God as a Rabbit

This once was a book about a brother and a sister, and soon it changed into a Soul and a lack of soul-mate. It was about childhood and growing up, as well as friendships and family. Triumph and Tragedy go a long way in between everything as well.

Most of all, this is a book about love, regarding most of its forms.

We hope you will fall for it the same way we did.

Leah Woodburn, Udu Dragomir; Editors.

Now than.

Sarah Winman grew up in Essex. She attended the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art and went on to act in theater, film and television, quite simply, she accomplished her goals. When God was a Rabbit is her first novel, if you want to chat with her, she is usually somewhere in London.

God as a Rabbit

The introduction

I divide my life into two parts, not really a before and after, it is more as if they are bookends. They hold together empty years of point-less musings, years of the late adolescent or the twenty something whose coat of adulthood simply does not fit. It can fit but it has to talk first of the world it grew up in.

I look at photographs from those years and my presence is there, in front of the Eiffel tower or by the statue of Liberty, or maybe even knee deep in sea water waving and smiling. But these are just experiences. I know now, that these times in my life were greeted with a harsh prism that the moment is now and all the wonderful colors would gather again to a mind numbing white. You can see it in my smile.

It says 'I am here now but when is now?'.

She was a feature to walk under my shadow. She clasped the years either side of this period, waiting and held them up as beacons, and when she arrived; in class on that cold January morning it was as if she herself was the New Year.

She offered me beyond, only, out of all, I could see that. Others were bound by convention, found her weak and her actions futile. And worst of all, they even mocked her.

She was of another world. Different. By than, secretly, so was I.

She was my missing piece, my complement in play.

One day, she turned to me and said ''Watch this !'' and out of her forearm she produced a shiny new piece of fifty pence.

I saw the flattened edge pecking out of her skin like a staple. It came from a pocket she made in her skin. Not out of thin air. And this left a bloody scar !

Two days later the scar was gone though, the fifty pence though, still in her pocket. Now this is the part hard for me to believe, the date on the coin was odd, it was twenty o' five.

I cannot explain the magic coin just as I cannot explain her sudden expertise in the piano that strange morning in church. She had no tutelage in these pastimes. It was as if she could will her mind into talent and through the willing achieve a sudden and fleeting competency. I saw it all and marveled. But these moments were for my eyes only. Proof of some sort. That I might believe her when the time was necessary. But God would prepare me for more than she had to offer.

Mr. Golan was our neighbor and he had a wife.

I looked at his hands, dry as the pages he turned at home when he would read. He had a number inked in on his arm from the camps. He was looking at the cieling, already heaven-bound.

I turned five and he had brought me a rabbit as a gift. It was in a cage with a water feeder so he didnt bring it over for lunch.

“The first thing we need to find” He said after finally having waited for his silence. “Is a reason to live”

He looked at the rabbit and then at me. Then at Jewlie and Tom (mom and dad) finally at his wife and than at Joe. Nancy my aunt was with us, and a few neighborhood kids, Charlie is worth mentioning, everyone else not really. But he only looked at us.

Golan continued “He who has a why to live for, can bear anything”

“That's Nietzsche” I jumped in.

“Young girl, you can be anything you want”

my father, said “Just don't be a lawyer”.

The rabbit I would go to name God and the number on his arm I found out at his funeral was something he would write himself every-day. I think it was a memory of some-one, maybe he had to leave someone behind to escape.

Part of One.

I decided to enter this world just as my mother got off the bus after an unproductive shopping trip to Ilford. She had gone to change a pair of trousers and distracted by my shifting position found it impossible to choose between patched denims or velvet flares. She became fearful that my place of birth would be a department store, with a staggered journey back to the safe confines of her postcode, her waters broke just as the heavens opened. And during the seventy yard walk back down to our house, her amniotic fluid mixed with the December rain that spiraled down the gutter, made the cycle of life complete.

I was delivered by an off duty nurse in my parents bedroom on an elder down that had been won in a raffle, and after a swift labor of twenty two minutes my head appeared and the nurse shouted

' PUSH !!!!'

And my father shouted

' PP UU SSHH!!!'

And so, my mother pushed, and I slipped out effortlessly into that fabled year. A year where space flight became flight and not ballistics. Where Greece became Europe. It was the beginning of personal computers and the end of the 70s.

For months I lived in a quiet world of fulfilled need. Cherished and doted-on. Until the day, that is, my mothers milk dried up to make way for the flood of grist that suddenly engulfed her, when she learned her parents had died on a walking holiday in Austria.

It was in all the papers. The freak accident,

accident ? that took the life of twenty seven 'tourists'.

A grainy photograph of a mangled coach lodged between two pine trees like a hammock.

There was of course, only one survivor. The German tour guide, who had been trying on a new ski helmet at the time of....the .... The thing that had obviously saved his life - and from his hospital bed in Vienna, he looked into the television camera as another dose of morphine was administered, and said that although it was a tragic accident, the recently departed had just eaten so they died happy.

His grainy pictured alongside the mangled bus.

On the television the same man came to talk again.

Obviously the trauma of plummeting down the rocky crevice had obliterated his memory. Or maybe a full stomach of dumplings and strudel had softened the blow; that is something we would never know. But the television camera stayed on his bruised face, hoping for a moment of sensitive lucidity for the heartbroken families back home, but it never came.

My Mother remained grief stricken for the whole of my second year and well into my third. She had no stories to recall, no walking stories or funny first words, those events that give clues to the child that might become. The everyday was a blur, a foggy window she had no interest in wiping clear.

We needed an emotional rescue, and only got it on the radio.

And yet that was the moment my brother took my hand. Took me protectively into his world.

He had skirted the periphery of my early life like an orbiting moon, held between the alternate pull of curiosity and indifference, and probably would have remained that way, had Destiny not collided with a Tyrolean coach that tragic, pivotal afternoon.

He was five years older than me and had blonde curly hair that was as unfamiliar to our family as the brand new car my father would one day buy. He was different to other boys his age, an exotic creature who secretly wore our mothers lipstick at night and patterned my face with kisses that mimicked impetigo. It was his outlet against a conservative world. The quiet rebellion of a rank outsider.

I blossomed into an inquisitive and capable child, one who could read and spell by the age of four and have conversations usually reserved for eight year old children. It was not a virtuoso of genius that had become my bedfellow, simply, it was the influence of this older brother, who was by then hooked on the verse of Noel Coward and the songs of Vanilla fudge and Ebb. He presented a colorful alternative to our mapped out lives. And every day as I awaited his return from school, my longing became taunt, because physically, I never felt complete without him, In truth I had found someone for me.

It was the day of the performance, as I can recall she crept out of the backstage shadows as would a giant tarantula, rather than the octopus she was supposed to be. And when Miss Grogney saw her she screamed as if her throat had been cut by Lucifer. There was no time to get Jenny Penny out of her costume and back into the camel costume. Miss Grogney told her to remain in the darkest farthermost reach of the stage and if Jenny was to move a much as a tentacle Miss Grogney would suffocate her with a large plastic bag over her head.

Baby Jesus began to cry, and Miss Grogney told him to shut up and called for a wet towel for him. I took a quick peak from behind the curtain to see if my Mother and Nancy were around. Today's performance had a good turnout, almost full, more people came to the show than came to the harvest festival. The harvest festival clashed with a football game, and apart from that only a couple dozen cans of beans, ten loaves of bread and 1 box of windfall apples had been consumed, something 4 people could do.

Nancy had seen me and she winked, just before Miss Grogney had grabbed me and pulled me back into Christian times.

"You will spoil the magic if you keep peaking out !"

My thoughts were that I will spoil the show any-ways and my stomach knotted.

"Where are the Camels !!" - shouted Miss Grogney.

"They have to hump with you" Replied Mr.Gulliver as we all laughed.

"Not funny Mr. Gulliver" And than she caught her toe on a sand bag.

"Good Luck Jenny"

I whispered and than she began to waddle over to the manager, casting an eerie shadow on the back wall. Jenny even blacked a few teeth to really get in the mood.

The light dimmed. I felt sick. Music crackled into the auditorium. I wiped my hands on my red tunic and then I was blinded by darkness. I poked one of the sheep up the arse with my white stick and he started to cry. I apologized to Miss Grogney

" I cant see what I am doing !."

She replied "God fortunately wasn't so blind"

I than felt a shiver run up my spine.

The straw in the manger felt strong. I brought it from home and even though it was not clean, it was authentic.

Michael Jacobs who played the role of Baby Jesus had been scratching himself ever since he had been placed on the over-sized manger, and under the lighting his heavy set features together with a smudge of dirt, made his face look as if it had a full beard. I tapped my stick and felt my way into

position.

The last scene, the one with the angel Gabriel seemed to go over well as I had heard the audience exclaim and clap when Maria Disponera, a new Greek girl, forgot her lines and simply said " You there Mary, you having baby. Go to Beflem!"

She had got an important part because her parents owned a Greek restaurant. They allowed Miss Grogney to come 'visit' just as much as she wanted.

The shepherds were a dozen and pointed in the opposite direction to the star, as they wandered off. They all appeared truculent and bored as if it was a ferret that was entering the world and not the Son of God.

When the three Kings had entered it seemed more hopeful. Of course that went over swell, one of the Kings dropped his box of frankincense, which in reality was a porcelain tea caddy with earl grey inside. A gasp rose up from the auditorium as his mother reached for a handkerchief and silently wept at the loss of a treasured family heirloom.

The King had not told his Mother he was to take it with him. Just as the young King didn't tell his Mother that he smoked her cigarettes. And in between her quiet sobs, a lone sheep slowly left the stage until it screamed in anguish as it collapsed onto its stomach because a sharp piece of china had embedded itself into its bony knee.

The three Kings just stepped over him to exit. Miss Grogney had some foresight and pulled the child off stage like some cumbersome skinned pelt. Replacing the injured sheep with another off course.

Finally, after all the affects of the night had taken place, I was in position, behind my fake door, hoping this night would cease from being another episode of Happy Tree Friends.

I heard a knock.

"Yeeess" I said the way Nancy had told me to say it and I opened the door up, quickly stepping into the light. The audience gasped, what a reassuring sign that everything is alright.

Nancy said, I looked like a cross between Roy Ordison and the dwarf in 'Don't look now'. I knew neither.

"I am Mary and this is Joseph !"

" We have nowhere to stay , do you have room at your inn ?!"

My heart thumbed, my tongue felt thick and heavy. Say it Say it Say it !

"You need a room ?"

Veering away from the script.

I saw Mary & Joseph look at each other. Miss Grogney glared from the wings at me pointing to the script.

"Let me think" I said again,

Silence

in the theater grew thick, clawing and tearing with anticipation. My heart beating harder and harder, my throat suffocating from the now doubled blood pressure. Say it, I said to myself, say it.

"Yes !" "I have a room, with a lovely view at an excellent rate" "Come this way please".

With my white stick tapping ahead, two thousand years of Christianity was instantly challenged as I led Mary (crying) and Joseph towards a double en-suite with a mini bar and television rack.

The curtain was now closing for an early interval. Bearded Jesus was left forgotten in the large bassinet in the corner of the stage, looking around at all that could have been. Suddenly the arachnid shadow of Jenny Penny had thrown Jesus into a fit , as she crept towards him, he attempted to climb out of the manger, his plan was fumbled by a cloth catching his foot and leading the 'baby' into a fall, right into a paper mache rock.

This all led to a police report.

Jenny was left trying to lead the piece into the opening verse of Joy to the World as screams and police sirens had began to turn the play into a visit to hell.

In the morning, the local newspapers ran the story of Baby Jesus in A Coma.

It lacked a picture of Michael Jacobs, but instead had a picture of a weeping King who's mother was telling him off for stealing, but of course that was cropped out. One individual interviewed for the story said that is was the end of christmas for our community, my brother said that we will not go that far and Jesus will rise again.

Not until Easter said Jenny as she cried into a pillow.

Of course, Miss Grogney used Jenny Penny & I as the scapegoats for everything ! Miss Grogney even went as far as to tell the police that is was our fault, but they had none of that bullocks and told her off with "this was a safety issue and you as a supervising adult must take responsibility for everything, you along with the whole palaver"

The blame would lay fairly and squarely on her big round shoulders. Miss Grogney in time resigned before there was an inquest, treating the whole incident as a question of faith. She would renounce modern life and do good deeds and also move to Blackpool.

My Mother had constantly tried to contact Mrs. Penny through-out the day. It was Mrs. Penny who contacted Mother of course, and mentioned that she was in the Southend-on-Sea eating cockles, and could Mother look after Jenny for the night, of course. My Mother took the opportunity to tell Mrs.Penny about all that happened.

To which Mrs. Penny replied " I will be there as soon as I can".

"Tomorrow ok ?" and than as a dingo smelling blood,

"Whens the funeral ?"

"He is not dead !"

Baby Jesus Dead.

A late headline we had to go along with the evening

news.

The child's Atheist family had agreed to shut

off the life support machines, after the doctors

informed the family that all vital signs were missing.

Nancy said "Christ that was quick"

"What in heavens name are they doing ??!! Saving Electricity !"

My Mother caught Nancys snickering " Not funny Nancy". "Not funny at all"

Though maybe to us it could be funny. if the Atheists wanted proof of God that was the moment, but of course once you question you are left in dis-pare, because it is most rude to ask of a God anything. Unless it is the God of Answers.

Chapter 1

Are we ready.

Jenny Pennys Mother was as different to mine as any other Mother could be. She was a women whom in herself was a child. She constantly gilded herself in approbation of peer groups no matter how young they happened to be, though the old she avoided as if they were infected with a zombie virus.

" How do I look bitches, Do my hair bitches ! Am I pretty bitches ?"

At first it was fun, like having a rather large doll to play with. but then her expectations and demands would override all, and her fierce resentment would hang in the room like a gaudy light fitting, exposing the youth she had lost.

"Misses Penny sounds to old !, Elly we are friends, call me Hayley, or Hayles".

"Ok Mrs. Penny, I will next time".

I said, but just couldn't.

Hayles everyday existence was secretive. She did not hold a job, but was so rarely at home, and Jenny had few clues to her Mothers life except for that one detail: She was a women whom loved her many lovers.

Her Mother also loved developing hobbies that attributed to her 'Gypsy lifestyle'.

"Whats a Gypsy" I had to ask.

" People who travel from place to place" Said Jenny.

"Have you done that, alot ?"

" Quite a lot,"

"Is it Fun ?"

"Sometimes"

"Why ? "

"Because people chase us"

"Who ?"

"women"

Jenny and her Mom lived in a temporary world of temporary men.

This world could be broken up and reassembled as easily and quickly as legos.

Fabric hung from most of homes walls in strips, and around the door frame was a pattern of flowered hand prints. Pink and Red. These in dim light looked as bloodied hands on a crime scene, as if someone was searching for an exit.

Rugs were strewn around the floor and in the corner perched on a book of nudes was a lamp with a shade made of magenta silk. It threw a brothel-like hue into the room - not that I knew anything about brothels at the time !

I remember it was red, and errie and it made me feel ashamed.

Rarely I would go up-stairs, up-stairs the current

boyfriend would usually be asleep, and he would

usually be naked.

These men all had in common a nocturnal lifestyle

driven by alcohol and fancy perfumes.

I remember hearing footsteps upstairs, and the toilet flush, the shower run, or the radio chatter. I remember the worried face Jenny had when these sounds were being heard between us.

She would shhh' me and say

"we have to be quite!"

This restriction is why we seldom played in Jenny's room. As if there was much to play with, though she had a hammock, hung over a poster of a calm blue ocean it was.

" I look down, I rock a bit, than I daze off to another reality".

"The lost city of Atlantis is deep underwater beneath me".

She said proud of her adventures.

I asked her if she had ever seen the ocean before,

"Not really" she turned away a bit brought to her humility by the question, and wiped away a hand print from a mirror.

"Not even at south-end?"

"Tide was out"

"it does come back"

"My Mum was to bored to wait for the tide to come back. I could smell it though. I think I would like the ocean, Elly, I know I do."

Only once did I see a boyfriend. I had gone upstairs to use the washroom, I was alone and thus a little inquisitive. I had crept into Miss Pennys room. It was a warm room, with a musty atmosphere.

A large mirror stood behind the headrest. I saw only the back of this man, it was a naked lump of flesh uncouth in sleep as it probably was in wakefulness. I fell into a hypnosis, the mirror showed the infinite realities reflecting and refracting in my eyes. On the left of the mirror was written in different shades of lipstick 'I am Me'....over and over. At points it looked to say, 'am I me'.

I was transfixed by how much imagination existed in Pennys home. It was not the simple symmetry of my everyday life.

Jenny lived away from the rows of terraced houses with their rectangular gardens and daily routines of mail, work, naps, sleep, wake, and what else balances on the limitations of becoming mundane.

Objects, walls, order did not match in this other world. Harmony was in how a person that lives their interacts with the world. Here Tragedy and Drama would fight for space in the theater of these two goddesses. In a way, it was their own personal Silent Hill.

One day when we sat for sweats and squash I recall our conversation.

It started with Miss Penny

"There are givers and takers" " I my dears am a giver, and you Elly, what are you".

"She is a giver, Mum"

"Women are givers, Men are takers, does so say the oracle".

"My Dad gives alot, he gives all the time in the world in fact"

"Then he is a rare bird"

Than Miss Penny changed the subject to something none of us could contradict. Than as Jenny left the room her Mum asked if ever had I had my palm read.

"I am highly skilled at reading palms, tarrots, and tea leaves".

Truthfully, she could read anything, it was in her

gypsy blood.

I asked "Books?"

She blushed and started an angry giggle.

As Jenny walked in, her Mum took control " Come on girls, I have had enough of your booorriiing games, I am taking you too out!".

"Where too?" Jenny asked, calmly

" Surprise!!! You like surprises dont you Elly ??"

I replied with a simple "Um".

" Here ! Coats !" She barked as she stormed towards the front door.

Miss Penny drove very aggressively and erratically for someone whom is a giver. She used her horn more as a battering ram to push in and around wherever she saw fit.

She kept a trailer hitched, which swung around dangerously. At times missing pedestrian feet by inches.

I suggested we take the trailer off a few times.

But was always reminded that the trailer is welded onto the car.

At our feet was a mess of litter which if left to fall out of the car would result in fines as big as the national lottery.

Mainly it was Coca-Cola cans, some crushed, all of um empty. There were sweats wrappers, chocolate wrappers, gum packs, and a weird flaccid balloon.

We saw the church up ahead, without signaling, her Mum turned in sharply and parked right behind a hearse.

I remember when she pulled in the church parking lot a few people yelled, a few shook their fists, but everyone was disturbed by this frantic womans choice of entrance into a 'safe space'.

Miss Penny only barked her horn and told the kind Gents and Lady folk to " FUCK OFF ! "

She was gently stopped by a group of people.

Miss Penny "This is the house of God, leave me alone"

A priest kindly replied to her "We have to get the deceased out of the hearse, please move your car!"

As aggressive as she was, she still had a heart and was a human being who gave as much as she said she did. Which, obviously was much less that she could possibly give.

After moving her car to another space, we walked into the church. Miss Penny between us holding our hands as if we were going to a special ritual. Her body was bent forward a little, an embodiment of sadness. She ushered us into the pew and handed out tissues, clean tissues mind you.

Looking up Miss Penny smiled at the truly bereaved.

She marked down corners of the hymn book in preparation for song, than threw down her hassock, on which she knelt for prayer.

Her actions were fluid and graceful - professional even. From Miss Pennys mouth came a strange whispered reverie, unstoppable even on the in-take of air. For the first time that I have known her she finally belonged some-where.

Jenny and I were not much for spontaneous visits to the church, we also had little to do with the following in religion, we also spent little time ever thinking about what God is, or how God does whatever it is God does. To us, it was something we can start thinking about once we grow old and if we have no family or friends to give our attention to. We put our hands together and kept quite, sometimes I would doze off, church to me was like school but with less rewards and even less and more awkward socialization.

The way some of these church going folks said their sses scared me at times.

As the church began to fill with those that came for the funeral. Jenny Penny pulled me towards her and motioned to follow. We slipped out and crept along until we found our way to a heavy wooden door.

'Choir Room'

We entered one by one, I followed.

The room was closed, and the air seamed to press against your ears. Light came into the room from the ceiling and a switch, but it was a good choice of soft indecent bulbs that bothered yours eyes no more than a soft breeze.

"Have you ever done this before ?!"

I had to whisper to Jenny, I knew we were not allowed in.

"Once, at another funeral"

Jenny was more interested in the piano in the room.

It was sitting in front of a choir box, at 90 degrees, the high notes were facing the choir, so the back of the player would be towards the door. I would have preferred the piano to sit opposite of the door, greeting anyone who walks in, in this manner it seemed to be more a set up for a quick escape for the piano player in case they made a mistake.

Jenny had lifted the wooden cover of the pianos keys and it made a loud crack, my heart was beginning to flutter.

She came alive with the music ....

Eyes closed swayed in harmony

I began to tremble from the knees up, if it was shock, it was mixed with endearment. And my heart fluttered as my breath heated and moistened.

I felt my lips wet now as the blood warmed me up ready to sing along.

The church organ sounding. Most of the sound was muffled by the stone walls of the church, the bass though made its way into my body and I felt everything in me tingle.

The same way I tingled when Jenny kisses me.

What if,

What if I miss this chance, and I regret this moment for the rest of my life. I still think in hindsight.

Gently, floating over the floor I made my way towards Miss Penny and sat saddle on the bench, I pulled Penny into the nook of my body and squeezed her tight as she finger her last puzzled air.

We sat as one, connected at the mouth, breathing from 4 lungs and talking through touch and sighs.

A knock ruffled our quiet moment, and echoed as rosewood slammed on Marble.

"That will be the coffin"

Said Jenny Penny hovering her lips above mine " Come on, lets have a look!"

We opened the choir door and started heading out of the church. We caught a glimpse of the coffin on the way out enough to suffice for the both of us. It was a small white coffin. Obviously for a child.

It was bedecked with pink roses and a teddy bear. It was less than two feet long and carried by one person, much as how a newborn child would be carried. And before the life was taken from this body, it was a child.

I understood why the funeral director agreed with Hayles when she said God doesn't care, and understood her driving. In a moment in made sense. But were these people really angry with God, and would that in a paradox just complete a viscous cycle, a mean circle ? Is there a difference

Outside we sat on a stone wall, away from the parking lot on the side of the church by some grass. It was on a steppe and the clouds above the higher part of the land were within arms reach. All you had to do was jump!

We listened to the church sing us songs. Joyous songs, Jenny reached for my hand and we held hands together.

Thats when the little bunny showed up. I saw him pop out from a bush and run to the forest, faster than I could say anything, leaving behind him a trail of a faint rainbow. If it was not just my imagination.

Penny was dazing away into the horizon, and I left her enjoy her moment.

Later that day we were at 'The Wimpy Bar'.

"You two are sooo boring!" Told us Hayles as we were trying to eat lunch.

Hayles was refreshed & invigorated with no evidence of mourning and even less interest into what we did while gone. I am usually ecstatic to eat food that I usually do not have the possibility of eating. This time, I lost my appetite for food. I was alive from the energz of life. The magic of what had happened.

Hayles had ordered for me a 'beefburger' a large tray of chips and a huge tumbler of cola. But it was momentary.

"I am going out tonight, Gary will look after you two!" Said Hayles.

Jenny just looked up and nodded, she was happy with her food, very happy with the ongoings of her day as well. Jenny Penny was a taker, and when she had an opportunity to put happiness in a stranglehold, mainly by the jugular and with her canines deep in its flesh...

Hayles exclaimed " Im gonna have Fun Fun Fun!!!"

In hindsight I cant imagine how anyone could have fun involved in as much sexual manipulation and extortion as Hayles did. That was her, Pernicious, and with a sexual appetite like a wolf !

Hayles bit into her burger and left her lipstick to compete for attention with the ketchup.

I looked towards Jenny Penny, at the circle of gherkin on the side of the plate, looked at the wipe-down table. I looked in her direction, around her but not at her.

All through the evening I was thinking about the white coffin, the rainbow rabbit, Jennys lips.

Am I me ?

To this day, I have told very few, my parents know nothing about my little visit to a little funeral. My brother just said in a few words, in an ole English mocking the Victorian days of petulant vocabulary.

" Tis was sentiments of a broken heart, now disappointed and filled with such feelings as regret, a braided twine called by many heartbreak"

I was to young to disagree and understand, I just went with it.

Chapter 2

Tube Blast

There had been a bomb blast.

On a train leaving West Ham station.

Why?

Father was on that train, he left his meeting early, excusing himself to spend time with his family.

He called us to tell us he was fine. It was a brief call but we needed to know he was coming home.

It was a Monday morning in March. Fathers suite still had dust on it , in the dust was everything small and meticulous that flew through the air. He had brought white flowers for his wife and Easter eggs for his kids. When I hugged him there was a strange smell on his ears, as if from another world that I never want to know. A smell of burnt oil, smelted bronze, singed hair, burnt nails, and many others harder to describe. I imagine he was in hell for a bit of time that morning and the smell, was hell.

That day he and the other survivors arose from being knocked down, and in the darkness walked towards the light. Whatever it was that they thought as they went from hell to fresh air I am happy to never experience.

My father changed clothes as soon as his wife kissed and hugged him, and with-in a tenth of an hour was playing with his son, my brother, foot-ball in the yard. It was through the dribbling of the ball, and the attitude of the passes, it was in the dives he made as goal keep, that he communicated to my brother what words can-not translate.

As our day progressed, and I speak solemnly from memory, we had a quite fond time of staying at home, passing together to get groceries. And only in the midst of the night have I any recollection of a dark taint on that day.

" It is comming, its getting closer."

"Don't talk such rot, dear" Replied my mother to my father.

"Honey, last year, it almost got me"

The house moaned with my fathers grim spirit now up-taking our family coon.

"It's hunting me down'

"No no, love is stronger than this, look at all around you.

God loves you and has blessed you, this, this is just a cross for us to bear" Would relentless reincourage mother.

Last years experience was another example of the bullet between the rabbits ears - My father;

We, had lived through another bombing, it was at a hotel. What is it to remember the name. Those that died are forgotten. They are statistics.

My father was in the lobby, one minute before the explosion. Luckily nature called him and he was trapped in a bathroom for the next 5 hours. In a bathroom with one other lucky soul. It was dark and some of the plumbing had failed.

By the the times the news people had reported the tragedy my father had already called home, to tell us he was fine.

These experience of course shook him, and turned him into a little raskily rabbit fearing that ever-un-relenting hunter was inches behind him in a bush with a 12 gauge ready to plop him dead.

It was to hard to conceive the idea that maybe, these two miracles were just miracles. Football pools rapidly occupied my fathers lifeline, becoming an obsession, and it was good, instead of him obsessing over a wandering hand of death closely over his head he was obsessing over Chelsea and Manchester.

Chapter 3

Sporting good time

Morning time around the breakfast table turned into;

"I have just won one thousand dollars ! What are we buying today !"

I would gaze a bit at this deluded man masquerading in the memory of my father and quietly grab a toast. For my father it was not about the money, but rather, winning became proof that he was still a lucky man, lucky enough that he will not die that day. A mere subroutine macabre ritual plastered on-top of an elaborate vice..

The whole family joined in on the masquerade. And weekly, Mom, Brother, Father, and Daughter would bet on the local, the international sport teams to score a goal or two. Some-how a few bombings promoted football.

My father had us as well play the lottery. And our methods ranged from the close your eyes and scribble down by divine intervention, to playing the same birthday number, to painting an orange with a blue pencil. Every week my father would promise us 'a brand new life', ticket the 'no publicity' check-box and off to the collectors with our chance at living in Elysium. Though only death can bring you there.....

And this pushed Joe to sports. Watching Rugby on Saturday night with his family, with our family, Joe hopped up and down awaiting the players to make it to the touchline because they would win and if they won, we would win. It meant money in the pocket, more than that it meant we could foretell the future.

Until this period of our lives, until the second bombing in our city, my brother only new conkers as a contact sport. My father only knew retarded involvement.

In these days my father had given an arm and a leg to place Joe into a decent secondary school from the private sector. The second set of arm and leg were to be allotted to my education. My brother re-invented himself in the years spent at this school, though it may have just been puberty.

At 2 months after we spectated our first televised Rugby match together (as a family) we were on an actually pitch, I felt the ground as fragile as egg-shells. It was my brother, Joe, it was his moment to be our bet.

Mum and Dad and me were in the tribune, watching from under the shadow of a listless sun which had graced us earlier but now as though on a proper que to the last minutes of the game, was hopping like a rabbit between the tall towers of council flats conjuring the sports pitch. I tried to clap, but could hardly move, I had brought the wrong coat, one that Mr. Harris had bought me a week before, and I plunged into it seconds before having to step into the car, and being the only one whom noticed the horrid visual obscenity that I was, was rushed by adults to my brother big game.

Mr. Harris had seen the coat on sale and instead of the thoughts "Would Elizabeth Maud like this coat, Would it suite her ?"

He must have thought " That ugly thing is nearly the size of Elizabeth, and won't she look stupid in it, ha, !!".

The coat was white with black arms and had a black back, it was a coat as tight as a knee support, just, less use-ful, and although it kept me warm, it was only because the giggles of laughter the cold wind must have burst into that made me so. My typical British parents were to polite (or as I say, weak) to say "Oh, dear, you don't have to wear that silly thing". Of course, better weather would soon be upon us, if I was not to die by then.

The whistle was blown and the match under-way again. Joe caught a ball that was kicked in the air, having run towards it an neck-breaking speed. He never let his eyes off the ball, until he caught it, like a rabbit with a carrot stuck on a stick in front of him. He veered around obstacles, other players, but to him, they may have just been trees, obstacles. He flicked the ball to the man inside, the ball talked to the player. I cheered and thought my hands were raised, but weren't.....to stiff from the jacket to raise.

"Come on Blues"

My mother shouted.

"Come on Blues !!"

I screamed, making my mum jump.

My brother had the ball again. He raced down the line. The ball was tucked neatly under his arm. Thirty yards.

Just Twenty yards. A dummy to his left.

"! !Come on Joe! !"

"Go Joe Go !"

We, the family all yelled, and beckoned.

At the fifteen yard line, he was looking for support, and with the try-line in sight he hit a five headed human wall. Joe hit it at high speed, full sprint. It was bone and gristle and teeth that collided and bedded him into the thick mud. It turned into a grotesque dog-pile. The pitch and tribune fell silent.

Our friend the sun slowly reappeared from behind the tower and illuminate the orgy. I looked at my parents for an indication on how to react. Mum was turned away, unable to look. My father clapped "Well Done boy Well Done!" An unusual response in my opinion to a probable broken neck.

I was the only one in a sense of danger and so, I ran to the pitch, I made it only half-way when a strong man yelled. "Pick up that Penguin ! ".

I froze in my tracks and began to hear the laughter.

The referee peeled off the battered players, until I saw my brother crumpled at the bottom, motionless, embedded in the mud, with the ball still in his hands. I ran to him, and I tried to bend towards him, but the jack was to straight and in one momentous effort I toppled onto him, winding him again. He sat up imminently.

"Hello, brother!" " are you alright ?"

He looked at me strangely.

"Its me Elly". I waved my hand in front of his face.

After-wards, I slapped him.

" Ow !

What did you do that for ?"

" I saw someone on the tele do it."

"why are you dressed as a penguin"

"to make you laugh"

He laughed, and I saw he was missing a tooth.

"Joe, ahm, Where is your tooth ? "

" I think. I think I swallowed it"

He said as he tongued the hole were his front chomper had been.

We were the last to leave the ground. The car had slowly heated up by the time every one clambered back.

"Have you got enough room" Asked my mum from the front of the car, where she had pulled her seat up forward as to press her face on the windscreen as a splatter frog, but of a better color.

"ow yes, plenty of Room Mrs. M."

Said Charlie Hunter, my brother best friend. Well best friend from his first days at the school until his last. And friends days and months and years after. You could say long time best friends or you could say BFF, but at the time then, they were only getting to know each other.

Charlie was playing scrum, and I considered it to be the most important position because he choose where the ball goes, and I even said.

"If Joe is your best friend why did you not give him the ball more often ? ".

As a reply all I got was a rub on the head and lots of laughter. Yea, I liked Charlie.

He smelt of Palmolive soap and peppermints, he looked like my brother but with more of a tan, and that tan made him look wiser and older. They both gnawed at their nails, and on the ride back, I sat between both of them gnawing away at their nails like nervous little bunnies.

Mum and Dad like Charlie as always, they had given him a lift home after the games and matches and training. Charlies parents never came to see him play. My parents thought that was a sad thing. Charlie of course had a television set in his room and would cook his own meals, and this set him aside as wild and self sufficient. As sibling we agreed that if we were to be ship-wrecked it would be much better to be ship-wrecked with Charlie than with God, or a hand-ful of other sorts we tried out. Though ship-wrecked with either Mum or Dad would be the best, the best non-the-less is to not be ship-wrecked !

When I would walk, and Charlie would walk with me, or us, I would nudge myself into him to see if he would push me away.

He never did, I still don't know if it was because he ignored it or because he was to nice.

Charlies street was the show street of an affluent suburb close to us. Gardens were landscaped, besides the occasional mowing, dogs were groomed and trimmed, and cars valeted. My fathers half filled glass was drained away and he was left wilting in the weekend traffic by the life-styles perpetuating from Charlies neighborhood.

"What a lovely house" said my mother with not a jealous thought in her mind.

She was always like that; Grateful for life.

Her glass was always half-full, and gold plated with a permanent refill.

"Well, thanks for the lift" said Charlie while, opening the door.

"Any time Charlie, a friend of our son, is a friend of ours". Replied my father, replenishing his dignity.

"Bye Charlie" greeted my mother as well, with her hand already on the seat lever begging to morph from that constraint position.

Charlie leaned in and told Joe they will talk later, and the reply was identical, and of course I jumped on the wagon and said the same thing, a bit late, as Charlie was already out and the door closed.

That evening the sound of football results droned in from the living room. A distant update as that of a stock ticker, just much more insignificant. Often we left the television on while we ate in the kitchen, as if we had more members of our family living with us, and our lives more were animated by constant chatter.

That evening the kitchen was warm and smelt of crumpets, the night at the window strained itself through the window and into the light, a hungry guest. The plane tree was still bare. It was a few nerves and veins stretching out into the navy black sky.

French Navy my mum would call it.

She turned the radio on, and to add to the already simulated atmosphere of an ongoing party the bangles came on. "Yesterday once more". She looked wistful, melancholic even. My father had been called away at the last moment, offering his support and expertise to a rogue many considered un-deserving.

My mother began to sing along. She placed the celery and winkles upon the table, and than the boiled eggs too. These were my favorite, maybe they still are, but only how my mum makes um.

My brother came in from his bath, and sat next to me, in his pajamas and a shirt on, I could see the pink skin from the hot water and the shine from the soft soap. Looking at him with eagerness I said "Smile". As if on cue he did and there in the middle of the dark hole in his smouth (smile and mouth) I fed a winkle through.

"Stop it Elly !!" jolted mother in a big of an irritation, and snapped the radio off.

"And You" Pointing to Joe.

"Don't encourage her!"

Joe leaned to catch his reflection in the back door. These new wounds matched well his newly found man-hood. There was something noble about being tough that he liked, and began to gently touch his swelling eye. Mother slammed a mug of hot tea in front of him and said nothing. Purely hoping to distract the boy from brooding his pride. I reached for another winkle, hooked it with the end of a safety pin and tried to pull its uncoiling body out from the shell. But it wouldn't ! It clung on hard, even for a dead and cooked creature as if saying. "I wont let go. No never!".

"How are you feeling" Asked my mother most dryly.

"Not to bad" I replied.

"Not you Elly."

"Im fine"

"Not Nauseous ? ?"

"no"

"Dizzy ? "

"no"

"you wouldnt tell me though, would you"

she said diabolically.

"no, " and with a bit a laughter my brother showed that he was just fine.

" I dont want you to play rugby anymore" Curtly stated Mum.

Joe.

Calmly looked at her, " I dont care what you want, I am playing". Picking up his mug of tea, drank three large gulps.

"But Joey ! Its to dangerous !"

"Lifes dangerous, look at Dad"

"I. I cant bear to watch. To watch you hurt yourself, to see those big boys toss you around like a sack of potatoes."

"Than just dont mama, just dont come to the games."

"I feel so alive out there on the field. It feels so good, and the rush of the game. It makes me happy, mum.".

And so he got up and left the table.

My mum turned towards her sink and wiped her cheek. Maybe, it was a tear. It must have been because it was the first time my brother had said he was happy.

I got myself a blanket and went out-side after dinner to feed God. I sat next to his hutch, now on the patio, shielded from the wind by a new fence my neighbors had put up. These neighbors we did not know very well. They moved into Mr. Golans house. Sometimes, I could still feel his old face peering through the fence slats, the pale eyes that were translucent.

God moved towards his food and began to wait for me to pass it through the cage. I pulled the blanket a bit tighter over my shoulders. The dark sky was vast and empty, without a star. It was a sullen stillness that returned infinitely. From the vastness that it explored it now returned full circle into me, and was mine. The void and I conjoined in a symbiotic resonance.

I poked my finger in that frame of mind in through the wire mesh to feel for God. And found his cute little nose, his breath was slight, and calming, and it was warm and moist. His tongue insistent to tickle me.

"Things do pass" He said.

Quietly with a muffled low hum.

"Are you hungry ?"

"Yes, quite a bit."

I pushed a carrot through.

After he had eaten it, walked back and forth through the cage he spoke again.

"Thank you, much better"

The vast void and the moment of 3 began to disturb with noise from leaves far next to the fence. I jumped to protect God from the probable fox that had jumped in our yard and grabbed a cricket bat laying about. I quickly made my way towards the noise.

"Wait, its just me !"

Came a voice, it was Jennys voice !

Her body ripped through the shadows and a pink silk sleeping gown lightened with straws, leaves and a bit of dirt.

"Jenny are you alright, how long have you been there? "

"Yes, oh I just came out now." I helped her toss out the leaves, and rub off the dirt from her gown.

"I had to get out, they're arguing again !"

"They're really loud, and even worse mum threw a lamp at a wall!"

I took her hand and walked up the path to the house, covering her with the blanket.

"Can I stay the night ? "

"Ill have to ask mum, I am sure she will say yes, she always says yes."

My mother always said yes. We sat down next to the hutch and cuddled against the cold. She asked me.

"Who were you talking to ??"

"My rabbit, God, you know he speaks. His voice is like Harold Wilson"

"Really ?! Do you think he will talk to me ? ? "

"Dunno, you can try."

Jenny leaned over the cage and spoke in a more delicate, cute voice.

"Hey rabbity rabbit ! "

She began tickling his belly.

"will you say something ? "

"Ouch ! You little brat ! That hurt !"

Jenny either froze, or waited to gather her thoughts, either way the effect was the same.

She looked at me for a second. Than froze or gathered her thoughts again.

"I can not hear a thing"

"maybe he's tired" She continued.

"I had a rabbit once, Elly, when I was very young, and we lived in a caravan".

I asked "What happened to it?"

she replied "They ate it" and she cried a little.

"They

said it ran away

I

Knew the truth. Not. Not everything tastes like chicken !"

Jenny didnt even finish the sentence, she exposed the white of her knee and scrapped it viciously on the paved slab, in a swift meditated movement. She was now bleeding vigorously filling her ragged ankle sock. I stared both attracted by what she had done and repulse. The now calm air between us and her relaxed expression on her face. The back door opened and my brother walked out.

"Wow, its freezing out here. what are you two doing ?"

and before we could answer he saw that Jenny was just like him, injured.

"Shit!"

I mentioned "she tripped"

My brother bent down and held her leg up to the shaft of light emitting from the kitch, "Lets see what you've done"

"God thats messy, does it hurt ?"

"not anymore" and Jenny stuffed her hands into her overly large pockets.

"You'll need a plaster" Joe - Jenny "Probably, maybe two"

"Come on then" he said before lifting her up and holding her against his chest.

I never considered Jenny as young, her nocturnal existence had an aging allure to it. That night, nestled against him she looked small and vulnerable. In a way she looked wanting. Her face rested peacefully against his neck, and her eyes closed to the sensation of his care as he carried her inside. I didn't follow right away. I let her have her moment. That un-ending moment when she dreamt and she believed all that I have is hers.

Chapter 4 ^We made it !^

Days later, for Elly and Joe it was but a terrifying awakening. Kids having herd of stories, only tales, of the horrors of harsh realities. Genocide, homicide, war, crime. Murder.

Why was their father screaming, why was their demands for us to come downstairs blaring from my father in such a hasty tone ?

From the hall brother and sister began their convoy downstairs. Armed with only a toilet brush and a broom. The sibling began descending by the landing as their father rushed them, hugged them, and more so kissed them. Yelping in tears over what has happened. Mother was slacking behind, still she was in shock from the daft plunged into reality from her slumber.

"I said it, Did I not!"

Their father said, and both Elizabeth and Joe looked at each other, contending to abandon any and all fear.

"I said we are going to win it ! And I am a lucky man ! A blessed, chosen man!"

Than he sat on the top step and wept. Cried, hick-upend and at times laughed.

All the confusing attributions of their Fathers ego had peeked, buoyed by a slip of grid paper, the question rose and sank. 'Is this the end or the beginning of salvation ?' Having asked for salvation in the times of crisis, God had given him just that.

But humans always ask more questions, having received one blessing some-how entitles people to more and more blessing. Because if it rains, it pours, why would it drizzle, and if it drizzles why would it drizzle for only one day, tomorrow too. Or next week, but it will happen.

It has to.

Mother was now joyess, and she knew that soon she will be back in bed, sleeping, and when she will wake up it will be to a beautiful day. A day that will stay a memory with-in her soul for as close to eternity as we can guess. She kissed my papa on the head, and held him from 3 steps down, both hands on both cheeks,

"I told you honey! I told you"

"I know dear, come to bed"

He was not rocking back and forth, though a strange giddy tremor he did have about his posture. Lightning must have struck.

I watched my Mum take Joes hand and than reach for mine, we were now led by her heart to their bedroom. I remember the smell of sleep, heavy air, down, it felt to be made from. The curtains covered the windows, dark and warm, the bed fluffy and an inch deeper stiff. We sat down to our mothers command, to sit.

"We, we have won. The football pot"

She said it as if the Christmas presants just came in the post and we had to wait till tomorrow to open them.

"Blimey" Joe spoke with an opened jaw.

"Than whats wrong with Dad?" I asked.

While, flattening the sheets, mum whispered in a way.

"He's traumatized"

"What does that mean ?" I asked

"He's mental Liz" sniffed Joe.

"You two know that your father thinks to much about God. Right ?"

She was now hypnotized by her movements of the sheets. As if the linen on her hands was melting through her fingers into her heart.

Joe continued, "Yea, he doesn't believe in just one".

And mother picked up, "yes, its complicated,

He has been praying for us to win.

Now those prayers have been answered. Of course.

Your father just thinks, that, he will have to sacrifice something. He thinks that walking through this door, somehow closes another one, that we will lose something."

"If its just his mind, I think we can manage" I pitched in.

"No Liz, image that he won't consider himself a bad man anymore".

We kept the our winnings as a secret. Nancy, though knew.

Luckily, she was far away, some-place in Florence on a romantic get-away with, perhaps another, but a lover non-the-less.

The lovers name this time was a bit different from her previous lovers. This ones name was Eva.

An American Actress.

The secret of our winnings I had to keep

Even from my dear friend miss Penny. Jenny, had

mistaken my clue of piled coins as a hint for her

to steal from her mum.

As a kind of coded message for us to get sherbet dabs.

Excluding our-selves like this made

the win

just a normal, mundane thing.

A moment when our bank account swelled.

Our lives did stay exactly the same,

we stayed rather than climb the social ladder.

We swallowed our prides and choked

on being humble.

Our egos suffered as we longed dearly to tell the world.

We have won !

We Did It !

Mother still sowed our socks together.

We still bought what we found on a sale.

Even the tooth fairy refused to pawn a molar !

I wrote a note stating that my 20 bucks is with interest!

The interest grew and grew.

It became so inflated that father

came home in a brand new Mercedes.

It was a sedan, or a town-car.

Black windows, black leather, powered windows, silver exterior.

It had wheels with rims as big as our windows.

And it purred through the neighborhood as it cruised into

our drive-way.

My molar had finally come home.

Our neighbors

gathered around, rather quickly. Fathers timing was

impeccable. He came home at the same, 'just got out of work and made it home' time as everyone had routinely scheduled.

I herd more teeth shatter as jaws dropped greeting my father

with squeaked salutations.

It was father who had prayed and won, and now it was father

who had

jumped a rang higher on the social ladder.

And it was just a bonus from work.

Dinner we ate in silence that night.

The pink elephant in the room was, obviously.

The Mercedes (as I herd my father whisper to her in the drive-way)

Kathy.

As we ate. We swallowed more and more metaphysical bits

and pieces of the car. The first order of soup, tasted like refined motor oil, and our cups of tea seemed poured out of a golden radiator.

The grilled pork-chops must have been cooked on the engine itself as it was steaming hot from a long long drive back home.

Mother was the first to have eaten to much Mercedes and had to get some of it out.

"Why Tom ?"

"Why"

Before father had a chance to answer she was already up.

Emptying out the radiator.

(Getting a cup of water).

"I am not quite sure"

He said as he followed her into the kitchen.

"I could so I did "

They were back at the table now.

"That car its not who we are !

It stands for everything wrong with the world. It is a monster of how we are

Slaves to the economy!

How could you just bring a trophy of modern

materialistic money hording!"

He had to gather his thoughts a bit and just said.

"I have never bought a new car before"

"For Gods sakes ! Its not a new car ! That thing is a down-payment on a house for some-people. Its the first year in a new home!"

"I want, for all of us.

I want us to have a nice life. With-out worrying about things being wrong.

or if something happens to be right."

"The kids will get to drive that car to when they get their driving permits"

"Its not about the car !!"

"Its a bloody statement to the world !"

" It says that we agree with all the evil of the world !

after your God has blessed you for all of these years this is how you repay him ! By boasting and being proud ?!"

" I shall never " " Never Ride in that car."

"Either I go or it goes."

"So be it". Were the last words before my father grabbed his keys and drove away.

Mother was soon to follow suite and left the home as well leaving but a note.

'Don't your worry about me'

And we were not worrying about a thing, until we saw the note.

Chapter 5

Freedom & Responsibility

In hindsight, looking back after years of experience and with a mature mind.....let me say....let me write this.

When my parents returned from Cornwall long ago on an Easter pass-over, it was as clear as a crystalline sky that we are moving. It was a vacation my parents took to celebrate a second honeymoon. Nancy was quick to come to a conclusion that my folks just needed to reconnect, they had to find each other as people once again and when they walked through that door of that house, ruddy & salty, there was a vibe picking itself off of them. They were more kind than ever that I have witnessed them. Spell-bound soon I found myself at the dinner table with my Pops and my Mum, we all ate our food and as the digestive system began to numb our spirit of activity they declared the next proposition of our time on Terra.

We were moving forward in time and in a rotating spiral.

Father would also, quit his job, it meant 2 months of cleaning his footsteps. My father had to fill the empty space he would create at his job quick and fill it fully.

The note simply explained to my father that he can take the money and the kids and bugger off.

She left the note in February.

June came about, Mother had shunned all of her old life and celebration her freedom as soon as she walked out the family home. She spent that day in a parking lot of that same office he left behind. Her whole existence prepared for a new change.

She was here thinking of what direction to go, or to return.

It was late at night when the police came about to find a desolate red Volvo sitting in an empty parking lot. If it was an empty car the police would have drove by with no worries. But in this Volvo there was a woman, hunched over a steering wheel, peculiar, strange, and maybe, just maybe, in need of assistance, that is what the police do after all, they help and aid any whom are in need of help, and or assistance.

'' Im Sorry !" '' Im soosooo sooorrryy!'' That was what my mother said to the police man whom knocked on her window, waking her up from her ' happy mediation '.

She was full of tears, and had been crying in the parking lot for the past 5 hours..... the only smell now was that of wasted tears.

The policeman was on his second week out of the academy, his partner in the car was more relaxed, but this young buck reacted in a very unprofessional manner.

Seeing this middle aged woman blaze a declaration of guilt the young gun thought the worse was now in his hands, and a criminal who had just murdered her family was in front of his eyes.

This young Policeman grabbed the door open of my mothers Volvo, luckily it was unlocked, as the door opened the policeman ripped off his pistol and plummted the safety off.

'' Step out of the vehicle and place your hands on your head, NOW!'

My mother moved slow, unshaken by the imminent death threat. The control she displayed shrieked of a megalomaniac psychopathic killing machine.

If only a few hours later.

Our door thundered under the blows of heavy fists, it was a quick 20 seconds of knocking, I never heard anyone knock the way the police knock, they knock as if they are ready to kill, take, and charge.

'' Yes? '' Replied father as he was surprised at the sight of 2 police men besides my mother.

''Are you Mr. Thomas Maud''

'' Of cours-e thats my wi ''

'' Yes, what are you doing with ''

'' Yes, she is mentally stable''

' of course I am ''

'' of course she he is !'' They said at the same time.

The older policeman was having himself an entertaining evening as the young one was taken for a thrilling journey through his own imagination. He learned quickly and reacted to the facts, never allowing his reality to interlope with the one around him...he soon found himself only escorting a gentle woman home. Following a car through a neighborhood, and doing what a responsible body-guard and door man would do.

Chapter 6

The road to our Haven

Pops was defending a Mr. X against charges of child molestation. It was one of his first cases, rejuvenated as my father was in those days from all the excitement in his life he was bold on his new quest in the legal affairs of our community.

The defendant was a known man, a respectable one of the gentile society. The allegations were heinous. Iniquitous. X, Mr. X has been faithful for forty years at the time of the case, not even as much as a bicker between him and his wife had ever occurred and the couch remained vacant for entertaining quests. The marriage produced two children; a boy who became a man of the army and their girl, an accountant. More about Mr. X ? He was on the board of Directors for 4 companies, 2 local, 2 international. So he had enough money to play in society and live happily, joyfully, and gaily. Mr. X did all the good Samaritan duties of most good Samaritans, he provided financial situations for young academics, regarded fundraisers as a collection basket at church, provided for the local community solid investments for business to sprout and or grow.

The plaintiff, or in this case the victim was Jean Hargreaves. Pronounced with a G, as if the case would have been on the front page of newspapers across the country if it had been a Jea’n.

Jean was ten at the time of the of her humiliation, and after thirteen years of silence, was now a 23 year old young lady.

She grew up financed by Mr. X, he had the luxury of hiring Mrs. Hargreaves senior as a cleaning lady. Jean was asking for little, a few thousand dollars to pay for therapy, and 10k to live for ten, maybe five years. Apart from that sum of money, she wanted another 50 thousand dollars just to split between the many involved in her court proceeding. Plug the pig and we shall all drink the blood.

Her story goes, that time and time again, while her mother had her over her work-place, to well, spend family time together. Mr. X would do, weird things with the young girl when he had his moments, once or twice a year. While she is of the luckier victims of child molestation, she said Mr. X bathed her, and occasionally cuddled with her, and at times, found her underwear missing after a bath, with or without Mr. X…

These kinds of things are wrong. But my father desperately tried to play the scenarios off as innocent and friendly bonding experiences. As those at Korean or Russian bathhouses. Jean had, on her attack plenty of paper work from therapists explaining one too many mental disturbances caused by the defendants forthcoming attitude.

People who condone behaviors of human trafficking for sex slavery as well as those who advocate for legalized prostitution under the forms of ‘erotic massage’ or ‘ private lap-dance’ ‘or adult film actress’ would say this was a case of an over-romantic Lolita exercising her justice on her lost lover, for him abandoning her.

Jean used evidence from recollection, the colors of bed sheets, the aromas of candles, the fissure on Mr. Xs ring, she had a recollection of everything my father could ask to illustrate a infatuation. She was scorn to exact justice.

Her Lawyer a Mrs. Glick, of a Jewish family, was a pit bull without a collar. A warrior with no reserve.

4 hours into the hearing Mr. X began finally to shake, and tremble, to sweat and shiver. Whatever truths he was inviting fell to pieces in front of the members of the court. What little press there was found a diamond in the ruff.

Later, my father lead Mr. X down the corridor to escape from his guilty conviction. He was condemned to pay the sum agreed. He was condemned to 4 months of therapy. And he was condemned to 400 hours of community service. Slap on the wrist for a man with millions upon millions of pennies in his piggy bank and just as many under his pen.

Mr. X had stopped in front of Jean, my father acted as a buffer for others not to hear, and apparently this stuck pig payed his way out of a slaughter.

My fathers next task after the events of such a scandalous affect was to quite down the town, which meant a few things. One, was that Mr. Xs’ accountant was now my fathers best friend. Two, our family gained respect in the community for quieting down troubles for people. And three, that after we had acquired a new beautiful auto-mobile. After the police came to our home to bring back a Man whom had refugee himself from his family and after all the gossip picking up in our town about us.

We became the local mafia bosses.

June moved on hot and cozy straight to July. I’d have to resist another 4 hours burning my head in the blazing hot sun. I was wishing to have worn my hat; a white cricket hat Charlie had given me last month it seemed as if it were his mothers, or perhaps his sisters….I knew I was late. I ran up the road, panting for breath like an overheated dog. The sweat that ran down my back felt cool and chilling. I silenced the clamoring with-in my pocket, placing my hand on the loose change soon to be exchanged for an icicle or two.

I was late because of Jenny… why else?

I escorted her to the recreational playground just fine. But upon arrival she some-how tripped and got her hair caught in a fence. A large clump ripped off, stuck in the chain-link like a blot of sheep’s wool and she screamed in distress, convinced that she was bald. I explained to her that she still has plenty of shrubbery on her head and calmed her down ten minutes later, climaxing with a friendly I’m off to meet with Joe.

Finally having turned the corner where I saw my brother standing and pointing at his watch. We had the typical chat:

“Your late !”

“I know !, Im sorry Jenny almost died !”

Though I was late to come wait with him for the bus, I showed up 2 minutes before it arrived, so in a sense of the word. I was perfectly on time. Greet my brother, hop on the bus, and sat separately for quite awhile. My brother wanted to sit in the back and I wanted to sit in the front.

I conceded defeat and went a midst the stained seats painted with cigarettes and joined him in the fantastical school childs fantasy at the back of the bus.

I stoop up and positioned my face next to the sliver of an open window. The air was still and subtle. I was a bit uncomfortable all in all being hot as a mutton in an oven. My brother was biting his nails again, giving himself a perfect pedicure. It was something he should have out-grown but somehow, on the bus nostalgia hit him like a cricket bat to the pitcher and off he went.

It had been awhile since he had met with Charlie. Charlie had taken time off from school, it was not out of illness, and at the time the two would not talk a word of the matter, though in later years the goose was out of the pen.

When it was our turn to ashore from the HMS Becky (I called all buses HMS Becky) the trade winds were finally blowing through my port-hole and I had become comfortable with my voyage. Joe and I began laughing as we walked down the streets. Mowers and Sprinklers hummed and Birds chipped as we giggled over the poor sheep caught in the fence.

Than we fell silent. There was a moving truck at our house. We slowed our paces, steadied our gait. Did we step on a worm-hole and now any wrong move would send us stumbling down to another wrong universe?

I asked Joe what time it was…..Clearly it was moving time…. But that joke just didn’t work and Joe fell silent as we watched the house animated with a peculiar ritual familiar with other people and other houses and with us, but usually after, months of planning. This was a spontaneous atrocity.

My friends ! My neighborhood. Where were we to go ?

We stood motionless and watched familiar items loaded into the van.

A small silver television set we watched together with Charlie on the occasion. A pair of skis. The large freestanding dresser that out of which came the penguin suit I wore, and the lovely cricket hat… upon many clothes.

It was a Mahogany wood straight from the French republic. From the days it was a democracy.

My brother gripped my hand in anxiety hoping to find comfort.

“Maybe he’s moving closer to us”.

He said forcing himself to smile. Apart from across the street, how much closer can some-one get ?

Charlie finally appeared carrying a box (whatever box you want it to be but not to big for a teenager to carry) he put it down and rushed over to us.

“Hey Guys !!”

He was waving, hoping to receive the appropriate enthusiasm the he gave.

“We are leaving !” He said so excited.

“What, what do you mean your leaving ?!” Joe.

“My Dad and I are going to Dubai. I am already enrolled in school there.”

We were still stunned.

“He’s got a new contract and a new country; we’ve got no choice.”

“You could come and you could stay with us”

I pitched in.

“When are you”

A little pause as my brother took it.

“Going”

“Tomorrow.”

My stomach clenched at the idea

“That’s to quick.”

“Oh not really. I’ve known about it for a few weeks”.

“Why did you not tell me !”

“It didn’t seem important”

“Oh, I’ll miss you Charlie”

Charlie turned away. “Yeah”

“It’s really hot there you know”

“It’s really hot here”

“We are going to have servants”

“What for” I had asked.

“I could come with you Charlie !”

Charlie only laughed.

Two men carried a large leather armchair in front of us and noisily positioned it in the back of the van next to a large silver planter.

“Charlie why, did you laugh at me?”

“He can go with you, Charlie!” I reached again for my brothers hand. “ if you wanted him to, all it would take is a phone call.”

“Look, Ill ask my Dad, and you can visit some day.”

“How about that ?”

Charlie folded his arms after having stated that.

“Fuck off!” “I’d rather die”

And with that my brother turned and walked away, swiftly.

We strode up the road, the pace too fast in the murmuring heat, and I couldn’t make out if it was sweat or , maybe something more delicate coursing down my brothers face. Soon he was way ahead of me and my tired legs refused the flight. I dropped my pace and sat on a wet wall, sprinkled intermittently by a flickering hose.

I was expecting to hear a knock on a window and an angrily motioned hand waving me off the private wall. I receive peace and quite and a cool trickle of water instead.

The cool water ran from the top of my head, down my thin neck to my clavicle where it ran horizontally and gather at points to drop down my breast and down my back. It was such a nice cooling sensation that my body begot the shivers.

I was sitting with closed eyes and I herd footsteps running closer and closer, finally sitting next to me.

“ofmph Its wet !”

“What do you want Charlie ?”

“I don’t know.”

“Than go away, you’re an idiot, an idiot, an idiot, an idiot”

“Elly, come on, your already go me wet”.

“Idiot”

“I just wanted a proper good-bye”

I turned and punched him hard in the liver, or was his liver on my other side?.

“Good Bye” I said.

“Ow crud!, why did you do that!”

He clenched, a bit.

“If you really don’t know than you are much stupider than you look!”

And again I punched in the same stung place.

“Why are you doing this to me !”

“Look what you did to my brother !”

“I had to be careful.

You see..

My father he watched over me. He’s really weird about it. Tell him that.. and tell him for me something nice.”

“Fuck off Charlie.

Go tell him yourself !”

I said that, jumped off my cool fence and off my way I went up the hill, suddenly revived, powerful and different, changed.

Had my parents ceased for one glorious moment to stop and be still in something called silence. They would have been able to hear the sound of my brothers heart ripping in two pieces. At one end was the hatred for Charlie and the feelings from a confusing, from a betrayal. The other half was him in desperate fear of lonesomeness, that absence of a secondary physical manifestation of himself in the world, leaving him to a voided man whom has to interact with-out an ally.

Though my parents herd only the sound of the Cornish waves and birdsong that were to fill the silence of all living with-in our proximity.

It was left to Nancy and I to mend my brothers heart together. To chill the fire and to melt the ice.

My first step was to pull his pale tear stained face from beneath his pillow. Than I had to give him a sense to the world, for he had none now. He loved, yet he was not loved back. And even Nancy was god spelled as to my brothers melancholy. For her it was a fact of life and felt sorry my brother had this realization so late in his life. She knew that this reality contradicted his reality and caused his heart to explode.

We stayed with Nancy at the Chart-house Square as the cavernous summer holidays opened up. Nancy kept us busy with continual visits to museums and art galleries and cafes and concerts and everything that would happen for public and sometimes private attendance. Joes lack of interest in everything except for his wounds gradually wane and he tentatively emerged, squinting into late July sunshine, opting to give life one more chance.

“When did you know Nancy ?” He had asked her as we walked along the Thames, heading towards the South bank complex to an old black and white film.

“A bit older than you I suppose. At sixteen ? I always knew what I wanted and I always got a lot of what I didn’t want, so my choice became easy.”

“But it’s not easy” He stunted in. “It stinks, all the hiding and what-not”

“Than just don’t hide, silly”

He continued. “ Sometimes I wish I was like everyone else.”

Nancy stopped to laugh.

“Noooo, no, you wouldn’t. You would hate yourself, you would have nothing to set you apart. Being homosexual is your salvation and you know it.”

“Nothing but Bollocks” He snickered.

Than tried to stifle a smile. He unwrapped a stick of gum and checked out the dark-haired man who passed in front of him.

“I saw you”

I said and nudged him with my elbow.

“Nancy ! I saw him look at that man there!”

“Shut up !”

And than he walked on, with his hands stuffed in his hot pants, the ones mother said would make him sterile.

“So… has your heart ever been broken?” Asked my brother of Nancy.

“Ohh God Yes. !”

“Her name was Lilly Moss!” I had added in, spunky and proud.

I was finally able to get my two cents into the conversation and measure up to their level of convo.

“The main one, that is. Everyone knows that story, Joe. She two-times Nancy and tried to take her for all she was worth. Didn’t really get away with it though.”

“Nooo she didn’t”

“Though she did snatch a very nice diamond necklace of mine”.

Joe continued “ I am never going to fall in love again.”

“Never again, with any-one.”

Nancy teased him.

“Never is a long time Joe. Bet you won’t make it.”

“Ohh yea, you wanna bet?”

“Tenner”

“Fine”

They shook hands, and Nancy walked on safe in the knowledge that she was ten pounds richer.

My father had for me, and my brother a surprise one summer morning. He told us that we are moving. My brother and I looked a bit at each other and than continued our breakfast. Our back-door was open to let in the August breeze that underlined the August heat. The bees and their intoxicating buzz thankfully filled the silence that had settled in the wake of our cruel indifference.

My father looked disappointed; he thought his exciting declaration might have elicited more emotion, than our stubborn bore. He seemed to wonder if he knew his own children as well as he thought he did. This thought of his was something common to him, not something new.

“We are going to be moving to Cornwell” Enthusiastically he raised his arms as if scoring a goal and finished off “ YAY!”

Mother came from the grill to come sit next to us at the table.

“We know it’s a bit sudden” she apologized to us.

“When we were away for last Easter a property came onto the market and we knew. It was what we want. Its been a dream of ours for the family for so long. When we saw it, we bought it.”

She paused to allow the absurdity of what they were saying to slap us across our cheeks and hopefully wake us up. It didn’t.

We kept on eating as if woke up deaf.

She finally asked us indirectly “We need you two to trust us”

My brother pushed his plate away’ “Alright, when ? ?”.

“Two weeks from today” Father said apologetically.

“Ok” – Joe.

He than got up clumsily from the table, a bit stirred now. He left two rashers of bacon and headed towards the stairs.

Joe was laying on his bed flicking an elastic band across his arm, red welts rising crisscross on his skin.

“Hey ! What are you thinking ?” “I’m not”

“Do you want to go Joe ?”

I moved closer and sat on the floor next to him.

“Why not? There really isn’t much for me here”

He shifted again to look out his window, shimmering sunlight reflecting off the kingdom we would leave behind.

“Joe, what about Jenny Penny ?”

“Yea, what about her?”

“Do you think, Do you think she will come with us !”

“What ? Why do you think, that”

He turned to me and flicked my knee. “Ouch !”

“Is it necessary for her to move, she lives here. Elly, she lives with her Mom, we’d have to take both of um.”

Than he glanced again towards his kingdom for the last few times in the next two weeks. “Oo man, how am I going to tell her.”

“Dunno” He than drew a line across the window. “ We need a storm, to clear the air. That will make things easier.”

Briskly a fall wind broke through the air, and a giant storm cloud covered our August heat. We sat in the shade, watching the summer change, and expecting winter to come.

My brother went downstairs to that patio and picked up my little rabbit. As he reached the breach of his door, where I waited by the bed on the plush soft carpet, thunder clapped through the house and I jolted to a straighter, stiffer posture, if only for the two seconds before god was again in my hands. His plush soft hair hypnotizing me to a calm.

“About time young lass”. He whispered to me.

“I would have died out there in that heat, about the thunderstorm, sorry, I didn’t mean to ruin your day, but I need it”

“At least you have shade”

“What ? where?” “Oh nothing Joe, just talking to the rabbit”

The rain drops fell immediately distracting Joe from the conversation with god.

“Well would you look at that, it as if god can hear me” claimed Joe in amusement to me, still overcame by the news of our move.

“Yes Joe I can hear you, but you will never hear me”.

“Why ?”

“Well I said that we need a storm and it happened.”

God chuckled to himself. Dogs barked three houses over and children danced into the downpour in the streets, joyful and when the thunder clapped it was terror. The thunder roared and shook the ground. Mr. Fisk could be seen from the window running to secure a line for his tarpaulin. We walked down to our garden.

The rain filling it up as if it were an immense swimming pool. The flowers drowned in baths of mud. The fence seemed to leak water.

Here was the sledge father had made, the one we took to school in the seasons of snow. A few ghosts of swings and frames of climbing frames. We thought back to the cricket games and football matches that had scuffed the grass bare at the bottom lawn. We remembered the tents we made in the nights spent with-in our spaceship ten astro-physics lab. The same place we lived in far away countries and lands of folk-lore.

Suddenly

There was so much to say fare-well to.

And as the storm blew across and the god-rays began to single for us to come out like the light beacon of a lighthouse. There was a drenched face peering over the fence as if she knew.

And god said “Go to her.”

I told my brother to bring me 2 towels, and ran over to help Penny jolt the fence, as if it may be a good caution to take when it’s wet and slippery.

We began to run back inside, “Penny do you know that we’re moving ?”

Joe handed her and me a towel. She placed hers over her head like a batik. And I the same. We made our way back inside.

“Why !”

She asked me pulling the towel away from her face.

The clock ticked loudly in the silence. She stared pitifully across the kitchen table, and I longed for my brother to reappear, to bring back recognizable into this scene of quiet. The chair I was on felt hard. The orange squash much to sweet. Our ease, awkward. Nothing was the same.

“Why ?!”

She began to flood with tears, the rain moved inside her.

“ Why why why why why

Why why why why why why why why why why ? !”

It was some-thing I couldn’t answer. My parents decided to move. I could only run away from home and ?

“Is it me ?” I felt my throat clench as she asked. “Of course not my Mum and Dad said we have to move!”

“Well, where are you going, is it far ?”

“Cornwell”

“OOOMMPPHH You may as well be dead !”

She was holding the rabbit, she dropped him as she stood up.

“Whoops” He shouted and made his way to the couch in the living room.

She came over to me and pulled my chair from the table, we were facing each other, she placed her hands on my knees and began to lean forward, close enough to study my very pores as they opened.

“What about Atlantis, and everything we planned to do ? How are you going to keep your promises, how am I going to keep my promises ?”

“I will keep all my promises. What we were going to do here we will do there. “

“It can’t be in Cornwall !”

“What why ?”

“Because it has to be someplace that’s ours !”

“We’ll just make Cornwall ours !”

“Cornwall is everyone elses !”

She began to stamp her feet in place in rage. A rage my brother felt so often playing with her. It was an excess energy born of the dangerous energy that could turn into war.

She stopped and breathed, closed her eyes, and stared deeply into mine.

“Don’t leave me Elly. Please don’t.

If you had any idea what will happen to me.”

But what could I say. She was in a panic. I reached my hand and palmed her cheek. It was warm, but she was trembling.

“I really love you Jenny.”

“No you don’t ! Your just like everyone else !”

She ran. I followed. I shouted. “Jenny Stop !” “Wait!”

I knew what it felt, what Charlie, what Joe, what Jenny felt. Why on earth did they not feel what I feel ? I felt what Nancy must have felt. “Jeennnyyy STOOP !”

But she never did. Her shutter came down, and she would live behind it until I left. Slowly frozen in time and thawing out.

I wasn’t very curious were I was going. My goal was to find a way back to Jenny. Joe could care less Charlie was the last interest to the world he would ever have. We knew we were going to go to some school, and we knew we were to live in some village. We trusted our parents and allowed them to lead us blindly into an unknown place we will call it home.

The next few days and the next week, followed by a brisk period to pack passed by un-noticed. While packing god told me to leave something in the house. Anything. It was so easy to not exist anymore. Just go and leave the home an empty shell to be filled by another family. I told my brother to help me out with this and we ran through the empty house, our foot-steps echos of the memory we are becoming to many. He grabbed a tin and a photo, I couldn’t see what, and we placed it under that slatted back fence. We covered it with a few extra bricks and sprinkled dirt and leaves on top.

I asked, worried, “Do you think someone will find it one day ?”

“ Nah never. Not unless they know where to look.”

“What was on that photo?” “ A secret “

“That’s not fair !” “Not at all”

He looked at me and it looked as though he’d tickle me or hit me. He reached out instead and cuddled me. It felt weird. As if he was saying good-bye to me as well.

I was not expecting to have her come see me off. And I was saddened deeply by that.

I herd the unmistakable sound of her unruly run, my heart fluttered, and as she voiced my name in a shout verging on a scream. I ran towards her hug.

“Sorry Im late It was my hair again”

We stood quietly looking at each other, frightened of speaking and saying a painful truth, or a childish word of a fantastic lie.

“Look Elly I’ve got new shoes” she said between our sobs.

“I like them, their so nice.” “I wore them especially to, to show you” “Oh deary, I know you did and thank you so much”

Suddenly I was feeling wretched.

“Elly I don’t think we will ever see each other again.”

She said looking up at me, her face red and blotchy from her tears.

“Jenny !” “ Of course we will !”

I put my arms around her again. Smelling her familiar scent of chips.

“We are liked – inextricably linked” It was something my brother said about us a few days before.

From the car I waved to her until I could not see her anymore. “See you soon, I’ll miss you !

Your my best friend.”

Chapter 7

Trehaven

We were surrounded by trees by the time we had turned off the main road. We followed a single lane track down towards a river.

At times veering sharply left than sharply right, following raggedy signs that read ‘ The Haven’.

The late afternoon sun hadn’t lost its heat and leaves from overhanging branches were dappled by its fractured intensity and flickered like broken mirrors onto my face. I breathed in this new air; it was dampy; warm damp and now and then I thought I could smell the sea and actually because the tidal waters that fed the small river by us were on the turn.

“We’re nearly there” I whispered to Joe.

For the first time in our six our trip he stoop up, interested. He started to bite his nails.

“Its alright Joe”

I smiled to him and he smiled back. He than took his hand away from his mouth and began to focus on the green world outside of the automobile. I lifted god out of his box

“Youll be safe here” He told me.

The road leveled out and we were on a plane now. There were no more sharp left or sharp right turns. No more hills to climb or slopes to descend. It was trees and forest as far as the eye could see. Soon the car was riding uncomfortably on rocks and gravel and compacted dirt.

We finally came to our terminal stop in front of a dilapidated wooden gate, TREHAVEN carved down the left-hand gatepost.

‘Oh how much Jenny Penny would love this place’

Moss had bedded down within the curves of the sign post and made the lettering vivid green against the dark wood of the post. My father turned of the engine. I help my breath as if not to join in the harmony of the birds and chirps, and breeze, and bustle of the forestry. Not until Jenny was there with the harmony.

My father announced us “ We’re here Our new home. Trehaven”

The first thing to see was the moving truck, sitting by the clearing, and than emerging from all the natural world came into view our house. Large and square, and offwhite in the sunshine. It stood alone with a small dilapidated outbuilding hiding in the shadow of the left side. A small tree had taken residence of the neglected space and reached for the sky.

I had gotten out of the car and began my stretch. I felt small. This house was so big. It was a house for rich people. I stood standing looking at the grace and majesty. Yes, we are rich.

My next move was putting a leash on god and walking with him. We ran down the lawn towards the river.

“You know this isn’t necessary, you might as well get a tophat and walk me around like that.”

There was a dock by the river. To my surprise! I negotiated my footing with care, maybe one of those loose mooring plates may break as they were all rotten, eaten with salt and wet from a lack of lacquer. And of course there was a boat. Attached by a rope that looked as old as the planks. The boat was in as good shape as the dock. It had a hole and was half submerged, but it clinged to its home like a elder with nowhere to go but… down.

Suddenly, to startle me my brother spooked me “What do you think”

I turned around quickly, for this was the land of spirits and sprites and other being to light to elicit the sound of tread.

“Look !” I pointed to the river “A Fish !”

To that my brother lay on the jetty and gently placed his hand into the cold water. The fish darted to the side. I watched him look at himself following the ripple of his reflection ride the rising water around his fingertips. I herd him sigh deeply. A melancholy sound.

“How old am I !” He asked.

I told him he was Fifteen

He replied “ Still young”

A kingfisher flew overhead, and landed on the opposite bank.

I’d never had seen one until that day.

8 months I had been pregnant with tragic sadness because of my separation from Jenny. It the first of May now and soon I should birth my suffering.

My sadness blew fresh, part of the gust of wind between the trees. Eight months ago it was still and musty, fresh with tears. It encroached our house with occasional rain clouds heavy with grief.

For decades the house has been sheltered from light and soon its dampness started to cramp on our clothes and our skin began to scrunch. Everything from the fall of leaves to our bones, from the winter months our lunch-times became desolate with gloom.

My exasperated mother surrendered weeks with-in our inhabitants and issued an ultimatum of either we move the house or move the forest and my father fittingly got himself a chainsaw to cut down forest and make room for sunlight.

He looked clumsy and sinister with the tool, and the racket he made on a daily schedule only was overthrown by the booming of the trees as they fell.

As winter and Christmas came he didn’t stop much, even bringing home a pine-tree from some-where near by.

And we now had wood to fix the jetty.

In March the clearing began to shoot flowers, bluebells, brambles, cowslips, nightshades, and foxgloves and a few shrubs as well.

Starting in February those falling logs became shelves our books lent on. A table for our discussions, and in March the Jetty began taking shape as Joe and Pops put together the old gal.

God loved it here. We agreed that Ill let him out in the field when it’s nice and sunny.

From behind the stone wall I sometimes watched the school bus pull away. In the first few months my parents never noticed if I stayed home or went to school. They were much to busy renovating and fitting in, and I was vigilant as well.

Joe was indulged in his academic pursuits, he was set to get himself a degree, go to college, and start a career if only to keep the family wealthy.

When Mom and Dad lifted their heads above the dust of chaos.

They had something to say, of course they did – but I could not care.

I would walk through the forest heading father and father. I found one place where old old trees leaned towards each other and made a dome, where the energy beneath hovered with the potency of a million words of prayer.

At school I’d skirted the periphery of groups, laughing at jokes I didn’t even hear. The moment I passed the school gates the magic of being human vanished and I was an elf. The school vanished, the groups, and peers disappeared. I was new to the school, and more so than that an outsider.

My father had built me a chair for my elevnth birthday, in the forest under the dome I’d sit on that and look at the interweaving of branches and leaves that obliterated the sky. Once I sat through a storm and returned home dry. With no-one to witness my miracle (well they must have thought I had an umbrella and a raincoat).

I had a letter from Jenny I would read once in awhile. I’d look at the familiar writing. It was written with a left hand, she was a lefty. A trail of smudge followed her wrist, small and delicate like.

I could see the ink now stretching down her little finger to her palm, where she would transfer it to her forehead in moments of hesitation and uncertainty. Those moments must be few now, for she has a boyfriend and that is what the letter tells me.

‘Dear prick, thank you for leaving me behind, guess what I found some-one to replace you and he’s got a dick’.

Or some-thing like that. Gosh. Sadness is some-times worse than hate.

His sudden presence, Matt is his name, you know like what do you call a guy who sleeps in front of your door, Matt.

His sudden presence omitted any mention of Atlantis, though he could be Neptune, if our little world hanged on. For Christmas Jenny Penny came to visit and spent Christmas with us. It was an unforgettable time at Trehaven. The whole time she slept over we stayed awake all night to talk in our pajamas. We walked through the snow to parts of the forest that amazed us.

Was that the first and last Christmas ? Was Matt Grumley going to replace me and take Jenny away from me forever ?

She said it was love. I put the letter away and repeated the word to see what the forest says. This emotion should have bypassed Jenny just as well as manageable hair.

The two met at a funeral, so the start was right on her marks.

She squirmed me with spite. He now took her to the playground to torment that weirdo who played in the bushes. He now plaited her braids with the patience of god. He now walked her to school. And he has a dick.

She mentioned something about having diabetes to, at the bottom of the page in a sentence.

“By the way, I told you, I also have diabetes”

‘I also have diabetes’ ? What ?

Diabetes was easy to coupe with for her, just always keep a bar of chocolate around as she always has done.

“No school today then?”

Her voice sprang through the trees.

“Nancy !”

She made me jump out of astonishment.

“Oh sorry” and than she came and we sat back down on a fallen branch.

“I don’t go to school on Tuesdays.”

“Is that right” She than nudged my packed schoolbag with her foot.

In the winter I didn’t skip much school. It was a little to cold, and the sun came down much to early.

I, having been smothered in silence broke right to my point of interest. “Jenny has a boyfriend”

“Is that right. That kinda sucks for you”

“It does” I was picking at a thread on my shirt now.

“I don’t think I like her anymore” I began to unravel, both my situation and my shirt.

“And why is that, and what about your promises ?”

I shrugged. “ I don’t know, I just, I want my friend back”

“Maybe your just Jell”

I startled myself.

I hiccupped.

I began to cry.

“I’ve become

Forgettable”

“Now Liz don’t be like that. It’s not even the last 10 years of your life. Your far away that’s all there is to it. If you were there now, she would drop her boyfriend in a heart beat and spend time with you if she had to.

Of course she’s only doing whatever she can to be normal. She wrote, she’s keeping your informed.”

Nancy and I were heading out for ice cream. The weather in May was fitting for ice cream.

I ducked in the front seat, just in case some-one would show up and have a chance to catch me skipping school, again.

“All clear”

I climbed back up in the seat to see the fields of rye and timber walls on the peripheral of the one way lane road. The drive to the kiosk was un-eventful, we passed a lady with a dog.

“Oh good morning ladies, Liz, Nancy.”

“Good morning Mr. Copsey”

Nancy replied with a simple Hi.

Mr. Copsey owned a small kiosk at the back of the beach. He stayed open through-out the year, and his menu would change either for the winter either for the fall either for the summer.

But the bacon and tater tots were always on the menu. The kiosk had a little dock, and a towboat could pull in, anything bigger might pull the dock with it.

Nancy once asked Copsey why he did what he did, and he told her that with-out the sea he would have nothing. His wife he met on a faring lane, she had a flat tire and one thing led to another, his career his saving, and now his flourishing business.

We sat in our usual place overlooking the rock beach. The tide was out and we could see rounds of slate and seaweed and pebbles stretched chaotically from the road to the waters edge. I looked up at the houses on the cliff and found it strange that three nights ago there had been a violent storm and waves had crashed over the gardens. So violent a dead seagull was found on lawn. One of the benefits of going to school, I get to know everything.

Copsey brought us over our ice creams.

We talked about the storms we’ve had to endure. The funnels of wind, the shutters shut firmly down yet still shaking violently. The unknown banging sounds of unknown things, that sounded like the boots of giants. Shrimp heads, damp nets, it all made the ice cream that much colder.

We finished up and out went Nancy in a rush. She had a canvas bag with her.

She was heading straight for the beach.

“Nancy ! Wait for me !”

I rushed down the craggy beach. Maybe she had a metal detector ? What was she up too, were we going swimming ?

She finally stopped after a mad dash of a good 500 meters right at the farthest most cliff. She dropped her bag and took out a hammer and a chisel. She began to scrounge for thick plate sized pieces of dark slate. I got on, and helped out, she tossed aside what was inadequate. In twenty minutes we had a 4 pole of pancakes next to us and Nancy decided it was time to crack um open.

She sat down on the sand and positioned a slate sideways between her feet, holding her down in-between her shoes. “Right”

She carefully lined up the chisel and with two sharp taps it separated cleanly in two unfolding like a book from its bind.

“Nothing” she signed.

“Nancy, what are we looking for ?”

“You’ll know when you see it”

She picked up another slate and cracked it open.

Four hours later, the tide together with Nancys mood started to turn; her sense of failure lapped at the edge of her frayed enthusiasm and even a freshly baked scone with blueberry jam couldn’t raise her spirits. We were surrounded by mounds of splintered slate all of an unrewarded effort. She stood up, and called it a day.

“Just one more, Nancy”. I picked up the last of the gather slates, a small plate. It was the same as all the others, indifferent in all it’s ways to the rest. Her chisel landed with a perfected precision from a day of labor. It fell in two pieces and Nancys face lit up like the high noon sun. The search was over. There snug in the middle of one of the halves was a coiled impression of a creature from another time, perhaps as old as the world.

I gasped at the first sight of the surprise. Nancy held it up for me to see a better.

“See this is what we’ve been looking for !”

I ran my hand and fingertips round and round the grooved spiral and than took it out of her hands and hugged it.

Nancy made on “Nothing stays forgotten forever.

Sometimes, people like us have to remind the world of the special things in the world. That their still here”.

Dear Jenny.

Yes I’m glad your happy. Matt comes off nice and I’m glad you have some-one to spend your time with, and play with. It’s better to be that way than alone. Like me.

I miss you more than ever and I really don’t like school. Your not there. I have no friends, and I don’t go to school more than I go to school. I don’t think I will ever find some-one like you.

Nancy and I found a fossil in a rock on the beach the other day. I feel like the fossil. She said it’s rare and precious. Nancy says good things.

I hope you like the fossil, keep it safe for me.

Much love, your best friend Elizabeth.

Not once had our parents told us of their plans to turn the house into a bed and breakfast. Not one mention of it in the year we were there. One day I was looking at a colorful magazine advertisement, it was a February edition of The Garden.

They asked Joe and I what do we think, my mind filled with words like: idyllic, unique, peaceful, crowded.

We as a family have exhausted our energies for almost a year transforming the dwelling into a home.

Joe asked my father “Do we need money?”

“Of course not!, We are doing this because we can and because it will be fun.”.

“Yes it will be an adventure” Chipped in Mother.

Wait a happily married 40 some year old couple looking for an adventure ? Hmmm. Take that any-way you want.

Old nursery school broke words like these.

“Think of all the lovely people we will meet !” Continued mother holding tightly to her pink quartz crystal around her neck. It was a crystal she had found in the clay pits of St. Austell.

My brother and I looked at each other as we imagined mister and misses strange love taking a look at our magazine ad and saying to each other “Look dear, we should so visit the place and never leave”

I had reached for my brothers had but, it was already firmly in his mouth, and his other hand was holding this one steady.

The first two guest at the inn arrived just as the sealant around the bath had hardened. Mr. and Mrs. Catt parked their sand colored Marina saloon and were greeted by my Mother who was wielding a bottle of Champagne as violently as if it had been a battle-axe. I guess she wanted a good spray.

“Welcome ! Your our first!”

She led them into the living room, where Joe and I had our introduction. I only grunted and raised a hand, I figured, I’ll pretend to be deaf. Make things easier for me.

“Tommy!” My mother shouted into the hallway, and my father jogged in wearing a pair of flimsy red running shorts. He may as well have come in naked, since the discomfort of our guests would have been exactly the same. He lent towards them with his outstretched hand and said ‘Hi’ with an elongated I. I guess pops decided to play a role as well. If I was def he was dumb.

“Champagne darling, these are our first guests”

She handed him an oversized flute.

“You betcha” replied Tommy.

All six of us were in the living room, there was room for more. Our living room could fit 18 comfortably.

Father continued “What about this travesty, eh?”

He held up the guardian, showing a picture of Margaret Thatcher.

“She’s still with us in spirit and won’t change a thing”

Mr. Catt began the argument against my father

“We both think she was marvelous, before we can progress we have to stabilize”.

“Yes Tom, you know I agree with them, and your on your own on this one”.

The glass of Champaign was escorted with a fun convo. about politics, republics versus democrats versus liberals and conservatives.

Among the conversation pieces was my fathers introduction to himself as being a successful attorney, omitting that our money came from a lottery and not his or hers career choices, or some vast inheritance.

As it reached the point of becoming a forced discussion, and my mother having done the part of reception, my father asked before finishing his glass, “Do you need anything, I must return to my paper-work”

“Actually, we really want a bath” bulleted in Mr. Catt, Stevens actually. He placed the full glass of champagne onto the table and began rubbing his hands as if the was already in his hands.

The bath-tube needed another 30 minutes for the sealant to settle. It was risky.

My parents froze like dear on the tracks of a train.

“A bath” Repeated my father, as if the paper had to bring to court itself was to wash.

Stevens said jaunty “Yes.”

“Rrriigghhtt” My father said as slow as possible.

Bidding himself for time.

My mother chirped in, clever as always. “Do you know whats better than a bath ?”

Mrs. Stevens replied, “ A shower ?”

Clearly these people didn’t stop on their drive and wanted to wash and change clothes ASAP.

“No no, a nice relaxing visit to our garden before a bath.”

“Oh yes, I’ll go prepare the bathroom.” Side-lined my father happy to have found himself those precious thirty minutes for the sealant to settle.

Mother marched the weary travelers down to the water edge where they gazed at water to cold for a bath. Their vapid reflections begged for a nap. The walk to and back had hypnotized the two.

Once back at the house my mother announced “Bath time !”

And the two guest cringed as if they were certain it was a bath they were all 4 taking together.

These two were docile people, whom wanted no relationship with anyone. They wanted a simple private get-away from their lives. One worked in a bank and the other a contractor with a company. This was their safe-house and Mom and Dad were the mafia heads in charge of their safety and discretion. But Mom and Dad wanted attention.

The two were up early every morning, regardless of the weather. For breakfast they would eat the same things, and mother could not convince them to eat more than bran flakes and orange juice.

My father tried to keep them up, but they would always go sleep at nine. My parents tried to organize a film night, and a cards night, and a board game night, they tried to have heated discussion and arguments but always received and ‘excuse us, its our bed-time’. Nothing at all could lure them away from their snug symbiosis. The first guests were to tame for my folks.

The only entertainment my parents received was how Stevens and Beth would take to me so I could read their lips, slowly, articulated. At times father had to excuse himself to go giggle.

And yes I’m glad my parents respected my decision as I respected their live changing choices.

The day it had happened, I was alone with Joe. God told me that he doesn’t want to grow old, and that’ll he’ll soon go.

I figured he was going to run off in the forest and fall asleep or find some wolf to eat him. In all honesty god could have run to the forest and found himself so rabbits to hang out with. He explained that he just wanted to snuggle with me a few times and than return to Lila.

Dad and Mom went to get a cooker, from Plymouth. My brother and I we making wind chimes of the shells and metal scraps salvaged. We had paints, strings, ropes, screws, glues, everything.

The sky was an unblemished blue haze that morning and seemed droning.

I herd the screech of brakes first, than the doors of the car opening and slamming. He was to small, you see. They had missed his head, the wheels that is. Joe, saw the whole thing.

Mr. Catt saw a rabbit run under the wheels, herd a soft thud, but thought it was a wild rabbit, and understood that there was not much to do. He tried stopping in time, but only pinned down god under the front left wheel.

Joe told Stevens to back the car out, and I herd it.

I rushed outside to see what was going on and found god wrapped in my brothers favorite shirt, the one Nancy had gotten him.

I guess that’s what god meant by ‘I’m leaving’.

Jenny !

He’s dead ! god is dead !

First I have to move and see you never, and now god is dead and buried. I can’t come because I have school, and you cant because of school too.

I tried to convince my parents to let me come what can you do ?

I really need you !

These stupid jerks were staying at our house and they ran him over. Jenny what am I going to do.

I wrote that letter that night and posted it the next morning. We buried him outside in the forest at the tree dome. It was the first time I took family there.

I was so angry with the Catts that I told them to leave, I was in tears and screamed at them. My brother was on my side, he grabbed an axe and we chased the Catts away.

They bolted for their car and left much behind. They had a plan.

Talk to some more mature people.

My parents came back, their car followed by the Catts, I would learn later that they went to Mr. Copsey and my parents saw their car parked, warranting an investigation. My parents had apologized for me and Joe and of course they understood.

They were going to come get their luggage and head-out. It was 4 in the afternoon, they’d be home by nine.

Me and Joe were getting ready to walk to the forest and Joe had got himself a shovel. I took six pieces of wood and a bunch of nails and made a coffin. We were two gloomy souls by the time they got to us, dressed in black, sad, faces wet with tears.

“your going to bury god” said my mom slowly, monotonously. “Yes, are you coming?” I asked.

Her and Dad came, with-out unloading anything, without changing clothes. We walked 40 minutes in silence. The Catts had time alone to gather everything and say good-bye to the bed and bath they’ll never see again. At least they have had a memorable time.

Dad took responsibility and worked a hole in the forest, Mom gathered a few twigs and a big rock for a tombstone. I stared motionless with the casket and the rabbit.

The morning came, and it was a hard time to get some sleep. I more or less passed out and woke up as soon as there was sunshine, remembering that I lost something.

I dialed Jenny and she picked up on two rings.

“Gods dead isn’t he”

I called her every week. 4 times a week. Some-times she didn’t pick up, we worked out a schedule. She missed out.

I told her to come and she agreed.

It was Friday night, my parents agreed to pay for a cab to get Penny over. That’s how much it took to get my friend over. Penny brought over a backpack with a few cloths, a few photographs, and a flower arrangement for the grave.

I sat on the patio all day waiting for her to arrive.

“Thank you so much for coming!”

“Its god will”

“This is a bed and bath now?”

“Oh yea, I forgot to tell you. My parents barely have any friends around here so they wanted to get more adventure in their life. I guess they are getting bored”

“Whoa…. Maybe you can open one up back home and we can be together again.”

It seems time doesn’t separate us.

That night my parents finally got their movie night and board game night, but with much less alcohol. Joe felt really bad, Charlie to this day had not wrote a word to him, but here was Jenny Penny smiling happy, hugging me, laughing. We were apart and here now we were together, snug in this home that would make Charlies visit romantic.

We spent the night talking about our past. About all the things that brought us together. About our visit to the church and my first funereal and … kiss. But we kept that to ourselves.

That night I held on to Jenny

And later she left.

Chapter 8

School versus Education

“Here”

My brother handed me the tiller for the first time. The river divide was just ahead by 2 feet and I was in charge of steering the boat. I was steering towards the left. The river would cut through dense woodland of scrub oaks and beech and sycamores. I was huckleberry and he was fin !

As we broke our way down the river and through the correct divide I startled a set of geese and they hurled to the sky to form a distinctive formation.

The more we went on the more the river narrowed down, and my imagination said it will shrink into a creek, and maybe or boat will shrink and we will be tiny little people.

There hang weeds rushed onto overhanging trees from the previous high tide. We had gone through this river before, and on this portion I always felt that I may fall in the water.

“Thats great!” “Your doing so good” my brothers encouragement. “Keep the boat right in the middle, let the boat find the deep water”. It did find the deepest parts but once in awhile I felt and herd something scrape the wooden hull.

I the sunlight was burning me up and I had to cup my hand across my brow. With the sunlight piercing the water I could see the ragged spume.

My brother took a nap. “ Hey will ya wake me up when we get there”. I was now responsible for our safety and his life and my life. Of course he took an oar for comfort.

Rolling down the river things went quiet. I read the years on my brothers face. He has aged since that first time he discovered his brutalness. He was almost done with highschool and began thinking of a career in interior decorating.

I saw a grey mullet flank our hull. He was looking for a companion, to guard him from the dangers out in the water, or out in the air. It was a four or five pounder, similar to one my brother caught in the first autumn here. Joe took so much pleasure in gutting the poor thing. He sliced the gills and soon he tossed the innards back in the water. My brother placed a small translucent orb into my palm. “Thats the eye, it still sees even in death”

“Shut up” and than I threw it in the water.

I guess he was exploring what it must have been like for Charlie to gut him on the river of life.

I found a nice place to punt the boat. Using a branch to guide us, I also found damson berries, and lots of um (Mom and I will be making jam soon).

“Joe, I think Charlie would have liked this”

“Elly, what is wrong with you !”

He got himself up in a brisk. I recoiled and lost my footing to fall on my side. Missin a rowlock which would have impaled me.

It hurt a lot, and I choked on my own tears. I guess I'll never say that cursed name again.

The boat too began to loath aimlessly, this direction placed the boat on a sand bank, with a sudden thump.

“See what you've done ?” He scowled me. My brother was still very sour over Charlie. Time did little to heal him over.

Charlie Hunter made it to the front page of the December newspaper. I was sitting in bed, feeling the slow cold of the winter months. Movement thought even breath were smother by my blanket.

“Elizabeth !!”

Joe screamed and brought white steel to my ear drums instantly jolting me alive and down the stairs. “Look !” and he pointed at the t.v.

'The sixteen year old boy was named as Charlie Hunter as our sources reveal. The young man was kidnapped at approximately ten o clock at night when a masked men broke into what was considered a secure house on the outskirts of Lebanon. He was with his father an oil executive working for an American company in Dubai visiting friends. A ransom note was left behind at the scene, although this has not been confirmed. This act has not been claimed and we unsure if this is a political or financial manifestation. Charlie Hunter is a citizen of the United Kingdom and this shows how vulnerable we all are'.

It was a 2 minute spot, between the price of fuel and whatever was on before I came down the stairs.

My father turned the volume down, maybe some-thing else will be set of Charlie.

Nancy broke the minute long eternal silence first “Good God”

“I can not believe this” Sighed mother. “Charlie ? Our Charlie ?”

“Scrum half Charlie”....even my father and Joe were confused.

It's a bit hard to deny that it was Joes Charlie when all these little details just fit.

Joe ran out of the room. Nancy ran after him.

My brother and I became him and me a long time ago. I followed slowly.

She sat on his bed, put an arm on his shoulder.

“I wanted him dead Nance, just like Golan, dead and gone out of our lives”.

I stood at the doorway. In wait for a que to come in and be of comfort. Maybe ease the situation.

“Joe what are you talking about ?”

“And now it might happen, he might die”

“Joe, joe... it won't happen, he'll make it out”

“Yea Nancy but if he doesn't its my fault!”

“We say these things, wishes dont come true is its a wish made out of anger and hurt, maybe if its a wish made out of tiredness or pain, but this kind of wish”.

She reached in, hugged him and gave him a kiss on the forehead.

Joe let out a breath of stalk air, the plinth that held his grudge over all these years

“I don't care anymore, I just want him to be found. I don't want him to be mine, I just want him to be happy and safe.”

More tears came down Nancies chest, well just on her sweater. He pulled out quick though only to stifle himself with his pillow. I herd him finally say “Oh God please find him”.

The smell of her perfume came into mind, as I watched from the door. It made me turn around. I herd the floor boards squawk and watched her come up the stairs. She came next to me and to hear the truth come from Joes lips.

“I love him so much” with a wallow of sorrow echoing down his gullet.

His grain image stood out from broadsheet to tabloid. Most of the time it would have been exciting to see his dark, handsome face again. And the only excitement we thought about was whether we should go on television to talk about him.

Now that same smiling face that greeted us from beyond the beach, a place we would have visited again if their hearts had taken a less potholed route.

He looked happier than us ! And he seemed unaware of the violence about to trespass on his life.

I wondered how much his kidnappers thought to price his life, I thought what his parents would consider reasonable. I began to think on the idea, what is some-ones worth related to, how can we measure that? Is it goodness, is it usefulness ? Or maybe its about helping people completely unrelated. Maybe Im worth more younger.

In that period I used to lay in bed listening to the owls. Even they get kidnapped. He was maybe in a dark cellar, chained to a wall, maybe upside down and surrounded by the bones of other kids whos parents refused to pay-off.

There must of be a stink in the room and a cup of dirt water. Things crawled in the darkness, and only one window let in sunlight, high up on the ceiling becoming darkness long before it hit his face. Damp. Cold. He seems to have found his way into my brothers heart again.

In my imagination I herd a chant, a call to prayer and shook up. But it was just a fox.

Charlies situation was horrid. More horrid than I could imagine. By Christmas day he lost both ears. By February both of his hands.

I had asked Nancy how much she thinks a ear is worth. She told me it is worth everything.

We sat in vigil in front of the television day and night , sometimes watching in turns to relay what someone could have missed. I got to miss out on school until the following term and we placed the routines of our days in distress. We were upset and in a panic. Confined to a long drive a big forest and a little river. Everything even Christmas was neglected.

We tried to come to an accord that what happens in other countries doesn't concern us. It was my fathers idea, mother didn't like it in anyway. Joe was barely eating now a days. Walking from room to room, pacing around, falling unconscious rather than falling asleep. Guilt ate him and only pops could understand the power that such an emotion held.

I strode across the lawn rudely disturbing the frost and entered the forest together with the morning sun. I was maddeningly awake. The air of the forest tasted metallic. I broke to a run through the undergrowth, startling little squirrels and birds. Some of which were still asleep.

I began to slow down when I caught sight of my chair. Gods grave was here, thats what I came here for. I came to pray for Charlies safety.

Another event that kept us on our toes was that of a boat with a hole being rescued from the rocks of an island close by. Our family watched the rescue from the shore. Mother brought down flasks of tea and warm fruit scones for the rescuers and inquisitive, the gulls began to circle in predatory manner.

It was an overcast day and made our sense of doomsday more impending.

Twenty third of December. Our days at Trehaven became darker and darker, and we hadn't had guest ever since the Catts.

In the end of February we came home to the television showing images of Charlie again. Covered in blankets, “Charlie Hunter returned home” read headline. He now had scruffy long hair. Deep red eyes sucked into their sockets. He looked skinny, unfed. His hair covered his missing ears and a blanket covered his missing hands. He was quickly shielded from the cameras by random bodies and pushed on into another car.

We learned later that a million pounds had changed hands for him to stay with his family. Now when we spoke of Charlie it wasn't the Charlie Hunter whom had broken Joes heart but the Charlie Hunter whom was a hostage in the middle east. Having had so much taken from him, Charlie was now allowed back in my brothers life.

Christmas was good because of god. With Charlie kidnapped, that boat wrecked on the island, and Jenny Penny with Matt we barely managed to put up a tree, or lights. But we did.

It was Christmas morning. I looked out onto the lawn thinking that it was covered by a thick layer of snow, but it was only mist. It rolled up the river valley like white tumbleweed. I crept downstairs and peaked into the lounge and saw presents strewn under the tree. The smell of firewood was still distinct. The aroma made me hungry and I checked the hearth to see if the carrot and mince pie had been eaten, or is there was any left. I caught half of the pie, and finished the sherry.

I wandered into the kitchen to get a biscuit when outside in the corner of my eye I saw movement on the lawn. I felt a very large presence. I perceived an urgency to go outside and defy it.

I quickly put on a pair of Wellington boots and my Dads jumper and marched out to the cold morning air.

The mist was only knee high over the lawn, finding it hard to discern anything moving amidst an opaque haziness. And than I saw it. Bouncing ten yards from me and stopping, than “hello”

“I knew you would come back to me!” I crouched and we both moved close to each other. He hopped on my knee wiggled his nose and than ran off into the forest again.

“I am here for everyone”

Where the last words god spoke to me.

For awhile.

A new decade dawned and my parents would eventually have guests who returned to them year after year. They were like us, a collage of the useful and impractical, heady, or mundane.

It often occurred to me that normal people never stayed with us. If normal people stayed with us it was only for an eye-opening night. That magic talking rabbit might have gone, but his spirit was strong with us.

My mother loved the seasonal swell to our family. The ebb and flow of familiar faces that brought new stories and new delights to our door just as uncle Rick or aunt Sally would have if we had family in close ties with us.

We compensated.

Our lives were a bit tidal; friendships, money, business, love; nothing ever stayed the same.

One fine summers day, the day I first met Mr. Arthur Henry striding through the village in his fine gentle-mans attire of a grey blue complete with the matching pocket watch. He had a yellow and blue striped shirt with a pink and white polka dot tie. He was leaving a trail of open mouths and Cornish gossip in his wake. He would gesture with his cane if it were a matter of laughter and with his newspaper if it was of concern. He also used the newspaper to waft wasps and bees away and whatever flying creatures where attracted to the sweet floral scent of his parfume.

I followed him until the arcade. Where I was compelled to play pin-ball. I reluctantly entrusted him to the day ahead. I watched him again saunter along the quay next to the crabbers and the ferrymen. I watched him weave in and out of parents holding cigarettes and lager instead of their childrens hands. He belonged to another time, a more genteel one. Yet here he was in modern day !

I met him later on. This time in the forest. He was talking aloud, alone, reciting shakespear. He danced like an aged elf in this unabashed green solitude. His dance signified his feelings and attachment to the forest. His wild and juvenile steps.

I felt shy watching his moment of privacy and when I could no longer bear the voyeur, I stepped from behind my tree and said loud enough for him to hear.

“Good morning sir !”

I held out my hand with an assurance beyond my years.

His pirouette froze and he smiled, breathing hard beckoned me Good morning as well.

He came over to shake my hand. He looked older up close, but not that old. Perhaps a good sixty. His skin had the sheen of care and the trace of a long forgotten vanity that would have once turned a boring mirror into gold.

“ I like your outfit” I told him

“That is very kind of you to say”

“You know, this is my forest”

“Is that so, Than I am a trespasser and I am indeed at your mercy”... bowing in front of me.

I giggled, the only place I've ever seen anyone do this was on stage and in movies.

I moved over to a log and grabbed a seat.

“Where are you staying” I asked him.

“I am staying in a quaint bed and breakfast just behind the river on the east side”. He followed suite and sat next to me.

“Ah” I said with a nod. Pretending to know where he was lodged.

Arthur took out his pipe and grasped it between his teeth. He lit a match and held it above the bowl. Puffing hard and pulling at a cloud of nutty sweet smoke.

It made me feel hungry.

Thoughts of mothers biscuits, cooked early this morning, chocolate covered shortbread fingers. I could smell the scent of baking on my cardigan. I felt suddenly drawn to home and drool in my mouth.

“Yes, I live in that big white house just the other side of here” And I pointed in the general direction. Just hoping I could teleport home and eat a cookie or two. I also hoped he would be impressed.

“I'm impressed” he confirmed.

“My house is a big bed and breakfast too”

“Is it now ?” He asked.

“Come have a look if you want, we have some vacancies at Trehaven”

“Do you now ?”

“If you stayed with us, you could come use this forest legally”.

“Could I now”

It was a short walk back to Trehaven. My mother loved Arthur from the start. She took great pleasure in welcoming him under her orphaned wing, allowing him to mend the brittleness that had settled in over the years.

She missed living her life with some-body older, to watch some-one else grow closer to death, shielding her from the mortal wall we all hit at one point in life. It was someone simple to reassure her that everything is alright. Arthur did all that, from the moment he came all the while he stayed with us.

From the moment he raised his cap and shouted his hellos. None of us had any clue that it would be that start of a rich and enduring relationship.

Arthur simply paid a month in advance and installed himself in the outside cottage my father had renovated. A fragrance of paint hung in the air, the vapors verging on nauseating but it signaled newness to Mr. Henry, not discomfort.

With his entrance into the cottage, he spread his arms wide and loudly announced bliss.

I adopted that word to my own.

“What do you think of the shepherd pie”, said Brenda the lunch lady at school

“It's absolutely blissful”

What do you think of this poem I wrote, asked my brother,

“Its bliss”

“Liz what do you think of these new boots I bought”

Would ask mother,

“They are bliss Mom”

Chapter 9

Growing up.

Arthur practised yoga as much as he involved mindfullness into my life. For whenever I said that I was bored; Arthur would march me to a beautiful field or the river band and ask me questions of everything I could see. Making an immense descriptive of a boring view into an epic novel that would have paved my career in the world of editorials and literal arts for long days to come.

Arthurs knowledge contain elements from Oxford and Ahmedabad from sports rowing to walking hot coals. My education finally turned from a typical medium level, to an extraordinary personal academic gentleman teaching me the knowledge from yore to know.

Arthur had got off the bus right when Rosa Parks made her scandal to stay on, he was in Dallas when JFK was shot, in a romantic escape with an FBI agent. He told me she left him handcuffed to the bed, and that fueled my imagination for many years to come... how was he handcuffed to a bed with a woman he loved and how did she run out and left him in the room tied up ?

Well I finally understood a long time later, and considered that he may have been naked as well.

As I grew older I opened up a boating service. I'd bring people and goods from the village to and from the village. Out of all my customers Arthur was my favorite. By the time my parents felt comfortable with me to go into open waters I had keened my senses far from just seeing when the water was calm.

I know from the flight of the birds how the winds will blow. From the movement of the clouds how warm it will be, and from the swell in the water how long it takes me to move around, to float about in the water.

Because Arthur would ask me,

"You see the water she swells, but she swells more over there, why is that?"

"Because there are rocks under the surface, over there"

"You see the waves crashing in the distance, what do they say ?

"The wind is strong"

It was these constant excercises that kept my mind growing when I could have stagnated into a soft willow of a girl.

At times, I'd see my rabbit friend scurry along the riverbank.

At times when I was alone it would bring a smile to my face.

At times when I was with other, I asked myself if I could ever share what I knew. That God is real.

Mean-while, out of all the years Arthur had spent living, the one thing he had never done was fishing.

It was just one of those things he never had some-one to get at it with.

"Arthur, hold this line will you".

I told him as we reached the open water, where I felt the fish will bite in notime, and I'll bring home a supper of mackerel.

"Just let it run through your fingers"

I told him as I unraveled a feathered orange trailing line.

"Arthur, you'll feel a tug on the line, at that moment, yell and begin to pull the line in".

I told him as I continued to steer the boat under the noon sky.

"Elly, I will scream I ensure you my dear".

I found him screaming "Ahoy Skipper" 10 minutes later and turned the motor off to aid in pulling the nets in. We had brought in plenty of mackerel, and I kept three I fancied at fit for us, and placed the rest in the pool I'd bring in to town the next day. We also caught 2 crabs.

I'm looking ahead, scanning the waters ahead, there are pleasure boats this holiday season. and I want a route that leads to safety from the dangerous holiday spirit steering the boats in hap-hazardly zig zags and circles that will lead me to bouncing hours between them just to reach the other side of the vaction plot.

I can either go through the pit of sharks, or follow through a path in the shallows with sharp cliffs inches beneath the surface eager to bite into the boat like angry hungry crocodiles.

Last week in these same water with a hook and a line I caught me a pretty bass. A solid five pounder, that threatened to throw me in the water.

I'm heading towards an island today, towards a clear horizon. Arthur is my fare for the day.

"Why don't you go to school?"

He will ask after he begins to light his pipe, to have a puff of smoke between the vowels and constants.

"I do."

"Oh come on, that is not often enough"

"Nno need Arthur, I am learning everything I need to know here, by the sea, in the forest, building things. I know everything about food, I can live in the forest on fungi alone".

"You are expecting a disaster to unexpectedly strike?"

"I'm ready to live Arthur"

I put Arthur into a trance with my words, and left him confused as to the course of wording to maintain his original direction that I have to pursue knowledge and refinement, things I knew nothing off at the time.

He told me that nature is a very good educator, but it is not the sole educator, by being absent from school I am placing myself at a disadvantage in society, placing myself into a singularity.

“Arthur, at school everyone is so chivy about this whole mess of growing up, and I can't stand it.

They go on and on about what people say and what they do, with Penny, it's about us and what we want.”

The water was cool, and the grippe of the cold silk between my fingers began my chilled trance.

It was time to change direction a bit, to bring the pull of the island into or undertow.

Arthur could sense my separation from the now and respected my decision to contemplate how far I have come.

We reached the island and placed our feet on the ground, after having scuffled across a tight dock.

“Elizabeth, your mother wanted me to ask you some-thing”

“Yes, what is it ?”

“She knows that you are not going to school”

“Oh, she does, that can't be good”

“Actually, she asked me to be your tutor, I will teach you everything, and it will be almost as it is now, but with more writing, more reading, what we are doing now is skimming the surface, we will dive deep into the vastness of human conscious knowledge, for the unconscious we will only one day know.”

And that's how I counted another blessing. It was beautiful the way Arthur had waited for the perfect time to ask me, and how this wasn't a round the dinner table conversation as I had in my life before.

My life blossomed here in Trehaven, but Jenny Penny was still missing. My talks with J.P.

Because of Arthur grew and she too became through me his pupil.

“Arthur, do you believe in God ?”

We were ate a dinner table, eating sponge-cake.

“Do I believe in an old man in the clouds with a white beard judging us mortals with a moral code from one to ten? Good Lord no, my sweet Elly. I would have been smitten a long time ago with the tatty history I have. I do believe in the mystery of life, and in a sense the Lila, and the greater something that illuminating unknown that has created us, I know there is so much more than we will ever see.

This, here unknown, she is the muse for our art, for our beauty, for our love, and our strength (a subtle way to acknowledge war). I believe in life.

That was as far as I went into understanding God my little rabbit from Arthur, I had more luck understanding man from Arthur.

“There is absolutely no reason at all why a rabbit should not be god”

Now there is a difference between God, god, and a god.

As I learned in my later years from an editor who came by to help me have a happy book about a girl and not a sad, woolly story so tragic, with tears of grief you would laugh.

Jenny began to miss my birthdays, if it weren't for the short days and the heavy snow she says that she would not have.

Waiting at a train station is quite a responsible feat to accomplish. Stuck in time on a platform with nothing but two symmetrical rails filling a hovering emptiness that will be a vessel transporting life itself in a metal wagon miles across and unstoppable.

To my right there was London, to my left Penzance and it was a simple thing that kept me on the track to London. My brother.

Blowing, made steam, that steam warmed my hands. The raw crispiness of the ground swiftly made its way through my shoes and froze my socks off in the first twenty five minutes on the platform.

They had turned to snow and only a bath will bring that pink glow back to my little piglets.

It's been a good three months since my last visit.

And of course, I would visit J.P. Just as often, what with Trehaven faring the way it does. I guess in a way Arthur gave me an education and pocket money, as if god changed his form from a rabbit to a man overnight, and kept his mysterious was of working.

Now about Joe. He was really good an economics, he had a passion for it, other-wise he wouldn't be that good at it. This passion of his reflected in the letters he would send me, typed up all neat on A4 paper bound in folder and progressively sorted.

Settled in London, Joe was happier, and even played rugby again.

That's what I had to look forward to, but now, in this moment I was under a concrete ceiling. There was nothing here but the ticket booth, and a few chairs, some-how occupied. The layer of lard on those bums must be thicker than the most densely packed sand in the world to cushion some-one comfortably on that chair.

But Arthur told me of places colder than anywhere I can image, and until I see them with my own two eyes they are only fantasies. Even if it felt as if I was in the cosmos, I was only on a platform waiting for a train on Earth.

Trehaven had hired Alan. Alan drove a van to shuttle our guests from here to there. His tape of Cliff Richard wouldn't keep my excitement down, only the refreshingly cool stiffness of the platform, the silence and my thoughts tiring me out will help me calm.

With that in mind, I opted out of waiting in a warm van with memories of Alans time in a penitentiary awaiting penance.

Alan had been honest about his short time out of the guard-house and had become a rehabilitated functional citizen of the United Kingdom. Trehaven brought back a wage, a wife, and his son into his life.

By the time the train stopped, Joe flanked a solid position and was waving his arm in the air through the window. I knew it was Joe because, well no-one else was waving.

We made eye contact as he climbed the first step and he threw his kit bag out like a kite.

“Joe !”

I began to scruffle towards him in a jog, my hair behind stretching all the way back to Trehaven at a straight horizontal.

“Stay there!” he yelled back at me. He was well on the platform now, and broke his jog into a solid dash. I prepared to anticipate the lift to his chest and the hard squeeze. I gave him after-shave for Christmas, and that was the last time I'd given him after-shave.

“Lizzy, you look so great !”

“I've missed you too” He squeezed out of me, literally.

I cried, tears, joy.

“Lizzy, come on, your getting my glasses dirty”

Why, well, because Joe had his heart broken, he turned to becoming a better person. And took steps to fit into that category of people who continuously better themselves. Alan would drive us back the long way. He grew up in these parts, the hedgerows and vistas where here when he was 2 and here they are now thirty years later.

Now and than on the road home, Alan would glance in the mirror at Joe and I. His eyes would light up when we'd break the news of things most families would only talk about behind closed doors. It was gossip between my brother and I and Joe was the paparazzi. As being popular in school wasn't anything to particular for either of us this was when and how we'd compensate.

“Nancy kissed Mum” I told Joe.

Alans breathing stuttered.

“When ?!” Asked Joe with an extra breath stolen from Alans chest.

“A month ago, I think, when she broke up with Anna”

We began to feel dirt instead of road under the tires.

“Mother was really devastated by that break up”

“This whole kiss with Nancy has something to do with some newspaper article I think”

I told Joe, and Alan began to let the engine rev. just a little less.

“Nancy was out on the porch, stiff as a bat, holding a newspaper. And mom, she got up and hugged her, they were outside for awhile, I only saw the kissing and than I went in.

Alan crunched the gears.

Either he was getting emotional, or he wanted to hear more.

She grabbed her hips, Nancy did, and mom just pulled her head out of Nancys shoulder, looked her in the eyes and they both”

Now the car started accelerating, just the engine.

“Wow, they are really close.” “How long did they kiss?”

“Long enough for me to walk by and walk in the house. It was like they were hypnotized ! They couldn't even hear or see me.”

“I herd mom say oopps after I got in and they started to laugh”

There was a fork in the road now. Time to take a right turn. The van stopped. The blinker went on.

Click click

Click click

Click click.

Vrrooomm.

“And guess what”

“What Liz ?”

I started to giggle a little. “ I told Dad”

“I bet your dads a happy man.”

Murmured Joe.

My brother looked around his room. It was different and it was the same. A thing or two we changed in his absence, like the bed-sheets, and he noticed.

Whatever we moved, he placed back where he had it before. His newspapers were still laying on the floor. Now instead of being open, they were closed. His Jeans had been placed on his bed, and washed, and now was his chance to dirty um up again.

I moved a chair by the window and sat down to watch the sun and to watch him unpack.

Out of all the glamour I expected out of the bag came the usual bag of dirty clothes and linens.

“Joe, why do you always come alone ? Your part of a team, you can bring some team-mates here to practice”

“It's to quite here, they'll get bored and run-away. Life is different in London.”

“It's something new theyll see here, you know theyll love it here.”

He thought about it and folded a sweater. He walked to the window and imagined playing rugby at home.

“It could be fun. I'll see if I can do that, if it will make you happy.”

He was still looking out the window.

“Liz, is that god ?”

I jumped and looked out the window.

He was shimmering in a rainbow haze.

“I've never seen a rainbow bunny”

He turned back to his luggage. But sat on the bed instead to look at me with a smile.

Ginger came for Christmas the next year. A present for Arthur from the north pole to his pole.

My lessons turned to more romantic now. I wasn't learning about wars and inventions. About philosophy and geography.

We focused on Medusa, and Hera. We talked about Helen and Sissy. I learned about making perfumes and aroma therapy, and I would later complete the lessons by teaching myself about aphrodisiac...but much later. In college.

Next years Christmas Nancy went on a skiing trip. It's been a long time coming. It felt good actually. What could we possibly get her anyway, me, Joe, Mom, Dad, Alan. We could only give her what she wants, what she needs is out of our hands..

And on her skiing trip out in Gstaad she met a lover.

Just for the time there. It lifted her up to the mountain top.

Mom may have gotten a bit jealous over the telephone call notice she gave us. But none the less we all thanked her for the wonderful presents and begged her to have a great time.

Alan had taken every Christmas off since his second year at Trehaven. It would kind of be weird if he didn't.

I left everyone at 8. I walked down a hallway in a pair of socks. The was laughter behind me, stories and a very warm fire.

I made this moment quiet to listen to J.P. Every year and I never missed a second. That year Joe saw god she fell asleep on the phone and I had to hang up.

“Jenny, hello, are you there ??”

“JENNY!!”

I yelled so loud my father came running.

“What happened, Liz are you good?!”

He hugged me and saw that I put the phone down.

“She fell asleep”

We laughed a little.

Chapter 10

With or without you

Jenny never ever ever woke up early for Christmas.

“Jenny why do you always stay in bed so long on Christmas” I asked her over the phone.

“To think about things”

“Like what gifts your getting, and what stories to tell ?”

“I think about the world. About life.”

“Jesus”I said with a sigh.

“Well, kind of, I mean, if you think about it, there is a star on the tree and the three wise men were led by a star. They brought gifts, and than the tree has needles, pines, like the crown he had to wear. The trees are big enough to make a cross to, and strong enough”

“Yea, I guess, I never thought about it that way”

“Why would you ? He wasn't your son”

The first Christmas at Trehaven was legendary. Penny came. This year she would be over for easter. She would be my little bunny.

She came by train. 10 minutes before my brother. She brought a small bag with a change of jeans, 3 underwear a note-book, and a camera.

Her eyes held starlight bright enough to burn not just a hole in the sun but the whole sun.

Father drove the Van back home, and exchanging those nuclear secrets was not something we could do on the scenic route. Because we didn't take the scenic route and father drove an automatic.

Once at home, the first thing Jenny told me was to take off my clothes.

We were in the room she was going to stay in.

She stayed with me and we took turns sleeping in

each others arms.

I looked at her with bewilderment. She started

taking off her pants, than her blouse. She moved towards me and lifted my shirt off. Her hands were as warm as the sunlight that came through the space between us. I could feel electricity from her body.

“Jenny, what are you.”

“I wanna get wet, Lets go for a swim”

I turned back to my natural color, hopped out of my pants, and we ran across the lawn. We ran to the river and we jumped in.

I spent days out on the river. It excited me as much as a bus stop excited J.P. Though I loved and adored the river so much more than J.P. Did a bus stop.

“ Haha heeee I wanted to do that since Christmas”

She shook and water flew across the river, splattered my face.

We saw rabbits playing on the field opposite the house.

“Love for Paris this is far from being my dear sister”

“Oh we are more the sisters Liz.”

We swam in the water for eternity. Joe saw us, and brought over towels. Because he aims to be better.

I showed Jenny my boat and we swam under it, dived off it.

We sat in the sun until it dimmed and wrapped our towels to walk in.

“You two are having fun”

My father told us with a smile on his face.

“Jenny Penny have you thought about moving here ?”

“Well I have and I might one day. It's so nice here”

“You've been such a good friend to Elizabeth, I'd say you too are sisters, and why would I ever impeach this ? And who knows, maybe soon you and Liz can run Trehaven and Me and Jewlie can run away to the Caribbean for a year or two.”

It was the first time my dad mentioned his riches to anyone. It was his biggest secret. He wanted to give her some-thing to show her his trust and appreciation.

I lived life from that Easter with a new perspective. It was a feeling I felt similar with Joes. I felt that tomorrow will be better than today, that I will stop growing and reach a point where I act and live.

“Immortality is when the material is obsolete.”

Arthur we both know people can never be immortal.

“I sure do wish we were”

My father joined in at times, my mother would join in at times, and even Joe would. If I made the impression that what happened with Arthur was a one on one thing I apologize. Arthur lived on the laughter of others. It was his job to make us smile before he went to bed and as soon as we would wake up.

Joe sat with us where we buried god in the summer evening. My father had himself cider, Arthur his pipe and a flask of rum. My brother had Plato, only in case he was to fall out of the discussion.

“But if we become immortal we lose our sense of passion, and emotion. It all becomes mundane”

“Joe that is true, and if one does live a few hundred years to smile and laugh and feel with-out becoming insensitive”

My father:

“Why I would never ! If god blesses me to live a thousand years I will cherish every breath I take, every time I bleed I will say praise that I have blood in my veins and life in my body”

“Well said Tom”

“That's where reincarnation comes in, if we get bored, than we just die and start all over again until we again reach that point.”

I learned a lot and I made a great point.

“So if we love someone in this life and lose them, we will get them back”

Joe could've thought this before or since that summer. I'm not sure, the way he said it, everything fell into place so well.

“We also have to consider how much space we have on this planet and what would happen if everyone would live forever. It would be very crowded, sadly.”

“Arthur, people would learn better self control, and be much more responsible for tomorrow if they were going to be around”

“You do always tell us to Dad” Joe told him with kindness in his eyes.

We sat in silence for a few minutes.

Than dad poured some cider on the ground.

“For god”

Arthur was displeased, but more intrigued by the gesture implying that god was in any way fond of alcohol, a vice, a temptation, and in some religions a sin.

“Well Tom, your god seems as a quite proper gentleman”

“No, he's just a rabbit”

Arthur showed confusion for the first time ever, “a rabbit that drinks” he whispered, imagining a rabbit with a beer.

He took his flask of rom to his lips, replacing his pipe.

“Arthur, this is where we buried Lizzies rabbit, his name was god”.

Joe cleared the confusion for him.

'How can I make this anymore interesting'.

I herd a familiar whisper.

The world flashed to nothing. It was white. I could see only white. I herd silence.

And than.

It all came back, Arthur had his pipe back in his mouth. Father was now drinking cider. Joe was placing his book down, from his lap. He was done holding Plato in his lap. There was a wind blowing a

little heat away.

I called Jenny, again, she spent Christmas with her mom. I now felt something different, I felt that J.P. Was all that her mother had. I picked up the reciever, I played the little melody of her number. If Jenny lives with us, her mother won't this place is not for her. She could live with us if she changes everything about herself. If she does change she could die.

“Hello, Liz?”

“It's me” I said happy to hear my best friends voice.

She picked up the phone after two rings again.

“Merry Christmas my angel!”

“Elly I can't talk for long”

What Elly ? She hasn't

“What's the matter? ?” I asked before I could finish my thought.

“It's all gone wrong.”

“It's shit, we have to go”

“Where are we going ?”

“No, me and my mom”

The last two things to say to me was.

“I'll call you again soon”

A pause between us a cold air.

“Im sorry”.

That was the first Christmas I did what Jenny does.

I sat in bed until 3 and I thought about

Everything.

I told people to leave me alone.

I talked, if I talked. Very little.

I must have been bad this year.

I got a lump of coal and instead of it being in a box it was someplace else.

In my chest.

The sun comes out later in the winter. At Trehaven we have light between 9 and 10 in the morning, depending on how cloudy it is. Darkness beseats us at five everyday.

Since Jenny told me the news I have seen nothing but darkness. The faces on family had gone and their voices echoed quietly. I took Arthur out a few days later to the dome.

Everyone already new the news about Jenny telling me she will pull a Charlie.

“Arthur, how long have you been alone”

We talked on the way here, about how winter is a very safe time to wander through the forest in the wee hours of the morning. Predators hunt early in the night not this late. I told Arthur that if a bear wanted to eat me I wouldn't run, I wouldn't yell, I would put my head in it's mouth and tell him to chew before he swallows.

Arthur laughed at the idea and we talked about how painful being a bear breakfast would be.

“I've been alone for 5 years now. Half a decade. To tell you the truth. …..sigh.....

I do find it peculiarly hurtful. “

“I'm going to feel this pain for the rest of my life ?”

“Liz. It grows stronger. I remember less and less of everything that happened and remember just those memories that I hold on to. They grow.”

“Yes, Charlie and Joe were closer ? Thats hard to say. I don't think closer but they were kinda like me and Jenny”

I took a few steps in the darkness, we weren't walking anywhere else. We were going to let the air refresh our bone marrow and than walk back.

Yet it felt warm out in the morning trotting through snow with boots, pants and a jacket, what I felt inside numbed what I felt outside.

I had a tear fall, Arthur caught it in his glove. And we watched it freeze.

I didn't know what to do with it. He handed it back. I held it. “Thanks for the ice cream tear J.P.” I whispered and ate it.

I remembered that Charlie was part of my life to and picked up where we left off.

“I'm going to turn out just like Joe and you. Focused on what ? Academics !?”

That tear must have left a bitter taste.

“Thats an icy thing to say dear.”

He paused, to heal, I'm usually an angel. But not now.

“I always knew there was another memory to come and another love to feel. What was in the past makes me into what I am today, we talked about that a few times. Ego Sum qui suim”

“Yes, the needs of the many outweight those of the few”

“I think the idea was the sum is more important than the parts”

“But we are the few that are suffering !”

“What are we suffering for Arthur ? So that others will learn from us ?”

“Life is like a mobius surface” “It twists and turns but it always has a face and back, we argue among each other that its a mathematical impossibility. It turns to complicated words that turn to ideas and philosophy. We go around in time distracting ourselves and charging each other money for spending time together.”

He left it at that.

We left it at that.

I began to walk “Lets go back to haven”.

We'd get back home and there would be a fire kindled by dad. I would stare at it for a few hours until we'd sit down for lunch. I'd go read something from a journal. And fall asleep again.

The next day, the morrow awaits me unknown. It has awaited me before with the unknown but this time it was the unknown and un-interesting.

I feel sorry for Joe but I will think about him later. When we're waiting at the train station for his ride back to London. I'll give him 20 minutes.

Is that it.

The snow crunched in alternating rhythms. A bird or two sang, melody vibrating the crystals of ice in the vapors of air.

My nose turned pink. I had something new grow in my heart the closer I came to Trehaven. It became cold outside and I needed to get home to the warm fire.

I herd a familiar song-bird and I froze in the snow.

“Arthur, do you hear her?!”

“”Hear who?”

It was still there in my ears, and in my head. Indistinct words, I waited ten minutes, and herd silence, and than her voice again.

I jumped to a run.

“Liz wait !”

I couldn't hear a thing but the wind and branches and snow. I heard so much but I couldn't hear any voices. I herd Arthur behind me running. I herd my clothes rubbing against each other branches crushing under my feet my breath, my chest pounding. I felt something though an energy just pulling me closer and closer to the door.

The rest was a blur of white.

She was by the fire with her Mom and my Dad.