In the space between dreams (part two)

Photo by Samuel Marksville, "General Striker's Cottages c. 1887"

[Note: This is Part Two, Part One can be found here.]

When he opened his eyes again, the little bird was gone. Harry realized that he had fallen asleep. It was getting harder and harder for him to stay awake it seemed. Sometimes he didn't even hear his grandmother come in to bring him his lunch or supper. He was sad at those times because she always had something funny to tell him that one of the neighbor kids had done, or something silly that Landie had said. Harry would ask about his friends, Tom and Walter. They used to call up to him and throw things through his open window when he first got sick. Back then everyone expected that he would be better in  few days. Now he listened to the voices that passed by in the street and tried to pick out those people he knew.

It was strange to think that he would never see his friends again. They didn't call up to him anymore and it seemed like everyone had forgotten him already. But in his frequent dreams, Harry still played with Tom, and Walter, and Frank and even Landie's youngest daughter, Nellie, who was a real pain but could throw a ball better than anyone else he knew. In his dreams, he could run again and sometimes he  was even faster than Frank, which never happened in real life. In his dreams, he was a great tree climber and instead of watching Walter's older brother climb the tree up to Mrs. Keghill's roof to get her fierce but frightened white cat down, he did it himself and Mrs. Keghill thanked him by baking him a rhubarb pie.

Now as he lay in his bed, Harry thought that aside from his visits with Charlotte, the most exciting thing was dreaming. He was sorry to wake up sometimes, his dreams were so vivid. But when Charlotte hopped onto his bed to eat the bread he saved for her, he didn't want to be anywhere else.

She seemed to be coming to visit him more often these days. Sometimes she would sit on the windowsill, neither inside nor outside, as she trilled and chirped to the birds in the trees. Harry imagined that she was inviting them to come visit, but the other birds were content to stay outside.

She would hop about his head too, if he kept very still. Sometimes she pulled at his brown hair that  was longer than he ever remembered it had been before. Her little tugs made him giggle and he thought that she was trying to put his hair into her nest. And as it became harder to stay awake during her visits he found that he was dreaming about her too.

At first, he dreamt that Charlotte perched on his shoulder as he walked through the neighborhood.  His friends took turns holding her on their fingers. Now he dreamt of walking without pain and breathing deeply. In dreams anything is possible. Even flying.

Charlotte was sitting in her now familiar spot on the windowsill and beckoning to the birds outside, except that she was looking a Harry as she trilled her welcoming song. He sat up and went slowly over to the window and reached out his hand to her. She chirped again and flew out to the tree that was swaying slightly in the yard outside. As he stood watching her, Charlotte came back to the window, turned at the last minute and flew towards the tree. Over and over she repeated this maneuver, towards the window and then the tree as if she was trying to wear a path between the two in the air.

Harry watched, silently and felt himself become giddy with the flapping of wings and the freedom of his little bird. He heard his grandmother call loudly from downstairs and turned to see if she was coming. She would be angry to see him out of bed. As he turned back, he realized that he was no longer in his room but now in the tree, somehow transported by his tiny companion.

There she sat now, just above his head on another branch. Her small chest was moving rapidly with her recent exertion. She looked down at him and sang a song that he had never heard before, but its sound made him close his eyes so he could hear it better. As he listened, he remembered the kites he had seen once in the park. He had loved the way they fluttered and dipped, flying high in the wind but so unlike a bird.

With his eyes closed he felt a bit dizzy. It seemed that the edges of his head were getting fuzzy. He opened his eyes and saw that  the tree he was sitting in had grown to an enormous height. From where he sat, still serenaded by the little bird, he could see his whole neighborhood, and beyond. He could even see the park, and the river. He had never been so high in all his life, and it was thrilling, even if it did make him a bit woozy.

He heard his grandmother call out again. It seemed as though she was calling for him, like she used to do at supper-time before he was sick. He could be playing anywhere in the neighborhood and he was able to hear her call him. They liked to play a game, back then, Grandmother and Harry. She would call him home and then watch the clock until he arrived. If he was home in less than three minutes, she would give him an extra helping of dessert after supper. Harry loved that game and was famous with the other kids for stopping whatever he was doing – even mid sentence- and running straight home. Everyone knew why he left so fast, and sometimes they would cheer him on chanting, “Faster, Harry, faster! I heard she made a pie tonight!”

But his grandmother hadn't called for him like that since he got sick. Why would she need to? He took advantage of his great height in the tree and looked down to see if his grandmother was visible. It looked as though she was standing outside of the cottage, but he was so high up that he couldn't be sure if it was really her. Someone was approaching her, could it be Landie? And now another person came of of the cottage and seemed to put a hand on her back.

Harry's eyes felt quite tired from trying to make out all those small figures. He turned his attention back to Charlotte, who eagerly hopped onto his finger when he offered it to her. Her song was finished and she was mostly silent now, except for a few soft warbling chirps every now and then.

With the brown bird perched comfortably on his small finger, Harry breathed deeply. The afternoon was beginning to turn to evening and he smelled the deep, warm scent of rhubarb wafting up to him as he watched the beginning of the sunset in the far horizon.

 

She keened softly and was comforted by the arms of the neighbors who had come running when they heard her cry out her grandson's name. In the close confines of the neighborhood of small cottages, everyone had been expecting this day. They knew it would be hard for her to let the small boy go, after all he was the spitting image of his father, her son, whose name he also shared, and who had died several years earlier when influenza was indiscriminately taking members of everyone's families. It had been hard for her then, and she did not get over his death easily. But as her grandson had grown she found that their shared grief had brought them together in a way that was even closer than the bond she had had with her son. The women in the neighborhood knew that his death might just be more than she could handle this time.

She had taken up the habit of sitting by Harry's window. The room comforted her and she felt closer to him as she sat there looking out on the large tree in the yard. She was often serenaded by a dun-colored bird as she sat, and the unusual melody took her out of her grief momentarily. Listening to the bird she found herself daydreaming and remembering her grandson running towards her at supper-time with a huge grin on his face, shouting as he got closer, “Did I make it? I did, didn't I? You'd better get a big plate for me tonight because I was extra fast, wasn't I?” She remembered how she'd told him he had beaten his record, even though she hadn't been looking at the clock at all.

Comments

[Brooke]

Absolutely, positively...beautiful. Even though I expected it (the end), I still was not ready. Somehow the pacing felt birdlike too: little flapping wings going higher and higher, soaring until it all glided away.

More, please.

[magpie]

Wow, that was lovely and powerful. Thank you.

[Liesel Elliott]

Thank you.

[jcmerritt]

It's such a moving story...but without being syrupy. Kind of peaceful.

[Christine]

Reading your website is like opening a present, and I'm always grateful for what I receive.