Mercurial

Chapter One

Why is it that we're always tucking the things that mean the most to us in back corners? Far from the lights. The promises. The mind. Dust settles, layers and layers seeping into skin until it's no good anymore. Too much time goes by, and suddenly it's the day you're throwing it away.

Or forgetting about it altogether. For the last time.

I won't allow it to happen. My mind has been heavy, keeping me awake at night for days now. I can't let it all go. I won't.

My life has been filled with dreams, and yet none of them have ever lived to see the morning light because I have never dragged them away from the corner and over to the window to first grow and sustain by moonlight. But now, tucked under layers of winter quilts, the house still and quiet, and the moon impatiently peeking through the window, I know enough is enough. Enough dreaming, enough wishing, enough waiting.

For once, I'm cleaning out my corners before it's too late.

I push the pillow off my face and roll out of the bed I share with Lizzie. It feels as though my head has been stuffed with coins, weighed down like my apron pocket after collecting the laundry money. Goosebumps rise on my arms and legs as I hop over to my dresser with light, stockinged feet. The human in me longs to light the lantern I know to be sitting on the table a few paces to my left, but the animal buried deep down knows the way by instinct and routine.

Soundlessly, I pull open the third drawer and fish around in the blackness until my hand lands on the clothes I stacked together the night before.

Moving quickly to keep from changing my mind, I yank my nightgown over my head and slip into the layers of dresses and underthings. By noon I'll be anxious to take most of these off, but right now, noon feels very far away.

Leaving my nightgown crumpled on the cool wood floor, I scoop up the tied handkerchief bundle and sturdy boots waiting against the wall and go to open the door. It creaks. Loudly. I freeze.

Lizzie's slow, rhythmic breaths continue to lullaby the room, slowing down the rowdy tune my head keeps trying to sing. An owl hoots from somewhere out the window and I shiver.

Although I'm not doing anything wrong, I can't help but feel like a bandit slithering out the town jail right under the sheriff's nose.

"Stop being ridiculous," I mouth to myself. With a deep breath, I pull the creaky door towards me as fast as I can in attempts to shorten the sound. When Lizzie doesn't stir, I step into the hall and shove the door back behind me, stopping it just before it slams.

The hall is pleasantly warmer than the drafty bedroom, the warmth from the kitchen fire rising and lingering like a friendly ghost. There's light coming from downstairs, and suddenly all the dramatics feel silly.

I find Emma sitting at the dining room table, hunched over a sheet of paper. The room has that kind of warm, homey glow that makes everything look as though it's shining with some internal light, and I pause in the doorway to take it all in. A fire in the fireplace; the big sturdy table Pa made four years ago from the weathered wood of the old barn; a graveyard of shadows cast on the wall from the eight chairs, each uniquely shaped and carved, differing as much from each other as the people who routinely occupy them; a tiny girl sitting there alone, her light brown hair becoming a halo from the backlight of a lantern.

So ordinary, yet so ethereal.

The world is full of the beautiful mundane for all to enjoy if only someone would point it out.

I want to do that.

This is why I'm here right now.

This is what I was born to do.