La Strophe de la Faunesse Rouge

Indeed, the pain is not pain, but the most exquisite of emotions for which the name “longing” is simply not sufficient.

First published in Encounters With the Imaginary Vol. 3, from Boneshaker Press.

Mother — always musical, always sad, always dancing — will not dance again, the physicians say. She will not sing for any great halls again. She will not silence swathes with the stinging swell of her voice-not-her-own. The fever is taking her and her voice, the physicians say, and no patron’s bribe can save her now. I hear them when they come to pay their respects, whispering with those physicians who say so much, as though one of these men with such useless voices might sneak to Mother’s bedside, pocket her voice-not-her-own and away with it for precious posterity.

Mother will not pass the night, the physicians say, and so I say Away. Away. And with her I will stay, and perhaps sing for her in my own voice — very much my own, very much unsuited for singing.

I begin low and sad, crooning a familiar lullaby from some deep hole of childhood, but am overtaken by the restlessness of unwelcome anticipation; the urge to stand; to move; to dance, even; and the desire for a hint of joy and of the sprightly to see Mother on her final journey.

Alas, nothing comes to mind, as if I’d never heard a happy tune in my life, yet the hot silence is unbearable, and I launch into some unknown tune come unbidden. I sing slow and faltering, barely more than a hum, unused to composing out of thin air; to the lack of surety of the following note.

I sing this way for some time, until compelled to stroke Mother’s matted hair from her face. She stirs.

“Well, Red…!” she says, eyes shut, with a clarity of voice she hasn’t mustered in weeks. “I wasn’t sure you’d come… But I heard you! I always heard you…”

I don’t know who has manifested in her fever-mind, but she smiles girlishly. A private name for my father? A flirtatious musician? A schoolyard crush? Not knowing how to respond, nor wishing to break this spell, I continue to sing, sprightlier even than before.

Mother begins to hum along, smiling still, tucking her chin to her shoulder — such a girlish gesture! I feel something achingly deep, stirred by some unclear drama enfolding behind this sprightly, frenetic, elfin melody with its loops and swirls of tone.

I’m unsure how long it is that Mother and I hum and sing in soft unison this half-world song, my hand alternating between her brow and her cheek; but at some point I realize my voice is not my own, yet it sounds no different. And Mother’s; the voice with which she hums is unfamiliar, though it sounds like her. There is a light in her voice now which I’ve never heard.

That deep ache grows, so much that it might consume me. But there is more than pain there. Indeed, the pain is not pain, but the most exquisite of emotions for which the name “longing” is simply not sufficient. The drama behind the musical movement begins to take its shape.

My mother, a young girl, dancing among great red trees, while another looks on. A creature tall and lithe enough as to dance on air, red-haired and ferociously happy. She wears the semblance of a young girl, yet her legs are covered in umber hide as that of a goat, and end not in feet but delicate hooves. And from that fiery head of hair emerges a pair of horns twisting, each like some ancient cornet, which belie a cardinal, primogenital secret I am not to know.

She is a creature of music and of exuberance. She dances with my mother, and sings. They do not speak — or at least, she does not. My mother speaks, talking of all things; but this faunesse merely smiles softly, wordlessly, or else hums quietly along. So many days, and so many nights, they dance together among great red trees, and sing together, and sit together.

At times, this fauness seems to my mother a mother in her own right, yet in the next moment they are giggling confidants in some playful scheme. Other times she seems the child, herself.

I see this faunesse cooing over my mother, crying in her arms over some slight from Outside. I see her stroke my mother’s cheek the way only an inexperienced lover could. I hear my mother whisper to her in the grass and nettles under moonlight.

I see my mother in some pleated uniform, sobbing, clutching this faunesse and crying out, trying to make her understand. But she doesn’t. She can’t.

I see this faunesse, waiting and watching in the high branches of some great red tree, crooning softly. I see her waiting, and waiting, and waiting. I hear her crooning turn to cold silence and stillness.

For a long time, she does not dance and does not sing. Until some far off day, when in some far off odeon, my mother prepares to sing for strangers. But she sings instead for her faunesse, and her faunesse hears, and sings with her across the miles and the years of silence, her voice only for my mother.

This voice-not-my-own, is that of my mother’s faunesse. From somewhere unimaginably far away, she sings for my mother one last time, in a recollection of youthful springtime. She sings a goodbye for her friend; and it gives me some comfort — though I understand none of what is or has enfolded in this heavy room with death waiting quietly in the corner — to feel that my mother’s voice will no doubt join with that of her faunesse, who might yet sing and dance again.

Mother, still smiling, turns her face into my palm and sighs “Red…”, and is no more.

I am no longer singing, yet I can hear the melody still, less lonely now. As if a counterpoint has joined in, though there is none to be heard. The music dances and twirls around some unheard other, more sprightly than ever, until it is impossible to imagine there might have been anything forlorn in that tune.

Evan is an illustrator, developer, designer, and animator who tells stories in any which way he can. When he’s not branding businesses or building front-end apps; he’s illustrating children’s books, painting for tabletop games, animating commercials, or developing passion projects of his own.