Their Worlds

THEIR WORLDS 

By the tiniest but truest desire, any someone can walk a mile as though it were a step. All he must do is not seriously doubt that he wishes to move so quickly. Beyond life, desire is purified in an instant, and there no one needs doubt their desire, which accounts for the various speeds and rapid movements of the dead, rarely ever is somebody totally still. 

The newly dead doubt themselves at first, but not for long, even without help. Geo, a little boy who was slain by his own mad mother, stopped and started as he floated about the forest trees after his father, who though only a day older in death by that same woman’s hand, was flying smoothly ahead of his son. 

Geo halted over a pool below, a pond. Desire and despair. It felt as though he could not breathe, but Geo remembered, as the experience bore no consequence, that he had no need to breathe, and it is only a memory. When he lifted his head, his father was not in his sights, but in an instant, Geo was pulled to his side. 

“You missed me,” father said. 

“You didn’t stop.” 

“Do you remember that place?” Father asked. 

“I remember drowning.” 

“When you sought the reason, I desired my own reason and came to this river. I did not drown, but I remember falling in after I was struck.” 

“What is the reason?” Geo asked. 

“Here,” father said. 

Such a question brought them to the answer, the place where Geo was born and that his father built with his mother, who just stepped into the cabin. 

“What is that smell, father?” Geo asked. 

“It is nothing you’ve ever smelled before.” 

Something about it reminded him of his father, the salt in the air. There was such intense curiosity, that he began to leave his father's side and to that place within the cabin., where his mother stirred a large pot. His father caught the boy's arm and held him with greater desire than his son's to know the secret. 

“Leave it and love my advice so well as to counter your curiosity,” said father. 

“At least tell me if you know.” 

“It would be as though looking into a mirror, though distinctly not identical.” 

“A mirror?” 

Father smiled. “She is cooking our meat to eat, son.” 

“Why are you smiling, father?” 

“I am glad it’s him and not me, I guess.” 

“But it is you,” Geo said. 

“If it is then who am I?” Father made a face and drifted off. It was strategically done, for Geo was not satisfied with this answer. They left that crouched and muttering woman below to tear her teeth into her beloved’s flesh, gnawing and scraping their bones like a beast. 

“Can we not go very far, father?” 

“We can go wherever we like. Where would you like to go?” 

“I don’t know any other places.” 

“That’s very true, and I know no better places,” father said. 

Geo’s father felt his fear. 

“What can she do to you, my son? She cannot see you, hear you, or touch you without you desiring it.” Seeing as Geo was still learning to obey his true and transportive desire, he simply became afraid of himself. 

“What will we do?” Geo asked. 

“What we want to do more than anything.” 

“What?” 

“I don’t think we know. Or we are trying so hard not to know that we won’t go there, to that place. We must let go.” 

“I’m not holding anything,” Geo said, lazily, knowing what his father actually meant. 

“Perhaps not, but I am. There’s a part of me that thinks I ought, we ought, to stay here, and guard the forest, ensure that no person enters, ignorant of the danger. Your mother will grow hungry again, and whoever she finds in our woods will be her victim. We could circle her, and learn to pity her for what she is, and, of course, frighten away the strangers and travelers and the lost from her snare.”  

“Pity her?” 

“Your mother has been sick all her life, boy. When she drowned you in the pond, she was thinking about painting the cabin blue.” 

“I will not pity her.” 

“In every boy is some pity for his mother. If you were to burn him to nothing, it would be the last thing to die. Love will not be silenced by you, a boy so little.” 

“I hate her.” 

“Words. In that world, words meant a great deal. They put a picture in someone else’s head, they stole the whole world from someone who could accept a lie, they made peace and made people laugh. Here, words are nothing. Words can do no more than disappear.” 

“I hate her.” 

“You hate yourself for being so weak and small and easily killed and eaten. You hate that you could do nothing to stop her.” 

Geo was tearing up, and an aching cry followed. 

“How often, in the warmth and clearness of a summer day did I feel raindrops on my head, and wonder how it could be. Perhaps it was tears like yours.” 

“Will we go then,” Geo said at last, “Like you said.” 

Father closed his eyes, and breathed, a habit of decision, now without necessity. 

As Geo wiped his tears, someone came up the path that lead to the forest. The road did not go through the trees, but turned right and ran along them for a few miles. These men would be fletchers, woodsman, lumberers, sometimes thieves looking to steal away. 

His father disappeared and appeared again in a short time. 

“Where did you go?” Geo asked. 

“I wanted to know about that man, so I went where I could know.” 

“Who is he?” 

“His name is Edward, Edward Ruby Polk.” 

“Are we going to scare him?” 

His father’s face tightened and shook. 

“It is impossible. Though I think I might, that I should, there is no desire, and desire is not easily manufactured here as it is in their world.” 

“I want to go with you.” 

“We will go there together. When I have let go.” 

His father stood there, in the air, shuddering with difficulty over his task. At last, he began to laugh as tears came from his eyes. He smiled very wide, throwing his head back to cackle. He flew over Edward, letting his tears sprinkle the man’s neck. 

Edward patted the spot and looked up to find not a cloud in the sky. Even if he could see their world, the father and his son would not have been there, for the moment the tears landed upon his skin, they had gone on. 

Edward looked ahead at the woods and thought that if it was going to rain he had better not be caught under the trees. 

THE END.