Stepping Away from the Stone

He left her there on the litter by her parent's trunk, knowing she'd need to be alone now.

He went out into the other room and sat by the open door sipping at the pod of warm pulp she'd set out for him before. It was dark outside, gray turning relentlessly over inside itself, almost morning. In the open square just beyond the door a tree moved several steps to the right, into a patch of dull light, and resettled itself with something like a sigh sounding in its leaves. The leaves were perfectly rectangular, curling towards midline and tip like a tongue.

Much of his life, he knew, would be spent contemplating what had just taken place. But for now, newly set adrift on his future, he took refuge in the past, in his own memories and those of his parents.

A limitless white ceiling, the only world he yet had. The voices that came to him there, like a rain one heard – voices that came to him still sometimes, unbidden.

A crimson, restless sea.

Fields of migrating grain.

The husk of his parent's body just before he returned it to the trees.

The tree moved again, to the left this time, and settled back. He thought how so much of their lives, fiber for clothing, materials for shelter, medicines, even basic sustenance, came from the trees.

Then she emerged from the back room.

They sat together in the doorway, soles of their feet pressed against one another. He passed the pod and she drank. Pulp, from the tree.

The world looks no different, she signed.

No.

But it is. I thank you for your choice, for my freedom.

He signed that it was of no import and passed the pod to her again. Lowering her head, she drank. Lifting the pod, he drank. Light pushed gently at the backside of gray beyond the door. The tree shifted again, into whatever tatters remained of darkness.

She drank off the last of the liquor, gathering final shreds of pulp onto her smaller thumb and offering it to him.

There is more, she signed. He assented, and she went to draw another podful from the gourd as, waiting, he witnessed morning's arrival. Slow eddies gave way to pools of silver above the trees; then, riding from its center, there was sudden light. Around them the low, wordless moan of the trees.

And with the morning, morning's chill.

She closed the door and sat beside him again, soles of her feet against his. He watched her across this chasm, you could bridge it with an outreached hand but no one ever would, her lidless eyes, pale blue skin.

Passing the pod from hand to hand, they drank. Unseen light went on growing outside, reclaiming its world. A general sense of increment, augmentation. A growing sense of loss.

These walls, he signed. That shut us away?

He sat watching one. Pale white like the pith of plants rising from still water, like every wall he had ever seen.

There could be openings, he signed. Eyes in the walls. Out of those eyes we would continue as part of the world, never again be shut away from it. Those eyes would be formed of some material one could see through.

But there is nothing like that, she signed, nothing one can see through.

He assented. Then stood to sign:

There is a stone, a tree. Man waits. In due time, he steps away from the stone.

Woman waits too, she signed. In due time, she steps away from the tree.

 He took from her the bundle she offered. Tied with a single white ribbon, it was almost weightless.

Nothing left but the world now, he thought as he went out the door. All this light. All this future he carried with him. The new memories he would have.

Flagging a barge nestwards, he sat on narrow branches among others rushing to or from. At length as they watched, dark began to gather, coming not from the sky, not as descent, but pooling up from the ground like oil: tree and stone united.

Nested, he pulled loose the ribbon tie about the bundle she'd given him. Light as thistledown it unscrolled, barely there at all, floor visible beneath as through water.

Some material one could see through.

Her face fell lightly, transparently, almost weightless, against his hand. Vacant eye slots looking up.

As dark fell then, lifting this precious skin to his lips, he began to eat, began to remember.

First published in TransVersions 11 (1999).