfriend . . . but I already had Alina, didn’t I? I dragged myself upstairs to my room to listen to some of the recording from this afternoon. If girlfriends were the cure, maybe Alina’s voice would help me. After all, without meaning to, I had recorded our conversation earlier.

As I quickly rewound the tape, all the voices sounded like the twittering of birds. Then I played the recording at normal speed.

But the only voice to be heard on the recording was mine—and the cries of the kingfishers.