Tanith Lee by Jedella Ghost

Author:Jedella Ghost
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-12-12T02:16:58+00:00

She was quiet and nearly motionless all through the ceremony, and though she looked down at his old, creased, vacant face, before the coffin was closed, she made no fuss about it.

But when everything was done, and we stood alone on the path, she said, “I used to watch the squirrels playing, in the trees and along the tops of the wall. They were black squirrels. I used to throw them little bits of cake. One day, John Cross, I saw a squirrel lying there on the grass in the garden. It didn’t move. It was so still I was able to stroke its side. Then someone came from the house. I think it was a man called Orlen. And he picked up the squirrel. He said to me, ‘Poor thing, it’s fallen and stunned itself. Sometimes they do. Don’t fret, Jedella. I’ll take it back to its tree, and it will get better.’”

Over the lawn, Homer’s daughter walked, leaning on the arm of her son. She was rubbing at her face angrily muttering about the meat dishes and the sweet pie she had been going to make for the birthday. Her son held his hat across his middle, head bowed, troubled the way we often are at grief we cannot share.

“So the squirrel was stunned,” I said.

“Yes. And later he pointed it out to me, running along the wall.”

“That same squirrel.”

“He told me that it was.”

“And you think now that Homer is only stunned, and we’ve thrown him down into the ground, and now they’ll cover him with earth, so he can’t get out.”

We stood, two respectful and well-behaved figures. Her life had been an acceptance, and she was coming to accept even now the unacceptable.

“Jedella, will you describe for me very carefully the way you came here, from your house in the pines?”

“If you want.”

“It would be a great help,” I said. “You see, I mean to go there.”

“I can’t go back,” she said.

I thought she was like Eve, cast out of Eden because she had failed to eat the Forbidden fruit.

“No, I won’t make you. But I think I must. There may be some clue to all of this.”

She did not argue with me. She had begun to accept also her utter difference, and that she was outnumbered. She guessed something had been done to her; as I did. She had ceased to debate, and would never resist.

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