Jenni Parklin sat side-legged on the floor of her family’s home, watching the gentle snowfall outside. As she leaned on the sill of the tall, multipaned living room window, her eyes drank in the white stillness of Ithaca, New York, and even through the glass she could feel the cold against her face. Her mind was far away, wrapped up in the heart of another, someone she had loved for a very long time.
But now he was gone.
Her breath spilled into a splash of fog as it hit the frost-rimmed pane just inches from her nose. The scene beyond should have been so beautiful, so lovely. Covered by a chaste white blanket, the world had always seemed so much kinder, so much cleaner, so much more fragile somehow. Yet the absence of that special someone, who had once held out the promise of many shared winters to come, diminished its loveliness.
Now it seemed merely cold outside—cold and harsh and so lonely.
“Jenni?” a voice called from behind her.
“Here, Mama,” she replied quietly, remaining in place.
Janice Parklin looked down and saw a foot protruding from behind the plush Queen Anne chair near the window. Canting her head slightly to peek around it, she smiled.
“You’ve been doing that your whole life,” she said. “Sitting there, looking out that window like that”—she walked up to her daughter, knowing the girl was troubled—“but only when you were upset.”
“It helps somehow,” Jenni said.
Her mother reached down and stroked the girl’s back. “Sweetheart, it wasn’t your fault. You did nothing wrong … you were just doing a favor for a friend.”
“That doesn’t matter. He’s still gone.”
“Maybe not, honey … maybe he’ll come around. The poor boy’s tied up in knots. You know how close he and his parents were … he’s just been through so much. It does things to people.”
“What if he doesn’t come around?” Jenni said, looking up into her mother’s eyes. They sparkled with the generosity, the kindness of her nature. “He’s like another person now.”
“I know.”
“I miss my T. G., Mama,” she said.
“I do too, honey,” her mother said, stroking the girl’s shoulder-length, honey blond hair. “He’ll come back. You just watch.”
Jenni took her mother’s gentle hand and held it close, then rose and hugged the woman.
“Thanks, Mama,” she smiled.
“Come on,” Janice said. “Dinner’s ready, and your father’s hungry.”
Schoolwork was not much of a comfort, but Jenni managed to push her concerns for T. G. aside just long enough to undertake the assignments before her. The nightshirt-clad student, sitting up in bed, struggled against fatigue and preoccupation to focus upon page after meticulous page of distribution maps depicting the regional habitats of several South American bird and animal species. Her career plans pointed toward a future position with one of the major American zoos, and that long-held dream now seemed but a couple of years from realization. Zoology was her love and also the major in which, one day soon, she would acquire her postgraduate degree.
Jenni tried to focus on the academic task at hand, but more than once, as she read in the warm light of a single bedside lamp, she caught herself staring at the floral wallpaper of her room, seeing his face before her. As she had told her mother, she missed her T. G., the one she grew up with, the one she loved—the boy who had taken a place in her heart she knew could never belong to anyone else. He had earned that place through his own long-expressed love for her, a gentleness and pure kindness she had never seen in the eyes of any other boy she had ever known.
But that had been before. Now she could only hope he would come back to her.
She thought about her young life, about the decisions she had made. Already most of her friends either had moved away, gotten their own apartments, or had married, but the twenty-three-year-old Jenni had chosen to remain at home and put every dollar she could toward her career goal. Living at home while working a part-time job in an exotic pet store had saved her thousands of dollars, which could now be used for travel and a place to live once she had joined the staff of whatever zoo facility would bring her aboard. Her mother was delighted to have her daughter still under her roof, for whatever reason, and her father greatly enjoyed the fact that the two ladies in his life enjoyed such a strong relationship.
The hour had grown late, and sleep was closing in. Bed was the wrong place to sit and study at such a late hour, for the comfortable mattress beneath her and the soft pillow behind called to her. Surrendering, she set the textbook, notebook, and pen on the bedside table, then fluffed her pillow and slid her bare legs under the cool covers. The remainder of the cherished weekend stretched out ahead of her, so she did not set her alarm clock. As her head nestled into the soft down cradle beneath it, she clicked off the green-shaded reading lamp beside her.
She lay on her back, looking up into the darkness, listening to her own breathing and the sound of the flowing, gentle heat of the floor vent. Sleep descended like a soft comforter, and its subtle embrace quickly enveloped her.
And then she was sitting on the peaceful grassy hillside of a woodland clearing, bathed in gentle rosy sunlight. A blanket was spread beneath the skirt of her flowing cotton dress, and T. G. sat beside her.
“Great lunch, Jen,” he said, finishing a piece of fried chicken.
“Thanks,” she smiled. He leaned over and kissed her, the scent of eleven herbs and spices still on his lips. “Mama made the pie.”
“Pumpkin … my favorite,” he said. When she looked down, however, the half-eaten pie was suddenly not pumpkin, but coconut cream.
And that was just fine.
Life and motion encircled them. Towering trees blocked much of the reddish sky, their copious branches densely laden with rustling foliage. Birds sang, darting across the sky and from tree to tree, swooping amid the leaves. Deer gathered at a nearby river. Herds of antelope darted through the clearing a short distance away. It was nature multiplied by ten, a song of color and music that seemed more a single, all-encompassing entity and less a gathering of singular creatures.
“Marry me,” T. G. asked, taking her hand.
Her smile was reply enough. A happy tear rolled down her cheek as she leaned forward and kissed him. She held him tight, savoring him, then slowly pulled away as something remarkable drew her attention.
Jenni’s eyes fixed upon a huge dark shape moving among the vast trunks nearby. She saw it only in part, but it seemed a massive, elephant-like beast, a colorful Goliath of purples and oranges that lumbered slowly amid the shadows of the forest.
“It was Uncle,” T. G. said.
“What?” Jenni asked, before nodding as if she understood. Somehow, though she did not know what he meant, the statement seemed to make sense. “Oh … okay.”
A rope as thick as her arm snaked its way toward them, reaching out from the trees. As Jenni watched, the end of the heavy cordage wrapped itself around T. G.’s waist like a boa constrictor. He seemed to take no notice of it.
“What is that?” she asked him.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said, reaching out to caress her cheek.
The rope grew taut and pulled him quickly toward the edge of the grassy clearing. Jenni rose and ran to follow but could not catch up. Something unseen slowed her, forcing her to strain with each stride as if she were running through a sea of thick gelatin. She saw the great mysterious beast moving deeper into the dark forest, the rope tied to a harness it wore, and she heard it crashing through the dense undergrowth even after the darkness there had made it invisible to her.
She could not understand why T. G. did not resist the force that was taking him away from her, drawing him into the woods and its tangle of vegetation. Following as closely as her hampered speed would allow, Jenni finally reached the tree line and paused, exhausted, to catch her breath, leaning against a massive trunk as she peered into the dense timber. Her eye could barely discern him as he was swallowed again and again by dark curtains of ground foliage. After a moment, she began to move after him.
“Jenni,” a deep, resonant voice sounded from behind her. “You cannot follow.”
She stopped. And then T. G. was completely gone, dragged away into the deep woods.
“I can’t lose him again,” she cried out. “I can’t …”
“He is mine,” the voice said. “He always was. Do not be afraid.”
“Who are you? I don’t know you.”
“You will.”
She realized she could no longer hear any sign of the huge animal that had taken T. G. from her. The sky went dark and the woods even darker. Then, though she had been alone, she suddenly felt eyes upon her as if she were standing in a crowded room.
Jenni spun to find thousands of people surrounding her, dressed in hooded robes of dark umber. They gazed at her, their eyes filled with both pain and hope.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“We who hear the Voice.”
And then darkness swelled around Jenni, and she became aware of her bedroom again. She awoke only partially and rolled over in bed, her mind struggling to retain its tenuous grip upon the ebbing scene.
In moments the dream faded quickly and completely away.