Revelation
Revelation
“I got here by accident as you must have done,” said Willow, as she used her napkin to mop up a puddle of tea that had spilled across the table.
“I was with a group of friends, doing a walking tour in the hills. The lady at the inn we stayed at the night before fixed a picnic for us. Cheese, a great long loaf of French bread, strawberries and a bit of wine. I remember how we sat under a tree laughing and talking as we ate. It was coming up for Midsummer’s Night, when the days are at their longest and it was brilliantly sunny. After lunch we set off again and discovered a cave entrance on a hillside. There was a writer that we all liked giving a talk on his new book that evening in the next town. We decided to meet at the inn where we’d reserved rooms so we could all go hear him together. Half the group went on ahead. The rest of us got out our torches and went into the cave to explore.”
I could picture her, moving from bright sun into mysterious shadow. “Stephen, it was the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen! And ancient! You know it takes millions of years for a cave to form? Water trickles down from the world outside and sculpts it. There were stalactites like giant icicles hanging from the ceiling and stalagmites like huge castle towers reaching up from the floor! I kept thinking how vast it was. How still and timeless. And how quiet.”
Her hand tightened on the soggy napkin. “It was that quiet which made me realize I’d gotten separated from my friends. I turned back the way I’d come. Or thought I did. It never occurred to me I was lost, only that I’d make us late. I wondered how much of the talk we’d miss because I’d fallen far enough behind that nobody heard me calling them.”
She shivered. “I always imagined if you shout in a cave, it would echo. It doesn’t. The stillness in there swallows up sound. That’s why they can’t hear me, I told myself. I’ll go a bit further, then try again… And again if I need to. In between, I’ll listen for them. They’ll be calling for me, too. It won’t be long til we’re on our way again. So I kept walking and calling. Walking and calling. But nobody answered.”
She drew a shuddering breath. Gathered her determination as she must have done that long ago day. “It was so quiet! Layer on layer of quiet. I didn’t want to think how it was giving me the creeps. I had to keep calm enough to listen for my friends. I told myself to think about something else. Like the author’s talk we were going to hear and the time he’d written about. It was a history, you see. When I saw a glimmer of light ahead, I flicked off my torch, expecting it had only been its beam reflected back to me from some smooth surface. But it was still there! I don’t know if I’d ever been so happy to see anything in my life as I was to see that light.”
Her words tumbled to a stop . At that moment, my future seemed less important than Willow’s past. No matter how she’d grown to love this time and the people in it, her arrival here would’ve been terrifying. Not speaking, I reached across the table, curled my sound hand round hers. There was an answering pressure as her fingers squeezed back.
“When I came out of the cave, all I knew was it was a different spot than where I’d gone in. The hill was steeper. There were rowan trees, not oaks. I didn’t think about retracing my steps, only about finding someone to set me on the right road again. It was only later that I began to realize…”
“Yeah, I know,” I said, nodding. “Only later…”
A look of relief flickered across her face. There was no need to explain to each other what fear and confusion lay behind those words. We sat in silence, our entwined hands doing all the talking we needed.
“I don’t know,” said Willow at last. “That I believed I was in another time for quite a while. I’d half convinced myself I must’ve fallen down in the cave and knocked myself out, and, since I might not come to for a while, I may as well try fitting into the dream around me as best I could til it was time to wake up again. Finally, I realized I was learning so many things I hadn’t known about before I couldn’t be dreaming.”
I nodded. “Yeah, like how to chop firewood.”
The ghosts of the past retreated a step as Willow laughed. “At least I knew how to do that! I’d been camping, remember? But I needed to get clothes. Women don’t walk the streets in jeans here, any more than men wear Harley tee shirts! So, I went into a shop and bartered the necklace I’d been wearing for a blouse and two long skirts so I would blend in. What took time to learn was how to walk around in them! But I did manage to get myself hired on serving up pints in a pub. You know, they haven’t changed all that much since the future…”
“Yeah,” I nodded, remembering the talk and laughter that would someday fill the Leaky Cauldron, Three Broomsticks the Hog’s Head, even The Digs, then the off-key singing that had swelled out into the alley that was my first memory of this time.
“But you can guess,” said Willow, her voice still rich with laughter. “That I was a terrible barmaid! I kept tripping on my long skirt. I dropped trays or sent them sailing through the air. Spilled things. Ale, beer. On the floor, across the table tops, finally one evening right over a customer’s head!”
To my surprise, I heard my own laughter mingle with hers. “That must’ve really endeared you to him.”
“Actually, that was Hal.”
“Your husband!” I exclaimed.
“My husband,” she agreed. “But not til more than a year later. At first I wouldn’t so much as go out with him. It wouldn’t be fair, I told myself. To either of us. But when you don’t know any body…”
I nodded. “It gets lonely.”
“Yeah, it gets lonely. I started saying I’d go on a buggy ride, to a picnic or an evening of piano music. Just a bit of harmless fun, I told myself. Hal was good company. Easy to talk to. But as autumn passed and we were coming on for Christmas, I knew I’d begun to be in love with him.”
Her gaze left mine and settled in her teacup. Her words came in a low rush. “Then I was given an opportunity to make a choice. To stay here with Hal… Or go back where I came from. My head told me going home was the wise choice. I’d be meddling in Hal’s life by trying to fit into it. But even after I went home, to the future, my heart kept saying to come back here. Finally I went to a society in London that looks up family records. A genealogical society they called it. I told myself that If I found he’d married someone else, then maybe I could let him go and get on about my life in the future. But-”
Her face looked as if it had been lit from within. “Stephen, I was there! With Hal! There was the record of our marriage and a whole packet of notes, stories and letters I wrote that one of my granddaughters saved. There were all those names that came down from my mother’s family. They were the proof it really was me. The past really was my future. How many people have relatives named Magnolia or Gentian, after all? Not to mention the handwriting in the photo-copies was mine! And there was the announcement of our son, Dylan’s birth. That was always one of my favourite names growing up. And then I saw the names of his children, Daisy, Kelton and Iris. Kelton’s children too, William, Camellia and Amaryllis. William’s son Gerald and his daughters and… The point is, my heart was right. So I came back here, stayed here. Because I wanted to!”
“So you can?…” I tried to swallow my eagerness in case I’d misunderstood.
“Leave if I choose to?” she finished for me.
“Yeah, that.” I held my breath.
After like what seemed forever, she nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I can.”