I love my father’s stories, but he seldom tells them anymore. Some things are best left to die, he says. Stories haunt the living and when my father turns his gaze back to the flames, I can see he’s no longer with us. Words hold power-everyone knows this-but perhaps those who tell stories know it better than the rest, for through their voice, the dead live again, resurrected like that story of the woman Eurydice, except there’s no Orpheus to lead the way back to the world of the living.
Just as well-he didn’t do a particularly good job of it.
“You tell one then, Cass,” Paul says. “You tell a story.”
I’m not sure why, but the look in Paul’s eyes tells me he needs this story from me, to hold him to the earth, to tie him to something solid. Stories do that, my father says. They make the impossible real. That’s why my father’s choice to not tell stories anymore hurts both Paul and me. Some days we need to believe in the impossible.
But when I try to find the words, none will come. I try, but all I can think of is that my father looks so sad tonight, staring into the fire, remembering. I know the story he would tell, if he could speak, the one of how he met my mother and knew, in an instant, she was the one he would marry. He’s told it to us often enough, but tonight, for some reason, he can’t, and neither can I.
Later, against my wishes, the wind dies and Bran leaves. My father leaves as well, but Paul and I stay by the fire. Paul stares at the coals pulsing gray and gold. The fire has stolen him, drawing him down into the world of vision.
Above us, stars crowd the heavens. When we were little, Paul wanted to be a star. I don’t know where he got that idea, but stars were the one thing he never tired of learning of at school. He learned all the myths, of Andromeda, of Calliope, and, especially, of Orion. The stars of Orion’s belt have always been his favorite. My father says his father told him those three stars were once three ravens, crossing the heavens.
A branch breaks in the forest behind me, as if in answer to my questions. I whirl around, but there’s nothing there.
My movement rouses Paul. “What’s the matter?” he asks, rubbing his eyes.
“I heard something behind us.” A shiver slithers up my arm. “Probably just a deer.”
“Probably,” he says, yawning, but I see the worried wrinkle of his brow as he turns his gaze back to the fire.
What does he see in the embers? I wish I knew, but I must wait until he’s ready to tell me. And I hate waiting.
He knows this and lies down, leaving room for me. When we were little, our family would spend nights under the stars, lying with our heads together to create a star of our own. The top of my head touches Paul’s, and my arms stretch out at my sides, filling the space our parents would have claimed. Satellites swoop through the heavens, as bright as fireflies.
“Do you think they’re watching us?” Paul asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I hope not.” But I get up and head for the house anyhow.
I bolt awake.
Moonlight spills into my room, painting the floor a milky white. The grumble and roar of my father’s snoring rises from downstairs.
Paul isn’t in the house. I can feel it. Something is wrong. Altered.
I slip from my sleeping bag and tiptoe downstairs. Sure enough, Paul’s sleeping bag is empty again.
Outside, the lake stretches out like a silver gauntlet, beckoning me.
I step over the threshold, out into a night full of frog song. But then, the frogs stop singing. The night goes silent. I stand completely still. Paul is out there somewhere. I want to search for him, but fear grips me and all I can do is stare into the depths of the forest.
A rock bounces out of the shadows, nearly hitting my leg.
“Paul?”
“Go back inside.” His voice drifts up from somewhere down the hill. There’s no way he could have thrown that rock.
“Paul, what’s wrong?”
“Cass, go back inside.”
“But…”
“GO NOW!”
I flee, tripping over the threshold and falling into the house.
My father wakes up and stumbles from his room to stare at me. “What’s going on?” he rasps.
I don’t answer. I don’t have an answer. Sparks of spirit float around my head, trying to warn me of something I don’t understand. My father draws me into his arms, but I can’t see him. The sparks press in on me, droning like a swarming hive, so thick I might drown.
And then I feel it, way down in the bottom of my gut: only a tickle at first, but then it grows, crescendoing to a rumble, forcing me to my feet as I drag my father after me.
The world is about to change.
The floor shudders and suddenly my father understands. “Up to the road!” he shouts.
Stones bite into my bare feet. I slip, fall, skin my knee, my hands, as I try to stand. My father hauls me up. The sparks coat my eyes, my ears. I feel like I’ll retch, but I can’t. Not yet.
We fall on the old, broken asphalt.
My father wheezes, “Paulie?”
In reply, the world begins to sway.
When the earthquake finally stops, I scramble down the hill to search the lakeshore while my father scours the woods that flank the house. No Paul. The look on my father’s face when I meet him halfway up the hill mirrors my own. We are panic-stricken.
“Back up to the road,” my father says. “He’s probably waiting for us up there.”
But the road is no longer a road. Asphalt lies in heaves and gullies, and trees are strewn about like spent match-sticks. An earthquake is always a reminder that we humans are as expendable as anything else, and if a fir that has weathered five hundred years of existence can be toppled, so can we.
A whistle from behind makes me whirl around, and there Paul is, stepping out from the forest, covered in scrapes. He holds his left forearm with his right hand and the dark seep of blood stains his shirt. A piece of wood is embedded in his skin.
We run to him.
“Leave it,” he says when I move to examine his arm.
I give him my sternest look. “Only if you want it to fester. You’ll lose your arm.” I can’t tell him how relieved I am, how worried I was.
“Fine,” Paul snaps. “Get it out, then.”
We head back down the driveway and stop at the truck. Paul paces, waiting as my father fishes our precious supply of whiskey out from behind the seat, as I stare at the house, looking to see how it fared. In the predawn darkness, it looks okay, but what damage will daylight reveal? None if we’re lucky, though I know that’s too much to hope for.
“Here, Cass,” my father says, handing me his jackknife. “Use this.”
Paul watches as I dig the wood from his flesh, and doesn’t wince-not once, not even when I pour whiskey over the wound and stitch it with deer-gut thread.
“Another scar,” I murmur as I tie off the knot.
He grins. “Good.”
Our house, by some miracle, is unscathed. Below, the boathouse has come loose from its moorings and the dock is partially submerged, but it’s nothing that can’t be fixed.
Only then, after we’ve surveyed the damage, do I let myself think of Bran, of Madda, of the people in the town. If the wind listens, if the sky hears my words, surely they will see them all safe.
Paul touches my arm. “Relax,” he says. “It’ll be okay.”
But I see the raven in my brother’s eyes, and I know more is yet to come.
