In Another Time
A sketch
“What do you remember, sister?”
“I woke up,” she said. “I had a dream, I think. It was so long ago, though.”
“Not so long,” he corrected, smiling a bit. The older brother, much older. A grown man with a beard and all. Kind eyes, a deep and gentle brown as tree bark. Wrinkled small crow’s feet drew you towards those eyes. Seeing them walk together, she was so short next to him with her hand reaching up to hold his, you could have mistaken him for her father.
They walked together along a path, well trodden, wide enough for two people with tall grass on each side, gentle meadow grass that flows even in light breezes. The meadow lay vast with small hills here and there, interspersed with cottonwoods and elms. A creek cut lazily along through it, clear water over rocks red, beige, yellow, and white. The meadow seemed endless to the north and the south, and to the east, where they walked, the shape of mountains rested against the sky.
A retort—“I am older now! I was so little then,” she said. He said nothing, just smiled more. Children need to make their points, to be heard. And she wasn’t wrong. She was so young that it was half her life ago, waking as a toddler in the dewy grass of the meadow.
She wrinkled her lip and furrowed her brow. “I just remember waking up in the wet tall grass and it was almost morning. It is always almost morning here. I like that.”
“Soon the day will rise. What about the dream, though?” he asked.
“I remember other people, grown-ups like you.”
“Yes,” he nodded, and looked to the foothills under the peaks where the dawn was rising. Somehow they yellowed with alpenglow even though the sun was behind them, as if the light flowed and splashed like a stream, covered everything and left no shadows.
“They loved me, I think,” she said.
“They did; very much so,” and he squeezed her hand. They walked now, in the warming and cool dawn. Cottonwood leaves touched with whispers from a breeze, and she could hear the brook under its banks hidden in the grass that also whispered.
They walked together for four or five minutes, and she thought of the dream. He relished her hand in his, the little hand that held tightly but easily. She would not always be this small. She would grow into a lovely person, and their walking and talking would only get better, but never like this again.
“I loved them, too,” she said. “I remember feeling my love for them.”
“You did love them,” he said. “And they knew that so well.”
“I remember more of it now,” she said. “It feels almost real.”
She took two steps to his one. He loved the rhythm of it. He squeezed her hand again. “It was real,” he said.
She walked and blinked, her eyes searching the horizon but actually inside herself to understand what he was saying. It took her a minute to reply, “How, though? I thought you said dreams were just stories our heads made up?”
“It wasn’t a dream, my love.” At this, he stopped their walking, and he turned to kneel on one knee, meeting her eyes with his own. A bird sang a small song, and the breeze picked up some.
“My love, you and I are people, just like the people you remember,” he said.
Her eyes met some confusion but mostly curiosity. “Who were they?” she asked.
“Who do you think named you?” he asked in return. He held both her arms gently in his hands, rubbed with his thumbs.
“My name? I, well… I just had a name. You called me it when you found me in the grass that morning. I don’t know.”
“But how did I know you had a name?” He showed no concern, only joy. His eyes almost sparkled with excitement.
“I… I… uh… I don’t know. How did I get a name?”
“You were named, my love.”
“By who? The people in my dream?”
“It wasn’t a dream, darling. It was just a time,” he kept his smile and watched as her brain discovered all the meaning he hoped it could.
“A time? What is that?” she asked. She reached up and put her hands on his beard, and it was somehow soft and prickly all at once.
“It’s a place like this place, but smaller,” he said.
“How did I fit?” she asked.
He laughed aloud, “We can all fit! We fit in that place almost as easy as we fit in this place.”
“But who were those people?” And here her curious joy turned to a degree of concern.
“They made you.”
“Made me?”
“Yes, my dear. With their own love and affections, they made you. They named you ‘Mary.’ They are your father and mother—your parents.”
Her eyes searched his, but also her mind grasped at this new idea like waves grasping at rocks on a shore, how they find everything but can’t quite stay.
“I wish I could meet them,” she said, finally.
“You will,” he smiled. He stood up, now, then took her hand and they started walking again.
“When?” she asked.
“In good time,” he said. Now he picked her up, placed her on his hip, and she wrapped her arms around his neck.
“I think I love them, still” she said. “And I have other dreams with them.”
“Those aren’t dreams,” he said. “Those are memories, my love. And they love you, too.”
She ran a finger through the hair that covered his right ear, and gently placed the hair behind it.
“What are those?” she asked, touching marks just under his hairline.
He smiled again. “Scars, my love.”
“What are scars?”
“In another time, my skin was opened.”
“Did it hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Why are there so many?” She ran her finger over each mark in a lattice ring under his brow.
“I wore a crown.”
“Were you a king?”
“Yes,” he said.
Love this so much, Joey!