The World More Full of Weeping (9 page)

“What is this?” He leaned in close to study the texture
of the stem, the flower, afraid to touch it.

“It has a lot of different names,” she said, leaning in with
him. “Some people call it the coast orchid, or the albino
orchid.” Her voice was a whisper. “I call it the death rose.”

“Why?”

“Because it lives off the dead.” When he looked at her,
she was looking at the plant, but he knew she had been
looking at him a moment before. “It has no leaves because
it never sees the sun. It grows in the shadows, and takes its
strength from the rot and decay of the earth around it. It
grows from the dead.”

“Like a fungus,” he whispered.

“Sort of.”

Without looking away from the plant, Brian pulled off
his pack and unzipped it.

“It won't be in your guide,” she said, just as he curled his
fingers around the book's spine to pull it out.

“Why not?”

“To most of the world, the death rose doesn't exist. It
grows in only three places, three of these tiny valleys just
off the coast where it can drink the moisture out of the air,
where it can consume the past through its roots.”

“But people must know about it.”

She nodded. “People do. But those few who have seen
it know they have been in the presence of something
extraordinary,
something
profound.
Something
that
transcends classification. Something that just
is
.”

She looked at him as she spoke.

He released his grip on the book and let the bag fall to
the cool, damp earth.

She smiled.

“Probably no more than a hundred people have seen this
flower in the last century,” she said.

“It's amazing.”

“There are others,” she started, and he looked at her.
“Other secret places like this. Plants and animals you won't
find in any book. Places you won't find on any map.”

Their eyes met, and he didn't look away.

“There's a flower, an African orchid, that only blooms
one night every seven years. It is believed that if you pick
this flower and give it to your heart's true love before the
sun rises, it will never die, and your love will be the stuff
of legends.”

Her eyes stayed on his, rich and green and bottomless.

“And there's a forest of trees so tall” — she stopped, as if
she couldn't believe it herself — “that they make the tallest
trees near your house seem like twigs.”

He watched her mouth as she formed the words, her
eyes as she seemed to drift into the stories she told.

“You
could
spend
a
lifetime — many
lifetimes —
discovering the wonders of this world all around you.”

Yes
, he admitted to himself, at last.
I could.

Joe Phelps manned the Communications Centre in the
Search and Rescue truck. The crackling of radio signals and
distant voices were the only sounds in the still yard, just
touched with the first light of dawn.

Jeff set the mug he was carrying on the desktop beside
Joe. “I thought you could use this.”

Joe tugged off the headphones he was wearing.
“Thanks, Jeff,” he said, and he looked like he was about to
say something else but turned away, directing his attention
back to his switches and knobs.

It took Jeff a moment. “It's all right, Joe. I'm not out
here trying to get information from you or anything. I
know you'll let us know if there's any news.”

The relief on Joe's face was palpable.

“I just thought you might like some coffee. It's been a
long night.” He stepped back, took a sip from his own mug.
The sun was starting to rise and the world was grey, a mist
clinging to the lows of the field.

Joe seemed almost chagrined. “Yeah. Thanks for . . . for
the coffee.”

Jeff shook his head as if to dismiss it. “I was coming out
anyhow. I'm gonna . . . I'm just gonna take a walk up — ”
He couldn't bring himself to say the words. “Just up to the
edge.”

“Sure.” Jeff turned away, then back as Joe added, “We'll
let you know. As soon as we know something. We'll find
him.”

Jeff looked at him for a long moment, then turned away,
without speaking.

He walked only to the grassy verge edging the west field.
He could have walked straight up the drive, past the shop
and the old barn and behind it, where the track ended at
the forest's edge. It was the most direct route.

But that didn't feel right. Something drove him away
from the yard, through the field to the edge of the wood.

Was it the picture of himself? Some memory he couldn't
consciously grasp?

For whatever reason, he was sure this was the path
that Brian had taken, that he was following in his son's
footsteps.

The way his son had been following in his.

Like father, like son.

As the sun crested over the mountains, the dew on the
grass shone silver, a wet, shining carpet leading inexorably
into the darkness.

He stopped at the point where the grass met the brown
of the forest floor. Under the spread of the trees, the light
disappeared, and the night still felt almost full.

He had to steel himself to step across the dividing line
into the forest.

Once under the trees, it took Jeff's eyes a moment to
adjust, vague shapes gradually shifting and congealing into
forms: stumps and bushes, a fallen log, a stand of trilliums.
The clearing was familiar.

As was the girl who stepped soundlessly into the clearing
from the dense brush.

“Carly?” he whispered, as if afraid she might take
flight.

She smiled. “I didn't think you'd remember.”

“I didn't,” he said.

But now he did.

Without warning, he remembered it all.

The weight of the fishing rod on his shoulder, the tackle box
in his pack. The smell of the forest, fresh and green, in his nose,
his clothes, his skin. The taste of the trout he had caught with
her in the tumble-rocked mountain stream, its sweetness, and
the bracing cold of the water they had drunk. The feel of her
hand in his. The stars so bright in the sky the night they had
spent in the woods, the Northern Lights dancing above them.

He had never seen the Northern Lights again.

And he remembered crying, feeling something rent from
him, a tugging at his heart that left him gasping for breath.

He remembered her asking —

“I asked if you wanted to stay with me,” she said.

Did she sound sad, even a little? Jeff thought so.

“I remember.”

“You said you had to go home.”

“I'm sorry.”

She shook her head. “I understand. I understood, even
then. You wanted to stay. I could tell. I wouldn't have asked
otherwise. But you had to go home.”

He didn't say anything, remembering the sound of her
voice. He hadn't heard it in more than thirty years, but it was
so familiar to him he was amazed he could have forgotten.

“I wanted to stay,” he said, lost in the memories of his time
with her. She had shown him worlds he could only imagine,
worlds he had lost when he stepped away from her.

“I know.”

“Is . . . Is Brian with you?” The words came hard, and he
already knew the answer.

“Yes.”

Jeff felt an unaccountable relief. Brian wasn't lost. Brian
was just . . . gone.

“Did you ask him to stay with you?” His voice broke on
the whispered words.

She looked at him.

“No,” she said.

His heart clutched at a final hope.

“He asked me.”

A sob rose in his throat, but he pushed it back down.

He remembered the places she had taken them. The air
was so pure, the light so bright, everything outlined with a
subtle glow.

And he knew he had spent the years since he had turned
away from her, spent his whole life, in a world of greys and
half-measures, the reality around him a pale shadow of the
worlds he had tasted. The worlds he had lost.

“Is . . . is he safe?”

When she smiled, the clearing seemed to glow around
them. “He's blessed.”

The words caught at his breath and tore it away. “Be . . .
Take good care of him,” he said, in a voice hollow and
powerless.

“He'll come to no harm with me,” she said, and though
the words were soothing, they did not take away his pain.

When she stepped away, turned back to the forest and
faded into the green and brown, Jeff Page fell to his knees,
his back heaving with broken sobs as he cried for what was
lost. For what he knew would not return.

After breakfast the Sunday morning he disappeared,
Brian had gone up to his room. The sound of the back door
closing as his father went out to his shop echoed through
the house.

He had barely slept the night before, too filled with
excitement, with thoughts of the day — the days — ahead.

He unzipped his knapsack and set it on his bed for
filling. The microscope in its case took up most of the space.
He slid the plant guide in beside it, and a sweater. He didn't
think he'd need clothes, but he was a bit worried that he
might be cold at night.

Looking around the room, he tried to figure out what
else he might need. His compass. A magnifying glass. The
picture of the three of them — he and his mother and his
father all together — that had been taken at Disneyland.
The slingshot his father had given him.

The thought of his father made Brian pause. He
wasn't mad at his father. Carly was right: he just didn't
understand.

He thought of leaving him a note, but he had no idea
what he would write. He knew his father and mother would
be sad or scared, but there were no words to explain what
he was doing, where he was going, what it all meant.

As he zipped up his backpack, he took a last look around
his room. The books on his shelves. The posters on his
walls. The schoolbooks on his desk.

As he walked down the stairs, he trailed his fingers
along the cool walls, listened to the echo of his footsteps.

He took one last look around the kitchen, at the table
where he and his father ate every meal, at the dishes on the
counter, at the toast on his plate.

He slipped on his boots and coat, and closed the back
door for the last time.

He stopped in front of the open door to the shop, and
looked inside. The smell of oil tickled his nose, the way it
always did. His father was under the car, his sticking-out
legs the only part of him that was visible.

He didn't speak. Tears streaming down his face, he
raised his hand in farewell, and turned away, setting out
across the field for the woods.

Jeff Page never told anyone what had happened to him
in the woods, either as a boy or that morning after Brian
disappeared.