Rip comes in from the garden, his feet are muddy and his shirt is bunched up around a mixture of herbs and flowers he’s picked. He hears Yiska, his voice raised.
Is not your place to do that, we do not get involved in their fate. We speak of this before, you have no special rights in this case. You know this, Yiska says, his back to the door.
She had to know, and I stand by my decision. They were both there the day I died in that world, you have no idea what this has been like for me, having him here and having to keep so much from him. I still have freedom of choice and I stand by my decision to tell Sahara.
Rip stands in front of them. Tell Sahara what? What’s going on?
Oh, we didn’t see you, Asha says. It’s nothing, forget what you heard. It’s all right.
It is not all right. This make changes for everyone. You upset the balance, Asha. This foolish thing you do. Yiska points a gnarled finger at Asha.
Tell me right now what’s happened to Sahara! Rip demands.
Asha sits wearily down. My boy, there is so much you don’t know.
Please Asha, whatever it is, just tell me.
Asha sighs. There are ways we can travel between dimensions for specific purposes. She looks to Yiska, shaking her head. I visited Sahara today.
Yiska pushes a chair firmly into the table. This is not the right way.
Sometimes the right way is just what happens, Yiska. It is done and even you do not know the way of everything. Asha picks an orange nasturtium from the pile spread on Rip’s shirt.
You have to show me how, Rip says. I have to see her, Asha. You must show me!
You cannot, Yiska says firmly. This not the right way.
Rip looks from Yiska’s hardset face to the softness of Asha’s. And then he runs. He sprints out the back door and over to the tipis. He rushes inside the first one he comes to and sees Yiska’s drum. He picks it up, lies down and begins to beat out a rhythm. He hums aloud, willing himself into the other world. He hears Yiska shouting, but it’s too late, he’s on his way down.
He’s falling fast, past streaking lights and layers of colour that wash over him. His body falls until it lands, hard, on a spongy surface. He looks through it and below he sees her. She’s alone in a room on a bed. Staring blankly ahead. Sahara! He screams her name with everything he has in him. Sahara! Look up! He reaches out for her, but his hand hits into the spongy layer separating their realities. It’s see-through, but thick, like many layers of frosted glass so she is there before him, but not clearly.
He beats his fists as hard as he can, but the barrier between them remains. Please, look up.
She blinks, startled and stares at the ceiling. She senses the faintest throbbing, like a heart beating in her ears.
Sahara, Rip sobs, his body spreads over the veil between worlds. His face is pressed up against it, desperately. His fingers run over the place where she is. He slides closer to her, a moment of hope, and then the barrier curves over and around her, like the film of a bubble. He can circle her, but there is no way through. He keeps calling for her, as she puts her head on the pillow.
He hangs, suspended over her, his body spread out over hers. He parts his hands and places them over hers. If only you could just see me, he says.
But she can’t and the feeling of being so close and yet so far is torture. It is more than he can bear. She yawns and her breath filters through to him. It comes like a breeze on his cheek, bringing tears to his eyes. He takes in the beauty of her face, the plump cushion of her upper lip, the pin-dot freckles on her nose, the blue rivers of colour that dance circles around her irises. His body reacts with a fever of heat that surges through him. He slides closer until his face is inches from hers, but still slightly distorted through the veil. This is as close as I can get, he tells her, sniffing away tears.
She swats at her face, fingers suddenly wet with water from her cheek. She looks around, confused.
Rip watches, awe-struck as another tear from his face slips through the veil. It pools for a moment under the barrier, and then drops, full and orbiting straight down. It erupts against her skin. I’m here, is all he can say.
Sahara blinks. She stretches out a hand and he rubs his face into it, feeling the caress of fingers that are still a quantum leap away.
Suddenly hands are on him and he is pulled back up through the layers of light and colour. He tries to fight, but the grip on his body is too strong and soon he is back in the tipi, hitting Yiska away. Just leave me alone! he bellows. After all I’ve been through, just leave me alone.
You cannot go against things, Yiska says, releasing his grip.
I almost had her in my hands! I will never, ever forgive you! Rip turns and flees the tipi, running blindly through the rain that is now falling.
He collides with Asha near the house, she tries to hold him but he pushes her off also. He runs over to the gardenia bushes and madly pulls flowers from stems, tearing leaves and petals. His hands are full, but he keeps clutching for more, rain streaming down over him. He is sobbing wildly. He tries to get back to the tipi, but Yiska is an impenetrable wall that won’t let him inside. Rip screams for Sahara as the rain buckets down over them all. The only thing he can do is throw his offering of crushed flowers into the wind and hope that they find her. He lets go; they scatter, some falling into the mud but, as he watches, other white petals take flight and curl in the air away from him.
Come inside, Asha says. It’s okay.
Distraught and shivering, Rip allows her to take him indoors.
Darling, it will all be okay, she says. Everything passes.
He looks up, eyes murky with tears. How do you know that?
I know because I’m your mother, she says. You don’t recognise me because you were so young when I died, and your father burned all photos of me, but I’ve been watching over you all this time. And her also. I have done what I can to help you both.
Rip searches the face in front of him. But my mother’s name is India.
You are right, she says. I was born Asha, that’s my birth name. I changed it after spending a year in India when I was eighteen.
How am I supposed to believe you?
She thinks. I know you kept a handkerchief under your bed after I died. You believe the A was my great-grandmother’s name, but it’s not. The A stands for my birth name, Asha.
Stunned, he says, I remember you, I didn’t before, but I do now.
Darling heart, I have always been with you. She gathers him up in her arms, the cold shivering body of her son. I was always there, my boy, always.
I saw her, Rip says, from her embrace. I saw her and she knew I was there. I could feel it. And now you, I just… It’s too much.
I know, darling, shhh … I’m here, just let your mind find stillness, just for a moment. I have to tell you why this has all happened.
Rip lifts his head from her shoulder.
My time in the Wilderness is over. I am leaving, Rip.
He shakes his head. But I just found you.
No, dear one, you had me all along. And now I must go. Her face is calm, serene. It is the completion of my time, this last moment with you. I always knew this moment would come, but it was visioned for further down the road of experience. She takes his big hand in hers. I rushed the process, I went against the plan. I told Sahara that you are still alive. I knew that this would take me from here and from you sooner, but I know deeply in my womb that birthed you that it was right.
I can’t lose you so soon, he says.
I will be gone from here, but you never lose what you have loved. It stays in your heart across lives, across eternity. And always, we find each other again. She stands. I have watched over your suffering and joys, and it has been the greatest gift of my days to see you both grow. But you don’t need me anymore. You are both ready and free to do without my guidance or assistance. My purpose here is done, it is complete, in the perfect way that it has unravelled.
Why must I lose everything, even you? Rip asks.
Because that is life, she says. Letting go of it all in each moment, in each day, dying to the past and being birthed into a new reality in each breath that we take. Nothing is static. It is all fleeting and transient, like the beauty of falling snow that exists only for a moment before it melts.
Yiska comes into the room. It is time, Asha, he says. Rip, you say goodbye.
Where is she going? Rip asks, standing too.
That is not for you to know, Yiska says, even she is not knowing. The memory of what is next, what she been shown, this is leaving her now. You go outside.
Rip holds his mother’s hand. I’m not going, not until you tell me what will happen to her.
She will leave her physical body, Yiska says. Now go.
Let him stay, she says softly. Be humble for you are made of earth, be noble for you are made of stars, my boy. She smiles at them both and then her mouth goes slack and loose.
Her hand is limp in Rip’s and he sees her eyes cloud over. He catches her as she falls, her skin is changing colour before his eyes, from rosy to an insipid, sweaty yellow. Rip looks over to Yiska. Do something!
Nothing to do, Yiska says.
We can’t just let her die! Rip screams.
Time slows down for Rip, he tears open the top buttons of Asha’s peach-coloured blouse. He presses his hands to her skin, yelling for Yiska to help him. Now, get over here now!
He is lost, hearing nothing, thinking nothing, fully focused on the continuous, repetitive motions.
Yiska sits in the middle of the room, eyes closed, reaching for the spirit of Asha. He visions her in white light and holds her there in the peaceful straddling of this world and the next. He chants silently, over and over, until he feels the snap of something subtle in the room. He is completely still as the catastrophe of Rip’s frenzied CPR continues.
Sleepless, harrowed, Rip stares out across the hills. He’s wrapped in a blanket, unable to fully process what has happened or what it felt like. He’s numb, although numbness is not enough of a word but there are no others; sometimes language falls short of the depth of the human experience. Dream sits with him, but he does not talk.
Yiska calls for him and together they walk down the stairs and around the perimeter of the land, hunting for suitable wood. They pull back the planks from the paddock fence and carry them inside. They lay the wood out on the rug and set to work fastening four sides together, finding wood that lines up at the sides of the coffin. Finally something is made, completed, and they lay Asha inside it.
Rip is woken from his sleep by a strange, low sound and seeks it out. Over the balcony in the fading light he sees Yiska dancing around a blazing bonfire. His hands are clutching feathers and he’s chanting words so ancient, so poignant and powerful that Rip is compelled to join him.
When he gets to the fire the old man stops him. He pulls a short stick of herbs, sage from his pocket and lights it in the fire. He tells Rip to be still and he proceeds to smudge the heady grey smoke over his body, fanning the burning herb embers with a long, white feather, beating the smoke around Rip in circles so that he can be cleansed from what has passed. The moon begins to rise. It’s new and narrow and white in the sky, a crescent like the bed of a child’s fingernail.
Rip points to it.
Only when one leaves, there is night here, Yiska says. Now you dance for her on the fire. You celebrate her, he says, handing Rip a feather.
There is nothing left in Rip to be self-conscious or guarded—just the wind, the fire and the light of the moon. He starts to follow Yiska’s movements, hanging off the trail of his hands in the sky and the plod of his feet on the ground. Soon, though, he loses touch with him and begins to dance his own dance. Each is markedly different and Yiska is making guttural sounds, like something crawling from the centre of the earth. Rip takes on his sound and releases it, too, from his mouth.
Dream watches Rip, his body, face and spirit wild in the quickening night. It’s the end of our time together, she whispers. She was called to be here and now that cry is silent. She takes her backpack and blows Rip a kiss. Then she turns and walks away.