Page 21 of A Girl, Unbroken
“The river of life flows into the sea of eternity,” Icarus said at some point.
Back on land, we sat on the terrace behind the house drinking moonshine, and soon Icarus and Pan were talking about Sparta. Only Nathan and Troy remained silent. After a while, Nathan went back to the dock. I saw him staring into the blackness between sky and water, into nowhere or a nowhere place. Without thinking, I rose and hurried to him. I heard Icarus say, “Leave them!” to the others.
The old wood of the dock creaked under my feet in the oversized boots. Sparta had taken his last breath here last night and it seemed to me as if part of his spirit remained. In my summer dress, I shivered, but not because of the temperature, which was probably still seventy degrees. Nathan stood at the end of the dock, a black marble statue in a gloomy abyss.
I carefully touched his shoulder. “Nathan?”
He didn’t say a word, but his muscles stiffened as if he had to flee from me, so I pulled my hand back.
“I buried Lea here.” He kept staring at the Atchafalaya Basin. My heart clenched. I wanted to throw my arms around him to comfort him, but he didn’t seem to want that. “I came to this place and it was as desolate as I felt. Isaac and I had argued because he didn’t want to take Lea to the bayous. He just wanted to leave her behind. He was always so terribly afraid that we would be caught, sent back to Canada, and put into differenthomes by Child Services.” He shook his head as if in shock. “But I... I promised Lea. She was still a child, Will.”
Just like you back then, I thought.
“Children’s final wishes are like promises. They are sacred. You have to fulfill them…” He swallowed. “I stole a motorboat and took her with me. Then, I motored down the Mississippi tributaries to the bayous and kept moving until I heard her whispering inside me.This is good. I want to stay here, Nathaniel…”
My throat tightened. I imagined him making that difficult journey as a child, all alone, his heart filled with dark sorrow.
“I didn’t burn her. I couldn’t bring myself to do that.” He turned to me, his misty gray eyes shimmering in the night. “I left it to the earth and the swamp. On the other side of our island. That way I could convince myself that over the years she would become part of this silver-green swampland.” He looked at my face for a moment, then took a strand of my hair and tugged at it so gently that it hurt. “According to legend, Spanish moss is the hair of a princess who was killed by her father’s enemies on her wedding day. The grieving groom is said to have cut off her silvery-blonde hair and hung it in a tree, and the wind carried it across the entire country.” His fingers hovered in the air as if he wanted to stroke my cheek.
“It’s a sad story. Sad, but beautiful.”
“I also cut off a tuft of Lea’s hair and hung it on a tree. Crazy, right?”
“Nothing you do out of love can be truly crazy.” I smiled even though I was full of tears about Sparta’s suffering, about injustices in the world, and everything that had made my life a mess.
Nathan looked at me and dropped his arm. With his fingertips, he touched the bracelet that he had given me twice. “If you’d like, I’ll show you where I took Lea.”
He was so close to me that I could feel his broken aura against my skin. All his contradictory feelings danced through my senses. Sadness, anger, and fear, but also love. I knew how much it cost him to overcome what he wanted to do. He guarded his grief like a treasure, locking it up so tightly that it was in every fiber of his body, in his blood and his soul.
“That would be nice,” I said quietly.
No more words were needed. I climbed into the boat after him and he started rowing. When Pan asked where we were going, Nathan simply replied that we would be back soon.
I viewed the surroundings with mixed feelings. Nathan had put on a headlamp that had been in the sturdy box in the boat from the beginning. The light cast a bright triangle in front of us that refracted off a fine layer of mist. It seemed as if myriads of water droplets were floating over the swamp and the black trees were covered with the ghostly hair of a long-lost princess.
Now and then, an owl called out of the darkness, and then birds fluttered, startled by the light and the splashing of the oars. Nathan himself was a dazzling point in the night with the lamp. At some point, he stopped and draped the headlamp on a bench so that a small patch of water glowed like a moonlit rectangle, no, like a moonlit grave. My heart was pounding.
“Here,” he said. He sounded mechanical, without emotion.
“And only you know the place?” I asked guardedly.
“Yes. I only told Isaac that I fulfilled Lea’s last wish.”
I moved from the bench behind him and climbed next to him, causing the boat to rock. We stared at the water together, and at first, I didn’t know whether to speak or remain silent, but finally, I asked, “The story you told Sparta about Sam…how did you know what to say?”
Nathan looked at the bright strip of water in front of us. “I’ve told stories to many dying people. It’s not difficult, Will. You simply have to incorporate what they loved in life and finda happy ending for everything. Stan loved his son dearly. Sam had to have a happy life, but I also had to continue the circle to include his grandchildren. Living on in our descendants or a memory gives life meaning. Not to be forgotten is what most people desire. To leave something behind in your children or the world. Ultimately, Stanton loved Coldville, the Coldville that it used to be before…” He paused and looked at me, and I realized how much I had underestimated him. He was much more than what I had always seen in him. Alongside his grief, he harbored so many wonderful secrets and treasures.
“Did you…did you tell Lea a story too?” I asked haltingly.
A wistful smile crept across his face. “Yes, of course.” He regarded his sister’s empty grave. “Lea loved this world. She loved life despite everything we had been through. So, I had to take away her fear of death and invent a world in the afterlife for her, a world where she would hear my voice, where she would meet Mom, Dad, and little Jacob again. I told her time wouldn’t matter there, and that Isaac and I would be by her side before she could count to three. ‘When you get there,’ I said, ‘we’ll actually already be there.’ That made her smile. Of course, I had to tell her with my hands.” He eyed me for a long time until my heart began pounding, but then he looked away again as if remembering his fear of me, as if it was a blade held to his throat. He swallowed loudly.
“You always talked to Lea,” I said into the brief silence. “Even in the Palace of Shards. You said earlier that the dead don’t need our words.”
“Words are only for the living. I truly believe that. We talk to the dead, but we do it for ourselves. Because we need it.”
“You could…”
“Shh!” Nathan suddenly put his finger to his lips. “There’s something out there.”
