21 - Voices Calling

The Final Chapter

For one heart-sinking moment, the Old Woman thought nothing was there, that the back of the wardrobe was nothing more than the back of a wardrobe—wooden planks and a few nails and dust and darkness. She caressed the boards, leaned her head forward and felt the coolness on her paper-thin skin. Perhaps this really was it. She would sit down and die in this darkness, and someone would find her.

Still, she remained upright, her palms against the flat back, and behind her the quietest sound of the latch as Alan closed the door, and she remembered some long ago piece of wisdom (“Never close a wardrobe door behind you”), and any hesitation or uncertainty she felt was quickly overwhelmed by absolute trust that Alan would never have led her here for nothing. He knew what to do. He would never close a door behind her if that was the end of it.

She found complete darkness there, so complete she could have been floating in the furthest reaches of space with her eyes closed. The only thing she could still feel was the bottom of her feet on the wooden floor, the palms of her hand on the back of the wardrobe. She took a deep breath, and as she exhaled, something changed.

At first she thought it was the air around her that shifted, or perhaps the box had shuddered. Had someone shaken it, tried to open the door? But she quickly realized, no, it wasn’t anything around her that had changed—it was her. Something about the arrangement of her very cells had morphed. She was not in Lion’s Head anymore, or anywhere on the property, or, actually, anywhere at all. And she was not the same Old Woman. She was something new.

A great fear jumped into her throat, that this was annihilation, that she would spend eternity locked in this darkness with only her thoughts, only her memories and regrets and should-have-beens. And she thought of all the times her brothers and sister had wanted to talk about the old days, the funny games they used to play, and a deep regret wrung her out like a rag, regret that she had not recognized all of it for what it had truly been, that she hadn’t listened.

There is a grief as deep as marrow, and she felt it there in the darkness of wherever she was, or wherever she wasn’t, whatever she was, or whatever new thing she was becoming. She felt weightless, except for this regret, which was heavy as a millstone, like something lodged in her throat, something she could choke on.

But then a deep voice said something low, indistinguishable, and she strained to hear it. The voice was hearty, like a winter’s meal, and she held her breath and waited. What had that sound been? Were they words? She was met with only silence, but then it came again, louder, and still she couldn’t comprehend it—oh, the yearning to hear what was being said! It felt so crucial. So important to understand. She put her ear against the back of the wardrobe, though that wasn’t where the sound was coming from. It was somewhere else, somewhere deeper.

It took everything within her, but she was able to muster a single whisper.

“Please.” That was all. One tiny breath, and nothing more. One word, and it contained everything, all she desired, all she hoped for, all she wanted to escape as well as the home she wished to return to.

“Please.”

The sound came again on the heels of her implication, her prayer, and she realized it was her name, this voice was saying her name, and it was as if all of grace had become a single sound, and that sound was calling her out of all that kept her bound in the darkness—her grief, her regret.

Just her name. The sound of her name. That was all.

A dim light appeared at her feet, and to her right, and above her, and the back of the wardrobe was no longer the back of a wardrobe but a door, and at her right hand was a handle she could turn, and she did it slowly, realizing that even the darkness felt safe compared to what might be waiting for her outside. The darkness became something that was also calling to her, tempting her with safety.

But still she pushed. The door swung open.

It was nighttime and the air was full of the smells and sounds of the sea, and the wardrobe shifted ever so slightly from side to side and front to back and she stepped out onto the deck of a huge wooden ship, and it was in trying to keep her balance that she realized she was no longer an old woman.

Her muscles worked perfectly, and every ounce of physical life she had lost during the previous decade was suddenly restored. She was so happy, she wept. She looked at her arms, her hands, her fingers, and it was all so strange, so indecipherable, because she certainly wasn’t old but what she saw was also not the skin of a young woman. She was something new entirely, something besides young and old, something restored.

She walked forward, and after ten steps or so, she became used to the pitch and drop of the ship on those relatively calm waters, and after another ten steps she realized the sky was beginning to lighten in the direction the ship was going, and in another ten steps or so she reached the pointed bow of the boat and leaned her forearms on the wooden rails.

A beautifully warm breeze blew over the water and the horizon was nearly invisible, both because it was so far off but also because the lightening sky and the water were nearly the same color. Again she felt disoriented, wondering for a moment if the ship was simply floating through a vast light blue sphere, but when she looked straight down she saw the white foam of water crashing against the hull and above her seagulls cried and circled. A mist came up off the water as the boat plowed ahead.

And, once again, she heard her name.

This time, though, it came from behind her. She turned. It was Alan.

He seemed somehow larger than before, and the more directly she looked at him, the less he looked like the Alan who had lived in the bungalow at the bottom of the hill. It was him, or the essence of him, but he also looked like a wild animal, or perhaps an angel, but no, that wasn’t right either. He was a storm, a lightning strike, a hurricane. But no, none of those—maybe a lamb, a child, a whisper.

She looked away, and it was in glancing only at the edge of him that she recognized the old Alan—when she looked directly at him, his identity became a cipher once again, a mirage, a shifting wave of mirrored images.

He said her name and took her hand (somehow he had come close enough to take her hand), and she looked up again, and she could see him clearly, and all she could do was fall to her knees. But he lifted her softly and hugged her and she never wanted to leave that embrace.

“Here we are,” he said quietly, keeping hold of her hand but turning her towards the horizon again, so that they stood side by side, facing the direction the ship sailed, facing the light that had grown like a sunrise.

“And where is that?” she asked with a grin, realizing she still had the same spunk, the same sense of humor. Somehow the journey to this place had not dimmed her personality; in fact, she felt more herself than she had ever been.

Alan laughed, and it was a beautiful sound.

“Here is here. And always will be, for you, never-ending.”

“Here is here,” she repeated after him, and the words felt lovely, not only crossing her tongue but in her mind and heart. “Here is here.”

She started asking another question but the words were overcome by what she saw rising on the horizon—a wave. The closer they got, the more terrifying the realization that the wave rose higher than she could even imagine. She gripped the rail.

“Are we going over that wave?” she asked, incredulous.

“Not ‘we’.” She could feel Alan looking at her.

“Me?” she asked, staring at the raging force of rising water, already shaking her head at the impossibility of it. No, no, no.

“It is the final question,” he said.

“The wave is a question?”

He nodded.

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ll walk with you to the very edge.”

The boat came to a stop, and in front of them was a sandbar that stretched ahead all the way to the wave, which she now realized was not advancing. Not that it was motionless: water was constantly being pulled from the sea, over the sandbar, and up over the wave. But the wave did not go further than the sand.

Alan unrolled a shaky rope ladder and the New Woman found it exhilarating to realize she could scamper down, over the edge of the boat, and the water only came up to just below her knees. She glanced back at the boat which somehow still seemed to be floating in water of unfathomable depths.

Alan joined her, took her hand, and led her across the sand to the wave.

“They told me once about a wave at the edge of the world,” the New Woman said quietly. “I didn’t believe them.”

“There were a great many things they told you. Funny little things.”

She looked at him with sadness. “I’m sorry.”

He shook his head, casting away her guilt and regret once again.

“I don’t think the wave they told me about in their story was this big. Not the one they described to me.”

“Indeed,” Alan said. “It was not. In those days the wave was only three times your height. You could nearly see over it from the deck of the boat.”

She looked up and up and could not find the top of it. It’s concave nature, like a lens, bending up and up until it seemed to rise and curve over her. It made her dizzy.

“Why is it so tall?”

Alan sighed. “The end of all things grows near. When the wave reaches a certain height, which it is nearly at, it will wash over this sandbar and consume all of reality.”

“Our entire world?” the New Woman whispered.

“And every other world.” He looked at her. “But until then, it is a wave that must be crossed.”

She realized that beside him bobbed one of the smallest boats she had ever seen, barely large enough for her to sit in. He motioned towards it, and she knew he wanted her to crawl in.

“Oh, I can’t do that,” she said, shaking her head.

“Look,” he said with compassion, pointing into the wave, and at first she saw only the water rushing up towards the nearly invisible crest, but she looked closer and realized she could see through, as if looking into a telescope, and in the distance she saw a far green shore, and on its bank a familiar structure, a castle, and somehow she could even see, in one of the highest turrets, three people she knew and loved.

“They’ve been waiting,” he said.

“I’m afraid I’ve kept so many people waiting,” she said in a quiet voice. “You, for over fifty years, my gardener. And now them, for who knows how long.”

“All is here,” he said with a solemn smile. “There is no waiting, only being.”

“I’m so scared,” she said, the fear taking literal form in her chattering teeth and trembling limbs, and yet there she was, sloshing through knee-deep water, climbing into the boat that shook back and forth, back and forth. Marveling at her strength, her flexibility. She sat in the small boat, floating, now gripping the sides with all of her might. Her heart in her throat as she looked at the rushing water and the height of it.

“Let the one who hears these words come, and let anyone who is thirsty come, and let anyone who wishes take this free gift of the water of life.”

And with that, he released her boat (for she didn’t realize it but he had been holding onto the back of it the entire time), and when he let go she was swept up the wave, and she screamed, and the scream turned into a childlike squeal, and soon she was shouting the cry of someone charging into battle, and then laughing like someone who has spotted an old friend, and the higher she went, the less fear she felt, until she somehow was taken over the crest and then back down, and the boat was dashed and she was tossed into the sea and washed up on the far shore.

She pulled herself to her knees in the shallows and then stood, drenched in this water, and she laughed again, and she walked lightly through the sand towards the far green country, and that familiar castle.

And the voices of those she loved called to her.