Dream Song
Heart Balm Literary/Issue 2/December 1. 2022
Dream Song
Miranda’s disappearance really began that early June day, the day the book she held in her hands at the library’s circulation desk fell open on the ground. The poem on the page demanded to be read.
Sunlight, moonlight,
Twilight, starlight.
Gloaming at the close of day,
And an owl calling,
Cool dews falling
In a wood of oak and may.
She drank the words down, absorbing their rhythm into her bloodstream, her heartbeat, her footsteps. For the rest of that day, she floated above the stacks and desks, softly singing the dream song.
***
Miranda sat with her sister Sam on their bench by the pond, eating sandwiches and watching two brilliant white swans hooking their question mark heads.
“I need to tell you some news,” Sam said, breaking the peace.
A siren wailed in the distance, cars honked. She moved straighter in her position on the bench.
“I’m pregnant,” she said, looking expectantly at her sister. Miranda stopped chewing, her mind paused over her sister’s words. She wiped newly formed sweat off her brow and swatted at a fly.
“That’s what you wanted, right?”
“Right,” Sam said.
***
Lantern-light, taper-light,
Torchlight, no-light:
Darkness at the shut of day,
And lions roaring,
Their wrath pouring
In wild waste places far away.
The day of Sam’s news, Miranda breathed deeply as she entered the Green Lakes trails, feeling the acceptance of the trees, her trusted friends. She ran, slowly at first, shaking off her disturbance, whispering the words of the dream song, steadying her mind. She moved away from the lake’s beach area, away from the sunshine, into shade. The voices of children playing and adults talking and laughing fell away like an old heavy coat. She felt lighter, knowing there would be no indecipherable discussions here, no awkward conversations, no bad thoughts of intrusion, jealousy.
A strange, sharpening of senses overcame. She stopped abruptly, like a squirrel on its hind legs, alert, sniffing, eyes shifting, checking. Nature pulsed around her--smells, textures, forms, colors, light, shade. Her body, alive with the energy of the run, her mind, heart receptive, prickly with input.
In this state, she imagined all kinds of lost things found, fixed: speckled blue bird eggs whole and perfect, schools of fish rising to the surface of water, iridescent fins flashing like rainbows, billowed lips catching worms held out on hooks, a long lost wedding band shining in the sunlight. The invading image of her sister’s baby, pink and fat, brought a coldness over her, like a slap of ice water.
The anxiety was eased by her dead father’s appearance on the trail, vivid before her, his long, lined face emerged, appearing in not just one tree but all trees, so that as she ran, his face met her, from tree to tree to tree. Each time, she met his smiling eyes. She could not speak to him, she knew. It was clear to her he existed just for her sight, her own comfort. She gulped it all down, allowing his peace to tingle through her body, from her beating heart down to her fingers and toes.
In the wind, her mother, too, emerged. In life, she had been a woman of inexplicable, extreme emotions. Here, she blew sweet air in gentle waves, ruffling Miranda’s hair off her sweaty forehead. Miranda continued to run, soothed, unafraid of her parents’ apparitions.
Elf-light, bat-light,
Touchwood-light and toad-light,
And the sea a shimmering gloom of grey,
And a small face smiling
In a dream's beguiling
In a world of wonders far away
Now the dream song called her to the lake. The bright green presence of water asserted itself just beyond the edge of the woods. She stopped at its tip, got closer, stared down through the emerald surface. She searched for life in the water, seeing only weeds, roots, petrified wood protruding from prehistoric layers.
Finally, the wind shifted. Miranda’s breath drew short. A small nose and rosebud lips poked through the surface of the lake. A baby, gasping and crying out, just born. As if being pulled by a hand somewhere below, the baby jerked from exposure, receding into the water. Miranda’s hands reached out. Her chest heaved up and down and her nostrils flared. She turned to look for someone behind her, help. Nothing. No one. She ran back into the woods, back onto the trail, seeking her mother, father, Sam, someone.
She stopped in her tracks, the wood chips of the trail flying. Miranda thought of Sam’s baby, her niece, and ran back to the water, where the rings from the infant’s appearance still reverberated. She summoned her last bits of dizzy energy. She dove, the shock of the icy water a surprising relief.
***
“Are you sure your sister wasn’t meetin’ someone? Someone you don’t know?”
The officer who arrived to investigate removed his cap and wiped his brow,
“She’s not social,” Sam said.
The officer stared blankly.
Sam stood on the beach, next to a smoldering bonfire from the night before, the wood cooling, growing whiter each second. Another officer approached.
“No luck, mam,” he said, “We think we need to call in the divers.”
Sam doubled over in despair, cradled her belly with one hand, touched her chest with the other.
“She couldn’t swim!” she yelled, voice echoing across the lake.
***
Sunlight, moonlight,
Twilight, starlight.
Gloaming at the close of day,
And an owl calling,
Cool dews falling
In a wood of oak and may.
The words of the dream song formed in her mind naturally, as though Sam had always known them. She hummed softly as she went to work and home, as she stood and pressed the pretty clothes collected for her baby.
She felt distanced from everyone - underwater, unable to hear or be heard.
The world became muffled, blurry.
Her baby girl remained present inside her, pulsing, crystal clear, growing bigger every day, stretching skin.
Sam’s baby kicked with life, waiting to emerge out of her darkness, pushing up out of the deep water, into the light.
