Soul of the Fire

Chapter 25

Roberta lifted her chin high in the air, stretching her neck, to guardedly peer off past the brink of the cliff not far away and look out over the fertile fields of her beloved Nareef Valley far below. Freshly plowed fields were a deep rich brown among breathtakingly bright green carpets of new crops and the darker verdant pastures where livestock, looking like tiny slow ants, cropped at tender new grass. The Dammar River meandered through it all, sparkling in the early-morning sunshine, escorted along its route by a gathering of dark green trees, as if they’d come to watch the river’s showy parade.

Whenever she went up in the woods near Nesting Cliff, she had herself a look from afar, just to see the pretty valley below. After allowing herself that brief look, she always lowered her eyes to the shaded forest floor at her feet, the leaf litter, and mossy stretches among dappled sunlight, where the ground was firm and comforting.

Roberta shifted the sack slung over her shoulder, and moved on. As she maneuvered through the clear patches among the huckleberry and hawthorn, stepped on stones set like islands among dark crevices and holes, and ducked under low pine boughs and alder limbs, she flipped aside with her walking stick a fern here or a low spreading balsam branch there, looking, always looking, as she moved along.

She spied a vase-shaped yellow cap and stooped for a look. Chanterelle, she was pleased to see, and not the poisonous jack-o’-lantern. Most folk favored the smooth yellow chanterelle mushroom for its nutlike flavor. She hooked the stem with a finger and plucked it up. Before sticking the prize in her sack, she ran her thumb over the featherlike gills just for the pleasure of the soft feel.

The mountain she searched for her mushrooms was only a small mountain, compared to the others jutting up all around, and but for Nesting Cliff, reassuringly round, with trails, a few made by man but most made by animal, crisscrossing the gentle wooded slopes. It was the kind of woods her aging muscles and increasingly aching bones favored.

It was said a person could see the ocean far off to the south from many of the taller mountains. She’d often heard it to be an inspiring sight. Many people went up there once every year or two just to view the splendor of the Creator by what He’d wrought.

Some of those trails took a person along the scruffy edges of cliffs and scree and such. Some folk even tended herds of goats up on those steep and rocky slopes. But for a journey when she was a small child, when her pa, rest his soul, took them off to Fairfield, for what she could no longer remember, she had never even been up there. Roberta was content to remain near the alluvial land. Unlike a lot of other folk, Roberta never climbed the higher mountains; she was afraid of high places.

Up higher yet, in the highlands above, were far worse places, like the wasteland up above where the warfer birds nested.

There was nothing in that desolate place, not a blade of grass nor a sprig of scrub brush, except those paka plants growing in that poison swampy water. Nothing else up there but the vast stretches of dark, rocky, sandy soil, and a few bleached bones, as she heard tell. Like another world, those who’d seen it said. Silent but for the wind that dragged the dark sandy dirt into mounds that shifted over time, always moving on, as if they were looking for something, but never finding it.

The lower mountains, like the ones she hunted for mushrooms, were beautiful, lush places, rounder and softer, mostly, and except for Nesting Cliff, not so steep and rocky. She liked it where it was full of trees and critters and growing things of all sorts. The deer trails she searched stayed away from the edges she didn’t like, and never went very close to Nesting Cliff, as it was called because the falcons liked to nest there. She liked the deep woods, where her mushrooms grew.

Roberta collected mushrooms to sell at market; some fresh, some dried, some pickled, and others fixed in various ways. Most folk called her the mushroom lady, and knew her by no other name. Sold at market, the mushrooms helped earn her family some trading money for the things that made life easier: needles and thread, some ready-made cloth, buckles and buttons, a lamp, oil, salt, sugar, cinnamon, nuts—things to help a body have an easier time of it. Easier for her family, and especially for her four grandchildren still living. Roberta’s mushrooms provided all those things to supplement what they grew or raised themselves.

Of course, they made good eating, too. She did like best the mushrooms that grew in the forests up on the mountain, rather than those down in the valley. Touched as they were up there by clouds so much of the time, the mushrooms grew well in the damp conditions. She always thought there were none better than those from up on the mountain, and many folk sought her out just for her mountain mushrooms. Roberta had her secret places, too, where she found the best ones every year. The big pockets in her apron were plump and full with them, as was the sack over her shoulder.

Because it was still early in the year, she’d mostly found heavy clusters of the tawny-colored oyster mushrooms. Their fleshy, tender caps were best for dipping in egg and frying, so she’d sell them fresh. But she’d been lucky, and would be setting out chanterelles to dry as well as offering fresh. She found a goodly number of pheasant’s-backs, too, and they’d be best pickled, if she wanted to get the highest price.

It was too early for woolly velvet in most places, even though it would be common enough later on in the summer, but she’d gone to one of her special spots—where there were a lot of pine stumps and she’d found some of the ocher-colored woolly velvet used to make dye. Roberta had even found a rotting birch with a cluster of smoky brown poly-pores. The kidney-shaped mushrooms were favored by cooks to keep a fire blazing and by men to strop their razors.

Leaning on her walking stick, Roberta bent over a harmless-looking brownish mushroom. It had a ring on the off-white stalk. She saw that the yellowish gills were just starting to turn a rust color. It was that time of year for this mushroom, too. Grunting her displeasure, she let the deadly galerina be and moved on.

Back under the spreading limbs of an oak, as big around as her two oxen shoulder-to-shoulder when they were yoked up, she plucked up three good sized spicy chanterelles. The spicy variety grew almost exclusively under oak wood. They had already turned from yellow to orange, so they’d be choice eating.

Roberta knew where she was, but was off her usual path, so she’d never seen the huge oak before. When she’d seen the tree’s crown, she knew that with all the shade it provided it would be a good spot for mushrooms. She was not disappointed.

At the base of the oak, around part of the trunk where it came up from the ground, she was delighted to see a bunch of small pipes, or beef vein as some folk called them because the standing tubes were sometimes a vivid red like a whole passel of veins bunched together and cut off even like. These, though, were pinkish, streaked with just a bit of red. Roberta preferred the name small pipes, but she still didn’t hold much favor with them. Some folk, though, bought them for their tart taste and they were on the rare side, so they brought a decent price.

Under the tree, in the deep shade, was a ring of spirit-bells, so called because of their bell-like tops. They weren’t poisonous, but because of the bitter taste and woody texture, no one liked them. Worse, though, people thought that anyone stepping inside the ring would be bewitched, so folks generally didn’t even want to see the lovely little spirit bells. Roberta had been walking through spirit-bell rings since she was a toddler when her mother would take her along mushrooming.

Since she held no favor with such superstition about her beloved mushrooms, she stepped through the ring of spirit bells, imagining she heard their delicate chimes, and gathered up the small pipes.

One of the spreading branches of the oak grew down low enough to make a seat. Big around as her ample waist, it was comfortable enough, and dry enough, for a good sit.

Roberta slipped her sack to the ground. She sighed with relief as she laid her weary bones back against another branch, which turned up at just the right angle to rest her shoulders and head against. The tree seemed to cup her in its sheltering hand.

Daydreaming as she was, she thought it was part of the dream when she heard a whisper that sounded like her name. It was a pleasing, low, warm sound, more a feeling of good things and pleasant thoughts than a word.

The second time, she knew it wasn’t part of her daydream, and she was sure it was her name being spoken, but in a fashion somehow more intimate than a mere spoken word.

The thing was, the way it was spoken strummed the strings of her heart. Like the spirit’s own music, it was. All lovely with kindness, compassion, and warmth. It made her sigh. It made her happy. It fell across her like warm sunlight on a chill day.

The third time, she sat up to look, longing to see the source of such a touching voice. Even as she moved, she felt like she was in one of her daydreams, all peaceful and content. The forest all about seemed to sparkle in the morning sun, seemed to glow.

Roberta let out a small gasp when she saw him not far away.

She’d never seen him before, but she’d always known him, it seemed. She realized he was a familiar friend, a comfort, a partner from her mind since youth, though she never really gave it much thought before. He was the one who had always been there with her, it seemed. The one she always thought about when she was daydreaming. The face without definition, yet one she knew well.

Now she realized he was as real as she had always imagined when she kissed him in her fancies, which she had done ever since she was young enough to know that a kiss was something more than your mother, gave you before bed. His were kisses given in bed. All warm and ardent.

She’d never thought he was real, but now she was sure she’d always known he was. As he stood there, gazing into her eyes, how could he not be real? His tumble of hair swept back from his glorious face, showing his warm smile, though she thought it puzzling that she couldn’t say just what he looked like. Yet at the same time, she knew his face as well as she knew hers.

And, she knew his every thought, just as he knew every thought and longing of hers. He was her soul’s true mate.

She knew his thoughts; she didn’t need his name. That she didn’t know his name was only proof to her that they were connected on a spiritual level that transcended words.

And now he had stepped out of the mist of that spiritual world, needing to be with her, just as she needed to be with him. His hand opened to her, as if avowing his need. Roberta reached for the hand. She seemed almost to float above the ground. Her feet touched like dandelion fluff drifting on a breath. Her body floated like weed in water as she stretched out to him. Stretched out for his embrace.

The closer she got, the warmer she felt. Not warm as if from the sun on her face, but warmed as if from a lover’s arms, a lover’s smile, a lover’s sweet kiss.

Her whole life came down to this, to needing to be in his arms feeling his tender embrace, needing to whisper her yearning because she knew he would understand, needing the breath from his lips on her ear, telling her he understood.

She burned to whisper her love, to have him whisper his.

She needed nothing in life so much as she needed to be in those arms she knew so well.

Her muscles were no longer weary; her bones no longer ached. She was no longer old. The years had slipped away from her like clothes slipping from lovers shedding encumbrances in order to get down to the bare essence of their being.

Because of him, because of him alone; she was again in the winsome bloom of youth, where everything was possible.

His arm floated out to her, his need for her as great as hers for him. She stretched for his hand, but it seemed farther away, and she stretched more, but it was more distant still.

Panic raced through her as she feared he would be gone before she could at last touch him. She felt as if she were swimming in honey and could make no progress. Her whole life she had longed to touch him. Her whole life she had longed to tell him. Her whole life she had longed to have her soul join with his.

But now he was drifting from her.

Roberta, her legs leaden, leaped through the spring sunshine, through the sweet air, racing to her lover’s arms.

And yet he was farther still.

Both his arms lifted to her. She could feel his need. She ached to comfort him. To shelter him from hurt. To sooth his strife.

He could feel those longings in her, and cried out her name that she might be strengthened in her effort to reach him. The sound of her name on his lips made her heart lift with joy, lift with a terrible pang of need to return such passion as he put into her name.

She wept to know his name, now, that she might put it to her undying love.

With all her might, she stretched out to him. She put her entire being into her reckless lunge for him, forsaking all care but her fierce need to reach him.

Roberta cried her nameless love, cried her need, as she reached for his ringers. His arms spread to take her into his loving embrace. As she rushed into those arms, the sun sparkled all about, the warm wind lifted her hair, ruffled her dress.

As he cried her name with such beauty it made her ache, her arms spread wide to take him at last into her embrace. She felt as if she were floating endlessly through the air toward him, the sun on her face, the breeze in her hair, but it was all right because now she was where she wanted to be—with him.

At that moment, there was no more perfect time in the whole of her life. No more perfect feeling in the whole of her existence. No more perfect love in the whole of the world.

She heard the perfect chimes of those feelings ring out with the glory of it all.

Her heart nearly burst as she at last plunged into his embrace in one wild rush, screaming out her need, her love, her completion, wanting only to know his name so she might give everything of herself to him.

His glowing smile was for her and her alone. His lips were for her and her alone. She closed that last bit of space toward him, longing to at last kiss the love of her life, the mate to her soul, the one and the only true passion in all of life.

His lips were there, at last, as she fell into his outstretched arms, into his embrace, into his perfect kiss.

In that flawless instant when her lips were just touching his, she, saw through him, just beyond him, the merciless unyielding valley floor hurtling up toward her, and she knew at last his name.

Death.