‘Don’t walk in the long grass with your legs bare. You’ll get ticks. Cover up, child. I’ve had Lyme disease and believe me, babe, you don’t want it… You wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy.’
“Babe”? Their whole life, only one person had ever addressed them in this way. ‘Else Two,’ Oldmother Medem said, immediately more welcoming. ‘Why, you haven’t come to see me in such a long time.’ Emerging from the shadows, she came to the front stoop of her remote cabin.
Everywhere around them flowers bloomed, in every imaginable size, shape and colour. A few bees floated here and there, gliding lazily to and fro as if drunk on pollen. Some of them at least still out and about then. Else Two looked down at the ground at their feet, unsure of what to say.
‘I understand, child,’ Oldmother said. ‘Don’t think I don’t.’ Hobbling over to one side, she ushered Else Two up the steps and in. The interior of the cabin’s main kitchen area was dramatically cooler, and infinitely calming. Else Two suddenly realized how very much they had missed in not coming here all these long months: their very worst year of years. ‘I can understand,’ Oldmother said again, as if she were able to hear their thoughts. ‘Why you would not,’ she said. ‘Why perhaps you would not want to.’ Bitter exchange of unkind words. Partisan accusations. Estrangement. Neglect. Guilts, compounded. So Else Two wouldn’t have to talk about any of that, or wait to be forgiven. They surrendered then to the hugest sense of relief.
‘Ee, ooh, ungh.’ With a little series of grunts Oldmother Medem reached to retrieve something from one of the high shelves. Every surface around them was covered over with densely packed rows of jars of one size, shape or another – glass, clay, who-could-figure-it – and filled with God knows what. Even God most likely at a loss to explain some of them.
‘What I am curious about,’ said Oldmother Medem, ‘is what would make you come to see me now…’
Else Two preferred to remain circumspect. Oldmother Medem was what Father called, “A sly old bird”. Possibly one reason why they got on so well. Or at least, had done so previously. Else Two would have to be extra cautious, taking great care to mask over their true thoughts and intentions.
Oldmother Medem had seen the child’s head turn to look back out of her open front door. How they stood, rocking – not once, but twice in quick succession. ‘Never mind that, though,’ she said smartly. ‘Come over here and help me get the lid off this old jar. My mangled hands are no longer up to it, the stupids.’
Else Two, encouraged, crossed over until well within the threshold. Gamely they trotted forward, keen to assist. ‘There,’ Oldmother said as the lid came free with a satisfying <plawp> sound. Reaching across to recover the opened jar she leant in close. ‘Hush, though,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t let anyone else know that I’m on my way to becoming an invalid. Else or otherwise.’ She tapped at her nose, dark-veined and bulbous. ‘Let it remain between the two of us,’ she said. ‘Our secret.’
Else Two, though not gulled, agreed. Their gaze had fallen on the screed of a wall-hanging quilt. One of Mother Grant’s. They had a couple of them in their house too. A few even. This one read, “If you’re lucky enough to live by the lake, then you’re lucky enough.” Curious – Oldmother lived nowhere near the old lake. Perhaps because there wasn’t even a lake there anymore, just a vast dirt hole in the ground. “If you’re lucky enough to live…” said Oldmother, obviously following their sightline – not one to miss a single trick. ‘Hih,’ she laughed, sort of. And indeed on closer inspection Else Two could make out that a portion of the embroidered motto had been deleted in ink of some sort, now faded.
“If you’re lucky enough to live by the lake, then you’re lucky enough.”
Slopping its contents as she put aside the jar, anyway never more than a ploy, Oldmother Medem shuffled across to the other side of the creaking shack and the vast loom occupying more than half of the space there. Claw-like hands busily casting the shuttle back and forth, she spoke, and at great length – starting out from matters of the workings of the loom itself, and the finer points of the art of weaving – just as she had so many times before. Oldmother liked to talk and Else Two indulged her: they both found it oddly comforting.
‘The chirrup of insects. A bird, taking flight. Mist, gliding in silence across the mirrored surface of the waters… Perfect calm. I do miss mornings like that…’
Oldmother Medem proceeded to outline the life cycle, ostensibly of bugs, although at some point she switched to seedlings and plants, the seasons, the longevity of the forest. Changes in the landscape, she said, were cyclical. Something further about “rites of succession”. Rights, maybe. How a weed field, cleared, lying fallow, would be invaded, first by shrubs, and then trees, the trees steadily becoming full-grown in turn. The whole process might take hundreds of years – “colonising,” she called it, with a wink and a nudge – before some calamity or other, natural if not manmade, would come along to level everything, allowing for it all to start over. All of it, going around and around again. She turned the spindle and threw the shuttle. She said by way of what appeared an at least partial conclusion that, as the result, it was important to take the long view as opposed to the short. That this, too, was a life skill, she said. And one that had very much been lost. At the point where all of their present troubles had begun.
Oldmother Medem. Although it had never been directly stated, by anyone, Else Two, listening, gradually came to the realization – with a clarity that was ineffable, unassailable, a revelation – that the famous Bowman and she must be somehow related. Her brother? Quite possibly. More likely though he had been her boy, her own son. Her designation in the community was “Old Mother” after all. All of the wisdom, the old knowledge of the land that Bowman had shared with the man who was Else Two’s father long ago – and since then shared in part with them too, in his own way – it had almost certainly come down the line of succession from her. And before her…? Who knew.
Else Two idly pondered. Had there once been an Oldmother Else? There must have been. Whoever they might have been and whatever it was that had happened to them, their role within the family’s lives had long since been filled, and ably so, by Oldmother Medem. They owed her much. All of them.
Oldmother had finished speaking, finished playing at the loom. She looked Else Two over. ‘I’ve been watching you,’ she said. She let that rest there for a time. Watching over them, Else Two knew Oldmother meant to say. Didn’t she? ‘Your mother loves you very much,’ said Oldmother. ‘Much more than she can ever tell you. You know that, don’t you?’
Mother?! Father… ‘She won’t even look at me,’ Else Two said. Father maybe. Whatever else he thought of them he at least could bear to do that. Wait. Was it…? Else Two’s eyes narrowed. Had Oldmother Medem seen them with Chandler Two? Was she the one to…?
‘You should show greater kindness to your parents,’ Oldmother said. ‘They’ve been through so much… the worst a parent can go through. Any parent.’ She spoke from the heart.
Spooked, Else Two turned as if to make for the door. ‘It can be a lonely life,’ said Oldmother Medem. ‘My second husband, I tried to replace him with a daily crossword puzzle.’ She indicated a tall pile of yellowing papers, their crisping fibrous edges gently curled. ‘But then those ran out on me as well,’ she said. Darn, she was good. So good it was bad.
Oldmother struggled up out of her seat at the loom. ‘Before you leave,’ she said, pausing with that thought a moment too long, ‘I have some things for you.’ Making her way slowly over to heaving bookcases hard by those sickly-looking piles of papers, she then trundled back bearing three book titles in her spidery hands. ROBINSON CRUSOE: a compilation of Fenimore Cooper’s LEATHERSTOCKING TALES: and one other Else Two couldn’t yet see.
The volume of ROBINSON, well-worn, even better known, held a very favourite story of theirs. It would have been passed around and around the whole of the Circle before ending up here with Oldmother – very possibly the same place from which it had begun its epic journey. Time and again the text had proven itself very useful, almost universally so: dense with detail on how Crusoe had survived so long, living alone on his deserted island – How to make fire, bake clay pots that might last, tame a goat, and so on and so forth. Plus, so many other things – although Else Two, worst luck, had never yet discovered a parrot to train and talk to, let alone a Man Friday to bend and scrape, or to rebel, so they might teach them to be a better person.
Oldmother Medem thrust all three of the books forward at them. ‘I…I can’t,’ Else Two said.
‘It’s a Flash Sale!’ said Oldmother, arms flapping. “Buy one get one free! Few remaining! Everything must go!” Else Two took a fearful step back. ‘I’m sorry, babe,’ Oldmother said. ‘Over your head. Or under your chin. Old ghosts beneath your notice. I mean it, sincerely. These are yours. I want you to have them. Let me do this, please.’ She could not be resisted. ‘Doing a little good,’ Oldmother said, as the precious texts passed between them, ‘allows us to be bad, just as doing bad can sometimes allow us to be good. It may seem altruistic,’ she said. ‘But it isn’t.’ Else Two recognised the specific look that now lined Oldmother’s face. One they hadn’t explicitly noted before, but realised, in that same moment, had always been present: knowledge of something or perhaps someone for too long kept as a secret – an omission that led to the marked sufferance of a guilty conscience.
Oldmother Medem gathered Else Two beneath one threadbare wing of her mantle. They went outside. Oldmother’s makeshift bag-shoes made a shushing noise across the grass lawn underfoot. ‘Oh!’ she cried, sounding like a little girl, although not at all looking like one. Oldmother skipped over to pick at the needleleaf branch of a pine sapling, and then shooshed her way back again, twirling a small body around the finger of her outstretched hand. “Immabe, immabe,” she hummed to herself, as if to the tune of a song.
‘You’re a…bee?’ Else Two said.
‘Hm? Oh no, don’t mind me. Lookee here.’ Proudly she offered up for inspection the living contents of her ring-bedecked hand. A caterpillar. ‘Woollybear!’ said Oldmother, delighted. ‘See the narrow orange band in the middle? A fellow fat and fuzzy as this one means a bitter cold’s expected…’ She looked Else Two hard in the eyes. ‘Heavy snow.’
Oldmother Medem danced away, returning her passenger to its perch.
“See how high the hornet’s nest,” she sang, trilling lightly, as she did so. “Twill tell how high the snow will rest.” And then again: “Immabe, Immabe…” She stayed like that – bobbing up and down manically, a few paces distant, with her back turned. ‘Who will you turn into as you grow, little butterfly?’ Oldmother said. She’d stopped bobbing. ‘What could you become?’ She sighed. ‘I often wonder.’
She turned. ‘I don’t envy you,’ she said.
What? Who? Else Two had gotten distracted by an inquisitive honeybee, all up in their face. They jumped to see Oldmother returned, right by their side.
‘Pass that one here,’ she said, all sudden seriousness. ‘… the Robinson.’ Else Two, who hadn’t yet transferred Oldmother’s gifts to their knapsack, did as she asked. ‘Else Two,’ Oldmother said, taking up the proffered book. ‘Do you remember that part when Crusoe’s mother speaks to his father, and what the father says to the mother?’ Before Else Two could shake their head, Oldmother continued. ‘He says, "That boy might be happy if he would stay at home; but if he goes abroad, he will be the most miserable wretch that was ever born." Or something along those lines,’ she dissembled. ‘You recall that?’ she asked again. ‘That desperate fortune?’
Else Two nodded. ‘I do,’ they said. ‘But what has that to do with…?’
‘Be content,’ Oldmother said, ‘ever to take the middle path. An… unexceptional life, it can be a happy one. Not… exposed…’ she said, her voice thickening slightly, ‘…to misery, hardship… suffering. By long experience, I’ve found that.’
Long experience? Else Two already knew all of these things, intimately.
‘Only the desperate, mind you now,’ Oldmother said, ‘go abroad on adventures.’ She pressed them, earnestly, and with great affection. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Don’t play at being the young adult. Don’t precipitate yourself into miseries Nature provides against.’ Nature? Else Two inclined their head back. They got it now, what Oldmother had been telling them all along. What curiosity had done for the cat. ‘Be happy,’ Oldmother pleaded. ‘Be happy in the world. No fate, no fault,’ she said.
She told Else Two then in no uncertain terms that they had their elder brother for an example. And not a good one. That was a mistake and it was clear from their face, and from her face that Oldmother Medem instantly knew it. Words that were forbidden, making mention of persons even more forbidden. Else Two couldn’t help but close their minds to them then as a helpless sort of reflex action: if not their mind then at least their ears. They felt defiled… undefended. What they wanted, all they’d wanted since forever, was to know the truth about what had happened to Else One. They’d had to work hard at working it out for themselves. Now that Else Two thought they had and held that truth, it wasn’t any longer what they wanted. It wasn’t any good to them. It did them no good. What Oldmother Medem was saying wasn’t enough and it came too late to help them.
Oldmother was mouthing more words. ‘I’ll pray for you,’ she said.
There was more, but Else Two no longer cared to hear it. Oldmother as it turned out didn’t understand them any better than anyone else. In spite of their anger and former wariness Else Two felt, more than anything, disappointed.
Oldmother, visibly moved, broke off. Patting at their sunken bosom, waving a hand in front of their face, they sought to excuse their inability to speak more. But they had said enough.
She denied her consent, but Else Two had not come meaning to ask for it. They didn’t need it. She’d anyway misread their intentions… Probably a good thing. Where Else Two meant to go was further away than that. Nowhere.
Much to Oldmother’s surprise Else Two snatched back the cherished book. Flicking rapidly through the first third or so, they traced their grubby finger down one page and then the next. There it was. This might be unwise, but Else Two recited the short passage aloud – calm, clear and collected. “It happened one day about noon,” they read, “going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore…”
‘Ahhh, yes,’ said Oldmother Medem, very familiar with this part and all that led from it. The terrors that this mundane apparition inspired – Robinson’s terrible fright: the crowding thoughts of many hours, days, “nay, I may say” weeks and months. She believed then and there that she understood Else Two’s line of thinking.
Seeing credulity etched in Oldmother’s worn face, Else Two, intent, flicked on ahead. Here then was the crux, the part that they now most wanted to relate, for her to truly understand – for them to be understood. “Thus fear of danger,” Else Two read aloud, emphatic, “is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself.”
A complex mix of emotions passed across the pitted depths of Oldmother Medem’s face. She settled for the moment on pouting her lower lip, to flatter that she was suitably impressed. ‘Yes,’ said Oldmother, approving. ‘You’re not wrong there. Wise words.’
Else Two watched as she waggled her untamed brows: more thick and wintry caterpillars. There was more in the words of the book that they wished to read to her, but they feared to, for that would leave them entirely exposed.
Some kind of provisional truce arrived at they ambled slowly together down the gentle slope, through the rest of Oldmother’s flower gardens, past her sparse vegetable patches. Inevitably it was Oldmother Medem that broke their silence. ‘Remember,’ she said, ‘what I said about ticks.’
“You would not wish them on your worst enemy,” Else Two said.
Oldmother Medem shrugged. ‘Mm,’ she said. ‘Maybe. I’ve considered it.’
‘No,’ she said then, stopping short a moment. ‘Moose, dear. And deer. The ticks came North as the climate changed, like a plague, more and more of them every year. That you see was what killed off the moose, and most of the deer. Afflicted them with a terrible wasting disease. Then any of our horses, and the cattle too. It was also that that had to do with the water going bad, of course. And the lack of it, of water,’ she said. ‘All of the larger animals gone, save one. And you know who that is, don’t you?’ Oldmother said, proceeding onward.
Else Two nodded. But not really.
‘Our own worst enemy,’ Oldmother said, sighing again. “All men would be tyrants if they could,” she said. ‘But ruling over what?’
She spoke of mankind? Men? Else Two wondered. Or only of the Magister, now ‘Brom’ Chandler?
‘We are fools to ourselves,’ said Oldmother, continuing to muse. ‘For just so long as the spoils are divided, people remain happy,’ she said. ‘And yet,’ she said, ‘to get more, they will cheat.’
And lie. And steal. But that was adults for you. Most adults. All…?
‘If the truth can be made flexible, then how, I ask you, is it any longer the truth?’ Oldmother Medem said. ‘Your truth? Or mine? Inconsistent honesty, don’t even get me started. It still feels honest.’
Ambling along downhill the Old Mother had picked up quite a head of steam now. Like in a drawing of one of those “choo-choo trains”, Else Two could almost picture the little puffs of cloud coming out of her ears.
‘The common sense is not so very sensible,’ she said. ‘It is insensitive.’ Puffing away. “An Execution Culture,” she said. ‘That’s what we used to call it. As in executive. You wouldn’t credit it to look at me now, I know, but my background, my training? In life I used to be in business, before. Big business. “A strategic tool to help you understand your preferences.” Hoo boy howdy. Your preferences when it comes to executing strategy,’ she said. ‘I tried to tell them, kept reminding them. That wasn’t my advice, wasn’t what I’d meant at all. Nothing so dark. But they’ve got it all wrong,’ she said, halting. ‘You should run it,’ she said. ‘It shouldn’t run you.’
Moving on. ‘Anyways. Always,’ she said, ‘we are seeking balance. But while we do, our morality, it’s shifting. I’m sorry, my dear,’ Oldmother said, seeing the bedazzled look on Else Two’s face. ‘I think too much. Or perhaps just enough,’ she said. ‘It’s just that I have no one else left to talk to worth the spit! Don’t even… Don’t mind me, prattling on. You should understand though that I’m no longer proud to think myself a humanist. I’ve become Post Human. Otherwise I think I’d go insane. “This too shall pass,” is my best guess,’ she said. ‘This too. Do what you have to do.’ She looked inexpressibly sad for a moment. A passing moment. ‘You take good care of those books,’ Oldmother said. Patting Else Two on the back. Packing them off. ‘And even better of yourself! You could learn a lot from them, if you care to,’ she said, circling back around. ‘The important stuff.’
Else Two carried on their way down the hill, alone, loaded knapsack heavy on their back. With absolutely no intention of taking the middle path.
‘Come see me again, won’t you,’ Oldmother, other Mother, called out in back of them.
Silence. It could be honest. Or dishonest.
‘Fools,’ Else Two could still hear Old Mother muttering, ‘to ourselves…’