Remembrance

By Catherine Paul

“Demetra!”

Demetra appeared. Her chestnut hair flowed over her shoulders. Her dark eyes wise, intuitive. Before they could speak, she glanced out the window and viewed the young man talking to her son. She beheld the aura surrounding him as he stood in the midst of the blues and grays rising from the herb garden, and her lips pursed in a half-smile.

“He’s the one?” she asked. The older women nodded. “Fine”.

And they knew that it would be, because it had always been.

****

Cassandra was a Dempsey and a Winslow and a McGraw and every lineage that predated. It is said that the day she was born, the winds escalated and a rain fell that brought an early spring in which flowers bloomed more profusely and the harvest of herbs was more prolific than at any time in memory.

When she was five, she was taken under the guidance of the spry older women who wanted her to learn the ways; the ways her father did not know, nor really did any of the men care to know. But if it is possible that some knowledge carries forth unimpeded and unlearned via traditional channels, so it was for Cassandra for whom the ways of the women were intuitive, innate and as natural as a perfume of lavender and rose.

When Cassandra was fifteen and her flaming wild hair and wilder ways garnered ridicule in the school she attended, where the girls wore only the most fashionable clothes and shoes, and belittled those who did no, Demetra realized that to save her daughter’s spirit they would have to remove her from school. But Demetra’s husband William refused. He would not have Cassandra removed from school. What would become of her opportunities for a decent future?

William was mesmerized by his daughter. Her brilliance startled him, her intuition frightened him, and if someone had told him she could be seen on the nights of a full moon, dressed in a long white gown flying amidst the stars, he would have believed.

So it was that Cassandra continued at the school and her spark lessened, her hair wilted, and her eyes dulled. At first, William pretended not to notice. Over breakfast, he would sip his coffee, listen to the quibbling of his young sons, and avert his eyes from his daughter’s face, which was bent toward the table, her green eyes a waning ember of a once blazing fire. Hadn’t his younger sister been like that at her age? Hadn’t his younger sister grown out of the tragedy of her teenage years and striven forth unimpaired? But, as weeks fostered months, and winter passed in a flurry of white, Cassandra’s vibrance faded to dross. William could no longer ignore his daughter’s dwindling spirit. He implored Demetra to assist, but her eyes were veiled to him. Her manner for the first time in their lives together was derisive.

“Is it the school? It’s not normal, Demetra. A child should be in school.”

Demetra’s eyes sprayed venom. “Not every child is normal.”

“Cassandra is normal.”

“Normal? Don’t you see how different she is? She is different from you and me and the boys. She is above normal. She is the hawk that soars and now her wings are clipped. She’s become, in the matter of a season, earthbound.”

Demetra’s words reverberated in William’s mind as an unrelenting chorus. For days he reflected and watched. Then one Saturday as Cassandra knelt in the garden, indifferent to the gentle rain falling as she cut roots of silvery green plants he would never know the names of, she raised her eyes toward his window. He thought he could see tears mixed with raindrops. When they caught the shine of light and glimmered and seemed to glitter upon her cheeks as opals illuminating her sorrow, he nodded to her. Not understanding why, and certain he never would, William withdrew his daughter from school and watched the transformation as she soared like a hawk in the realm of the clouds.

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