Chapter 34: A Soft Epilogue
When life weighs heavily on Jacob, there's some comfort to be had sitting around the cooking pit with other people. At least once in awhile. Mostly, though, he lives in his cabin, where the wood stove actually needs deadwood to boil his tea or oats, instead of a wave of the hand. Five years later and he's still not used to it.
John Locke rules the Temple now. Sometimes Jacob visits, but he doesn't stay for more than a few days at a time, because he senses that beneath the veil of courteous words, Locke sees Jacob as an obscure threat. Besides, Ben Linus's tense rapprochement with Goodwin makes Jacob nervous. Had the two men been Romans, they would have gone into the fighting circle and only one would have emerged.
Jacob still can't understand modern people.
Only young Boone (a youth no longer, having grown into a tawny, golden-haired man) is sad to see him go. Jacob has often imagined inviting Boone to visit the cabin, but just as quickly lays the thought aside. Once Jacob was able to read thoughts; perhaps Locke can read his, and fears the competition.
Whenever Jacob has a craving for breadfruit flour, fresh fish, or vegetables, he makes his way to the settlements around the Island: a shy, solitary man in a white linen cloak, something like Gandalf the wise but with far less assurance.
Jacob brings baskets of finely-spun linen thread and bags of flax seeds with their precious oil to the old beach camp, although it's not exactly a camp anymore. The rickety tarp-and-metal structures have been replaced by sturdy Polynesian-style wooden houses with steep thatched roofs. Hand-carved outriggers dot the shoreline.
Rose and Bernard greet him warmly, as do Sun, Jin, and the others. He admires Sun's growing skill at the loom, even though he's lost the ability to read the brilliant green Korean characters which emblazon her tapestries.
In a long-standing ritual, Rose makes him tea, for Jacob has more to offer than just flax. Freely he tells her what had taken him decades or even centuries to puzzle out with no guide or counsel. He tells her the mistakes, too, as she listens avidly and without judgment.
In the evenings, the children dance around him, begging for stories. Hiding the sting of tears, he tells them tales of tall ships and sea battles; of the dark-winged serpent which once stalked the forest. Wide-eyed, the children gasp or cling to each other. When they hear stories of the ghosts who still whisper in the tree-tops, they whisper a prayer for the dead, just as Father Eko has taught them.
Even though the beach folk invite him to stay, Jacob always leaves, laden with taro root, salt, dried seafood. He returns home to sow and harvest more flax, and the cycle begins anew.
He isn't happy. Perhaps he can't be, not entirely. But it's a life.
Danielle slips between trees so tall they blot out most of the midday sun, leaving the jungle undergrowth in perpetual twilight. Alex follows close behind her mother with a toddler strapped tightly to her back. Karl brings up the rear, and all three bear large, curved knives.
They hear the frantic squeals before they spot the terrified young boar twisting in its rope trap. Danielle crosses herself, lips moving in prayer, then slices the animal's throat in one clean stroke. They hang the twitching carcass by its hocks and get to work at once. Even on this Island, heat will eventually spoil a kill.
Freed from her baby sling, the little girl picks up a stick and pretends to flense the tough hide just as her parents and grandmother do. When she loses interest, she dances around the gut-pile and pokes it with her stick. The intestines move from the gases trapped inside them, and she laughs.
As the two women scrape the last scraps of fat from the boar hide, Danielle turns to Alex. "Do you ever regret it?"
Alex looks up and wipes her knife. "Regret what?"
"This life. Everything."
"You're kidding, Mom, right?"
Karl blows up the boar's bladder like a balloon and tosses it to the child. "Here you go, Roberta." As she slaps it around, her happy cries float to the treetops.
Later they trudge back to their bunker in the heart of the Dark Territory, laden with meat, fat, and hide. Danielle can't help but smile every step of the way.
On the Fiji island of Vanua Levu, a large sailing yacht sits in dock. On her starboard side, bright blue and gold letters spell out Our Mutual Friend. In the early dawn, everyone on board is asleep save one.
Desmond stands on deck, drinking last night's reheated tea from a mug. The grey beach is silent save for the occasional shrieks of gulls. Below deck, Penny and their son Charlie still lie curled up asleep. Desmond gulps more tea, grateful for the stirring breeze.
He's up because of that dream, the one he's had for the third time in five years. The dream is always the same. He's back in time to the night the Elizabeth capsized and left him to drift unconscious towards the Island.
In his dream there's no storm. Instead, sunlight pours like liquid gold over the corrugated rocks. Limp as a jellyfish he drifts on the waves, past boulders sharp as sawteeth. The warm sea nestles him, keeping him safe.
On the highest pile of rocks, a small dark-skinned girl waves, her blue dress flapping in the breeze. As he draws closer, she beckons in welcome. Just as he's about to reach the shore, a tremendous swell pushes him under, and that's when he wakes up.
He finishes his tea as Penny appears on deck. She takes one look at him and without being told says, "A few more people on the Island have decided to leave, haven't they?"
He smiles and nods, already looking forward to the journey. Charlie at age three is old enough for playmates, of which the Island has a good supply. Every time Desmond makes this trip for Rose, he stays longer before departing, to the point where he wonders why they should stay on Vanua Levu at all.
"How attached are you to Fiji?" he asks Penny.
In answer, she lays her head against his chest. He hears her muffled "Not very," as she rocks in time to the gentle slaps of waves on the hull.
Walt has early dismissal, so Michael meets him at St. Andrews Day School on West 74th. His crew renovating the Hotel Earle can spare him for a few hours, long enough for he and Walt to grab some hot dogs and take Vincent to the Riverside Park dog run.
The flowering crab-apple trees look like clouds floating low over the green May lawns. Off-leash, Vincent bounds to and fro, sniffing some dogs, barking at others in happy, high-pitched yipes.
Even so, Walt is preoccupied, quieter than usual. "Anything wrong?" Michael asks with the normal parental dread that the answer will be too large to handle.
"Dad, you remember back in sixth grade, when I asked you how long Labradors live? Fifteen, twenty years you told me."
Caught. Busted. No way out but through. "Your grandma was still in the ICU, Walt. I didn't think you could handle any more bad news."
"I know," Walt says quietly. "Vincent was a grown-up dog when I got him. Anyway, I looked it up at school. Ten years, maybe twelve." They both glance over to Vincent at the same time. Not a single grey hair glints in his muzzle, and his fur is sleek, unchanged.
"I'm sorry, Walt. I shouldn't have lied to you." Michael sighs. He has always known that neither Vincent nor his mother were going to last forever. Two years after he returned to New York City, cherries flashed as Ruth Dawson was sped to the hospital. When Michael finally got to see her, she lay unconscious in the ICU swathed in tubes, surrounded by beeping machines.
The next evening, Michael left the ICU to find Rose in the waiting room, sitting calmly with hands folded.
The ICU staff only allowed one ten-minute visit every hour, and Michael had just used up his. For some reason the nurse softened and let Rose in for an extra visit. She didn't even write it down in the log book.
When Rose emerged, she was smiling but said nothing. Together they picked up Walt from school, and afterwards he cooked everyone chicken burritos with white-cheese sauce. She listened with that same beatific smile as Walt prattled on happily about classes and soccer practice, while Vincent panted at the boy's feet.
She kept reaching down to ruffle the dog behind his ears. Michael thought nothing of it at the time, nor when his mother was released from the hospital a week later. Her heart had been fine since.
"It's okay, Dad. I was just a kid then. I get why you did it."
A few moments later, Vincent bounds back to Michael and Walt, followed by a middle-aged woman with a whippet. "You have the most wonderful dog," she gushes in an enthusiastic voice. "So gentle, and with such good manners. How old is he?"
Michael and Walt glance at each other before Michael speaks. "We don't exactly know. He was a rescue."
The woman walks away smiling, as if Michael has made her day. When she's out of hearing range, Michael and Walt start to chuckle.
Fragment of an Atlanta Tribune Life and Style interview, "YA Fantasy Author Shakes Up the Genre Once Again," May 24, 2010:
...where we spoke with James Ford and his lovely obstetrician wife Juliet Carlson, just on her way to her busy practice at Emory University Hospital, where she specializes in natural birth in a low-tech setting.
"She's done it twice," Ford jokes after kissing his wife good-bye. "She's braver than me. I got no complaints, though. Juliet does the work, and I get to write."
When asked about his major inspirations, Ford mentions young-adult classics such as Judy Blume's Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret and Richard Adams' Watership Down, but his works go far beyond sweet tales of cheeky teens and fluffy bunnies. Ford draws from the well of his own experiences, and it's a deep one. His debut novel Wonderland Express was inspired by his own personal tragedy as a childhood survivor of the murder-suicide of his parents.
Ford's second release, Death Island, is based on his remarkable real-life adventure as a passenger who survived the mysterious South Pacific crash of Oceanic 815. The unknown island and a portion of the remaining survivors have never been found.
Set on a fog-shrouded island off the coast of Vancouver, the shipwrecked young teens of Death Island struggle with each other, ghosts, and "spirit bears" of indigenous legend, who turn out to be not what they seem. When asked about the distinctly non-tropical setting, Ford chuckles. "Let's just say I'm full to the brim of trekking through steaming jungles."
To a reviewer who called him "an unholy fusion of Roald Dahl and Stephen King," Ford responded, "Strong themes are necessary in kids' books. Kids need to crawl right down there under the bed and confront the darkness."
Not everyone agrees. Two years ago, Wonderland Express was banned in the suburban Atlanta school district of Cotterville, which led to a swift reaction by the American Association of School Librarians. Of the ban, Ford said, "Kids are going to learn about sex and death sooner or later. Better they come to respect both."
When asked about movie options for his novels, Ford replied, "I guess the time just isn't right" for Hollywood, but added that his agent has been in negotiations with Netflix and Amazon...
In early June, two women sit on the shaded back porch of a house high upon a Santa Monica Canyon hillside. Heavily pregnant, Claire sprawls out on a lounger, while two-year old Luke balances himself on what little lap she has left. Kate relaxes in a lawn chair, sipping iced herbal tea.
Four other children race around Claire and Hurley's backyard jungle gym, where five-year old Aaron has scrambled the top. He crows like the cock-of-the-walk as the younger ones try to reach him. When Claire's eldest daughter Rosie slips and falls onto the soft shredded-tire surface, she picks herself up without crying and tries again.
Claire says to Kate, "Leaving this weekend, are you? You might miss the birth."
Kate smiles. "You'll have to do without me for this one. The court papers came earlier this week."
"Oh, my God," Claire says. "Finally."
"No more probation," Kate says with a grin. "I've never been to Cape Cod, but Jack says it's wonderful. Margo's already gone ahead to open up the house."
Claire glances at Kate's four-year old twins, the same age as Rosie. "Lily and David are finally old enough for a holiday, I'd say. They were a handful for ever so long."
"All that time on the Island, Jack was scrupulously careful. Then, when we finally got to Honolulu..." Kate laughs at a warm, private memory.
Claire has some fond memories of her own, of a real bed for the first time in months. The cold shiver of air-conditioning. How her hands slid over the vast expanse of Hurley's cool flesh as they snuggled under the covers, warming each other until they melted in more ways than one.
"The twins were a surprise, though," Kate goes on. "But they did keep me out of jail."
Claire nods. Twins meant a high-risk pregnancy, and luckily for Kate, her judge was a grandmother who gave her two years house arrest, except for medical visits. Not that Kate was going anywhere, on bed rest for the last trimester, then coping with two gurgling, squalling bundles who filled her heart, life, and hands. Jack didn't schedule any surgeries for four months after David and Lily's birth.
Three years' probation followed. Now Kate was free to go anywhere she and Jack wanted.
"I'll miss you," Claire says. "You were there for Aaron, then for Rosie and Luke here." The little boy peeks up at the mention of his name, then slides off her lap and rummages in the nearby sandbox for a toy. "But I get it. It's your first time away."
"You'll be fine. All I did was hold your hand."
"Oh, as if that's nothing. Hand-holding is important."
"Well, who knows? You might get another chance. Memories aren't all I might bring back from Cape Cod."
Claire laughs. "Finally ready to try again, I see."
"Have twins and then tell me how easy it is."
"No chance of that, unless another one's hiding where we can't see him."
At that instant, Claire's phone chimes out the first few bars of "Catch a Falling Star," and she flips it open. "Shannon, hi. Kate's here, mind if I put you on speaker?"
"Hey, you two," Shannon says. "Just got done with a Beverley Hills hellcat who thinks her daughter's another Pavlova." Claire can almost hear Shannon's eyes rolling back into her head. "You know my philosophy, meet every child where they are. It's the mothers who make me want to throw in the towel."
The three of them chat until Shannon finishes with, "Hell yes, Claire, I'm coming to stay with you after the baby." A little boy's voice babbles in the background. "Of course you're invited, Omer." Shannon laughs, then goes on. "Anyway, Sayid's teaching a cram class in Monterey all summer. You know how it is, the Marines can never get enough Arabic teachers. So I guess with Kate gone, you'll be stuck with me. Since your mom can't make it."
"Mum's only been off the walker a few months. And it's a long flight."
"It's been what, three years now?" Kate says to Claire.
Claire tries not to sound defensive, but the telly so often gets it wrong, and she does get tired of explaining. "You don't just wake up from a coma and walk around like nothing's happened."
Shannon changes the subject. "So, Kate's off to Cape Cod. Me, I'm running back-to-back all-day ballet camps the whole summer long. Enjoy that vacation for me." She pauses. "I know what you need to do this weekend, Claire. Work on getting that labor started."
The three women explode into an uproar of laughter. They haven't forgotten how Claire urged Aaron into labor.
As Claire flips the phone shut, she says with a grin, "I could get behind this project."
"Or on top of it," Kate says with a smirk. "Oh look, speak of the devil."
"Two devils." Claire and Kate laugh again, because their husbands are anything but devilish.
As Hurley and Jack make their way up the path to the house, Luke launches himself at his father, squealing, "Daddy!" The other children take up the cry and run to the men. Jack, laden down with an armload of twins, leans over to kiss Kate.
Hurley helps Claire to her feet. "You're just in time for lunch," she says. "Your mum must run a brutal meeting."
He laughs half-heartedly. "You remember when Rose came for that visit three years ago?"
"I remember," Claire says. They had never thought they'd see Rose again, but she turned up on Hurley's parents' doorstep without so much as a postcard to announce her arrival. She had stayed exactly twenty-four hours before moving on, with a mysterious remark about other stops to make. The result of that sleepless night was the Reyes Charitable Trust, with Carmen in charge of the appropriations committee.
"I think Rose created a monster. This morning, man oh man. I wouldn't have wanted to be on the other side of that Power Point presentation, I tell you."
Through the Reyes Trust, Carmen has already funded food pantries in three parishes, health clinics throughout Los Angeles, numerous after-school programs, and a scholarship for Walt's tuition through college. Hurley goes on, "Today it was a guy who wanted to run those summer camps she's got in mind. She got a phone call in the middle of his presentation."
"That was me," Claire said. "I didn't know she was in the middle of a meeting. Earlier she just asked me to call at 10:30, put the kids on for a minute. Let them say hi to Abuelita."
This amuses Hurley. "Mom gets crazy about lying. If she's gonna trick you, she'll do it fair and square. I watched the guy get more and more annoyed at her talking to her grand-kids. Long story short, no contract for him."
Jack laughs. "By those standards, my old man would have never gotten a position." He says to Kate, "My excuse isn't so interesting. The last consult canceled."
Hurley lifts Luke to his shoulders for a ride, just as he used to do when the other children were smaller. Rosie clings to his leg, while Aaron helps carry the iced-tea glasses into the house. Noonday sun bathes the garden with clear golden light, not Island light, true, but it still fills Claire with rare warmth.
Maybe it's just the sentimentality of late pregnancy, when tears or wild joy can spring up at any instant. "I love you all," Claire bursts out. "I'm so glad we're together."
(The End)
(A/N: We've come to the end of the journey, faithful readers. I hope you enjoyed this softer version of LOST with its more gentle ending.
Thank you so much for letting know what you thought, both in reviews and PMs. Your support kept me going when I wanted to throw in the towel more than once. Many thanks also to my faithful story-editor helpers who talked me down off more than a few ceilings as this story progressed. You know who you are, and you've been invaluable.
The chapter title is from Nikka Ursula's "Seventy Years of Sleep, #4." An earlier version of the Jacob segment originally appeared in a post on AVClub.
Namaste, and may you find your "road to Shambala" on the Island or off it.)