Waterfall

For most of that year, at least once a day, I had to go get her. Bring her back from the beach to the old chair that sat just outside the kitchen window. The one that allowed anyone perched there a clear view of the rocky sand and the ocean. That’s how I knew, you see. She never said anything. Never let on that something was wrong, or that she felt or thought about doing what she did. I just thought she needed to feel the ocean. After all, the ocean is as much a part of our family as anyone that shared our blood. Its song is a siren’s call that thrums through our veins and fills our hearts with the joy and pain of the Deep Mother’s love. When we were young, she would tell us to listen, and if we were quiet, we could hear the quiet humming song just above the song of the ocean. That was our father’s song, the one he created just for us. I imagined that when she stood with her feet in the sand where the water could lap around her ankles as the moon’s pull pushed the flow closer and deeper with every hour that passed; she felt at peace and part of everything, closer to my father. At least that is how I feel when I stand there myself. But I knew.

After, and for many of the months that followed, my sisters and I recalled the stories she told and the lessons we’d learned from our father in childhood. His lessons were the ones we should have listened to more closely. He told us what was coming and what lies beneath the waves waiting for the unaware and unafraid. Yet they were just stories. Folktales, family legends. Things to be taken with a grain of salt but believed in part because of who and what we are. We are, after all, his children. So, we couldn’t exactly claim not to believe in fairy tales and legends. We had proof of their veracity flowing through our veins and lighting up our dreams. Saw it in the smooth skin of our mother who, despite her pain filled limbs and spotty memory, looked more like our sister. She always laughed when I said that, yet everyone remarked upon it. Her youthful glow. The glow of the undimmed core of life and love she’d passed onto us.

I was 50. My mother had been young when she’d had me. Younger still when she’d had my older sisters. I only had one brother, her last child, and only laid eyes on him twice in my life. First when I was 11. He looked like us, but I could tell he would be taller, stronger, and more beautiful despite his spindly legs and clumsiness. He made me laugh, and I felt a deep well of love for him that aches like a dull tooth on days I let myself remember. But I digress. I guess my mind went to him because the second time I saw him was that day and the pain of that parting is mixed in with the rest.

For 5 years I had watched my mother wither. That’s the only way I can put it. Before then she had lived, and lived well. Worked and tended to her family and her home and the community. We excused it at first. Our father hadn’t come home for so long. We just thought her agitation and silences were just her being worried because of the long absence. He’d never been gone so long, so it was only natural. To outsiders, she appeared a tad lonely, but not overly so. She had us and her grandchildren. A few of whom had gifts that led them to lives of service far from the ocean that sustained us all. But every year she was less and the one time I asked her what was wrong, she told me she hated waiting.

That shocked me.

Patience was our religion. Our paradigm, if you will. Life, like the sea, would always bring us what we needed if we had the will and strength to work and wait. To stand ready and true for the coming reward. It was a sign of our belief and obedience. Our responsibility as the Deep Mother’s seed.

I remember once when I was young, around sixteen and full of myself and love for a boy who made me burn brighter than the sun’s reflection off the waves on a cloudless day, I found myself hurting as the boy turned out to be just a boy. One with a streak of cruelty that killed a piece of me I hadn’t known existed. I was sitting on the beach, my feet buried deep in the sand too far for the water to reach me as I cried. My mother had come to me. She told me the story of meeting my father again, then another. Of meeting a stranger. One whose attention and presence made her momentarily forget what she shared with my father. A man whose absences grew longer as the years flew by. Told me she once forgot why she was waiting. Forgot the reward of her patience in the soft kisses and deep caresses of hands hardened by the land, not the sea. He'd made her head swim. Made her feel things. Then all too soon reminded her of why she'd never looked to the land, never looked to the men that were around her in her community, with how he hurt her and how he left. She told me when my father returned. After a five-year absence this time. She explained to him what happened, confessed to her actions, confessed her longings, her sins, her love. And her feelings. Her failings. He'd clung to her. Hummed his song. Their song. And then, after a time. After renewing their love. She remembered. Remembered what patience brought, remembered what she wanted, remembered what she felt all those moments ago, all those times long ago when they first loved each other, when they first became one. When he’d filled that hole inside her, the place that he belonged. The place that he had made for himself. And she told me that could be mine too. I would find it. And maybe it wouldn't have that fiery burn of passion or longing at first. Maybe it would be something she couldn't even see or even think of or dream of. But it would be mine and it would be worth it. It would be worth the patience. If only I could learn to wait.

Yet here she was now. Saying that she was tired of waiting. And I wondered what it changed. And that part of me that knew grew cold and afraid.

I’d woken afraid that day. Some air of madness or evil in the air had me tossing and turning all night until finally giving up on sleep and rising much earlier than I normally would to stand staring out my window at the bit of ocean I could see from my side of the house. I was in my childhood bedroom in the house I shared with my mother. My siblings are long gone but I’d moved back home after I lost my husband. The one that was my reward for waiting.

The day had dawned bright and cloudless, but the sky was gray. Almost angry. Waiting. And when I went downstairs, my mother was nowhere to be found despite the earliness of the hour. She usually rose before me. Rising and had breakfast before wandering out to the porch and sit in her chair and stare endlessly at the sea while she worked at something. Sewing or knitting or reading a book. Some little things to pass the time, the endless time, the endless waiting. The waiting, she said she was tired of. I went upstairs to her room first to see if maybe she'd slept in. It's happened a handful of times when she wasn't feeling well or it had a slow start because her joints were paining her. The years were catching up with her to where she could move, but slowly. Much more slowly. But she wasn't there. The house was empty. It rang with the emptiness. It was loud. The emptiness was so loud. And I knew. I went downstairs, racing from the house and out. Down the stairs to the beach, across the small strip of sand, and saw her standing far out in the water. It was to her waist. And I wondered how long she'd been standing there. Her skin looked so pale, too pale. I waded out myself, heedless of my shoes and my clothes or anything, just desperate to get to her, to get to where she stood, motionless, staring down at something. I couldn’t see, so I got closer, staring down and saw the dark stain in the water. It was spreading. Surrounding her.

“Mom! Mom, come back. What are you doing?” I said, as I reached her and reached out to touch her, but the water pushed me away. The water! My friend, my family. Pushed back at me harder, keeping me away from her as if it was claiming her and rejecting me. Rejecting me. I couldn't believe it. Finally, I made it to her. I made those final few steps, though it took me way longer than it should have. How long, I don't know. Time was … Passing. Crawling? Speeding? Who knows? I hadn't looked at the clock before I left, and I wasn’t looking around. I was just looking at my mother as she stood there, her clothes clinging to her, the waves sucking at her body. The darkness around her growing. Leeching the color from her skin, my skin.

“It's okay,” she said. “Don’t you see him? It's okay.”

I shook my head and reached for her. Felt the coolness of her skin. The clamminess shocked me. It felt unnatural, unlike anything I felt before. It felt like death. That scared me. I took two … no, three deep breaths and tried again.

“Mom. Come with me. We have to get out of the water.”

“No, I'm not getting out. He's come. You see? You see him, he's come. He’s come home at last.”

I looked down at the darkness and couldn't see anything. Certainly not my father, if that is who she meant. He hadn’t come in fifteen years, and we all knew if he hadn’t come; it was because he couldn’t. Because he was gone. Below her was only darkness. It rolled and seethed beneath us against the natural ebb and flow of the waves. It looked unnatural to me and felt unnatural. Like a frothing black hole pulling everything around it into its gaping maw of nothingness. I felt the drain, the pull standing there as it sucked at me. Sucking everything away, sucking at my life, like it was sucking at hers. And I was afraid. My fear grew. Large. Larger than the sun, larger than the sea, larger than anything I'd ever felt before. And I knew in that moment that this thing was evil and it had a hold on her. Something had crawled inside her, had used her connection to the ocean to grow in her mind and convince her that this was where she should be and what she should do. And in my fear, I screamed.

“Mom. We have to go now.” I wrapped my arms around her, and I pulled and something … something pulled back. It pulled back against me and I couldn’t fight it. I couldn’t fight it. It pulled her from my arms, and I looked down and the darkness had morphed. It changed. And she was under water. She smiled as the darkness embraced her and water filled her mouth and her lungs. Then I saw the change. Saw the fear come, the desperate struggle to escape. Then something bright and blinding flashed, and I glimpsed a pair of hands sweeping away the darkness. Her smile returned, her face beatific as the fear receded and life leached slowly from her eyes. Desperately I dived under the water and reached for her, grasping. Then I saw him. Saw them and realized the waves had pulled us away from shore. Further into the ocean.

Beneath me. A dozen figures swam, fought against the darkness, the coiling tendrils of hate that had my mother in its embrace. A seeping darkness that killed. Shining figures that darted in a dazzling ballet of fins and limbs through the coiling tendrils of darkness and speared it. But the thing seemed too much for them. Every time one of them destroyed one fetid rope, a dozen more bloomed and lashed out, grabbing for me, trying to return my mother to its embrace. One figure swam closer. Coming for me, and I realized it was my brother, grown to a man now, in human form. I hadn't seen him in so long, but I knew in that moment it was him. Coming to save us. Coming to save me. He reached me just as another figure reached my mother and swam her away from the darkness. But it was too late. I knew it was too late. And so did my brother. The pain of our embrace as he swam paled compared to the pain of our loss, the pain of our knowing. The other person, who I found out later was one of the Mondaó, transformed the lower part of his body so he had legs instead of fins, carried my mother's body gently to the sand and laid it a few feet from where we kneeled in the frothing waves where the two worlds met. My brother held me for a moment, though I knew it caused him pain. Then the two of us went over to her body and kneeled beside her.

“It had to have been in her mind,” the Mondaó said. He looked at me, speaking for himself and my brother, whose voice I hadn't heard since I was a child and would never hear again because I wasn't his. Only his blood.

“It had to have been speaking to her for some time, convincing her to come closer. Luring her to come out.”

“What was it? Is it gone? Did they kill it?” I asked. But I didn't care really, because my mother was gone. Taken from us by this thing, this, whatever that gorged itself upon her mind.

“We do not speak its name. But it preys on the lost. On those who are empty, who have a space they’re unable to fill. Yes, she's gone. But the Mother Beneath the Waves is merciful. Her spirit found your father again. And she will come for you too, in time. That is the way of things.” I thought about what I had seen, those hands sweeping the darkness away, her smile. His spirit and hers, reunited beneath the waves.

“That is poor comfort,” I said. My brother nodded as if he agreed with me and rose, his steps weighted with everything that lay unsaid between us on his silent trek back into the water. I blinked, and he was gone. Without even a wave of farewell, as if in losing her, he had lost the ability to remember the little human things we did to show affection. I stared at the spot where he’d disappeared and then took my mother's hand, holding it between both of mine.

“Can that happen to anyone? Is it safe to be here?”

“As safe as anyplace ever is. Safe as we ever can be. It is still your home. Your place. The place that she made for you and your family. Do not let the loss of this battle change you, make you forget who she was and what she gave you. Do not let this one thing, this ending overshadow all the things that came before.”

“But what was it? Why did it choose her? Take her?” I asked again, and he shook his head.

“There are enemies and there are enemies. Many things that we can fight and many things we can’t that don't belong here. Things that can come in and take advantage of some small weakness. This was one of them.”

“Can it come back?” I asked. Worried now about my sisters and their children and their grandchildren. Worried for my own children, wherever they were. Though I knew their lives and their paths were far different from my own.

“Yes, it can come back. But I do not think it will. Her life and her escape. The battle we fought to stop it. It will fear this place. That should make it safe.”

“Safe?” I scoffed, and raised my mother's hands so my lips kissing her cold flesh. Nothing would be safe, nothing would be the same. Never again.

He stood, and I remembered my manners. My mother would not have wanted me to be so hard.

“Thank you for saving me. For bringing us back.”

“You are never alone.” He looked at the water and then back at me. “Never alone. Remember that.” He nodded, then turned and left. Following the path my brother had taken. I never saw him again.

My sisters came, and we dealt with all the things that came with death. The friends, the family, and all the trappings of mourning. The priest who said that things were a plan. But I knew that this had not been anyone’s plan. This just was. And what armor do we have against things that just are? What can we do in the face of things that have no explanation? What do we do in the face of loss? When the one we loved can never come back to fill that place? What good is patience? I pondered this when all the things were done. Once we’d talked and remembered the tales and tried to put a name to the darkness, to the evil that had robbed us of however many years we might have had. Rehashing and remembering as we sorted through the pebbles of her life. Then it came to me.

While my sisters and I stood at the edge of the sea days later and flung her ashes to the wind, returning her to the waters that were so much a part of her life and death, I figured it out. I didn’t have all of it. It’s more a feeling of knowing. Like I knew something was wrong or knew the end approached for my mother. But I know that even though I'm changed. There is a reward waiting at the end for my patience. That reward is the love I have yet to find, in the ones I have yet to meet. I know the feeling, and I will know when I’ve found it because I've had it before. That must be enough when the darkness tries to fill the emptiness when I am missing those who are gone. When the world throws things at me that I don’t want and can’t understand. I just have to remember, I'm not tired of waiting.