Avelina

Aveline lost the sight in her left eye first.

It happened while she was out in the yard, checking on the vines sniveling up towards the second floor window, when a crow called and her vision split.

She fell back against the back wall of her cottage. The force of the loss was such that, for a moment, she thought perhaps she’d been struck by something. But then there was no pain, no trauma she could sense, just the immediate absence on her left side. Assuming it was some sort of temporary condition, she made her way into the house to lay down. It was not her custom to rest in the middle of the day no matter the country heat or the amount of daily labor. Avelina’s residence was the only building for miles, and that was how she liked it, but anytime an injury would occur, she would question her preference for solitude.

A year ago, she had twisted her ankle in the garden, and had to mend it herself. Avelina’s father was a country doctor, and so she knew how to go about treatment. While it laid her up, the house went to pot and the weeds quickly sprang up in ways that defied her knowledge of growth and vegetation. Something about this part of the county had always inspired rumors and legend. The trees seemed to move about in the evening, so that mapping the area had proved impossible even for the most diligent of cartographers. The only birds that would visit were the forever boisterous crows. Throughout her childhood, Avelina never saw deer or rabbits. It wasn’t until her mother went missing and her father took her into town to report it to the sheriff that she knew the world was not strictly enigmatic. In town, things were square and drab, but in unimposing ways that she found soothing. She had never known that most of her life growing up was sharpened by an edge of fear that never left her, and may indeed have been placed inside her upon birth.

“One can live with anything,” her father once said to her, refusing to set a finger he’d broken while hammering a wheel back into place on the cart they’d use to gather squash, “It’s good to learn how you manage that which seems unmanageable.”

That’s how she learned to live with pain and grief and uncertainty. You don’t dismiss it, but you don’t pay much attention to it either. Instead, you go about your day, and whatever can heal will heal. Whatever can’t, won’t. If it’s the latter, there’s no point in thinking on what can be done. Luckily for her, most of her misfortune was of the healing variety. It was only when her father disappeared that she questioned his assurance that anything could be survived or suffered with dignity. She went dark the night he didn’t come home, and it wasn’t until spring that she forced herself back out into delicate air.

There was work to do.

When she woke up from her nap, the air was not as delicate as it was the day she decided she would not disappear. That was the day she took stock and weighed her life. Her parents were gone. The garden was already overrun with parasitic flora. All along the fence that ran around the property, crows sat and jeered at her. Today it was simply hot and the sun was thick with malicious intent. She would sweat today, and her eye was dark.

It wasn’t until she had spent the day learning to do her tasks with impaired vision that she saw the shadow run by the rear door to the house. She knew that it was logical to find her imagination playing tricks on her, but she picked up the nearest rake nevertheless and went inside to do a thorough search of the place. Living with fear means being familiar with it, and so while she would never be called fearless, fear did not set her back the way it does for so many people she would never meet and not care to know.

The house was small. It’s miniature nature had never struck her before, but now, she was grateful for it. Three rooms. A kitchen, a common area, and the room that once belonged to her parents. She slept in a loft above the living area, and that’s where she continued to sleep. Avelina tried to go to sleep one night in the bed where her parents had slept, and that was the night she had dreams that rocked her so hard, she woke up choking on her own saliva.

She checked every room and the loft--nothing.

There was nothing to see.

Back outside, she noticed a dimming in her right eye. Could this be happening? How would she survive without her sight?

She couldn’t.

Back inside the house, she padded water from a basin onto her face, hoping the coolness would aid in some way. That was when she saw a veracity fall over the doorway of her father’s bedroom. She walked up to it, not sure where the shadow could be coming from, but feeling as though an approach might scare it away.

The dark was firm. It did not let her put her hand into it, or ask her to come forward. She was startled by how warm it was, though it did not burn her. Avelina had fashioned a patch for her blind eye, but she removed it to see if she could get a better focus from her other eye on the obstacle in front of her.

The focus came and then became an insight. From her left eye, she could see into the darkness. It had shade and saturation that was previously unseen. Into that loss, she saw the spot that the crows call to and where people go if they believe they’ll only be gone for a day. There were days there. Days and then days after days.

Avelina asked for permission to keep looking, and the darkness acquiesced, but when, unable to negate her own desire, she once again tried to touch it, it did leave a burn. A spot on her palm so warm, she didn’t even feel the fire coming up the vine.