The Secret Place

It happened just as it should have. Just the way I didn’t expect.

It happened sweetly and slowly, like a little seed growing into a strong, tall tree.

If you could put a memory, one of your earliest ones, into a picture, it would look this way. Not many places could be that old and covered in dust but still so beautifully unchanged.

It was the perfect place.

I write this from what most people would consider a perfect place. In this palace, not just one, but several rooms are mine, and they’re all clean and cool and spacious. The bedroom balcony even looks out over the white sand of the southern coast and to the ocean beyond, an impossibly deep, blue, mass that gleams in and out of a thousand shadows. It glitters, even in the dark. Everything here seems that way. Not far away, in the city streets, I see the gleam of soft lights and hear the steady strain of music. Always the music…

The old barn was everything this place is not. Dusty, old, and abandoned.

When I was a little girl, and my grandparents were still living, we used to visit their house. Like the old barn, it was humble and shabby. Lots of dust. Grandmother’s arthritis was slowing her down, and her housekeeping wasn’t what it used to be. Grandfather collected lots of little trinkets and they gathered dust at incredible speed. They covered the few surfaces of their dimly lit home. The furnishings were sparse and threadbare, and there was always a draft. And yet, some of the best and happiest moments of my life took place in that little hovel.

The barn was like that. I remember every gap between the boards like I remember the lines in my grandmother's face. I feel the coolness of its interior like I can still feel the weight of my grandfather’s hand resting on my head. Those are things you never forget, no matter how deeply they get buried in all the extra tripe of life.

It had belonged, I would later learn, to a farmer. That was before the invasion and occupation. The farmer was long since gone, his lands seized and his fortunes forfeit. The barn was, ironically, property of the empire. So of course, nothing useful was being done with it. Until Kaleo found it and made it our own secret meeting place.

It was his idea. The first time he took me to see it, I found myself scoping it out for purposes that would suit his real needs. There was plenty of space for warm, dry beds and food storage. Why, he and the others could even put up some furnishings, if they wished. He listened to me, patient as always, until I had exhausted every possible corner and surface of the place. Then, he touched my arm.

“I don’t want to bring the others here.”

“Why not?”

“I thought it could be ours.”

“Ours?” My first impulse had been to be hurt he didn’t like my ideas, but this new word, ours, I could hardly understand. There was barely a we. How could we have anything together?

“I think,” he was saying, “this should be our secret place. For now at least.” His eyes changed. He was not so sure now.

“For what?”

“I don’t know.” He looked away, turned and looked up at the rafters and the cracks in the board on the wall. “Just…just for us to talk. To be alone.”

It was my turn to look away. We were so rarely alone in any true sense. Certainly we had walked together and talked as we strolled through the city, but always with people around. Always with his friends and followers nearby. And on the hill a time or two. Never enclosed. Never hidden, as we were now, from the eyes of the world.

He was surveying the barn now; it was always that way. As soon as he seemed about to share something wonderful, he turned his attention to something else.

“Yes,” he said, walking over to his violin, which he had leaned against the wall when we arrived. “No one will find us here.” He picked up the violin and laid it on his shoulder. He nodded his head toward me. “Put that down.”

I gripped my crutch tightly with both hands. Just the thought of being without it, the thought of toppling over, made my knees shake and my head spin.

“You can do it,” he said.

“Not without you...your music.” I looked down at the ground, at the cool, hard-packed dirt.

“The music will just help you get started,” he said softly. He walked over to me. “Do you want to be without me?”

“No, no of course not!” I looked up. “I always want to be with you. It’s just that I know…”

“You know what?”

“Nothing lasts forever. What do I do when you’re gone? Just go back to being crippled?”

It was an honest question and he didn’t mock me this time as he may have others.

“Just come with me.” A simple answer. Too simple, I knew. At least for me.

“It’s not that easy,” I said.

“Why not? Because of your parents? Your sister?”

I nodded.

“Althea,” he said, putting down the violin and taking my face in his hands. “Do you believe me?”

“Which part?”

“You can’t believe just part. You believe all, or nothing. That’s the only way it will work.”

I didn’t answer. How could I, when I questioned the answer myself? He let go of me and picked up the violin.

“Just try,” he said. “Just once. Here,” and he played a slow, sweet, series of notes.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I let go of the crutch, listened to it land on the ground with a hollow thud. I wobbled and held out my arms for balance. Opened my eyes. He was before me.

“Now,” he said. “Walk.”

I took a step. Wobbled. Paused.

“There,” he smiled. “Again.”

He played slowly, sweetly. The music and its magic hummed through my body. It seemed it was knitting together every damaged piece inside, every misplaced bone, every shivering muscle. I took another teetering step, and another. He played a little faster. I walked straighter, stronger. From one end of the old barn and back again to his magic violin I walked, until he stopped suddenly, and I finished in the lingering quiet. The humming had filled me up. And I knew that it wasn’t the music from his violin, but the music he had put inside me, that had carried me.

It was so long ago. So much happened after that. The last time in the old barn was...regrettable. I’ll never forget it. I couldn’t, though I wish I could.

But for all he became, or all he showed himself to be after, there was always this. This golden day, the day of promise for me that changed not just the course of my life. It changed his, too.

I often wonder, if he would have still healed me, if he could have known what was to come.