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A quote: “Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.” ~~ Oscar Wilde
I’ll start with a story …
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“Dad? We need to go.”
“Wait, I think I know where your mom left it.”
“We already searched the whole house, Dad. The limo is waiting.”
“Eureka! I knew I would!”
He practically danced down the walk. Not easy for a man in his 80s. He looked at the book in his hands, opening it to reveal a small bunch of pressed lavender tied with a pink ribbon. He smiled at his daughter “I gave her this for her first Mother’s Day.”
She squeezed his hand. “And now she’ll have it forever.”
The limo moved off towards the funeral home.
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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image, cropped, Adobe stock standard license
Lewis says: She was 10 years old, all dark shaggy hair and questioning blue eyes.
“Talia, the books are NOT allowed outside, you know that, don’t you…?”
She put the book on the rock and opened it. A red maple leaf, dried in perfect shape, lay against the white page.
“What is it?”
Life on planet Earth was so fragile and so far beyond us now. We all waited for someone to explain. We gathered around the book. Slowly the elderly couple began quietly to talk about libraries under huge trees surrounded by green lawns. Several sparks of desire came to life.
Bluebells.
Just seeing them, pressed in the pages of this old book, brings back memories of childhood in the Montana Territory. My mother had brought them with her as a memory of civilization, of her settled life back East before the War of the Rebellion had torn the country — and our family — apart.
She’d been a music teacher in a small Connecticut town, and my father had been a steam engine mechanic, ever on the move, wherever his skills were needed. Neither of them had been ardent abolitionists, but when the Rebels fired on Fort Sumter, they’d both answered the call, my father to put on our country’s uniform and march off to war, and my mother to organize a Ladies’ Aid and sewing circle at home.
The cannonball that struck my father should have ended his life. How he survived long enough to be carried to the surgeon’s tent, no one could explain, but he lived the night through, and the next.
What happened next is muddled — neither of my parents wished to speak about it — but my father was approached by a mysterious group who claimed they could not only rebuild him, make him able to fight once again, but also give him a mechanical steed to carry him across the battlefield.
Thus my father became one of the automen — but by the time he had mastered his new body parts and the stiltwalker that would carry him to battle, Lee had already surrendered to Grant, and President Lincoln was felled by an assassin’s bullet. There was nothing for my father to do but return home to the family he’d left behind.
Except he found neither home nor peace among those who considered the automen and their automechs an abomination. So he gathered us up and headed out to the Territories in search of a place where we could live in peace.
But peace did not last, for in time our country was dragged into the infamous Turkish War. My father could not forget that he had been made — or at least remade — for a battle he had not fought, and thus felt a deep debt and an opportunity to repay it. As for myself, I was keenly aware that I was no longer a boy, but a man, and must shoulder the obligations of a citizen.
My father was among those who broke the Ankara Line, a victory which we paid a dear price. However, he’d used some bit of influence to have me enrolled among the pilots of the clockwork falcons. Thus I spent much of the latter part of the Turkish War flying to and fro in search of the Butcher of the Balkans.
I returned home unscathed but not unchanged. After so long aloft, whether strapped to my clockwork falcon or aboard the airship which served as our mews, I found the ground a confining place. Thus, after ensuring that my mother was properly settled as a war widow, I found my way into one of the traveling teams of barnstormers that cross the country, performing for the people of cities and towns a long the way.
Now I hold in my hands one of my mother’s greatest treasures, a memory of the home she left behind. I can only hope that she and my father are reunited in the hereafter, and that they are happy.
Navig8r says: “Honey, you need to pick a different book for pressing flowers.”
“But it’s old. No one ever looks at it and the words don’t make sense.”
“It’s your great grandmother’s medical dictionary. It’s one of the few things she kept from the old country.”
“Was she a doctor?”
“No, a nurse.”
“So she worked in a hospital?”
“No, her credentials weren’t recognized here. She lived on the farm. It was the depression and lots of folks couldn’t afford doctors. She delivered a lot of the babies in the neighborhood, including some who grew up to be some of your grandparents.”
Dupin says: “What is that?” Anca stared at the little pillow thing sitting in Sabina’s hand. How would this help her?
“It is a lavender sachet, my dear. After what you’ve been through, it will help. Place it inside your pillowcase before you go to sleep tonight.”
Anca doubted she could sleep. She saw what he’d done to her mother before slashing her throat. Nothing herbal would allow her to sleep. Still….
“I will,” she promised.
She’d found where he lived. She had the knife he’d used. She’d be awake when the church struck three. Sleep would come after she came back.
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