Almanor’s Calypso

Ash coated the ground around Sybil’s feet, making the snow beneath a cold, grey blanket. Her sister stood next to her, frozen in place, eyes rolling over the field. Trees huddled at the perimeter, leaves still clinging to the branches, shivering as wind barreled into them off the plain. Winter wheat broke the surface here and there, but the overall effect was incongruous. They should not be seeing this. Not these things together.

She blinked and wondered if it would break the suspension. The silence stood unflinching, daring her to shout. Her sister coughed but did not move. It was November. She could remember that, but everything else was faint. She should move. Take a step. Raise her arm. Anything to arrest the inertia circling them like a vulture.

“Almanor, give me your hand.” she said, looking straight ahead. Her head would not move.

Almanor groaned as she tried to lift her fingers.

“It’s too strong, Sybil.”

“What is?”

“Gravity.” Almanor suddenly sank to the ground, knees splaying wide.

The ash rose about her, a curtain drawn up too quickly, certain to fall. It settled on her shoulders, mantle-like, and face too. Sybil resisted the urge to say it looked like a shroud but the eeriness made her bones crack.

“We need to move, Al. I can’t remember what happened here. Can you?”

Almanor shook her head. It was a slow movement, reminded Sybil of water aerobics at the pool she used to work at. People seemed to move at half speed in the water; even overweight ladies had an undulating grace as they finned through the routines. She smiled and felt her body shift from its pedestal.

She looked down, expecting to see grey. Instead, white met her, so bright she could have been stepping from a cave into full sun. She raised a hand to comfort her eyes and it came easily. It did not strike her as odd until Almanor struggled to her feet.

“What did you do, Sybil? I can move.” Almanor began rolling her wrists in circles, staring at them like strangers.

Sybil shook her head. “All I did was smile when I remembered water aerobics at the pool…”

Almanor tried to take a step forward and found herself locked in place. The sun was on its descent but the sky remained light. She looked at Sybil and the exposed patches of white.

They threw rays upward and raced after the fading sun as though the earth was a flashlight being uncovered. “Beautiful,” she whispered as they continued on and on past the horizon. Her heart thrummed, a willful hummingbird in her chest, unconcerned with the miracle of its movement.

The ground trembled in time to its beat. Almanor stared, her vision rippling like rings over a lake surface. She felt weightless, suspended above all the grimness of the landscape until the questions of why and how they arrived here began to fall away. She closed her eyes and smelled the air. It sank into her nostrils, warm, unexpected amidst the snow. Memory flickered.

They had been walking to burn off Thanksgiving dinner. Not just the food, but the weight of strangers and alienation that had been unprecedented that year.

Mom had gone overboard again and invited all the neighbors within a two mile radius. “Thank God they live in the country.” Sybil had muttered under her breath when they arrived to a driveway overflowing with cars.

It had always been strange in their family. Close but remote, bonded but completely inconsistent. Case in point was their inevitable return to the farm each year like salmon to their spawning grounds. Even though they knew they’d come out of the experience battered and possibly emotionally annihilated, the pull was irresistible.

Almanor had dragged Sybil outside after a grueling two hour conversation with Bill Paxton, the neighbor in the yellow house, about road improvements in the neighborhood.

The sun iced over as they exhaled steam in clouds that rose around them on the porch. “I know she means well,” Almanor said, looking out over the rolling fields to the darkened forest, “But I’m fucking glad Thanksgiving only happens once a year.” Sybil wrapped her long braid around her arm like a rope until her hand rested on her shoulder. She leaned against the rail. “Let’s go check on the old fort. I wonder if our stash is still there.”

They’d set off bareheaded, it wasn’t far to the trees. Almanor had insisted on jackets and Sybil always carried extra gloves. It was an old habit from working with horses year round. “We’re lucky mom decided on an early dinner, I guess.” Almanor chuckled as they stomped a path through the snow. “This could take a while.”

The trees had gotten thicker since their last visit, closing in around the deer trail they’d discovered as kids like a tunnel. It was warmer beneath the branches and Almanor removed her gloves. “I remember why we chose this place.” she said, reaching out to touch the living walls. Sybil was silent, leading the way until the trail opened into a small meadow that had grown smaller in the last ten years.

In the middle, their fort sat atop a small hill that had a vague outline encircling its base. “The moat’s about had it.” Sybil stated, walking the circumference, one foot in front of the other. Almanor wrapped her arms around herself and climbed the hill. The door stood straight on its hinges, its rough planks worn smooth from countless hours of hand sanding until it smoothed.

“Look at this, Sybil. It still shuts tight.” Almanor ran her hand over the surface, found the metal ring they’d found buried in the forest, and pushed.

Sybil watched her enter and remembered. They built the fort together, gathering boards and straw and making their own mixture of dirt and sand that they’d packed into shapes of walls and windows. The result looked like the hill had gotten higher and added eyes. It stayed an even temperature year round, insulating itself. They’d built a hearth out of rocks from the nearby river to make it cozier.

They retreated there on countless occasions and had built up a stockpile of dried food and books that was supplemented with weed when they reached high school. Time just enhanced the sanctuary effect.

Sybil pulled herself back and walked up to join Almanor. “Find it?” she asked. “I could use some perspective about now.”

Almanor straightened from crouching at the hearthside with a plastic bag. “Still here.”

Sybil grabbed a lighter from the tin box on the mantle and lit the fire. “I can’t believe how thorough we were with this place. Ten years and the wood in the fireplace is still waiting to burn.”

They sat Indian style in front of the blaze, passing the joint and watching smoke mingle. It was good to sink into the earth, to feel it support them as they swapped stories. Time sank too, going down slow until a coal popped onto Almanor’s hand, breaking the stall.

“Do you remember the hole we dug trying to make a well?” she said, flicking the ember back onto the stone.

“Of course. Did you ever come back for that stone?” Sybil asked, propping herself on elbows.

Almanor shook her head. “It didn’t feel right without you. I left it in the hiding spot.”

They looked at each other and crawled to the window seat that doubled as a bed. It was made from the same adobe they’d used for the rest of the fort and deep enough for both of them.

Built into the wall beneath the window was a series of colored glass bottles they’d embedded during the building process. Almanor counted two down from the top and over one to the right. She nodded to Sybil who tapped the center three times and pushed in with her finger. The end flipped down to reveal a tube. Sybil stuck her fingers in and extracted a circular stone the color of salmonberries.

It lay in Sybil’s hand quietly as if resting after a long journey. Almanor reached out to touch it and then paused. “I wonder if it still does that thing.” she murmured to no one in particular. Sybil laughed and placed it on the hearth. “You remember what happened the first time it did that?” The stone began to totter.

The sisters looked at each other and moved closer together. A fragment of light began to twist out of the rock’s center, stretching up and then descending in time to a beat they could not hear. Almanor smiled at Sybil and took her hand up. “This is different. I feel almost transparent. What about you?”

Sybil’s braid began to rise, mimicking the lift and fall of the beam coming from the rock. She tried to tuck it into her coat but it kept escaping. “Yeah, this isn’t familiar.”

Examining the stone had never been particularly familiar. It was exhilarating and often shocking, but never predictable outside the regular intrigue. Sybil used to say, “Expect to be dazzled.” It was always true.

They had no idea where the rock had come from but they were both sure it was not something they wanted to share. It offered escape, a portal to something theirs, without being petty or mundane. After the last escapade ten years ago though, they’ put it away for good.

There had been music that time. It was a low bass note that moved their bodies in undulating arcs until they collapsed exhausted on the floor. When they looked at the clock it showed eleven hours missing and a new day.

And now they were here, in a meadow that should have a hill and a fort in the middle but instead had ash and light writing over land and ether. Sybil and Almanor did not touch. They looked over the openness and felt the weight of being passengers on a runaway train.