Lest I Forget
And it occurs to me, not for the first time, that dead things need care and nurturing just as live ones do. This bridge of dead wood, which I cross now for the last time, creaks alarmingly under my weight; with no new growth, without my constant care in repairing it, it will one day fall to pieces. Death wants to rot, to crumble, to blow away, to be left in peace. Life wants... I don't know, yet, what life wants. But I intend to find out.
When last I crossed this bridge, on my way out to the platform at the end of the world, I reached into my pocket for the mending-twine that wasn't there, and laughed at myself. This time, I would burn the bridge behind me, if I only knew how to do it without endangering the living tree I return to.
I suppose it's been close to twenty years that I've kept the bridge in order, kept my fornightly pilgrimage to my flimsy perch, to talk to the dead and tell myself I am waiting for the living. There must have been many days, many fornights, while we crouched on the reefs and watched the world burn; and how many more while we tended the burned and the injured, mourned the dead, and struggled to save the one tree that survived? I was younger then, not much for counting things out and trying to make them line up in my mind. But I never forgot you, Saavedro, and when at last we were hale enough and the tree large enough to let us explore the burned ruins, I was the first to clamber up to the glide car cable's mooring. Climbing the platform was out of the question; that had broken loose in the fire, or in the aftermath of the fire, and if the glide car came, its passengers would have found themselves suspended high in the air, far above the deep waters. Exactly where we'd want them, if Sirrus and Achenar came back.
Even with the platform gone, even with the journey out here being a long and difficult climb from the world of the living, many people still wanted to cut the cable for good, wanted to be assured that they could forever turn their backs on this place without fear of them creeping back when no one was looking.
But I was adamant, my love. I think I may even have threatened harm to them or myself if they cut the cable that I still hoped would bring you home. I know I raged, and I know I wept. In the end, this bridge has been a compromise: a compromise between stubborn old Tamra and the Elders, and a compromise between the world of the living and the world of the dead. They let me have my way, but they would not help me have it; I strung these vines myself, wove in the dead wood, and maintained the bridge I'd made. Though I knew, even then, that you were dead.
I wonder if Corano will credit his proposal for causing my change of heart. Well, he deserves some credit, if only by example. His wife Miall dead only five years, and here he is proposing; going on with his life. My aging body reminds me that my energy is limited, and will only be more so as the years go on; perhaps Corano made me realize that I do have a choice, whether to spend my energy on the dead, or on the living.
The Elders were pleased, I think, when I told them old stubborn Tamra was tired of her regular trek, when I told them I would cut the glide-car cable myself if they would allow it. They've wanted just that for years. But recently it has been a token argument only; they glowered and asked when I would allow the cable to be cut, I glared and told them it would not be cut until my husband came home; but for all our fiery words, a child learning to read could just as easily have read our parts, and with much the same effect. We have all grown tired of the matter, I think.
And so I crossed the bridge for the almost-last time, the last time out to the cable. I left my mending twine at home and carried the cutters tied into a bundle on my back, and the proposal-tokens in my pockets, the old and the new both. Catching my breath on the small platform, I took them out: one old and worn, one freshly-scribed and still blank on one side, both made of glittering shell. I held my future and my past in the palm of my hand.
My husband's, my dear husband's, is so worn as to be illegible. But I remember what poem he scribed on his side: Love nurtures infinite possibilites. A noble and well-meant pledge from a young man with a world of possibilites in front of him, and love not the least of them. Ahh, Saavedro, was I ever that young? But on the reverse, my reply and my promise: With love will grow our mutual harmony. I must have been young when I scribed that; young and more hopeful, more foolish, than I can now recall.
We weren't even particularly original. I've seen the same poems, and poems almost the same as these, on many tokens since; on the tokens we cast back to the sea at too-many memorial services, on the token my daughter, our daughter, showed me, breathless, laughing, asking, "What shall I say back to him, Mother? What shall I say?" But we were young, very young and very trusting, and if it has all been said before, still we meant it, and knew no one had ever meant it as much as we did.
And on the newer token, still waiting for its reply, Corano's steadying poetry: Love will transform chaos into growth. Still hopeful -- that must be the human condition -- but older, wiser, and more original. As I am older now, and perhaps wiser, and have certainly tired of old platitudes.
I was weighing them in my hands, having made my decision even before Corano gave me the token, needing only to decide what to scribe before returning it to him, before choosing the world of the living and casting my dead husband's token, with a prayer, into the sea. Perhaps it was the thrumming of the glide-car cable that woke me from my thoughts, or perhaps a glimpse of movement, but after my slow old mind made the connection, I leaped to my feet so quickly that the old token slipped from my grasp and fell. I almost dropped the cutters, struggling to unwrap them quickly, quickly, as if Sirrus and Achenar might actually be able to get out of the glide car and find some way across the gaping drop below before I could cut the cable.
I had the cutters on the cable, working at it, when the voice stopped me. A voice shouting, "No! No! No! No!" over and over, frantic, maybe a bit mad, but a single voice, and familiar in ways that Sirrus's or Achenar's would never be. I stared at the glide car, watched it come to a halt over the great drop, stared at the occupant. He wore rags and carried a stone hammer, he looked quite mad with the tears running down his cheeks, but his hair was yellow, not dark as the brothers' had been, and when he looked at me, I almost dropped the cutters. This was not the face I remembered; it was older, and more savage, but it was his face. It was Saavedro.
And just for a moment, I thought -- By the weaving! This changes everything.
And he looked up at me, perched by the cable, both madness and recognition in his face, and called my name in a shaking, hesitant voice: "Tamra?"
There are moments in time when everything changes, when a thousand thoughts weave through one's mind in only a second or two. In that moment, still holding the cutter to the cable, I realized -- nothing has changed, Tamra. Who knows if he was mad or sane, if he was my beloved Saavedro or a tool of Achenar's and Sirrus's? Even if he is whole in mind and body, he comes too late, and no one will care about whatever news he brings. My beloved husband died long ago, and I have this morning resolved to spend no more time on the dead.
"I will always love you," I said as I finished cutting the cable; and I always will.
And so I cross the dead bridge for the very last time, returning from the cable mooring. I will not come this way again. I give the cutters to one of the youngers, to put back into work on shaping the living wood, and I make my way back to the tiny room I share. I know now what I will scribe on Corano's token: Love remembers, the intellect sacrifices. He may take it as he will, though I hope he will take it as "yes."
I know what death wants: peace, rest, and an end to struggling.
I don't know, yet, what life wants. But I intend to find out.
(August 2003)