She stood on the cliff took, looking out over the valley below. The sun was just touching the horizon and, as it did, suddenly the whole world lit up, lighting not just the ordinary world, but her world too. It was fully alive again for her first remembered time with blinding and full colour. The colour was more beautiful than she could ever have imagined.
As the colour came back so too did the memories, the good and happy but along with them the pain and horror as well, all she had been and all she had done. She cringed with pain in her soul as it all came rushing back, the awfulness of it; her awful part. Slowly it too faded as she looked far out, her mind moving past it.
In that last sunlight of the fading day she could see the shadows dance. She remembered how, all the years ago, Mark had brought her here and had told her how, in that last fading light, the shadows came out and danced, those of the people who had lived here over fifty thousand years.
He had asked her to bring his remains back to this place and they had. They had scattered his ashes across the hills and sand plains below. Now he was one of them, walking amongst them, a shadow dancing amongst other shadows in that last sunlight.
She felt his joy, his joy for himself and his joy in seeing her again. She heard the spirits singing in that last light, more beautiful than any sound she had heard before, all life’s emotions mixed and blended into ten thousand, thousand voices. And his voice sang loudest.
He stood there beckoning, waving, signalling and calling “Come to me. We can go together into this other place; leave the pain of this world behind. It is a good place. I want you there. Come with me, come now.”
Now she was only Susan again and loved only Mark. She remembered still, as if from a great distance, Vic; how she had shared her life with him and loved him too. They had taken Mark’s children, her children and they had created their own children together and they had given them all a good life. But Mark was her first and truest love, she was his Susan and her spirit must go to him, it must answer his call.”
As she stood at the cliff top gazing out across the rocks far below, she knew she would now soar from here like an eagle and fly to Mark. She would rejoin his crocodile spirit to that of hers and be complete again. She would leave behind all the pain that she could not bear to remember.
She stepped forward to where there was only air.
Far below a small cry came, penetrating somehow through the other world music and last sunlight where still the shadows danced. It was the voice of her child, David. “Mummy, come back!”
It pulled her back. Again her feet stood on solid ground.
She knew that this boy, the new Mark, needed her more than the other Mark, as did Vic and Anne and little Vic and the others, even one unborn. So she must learn to live with the pain, accept what she could not change and take joy in life’s little things.
She looked back out, Mark was calling again, but now she knew it was not for her he called. As she watched another girl came out of the shadows, she had dark hair; this girl looked like her but was not. She answered him, singing in a beautiful French voice.
“Non, je ne regrette rien.”
As Susan watched she was joined by another and then another girl, and finally there were four. She knew all their names, the one with dark hair, the two brown and the one of glorious shimmering blond. They all joined hands and danced towards the other spirit shadows in that last sunlight.
Susan watched as the light faded and then they were gone. Now she was Jane again, the remnants of Susan had passed from this place.
She walked across the flat ground to where they all stood and they all enfolded her in their big and little arms. She was glad she was still here. She stood with them all in the now fading twilight as the sun travelled across another sky. She knew that all these other ancestral spirits had gone there too, Mark’s spirit, the crocodile spirit that had tried to take her there, along with the spirits of other women he had loved and who had gone before.
But it was not her time to go there, she would live and love in the world of men, watch her children grow and their children too, share their joys and pains and live again in life’s colours. It was enough.