THUNDERBIRD AND HIS CUMULONIMBUS
2006-2032, Washington/South Dakota
When Edward took his baby girl upstairs, Rosalie turned on Jacob. She pulled him out the door by his ear, despite his spluttered protests, and she did not let go until she deposited him outside the range of hearing of those in the house. When she felt satisfied at the distance they had put between them, she dropped her hold of him and crossed her arms over her chest.
"You imprinted," Rosalie said, without inflection in her voice, though her grimace revealed the reaction her voice failed to communicate.
He nodded. With his heart still full to bursting and every cell of his body overwhelmed with the sudden shift, he could hardly deny it. It was true. He would never be the same again. From her expression, he could not tell if it was relief or disappointment which motivated the question.
"You wishin' for a second chance, Blondie? That train has left the station. You'll have to satisfy yourself with my memory," he said with a cavalier smirk. Her eyes grew hard and her perfect lips pulled down in disgust.
She shook her head. "You are an idiot."
She marched back to the house without another word.
ooooooooo
Ten years later, it was time to leave Forks. They prepared the Cullen house for a long absence and locked away the parts of themselves they planned to only keep in that house. Rose hated to leave, but she also wanted to go.
Most of the others were out. The men had gone hunting. Alice, Esme, and Bella took Renesmee to Seattle for the next round of alterations on her wedding dress. Rosalie declined.
"It's not often the house is quiet. I'd like to enjoy it, while it lasts."
They didn't press. She didn't change her mind.
She spent the better part of the day in the attic. She pretended it was in preparation for the move. Perhaps it was. Mainly, she wanted to get one last glance at that old cedar box, before she locked it up for good.
She hadn't expected Jacob to come by the house. He had spent the day on First Beach. It was the last bonfire before the big move and he had his own endings to carve into his old life. When she saw his familiar figure walking down the driveway, she made an impulsive decision. She ran from the attic to the front door and met him on the porch. Then, she thrust the old carved box into his hands and turned to walk away.
"What is this?" he asked.
"You can have this back. I've had it long enough," she said.
"I've never seen this before," he answered.
"Good. I don't ever want to see it again."
She turned on her heels and vanished, back into the house. He removed the lid so he could look at what was within and he shook his head. It was old junk. Nothing of value or even of sense. He let the lid fall closed with a wooden clamor and debated what to do with it. His first impulse was to throw it away, but instead he took it home. To his childhood home, not the home he shared with his fiancée and her family.
Billy met him there, his grey hair falling loose over his shoulders, and his dark eyes alight with curiosity.
"What brings you back here, Jake? I thought you had gone for the day?" he asked. When he caught the tight set of Jacob's jaw, Billy wheeled closer. "What is it? What is wrong?"
"Have you ever seen this before?" Jacob asked and he set the box on the table.
Billy carefully ran his hand over the faded wood, as if too much pressure would leave a bruise. "That's a Quileute cedar chest. An old one, by the looks of it. It's a beauty."
"But have you ever seen this one before?"
"Can't say that I have."
"Good," Jacob said. He stuck the box in the corner of the closet of his childhood home and left it there, intending to never look at it again. Then he stormed out, not bothering to answer any of the questions Billy threw at his retreating back.
He cursed Rosalie for weeks after that. The dreams were even worse than before.
Oooooo
It was after Billy died that Jacob and Renesmee went back to Washington for an extended stay. There were so many affairs to set in order. The old house needed to be sold and he had to organize the funeral.
"Besides, the kids need to know my side of the family, too," he said. "We should stay for awhile."
When the Blacks returned to South Dakota, Renesmee was as full of stories as their minivan was full of boxes. It wasn't until the car had been emptied of luggage and the children slept soundly in their beds that she brought out a wooden box.
"Look at this! I was cleaning out Billy's house and I found this in the back of his closet. Rachel said she didn't recognize it. I think it's real old. She thinks he got it from his Aunt Maria, after she died a few years back."
Rosalie tried to hide her gasp. It was an exact replica of her cedar box, down to the carved Wolf on the front panel, Orca on one side, Bear on another, and Thunderbird on the lid. At first, she thought it was hers. Then Renesmee opened it and began to withdraw objects, chattering aimlessly as she set its contents on the table.
A bear tooth necklace.
A woman's comb.
An old primary school book.
A train ticket.
A program from the Lewis and Clark Exposition.
A pair of tickets to a rodeo.
A faded photograph.
"She reminds me a bit of Rosalie," Renesmee said when she pulled out the photo. "A bit older and her hair is darker, but there's something about her eyes that's similar. And the man – look at that flattened forehead. Jacob thinks he was Quileute or Makah, but he isn't sure. It looks like the end of the nineteenth century by her clothes."
Rose could not tear her eyes away from it. A woman in a tight corset and parasol, her golden hair coiled loosely on her head, stood next to an Indian man wearing a suit and tie, his shoulder-length hair fell loose and heavy on his collar. She couldn't recognize the background, but she recognized the man. She had seen him before… long before… when he used to frequent her dreams.
Rosalie struggled to restrain her thoughts and her emotions, hoping the novelty of the moment would distract the more perceptive members of the family from her own inner turmoil. She wanted to weep and to rejoice and to run out of the room as quickly as she could. She wanted to snatch the box out of Renesmee's hands and glean through the contents herself, alone, without an audience, and examine all the treasures within.
How dare he only give her half of the story.
"Didn't you go to that rodeo?" Edward asked, as he looked at the tickets in idle curiosity. "This was when you were in Washington, the first time. You thought about that rodeo often, after that."
She gave a terse smile and nodded, attempting to focus on her nails and hair and not on what occurred at that rodeo. She knew why he kept those. Of course, she did. It was fire and ice and wolves and passion and oh, how she hated that man for keeping those! For showing up at all!
Edward and Jasper both stared at her and she could hold it back no more. She fled from the room with an inelegant bang of the front door and ran into the solitude of the forest.
"What's with her?" Renesmee asked.
Edward just shook his head. "I'm not quite sure."
Oooooo
It wasn't Emmett or Edward who went after her and found her in the forest. Three hours later, as she sat throwing stones at a tree, so hard she left dents in the bark, a pair of footsteps intruded on her silence. It was Jacob. He came and collapsed onto the needled floor of the forest, his hands in his pockets.
"Why are you here?" she spat. She threw another rock.
"You know why."
"No. I don't."
"When were you going to tell me?"
"Tell you what?"
"Everything."
"There's nothing to tell."
"Stop with the B.S., Rose. You know we need to talk about it."
"What's there to talk about?" she hissed. She paused and threw her shoulder back with a haughty flourish.
"The dreams…How is it possible? You were human before I was born," he said, "Tell the truth. You had them too, once." It was not a question, but a statement.
"I don't dream."
"No, but you used to."
"And you were human before I was born," she answered. "How could I have dreamt of you?"
He shrugged and let out a long sigh. "Yeah, you're probably right."
"I'm always right."
"Still as stubborn as a rock...and still growling at bears."
At the sound of the reference to her old name, the name only he ever used, her façade shattered into a thousand pieces on the forest floor. The upright sweep of her neck wilted and she broke down into tearless sobs.
"There was a letter," Jacob finally said. "I found it first, before Renesmee. I think, maybe, it should stay in your box and not mine."
He handed a stack of loosely bound, yellowed paper to her, covered with scrawling handwriting and ink blots of someone unfamiliar with a feather pen and clumsy at writing. There, summarized precisely, with dates and important events, were the lives and times of Rolling-Thunder and Growls-at-Bears. She ran a finger over the scrawl as if she could resurrect some ghost of the past through the writing itself. She wondered why he had never given her this box, back when he gave her the other.
"It wasn't us," she finally said. "It was them. They were, somehow, different and distinct and not really us."
"Of course."
"It's over. It was never meant to be in the first place. That's why it's never worked. If it couldn't work when we were both arguably human, it's even more impossible now. We are captives to our own biology. You must imprint to carry on your blood line and you cannot imprint on me. My kind finds our mates and we never return to the way we were before. We will be content as we are."
"But we were once something else," he said, momentarily matching her somber tone with his own. He let his mocking façade temporarily fall.
"No. We have always been impossible. We are worse than Romeo and Juliet and just as stupid. What else is there to say?"
"Did you ever tell him?"
"No."
"Are you gonna tell her?"
"No."
"So, that's it then."
"Yeah, I guess it is. I'll keep this with my box…but I gave my box back to you."
"It's in the cargo compartment of my bike. I thought, maybe we should keep both together."
"Maybe we can keep them both in the attic here, you know, just in case," she said. Her hand shook on the stack of papers in her hand and she didn't know whether she wished to read them or lock them away without knowing what they said.
"Yeah. That's a good plan." Jacob picked up a stone from the ground and carelessly tossed it up and down, catching it each time. After the third time, he turned to her again. "How many times do you think this has happened?"
"I dunno. I wasn't keeping count."
"Yeah. It'd be nice if someone was, though."
"I don't think I'd want to know," she answered. "It's enough to know it's happened more than once."
"I guess. Do you think it will happen again?"
"Maybe. I'm not the expert here."
They gave each other one last stare, as thick as molasses and twice as heady, as if their gaze alone could rewind time, rewrite history, and resurrect old bones with flesh and skin to make the old ghosts live again. Then they parted. Jacob returned to his devoted wife. Rosalie returned to her beloved mate. Both boxes retired in the Cullen house attic, gathering dust in a forgotten corner of the abandoned house.
The only change occurred when, many long years later, a pale, cold hand opened both. Within, she placed in another photograph, one of those spur of the moment things they did during a jaunt at the local fair, and then she added another few pages to the letter, on fresh, crisp paper. Then the boxes were secured again.
Just in case they were ever needed again.