Chapter 206: Day 205

Day 205,

I’d meant to keep going with the writing last night, but when I got up to take a brief stretch break I found the nature sprite back in the house.  It was just standing there, in the kitchen, not seeming to be really doing anything.  It turned its head to look at me as I stepped out from the hall but otherwise took no action.

I was frightened, of course.  Jumped and yelped when I saw it.  Then took a half step back.  Then froze up.  Wanted to run.  Knew that wouldn’t help.  Wanted to shout and rail at it.  Was afraid that might provoke it.  Started breathing fast.  Gripped the corner.  Tried to steady myself.  Reminded myself of the things Pat had said about it.  Reminded myself that if it wanted to hurt me it would have done so already.  Remembered the last night of my illness.

While making a conscious effort to keep my breathing slow and steady, I forced myself to look at the intruder.  Make eye contact.  Stand up straight.  Stare it down.  I was no less afraid, but if I didn’t act like it maybe I could fake it until I make it, as the saying goes (is that a saying in this place, or just in my past life?).

The problem with attempting to stare the nature sprite down though is that looking at its glowing eyes for too long is like staring at a candle or the glare of the sun off a reflective surface; stare too long and your own eyes start to hurt and you wind up with a pair of spots in your vision for a while afterward when you’re inevitably forced to blink and look away.

Steeling myself, I attempted a different approach: pointedly ignoring it and going about my business like it wasn’t there.  If it wanted entertainment from me being unsettled by some prank or another, I’d refuse to give it the satisfaction until it got bored and left.  And if my doing so made it impatient or think it had lured me into a false sense of security, then at least I wouldn’t be caught off guard.

Or at least, that’s what I told myself while I went about looking for hidden surprises or misplaced objects while trying to look like I was casually tidying up the house.  As I did so, it continued to simply stand there and watch me, motionless save for its head pivoting on its neck.  Until I began to move to check the kitchen that is.  I’ll admit I’m not sure what I was expecting to happen, but it wasn’t for the sprite to simply shuffle out of my way to go stand in the hall and let me have free rein to examine the kitchen.

Yet, despite my eventual searching of every room in the house, I found nothing out of place.  Nothing absent from where it should be and nothing there that should not be, save for the nature sprite who continued to do ought but stand and stare and shuffle around to get out of my way.  For the life of me, I couldn’t - and still can’t - figure out what its game was.  I wound up taking a seat on the couch and watching it from the corner of my eye all night until I could no longer keep my eyes open and, despite my best efforts, fell asleep there, exhaustion finally conquering anxiety.

It was gone when I woke up this morning, and another check of the house revealed all to be as it should be, best as I could tell.  Come to think of it, I don’t think this is the first time it’s acted like this.  The first time I saw it following the incident where it simply walked alongside me on the way home from the Village and then returned the soap comes to mind.  I feel like there’s been at least one other time but I can’t quite place it off the top of my head right now.

I suppose I should get back to recounting yesterday though.  This is sort of my dry season weekly, self-appointed day off from official archivist work so there’s not much else to do right now.  Except laundry.  And going through the transcriptions everyone made from the cathedral visit.  But I’m using wanting to do those activities with company as an excuse to procrastinate on them, so writing it is.

I’d left off with having just finished talking to Pat about plans for finding the healing spring and Iole, he gave me a warning about Theo, said some cryptic stuff, and then we got back up and continued our walk down the beach.  He’s not one for letting silence hang, that old man, and it didn’t take long for him to start waxing nostalgic and reminiscing about old times.  Which, for him, is a pretty broad range of topics.  Old friends.  Powerful storms.  Festivals  (It seems that while the equinoxes are the only regularly scheduled ones, every now and then someone takes it upon themselves to organize some sort of large celebration or another, sometimes just for the sake of it).  First meetings with prior outsiders.  As I’d gathered, it’d become sort of his job over the years to greet new arrivals and introduce them to the Village.  Part of the reason he’d taken to making a habit of these beach walks (not that he didn’t enjoy them for his own sake).  It often wasn’t him that initially found them, but someone always wound up bringing them to him in short order.  Always dazed and wearing the same white garment I was, no matter what prior life they might have remembered.

Or at least, it’s assumed we all wash up like that.  There have been a few rare cases where someone washed up on some further part of the island and took hours or even days to find other people.  It was before even his time, but he’d heard of one outsider who actually washed up on a different island altogether and took years before he rowed up to the Village on a boat of his own making.

We shared a laugh at how that must have thrown the villagers of the time through a loop before Pat grew somber and added that the story always made him wonder how many outsiders arrived in this world on some smaller, remote island and never found the Village.  How many had washed up, lived their lives, and disappeared again thinking they were alone in the world with no one knowing they existed?

I didn’t know what to say to that, but I couldn’t help but wonder if that was the case with Maiko’s mother.  Then again, that wouldn’t explain who her father was.

We were saved from pondering such mysteries for too long by the realization that we’d reached what I’d come to think of as “my” stretch of beach, whereupon Pat suggested we take another rest before turning around and heading back to the Village.  Taking the same seats we’d taken just over a hundred days ago, the two of us sat and watched the sea until I began to grow restless with the suspicion that he was waiting for me to say something.

After some stuttering and false starts, through which Pat was mercifully patient, I eventually got out that I was worried that being my apprentice, even being around me, might be bad for Cass.  I told Pat about my rough awakening from the Catacombs nightmare the other morning.  And about the time I had something like a panic attack in front of the class full of kids when asked about where stories come from and how to tell fiction from nonfiction.  And the myriad other anxieties of mine that I tried to keep hidden but I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d picked up on.  None of it is her fault or directed at her or even has anything to do with her directly, but that just doesn’t seem like an emotionally or mentally healthy environment for a child to be around.  And as much as she’s eager to prove how mature she is and insists that she wants to be treated like an adult she’s not one.

And all that’s not even getting into concerns about what Theo’s said about outsiders pulling those around them down with them to whatever premature fate they find.

At the same time though, Cass is good at archivist work and even seems to enjoy it.  She certainly enjoys the “expeditions” to the floating island and cathedral ruins and such.  And I don’t want to take that away from her if it’s what she wants to do.  Nor do I want to hurt her by doing or saying something that comes across as driving her away or implying that she’s not good enough or can’t handle things because she’s “just a kid.”

I confessed to him that, as much as I suspect she’d bristle at the phrasing, I’ve come to think of her like a younger sibling of my own and I want what’s best for her.  But I don’t know what that is.  And who am I to even say what’s best for her?  Or for anyone for that matter?

Pat asked me if I wanted advice or just a sympathetic ear to bend while I express my worries.

Before I could stop myself I said that advice would be appreciated, and then reflexively added on that I didn’t want to impose or come across as only visiting him when I need something but too late for that now.

He told me not to worry about imposing then got on with his advice.  The gist of it was that I should sit down with Cass and talk with her about it.  Be honest, lay out my concerns the same way I’d told him, but be clear that I still respect her and the work that she’s done.  Say that I want her opinion before I decide what to do, so that even if I ultimately decide to do something she doesn’t want she’ll at least feel considered and heard.  And who knows, her point of view might give me valuable insight I hadn’t thought of.

But if I truly think that being around me is hurting her, then I need to make it clear to her how and why I think that, and if I still believe it after talking to her, best for me to find a way to stop hurting her and act on it, one way or the other.  And help her find something to hold onto so the fix doesn’t hurt her as much as the problem.

I thanked him.

He wished me luck.  Said it wasn’t an easy decision to make.  And then said that’s enough stewing in our thoughts when we’ve got a long walk back to the Village.

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As we began walking, Pat commented that there’s a lovely little cove around the bend in the shoreline if I hadn’t explored it already.  A pretty sight and a shame he rarely has the energy to extend his rambles that extra little bit.

Was he implying he knew about Maiko and her comings and goings from there with her boat, or was I reading too much into it?  I wasn’t about to ask either way.

 

Took a break from writing to eat lunch and stop procrastinating on laundry.  Sooner or later I’d need to get used to going out on my own again.  Can’t let fear of another unlikely incident rule my life forever.

That laundry trip down to the stream was uneventful until I was on my way back to the house.  Struggling with the basket of now water-heavy laundry I tripped and would have fallen and spilled the basket had not a pair of hands caught me, steadied me, and pulled me back upright.  By the time I realized what had happened and looked about there was no one there.  The nature sprite’s doing undoubtedly, but I just don't have it in me right now to contemplate the new pattern of behavior it seems to be shifting toward.  Although I suppose I may as well note the observation that all of my interactions with it since the incident have been neutral at worst and seemingly benevolent at best with none of its usual mischief.

Back to the very long day that was yesterday.

On the way back to the Village Pat asked me to tell him about some of the good times I’d had here.  I was in a rough spot right now, but surely my life had its bright moments as well.  Jokingly he said I could call it repayment for the advice I seemed so worried about “imposing” on him for.

That seemed fair enough to me.  But where to start?  It took me long enough to decide that I suspect anyone else (except maybe Maiko) would have grown impatient with me, but I settled on that trip to the lake of stars with Lin, back when I’d only been around for a month or so, starting with her waltzing down the stairs to the archive one morning and declaring “I’m taking you shopping and then we’re going camping!”

I’d moved on from that to recounting my first proper exploration of the cathedral ruins with Cass when we stopped to rest again.  On a roll, I simply kept talking, describing the feeling as the two of us sat in the catacombs exchanging riddles in the dark over treasure as our own private callback to the first story I’d told as Archivist two nights prior.

Recalling dinner with Lin and Vernon - burnt food outweighed by lovely conversation - took us from the beach to the Village streets.

More solitary pleasures, such as watching the giants in the mists and my dances with the rain brought us along the cobblestones and up the hill.

I was just finishing my attempt to capture the awe of watching the shadow of Cloud Tower cross the border of noon when we reached Pat’s door.

I knew I should be getting back to the library, and then catching up with Cass and James, but there was one more “bright moment” I wanted to relay to Pat before I left him, even though he was there for it.  It just felt right to say.  Important even.

Once I’d finished telling him the wonder I’d felt the first time I saw the archive and its caged stars, he smiled, nodded his head and said the moment had been special for him too.  That it was when he became sure that I’d find peace here one day.

That would have been a wonderful note to end the day on as I left him with a promise to come back and visit sometime next week.  

But I still had Cass and James to talk to.

To my shame, I wasn’t able to bring up my concerns with them.  The closest I got was taking Jame’s side when he suggested we go back to last dry season’s schedule of Cass being in the Village for archivist work two days a week.  Cass wasn’t thrilled with this arrangement, but we compromised with a promise of three days a week next dry season and to let her go with me on any archival-related ventures out of the Village, even long ones like the floating island trip.  I was quietly relieved that James agreed to that last part before we brought up the boat trip we were starting to make plans for.

I tried not to cringe when Cass mentioned that we’d be looking for Iole in addition to the spring.  And I don’t blame her for it; I would have done the same if not for the talk with Pat a few hours ago.  All the same, I was quick to add, making sure that the present siblings heard as well, that we’d like to keep things quieter than the floating island plans were.  Said that I hadn’t been comfortable with all the attention and there’d been a lot of wasted food donations.  Both technically true.

I’ll need to relay that warning about Theo to everyone the next time I can get them in private.

And that all brings us full circle to arriving back to an empty house last night, followed by writing, followed by another nature sprite encounter, followed by today.

Time to get some dinner and head to bed.  I don’t think I’ll be making another entry tonight unless something truly unexpected happens.

It’s funny how so many days can pass, one similar to the next, and then one comes along with so much you can hardly process it all.

 

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