The Swan

The little boy was exhausted. He had been digging in the thick mud all day, and the rain that been threatening to fall all day was finally making its debut. Beside him, the boy’s father seemed as though he was in a trance, his movements were mechanical and his face empty. The boy supposed that his father was sad, and he was sad too, he just hoped that his father wasn’t the same type of sad that his mother had been. For the past week, the boy and his father had hardly left the garden. Although, ‘garden’ probably wasn’t even the right word for it anymore. Once thick with daffodils and tulips and countless other flowers, the garden had been the pride and joy of the boy’s mother. It had been his father’s idea to rip out the beds of flowers and shrubs, it had been his father’s idea to try to completely erase any and all traces of his mother that were left behind. His father wanted to forget about her as quickly as possible, and the boy had to admit to himself that it was already working.

He had already begun to forget her face, her image gowing dusty and brown and fraying around the edges in his mind. The boy knew that she had yellow hair, almost the same shade as his own, and when the sun was shining it looked as though someone had set her head on fire. The boy knew that when the sun was shining, his mother could be in a Good Mood. That when the sun was shining she would wake up and would sing and tend to her garden and sometimes even dance with the boy and his father. And although the sun may have been shining outside, sometimes his mother couldn’t see it. Sometimes, his mother had her own personal rain cloud. This was how it was for the last few weeks. The boy could barely even remember her singing voice anymore.

He did remember the day that it had happened, after a string of what his father called Very Bad days, when his mother’s personal rain cloud turned into her own thunderstorm. For her last week she wouldn’t speak let alone sing, or go to the garden, or even eat. For the last days she could hardly get out of bed. His dad said she was sick, but the boy knew that his mother was just very sad. ‘Not the kind of sad that can be fixed with a hug and a kiss,’ his father had explained, ‘Mother is Very Sad. Sometimes there is no way to make her feel happy, and that’s okay. What’s important is that she knows that we love her,’. But when she died his father told him that for some people love just wasn’t enough, and although the father denied it, the boy couldn’t help but feel as though some part of this was his fault.

Wearily, the child stood from his spot in the dirt, hands and elbows brown and sore. The rain was falling in earnest now, and the drops rolled down his back, making him shiver. The boy turned to go back to the house and his father, still digging in the mud, didn’t even notice him go. The trees seemed to be singing as the wind rustled their drooping green leaves, and the boy followed their song into the thick forest that ran behind their yard. His sneakers squelched in the mud as he went deeper into the thicket, and the looming yellow became distant through the trees. Soon enough, he found the river. The river where it happened. But he wasn’t scared, because the only ghost that he would encounter would be his mother, and he would quite like to see his mother, and even still, it really was a beautiful wood. High above, the treetops bent and swayed against the graying sky and the little boy, now impervious to the chilly rain, perched on a small stone by the riverbed. Tadpoles and little fish darted beneath the rippling water, and the boy watched the creatures thrive in the water that took his mother.

He supposed that he ought to feel sad about it but he didn’t really, because she wasn’t really gone, was she? She was just waiting in the water for him. She was here, among the little white flowers and the tall grass and the singing trees, he could feel it. He might have been alone, but the little boy didn’t feel lonely. His mother still lived in these woods, and he could feel her spirit in the wind, pulling him close to her. The boy closed his eyes and listened. Perched on his mossy grey rock, he could hear his mother’s voice in the river gurgling below him and the wind howling above him. He could see her in the beautiful flowers and creatures that still thrived around him and he did not feel sad or empty or lost, instead he felt full. He was peaceful, yet it was a drowning sort of peace.

When the boy opened his eyes, he was surprised to find two things. The first was that he had somehow begun crying, the second being the swan that was swimming in the river below, looking up at him with intelligent brown eyes that reminded him of his mother’s. The boy’s curious nature filled him with a momentary thrill, he had only ever seen pictures of swans! He smiled timidly at the bird as the rain began to slow, not wanting to scare her away. Filled with excitement, the boy stood to run and tell his father about the swan. He turned back to the tall yellow house, still visible through the trees and forest brush. As the sun finally began to peek out from the clouds, the child raced through the mud and grass and tangle of trees, not once losing sight of the yellow house.

When the boy reaches his home, he is out of breath and his pale cheeks had regained their impish glow. Hoping to find his father when he returned, the boy came running to an empty yard. Disappointed, he turned back to the forest and the river, but the swan was nowhere to be seen, and the towering trees seemed to mock him. The grass and mud of the backyard was broken only by the once-garden, which was now a swirling pool of muddy rainwater. The boy dropped to his knees at the sight of the destroyed garden. What would his mother think? He and his father had torn apart the only thing that she had seemed to care about.

Suddenly the boy was no longer peaceful, but instead he was full of something else. He couldn’t quite place it, but the Something was drowning his mind. When he turned his tear-filled eyes back to the pond of mud and debris, he saw the swan from the forest swimming in it. The sun was shining down upon the house once more and it sparkled in the water around her. The sight of the swan comforted the boy, and although he was still drowning in Something, the thought of having her make her home in the once-garden made the boy feel not quite as scared. And before he turned to go back into the bright house, the boy noticed the way that the sun made his swan’s feathers seem as though they were made of flames, just like his mother’s hair.