Bone House_ A Novel - Betsy Tobin [23]
He picked up the crow and descended the mountain with great sadness, knowing as he did that the bird of his dreams was lost to him forever. When he reached the bottom, he hid the dead crow in his pack, and gathered the people of the village around him. He told them they were indeed blessed to have such a thing of beauty in their midst, and instructed them to revere it always. The people nodded and were relieved, secure in the knowledge that the bird would remain with them forever. The hunter left that land and never returned, and the people of the village kept their pride in the wondrous creature that lived among them.
Dora spun her stories with such intensity that she often left me breathless. Her pale eyes flashed with the excitement of the telling, and her long fingers rose and fell before her in an animated fashion. At these times she seemed to carry the hear beat of armies within her ample breast—she seemed more alive to me than anyone or anything I had ever encountered in my own barren corner of the world. But what struck me most was how she differed from my mother, who though capable was unfailingly taciturn and circumspect, and did not trust the world beyond her threshold. My mother had no vision of life outside our little village; she did not dream of faraway lands or foreign peoples, nor did she aspire to any other life but the one she inhabited. She accepted Dora for what she was, but granted her no other past. Once when I asked her why Dora had come across the sea, she looked at me a little strangely, as if I had spoken some heresy, and said that Dora had found her place within our village. “But what of her own people?” I persevered. “We are her people,” replied my mother, and with that she rose and turned her back on me, as if to stifle any further questions in my mind.
So I took my questions to Dora herself, asking her why she’d come so far across the water to settle in a strange land. She looked straight at me then, and her expression deepened, as if I’d vanished right before her eyes—for suddenly her face was taut with memory. She stayed that way for several moments, and then she blinked and looked at me anew. “The world holds many lives for us,” she said finally. “And in the end, I chose to lead this one.” She spoke slowly, choosing her words with care, as if the truth was too fragile to reveal. Or as if she must temper her words for my ears.
As a child of nine or ten, the idea that one could choose one’s destiny made me almost dizzy with desire. I was too ignorant, too naive, or perhaps too stubborn to see how uncomfortably this notion sat within my mother’s understanding of God or man or the nature of things. I knew only that it was strange and desirable. Now the idea frightens me, for I have learned with age that it contains seeds of truth and possibility. And there are times when I feel the stirrings of my childhood swell and rise within me, but always they are accompanied by fear, so much so that I often think that there are two people who dwell within me: my mother and myself.
I wake in the predawn light feeling stiff and uneasy. Half asleep, I grope beneath my cushion for the purse of gold, but my fingers scrape the empty sheets and claw at nothing. I sit bolt upright, rubbing my eyes, wondering if I dreamed of its existence. And then I check the floor beside my bed, where I see that it has fallen during the thrashings of my sleep. I reach out to retrieve it, and clutch it to my breast, my heart beating wildly. For the first time it occurs to me that to have so much wealth in one’s possession is perhaps a mixed blessing. What will it mean for the boy?
I rise and dress, stowing the purse deep within my petticoats. I have no other alternative for its safekeeping, as I will not have an opportunity to take it to the boy until that evening, and I do not