When Autumn Leaves: A Novel (25 page)

The next day, after sleeping for thirteen hours straight, Piper awoke with the girls. Shiv was going to band camp in the mornings and Sylvie was working at Totems bookstore three days a week. She was sorry to see them leave, but she knew they needed something else apart from Piper’s illness to occupy them. She pulled out her latest journal, to write her daily entry in the garden. She took along some watercolors as well, wanting to reproduce an old photo of the girls taken at the Summer Solstice fair ten years previous.

She sat on a painted Adirondack chair and opened the book to the next blank page. The spine bent and creaked and Piper smoothed her hand over the white of the paper. She had called Autumn and told her to come over any time, and it seemed like a good thing to do while she waited. Yesterday had been busy and taxing; Piper felt exhausted and worn through. Even with the restorative effect of her visit to the forest, she was beginning to slow down.

She wrote quickly. Of course she had detailed the phenomenon of her traveling. It helped her deal with the craziness of it, and she did want the girls to know, eventually, about this breathtaking kind of magic. The painting she did more leisurely, taking her time in slow, even brushstrokes. When she was finished she left the book open to dry and closed her eyes.

She awoke with the pressure of Autumn’s hand on her shoulder.

“Oh, Autumn, I’m sorry. I must have dozed off. Were you at the door long?” Piper tried to shake the sleep off her.

“Not at all. When you didn’t answer I walked around back. How are you feeling today?”

“Tired. Tired of being sick and tired.” Piper sat herself up in her chair, which took a disheartening amount of effort. “I meant to tell you, though, before you rushed off yesterday. I did what you said and managed to stay . . . there. In that place. I met a friend of yours. Maggie, right? She’s lovely. I spoke to her, and then I got myself back home. So you were right.”

“We thought so.”

“We,” Piper repeated. “There’s that ‘we’ again.”

“Yes. That’s why I’m here.” Autumn settled herself in the chair closest to Piper’s. “You see, I have these friends. Well, they’re more than friends, more like sisters, really. And some of my friends can do what you do. They’ve been where you’ve been, and other places too. It’s quite an extraordinary gift. I told them about you, and they did some investigating, you see. They asked some of the folks that live in this place. It was quite a summit, I’m told. Very few people, or very few untrained adults, I should say, have done what you’ve been able to do.” Piper was charmed to see Autumn quite caught up in her little inconvenience; Piper’s strange habit was at least as exciting for her older friend as it was for Piper herself, and Piper had thought Autumn had seen everything. “The point is, Piper, I think you’ve been given this ability because . . . I think, we all think, actually, that you are meant to go there. I mean live there. And by live I mean live.”

Piper felt her stomach drop. For the briefest moment she had forgotten her illness, but this was about her illness, after all. Autumn was waiting, watching Piper’s mind churn as the possibilities started to occur to her. This was it. Her way out. What she had talked about so painfully with Will—only perhaps not as painful as she had thought.

Autumn must have seen the hope kindling in her eyes. “They can’t cure you, not for this world,” she warned. “You as you are. But we think you would live, there.”

Suddenly Piper was fighting nausea. She wasn’t sure why, whether it was confusion or feeling overwhelmed by her luck or just her illness rearing itself. She clamped her mouth shut and sucked on her tongue, swimming through Autumn’s words.

“It’s not straightforward,” Autumn went on quickly. “You would have to change, if you lived there permanently. Change into what, I’m not sure. Not into a tree, or a glass of water, or anything like that. You would be a sentient being, just not entirely . . . altogether human.” She let this sink in for a couple of seconds before going on. “The other thing I should say is that once you undergo this transformation, there is no guarantee that you would retain your ability to travel. More than likely you would not.” Autumn finished talking and went quiet.

Piper stifled her imbalance and took a deep breath to calm her stomach. “Right. So I go to this place with no name, this nowhere place. I just walk away from my kids and my house and my husband. And I become . . . what? An ogre? A fairy? A tree frog?” Piper threw her hands around her rather wildly. “That’s . . . I don’t even know what that is. Ridiculous?”

Autumn stilled her with a stare that bored into Piper’s sunken eyes. “You are going to die, Piper. Very soon and very painfully.” Her voice was flat and not gentle now. “I’m sorry, but that’s the truth of it. You are going to leave them anyways. I know changing, leaving, seems scary, but do you understand why it’s not as scary as it could be?”

“I’m trying to understand,” Piper said meekly. And she was. It was so much to wrap her head around.

“Think about it! Think about what an adventure this is.” Autumn was pushing; it was most unlike her. “And let me tell you—those girls of yours. They are special too, just like you are. I’m sure at some point that we could find a way for the three of you to see each other.”

That was it—the one thing she needed to hear. Her girls. Her lucky break. Yet another lucky break. “What about Will? Can I see him?”

“That . . . would be harder. Probably not, I’m afraid.”

And like that, Piper’s eyes filled with tears. Ten minutes ago she had been furiously resigned to abandoning her entire family; now, spoiled thing, she couldn’t bear the thought of losing Will, being apart from him forever. “My Will,” she choked, embarrassed at herself.

“Look,” Autumn said, almost impatiently. “Stay here and die, or go there and . . . see. I feel in my heart that a great adventure awaits you there.”

Piper was still on the verge of tears. “But why? I can’t even begin to understand this. My mind is already starting to go. Maybe this is all happening inside my head. Could it be? Could I be imagining all of this?”

“You most certainly are not!” Autumn took Piper’s hand and squeezed it hard. “I don’t know why. If I had to guess, I would say the work that you do, the stories that you write, all that magic you spill from your fingertips when you press those letters into words, wove some kind of spell, one last gift after all the magic you’ve given to the world.” She shrugged, and said firmly, “Sometimes we don’t question things. Sometimes we just accept them. That’s faith, Piper, and that’s what’s required here.”

Piper said nothing; there was nothing to say. She wasn’t sure there was enough faith in the entire universe to get her to knowingly walk away from her life in Avening. But whatever the state of her faith, even the vaguest hope of not having to totally abandon her children was more intoxicating than the morphine the doctors offered her. It alleviated a pain far worse than the physical.

She thought about it all the rest of the day and into the next, when the end of summer seemed to echo her despair. The usual blue sky was replaced with clouds, grey and melancholy, that rumbled and turned, setting one another momentarily on fire in quick flashes of light. Piper wanted to live.

She had always believed—in what she recognized as part of her denial—that even though thousands of people die of cancer each year, she was the exception, the mistake. And now she felt almost guilty at the chance to outwit death. That was the thing she couldn’t get away from. She wanted to live—but was simply living enough, if it turned out she could never in fact see the girls again? Autumn had only told her it was a possibility—what if eternity in that strange time-skewed place was full of nothing but missing her family? She would not see Will; that much she had to accept. All spouses and lovers end up thinking about how they will survive should the day come when they are permanently separated from their beloved; it was searingly painful but not unnatural, not beyond the realm of getting through. Piper could live without Will, however difficult. But the girls? She wasn’t so sure.

She had learned that motherhood was the greatest love affair of all; romantic love paled in comparison. How could she go on if she wasn’t sure they were safe? How could she be happy not knowing if they were happy themselves? In death they would be beyond her grasp; in that other world they would be tantalizingly close, just on the other side but untouchable. She was at a loss. She had to talk to her family, let them in on her secret and let them help her decide.

The next morning, Piper insisted they all eat breakfast together on the old kitchen table that had belonged to her great-grandmother. Piper ate little, a piece of toast and a small glass of diluted juice. After everyone had finished, she sat straight on her chair and gently folded her hands into her lap.

“Everyone,” she said. “I have something to discuss with you.”

Will looked startled, but Sylvie perked up. “What is it, Mom?”

“Well, I have a decision to make, and since it involves you, I don’t think I should decide alone.” She saw sudden panic in Will’s eyes—he thought he knew where this was going—and she quickly went on. “Now, what I am about to say will sound crazy. But I need you all to keep an open mind, which I know that you can do.” She turned to her daughters. “Sylvie, Shiv, I want you to remember this moment. It’s important. It calls for you to think like women, maybe for the first time in your lives.”

Before she could go on, Will interrupted her nervously. “Piper, don’t you think you should discuss this with me first, in private maybe? Then talk to the girls?”

Piper looked at him as if he had spoken some unintelligible language and continued. “Like I said, this will sound totally insane, I know. But Autumn Avening can back up every word I say. I would encourage you to go and talk to her. I think she can help clarify a lot of this.” Piper took a deep breath in and exhaled loudly. “Whew. Okay. The thing is, I have recently started to travel to another . . . another place. Not travel, like on a bus. I mean, my body is suddenly in this . . . this other world, I guess. I mean . . . somehow I have managed to open up some kind of gate to a place . . . between places. I actually go there, physically.” Piper’s words were halting. But her face was so earnest that her girls knew she couldn’t possibly be lying. Will looked daggers at her, which pissed her off in a way that made her want to go on.

“And Autumn . . . she talked to a bunch of her friends. You know . . . people that are like her. You know what I mean.”

“You mean witches?” Siobhan said flatly.

Piper shot her a look—this was a conversation they’d had before, and which she’d quashed before, but now wasn’t the time. And, now that she thought about it, she didn’t know if she could honestly explain to Siobhan that she was wrong. “Whatever they are. Other . . . spiritual people like Autumn. But they’ve all decided that instead of staying here, in this place, and dying, I should go permanently to that other place.” Piper stopped. She wondered how she could say what she had to say next. I’m leaving you, she said to herself. I’m leaving you I’m leaving you . . . She was leaving, one way or another. But to say it? Out loud it made her feel like breaking apart. She concentrated on the facts and Autumn’s words. She took a deep breath and continued.

“But . . . apparently being in that place would change me. I don’t know how, exactly, but I’m pretty sure I would look different. To be honest with you, I don’t really know much. Autumn says she thinks she can find a way to get you girls there at some point eventually. To visit, I mean. I know this all sounds too crazy. But I need to know your thoughts on this, to help me decide what to do.”

“You should do it, Mom,” Sylvie said immediately.

Piper looked at her eldest daughter, right into her beautiful green eyes. How was it that Sylvie needed no proof, did-n’t need to bombard her mother with questions about this impossible story? She must have had so much faith, the faith Autumn described. She was offering her mother a gift. A gesture of absolute solidarity in front of her father and her sister. She wanted them to know that she didn’t care about the hows or whys. All she cared about was Piper and what Piper believed. “You should go,” Sylvie said solidly after a moment’s awkward silence. “Either way, we lose you. But at least I would know that you were alive . . . somewhere.”

“Mom? I don’t get it,” Shiv said, clearly bewildered. “Where is it? Couldn’t we all just go together?”

Piper bit her lip and fought back tears. How could she get through to her daughter? How could she explain when she didn’t know herself? Piper didn’t have words, only feelings, and she didn’t know how to show them.

“Shiv, honey, you know I’m . . . sick. You know I don’t have long. If the cancer gets me, you won’t be able to come along . . . and—”

Will stood abruptly, kicking back his chair. “Enough!! Sylvie, Shiv, go upstairs . . . Now!” The girls, startled, got up and quickly left the room, not remembering a time when they had seen their father so angry. “I won’t let you do this, Piper. I don’t care how sick you are. I will not let you give these girls false hope like that. It’s cruel.”