THE VISION IS A PLACE | ✓ {complete}

Chapter 40 : future

While Anna and Heath take Aurora to the bus station in Finley, the rest of us get to work. The day is sweltering; the air damp and motionless. It's been a long time since I've been alone like this in the garden. The boys are all on the other side of the farm, hard at work on the cob house.

Usually, even on hot days, the air feels fresh and cool for the first second after leaving the humid greenhouse, but today there's hardly a difference. The air is just as heavy and languid everywhere. The sun, relentless in its beating.

Eventually the thought of shade, combined with the cool breeze coming off the stream, becomes too tempting to resist. I drop my shovel, and cross the sweaty meadow, to join the boys under the forest canopy, where the air is at least six degrees cooler; an entirely different day.


Brandon is balancing on the unfinished roof, singing in French, with Jai underneath him, filling in the back wall with heavy, dirt-packed tires. Jai keeps interrupting him to ask what a word means. They say it back and forth to each other until Jai gets the pronunciation right, and then Brandon carries on.

I scan for Addison and find him off to the side, working on a rocket mass heater, trying to bend a thin sheet of metal into a cylinder with just his hands. His shirt is off, and his tan skin is sparkling with sweat, the veins in his forearms straining.

This is the dream, isn't it? Move out to the woods, fall in love with a beautiful man who will build the house you'll raise a family in...

It looks more and more like a fairy-tale every time I come down here. The house is small, but intricate, with its curvy walls and exposed beams made from oddly shaped trees. The door and window frames are all hexagonal in shape; no ninety degree angles in sight. Inside, large slabs of asymmetrical wood make up the shelves and countertops. My favourite part of the house is the long, narrow growing space spanning the entire south face. The windows are all mismatched: some with muntin bars, some foggy like shower doors, some stained glass ones... They're all pieces together to create a dreamlike filter, casting all sorts of unreal patterns where the plants will be, in an attempt to mimic the strange light Kent described in The Vision. The kaleidoscope greenhouse.

It's the most perfect house I've ever seen. Aside from the extra bedrooms, it's nearly identical to the blueprint Kent left for us, based on the house he swears he lived in for those two years.

From where I'm standing, I can see the future. I can see the nights Addison and I will finally get to spend in our own room again, the way it was that first spring when the loft was just ours. I can feel the reticence of blue, crystalline winters, and smell the smoke from the wood burning stove after a day of snowshoeing down the river. I can feel the pages of old books on my fingertips, and the sun warmed countertops on my palms. I can feel time passing only as seasons, everything in cycles.

And I can see little kids running around, the way Ash, Cedar and Willow do. Two boys and two girls. They'll have Addison's heart, taking care of all the injured creatures they find in the woods. They'll wander out on the frozen pond in winter to meet Addison there, and he'll show them what to do if they fall through the ice. They'll listen to him, all wide eyed, the way I still do sometimes, amazed by how much he knows, and the feeling they'll have when they're around him, that nothing bad will ever happen if he's there.

Watching Addison be a father, I know, will be one of the greatest joys of my life.

They'll be the kings of these woods. I can see them putting on plays, and making forts in the brambles. Maybe they'll want to play music... The only real wish I have for my future kids though, whoever they are, whatever they love, is that they care for each other.