The Love of a Mother
Stories similar to this that you might like too.
It was just after midnight when we found him. I don’t remember how long we had been searching, but it was dark out and all the stars were up, bright against a clear sky. And there on the ground at our feet was a boy – he must have fallen off the roof where he’d been playing with his friends.
His face was blue and wet; it took me a moment to recognize him as my brother’s youngest, William. He lay motionless on the cold stone street, his arms folded across his chest. A dark pool spread out beneath him, growing steadily larger. There wasn’t much water in it yet, though I suppose that meant there’d been a lot of rain lately. The rain made us all feel better, somehow.
It was always raining these days and I couldn’t remember what we’d done with our summer last year. But it did bring us more food, which was good for me, who ate everything she saw. And it brought us fresh water in our wells, and the river ran strong again this time of year. We hadn’t realized how weak we’d gotten after so many years without it.
I was just about to step forward and pull my brother away – he was still holding the rope and watching us from above, a dark figure against a gray night sky – when one of William’s older brothers called out, “Mama!” and everyone turned to see what he wanted.
“I’m sorry,” William said quietly before someone answered him. Then he added quickly, “For not going to church today.”
“You could have come tonight,” another son of ours shouted. “We’ll be home early, tomorrow night. You can come then, right?”
My brother gave me a hard look, but I just shrugged my shoulders and went back to looking out into the darkness.
“Come on!” I heard my sister-in-law call out. “Let’s go! The rest are waiting for you and the boys are in a terrible temper.”
“What is a temper?” William asked as he started walking back toward his house. I watched him go, feeling sad but also wondering why we were even trying to find William. He didn’t want to talk to us and he told me that he was leaving.
That night, he climbed up onto the roof of his house and waited there while his brothers threw their rope down to him. They wanted to make sure he was all right and get a chance to wish him well. So he could leave.
That’s how it had been since we first came across the river.
William’s mother had gone into labor soon after we crossed it. There was no way of getting to a doctor – no one here knew what that was anymore. But when I held her hand through her contractions and she finally pushed out her baby girl, I thought for just a moment that this might be a better place than ours.
We were poor; they were rich. William was born here and lived with his brothers, but I wondered if he ever got to play like they did or if he had always worked. His father had a shop and William spent much of his time in it, making new things out of old ones.
I saw him sitting at the loom one day and weaving something that looked like a basket but turned out to be an umbrella. I asked my brother about it; he told me it would rain again soon.
I was sure of it. We hadn’t had so much as a thunderstorm since we came, not once. But it had stopped raining, just the same, and that made me worried. It wasn’t supposed to rain in these parts of the city; we’d always known this place for its clear skies.
And then we found that there was no food here and that the people on the other side of the river – we called them the country folk – did not like us. Not one bit. We were starving and they were feeding their animals – and then we were starving some more.
My family’s house was dark and quiet now, and I thought about going home to the others and telling them that I’d seen my son, William, walking along the river. Then I remembered that William had told me himself that he was leaving and going back across the river where he belonged.
“Come with us,” I said quietly as I walked away from my sister-in-law’s house, following the river to see what was left in it to catch a fish in. “The boys want to know everything!”
I had been fishing for a long time when the rain started. There hadn’t been much rain lately. The rivers were low; the well water was too dirty to drink. And our bellies were empty. And we were hungry. And we were afraid. So I stood in my father’s house with my little sister, listening to the rain pounding the roof.
And we felt like crying but we couldn’t because we knew that we didn’t have any tears to give to the sky.
The thunder rumbled through the air, shaking the walls, and we listened to the pounding rain. And after a while, I looked out over the city. There were lights, just like there used to be when the weather got cold and everyone was getting ready for winter. They were the inside, and I could make out the shapes of people standing in their doorways, watching me and the others.
My brother and my sons. Wondering what we wanted. What we were doing. But I just watched them and wondered how long they would let us wait. Would we have to go hungry again before they decided to open their doors and let us into their houses? Or would they never see the lights shining through the windows?
The storm had gotten so loud that even my little sister fell asleep at last, lying against my shoulder. She must have been very tired or else she wasn’t feeling well. We didn’t have enough food to keep her going all day without a nap, not when we weren’t able to get up off our bums and go outside and do some work to feed ourselves.
The rain had turned to hail – small pieces of ice falling to the ground, breaking on the cobblestone walkways and streets. Some landed on our heads; others broke when they hit the wooden beams that supported our home.
As I walked across the yard, looking out at the others who were still waiting in their homes, I saw my sister-in-law’s house glowing red. It wasn’t the lanterns we usually used to light the way down the street. That one burned bright blue and green and white and then disappeared as it moved down the road, making sure there was no way we might get lost coming home again.
This was red. Red like fire. And I remembered that the color meant something here: that you were burning. Burning in hell. Burning with hunger and fear.
My son called out for me then, but he couldn’t make himself heard over the pounding rain and the crashing of the hail. The lighting was too bright and quick, throwing shadows onto the wall, and sometimes a bolt came so close to striking down that we could feel the earth shake from its impact.
The smell of smoke filled the air when the wind blew back the curtain that we’d pulled shut, blocking out the cold and the wind. The thunder rattled the windows of my house and shook the walls so hard I thought that they would fall in, but I couldn’t run inside because I was afraid to leave my family and my little sister alone on the street.
“Mother?” My son looked out at me, his voice trembling. “Will you come in now? Come away from the window and let your eyes rest. There are other things to see.”
He wanted me to stop looking, I knew that much, but I couldn’t look away from the red glow in her house. The light had turned into a flickering flame. I saw it then – a flame dancing inside that one lantern that burned so brightly against the dark rain clouds and the darkness of night.
The rain had stopped now. I watched until my sister woke up and started crying quietly as she curled into my arms.
We left them behind as we climbed over the gate and walked through the town of people, leaving behind our fear of being hungry or cold. We went to a place where we felt safe and warm, and we found our children waiting for us, sitting on the ground in front of a fire pit with a woman who held the red flame in one hand and another man whose face was lit by a single blue lamp.
The man’s hair was gray and short, his face wrinkled from the years and the rain. And he wore the same kind of clothes as we did: a tunic that showed off the muscles in his back and shoulders, with long pants tucked into the tops of his shoes. But instead of the brown leather shoes that I usually wore, his were black.
“We’re sorry,” said my brother-in-law in a low voice as he pulled his little sister onto his lap, cradling her close. “It was just too hard. You all have to know this is not the way we should live. If only we had some wood to burn and a way to heat ourselves through winter.”
His voice sounded small, like the rest of him, and I could tell he didn’t think they would be able to get through a cold, dark winter without food to eat. But I remembered that he had always been strong. Stronger than his brothers and my own brother, and he had always done what needed to be done.
He had gone out to make money when he was only ten years old and returned with bags full of coins so that we could eat. So that my son and his daughter and their baby might have milk for their teething babies and a warm place to sleep at night.
I thought of how many times I had seen him do it. I knew there were others who lived in our town who had done the same. There must have been other boys and men whose faces lit up when they heard my brother-in-law ask for help. I looked around but I saw no one.
My brother-in-law stood now, wiping tears away with the back of his hand. The fire had burned low and the light had grown dim and gray, but the glow coming from his face stayed bright and true. “This man came out of the woods last week and asked us what we needed most. And he gave me the lamp.”
My brother-in-law turned, his eyes searching. And then he held up his hand as if to show them off, as though they were made of glass. A red flame danced against the light blue shade, flickering and flaring in time with his breath. His voice trembled as he spoke, and his eyes grew wide.
“And he said that this night’s work will be enough to take care of my family through the next season of winter. For all of us. And after that, he told me to tell you that your turn will come.”
He took my hand then, squeezing my fingers tightly in both his own as he stared at the glowing flames in his lamp. He let go, looking down into my face. “We will do our best to make sure it’s enough for us,” he whispered.
Then the man with the blue lamp stood. He nodded to my brother-in-law, his dark hair and eyes shining even brighter than his lamps, and the blue flames in their windows winked out as one. The darkness came again, only a little less complete because my brother-in-law was here now.
The End