Category: webpage

This young woman thinks I am her mother?  I wanted to doubt her also—her blonde curly hair and green eyes. She looks no more like me than Charlie does. But why would she believe such a thing?

My total lack of memory of her existence troubled me. 

And the painting—Jade and Jayzu both said it looks like me. How could she know?

I need to see this painting. I wiggled out from under the bush and stood up. I had no idea how long Jayzu would be gone, though I was certain he’d be back shortly. Strangely, I didn’t want him to find me inside his house. 

But I had to see that painting.

I glanced toward the forest, then darted inside Jayzu’s cottage. I quickly looked around in fear and hesitation. 

I am an intruder. What if Jayzu comes back and finds me here?  

Once after I was caught creeping around and spying on the whitecoats at Rosencranz—I was just bored and found my silence made me nearly invisible. The whitecoats only paid attention to the noisy inmates. I only got caught when I hid in the coat closet in the cafeteria

I was soundly scolded and hauled up the stairs to my little room and locked inside. I had a few scraps of bread in my pocked that I was saving for the birds. I devoured them before the first day was done. I had no water. Two days went by before they let me out, though I had to clean up my mess in the corner.

After that, I was more careful to not get caught where I was not supposed to be. 

I’m not supposed to be here.

Fighting a strong urge to bolt back through the door before Jayzu found me in his cottage, captured my attention. I stepped closer.

My eyes looked into my eyes.  This is a mirror, not a portrait. But the image remained still when I moved, and my face remained a frozen expression of casual repose. A painting, not a mirror.

I drew closer, and the intricacy of the hair—my hair, and the skin—my skin —came to life. Images of vaguely familiar landscapes and faces comprise the milky luminescence of my face. A gray cat sleeps in an armchair. Sunshine streams in an open window. Green eyes look back at me, as a paintbrush washes my face in many-colored hues. A sweet young voice wafts through the open window, gently stirring the curtains.

All around the purple heather,

Will you go, Lassie, go?

Her eyes, her jade-green eyes, she almost smiles then turns away. Disappearing like a morning mist. A wave of dizziness drifts through me. Antiseptic odors. Muffled voices. Bright lights. Something sweet and sickly smothers my face.

An infant cries from far far away. A long metal table on wheels, covered with bloody sheets. I want to puke.

I  fix my eyes on the face in the painting, shutting out the grisly scene visible out the corner of my eye. Confusion curled around my brain, searing my thoughts into dead ends of not knowing.

A sudden camaraderie with her swept over me for this woman, this me staring back at me. Jayzu had brought me a mirror on one of his visits to Rosencranz—which was the first time I had laid eyes on my own face since—before Rosencranz. I had no idea what I looked like until then.

Until now.

As I surrounded myself with the images in the painting, I wondered how this strange blonde woman knew my face better than I did. And I wonder with a dark shadow of doubt why Jayzu told Jade she did not see me, that no one else was on the island. He bought her painting of me! 

He knew. Why didn’t he tell me about Jade? Or that he had this painting of me?

Why?

Priests can lie as well as any human, I guess. But this sudden disappointment had rained down upon my otherwise enchanted heaven, and the angel who brought me here. I shrugged to myself. Evidently I am not dead. There can be no lies in heaven.

The dark shadow of mistrust grew as I glanced out the window. I saw Jayzu striding down the path toward the cottage. He cannot find me here!

I darted out the door and into the woods behind the cottage, hoping in near paralyzing fear that Jayzu did not see me.

“CHARLOTTE!”

I hear Jayzu calling.

I do not answer. I keep running … away from the voice, plowing through the vines and shrubs and low-hanging branches, scratching my arms and face. My breath comes in ragged gasps. I steal a glance behind me.

They are closer.

Running faster. Gasping for more air. Something hits me from behind. Falling …

A man with a priest collar stares at me, his mouth hanging open. A woman wails. Rough hands are upon me. My arms are tied behind me. Sudden darkness envelopes me. Moving. I am in a vehicle. Motion stops. Loud voices. Metal clanking. Bright lights in my face.

An infant cries from somewhere far away.

Someone is singing:

And we’ll all go together

To pick wild mountain thyme

All around the purple heather,

Will you go, Lassie, go?

The singing fades. I am alone. Facedown. Inhaling the odors of mold, the death-scent rotting leaves, and dirt. I don’t know where I am. My mouth is dry. I need water. Rolling over, I look up through a mass of green leaves, branches. The sky is pale blue, as the sun falls toward the horizon.

I hear my name in the distance, from the direction I had come. 

“Charrr-lotte”

They’re still looking for me. I will not answer. This time I will stay hidden. If they can’t see me, they can’t find me. 

For 96 minutes, I lay still as stone amidst the undergrowth of living bushes and rotting leaves, listening. Watching the sky turn lighter shades of blue and gray, I counted 17 more minutes of silence. Perhaps they have given up. 

I must find water, but I dared not stand up. I can barely open my mouth, so parched and caked with dried mud. I must find water. Crawling on my stomach and forearms, I made a soft swishing sound as I slithered like a lizard through the dark undergrowth of bushes and branches, and dead rotting leaves. 

Water seemed everywhere earlier in the day as I joyously hopped over many streams, springs, and small ponds. Eventually I fell face first into a small pool, which washed much of the mud from my hands and face. And I drank as much as I could hold.  

Laying on the grass next to the pond, looking up into last rays of the daylight, I felt my stomach rumble. I must be hungry too. I can’t remember the last time had a meal, nor what I ate. But what could I find in this forest? 

Darkness arose from the depths of the forest. I needed to find a place—a safe place to spend the night. I crawled into a snug hollow in one of the old dying trees, whose hard wood had kept it standing while its life slowly faded. The sky turned darker shades of gray as the sun set, and with it the warmth of the day. I laid down inside, a cozy nest of many years of fallen leaves. I looked out onto the dark forest decorated with flecks of moonlight.

Beset with the agony of Jayzu’s betrayal, I wept like a lost and forsaken child. Long after my tears had stopped and dried on my face, I tried to relax, but could not. Between hunger and fear, I slept fitfully in the hollow of the tree, dreaming of gigantic insects with x-ray eyes penetrating my flimsy skin and peering into the deep darkness of my soul. I perched high in a dark tower, listening to whispers.

The Captain rowed the boat to the City Docks, while Russ told him all about Jade’s hallucinations, as if she were not there. She turned her back to them and stared out over the river. She’d wanted to haul off and smack Russ back in Alfredo’s cottage, when the two of them shook their heads at her, clucking their tongues, whittling her down to ant-size. 

Smirking Dr Know-It-All. And the Holy Father Alfredo took his side! The liar! He knows what I saw.

The Captain let them off at the docks, and he winked at her as she said good-bye. She smiled back and gave him a quick wave. At least he didn’t call her crazy too.

He knows my mother is on the island too—how else would she get there but by the Captain’s boat?

A chilled, heavy silence enveloped them all the way home from the docks. Hardly a word passed between them. Jade seethed inside. Russ’s attention was riveted on the road. He pulled the car into the driveway and touched the remote control that opened the garage door. She got out and opened the door to the kitchen, letting it close behind her.

She went straight into the bathroom and closed the door. After turning the water on in the tub and pouring too much bubble bath in, she slid into the warm soapy water and closed her eyes. The woman in the forest appeared, clear as she was under the afternoon sun. Long black hair braided into a single plait. Pale blue, almost gray eyes.

Just like my painting. And… she almost spoke. Damn it that Russ had showed up when he did and chased her away!

Anger surged in her chest. 

Russ hardly ever respects what I think. He always gets my painting, though. As if he can see what I see if it’s in a painting. But when he’s not standing in front of one, I become an idiot.

A tap at the door followed by Russ’s voice momentarily interrupted her snit. “Meet me in the kitchen when you’re done, babe,” he said from the behind the door. “I’ve got dinner.”

She wanted to hurl an obscenity back at him, but her stomach rumbled, “Okay,” she said, trying not to sound too interested, though it was definitely a peace offering.

Russ never cooks dinner.

Twenty minutes later, Russ served her a slice of pizza on a paper plate from a box bearing the logo of the Black Raven Pizza Palace. He sat down and shoved a slice into his mouth. “Dang, I’m good!” he said through a mouthful, grinning like a schoolboy.

He finished chewing and set the slice down. “You ever going to talk to me?”

“I really wish you’d have stuck up for me, instead of making me look like an idiot in front of Alfredo,” she said, picking a slice of pepperoni and mushroom from the box.

“I’m sorry, hon,” he said, still grinning in that semi-self-deprecating manner that she usually found cute, but not today. “But I just didn’t know what to say. Alfredo doesn’t think you’re an idiot. And neither do I.”

He picked his slice up and held it poised in the air. “I mean, you really flabbergasted Alfredo, too. We just couldn’t figure out how your mother could be on the island.”

She looked at him her eyes narrowed into slits. “We. Two against one, we’re right and I’m wrong—or is it three? Why did you need to tell the Captain what a mental case you think I am?”

“I don’t think you’re a mental case,” he said, his grin vanished and his shoulders dropped. The pointy end of the pizza slice he was holding drooped. “And no one is against you.”

“Good,” she said, and cut the end off her slice and stabbed it with her fork. “Then you will believe me when I say I saw my mother, and I was not hallucinating.”

Russ fiddled with his fork, his jaw clenching and unclenching. But he said nothing. 

“Fine,” Jade said as she stood up. “Glad you finally believe me.”

They spent the rest of their meal in silence. Russ cleaned up the paper plates. Jade wrapped the leftovers and put them in the refrigerator.

Jade spent the entire night in her studio, painting for hours at a time without stopping. Study after study of the green forests of the island. And the woman, her mother. Invisible one moment, camouflaged in the gray and green and brown hues of leaf, tree and branch. And in the next, she stepped out of her forest costume, and into plain sight.

Her face was shrouded in moonlight and wisps of black hair that had escaped the braid. You had to really look closely to pick her out among the dark, dense forest. You had to almost know she was there.

“Maybe I’ll go to the island without him,” she said to WillowB, curled up in the armchair. “What do you think?”

WillowB’s ears turned slightly sideways.

“I guess I could call Alfredo, and ask him to ask the Captain to pick me up. I’d have to make up an excuse, like I lost something. But would he let me come without Russ?”

She placed another canvas on her easel. With dozens of studies of the woman she saw embedded in the forest, she began to paint the final rendition. Far into the night she painted layer after layer of greens intermingled with strands of darker browns and charcoal grays. Intertwined amid the somber tones of the deep forest, she wove waves of dots and sinuous lines, which intensified the illusion of great depth.

The face of a woman…the face of her mother, hung like a full moon in the darkness.

Russ flung an arm across the other side of the empty bed and opened his eyes. He hadn’t noticed that Jade had left, or if she ever had come to bed at all. He rubbed his face and yawned.

She’s still in a snit, he said to himself. He knew it wasn’t really a snit. She was upset. Not just Smitty dying so suddenly. Or that he would not be there for his funeral.

She hallucinated her mother on the island and thinks it was real.

After staring at the ceiling for a few moments, he swung his legs over the side and stood up. All in one fluid motion, like a cat. He showered, shaved, dressed and went down the hall.

Light oozed out from under the door to Jade’s studio. Just as he thought—she stayed up all night painting. He passed by the studio and went to the kitchen to make coffee and feed the cat.

He knocked quietly before turning the doorknob and stepping into a room full of crows. He looked around, shaking his head. Sketches and half-finished canvasses covered every horizontal and vertical surface. On her easel, a portrait of a forest whose trees stood so close together there almost was no light between them—just a silvery veil from the pale moon above.

 Jade normally kept her studio relatively uncluttered. It confused her, she said, when things were in too much disarray. “I can’t even find myself in all this mess!” she was fond of saying when it was time to tidy up. 

This was a bona-fide mess, as if she had spent the night feverishly scribbling, quick gestural drawings of hands and wings, faces of the moon, dropping one sketch and seizing a new sheet of paper before the rejected sketch hit the floor.

Jade was draped like a corpse across the overstuffed armchair, fast asleep. She didn’t turn her head or even blink at his entrance.

“Good morning!” he said, “Sorry to wake you, babe.” He set a cup of coffee on the table next to her chair. 

Jade’s eyes shot open.

He grabbed a folding chair leaning against the wall and opened it with one hand and one foot. He sat down and set his mug on the table next to her easel, pushing a few cans of paintbrushes aside.

“So, um, I see you were up late painting” he said. “You okay this morning?”

“I’m fine,” she snapped, without looking at him.

“I made coffee,” he said, gesturing toward the mug on the table.

“Gotta pee,” she said, scowling. She arose from the chair and left for the bathroom.

She washed her face, brushed her teeth, and stared at herself in the mirror—her pale face, dark shadows all around her eyes. God, I look like death. She pinched her cheeks and bit her lips, trying to get some color into her face.

Squaring her shoulders, she returned to the studio.

“I really did see her, Russ,” she said after sitting down. “I know it was her. My mother. I saw her, Russ. I need you to take me back to the island today and find her.”

“Babe, I’d love to take you to look for her,” Russ said. “But I can’t today. You know I’ve got a plane to catch in a couple days. When I get back—”

“That’s three weeks from now, Russ.”

“Two and a half,” he said. “But I have no time between now and when I leave to do anything but prepare for this trip. I simply have no time.”

“It wouldn’t take that long, Russ.” 

“Right. First we have to call Alfredo who has to call the Captain.”

“And?” Jade said. She lifted her coffee mug and sipped, looking over the rim at him.

“It would take the better part of a day,” he said. “At least, is what I’m saying. I have a ton of things to do and not enough time as it is.”

The landline rang. Jade did not move. “I’m sure it’s for you.”

Russ fished the receiver out from underneath paint tubes, rags, paintbrushes, cans of turpentine and linseed oil. “Hello?” he said into the receiver. Moments later: “Oh, hello, Mrs Flanagan!” He glanced at Jade. “Sure, she’s right here. Hang on.”

“Mrs Flanagan?” Jade said, frowning. Why would she be calling?

“Hello, honey.”

Dread crawled up out of Jade’s stomach—Mrs Flanagan had never called before. Her voice was far from the usual chipper Mrs Flanagan, who had assumed many of the household duties at the farm after Chloe died. 

Smitty. Something happened. 

“Is Smitty all right?”

“Well,” Mrs Flanagan said, “no, honey. That is, well, Smitty has left us.”

“What?” Jade said, looking wildly at Russ. “What do you mean? Where did he go?”

“He was a good man,” Mrs Flanagan said. “I’m sure he went straight to heaven.”

Jade dropped the phone, her hand fell into her lap. 

Russ picked it up from the floor and said into the receiver: “Hello, Mrs Flanagan. It’s Russ. What’s happened?” He looked over at Jade, still as a statue.

“I see,” he said. “And you found him this morning out in the garden. Was he breathing?”

Tears rolled down Jade’s cheeks. Smitty is gone? I didn’t even get to say goodbye.

“Thanks, Mrs Flanagan,” Russ said and hung up the phone.

He took Jade by both hands and pulled her out of the chair and led her to the living room.

“I’m sorry, babe,” he said softly after they were seated side by side. He put one arm around her shoulders, and the other held her hand in his lap.

She nodded and squeezed his hand. “Yeah. Me too. I should’ve gone out to see him. I haven’t been to the farm since last Christmas.”

After a brief silence, Russ said, “I should’ve made time to take you.”

“I should’ve at least called him every week.”

Life had somehow swept her away—being married and playing Mrs College Professor’s Wife, and having her own house, and painting. If only she could turn back time, just a bit. Pangs of homesickness added to her grief. I’d be out at the farm more. At least once a month. 

She never liked living in the suburbs after growing up on a farm. But Russ’s job was in the city, too far to commute.

“It’s a tough one, babe,” Russ said. “I’ll be dealing with that with my parents soon, too. It’s hard to get away to see them.”

“You need to,” she said. “While you still have them both. Chloe’s been gone 5 years. Now I feel orphaned, even though neither Chloe nor Smitty were my quote unquote ‘real’ mom and dad. They were who raised me.”

“That makes them your real parents,” he said. “They were there for you. Your whole life.”

“And now they are gone.” A tear rolled down her cheek.

Russ touched the tear with his finger, brushed wild blonde curls away from her face, and kissed her forehead.

“Did Mrs Flanagan say when the funeral is?” she asked.

“Thursday.”

“We’ll need to leave Tuesday,” Jade said, not seeing the grimace on his face, She fiddled with the a button on his shirt. “So I can help Mrs Flanagan prepare.”

Russ took her hand away from the button and kissed it. “I can’t go, babe,” he said after a moment. “I am leaving Tuesday for Ecuador, remember? The Orchid Trip?”

She stared up at him open-mouthed at him. Ecuador. The Orchid Trip as she’d been calling it. It was a big deal for him, she knew. But, still. “You’re kidding. You’re going to just leave me? Now?”

“I have to, babe. I can’t cancel the trip. I can’t even show up late. It’s been planned for months. I’m leading field trips.”

“I am depending on you too,” she said. “I need you to be with me. Smitty’s wake is Saturday. You can leave on Sunday.”

“No, I can’t,” he said. “I can’t just change a reservation just like that. It’s an international flight, and an international meeting. I’m the one with the maps and the prior knowledge of the area. People are coming, important people. Co-authors. I can’t show up late. We have filed trips planned and I lead several of them. I’ve got tenure on the line. If I don’t get it—”

“Yes, I know,” she said through a long sigh. She let him hold her hand, but didn’t close her fingers around his. “You’ve told me a million times what happens if you don’t.”

“I’m sorry, Babe,” he said. “Jadum wilderii, well, for me, it’s like your painting, maybe. I think about it all the time. I can’t wait sometimes to get to my lab and discover her secrets. Vin’s been analyzing the alkaloids and—”

“Vin?” Jade said and her body went rigid. “Who’s Vin?”

“Dr Virginia Parkman. You met her last year,” he said. “At the department Christmas party.”

“I don’t remember meeting her.” She shook free of his hand.

“She’s a geeky bio-med engineer type. She divides her time at the medical school, and with us in the Biology Department. She’s interested in Jadum wilderii, for its possible usefulness to the pharmaceutical industry.”

“What does Vin look like? Is she pretty?”

“No,” Russ said. His shoulders dropped. “She doesn’t hold a candle to you. I admire Vin. But I love you. She is an amazing scientist. We talk endlessly about alkaloids and other organic compounds … things that would bore the crap out of you. She’s analyzed the hell out of the Jadum wilderii I gave her, and we’ll present a paper at the—”

Jade stiffened and stared at him. “You gave her my flower”

“No, yes, that is, I gave her a specimen.”

“I thought this wonderful new flower was for me,” Jade said, her voice shrill.  “And now it’s a specimen for Vin.”

“Babe, Jadum could be a a whole new specie of orchid. And I named it after you, didn’t I?” he said, smiling broadly. “It’ll always be yours.”

“Except this one,” Jade said swallowed the last of her coffee. Cold and grainy.

“Jade, listen. I gave Vin a Jadum to test, so I can be sure it’s unique. I have to do that. It’s my job. She tore it apart—that’s her job. For science. Okay?”

She wiped her dripping nose with her sleeve. “Maybe you should name it after Vin.”

“Jade, please?” he said. “I gave her the smallest, most likely to not survive the transplant. It wasn’t a romantic present. Naming it after you, is. It didn’t occur to me to give you the very first Jadum, because, well, they’re specimens, not even close to florist-quality orchids. They were wilted, scrawny objects of science that had been in my backpack for many hours. When I get back, we’ll go to the island and I’ll get you a really beautiful one, okay? And we can look around for your mother.”

“In three weeks,” Jade said. 

“I’m sorry, okay?” he said as he put his cup on the windowsill. He pulled her up from the armchair and wrapped his arms around her, pinning her within his embrace.

She struggled to get free for a few moments, then gave up. He kissed the top of her head. She remained rigid in his grip. “I am an oaf. I had no idea this would hurt you so much. Forgive me?”

“Fine. I forgive you,” she said. “Now please let me go.”

“Come on,” he said as he let go. “Get dressed. Kate and Sam are waiting. We had a date with them for breakfast, remember? And Kate texted me earlier and said Majewski flew in last night, and will be joining us.”

“You go on without me,” she said and twisted away from his embrace.

The dreams and the chill, and my fear made it impossible to stay asleep inside the hollow tree—every muscle and joint in my body wanted to move, stretch, or find another position. There were none. It was probably safe to come out. 

The rising sun illuminated the world softly…as the birds began their morning song to the day. I needed to pee. I crawled, relieved myself, and stood up. Reaching for the overhead branches, I bent over sideways and frontwards, gently stretching. 

My mouth was dry as a bone. Surely there is water close by; you could barely walk ten steps without stepping into a puddle or stream. I had no idea where I was, but I started walking. The island is small and I would find water soon.

And I did. I saw the small clear pool before I stepped in it. I dropped to my knees,  drank deeply, and washed my face in the cool water.

My stomach rumbled. Maybe Bruthamax planted some apple trees. A few strides and I felt something scratch my arm. I pulled back from the thorny bush. Several drops of blood appeared on my arm. And then I saw them.

Blueberries! Plump and so ripe they were nearly black. More rumbling from my stomach

Silently blessing Bruthamax, whose apples I tasted upon arriving here. I pulled one off the bush and ate it—unpleasantly sweet, oddly smoky, and very bitter. I nearly spat it out. Definitely not a blueberry.

“What does mildornia look like? Does it grow on bushes or trees? Is there mildonria on this island?” I had asked Rika a steady stream of questions before she became annoyed and chased me out of the Treehouse.

“It’s a dark purple berry,” Rika had said. “Almost black. And tastes terrible. They have to ferment it so the Keepers can swallow it. Charlie says there is one only bush on the island—no one knows where there are other bushes. No, I don’t know where it is, but no one is to touch it except Chief Archivist Starfire.”

So, I had found the solitary mildornia bush! The berry tasted so awful though, I could not swallow it. But there was an effect from the few seconds the crushed mildornia berry remained in my mouth. The bitter juice made my tongue numb, and my teeth clamp shut.

The birdsong that filled the air a few moments ago stopped. The entire forest fell suddenly silent. 

===

Jayzu hated leaving Charlotte so soon after bringing her to the island. But the Friends of Wilder Island had planned a party at his cottage to celebrate their victory over Henry Braun’s destructive development plan that would change the island forever. He could not cancel or postpone the celebration—not with Majewski flying in for the occasion. Nor could he think of a viable reason to do so; he could not tell anyone the real truth.

 Only Sam knows. And the Captain. Otherwise, no one knows she is here.

The others—Jayzu’s superior, the Provincial Father Thomas Majewski, Jade and Russ, Kate—knew nothing of Charlotte’s escape from Rosencranz. Jayzu planned to keep it that way.

The easiest solution was to leave Charlotte for a few hours, get the party over with, and spend the rest of the day with her. Confident that she would not leave the Treehouse while he was gone as he had asked, Jayzu strode across the meadow. He broke into a run as soon as he entered the shadows, and headed to his cottage.

“Well, dearie,” Rika said as I stood dejected, watching Jayzu disappear into the forest beyond the meadow.

“What will I do all morning?” I wailed.

“First off, maybe your bath?” Rika said. She fluttered her wings against my legs, gently pushing me toward Jayzu’s bathtub. “‘Specially maybe after your journey yesterday, you’ll want to freshen up. MiLady always took her bath in the morning.”

I nodded and sighed. “Yes, Rika.” I stripped off my clothes and stepped into the  water. How wonderful it was—warm, soothing, and best of all, cleansing. In all my years at Rosencranz, I had been denied the pleasure of soaking in water, whether warm or cold. There was no swimming, no baths, just showers. Gang showers.

Only yesterday I left Rosencranz, which had already faded somewhat—it seemed unimportant to remember anything about that place. I was perfectly happy to languish in warm water, on this island. I closed my eyes, feeling Rosencranz floating off my skin.

Sensing the life all around me, I heard the many voices of every living creature in those woods; some I recognized, most I did not. One kreegan made me laugh as it crash landed in my bathwater. I fished it out, placed it on the ground and watched it bounce up the tree back to the deck, crying piteously for Rika.

I drifted away underneath the cathedral of curved branches, arching gracefully from the thick trunks of ancient trees. The sun’s reflections off the water sparkled so brightly, I closed my eyes. 

Dozing in the warm water, I feel at peace among all the wild creatures, the chatty little stream that flows by, the sunshine on my face. I have nowhere to go, nowhere to be. And no one can find me.

I am safe. No one knows where I am. No one saw me come here. They never do. They’re afraid of the wild forest. If they try to follow me, I become invisible and hide among the trees. They give up. I know the ways of the forest. It knows mine. That’s why I made this place for myself. Just for me. On my own little island. Where I can talk to whomever I please, walk wherever I please. My own heaven on Earth. On my little island. Safe. 

Suddenly a rough voice shouts, “There she is! Found her! Over here!” 

“Who’s there?” I call out, trying to open my eyes. 

Terrified. Paralyzed. Strong arms grab me and I try to scream—nothing but a croak comes out. A cloth bag covers my head. I cannot see. Rough hands tying my hands behind my back.

“NO!” I screamed, leaping up and trying to get away—“NO! Let me go!”

I hear a small voice from far away: “Dearie!” 

Feathers brush across my leg. Looking down, I see a crow at my feet, staring up at me. I look around wildly. A stream of water gurgles out through a pipe and into the pond I just jumped out of.

“DEARIE!”

I stared down at the crow at my feet. I do not know where I am—or when. The voices. Who were they? But where are they?

Many moments fly by—I am frozen. Until it dawns.

Jayzu’s bathtub! Jayzu’s island!.

“Oh,” I said, releasing the breath I didn’t know I was holding. “I’m sorry, Rika, I guess I fell asleep.”

I shook off my fear and shivered, wishing I had a robe or a towel to wrap up in. I climbed up the spiral steps to the Treehouse. 

Up on the deck, Rika stared at me for a moment. “You can’t be wandering around all nekkid like that, Charlotte. It’s just not seemly for a Lady.”

“No one is here but you and me, Rika,” I said and smiled. “I forgot to bring a towel. If there is one.”

Rika waved a wing at me. “Of course there’re towels, dearie! I told Jayzu to bring you two. Hanging in the hook behind the door.” She rotated her wing and pointed to the little cabin.

I wondered if birds could understand nakedness—if somehow they could wander about featherless. I had to laugh at my own absurdity. 

Rika’s care astonished me—the way she bustled about flapping her wings, helping me dry off from my bath. Her prattling about how a Lady behaves fades as a yoomun woman dries me with a towel, telling me I’m of an age where I cannot be running around outside naked anymore. Another yoomun voice rages in the background.

“Dearie!” Rika’s voice draws my attention. “Don’t just stand there all nekkid-like. Get dressed before you catch your death!”

I dressed, re-braided my hair, and set about fidgeting. The forest across the meadow called to me, relentlessly. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. If I could just go for a little walk—I’d be right back. But, I promised Jayzu I would not leave the Treehouse. 

He’ll come back. Any second now…

The morning passed as I put myself to whatever task I could find while “Here, Take her!” echoed though my mind. A voice I had heard before, long, long ago. 

Who was it?

Shaking my head, trying to make the voice go away, I sorted the clothing Jayzu had brought for me. I laughed at Rika’s story of how inept he was, being a man, as well as a priest. What would he know of women’s clothing?

“Ah, you should have seen him, dearie,” Rika said. “The way he fussed over every little thing, trying to make it just so. Not that he had any idea whatsoever, mind you. Lucky though that I spent so many years with MiLady, where I learnt how to put up a gentlewoman’s house, so I could tell him what’s what and where to put it.”

I laughed again when she told me how she had to explain women’s undergarments to him. 

“The rich church lady,” Rika said. “B’lieve he said her name was Mizzuz Brown, or something…but, no matter!” Rika waved a wing. “MiLady, she helped him pick everything out, except of course the undergarments. She did that part without him. He like to crawl into a hole every time anyone said brah-zeeyer.”

I laughed again. “I did not have a brah-zeeyer at Rosencranz, Rika. I had only coveralls, a short sleeved t-shirt, for the summer, and long sleeves for the winter. They washed my clothes at night while we slept in our rooms, so I always had clean clothes. But they were always the same. Coveralls and a shirt. No underpants.”

No brah-zeeyer on the shelf. But there were small undershirts that Rika said were called camis. Evidently Jayzu had described my physique to Mizzuz Brown.

I pulled a green hooded cloak hung from a hook next to the door. 

“Come winter,” Rika said, pecking at the cloak, “You’ll be glad to have this.”

“They didn’t let us outside when the weather was cold,” I said as I wrapped the cloak around myself. 

It was long enough to reach about the middle of my calf. I would still be able to run if I needed to, without tripping. For a moment I was running through the woods, on a windy day when the leaves are all shades of orange, yellow and red, a long cape trailing behind me. To a little island in a stream…with Charlie.

My little island.

“When will Charlie return?” I asked, as I put the cloak back on its hook. “Will he be back soon?”

“By sunset for sure,” Rika said. “JoEd’s in Keeper Training today—it’s his first mildornia trance.” She beaked a chunk of bread. “That takes a full day.”

“Keeper training?”

“Yes, dearie.” Rika said. “Keeper of the Lattices. See, the Great Corvid Council keeps track of such things as who gets born to who, and where, and who died, of what and when, and such like. They’re building JoEd’s lattices today so as to make places for all those things. And then they’ll teach him how to put the things into the Archive Lattice. ”

“Lattices?” 

“Yes, lattices,” Rika affirmed. “Memory lattices. We all have ’em. Yoomuns too, I reckon. They look like trees, Charlie says—he’s been in the trance many times. Charlie says our own lattices hold all of our memories. The Archive Lattice though—that’s where the Keepers store all of our important things—like who hatched, etcetera. Everything. And now, my JoEd, he’s eating the mildornia ferment today.” She seemed both proud and fearful. “So he can get into the Archive Lattice.”

“Mildornia ferment?”

“Yep,” Rika said, nodding her head. “Mildornia ferment. Comes from a berry, blue as deep twilight. It used to grow wild everywhere, but not so much anymore. Charlie says we’re lucky to have the one bush here on Cadeña-l’jadia. I ate a berry once.”

Rika gave a great shiver, and for a moment or two, her feathers stayed ruffled out. “Never again. I saw things.”

“You saw things? What things?”

“Things,” she said and puffed her feathers out further. “Now don’t you tell a soul, you promise me, dearie. S’far as you know, I never ate that berry, if you catch my drift.”

“Of course,” I said. “I can keep a secret. But why, Rika? If Charlie uses the mildornia ferment, and JoEd is—”

“Because,” Rika said, dropping her voice to a whisper, “I wasn’t s’posed to—just curious what all the fuss was about. So I ate one. But, if Starfire finds out, I’m afraid he’ll put me in a trance and try to find things. He’s been doing that lately, Charlie says. Looking for things.”

“Things?” I said, raising my eyebrows. “What things?”

“Things,” Rika whispered. “My Charlie said there are things, not just who’s born and who’s dead, but other things. Ancient lore from way back, before the time of yoomuns, maybe. Starfire—he’s the Chief Archivist, well, he says they’re all there, all those forgotten things, from forever back. Right there in the Archive Lattice.”

“Are you saying that eating mildornia berries can make you remember things?” I said.

“Well, maybe I am, and maybe I’m not, dearie,” she said, standing first on one foot and then the other. 

“I have forgotten many things, Rika,” I said. “Perhaps I should eat a berry I can remember who I was before Rosencranz. Where can I find a mildornia bush?”

“There’s one here on the island,” Rika said. “They say it’s the only one in the whole world, but Charlie said this isn’t so. There aren’t many, he said. Used to be it was everywhere.”

“What does it look like?” I asked. If there is a bush on the island, I will find it.

“Well,” Rika cocked her head to one side. “I can’t say as I ever saw the actual bush Just the mashed up berry they use for the Trance. It’s dark purple.”

“Maybe I can find the bush,” I said. 

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” she said, fluffing her feathers out again and shaking her head. “Nope, no sirree, dearie! I saw things I hope to the Great Orb I never see again. In my own lattice.  There are things that are better left forgotten.” She shook her head. 

“But I want to remember.”

“Not remembering has its virtues, dearie,” Rika said. “You do not want to remember everything. Trust me, dearie. If you eat the mildornia, you’ll see things you wish you never had.” 

She scrunched her head down into her feathers. “Trouble is, you can’t unsee them.”

Time is my enemy. Again. I thought I left it behind with all the clocks at Rosencranz. I hate waiting.

With or without clocks, the sun moved abominably slowly across the sky. My frantic pacing around the Treehouse’s tiny deck with a broom got the best of Rika, who politely let me know in no uncertain terms that I was driving her nuts. She flew off leaving me alone with my impatience. 

With no one to forbid me or witness my transgression, I seized the opportunity and flew down the spiral steps around the tree trunk, my feet barely touching them. Sweet freedom! I plunged into the sea of tiny wildflowers and tall grass between the Treehouse and the emerald forest, laughing all the way to its edge.

I slipped across the threshold between light and dark—out of the bright warmth of the morning sun and into the shadows of thick woods. Underneath the tall trees curved branches, arching gracefully from the thick trunks of towering trees, the smaller trees and shrubs found enough sunlight to proliferate in dense thickets.

The whole of creation opened before me in a great disarray of smells and colors and sounds. Late summer flowers splashed bright spots of all the colors against the background of a thousand shades of green. 

I inhaled the perfume of flowers and the sweet smell of fertility that emanated from the soils beneath moldy rotting leaves from years past. Thousands of flowers and grasses going to seed, swayed as I approached and passed. But for the roses around the patio where I wiled away the sunny days, I had not seen a flower in more than 20 years.

Ancient trees rose up from roots around which flowers sprang in wild abandon and color. If I bent to touch a pretty face, the flower sprouted wings and flew in a circle around my head on its way to join the birdsong in the sky. So many birds! The symphony of their songs!

I could hear the crawly things rustling around in the dead leaves and twigs that covered the ground. Crickets! Their chirping revived a bubble memory of a warm sunny day with Charlie in the woods beyond a house. The house is familiar—perhaps I lived there before Rosencranz. I had not considered there was a time before Rosencranz…until now.

Jayzu told me that many crows and a few ravens lived on the island, and had for many years. But I had no idea what that really meant until hundreds and hundreds of crows appeared out of nowhere. Some flew over my head, calling out my name—MizSharlit—while others roosted in the branches over my head, watching as I walked by.

All of them seemed to know my name, but that was not a mystery, Charlie had told me. “Everyone knows you’re here, Charlotte. You’re a celebrity.”

At Rosencranz I heard the crows, but I never conversed with them. Among the few things I remember from my earliest days there was to never let anyone know I could; I was afraid someone would see or hear me. 

A woman screams at me from behind me. Fear shoots through me, and my heart pounds. I turn to look, but there is no one there…other than the gang of silly raucous crows following me. What or who did I hear? I looked back every few seconds for several minutes until I became convinced no one was there.

Even so, I was not alone at all.

Charlie and JoEd were in Keeper Training somewhere, but there was no lack of friendly crows accompanying me. I don’t desire solitude—I’d had quite enough of that at Rosencranz. I would happily be never alone again.

Crows are good companions; they’re chatty and full of good humor. Jayzu told me crows are officially classified as songbirds, though no yoomuns think their sounds are music.

“Well, I do,” I had said, feeling indignant and defensive on their behalf. “I am sure the sounds of yoomun language are not music to the them either.”

“Watch this, MizSharlit!” a hidden voice called out to me from above. A small black blur swooped down in a graceful arc toward the ground. The young crow plucked a wildflower in its beak, and after making a small circle around me, dropped to the ground.

I smiled down at the little crow, looking up at me with the flower in its beak. I took the flower—a red star with brilliant yellow inside. “Thank you!” I stroked the crow’s back. “And what may I call you, dear one?”

“Gladys,” she said and took a step back. One wing went out in the crow greeting—and she bowed low to the ground.

Gladys rode on my shoulder until her companions called her away for a game of Drop the Walnut. A crow would pick up a small round item, but not necessarily a walnut—anything smallish and roundish sufficed. I watched the whole group of crows shoot up high into the tree canopy. The one with the walnut dropped it, and the others followed the nut’s descent. At the very last moment before it hit the ground, one would catch it in its beak and head back to the sky.

Or not.

Occasionally, hilariously, the crow misjudges and crash-lands, somersaulting into the bushes. Raucous laughter from all around—and the game begins again with another ‘walnut’.

I left them to their game and walked on amid the island’s elders—the trees. The luscious growth of young flowers or colored leaves, upon a rich carpet of smaller beings, emanated all the fertile odors of life and death. I threw my arms open, and my head back. I twirled around a few times, embracing my new freedom, as if I were a child. 

Like I did when I was a child. Before Rosencranz. 

I grew so dizzy from the spinning, when I stopped I failed to regain my balance. I tipped over into the sweet-smelling grass and wild flowers. The world spun all around me as if I were the very center of all that is. 

On the ground squeezing my eyes shut, until the spinning stopped. Opening my eyes,  I gazed up through tiny patches of blue sky and the green leaves of the trees over my head.

Then I heard it.

Music.

I sat up. Amid the chatter of crickets and the happy melodies of the birds, I heard it again. Music. A sad, silvery voice—a yoomun voice. 

I got to my feet. The singing came closer. I couldn’t see who the singer was, but the voice was a woman’s—clearly not Jayzu. But who, then? He told me there were not others, no other humans on the island.

Mesmerized by the sweetness of the song—eerily familiar from the shadows of long ago—I remained still as a statue. The song came closer…

I almost started singing, so familiar was the song. Where I had heard it before, I had no idea—and no impulse to stop and rack my brains to remember. I just wanted to sing this song. Could I?

I whisper-sang softly along, stumbling over half forgotten words. 

The singing stopped suddenly. Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement among the trees. And then I saw her. Not more than ten feet from me—frozen as I was.

Our eyes locked together; she stared at me with startling green eyes—the distilled color of the forest all around us. Her hair curled around her face like a yellow halo. The faintest smile dawned on her lips. Her eyes sparkled with joy and surprise. She raised a hand as if to greet me.

I held my breath, unable to speak. Who is she? Familiar, yet… my mind blanked. I exhaled slowly. I wanted her to come closer, whoever she was.

She smiled and took a step toward me, raising her eyebrows slightly, as if asking my permission to approach.

I smiled. She took a couple more steps. And stopped—the moment shattered at the sound of a man shouting as he approached from behind the woman. I saw flashes of a red plaid shirt as he walked quickly through the trees toward us.

That is not Jayzu.

As soon as he could politely leave the riverbank seeing Sam and Kate off in the Captain’s boat,  Jayzu turned and strode calmly away from the river bank and into the trees. When he was out of sight of the boat, he took off running to find Russ and Jade.

But where to now? He cursed himself for not asking Jade where she said she saw her mother. Charlotte could be anywhere. He was not worried they would find their way to the Treehouse, but what if they did? They would see Charlotte.

That is not how he wanted things to go.

For weeks before she left Rosencranz, Jayzu had daydreamed of Charlotte on the island. With him. Just the two of them. They would walk together under a canopy of green leaves and blue sky. He would show her the places he inhabited—his cottage, the hermit’s chapel, the rocky point on the river. All amid this amazing Garden of Eden he had the grace from God to live in, with her.

He had it all planned. He would go alone into the city every week for groceries and other necessities. He would teach his classes at the university, and perform whatever priestly duties were asked of him at St Sophia’s. Both provided him a meager yet adequate living that could easily support them both.

Meanwhile Charlotte would remain on the island, safe from the world, surrounded by a few hundred of her closest friends—the crows. She would be the Lady of the Island, bestowing her presence upon all that existed there. In time, when her disappearance from Rosencranz blew over, he would introduce her to Jade.

She would bathe his life in the love he had never known. Not with his mother. Not even with God. He would love her with all his heart and soul. And they would live happily ever after. 

Jayzu ran past his cottage. A minute later, he flew across Bruthamax’s bridge — his feet barely touching the planks. 

“Charlotte! Where are you?” he shouted as he ran

Russ and Jade had gone for a walk—he wanted to collect specimens and she wanted to sketch the flowers. but where did they go? Terrified they would run into Charlotte, he cupped his hands and yelled: “Charr-lotte!”  But his voice cracked and he sounded like a dying duck.The afternoon rolled by while Jayzu ran without a plan. Haphazardly darting between trees and muddying himself by romping through the forest in panicked abandon, he called and called Charlotte’s name. Some of the nearby crows picked up the call: “Shar-lit! Shar-lit!” until her name echoed throughout the forest.

Where the devil is she?

As the sun approached the western horizon, Jayzu ran to the Treehouse—perhaps he could find Charlie or JoEd to help him find Charlotte. It was odd that he had not seen them at all.

He leapt off the Treehouse deck and took off running. He dashed across the small meadow—the direction Rika pointed. He plunged into the dense forest, smashing through overhanging branches and splashing through the small streams and pools. 

He tripped on a root and fell forward into a bog; his hands sunk into thick black ooze, all the way to his elbows. He spat out a dollop of mud and hauled himself out onto the grass. He wiped the stinky mud from his face, for all the good it would do. 

He stood up dripping black mud. He was a walking mud-ball, speckled with a little blood here and there.

“Best you should find some clean water and wash yourself off,” a crow’s voice from above said. “I’m just sayin’, Jayzu, I reckon you’ll scare Mizsharlit clean out of her wits, if she sees you all covered in mud and blood and such.”

She looked him up and down. Her disapproval hung heavily in the air between them, but her warm voice soothed him. He looked down at his bloody, muddied arms from his mad flight through the bogs and dense undergrowth.

“That is true, Gertie. I am the portrait of filth. And I stink.”

“That you do, Jayzu,” Gertie said. She rose up on her legs and flapped her wings before refolding them neatly into her sides. “Like a bunya.”

“I must find Charlotte, Gertie.” he said, trying to smile. He could hardly believe his own ears. “I love her. God help me, I love her. I just wish I knew what to do.”

“Stop fretting and clean yourself up,” Gertie said, brushing her wing across his back. “That’s what.” She aimed the other wing toward a pond of clear, clean water—unlike the mud bog he had just fallen into. “Plenty of clean water around, Jayzu, doncha know? No need to bathe in the mud.”

Jayzu followed her wing; within a few moments he stood in the rushes on the edge of a small, clear pond. He took his shirt off and tossed it to the ground. “I must find her, Gertie! I cannot bear her out there lost and alone!”

“Mizsharlit’s just fine, Jayzu,” Gertie said. “Every bird on the island’s heard of her comin’, and everyone’s been dyin’ of curiosity. I doubt she’s lost at all, or even walks alone without a whole crowd of birds over her head, pesterin’ her every step. Now you just strip down, Jayzu. Sit down here in the water and wash up and make yourself presentable.”

“But—” What if she runs into Russ and Jade, who are also out there wandering around?

“No buts,” Gertie said, flapping her wings. “Get your stinkin’ carcass in the water.”

He stared at her slack-jawed for a moment, then did as he was told. He slid into the cool water, suddenly bashful of his nakedness before Gertie. He turned his back as he splashed water on his face and arms, scrubbing at the mud and blood with his bare hands. He plunged his entire head under water and scrubbed his scalp.

“You’re a new yoomun, Jayzu,” Gertie said, looking him up and down after he stepped out of the pond and onto the grass.

Jayzu felt his face redden and looked around for his clothes to hide his nakedness.

“Don’t tell me you’ll be putting these back on?” She nudged the dirty clothes on the ground with her beak. “They stink to the moon.”

He tossed his clothing in the water and washed out the black mud, and most of the odor. After wringing each item out, he put them on. The wet clothing clung to his skin and into every nook, cranny, crevasse and wrinkle.

“Much better, Jayzu,” Gertie said. “Much better. I reckon Mizsharlit will see you— before she smells you.”

“If I can find her.” Jayzu said, imagining her flitting almost unseen through the curtain of trees and dark green shadows of the afternoon. And running smack into Jade and Russ. He shivered in his wet shirt and tugged at his pant legs to keep them from riding up into his crotch.

“Me, I’d head for the Sanctuary,” Gertie said, sailing into the branches above him. “But I’m a crow. What do I know?”

The bird sanctuary appealed to all the birds on the island, as well as a plethora of passers-by—those on the wing to other places, or city birds just out for a fly. The Captain, Russ, and Sam had helped Alfredo build it—though they really didn’t do much more than move some rocks and transplant a few things. How simple life was, then. It seemed so long ago, yet it had been little more than 24 hours since Charlotte had left Rosencranz and come to the island.

He bent down and stroked the crow behind her head. “You are very wise, Gertie. I came from the direction of the Treehouse, and before that from my cottage. I did not see any sign of her. She very well could have gone to the Sanctuary.”

“I’m sure you’ll find her, Jayzu,” Gertie said as she sprang into the air.

“Charlotte!” Jayzu shouted as he walked. Again and again he called out, but each time his voice fell dead among the branches and leaves. Not a single crow showed up to tell him where she went. Even the crickets remained silent. He peered into the dense foliage, his eyes scanning for an unusual color or movement or sound. Nothing.

He cursed the victory party that took him away from Charlotte on her first day on the island. It had been difficult to stay present, and he had fidgeted the entire time, wishing everyone would hurry and go home. Sam and Kate left, finally, but Russ and Jade wanted to go for a walk.

I should have told them no. But there was no graceful way to do so.

A black shadow passed over his left shoulder and circled around, coming to a stop on a low-hanging branch. “Grawky, Jayzu,” Charlie said, as Jayzu stopped and squinted to see who it was. 

“Charlie! I am truly happy to see you!”

“Rika tells me you ran off like a madman,” Charlie said. He eyed Jayzu’s bleeding arms with his intense blue eyes, and then his face. “Are you mad?”

“No. Yes,” Jayzu said, shaking his head and nodding. “I have no idea anymore, Charlie. I cannot find Charlotte and I fear she might be hurt or—worse.”

“What would be worse than that, Jayzu?” Charlie asked. “Death? What would kill her on the island?”

He shook his head. “No, not that. I fear that Russ and Jade will see her, and they might tell someone and—” His guts turned to ice. “No one can know she is here, Charlie. They will come and take her back.”

Charlie tilted his head to one side and gazed at Jayzu for a few seconds. “Well, she’s still here, I reckon. It’s not like she can leave the island. JoEd said he flew with her for awhile. And then JohnHenry, with a few of his zhekkies. They say she was looking for you, and so they pointed her toward your cottage.”

“My cottage!” Jayzu groaned. “Oh, no! She cannot go there, Charlie. What if Russ and Jade are back from their walk? Oh, dear God, no!”

Jayzu turned on his heel and sprinted back in the opposite direction, toward his cottage. Praying that Jade and Russ had returned from their walk, he hoped to find them patiently awaiting his return. Alone. 

Please, dear Lord, please do not allow them to see Charlotte.

He arrived at his cottage—the door was open—he stepped in. Russ and Jade were inside, talking. Arguing, given the decibels of Jade’s voice. Trapped between relief Charlotte was not there, and anxiety of where she was, Alfredo the Jesuit plastered a fake, yet benign smile on his face and entered his cottage.

Terrified the man saw me, I dove into the folds of the forest and held my breath and watched. I held my breath, with my heart pounding so hard I feared the woman and the man would hear. 

The man came to the woman’s side, and she pointed toward the place where I had been standing. He shook his head, and she shook hers—blonde curls bouncing like springs—and pointed again.

They finished their pointing and head-shaking, and he tugged at her sleeve. She resisted momentarily, pointing in my direction again. My heart broke a little, seeing her hopeful face searching for me. I remained hidden.

Who is she? So familiar, I think I must know her, but I could not possibly have ever met her. There was certainly no one like her at Rosencranz.

Her shoulders sagged, and she allowed the man to lead her away. I followed them on a faint path through the trees, letting them get just far enough so as to not lose them, but close enough I could catch a glimpse of his red plaid shirt.

I lost them for a few moments, though I could hear them through the trees. Abruptly I came upon them as they stood before a large tree with steps spiraling up its trunk. So similar to the Treehouse, but instead of a deck above, the steps led to a rickety-looking bridge that crossed a chasm of boulders. I slipped behind a tree and watched the bridge sway back and forth as they crossed, single-file.

I climbed the steps to the bridge and stared at the ancient-looking contraption, its uneven footpath composed of small yet varying thicknesses of cut tree branches lashed together with living vines. A handrail of vines had been strung across the chasm, with more vines looping it to the footboards, connecting the entire structure.

I took a step, one hand still on the great tree trunk. Nervously, I let go and took a step onto the bridge. Spongy, yet somehow it seemed sturdy enough to walk on. And, the man and woman had crossed it moments before. I took another step, then another, and the whole bridge swayed. I quickened my steps and was on the other side without upchucking my lunch, and leaped back into the arms of a solid tree.

The two yoomuns were nowhere in sight, but a well-worn path snaking through the forest seemed the most likely way they had gone. I walked as silently as I could, ears and eyes wide-open, sensing … other yoomuns. The trees and bush were full of animal and insect presence but those did not worry me.

Who are these yoomuns? And what are they doing here? Jayzu said there was no one else but the two of us on the island. I worried about one thing only: Are they here to take me back to Rosencranz? Jayzu promised me he would not let that happen.

He doesn’t know they are here!

I must warn him!

But where is he?

The path wound through the woodlands, and I glided past many flowers whose colors and sweet scents lured me to their faces. But I kept on. I had to find out who those people were, and warn Jayzu we were not alone.

The path ended at a small clearing within which stood a tiny cottage—I knew it must be Jayzu’s. He had told me he built it after the same fashion as Bruthamax had built the Treehouse.

I snuck closer, staying within the cover of the trees and bushes. The door was open and I heard voices. They are in Jayzu’s house! I crept up to the window hid under a bush. I was about to raise myself up and peer inside—until I heard the crunching sounds of footsteps from the direction I had come. 

Jayzu strode right past me and into his cottage. I started called out to him—that strangers were in his cottage…but he raced by and was inside the door before I could make a sound. 

I raised myself up a bit—enough for just one eye to look inside…

“I saw her, Russ. I know it was her,” the blonde woman was saying, her voice not quite pleading, not quite defiant.

“Saw who?” Alfredo said, as he stepped inside his cottage. “Forgive me for being late, Russ, Jade. I — uh—am sorry. I expected to be back her sooner.”

Jayzu knows these people? 

“Jade thinks she saw her mother out there in the forest,” the man, Russ, said, waving an arm toward the bridge. “I can’t convince her that’s impossible. I hope you can.”

“Well, the island works in strange ways,” Alfredo said, quickly switching on a sympathetic smile. “Sometimes it brings out one’s hopes and wishes. But there is no one here but the three of us, Jade.”

No one?

I could hardly believe my ears. But there she was—Jade—the woman I saw and heard singing in the deep forest. But why was Jayzu lying to her? I could hardly stop myself from striding through the open door and coming to her side.

“I’ve told her that over and over again, Alfredo,” Russ said. “And I didn’t see anyone. I was working and Jade had gone off by herself, and when I found her, she was in a state—”

“I was not in a state,” Jade said, raising her voice. “I saw her. She was singing. So was I. And we sang the same song. She was wearing a blue, long-sleeve shirt, and green coveralls. She had a long black braid. She looks just like the portrait I painted of her!”

She glanced toward the window I was peeping in. Had she sensed my eavesdropping? I quickly ducked my head.

I heard Russ laugh and say: “Of course she does. You imagined her, Jade. Just like when you painted her, and now you imagined her here on—”

Again, I wanted to leap inside the cottage—how dare he talk to her like that? I slowly raised up again to peek in the window.

I saw Jayzu hold a hand up, and Russ stopped talking. 

Jayzu turned toward Jade and said: “Your mother has been on your mind a great deal lately—you told me that when I bought your painting, Ave, Madre.”  He gestured toward something out of my view.

“So aptly named,” Jayzu said, smiling. “Ave, Madre—‘Hail Mother’. It moves me deeply. I sometimes think she is real too—the Blessed Mother of us all. It must be more so for you, Jade, having painted it and losing your mother when you were so young.”

A painting? They are looking at a painting that Jade painted. Of me. Her mother. But—how?

 A mother? I am a mother? I shook my head. How could that be? 

“I did not paint ‘the Blessed Mother of Us All’,” Jade said as she clenched her fists at her side. “I painted my mother. Yes I see her in my dreams. And I saw her today, here, on the island. For real. Standing right in front of me.” She gestured angrily toward the outside, glaring at the two men.

She really believes I am her mother!

This woman I saw for the first time today says I am her mother! And she recognized me in the woods—from her painting? And Jayzu has this painting? I got to my feet and resumed my spying through the window. I had to see that painting…

“Jade,” Jayzu said gently, stepping toward her, smiling still. “That cannot be. There is no one else on this island but the three of us.” He grinned sheepishly at her and shrugged. “The island is enchanted, you know. Sometimes even I get carried away, and think I see things. But really, you could not have seen your mother here, Jade. It is impossible.”

Still smiling, he held both hands out, palms open. Nothing to hide.

A bell rang from some distance away. Alfredo rolled his eyes toward the heavens. Saved by the Captain’s bell, finally.

“Fine. I didn’t see her,” Jade said. “I didn’t see a damn thing.” She picked up her bag and stormed out the door.

Russ shook his head and followed Alfredo’s eyes to the ceiling. “I’m sorry, man. She gets like this sometimes. I’ll calm her down when we get home. I hope.”

“Perhaps that is part of her gift,” Alfredo said, putting a fatherly hand on Russ’s arm. “To feel things so intently. Be patient with her.”

Russ sighed. “Trying to be. She is sure hard to live with sometimes.”

“Take her home, Russ,” Jayzu said, edging him toward the door. “Just love her. Love cures everything. Now come along. The Captain is waiting. We must go.”

I don’t remember dying.

Yesterday, and every single day for 25 years, I woke up alone and unknown in my tiny room within the gray stone walls of Rosencranz Asylum for the Insane. I languished amid white coats, and ancient, abandoned bodies whose owners lacked awareness that they lived, but couldn’t seem to die.

Perhaps I was one of them—at least for the first 16 years, where my awareness of the outside world, and most of my memories were hidden within a gray mist inside of my head—the Graying. I could see my immediate surroundings enough to not bump into walls or other inmates, but nothing beyond.

I spoke to no one. The white coats ordered us all around, and understood everything that was said, I pretended not to. I raged with anger for I don’t know how long. Perhaps until they tired of gagging me and tying me to the bed. Or perhaps when I figured out how to make them stop that—and the lightning bolts.

I went limp.

I became docile.

I understood everything they said. But I spoke only the language of crows. 

The white coats would come and take me by the hand or in a wheelchair to the dining room, to the toilet, to bathe, to sit on the patio, or to the Great Room. I gave no resistance. Over time, I became invisible within the loud chaos of certain other inmates that demanded the attention of the white coats. They paid me less and less mind, and I slowly started moving around on my own.

To the dining room. To the patio. To the Great Room. To the toilet. To my room. I gave no trouble, so was left wrapped in my cocoon of solitude—the Graying—a refuge  within and against the wailing grief and suffering echoing endlessly within the asylum’s impenetrable stone walls. 

I don’t remember how or why I had come to be at Rosencranz. Or who I was before Rosencranz. I had few memories of anything but Rosencranz. But Charlie’s pecking on the window to the Great Room 8 years ago changed everything.

I remember Charlie, my best friend from childhood—most of which is obscured by something darker than the Graying. Eight years and 23 days ago, Charlie pecked repeatedly at the window in the Great Room until I looked up. 

Robust memories surfaced—of the two of us wandering the woods together, sharing a picnic basket of food. I remember flying a big red kite, while Charlie was up in the sky flying circles around it.

Within the Graying, many ‘pocket-memories’ such as these float around now, unattached to any particular time or event. Charlie’s presence on the other side of the glass—and even now—helps me remember. 

I didn’t know I had hidden memories, until Charlie, then Jayzu showed up and awakened the broken shards of my past, though I could not make sense of most of them. They terrorize and tantalize me. Charlie believes all the pieces of my lost memories are concealed somewhere in the Graying. 

I had grown unaccustomed to the passage of Time at Rosencranz—a thing that does not exist in the Graying. But after Charlie came into my world, I quickly became a prisoner of Time, waiting and longing for his next visit—even though we could do nothing but touch the glass that separated us. 

When Jayzu appeared out of nowhere, I left my moment-to-moment existence for good, and sought tomorrow with all my heart. Jayzu could not come every day—he lived on an island and worked in the City. Impatience and hope bloomed within me.

Prior to Charlie and Jayzu’s visits, the sun had risen day after day over the gray walls of Rosencranz, though I barely noticed its passage across the sky. The sun was in the sky, or it wasn’t. Day or Night.

After Jayzu taught me about time, I noticed the clocks. Everywhere clocks with big white faces suddenly demanded my attention. I could not escape the two black pointers—one longer faster and the other shorter and slower—and one tiny red one that went faster than the fast black ones. 

I spent many of the hours waiting for Jayzu—watching the long black one, never looking away until it had gone all the way around the white circle, while the shorter one advanced only a small part of that distance. And the red pointer went sixty times around.

I kept track. Every single day.

That’s how the illusion of time came back to me. Watching it second by second…minute by minute, hour by hour. The red pointer touches the black tick mark on the clock face, and then it is gone. As if it never was.

It mattered not, I observed. Another moment arrives with or without my attention, or yearning. It seemed this train of moments occurred even as I slept, or when I wasn’t watching.

I learned how to ‘tell time’ from Jayzu. He said I learned so quickly, he thought I had known how, once upon a time—before Rosencranz. I shrugged. Time before Rosencranz was a black hole with but a few twinkling shards of my brief and unconnected memories.

After I learned about time, it dragged even more dreadfully between Jayzu’s visits.  Moments that used to be barely noticeable expanded in all directions, enduring for weeks it seemed. But the moments he visited me flew by like the wind.

When Jayzu came, time was not. When he was gone I retreated into the Graying to escape the torture of time, but I couldn’t find Jayzu there. He did not exist in the Graying. 

I dreamed of him, night and day, and of things that grow wild and free. None of which I could find within the isolated pocket memories of the Graying.

I had to come out.

“Take me with you, Jayzu!” I had begged one day as he was leaving. “Far away from here! Take me to your island! I want to live in all the colors of the outside world!”

He told me he didn’t know how to get me out of there, but promised he would never stop visiting me. I went back to the clock and watched and waited for his return.

And then it happened. Miracle of all miracles!

Jayzu, Charlie, and an army of crows showed me how to escape the gray walls of Rosencranz and its clock. Jayzu walked with me to the gazebo near the edge of the grounds. I slid under a fence that Jayzu showed me behind the gazebo.

“Now, run!” he said. “I will see you at the Treehouse.”

The Treehouse! 

I ran through the woods with Charlie flying overhead. Laughing all the way. It was so easy!

We came to a big river; after awhile a small boat that seemed more like a small island floated to the bank. A big burly man, the Captain—that’s what Jayzu and Charlie called him—with many strange and wonderful tattoos on his huge arms picked us up.

I could hardly keep my eyes off the Captain’s tattoos as he rowed. Birds and fish seemed to fly and flow, merging with river and sky. He seemed in command of the river as much as his boat. I loved the sensation of floating! And watching the growing group of crows following the Captain’s boat.

The Captain rowed us down the sparkling river toward a green island thick with trees. Jayzu’s island. Charlie called it Cadeña-l’jadia—misty island of green trees. I shivered with excitement and anticipation.

The island came into view. Ravens perched on tall gray cliffs above the river, watching us pass. The Captain brought his boat into a place Jayzu would tell me later was called the Sanctuary. 

A stream flowed out of the cliffs and separated into many smaller streams that fed small ponds. I bolted out of the boat as soon as it stopped, toward the pools where water birds floated or played or dove their heads under water.

“Is Jayzu’s Treehouse here?” I asked.

“No,” Charlie said. “It’s further into the forest—but it’s not far from here.”

I now wake up in the Treehouse—built in the boughs of a very large tree. The memory of the gray walls of the Rosencranz prison fade.

For this first time in my spotty memory, I do not fear being harmed. What is there to harm me here? I am with Jayzu, the only other yoomun whose protection I am sure of—on an island of mostly crows and ravens whose language I speak. 

Is it real, this forest, this island, this man? 

I don’t remember dying, but I don’t remember living either. I remember so little  of my life. Charlie connects me to my childhood and its memories. Jayzu connects me to the land of the living.

Maybe I don’t need to remember anything more. Maybe just being here with Jayzu and Charlie is enough.

Or so I thought…

===

We stayed up late on the deck of the Treehouse that first night, Jayzu and I. Charlie, Rika and their kreegans had disappeared into the branches above just before dark. With my head thrown back against the deck railing, high up in this tree with stars overhead, I was speechless.

Jayzu pointed out the constellations—“That’s the Big Dipper, Charlotte.”

For a moment the Treehouse was gone. I stood on a roof looking up at the stars. A man stood next to me pointing it out with his pipe, whose sweet aroma evoked vague memories of somewhere familiar.

“And if you follow those two stars…” he picked up my arm and told me to point my finger… “all the way to here…” he moved my arm a few inches until my finger touched a bright star.

“That’s the North Star,” he was saying.

“What are you doing here, Ms Steele?” a harsh voice asks.

Dizziness enveloped me. For a few moments I had no idea where I was—up in a tree or on a roof looking at stars, or wrapped in a remote pocket of the Graying imagining I was somewhere other than Rosencanz.

“We will go for a walk all around the island tomorrow afternoon,” a familiar voice was saying. “I will show you all my favorite places.”

For a moment I seemed trapped amidst many bubbles—each containing a different person talking, all in different landscapes. I recognized the stony prison of Rosencranz, but not the names and places I did not recognize. I didn’t know where I was or who was talking about taking me for a walk—until a kreegan argument in the branches above our heads took my attention. 

Jayzu’s laughter brought me back to…the Treehouse! I am on an island called  Cadeña-l’jadia  with Jayzu and Charlie and his wife Rika and all their youngsters! Far from Rosencranz.

“That would be lovely, Jayzu!” I said, smiling at the noise above. “You told me about your cottage, the hermit’s chapel, the rocks you like to sit on and look at the river. I want to see everything!”

“And I will show you everything, starting tomorrow afternoon.” Jayzu said.

We talked till I was hoarse and unable to stifle my yawns. I had never known such a happy day, though it was hard to bear somehow. So many years of non-existence in Rosencranz made me forget how large and alive it is on the Outside. 

Large, alive and overwhelming.

Jayzu stood up and said, “It is well past my bedtime, Charlotte, and yours too, I am sure.”

Inside the tiny Treehouse cabin perched on one end of the deck, I watched as Jayzu lit a candle on a little table. I flopped onto the thick mattress stuffed with leaves on a stout wooden bed, a big grin on my face. I wondered again if I had died and gone to heaven.

I watched him stoke up the fire in the little cast iron stove, and heat some water so that I might wash my face. It was all such happily acquired grime, I might have joyfully slept in it, had it not borne the stench of Rosencranz as well.

I looked down at my coveralls, with Charlotte Steele printed onto the pocket, and the short-sleeved white t-shirt underneath. For the first time I considered my wardrobe. Or my lack of wardrobe. I had not given clothing a thought in more than 20 years.

“This is all I have, Jayzu. I have no clean clothes to wear for bed…” I frowned, envisioning myself naked… 

“We will make it so, my Lady,” he said grandly. “You shall have clean clothes.”

He pointed to a shelf above the bed, laden with a few stacks of neatly folded clothing. “I had to guess at your size and the things you like. I have only ever seen you in this—” he tugged on my sleeve. “And being a priest for close to my entire life, I hardly knew where to begin. So I asked for help from one of the ladies at St Sophia’s where I am a priest. I told her I needed some clothes to donate to a woman who had to leave an abusive situation quickly, with only the clothes on her back.”

He grabbed one of the items and handed it to me, saying, “You need not spend another night clothed in the stench of Rosencranz. After you get changed, toss these out onto the deck. I will burn them tomorrow.”

I unfolded a long green and blue plaid flannel nightgown. So rich and thick—nothing like the dingy gray nightshirt I had worn every night for all those many years.

“It is perfect, Jayzu,” I said, hugging it close. “I have never had anything so beautiful.”

To my great surprise—and no doubt his—I burst into tears.

He took me in his arms and held me, whispering into my hair, “You are home now, my Charlotte. Everything is going to be all right.”

I don’t know how long we stood there, while it seemed an ocean flowed unabated from the depths of my being. He held me all the while, whispering, “Charlotte, my Charlotte.”

I drenched his shirt, and still he held me, gently rocking us both back and forth. 

Jayzu stepped outside the cabin for a few minutes while I changed into my new nightgown. “Sleep tight,” he said, tucking me in after he returned. “I am right outside the door. If you wake up during the night, call out my name, and I will be right here again, holding you.”

I woke in almost complete darkness, but for a tiny window of pearly gray light. For a few moments I was safe in the Graying, until a dark shadow covered the window. Fear washed through me. I tried to cry out but could not. Paralyzed, I waited for the whitecoats to enter. What would they do to me this time? A needle suddenly pokes my skin. 

“Good morning, Charlotte!”

The world turned upside down for an instant, and when it righted back up, I saw the outline of a crow in the tiny window. No Whitecoats. No needles.

“Charlie!” I cried out and leapt out of bed. He hopped from the window sill to the table and brushed his wing feathers across my cheek.

Rika appeared in the window and hopped onto the table scolding, “The Lady is not ready to receive visitors, zhacho. Now be off with you!”

Charlie obediently left, and I arose. I quickly splashed cold water on my face, and wiggled out of my nightgown and into a pale, sky blue long-sleeved t-shirt and forest green coveralls. I marvel at how well these clothes went on me—fitting like the asylum garb never did. I stepped outside onto the deck, my new clothes burst into even richer color. Everything seemed brighter and more alive than anything I could remember. As if the sun had finally come out after many years of low-hanging clouds.

I wondered where Jayzu was, but other urgencies required my first attention. I didn’t mind having to navigate the spiral steps down the tree trunk to the ground, nor the short walk to relieve myself. I often had to wait to use the toilet at Rosencranz, which was quite a bit less scenic. And not at all private.

Nothing was private at Rosencranz. Nothing was hidden from the whitecoats, or other inmates. I scarcely remember ever caring that my naked body was exposed, or who might be watching.

Relieved, I walked back to the Treehouse. With each step, I was overtaken by the sweet fragrance of the island’s awakening forest. Through a carpet of dewdrops, I inhaled with all my senses wide open. The colors!—I had forgotten the infinite shades of green, and the enormous variety of shapes and colors in the flowers.

At the Treehouse, Jayzu had made us tea, which we shared with Rika and Charlie on the deck.

“That teacup you are drinking from, dearie,” Rika said, pointing a wing. “That was Bruthamax’s.”

Jayzu’s island, though most humans called it Wilder Island after a famous hermit who lived and died there in the past century.

“That is true, Charlotte,” Jayzu said. “I told you about Maxmillian Wilder—the old hermit who came to the island over a hundred years ago and built this Treehouse—with Charlie’s ancestor, Hozey the Great! Yoomuns named it after the hermit—Wilder Island. A few of the items in the kitchen have been here since he built the Treehouse.”

I held the teacup reverently, imagining Bruthamax’s hands as my hands. For a moment I had a vision of the old hermit tending a vegetable garden, and a flock of crows in a nearby apple tree giving him advice.

“We will have a garden in the summer,” Jayzu said, as if he had heard my thoughts. “I found the remains of his vegetable plot, near a very old apple tree.”

“You ate an apple from that tree yesterday,” Charlie said.

“I remember!” I said and put my teacup down on the bench. “Jayzu! Let’s go for a walk now! The sun shines and the emerald forest calls! Show me everything! The apple tree, your cottage, the bridge—all the things you told me about.”

“I would love to, Charlotte,” Jayzu said as he put his empty cup on the tray. “This afternoon, as I promised. But now, I must leave you in the care of Rika and Charlie. I have to attend to some matters.”

I frowned and tried to resist pouting like a child. “What other matters, Jayzu? Don’t you want to stay here with me?”

“I do, Charlotte,” he said and put his hand on my knee. “But I have a prior engagement I must attend to.” He stood up. “In fact, I must go now and make preparations.”

“Right now?” I said, wrinkling my forehead into a frown. “Take me with you!”

“I am afraid I cannot, Charlotte.” He paused for a moment with a troubled look on his face. “It is complicated. I need you to stay here.”

“What is complicated?” I asked as he stood up. “Tell me, Jayzu!” I stood up, eye to eye with him.

“I will explain when I get back this afternoon,” he said, bringing my hands to his lips.

“But what shall I do while you’re gone?” I wailed. “Can I even go for a little walk?”

“I am sorry, Charlotte, but no. I need you to stay right here where I can find you. Charlie, JoEd and Rika and the kreegans will keep you company.” 

“Afraid we can’t,” Charlie said. “Both JoEd and I have Keeper Training this morning. But listen!” He unfurled a wing and gestured toward the trees that surrounded the Treehouse.

For the first time I noticed the chatter of many birds all around us. Mostly crows—so I could catch a few words now and then.

“Yah, the Captain brought her—”

“Jayzu—”

“—sprung her he did—”

“Charlie —he—”

“Mizsharlit and Charlie—they—”

“Everyone’s dying to meet you,” JoEd said.

“See?” Jayzu said with a smile. “You will have plenty of company! I am sure you want to get acquainted with them all, Charlotte!”

“Today, my first day here, I only want to be with you!” I almost blurted out—but I swallowed my words and managed a smile as he pulled me toward the corner of the deck.

“Come!” he said, holding my hand tightly. “I will get a fire going for your bath. You told me last night you want to wash the stench of Rosencranz off you.”

I did say that—and it’s true. I wanted a bath. And then to go for a walk around this island—my new home. With Jayzu. Resigned to my fate, I followed him down the spiral steps to the ground below the Treehouse.

We left the shade of the tree, and stood in the sun at the brink of a small oblong hole with stone floor and walls.

“Bruthamax built it,” Jayzu said. “A small fire under that pipe, will warm the water it carries from a nearby spring to the bathtub. If the spillway is open—” he turned a small switch on the pipe, “water flows into the bathtub. If it is closed, the water flows from the spring into one of the many small streams on the island.”

As we watched the water flow into the bathtub, I put my hand underneath the stream coming from the pipe. “It’s warm!”

“On demand, My Lady!” he said and bowed at the waist. He drew me into his arms. “And now I must go, Charlotte. I will be back this afternoon, I promise. Please stay here at the Treehouse until I return? I do not want you to get lost. We will go walking in the forest when I return. I promise.”

I nodded into his chest, wanting to shake my head no and whine like a child. After a few moments he relaxed his hold on me and made me let go. He waved one last time before disappearing. I watched him cross the little meadow and enter the dark forest beyond.

I planned to follow him. After my bath.

I should be there now, celebrating. Without me, Wilder Island would have been lost. Only I could save it.

Provincial Father Superior Thomas Majewski gazed irritably at the steamy late summer afternoon in Washington D.C. Buildings outnumbered trees, or so it seemed. Asphalt and concrete covered the Earth. The noise. The heat. The cars. The unbearable boredom of his job.

The hot heaviness of Corporate Jesuit Headquarters in Washington D.C. posed an alarmingly stark contrast to the near-weightlessness he had felt in the brief time he had spent on Wilder Island. Exerting a sort of gravitational pull on his attention, the island fostered a fantasy of himself living a scholarly life of fascinating discussion, writing peer-reviewed papers  with his colleague and protégé, Dr Alfredo Manzi.

Paradise hung before his eyes, obscuring for the briefest moment the pile of paper on his desk. The cool island under the trees called to him almost constantly.

I should be there now. Anywhere but here.

Majewski had been depressed ever since he returned, a mere two weeks ago, though it had seemed more like a year. God I hate this place. He started praying to the Almighty to provide an opportunity to leave the hellhole suffocating his life.

Today Manzi and Kate, Sam, Jade and Russ are celebrating their victory over Henry Braun. I should be there. 

Majewski was proud to have been instrumental in bringing about the Friends of Wilder Island Conservation Land Trust that saved the island from development. He had used his powers over the Jesuit Purse in his domain—all of North America. He, that is the Jesuit Order, had funded the legal set-up of the Conservation Trust that would keep the island from development forever.

It was simple to use Jesuit money for this purpose, thanks to the little chapel built by their own Brother Maxmillian Wilder a century ago. And thanks to the wisdom and foresight of his predecessor, Antoni de la Torre, to claim the island under the Homestead Act.

He loved thinking of his Order and by extension, himself, as owning an island. Truly his best piece of work. Majewski had rarely felt proud of his career as a Jesuit Father Provincial, until now.

Wilder Island had blown his eyelids off. It wasn’t just the historical significance of the place where Brother Maxmillian had lived and died as a hermit on an island full of crows. He had left behind truly one of the most endearing and humble little places of worship ever built. Manzi had called it ‘the hermit’s chapel’—all in lower case, as a testament to its simple offering of a humble man to the majesty of the Creator.

Majewski’s job irritated him more than ever today, and he could no longer blind himself to the truth. He had risen to the top layer of Jesuit administration—meaning that he was not particularly holy, but an intelligent, hard-working, loyal, dedicated servant of the Order, and by extension—so the mantra went—Jesus.

In reality, Provincial Father Superior Thomas Majewski was nothing more than a bureaucrat with a priest’s collar. He’d never felt the deep, irresistible calling to the priesthood. Off and on, he had hated his entire adult life. Starting when Mother had shoved him into the Jesuit priesthood—all Polish mothers wanted their eldest child to take Holy Orders. That was her official story for why she did it.

He never forgave her.

The Jesuits had given him a superlative education however, and for many happy years he had taught Linguistics at several universities. He was promoted to Chancellor at the last one. From there it was Washington D.C., and a few short years later Provincial Father Superior.

He had enjoyed those positions of minor power for awhile. After a time however, he had begun to miss the scholarship that had made his life at least fulfilling and interesting, if not actually happy at times.

The mundane balancing of budgets, and dealing with attorneys for the pedophile priests was neither fulfilling nor did he derive a moment of happiness from any of it. Majewski had borne it all like a good Jesuit. Like a corpse—as he was taught in seminary school.

Wilder Island had taught him something else entirely—the possibility of a life not being lived like a corpse, but one downright happy.

Happiness would be enjoying some quiet yet stimulating conversations with Alfredo Manzi on the cool, quiet island of crows. Majewski was not fond of crows however—the birds were ugly and a nuisance. Crows had been inhabiting his dreams in a variety of unfriendly and disquieting ways lately. But the language they shared with Manzi, Brother Wilder (and Majewski’s sister Stella) fascinated him.

There must be others. Oh! The possibilities! The research with Manzi! The papers they’d present at international symposiums! No longer would he be remembered only as a high level clerk, scheming with the rest of them for more power. The end game for most on the upwardly mobile ladder of Jesuit echelons of power was the Pope. But there could only be one Pope.

Majewski was definitely not Pope material. Whereas the scholarly pursuit of a breathtaking and unique shared language between humans and other species!—tailor-made for him. And more accessible.

He had so looked forward to returning to the island for the celebration with Manzi, and the rest of the Friends of Wilder Island. Unfortunately, the Patron Saint of Spontaneous Obstruction had intervened. Dignitaries from Jesuit headquarters in Rome had suddenly and unexpectedly descended upon him. Four days of mind-numbing meetings about the most irrelevant trivia made him wish he was indeed a corpse.

Majewski was trapped. Required to play host for what seemed like an eternity of ennui, he had to smile and nod, and even participate in the usual litany of genuinely insincere platitudes with his brethren from Rome. He seethed inside, while maintaining the requisite pious expression and making benign, meaningless yet apparently agreeable comments here and there. 

He hated himself.

Once the Rome Legion had departed, Majewski’s calendar overflowed with regular end-of-the month meetings, budgets, and other nonsense that tied him to his desk. 

While Wilder Island consumed his thoughts…

“Father?” his secretary Luther’s voice came through the intercom on this desk phone. “Call on line one. Detective McDermott from Ledford Police.”

Majewski frowned and picked up the phone.

“Detective,” he said into the phone. “Have you found her?”

“We found a body,” McDermott said. “We need you to positively identify it.”

Majewski’s heart skipped a beat. “A body? Uh–”

“My apologies, Father,” Detective McDermott said. “I lack most social graces—allow me to rephrase and offer condolences for your possible loss. We need you to identify the body that might be your sister. It’s in bad shape, so we need your ID asap. ”

“Yes, I uh…,” Majewski said, his free hand moving back and forth over his heart.

A perfect escape! No one would bat an eye!

“I understand you are a busy man in Washington, D.C.,” the detective said. “But we have to ask.”

“Of course,” Majewski said. “I’ll, uh, get a flight as soon as I can.”

“Great,” the detective said. “We can also make a positive ID with DNA testing, in case the body is beyond recognition.”

“DNA?” Majewski said aloud as he wrote the letters on his desk calendar.

“It’s fairly routine anymore,” the detective continued. “We use it all the time. Matching a vic, that is the deceased, to a family member’s DNA is sometimes the only tool we have. We’ve got hers. Yours would give the answer.”

“In the event the body—” Majewski cleared his throat. “That is, if this poor woman turns out to be my sister, I would need to give her Last Rites.”

“Of course, Father,” the detective said. “I understand completely. Whenever you get here is good, but the sooner the better.”

After a brief conversation with his secretary, Majewski leaned back in his chair. Giving Snowbell his undivided attention, he scratched behind her snow-white ears with both hands. She responded with a distant purr, and opened her blue eyes halfway.

“Ah, to see Wilder Island again, my beauty,” he said to the cat. “One day I will be there again and never leave.”

For now though, a short respite. Stella had provided the perfect excuse to leave the soul-stifling, irrelevant nonsense that had become his existence. A perfect reward for enduring the absurd chatter of the sycophants from the upper echelons of the Jesuit hierarchy: a cool island paradise and long, stimulating conversations with the scholarly Alfredo Manzi. 

It would be like the old days, when he was on Manzi’s graduate committee. Manzi had specifically asked him to be, though Majewski’s area of expertise was Linguistics, and not Ornithology. Manzi never once even hinted at the idea of a Human-Corvid interspecies language. Yet he had written paper after paper on Corvid Behavior and Culture, and was recognized as the premier authority on the the subject. Majewski started to wonder why Manzi had never published on the language of the Corvids.

Completely envious that he himself had earned no such scholarly recognition, Majewski shook his head in disgust—his major contribution to the world was to root out sex-abuse by priests. He became known as ‘the Terminator’ for the number of cases where he had recommended a priest be de-frocked for violating their sacred vows of celibacy. Whether or not their infractions involved a child mattered not a twit to Majewski.

Stella’s disappearance was a gift from God, though—a blessing, telling him his plans had been approved. He was free to return to the island. Finally. Divine Providence. What else could it be? God had rewarded his diligent, uncomplaining patience.

“A body,” he murmured to Snowbell on his lap. “That would indeed be a relief from her suffering.” And his own. Snowbell tilted her head back as he scratched under her chin. “She really was insane you know.”

Snowbell stared at him.

“I’ve got you on a flight out of Dulles Monday at noon,” Majewski’s secretary’s voice came over the intercom, jolting Snowbell from her repose. “You’ll land in Ledford at 3:10 p.m.”

Stella had barely crossed Majewski’s mind since her admission to Rosencranz. Fifteen years after Mother and Father passed, the family trust fund that paid for her residence at the institution had dried up, and Stella became a ward of the state. After which, Majewski had almost completely forgotten her.

When she was very young, he had sent Stella books for her birthday, and for Christmas. Father had said she devoured them. Mother complained, “Stella is perfectly useless, having her nose in a book all the time.”

Does she remember me? Her big brother Tommy? He rather doubted it. I should have visited her.

But what would have been the point? She had been quite out of her mind the last time he had seen her, the day she was taken to Rosencranz. He had received no reports from the hospital that her mental condition had improved, so he assumed it had not.

“She understands very well what is being said to her!” Mother had maintained. “She just refuses to speak our language! All that comes out of her mouth is the foul sounds of those nasty crows.”

It wasn’t mimicking the foul sounds of crows that got Stella sent to Rosencranz in the first place. She had been pregnant with an illegitimate child. Over the years Majewski had conveniently forgotten that small and no longer relevant fact. He never knew and never asked what became of the infant.

“They’re taking non-violent, mental people,” Mother had informed him months after Stella had given birth. “Mostly Alzheimer’s patients, but with her babbling, she’ll fit right in.”

Aside from the occasional legal paperwork or checks he had to sign on her behalf, Majewski had pushed Stella’s existence out of his awareness for at least twenty years. Until that small, random and insignificant act by his sweet princess kitty Snowbell had changed his life. Surely Divine Providence had guided her. 

Snowbell had knocked what he thought was the book, Treasure Island, off his bookshelf. When Majewski picked up a metal box, he discovered it was not a book, but a metal box painted to resemble Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous novel. Inside, he found a letter from over a hundred years ago to Father Superior Antoni de la Torre from Jesuit Brother Maxmillian Wilder—and a deed to a tiny island in a big river.

Treasure Island, indeed. Majewski still chuckled over his predecessor Antoni de la Torre’s sense of humor. 

Majewski had thought de la Torre’s nephew was insane, like Stella, until he visited Maxmillian Wilder’s island. His former student Alfredo Manzi, had taken up residence there and much to Majewski’s shock and dismay, spoke this same, strange language of the crows.

Maxmillian Wilder and Stella, and finally Manzi, were all seemingly afflicted with the same disease. When he returned to D.C., he started to  entertain the thought that it was not a disease, but an actual complex language shared among sentient beings of separate species.

All three, Manzi had claimed when Majewski had told him of Stella’s affliction, were of a lineage of ancient humans—the Patua’—whose only difference from other humans was an innate ability to converse in the language of the crows. As a linguist, Majewski had taken the traditional view, and pooh-poohed the very idea of a complex animal language.

At the same time he was totally intrigued by it. He highly respected Dr Alfredo Manzi, whose research had advanced the intelligence and sentience of crows.

The island called…incessantly. All day long, derailing his thoughts, his work. All night long, the dreams…

===

Jules Sackman stood before the gigantic picture window of Henry Braun’s Riverside Drive Mansion overlooking the River. Wilder island seemed like a black hole, a singularity into which all light and matter disappeared. Gorgeous sunset colors bathed the sky and the other half of Ledford across the river. But the island’s trees swallowed all light and color, reflecting back only shadows. No one could see into its dark secrets.

Henry Braun had lost an epic battle to own the island. And now it was killing him. Right after the debacle he had staged for investors in his scheme to turn Wilder Island into a gambling resort ended in disaster, Henry pretty well went berserk. His wife Minnie called an ambulance, which took him up north to Kafka Memorial, the new state mental hospital.

Aside from having had a moment of destructive insane rage, Henry had also been diagnosed with a serious respiratory infection—most likely the consequence of being drenched in bird shit. Had it not impacted Jules’s financial wherewithal, he might’ve found it all quite amusing…the way the birds rose up en masse and crapped all over Henry—but no one else.

Jules had been grateful to provide legal services to Henry, which provided him with an excellent income, no matter what he had to do for it. Jules could live without Henry, but not without his money. His wife Julia had no income of her own, and had spent much of their married life trying to bankrupt him with her gambling debts. If he only had his own debts to pay, he would have been just fine with what he made as Henry Braun’s attorney.

Jules sighed. He’d be in a world of hurt if Henry died. At least he still had the secret stream of income he had set up several years ago, that funneled money into what looked like a bill-paying account buried deep in Henry’s financial empire, complete with bogus statements and invoices. With it he had tapped a small yet steady flow of cash out of Henry’s vast wealth and into his own bank account.

As long as Jules could hold on to his position handling Henry’s finances, he’d have no worries. Even if Henry were to die, probating Henry’s will would pretty well set him up for life. He knew full well how to milk more dough out of the estate than the usual percentage regulated by law. He might even be able to keep up with Julia’s gambling.

“Are you ready?” he said as Minnie came down the stairs.

“Yes,” she said. “Please have Robert bring the car around.”

“I have my car here, Minnie,” Jules said. “I’ll drive you.”

“As you wish.”

In his hospital room at Kafka Memorial, Henry Braun sank into a gray envelope between sleep and non-sleep. Velvety fog surrounded him, whispering a siren song of sweet nothingness. A trestle bridge floated by, and a two-story brick mansion, followed by his Bentley, and then his first bicycle—a Schwinn with a headlamp and tail-lights. 

His wife Minnie sat in a chair next to his bed reading the newspaper. He turned his face away and stared out the window into the gray rain. Two crows perched on the windowsill, laughing at him. Weak from days of coughing and rage, Henry was positive he had contracted bird flu from the attack he had suffered on Wilder Island. He had directed his attorney Jules Sackman to sue the Catholic Church, and Alfredo Manzi personally, for inflicting great bodily harm upon him.

“But you don’t have bird flu, Henry,” Jules had said. “Getting plastered with bird shit is not considered great bodily harm.” He flicked a piece of lint from his jacket. “Besides, neither the church nor the priest shit on you. Birds did it. You can’t sue birds.”

Henry hated that sanctimonious smirk Jules wore. I should fire his ass.

Water droplets streaked down the windowpane next to his bed, corrugating his view of the cloudy sky. Beyond the laughing crows, a young man’s face appeared in the rivulets, pale and sad, morphing slowly into the shock and disgust on Father’s face. Henry had only been in love that one time, so long ago he’d almost forgotten.

Leonard.

Humiliation had long ago taken any lingering sweet memory of their short time together. Henry swam again in those old, cold waters of fear, remembering the door flying open. The look on Father’s face. His mother sobbing. Grandfather’s voice in his ear: “We all make mistakes, son. A man learns from his mistakes, resolves to never err in that way again, and then he moves on.”

Father arranged for him to marry a local socialite, Minerva duBois. He hadn’t wanted to at all, but he was given no choice if he wished to inherit the Braun family’s fortune.

For the first few months, Henry had met clandestinely with Leonard—until that last day. They were supposed to meet at their usual place. Leonard never showed up. The evening news said a body had been found in the river.

After that Henry had devoted himself to his grandfather Henry IV’s sound advice. “Forget love, my boy. Forget sex. The only thing that matters is money, and the more the better. Money is the one and only thing you can count on.”

 Minnie never asked any questions. She hardly spoke at all—never made a single demand. She ran the house well, took excellent care of him, and always stayed within her budget. She never complained. And why should she? He had given her a rich, comfortable life with no worries that she would never would have had without him. Who would would want her—sullied as she was?

 It was a good marriage; an entirely satisfying arrangement for them both. Henry and Minnie had long ago given up on anything as foolish and dangerous as love.

Minnie Braun did not look up as another coughing fit wracked Henry’s body and turned his face purple. She looked at her watch. Jules Sackman was down on the first floor, waiting for her while she sat in bedside attendance. Henry turned his face away from her. As always, he did not require that she talk to him. 

Minnie stared down at the headline of the newspaper in her lap:

Woman Escapes from Rosencranz Asylum

Rosencranz! Her hand went to her heart, which felt as if it had skipped a beat. The newspaper, the hospital room, Henry’s coughing melted into the distant horizon of her past…

Rosencranz Asylum for Unwed Mothers—that had been its official name in her day, many years ago. Historically an opulent Art Deco party house built by a hedonistic wealthy atheist, Hobart Rosencranz, the facility had answered a greater need after his death—a clean, safe place for unwed, underage mothers from wealthy families to have their illegitimate babies.

Minnie shivered at the memories of herself, and the other young mothers–spending the last months of their pregnancies at Rosencranz. After they started to ‘show’, they sat in secret isolation with each other, well-fed, and well-housed, until they went into labor. 

Moments after the umbilical chords were cut, the babies were whisked away and  immediately placed into the arms of childless couples. Adoption fees collected, and everyone went home happy.

Except the mothers.

The girls never saw their babies, never got to hold them in their arms, nor even learn their gender. Even the babies who had been stillborn or who had not survived their own birthing. Like Minnie’s. She never knew if it was a boy or girl.

“Better that you not know,” the nurse had said, patting her knee. “It’s easier to get over that way.”

“How would you know?” She wanted to sneer at the nurse. In fact, it tore her heart out every waking moment, and she doubted she could ever forget. Neither indelible shame nor the passage of time could eclipse the profound sorrow that dwelt in her heart.

Rosencranz had a few plans to help the families get past the shame. But none for the mothers.

“Your daughter will be but a number in our records,” they had told Minnie’s father. “No one will ever know her name. Or that she was here. We shred all the records, once the babies are adopted out. When your daughter leaves here, her number will vanish, and all medical records relating to her and her baby will be destroyed. As if she had never been here. She will forget this unhappy experience in time, and move on to a happy life. No one will be the wiser.”

“36257,’ Minnie whispered.

I was there. I did not vanish. I did not forget.