A Blaze of Glory
by
Bruce Coville
(Author of My Teacher Is an Alien; Aliens Ate My Homework; Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher; Into the Land of the Unicorns, and many others)
Published by Oddly Enough at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Bruce Coville
For more information about the author and his works, please visit http://www.brucecoville.com/
A Blaze of Glory
by
Bruce Coville
It was a house full of white bread and death. Silence grew beneath the chairs like balls of dust. Nothing was out of order, nothing seemed to breathe.
In the center of it sat an old woman, waiting to die.
That she had been full of life at one time I well knew, for she was my grandmother, and I had seen her eyes flash with a fire that seemed stolen from the stars; heard her laugh in the night with a clear joy that easily banished my terror when I was upstairs, lonely and moon-frightened.
Now that was gone, the fire and the clarity drowned in the muddy depths of an unyielding old age that, glacier like, had crept across her and locked her in a grip of ice. Loss lay like dust in every room of the house: loss of husband, loss of friends, loss of strength, of sharpness of sight, keenness of ear, delicacy of touch. Loss, most of all, of memories, the most recent going first, so that if I entered the house and greeted her, then went to the kitchen to make her some tea, she would cry out in surprise when I re-entered the room five minutes later.
If I reminded her that she had said hello to me minutes earlier she would shake her head, moaning that she was worthless.
Even that was not as painful as when she asked where my grandfather was, and I would have to remind her that he had died three years earlier. She could only remember him alive, and only knew he was dead when it was brought to her attention. Every day, sometimes more than once a day, she learned again that the man she had lived with for over fifty years was gone, endlessly repeating that horrible first moment of discovery.
Her memories peeled away like layers of an onion, each layer with the power to bring tears to the eye. I found myself growing younger in her eyes as she remembered me not as her youngest and most disgraceful grandchild, the high school drop- out with no prospects, but as the little boy I used to be. I wondered if her failing mind would finally carry her to a time before I was born, and if so if she would then forget who I was, and no longer recognize me when I came to visit.
This had been going on for some months before I began to suspect that as she lost memories she might not be simply moving away from the present, but might indeed be moving toward something else, something long lost that she wanted to regain.
“I can almost see it, Tommy,” she moaned once, holding my hand, her eyes squeezed shut, something like tears, but thicker oozing from their corners. “What was it? What was it?”
But the memory, and then the thought, eluded her.
#
By the next week she was confined to her bed. Being the only one in the family without a job, I began to visit daily to care for her.
It was during this time that she began to hint at her secret. “Did you ever see them?” she asked one afternoon while I was sitting beside her bed, working a crossword puzzle.
“See who, Gramma?”
“The fair ones,” she replied impatiently, as if I were a stupid child not paying attention to something obvious.
“I don’t think so,” I said, wondering what she was talking about.
She sighed, then whispered, “Of course not.” After a moment, she added, “I wish you had.”
“What are you talking about, Gran?” I asked, totally mystified.
She closed her eyes. Her face relaxed, and for a moment I thought she had fallen asleep. But when she spoke, I realized that she was seeing something in her mind.
“Elves,” she said. “I’m talking about the elves.”
“I wish I had seen them,” I answered with some conviction. I had the terrible feeling that she was finally losing her mind. Even so, it was a fact that I had wanted to meet an elf from the first time I had read about them.
“I helped them once, you know,” she continued. “At least, I think I did. Do you think I helped them?” “Of course,” I said, squeezing her hand. It was the first note of whimsy I could remember hearing from her in many years, and I was amused. Amused, and oddly touched. I found something both sweet and very sad in the way we were exchanging roles, me becoming the grown-up, she the young one.
“Didn’t I ever tell you about it?” she asked me. Before I could answer, she muttered, “Oh, of course not. I’m not supposed to talk about it. Never did, either, till now.”
It was one of those moments she had when she suddenly seemed to lurch into the present.
“You can tell me about it now,” I said.
“Probably shouldn’t,” she muttered. Then she did sleep.
#
The next day she seemed stronger and more alert, and for a moment I wondered if her body was actually growing younger along with her mind. But the look in her eyes was almost feverish now.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. “I want to tell you about them. I think it will be all right.”
It took me a moment to realize that she was talking about the elves again.
“I was twenty-one,” she said, leaning toward me and whispering, even though there was no one else in the room. “And only recently married to your grampa. It was an accident, actually, but they were desperate, and I was able to help them.”
“How did you meet them?” I asked. I felt myself slipping easily back into a childhood mode where I had listened eagerly to her stories. Besides, there was no harm in humoring her.
“I fell through,” she said softly. “I was walking across the field, the one between the house and the barn. One minute I was there, the next… pfffft!” She made a burring noise, almost a raspberry. It was quite funny, coming from that ancient, wrinkled face.
“Where did it happen?” I asked. “Where, specifically?”
“You know,” she said slyly.
“The fairy circle?”
She nodded.
I felt a slight shiver. In the field between the house and the barn was a perfect circle about fifteen feet in diameter where the grass never grew quite right. My sister and I had always called it the fairy circle, and said it was where the elves came to dance. I had had a lurking fear of the spot from the time I was in fifth grade and had bought a book of “strange but true” stories from our school book club. One story in particular had terrified me, a tale about a man who disappeared in full view of his wife and children while walking across a field. He was never seen again, but his children once heard his voice emanating from the spot where he had disappeared, calling faintly for help. The grass around the spot had never grown quite right after he disappeared.
The story and the “fairy circle” in my grandparents’ field had merged in my mind, and I had usually given the spot a wide berth. Being of scientific mind, I had decided that the disappearing man had fallen into another dimension of some sort. Despite our name for it, I had never thought of the “fairy circle” as belonging to fantasy creatures. It was simply a place to watch out for. Now my grandmother’s words were making me reconsider that position.