THREE

 

 

I move back down the trail about a half-mile, then take a deer trail off toward the stream, moving up the valley through the brush. I find her sitting on a rock about ten feet from the remains of her twisted, bloody human body.

She sees me coming and smiles. “That wasn’t very smart on my part, was it?”

“Did dying hurt?”

She frowns at her mangled human body. “No, actually. And I have a hunch I should be angry, but I don’t feel much of anything at the moment, to be honest. That’s kind of nice.”

“That’s normal,” I say. “I can still show you the way.”

She points to a meadow through the trees, a small place where two deer are grazing in the sun. “I think I will stay here. It is so beautiful.”

“May I come visit you?” I ask. “I would like to learn what the world outside this valley is like.”

She glances back up the slope she had tumbled down when human. “Can you leave the valley?”

“Nothing seems to stop me,” I say, feeling slightly worried about her question.

She nods. “Give me time to get used to this and I will tell you about the world beyond that ridge. What is your name?”

I am about to turn away, to give her time, but her question startles me and I stop. I think for a moment. “I was called Mathew when I was human.”

I remembered my parents calling me that before, when I was human, and my mother continued using that name the first few years of us not being human. Now I was never called anything at all.

She smiles again. “Mathew, I am Connie. Thank you for offering to help me.”

It is my turn to smile. “Connie, it is very nice meeting you. I am sorry you are no longer human.”

She glances at her battered human body a short distance away. “I don’t think I miss it.”

With that, I turn and leave, going down the valley to where I can follow the deer trail up the path to the ridge, then on up to the old lodge on the ridge, continuing my original journey. I am now curious as to the young girl’s name.

And how she became non-human.

I remember how I became non-human. I fell asleep one night, very sick, and at some point in the middle of the night, while the snow fell outside our small cabin, I was no longer human. They buried my human body in the small cemetery where my mother sits most of the time. My mother said I was only fourteen years old at the time, far too young to die.

My mother joined me as non-human one night that same winter when she sat beside my grave through a snow storm. My father was shot in a fight in a saloon in the now underwater town of Roosevelt while drunk a very short time later.

My friend in the scuffed black shoes who lives on the ridge tells me she is named Lareina, after her grandmother. She is surprised I ask her name and then she is surprised I tell her mine. It seems to please her, as it does me. She also died at age 14 she tells me, also from a sickness.

“Walk with me?” I ask her, and we start down the narrow mountain road that leads from the ridge toward the human settlements beyond. I am surprised there is no feeling that I should turn back, and she doesn’t complain.

“A full day’s walk down this road,” Lareina tells me, “there is an old mining town called Stibnite. There are many of us living there.”

“And beyond that?”

She shakes her head. “I have never gone beyond that, toward the next town where humans live.”

“Why not?” I ask.

“I have never had a reason to do so,” she says.

We walk in silence until I decide to tell her about the hiker who went from being human to one of us right before my eyes earlier.

“Can I meet her?” Lareina asks. “I also would like to learn about the world of humans.”

“I do not think she will mind,” I say. “We must just give her time to adjust to not being human.”

Lareina smiles at me. “My mother says that time is something we have a great deal of.”

I think I understand that.

We walk to the old town of Stibnite, walk around the town, then start back. It takes us two days. We walk both during the beautiful clear days and during the night under the stars.

There are more of us in Stibnite than in the valley I live in, but most seem to be miners who ignore us. There are only a few children our age and Lareina and I stop and talk with them, learning their names and telling them our names as well.

When we leave, they want us to come back.

For the first time, it seems important to me that someone knows my name.

Lareina and I stop to greet her mother, then Lareina decides to walk with me the length of the trail all the way to the waters of The River of No Return. It takes us four days. On the return we decide to stop and talk with Connie, the hiker.

Connie’s human body has begun to decay and been torn apart by animals, but there is no sign of the non-human Connie.

I feel disappointment, and I tell Lareina. She says she feels it also. It is unusual for us to feel anything.

We start up the trail to the lodge. Connie is sitting on the same rock on the rockslide where she sat before she fell, staring down the slope where her human form died.

“It is very strange not being alive,” she says as we sit down next to her.

“I do not remember very well being alive,” I say.

“Neither do I,” Lareina says.

“How long have you been dead?” Connie asks.

“I died of the flu in 1906,” Lareina says.

I thought quickly, figuring I got sick in 1912 and I tell them that.

“Wow the year is 2012, a hundred years,” Connie says. “Both of you, frozen in time. That is a very long time.”

We sit on the trail in silence, then Connie asks, “So there is nothing after this for us ghosts, us non-humans as you call us?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “No one I’ve talked to seems to know. So we wait. But I would like to grow up.”

Lareina agrees.

Connie stares at us, then back down at the valley below. We sit there like that for a long time, until finally Connie talks again.

“As much as it seems right for me to sit here and let time pass, waiting for the next life after this stage, I think I need to go back to the city, Back to New York, to where humans live, to where I lived before I attempted to escape from people like I am now.”

“And what would you do there?” Lareina asks.

“Explore, learn, keep living, keep moving,” Connie says. “Maybe find the answer to what comes next. Someone, somewhere should know.”

“I would like to see the world beyond this valley,” I say. “Can I walk with you?”

“I would like to see it as well,” Lareina says.

For some reason, that pleases me.

“The more the merrier,” Connie says, smiling and standing. “Shall we get going?”

I glance back down the valley in the direction of the lake and the cemetery and think about telling my parents. But I doubt that they would even notice I was not walking my trail as normal. Sometimes it had been a full year between times we spoke. There had just been no reason to speak after all the decades.

“I am ready,” I say, standing.

“So am I,” Lareina says.

I can feel faint excitement, faint fear, faint feelings of happiness. I like all three feelings and I smile. I remember feelings like that when I was alive.

“Is this an adventure?” I ask.

“I would say it is,” Connie says. “Having adventures and experiences are part of growing up.”

“I want to grow up,” I say.

“So do I,” Lareina says.

Connie reaches out and takes my hand, and for the first time in a long time, I can feel another person’s hand in my own.

“Then let’s go have some adventures,” Connie says.

I take Lareina’s hand in turn and she beams, staring at my hand in hers.

I like the feel of Lareina’s hand, I like the idea of having an adventure in the human cities.

And most of all, I like the idea of finally growing up.