Remembrance

Callie nodded and Meg was sure Callie could and would do anything for her beloved Talis.

They shouted and described Talis to people for two hours, then Will came tearing down the road from the village, whipping the old horse into a lather. Will’s face was ashen. “He disappeared,” he told Meg, not in the least surprised that she and Callie were standing in the middle of the crossroads a mile and a half from their house.

Callie’s eyes were so big with fear they threatened to consume her face. She had eaten nothing all day and she was shaking with fatigue, but she would not so much as touch the water Meg tried to get her to drink. “Talis is thirsty,” was all the child would say.

After another hour of searching, with the two adults afraid to get out of sight of her, Callie sat down by the side of the road and said in a very adult voice, “I am going to call him to me.”

“Yes, of course. You must keep calling. Maybe he will yet hear you,” Meg said, trying her best to keep panic from her voice and from her mind. Will had taken the wagon and traveled all six roads for at least a mile, then returned to report that he had seen nothing, nor had anyone he talked to seen a boy like Talis.

Callie sat in the grass by the side of the road under some trees, pulled her knees up, wrapped her arms around them, and put her head on her arms.

“She is resting,” Will said to his wife. “Good.”

But Meg knew that Callie would not rest as long as Talis was lost so she went to the child and knelt by her, listening. Softly, barely audible, Callie was saying, “Come to me. I am here. You must come to me. Follow my voice. Listen to me. Come to me. Come to me. Come to me.”

When Meg stood up she could feel the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end. “She is praying,” she said to Will when he looked at her in question, but Meg knew that Callie wasn’t praying. Meg had no doubt whatever that Callie was “talking” to Talis—and what is more, she was sure that Talis would “hear” her.

With absolute certainty that she was doing the right thing, Meg quit running down the roads and shouting. She sat a few feet behind Callie, nearly hidden under the trees so as not to disturb her, and waited. Will said something about continuing to look for Talis,

but Meg waved him on. She wanted to be here when Talis came back to Callie.

It seemed like forever but it was actually less than an hour, just before sunset, when there was a sound in the bushes on the far side of the road.

Callie’s head came up but Meg knew it couldn’t be Talis or Callie would be running to him. Callie just sat there, looking at the sound with unblinking intensity. To Meg’s surprise, within a moment Talis appeared.

Meg wanted to run to him, to snatch him into her arms and hold him tight enough to crack his ribs, but she forced herself to stay where she was. Never before had she realized how much these children belonged to no adult; they belonged to each other alone.

Slowly, as though she were an adult, Callie lowered her legs and held out her arms to Talis as he came limping across the dirt road. He was filthy, with dried blood on his face from a bloody nose, his trousers torn at the knee, and Meg could see that he’d scraped his knee rather badly. He was missing a shoe and it looked as though his foot were cut. There were streaks of long-dried tears running down his dirty cheeks. Whatever he had been through today had been an ordeal.

Slowly, obviously in pain from his foot and his knee, he limped toward Callie, not even seeing Meg sitting in the shade of the trees. When he reached Callie he collapsed onto her, his arms going around her neck, his body falling against her. He weighed quite a bit more than Callie did, but the girl’s little body was as solid as a rock as she supported him with surprising strength.

In as adult a way as could be, Callie maneuvered Talis until his head was in her lap, then she crossed his arms about his chest and held both his hands in hers, her other hand stroking his dirty hair.

Softly, Talis began to cry. “I couldn’t find you. You were lost to me. I looked everywhere.”

“Yes,” Callie whispered.

“I kept hearing you call me.”

“I wouldn’t let you get lost. You are mine. You are me.”

“Yes,” Talis whispered, the tears still flowing down his cheeks, his chest heaving while Callie clung to his hands, her fingers intertwining with his, caressing his fingertips with her own.

There were tears running down Meg’s cheeks too. Talis was a very, very proud boy and nothing on earth could make him cry. Will had given him three lashes with a belt a few months ago when he’d left the henhouse door open and a fox had eaten four chickens, but Talis hadn’t shed a tear at the pain. When he was four he had fallen out of a tree and twisted his arm badly but he hadn’t cried then. Even when he was just a year old and he’d been chased by a dog bigger than he was, he hadn’t cried. As soon as he was old enough to talk, he’d said, “Boys do not cry.”

But now he was lying in Callie’s lap and crying until Meg thought her heart would break.

Callie reached behind her head and pulled her fat blonde braid to the front and unfastened the leather thong that tied the bottom of it. Callie was not what one would call pretty. She was plain, with no outstanding features, with her pale eyes and pale lashes, her pale pink lips. Next to Talis’s nearly flamboyant good looks she was insignificant. But Callie did have one exceptional feature: She had beautiful hair. It wasn’t thin like most blonde hair but thick and gorgeous, the color of honey, with great streaks of lighter and darker hair running through it. Nearly everyone who saw Callie, not able to comment on her looks, mentioned her hair.

Now, Callie unfastened her braid, ran her hands through her hair to spread it into one luxurious blanket of softness, then began to wipe away Talis’s tears, to stroke his face with the richness of her hair.

As Meg watched them, she was embarrassed. She should not be seeing this; no one should be seeing such an intimate thing between two people. At this moment she could not think of these people as children, could not think of them as only eight years old. What Callie was doing was as ancient as love itself, and if Meg had known the word, she would have called it erotic. For that’s what Callie’s actions were, as erotic as what any woman had ever done for any man.

While Callie stroked his face with her hair, she began to talk to him very, very softly, and as always, Meg wondered what Callie was saying. She had many times speculated about what Callie talked to Talis about, but the children kept their secrets and never let anyone know what went on between them. She had seen Talis stretch out under a tree and listen, without moving, to Callie talk for an hour at a time. But no matter how often Meg asked, they would never tell her what they were talking about. She’d tried to get Will to find out, as Meg knew that Callie talked to Talis on their trips back from the market, but Will had no curiosity. “They talk of all things that children do: ghosts and witches and dragons. What matter is it to me?”

But Meg knew there was more that passed between them than what went on between ordinary children. Sometimes she thought Will forgot that the children were the product of lords and ladies. Sometimes she thought he cared only about getting the work done on the farm. It never occurred to her that the safety of the children might someday depend on their being “ordinary” and looking like a farmer’s children.

That day, Meg leaned forward to try to hear what Callie was saying because it seemed to soothe Talis until his body began to relax, but just as she was beginning to hear a word or two, Will burst upon them with a great shout of anger.