Rupetta by N.A. Sulway

Author:N.A. Sulway [Sulway, N.A.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Tartarus Press
Published: 2013-02-05T16:00:00+00:00

***

That afternoon, Miri and I walked up into the mountains. We went through the garden and into the forest that seemed to have grown closer to the house since last time I visited. I could feel the pull of the house behind me and, even though he was sleeping now, resting by the fire, could feel my father’s eyes peering into me, unknowing, but afraid. As Miri and I moved out through the trees it was as though there was a thick skein of milky tissue tethering me to the house. I wanted rid of it, just for a few hours. It was exhausting. The sickly sweetness of his love. The cloying, open-mouthed confusion. My inability to know what should be done. I wanted to shake off the closeness of those rooms and so I walked fast, driving up along the tracks until they disappeared and we were walking in untracked bush. We were high up on the range. I knew that we were close to Land Between.

I could feel the tingle of heat in my thighs and stomach from the effort of walking so fast, but when I stopped at the top of a rise and looked back Miri was beside me. I wanted it to storm, but the sky was blue and smooth. I stood at the edge, wanting to know what to do, what to feel, wanting some skerrick of certainty to lodge itself in me.

She came close; I felt her body ledged against mine and her hand resting with its back against the back of my hand and knew that I could hold it if I wanted to. That she had placed herself there so that I would not have to reach for her. Her fingers were thin and firm. They didn’t tremble in my grasp. I could feel the soft thud of her thumb’s pulse against my wrist.

‘It’s beautiful up here,’ she said.

I nodded. ‘This is where I used to come,’ I said. ‘There’s a clearing not far from here where I would make camp. A rock where my mother and father carved their names when they were young, and in love with each other, and this place. When I was five they brought me here, and showed me where they had carved my name between theirs.’

I glanced at Miri and stepped backwards, sat on a fallen log. I had a strong vision of the three of us standing together—my mother and my father and I. I remember feeling removed and afraid, as though I was not a product of their affection for each other, but an impediment to it: a wound in the perfect shape of their two-personed life. After that, no memory of that time would stay firm. Every image I grasped at, every word, became nothing in my mouth.

‘My mother died after her Transformation,’ I said. ‘Died a heretic’s death of complications. Rejection of the Miracle.’

‘But you told me you remembered when your mother died,’ she said. ‘You remember her funeral, don’t you?’

I nodded.

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