She tiptoed up the stairs, and climbed into Jonah Tice’s bed.
“Wake up!” she said, cuddling close.
He smiled.
“It’s you.”
“It’s me.”
“I remember you. And then you go away. And then I don’t remember you. How do you do that?”
“I don’t know.” The thought of it made her incredibly sad.
“I’m glad you’re here now,” he said. And he held her hand.
“Do you have a pocketknife?
He did. The Sparrow unwound one of her braids. She pulled out a lock of hair and cut it with the knife, tying it into a tight bow and fitting it inside a locket that she had found on the rubbish heap. She put it around Jonah’s neck and secured the clasp.
“Isn’t this for a girl?” he asked.
“No. It’s for me to give to you, and for you to keep. One day, I will disappear. Either you will remember me, or you won’t.”
“I’ll remember you.”
“Sometimes you don’t.”
Jonah hung his head. It was true. And it shamed him. He imagined a needle and thread, stitching the memory of her into his soul. He felt himself bleed. He gripped the pendant. “I’ll never take it off. Never.”
“See that you don’t. When I disappear, throw the locket into the fountain.”
“And then what?”
“Maybe I’ll come back. Or maybe you’ll remember me, and that will be enough.”
“That’s not enough.”
“It’s enough for me. Promise. Promise you will.”
“Don’t go.”
“Promise.”
He listened to the snore of his parents, the song of crickets, the lonely cry of an owl in the dark. He hugged the Sparrow, who hugged him back.
“I promise.”
They fell asleep with their arms wrapped around one another, hanging on for dear life.
When Jonah woke, the Sparrow was gone. He didn’t remember her at all.
32. Now.
Jonah doesn’t keep his promise at first. When the wave came, the blast from its magic sent him flying backward. He hit a streetlamp, cracking his skull. The egg woman carried him in her arms to the doctor, who wasn’t sure he would make it.
And indeed, he didn’t want to make it. He watched the Sparrow disappear in a burst of light. There was nothing left of her. His heart would never heal.
As it turned out, while his heart, indeed, did not heal, his skull and his brain did. And when he woke, his pendant was gone.
Gone.
No one remembered seeing it.
His mother gathered him home to finish his recuperation. He refused to go out. He refused to eat. He stayed indoors for months, drawing pictures of the night sky and throwing them into the fire to be burned.
Six months after the wave washed over them, Jonah wakes in the middle of the night. He hears a voice calling his name. He tiptoes downstairs, and sees that the bowl of flowers in the center of the hand-planked table is gone. In its place is a locket. His locket.
He opens it up and sees the knot of hair. He brings it to his lips. It gives him an electric shock. Grabbing his coat and slipping on his boots, he runs into the night.
There is no moon, and the stars are sharp and cold, each one a bright pin holding up the sky. Their beauty begins to break his heart.
No, he thinks, it is already broken.
He presses the knot of hair against his sternum. Unaccountably, his heart feels more whole than it ever has. He feels as though he is floating. (And who knows? He may well be. The world is changing, after all.)
The town sleeps. No one is out. No one but Jonah.
There is a statue of the Sparrow next to the fountain. She is holding a Most Remarkable Hen. There is a butterfly on her back. Her hair billows behind her like a storm. Red flowers grow at her feet. It is the first time he has seen it, and he nearly collapses in grief. He hardly knew her. He loves her anyway.
Throw it in the fountain. That’s what she said.
And then what? is what he asked.
He doesn’t stop to wonder now. He throws the locket and the knot of hair into the fountain—a great, wild hope surging in his chest, like a wave.
“I remember you,” he whispers. “I remember and remember and remember. Now and forever, I remember you.”
He closes his eyes and waits.
Acknowledgments
Putting together a short story collection is a strange task. It is dizzying, frankly, to go back to fiction that has long since gone out into the world. It requires a writer to think backward and sideways and inside out all at once, holding each moment of story creation and execution like beads unleashed from their string, rolling each one over and under in the hand, trying to be both inside and outside at the same time. I feel that I have become, as Vonnegut would say, unstuck in time.
Except, no. That’s not really it.
It feels, more, I think, a little like excavation, a little like exploration, and a little like the myriad of tasks set to the infinite number of women who came before me—saving, sorting, arranging; dusting off, polishing up, finding the shine that once was lost; gathering, protecting, clucking, preening and finally tucking everything up and herding it to bed.
I started my career as a short story writer, and will probably continue being one, despite the novels. Or maybe because of the novels. The short story requires an entirely different set of muscles to build, and uses an entirely different part of the voice. They are, hands down, far more challenging to write than a novel, which is why it’s important that we write them. And read them. For those of you who are reading these words right now, it means that you have taken the time to read some, or maybe one, or maybe even all of the stories collected in this volume. And for that I thank you.
A couple more thanks are in order, though, if you wouldn’t mind indulging me:
First and foremost, I need to thank both Ann Vandermeer
