The Collagist, page 20
“I can’t. Father took the bottle with him—to fortify himself, he claims. He has great faith in you!”
Arra tut-tutted in exasperation. “How’s a body to work professionally here when things keep going missing?” she exclaimed, but her face wore a broad smile.
“Have we ruined the infusion, Arra? Do you think your earlier tonic is necessary for the effectiveness of this one?”
“Absolutely not,” Arra replied stoutly. “My main concern now is this—what on earth are we to put the new tonic into, so that we can deliver it to your father? With that precious paper dissolved in it, you wouldn’t want to just slosh it along the path in an open mug.”
“The spirits,” Romilly said, abruptly.
“The what?” Arra cried out.
“Before we set out for this island, my father asked me to gather supplies. One of the things he asked for was spirits, I assume to be used as disinfectant.”
“Your father has more sense than I give him credit for,” said Arra, thumping the table with her palm. “That is the perfect thing! Adding the spirits to this infusion will speed the absorption into your father’s blood. And then we can place the concoction back in the bottle and transport it to him! But that will be the last step. First, it must brew. And you will need to find your uncle and tell him about his boat. And then, bring him back here with you, missy. Don’t you go disappearing too!”
***
Romilly stood on the doorstep and scanned the yard. There he was, near the giant lilac tree. He had Mira on his shoulder and was just tamping with his boot sole around the base of a straight, silvery-barked pole made of a young tree.
“There you go, Mira—try that out for size.” He transferred the kestrel to the horizontal branch of driftwood that was pegged to the top. The kestrel gripped the silvery, suede-soft branch with her jet-black talons. Romilly stepped up to the new perch and together they appraised it.
“Uncle, what a beautiful perch—even better than her old one,” she began. Then she put out her hand gently and touched his arm. “Uncle, I have some news—don’t worry, we are all safe and sound, but—just now I came back from the overlook. Your boat—” she paused and took a deep breath “—is missing. We were hoping perhaps you had moved it yourself?”
“Missing?” her uncle enquired, pushing against the pole to make sure it was firmly seated in the ground. He turned his gaze on her.
“Yes, Uncle.” He tilted his head and looked up at the sky, considering. “Uncle, do you understand what I’m saying? Did you move your boat to the other side of the island? If not, we are afraid someone stole your boat.”
“Stole it?” Her uncle looked startled. “No, no one would do such a thing. Borrowed it, maybe.”
“Uncle, be serious! If someone took your boat, they might very well come back for the Ingres. Father wouldn’t survive that—”
“Yes, Romilly, he would. He has survived much worse.”
“Uncle, you’re teasing me! Why are you so unconcerned?”
“Why are you so concerned?” her uncle retorted. “After all, we’re not marooned here. We can easily walk back to the village if need be.” He narrowed his eyes. “What do you think has happened to my boat?”
“I think—I think Micah may have taken it.”
“Taken it? Stolen it?” Romilly looked at him uncertainly. “Nay, Romilly. I know that lad.”
“I—I met him, Uncle. He’s the one who brought Mira back to me. I met him on the shore where I was gathering the dayflower.”
“Eh, you met! So, I take it he’s the person who had been tending the cottage. What did you think of him?”
“Yes, he admitted he was the caretaker, Uncle. I liked him, I liked him—but he was very strange and stubborn in some ways. And secretive, which I didn’t like at all. He seems to know why we’re here but won’t admit it. When I asked him why he was hiding from us, he said it wasn’t time to reveal himself.”
“Well. Nothing in all you say could make me think he would steal from me. I prefer to consider this a case of borrowing. He’s a good sailor too. Grew up to it.” Her uncle bent down and pulled up a tall blade of grass, inserting it in his mouth and chewing reflectively. “So, I will wait to see what turns up,” he concluded.
Romilly linked her arm in his. “You are the most open-hearted person I know,” she said. “Or the most innocent—or both.”
“You sound like Arra!”
“Speaking of Arra, she sent me out here to bring you back to the cottage. She’s ready to decant the tisane.”
“She’s a clever one, that Arra,” he said, as they walked arm and arm to the cottage.
***
Her uncle regarded the bottle of spirits mournfully as Arra twisted out the cork. “Well,” her uncle said, with a sly half-smile, “we may not need all the spirits for this remedy. Perhaps we could save a few measures with which to toast our inevitable success?”
Arra rolled her eyes. “Brother, you are incorrigible. I suppose you will also propose we declare this an annual holiday?”
“Not a bad idea, that,” her uncle replied, rubbing his hands together. “I am ready for some vigorous new traditions! Preferably ones involving dancing!”
Arra set to work. Draping a length of cheesecloth over a bowl, she poured the steeping liquid out, straining the pulp from it. Then, doubling up a clean swath of cheesecloth, she filtered the tisane back into the kettle. With a reproachful look at Romilly’s uncle, she poured half the spirits into a mug, reserving them for the hoped-for celebration.
“I am almost ready to add the tisane to the bottle, Romilly. I just need to make some sort of funnel out of the grape leaves. Now. Tell us more about how you found your father.”
“Well, he appeared in the doorway while I was passing by the hut. He refused help again, but I persuaded him to walk with me to the overlook. He’s driven and rather grim, as usual. And suspicious of us,” Romilly explained as she watched Arra snip the stems off the grape leaves, layer several into a fan, then twist and coil them into a cone. Arra inserted the narrow opening into the spirit bottle, then stepped back to regard her work with a critical eye.
“Driven and stubborn, but oddly reasonable at the same time,” Romilly ruminated. “He even made a little joke about being unreasonable,” Romilly explained.
“Eh!” her uncle interjected. “That reminds me of how he used to be—he had a gift for gentle sarcasm, especially toward himself.”
“My, he’s developing self-awareness in leaps and bounds. Hold the cone like this, my dear,” Arra instructed Romilly, cupping her palms about the leaf-cone to hold it together. She had transferred the beverage into the tea kettle and now began to decant it slowly into the funnel.
“I know these leaves are waterproof, but I hope they are also rigid enough. Also, that the tisane isn’t too hot. Tell me if it starts to burn you! If it’s too hot, it’ll turn these leaves to slime before we can get all the mixture into the bottle,” Arra fretted.
“It feels warm, but not hot,” Romilly reassured her. “Have you dissolved the paper in it yet?” she asked, anxiously. She didn’t want to miss that part.
Arra pretended to be shocked. “Place the magic ingredient into the potion without the presence of our good fairy? Fie!” she said, smiling broadly.
For safekeeping, she had placed the delicate rectangle of paper in the pouch she had used to bring them tea, what seemed like ages ago. She withdrew this now from her apron pocket and carefully picked open the drawstring.
“Here,” she said, holding the pouch toward Romilly. “My hands are shaking. And this is your moment, Romilly. Your hands should be the ones that complete the magic.” Romilly extended her palms and Arra placed the pouch gently upon them. It was so light, Romilly was afraid the pouch was empty, but when she peeked inside, she could see the pale golden, slightly wavy edge. With her thumb and finger, she withdrew the paper, noticing again the pale burgundy cursive, so fine it seemed to have been written with a crow quill.
“Worldwidening,” she whispered.
She would need to scroll the paper into a tube so it would fit through the mouth of the bottle. She lay the small rectangle down on the wooden table and began to lift the short end. But as soon as the paper began to flex, the end dissolved into a pile of golden crumbs. Romilly gasped, staring at the pearly dust in consternation. Arra patted her shoulder.
“That’s all right, daughter. Maybe rather than scrolling it, you should tear it into tiny bits. We can brush up the dust—the paper would have dissolved in the infusion anyway.”
Romilly held the paper down to tear off the top corner, feeling an odd, simultaneous fragility and resilience.
“I can’t! It’s like tearing skin!”
She made one more attempt to scroll the paper, but it was clear that every time the paper flexed, it began to return to dust.
“Well,” said her uncle, “this isn’t a disaster. It’s just a bit messy. We need something to collect the dust.” He went to the pantry and rummaged about.
“Where are you off too, man?” Arra grumbled in impatience.
Her uncle returned holding a piece of translucent paper—he had torn off a corner of the letter to Digby. “We can use this paper to capture the dust,” he explained, “and to direct it into the bottle.” He folded the paper and creased it firmly with a thumbnail.
Romilly set the remainder of the label on the translucent surface of the paper and rolled it up from the short end, as best she could. She was afraid to pick up the crumbling scroll, so she picked up the paper like an upside-down tent, shaking the scroll and all the loose powder into the center.
“Are you ready?” her uncle asked, his eyes sparkling with anticipation, the fingers of both hands interlaced beneath his chin.
Carefully, Romilly raised the paper and, jostling it slightly, persuaded the scroll to slide through the mouth of the bottle. Almost instantly the scroll was eaten away by the liquid, disappearing like snow on water. The powder, which had begun to clump and cling in the moisture of the kitchen, dropped atop the murky green liquid and settled there a moment. Tiny hillocks, rocking lightly, darkened as they drew the fluid up. Then they heard the faintest hiss as the dust melted into the infusion and was gone.
Yet something persisted. At first, Romilly thought that she was seeing her own lashes as she squinted down the bottle’s neck at the water’s surface.
“Look! Look atop the water,” Romilly cried.
They all leaned in, taking turns to peer through the warping glass at the surface, upon which some minute filaments seemed to float on little islands.
Romilly pulled the bottle back toward her and looked down the neck of it. Atop the water she could see that the pale burgundy filaments were letters floating upon remnants of undissolved paper, as if the ink were holding it together.
“What is it, Romilly, what do you see?” Arra half-whispered, breathless with impatience.
“I see a word, formed by the letters that haven’t yet dissolved.”
“What word?” Arra and her uncle cried out simultaneously.
Romilly peered into the bottle as the delicate letters shifted, drew closer. She lifted her face and looked at them with blank uncertainty.
“The word is girl.”
***
Sitting at the table in her aunt’s studio with the bottled tisane beside her, Romilly reached for her mother’s journal. She rubbed her palm along the waxy, ivory vellum, fingering the spine embossed in gold with stylized lilies. If she should ever have a girl, a daughter, she thought, she would name her Lily. That name hovered inside of hers like a promise. But what had it meant, the word on the water? Was it a sign that she was the key to opening the wall? Was it simply a reminder to be a child, yet? Or was it mere chance? She opened the book and began to write.
I must wait another quarter of an hour before going to my father, as I promised.
I sit in Aunt’s studio, thinking through the morning events. Why the tiny scroll didn’t dissolve all at once, why four letters rested like tiny islands on the surface, why those letters happened to spell out ‘girl.’ Is this part of the magic of this place? And why, when I told Arra and Uncle this word, did they look swiftly at each other?
Even with the windows closed, I can hear steel on stone, the metallic ring. I feel the shock of the impact through my father’s arm. As the sledge hangs from his arm, I feel its weight. Then the labor of lifting the sledge back over his head. I’m eager to enter that darkness, my father’s darkness, and end this.
I want to meet Digby, who taught my mother to make this book. I know now that her hands didn’t just touch this book, they formed it, folded and cut the pages, sewed them in, wrapped the vellum, gilded it. Mother, guide me now. Mother, could you also be waiting beyond the wall?
She lifted her eyes from the page and gazed, without focus, at the expanse of table in front of it. Her eyes came to rest on the collage, perfect emblem of her world, the daughter cradling the soft body of her kitten, facing the viewer, but oblivious to the world around her; the father gazing down, away from the daughter, reaching toward the gathered sheaf of corn. She shifted her eyes to encompass the butterfly, the page in which this world reposed. So delicate: each antenna was a mere thread of paper. What was a butterfly? It was the culmination of a lifecycle. It was fragile, yet immensely strong. It must be handled gently. Romilly remembered pursuing butterflies through a field of Queen Anne’s Lace as a very young child, how, capturing one between her cupped palms, she had run exultant to the adults to show her prize. One of them leant down to her and cradled her hands in his, opening them gently to show her how the butterfly, floundering inside, had tattered the rims of its wings and powdered her palm with feathers so fine, they looked like a pearly dust. Like the dust on her feet, like the dust the magical paper was formed of. Who had this person been? Could this have been Digby?
She was lost in thought, when now was the time to act. Her father needed her, and she needed—all of him, not the preoccupied father, the one who pent up his rage and bitterness and sorrow within a brittle shell. That shell had deprived her of his full and open love. And it had created reserve in her, too, a sense of never trusting and never being safe. Abruptly she stood and grasped the bottle’s neck in her hand, then lifted it and held it to her chest, aware of its lingering warmth. She would go to him now. She was ready.
Just then, her uncle opened the studio door a crack and thrust his head inside. His hair stood on end, as if he had been plowing his fingers through it in his anxiety. He opened and closed his mouth, then looked at her a moment, abashed.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but Arra and I can scarcely stand the suspense any longer.”
“I know, Uncle. I’ve been gathering my thoughts. But I’m ready.”
She walked toward him steadily, holding the bottle to her chest in both arms.
He swung the door open for her, revealing Arra’s tall, firm form. Her sun-burnished face gazed proudly at her.
“You are as brave a daughter as your mother ever could have hoped for,” she said, as she stepped forward. She reached out both hands to disentangle a few curls, running her fingers through to the tips of Romilly’s hair, then cupped her face in her roughened palms.
“Your color’s good, like a wild rose. Your eyes are clear. I’d say you are ready.” Romilly nodded wordlessly and nestled a moment into Arra’s chest. Her uncle placed his arms around the two of them, resting his chin atop Romilly’s head. They stood, taking comfort in each other’s breathing, until the spell was broken by a sudden quiet—the pounding, which had somehow become part of the island’s soundscape, the great, steady heartbeat of the island itself, had ceased. They pulled back from their embrace and looked at each other with anxious intensity.
“He needs you now—go to him,” Arra said. “We will follow and wait outside the hut.”
“Just a moment!” her uncle cried. Crossing to the hearth, he picked up a small lantern of pierced tin, already lit. “Take this but walk carefully with it. I had some trouble getting the wick to draw.”
Romilly grasped the lantern and, taking one last look at their faces, set off down the path toward the falconer’s hut.
***
The door of the hut was a dark, mouthlike hole, and eerily silent. Romilly stood in the doorway, her left arm cradling the bottle, her right hand extending the lantern into the dimness, scattering pinpricks of light like golden stars upon the shelves. She swung the lantern left, toward the narrow stone corridor. She was afraid to call out, afraid her father wouldn’t answer. She inched down the passageway, hearing nothing but the sound of her own breathing. Summoning courage, she called out, her voice startlingly loud in the close space.
“Father, I’m here.”
She heard her name uttered low and saw, at the end of the passage, her father sitting upon the floor with his knees drawn up. His head leaned wearily back against the stone.
“Father, are you all right? Father, I’ve brought you the drink.”
She crouched next to him and lifted the lantern up to see his face. By its dappled light she saw he was smiling faintly.
“I’m sure I’ll breach it soon. Just going to rest a minute and have that drink you promised me. It’s been going easier since our walk this morning. I’ve made good progress.”
Romilly stood again and held the lantern high. At chest height, she could see a crater about six inches deep and two feet in diameter in the back wall. Even in lantern light, the broken edges of the stones glittered with compressed crystals. Her heart sank. What was he thinking, almost through? It would take days of such labor to open the wall. At her feet, there was a pile of rubble, pale with dust and smelling faintly of burnt sugar. The chisels in the open box of tools were also covered in a ghostly layer of fine dust. She set down the lantern by her feet and turned to her father again.
