Riddle 1
A voice as soft as a candle flame;
Seems sweet and like a kitten tame.
But echoes twist like a phantom bends
When softly spoken on the winds.
whisper
If you ever held a secret, held it quite tight enough in your hand to secure it but not so tight as to break it open, then you have tasted both the delight and fear when your secret is about to be uncovered. You would do well to unearth this account as first and foremost a series of secrets; some smaller than the head of a pin and others perhaps as big as the world itself.
The surprise that would eventually unfold the deeply buried secrets for the Always’ family came on a day in summer at the arrival of a rather ordinary looking letter crawling with dust from the countryside, smelling slightly of lavender. Young Chelsea Always limped to the mailbox to retrieve this letter, fingering the dust ever so lightly with her small hands.
Chelsea had always known pain in her right leg which was twisted slightly outward since her birth, and which she had to drag along as she walked. Sometimes the pain was like a small needle poking her and other times like a jagged knife, but it was constant. This may be the first secret of the account, for she kept the pain even from her own family preferring no special treatment and certainly no commonplace pity.
One would call her rather large for a ladybug, perhaps, but somewhat small for a girl of ten summers. And it was not that most people treated this small girl unkindly. Much worse; they treated her as if she were invisible, never speaking to her or commenting on how nice her hair looked or how pretty her shoes were.
It had always been good to get a letter from her nana, whose hair was frosted silver and white like the Alps in early spring. Surely there would be a dollar for Chelsea and her younger brother, Andrew, and the words were always like ice cream covered with chocolate syrup; better on better. But these words on that day seemed strange and swift, flavored more with sour adult words and riddles, and not even a quarter.
My precious family:
Please come to see your grandfather and me as soon as you are able. There is a secret we feel it is time to share. Please do not delay. The past is like your shadow; it follows you wherever you go.
With all my love,
Nana Always
By the next morning their small blue car, patched with white frosted smudges, was packed for their short nineteen-mile journey. Traveling out of the gray city into the rainbow countryside you could see the last bits of strange summer fog lumbering off like a tired dragon under the trees.
Out where the summer wind often journeyed for mere pleasure, there was a farmhouse in the distance, much like any small mustard-colored farmhouse but for one detail; this house rested in the branches of several old oak trees. It looked quite natural nestled in those limbs, as if it had grown there in springtime from a small mustard-colored seed. Every inch of earth beneath it crawled with vines and branches for acres across.
The family drove slowly up a dirt drive, overgrown from disuse except for a long black car parked beneath the farmhouse. This black car happened to be a hearse, the curse of the living, and the headlights stared at them dreadfully as they approached its ominous dark figure. They parked and walked at a snail's pace up the wooden stairs to the front door off the second limb to the right, pushing aside several branches in order to knock hesitatingly.
Now the death of a loved one is something that moves too quickly, even if it simply creeps around you like a lazy moth. For the family, this loss of their Nana Always was like losing a warm coat on a bitter cold day; you can try and rub your arms for warmth, but you never get quite comfortable. Papa Always would say a thousand times after, “She died in her garden. When I die, may it be in my garden.”
Soon the black hearse drove off with any joy they might have had packed in a rectangular box, the wind stopped suddenly, and the air hung like heavy curtains around the small family draped in black just two later. They made a few more trips to the city, moving their belongings to the farmhouse to begin the task of helping their grandfather with his harvest and his saddened heart for they loved him dearly. His hands had become an extension of the earth and they were always dirty, but he was never sick. People said he had very honest eyebrows; something that cannot be said of everyone.
Neither Chelsea nor her brother Andrew particularly wanted to live in the countryside, a place as different from the city as the growing sunrise is to the setting sun in the evening. This was a bitterly quiet place nearly ten miles from anywhere with no television, no video games, no radio, and no computers. There was simply no electricity whatsoever.
Chelsea had only one keepsake from her nana that helped her cope when sorrow crept up her shoulder: it was a soft as silk doll with brunette hair named Sarah. Sarah’s skin looked like Chelsea’s―soft white like a chamomile flower. And she had only one friend here on the farm, or sort of a friend. This was Raindrop, a small, black spider with a wet web because she rested on the water spout that was near the house. To Raindrop alone all her secrets she would tell as she placed another cricket on the wet web, and her questions were endless:
“Why do kids tease me when I never hurt them?”
“Will anyone ever think I’m pretty?”
“Why do some people hurt all the time when others don’t feel anything?”
Often left alone as her parents returned to the city to tie up loose ends, Chelsea found books to be her best friend and to keep her company on the hot, humid days. Books never said nasty things about her or left her alone for someone else, as had often been the case in her young life. Her grandfather’s small house had an endless supply of volumes, like mud after a heavy rain, covering every possible shelf in every room.
On a quiet afternoon, Chelsea turned from Raindrop’s web to watch her young brother dart toward a thick grove of brush and trees a stone’s throw from the farmhouse, smiling like a dog that just ate a Cheshire cat. “Don’t go near the forest, Andrew,” a firm yet gentle voice called to remind him from the porch ten feet up in the branches.
Glancing down at them with eyes as blue as the sky, their grandfather turned to view his strange fields of purple pumpkins, blue corn, and assorted herbs, lined by orchards surrounding nearly every acre of this good land. The only acres left untouched by their grandfather’s plow or axe lay quietly in the overgrown grove, filled with thick vines and mangled branches and surrounded by thousands of peonies. “Look out there, my little princess. These plants are only the very tip of the earth’s treasures, almost like hairs on her head. She hides so many other secrets deep within her, and one day, if you’re lucky, you may find some of them.”
“Papa, why are you a gardener?” Chelsea asked looking up quietly and pushing her hair back over her ears, as she often did. She rarely spoke, but when she did it was often in the form of a question for this helped satisfy her insatiable curiosity of the world. Her grandfather appeared serious for a moment then smiled.
“Well, my dear girl,” he said a bit slowly, “A gardener is like a prophet looking out on a barren land and saying, ‘I see corn, and beans, and lavender, and over there some roses.’ That’s what a good friend should be like. A truly good friend can look at our empty lives and see the fruit of what will one day come from deep inside us. And if you are a good friend like that, well you can change the course of history, for they say a thousand gardens can grow from a single seed. I know you sometimes have a hard time making friends because you’re quiet, like I once was. If others could only see the treasure I see within you.”
“I need to see it too, papa,” Chelsea said with a tear crawling down her cheek. “I don’t see it…”
“Your life may well be harder right now so that when you’re older you’ll be stronger for some great purpose. Those trees that survive a drought have roots reaching deeper in the earth.”
For a time, Chelsea and Andrew followed their grandfather to plant some late cabbage in the warm earth. Chelsea limped to the right on her slightly twisted, weaker leg. As they placed the seeds in the soil, their grandfather spoke as he bowed his head, “Now, for our garden blessing. As round as our heads…”
“As big as our butts,” they replied, laughing and planting more seeds, gently covering them with soil and a soft spray of water.
Coming to her with a basket of early fruit, Chelsea’s grandfather handed it to her as gently as if it were a baby. “Please take this to the Penner farm down the road and to the right. Their youngest is ill and they’re in need. Send our love and prayers to them.” At this, Chelsea limped with her basket over a mile down a dusty road to bring the gift to a family she had never met, though she had seen them in their field.
As she approached their wooden steps, through an open window she heard a voice quite loudly call out, “It’s the crippled girl from the Always’ place. What’s she here for?” Chelsea moved slower after that, as if the wind was pushing her back with ten skeletal fingers. They slowly opened the door and stared down at her.
“This is from my papa. He said one of your kids was sick.” Though she said little and held her head down, they seemed surprised and gracious for the food and kind thoughts, watching until this young girl limped out of their sight. Her tears mingled with the dirt on her face to form a soft mud. In her haste to get away, she fell and lay weeping in the dirt, as the sounds of insects sang around her.
The words still stung her young heart as she asked her grandfather, “Why does no one ever say I’m pretty, papa?”
Without hesitation, her grandfather smiled and pointed to some beautiful summer blossoms. “Do you see these flowers? They’re very pretty, but in a few days they’ll whither away. Now this rosemary has a softer, more unspoken beauty but it will flavor our food all year. Oh, my precious granddaughter, it’s just like you. You are so much more than beautiful. You never cease to bring me joy.” He paused for just a moment and then added, “It is good to remember that the butterfly must struggle against her cocoon before breaking free; the struggle makes her wings strong. The pain you have now will make you stronger soon enough.”
As night crawled into the quiet valley, Chelsea was lifted up the steps into the farmhouse on the back of her grandfather, while Andrew clambered up several tree limbs and jumped through a window, fearless of heights as well as pain. Breathing rather heavy, he took only a moment to inhale a spray from a small bottle then rambled off. Their grandfather looked at Chelsea with a serious stare, something that looked quite uncomfortable sitting on his soft face.
“Your mother and father will be back in a few days. They’re actually meeting with several doctors to discuss Andrew’s health.” Here he glanced back to make sure Andrew was not too near. “You know he’s gotten worse over the last few months, but perhaps this good soil will do for him what your stone city could not. It’s hard for heaven’s seeds to grow in cement, you know. Keep your eye on him for me but don’t let him know. It might bury his endless joy that means so much to me now.”
“I’ll do anything I can to help, papa. I’m ten now and I can do things on my own, you know.” She was quite right, and he knew it―quite right indeed.
Her grandfather knelt beside her, with some difficulty on his older knees so he could look into her eyes. “I don’t doubt that you are a big girl. Sometimes an older child, such as yourself, has to carry a heavier load; sometimes too heavy, my princess. So it was for me when I was young. I was adopted by my parents when I was your age and they had found me wandering on this very land; their land. I became their first child of five and they taught me to remember that even if you fall eighteen times just make sure you get up once more. Then they taught me to read and I have loved it ever since.”
“You couldn’t read? Everyone can read by ten.”
“I had never learned, and I’m certain there are others just like me. I can’t do without it now. Let’s get ready for night. I think we’ll have time for some stories then.”
The evening settled in like a traveling stranger in the country, covering the windows with dew shaped like crystal frogs and snakes on the glass. Inside the warm house, jars of creeping insects and spiders lined the kitchen cabinets and were strewn among the book shelves. The creatures became nearly still as stone when their grandfather sprinkled them with a strange powder.
With their dinner done and no electricity in the old farmhouse, Chelsea and Andrew slipped into bed to hear another story from their grandfather by candlelight. Kneeling between their beds, he put a hand on each of their shoulders and spoke like a soft song, just a little out of tune.
“As you know,” he began, “there is a time to live and a time to die. Well, at the latter time we gather at the gates of Heaven. I have heard that these gates are as tall as the sky and no one can climb over them. Each person who comes near them must have a key to enter. On one such day, a beautiful day like this one we have shared, a woman who had been rich woman came with a golden key, but she was turned away. Next came a man who had been powerful, carrying a silver key in the shape of a sword, but he was also turned away. As he walked off sadly, a man who had been a craftsman approached, holding a beautiful key hewn from stone. He was certain the gates of Heaven would open for him, but he too was turned away that day.”
“Who can get in?” whispered Andrew, looking quite upset. Their grandfather smiled and simply continued.
“Just then, two young children, a brave girl with blond hair and eyes as blue as a cloudless sky,” with this he touched Chelsea’s head, “and a fearless blond boy who could climb the rays of the sun approached the gates.” He looked down and smiled at Andrew, who seemed pleased. “They carried nothing with them, for they had lived a very poor life, but they came nonetheless. As they stood at the gates, they looked around for a key so they could enter. Climbing up the gates to the crest of the moon and clinging to the sun they both cried out, ‘We have no key; we only have our love. Will you let us in?’ And with those words spoken the gates of Heaven swung open and they climbed down, entering to the song of the angels. They truly possessed the proper key.”
“What did they see in Heaven?” Andrew asked, sitting up intensely on the edge of his bed.
“I don’t quite know what they saw, Andrew. No one knows the rest of the story. That’s all I’ve heard. You’ll have to dream a wonderful ending for us.” Smiling, their grandfather kissed Chelsea and then Andrew, slowly rising to leave as he leaned on a large axe he sometimes used for a cane.
“Papa?” asked Chelsea. “Did nana have a key when she died?” Stopping instantly, their grandfather slowly smiled, with just the subtle glimmer of a tear hanging desperately to his cheek like the last leaf in autumn.
“Ah, she had the proper key if anyone ever did. Good night, little angels. May the wind bring you peace from Heaven to rest your weary eyes, for there is a time to work and a time to rest from your work; rest well now.”
Taking out a small bottle, he poured a few drops of liquid on each of their pillows. “Lavender…”
“…for sweet dreams,” Chelsea and Andrew both said with a smile. With this their grandfather smiled again, then turned and quietly walked away, leaning on his large axe.
As an hour passed in the scattered light of the moon, Chelsea laid awake on her bed wondering about the next day, as the wind whistled through the branches and Andrew coughed. “God, please tell nana that I miss her so much.” For a few minutes she climbed out of her covers and danced by herself, quietly dragging her leg behind her.
Rising and shifting in the branches around them, the wind played like a child among the leaves. Back in bed, Chelsea heard a voice as soft as cotton whispering on the wind. The whisper uttered, “Child,” and though it did not sound like her nana’s voice, she hoped it was. Hour passed into hour as her eyes finally closed in sleep and the voice sat silent. In her rose-colored dreams she danced with no pain.