Goodbye.

Never say goodbye.
As the rain falls, silvering a field green with wheat. As small drops on a breeze sift onto the back of your neck, refuse.

The goodbye wells up in my heart, thrusts itself forward for notice, and the sky weeps for me. This melancholy strokes my soul with a meaningful fingers and says....what?
That it is time?
That old things must change?
No, the rain sings a many-tongued song but it is not that. The meaning lies just beyond my reckoning but the body needs no words to feel the import of this painful pleasure. Have you ever worked till blisters form? A hot, swollen testament to purpose, a work completed.
Well done, old girl, well done.

This rain blisters me. Under old callouses a new but familiar pain forms, swelling to the chafing of the true things it flings earthward. A cardinal flaunts on a gaunt pine-branch and its small voice is as sharp and acid-sweet as the rain: a goodbye that won't come.

Train-song drives upwind, iron wheels hammering the same tune. Away, away, away, away. How I want to reply, "I will away with you!"
But I can't. Never say goodbye to good things. To good friends. To best times. I never do. How could I?

Harder, fleeter, faster fall the raindrops. The pain intensifies, becomes sweeter and firmer in its vintage. Goodbye, goodbye!
I could say it. If my soul was more tender or a deal harder I could say that dolorous word, goodbye. But I think that if I hold onto Them, those things I cannot set free, They will stay. Goodbye would be easy if I did the leaving. But while the song drums "away," it is a gypsy-call for Them. Those things I feel I must keep. The song has two words...
"Remain," is mine.

Like rain, my word spreads feather-light mist over my eyes and soul.
Let them away. You remain here, for here is your place. Say goodbye.
But I cannot. Never say goodbye. Goodbye is a severe word. If they go away, who promises I will see them again? Who promises I will not remain obedient and empty-handed and absent-hearted?

A train shouts through the mizzle: away, away, away, away.
And again.
And again.

I shiver. A divisive pleasure and pain this is, though as dusk falls I have learned its tongue, dividing my will in shards of yes and no.
Remain.
I will. I believe and trust it is right.
Away. Give them away.
But can I? Greater than a fear of tangible evil is the thought of being left behind, forgotten, shrugged out of like a coat They once loved but grew too large for. Must we keep growing? Can we not stay as we are? Remain young and safe so They will never have to give me away? I would like that. We could walk in this rain together and balance on the tracks along the railroad and staunch its song. Never have to say goodbye. We could all stay. Would that be so wrong? We are so happy.

More rain. Green now yawned up by slate and darkness. If my heart would not grow, would not breed such eager dreams, maybe the rain could not chafe its palms. We all accept the good agony of a heart's sprawling expansion, though it sometimes makes to burst the chest apart.
Oh. That is why we grow bigger, isn't it?
If we could not, would our frightened, brittle child-bones crush the thrumming soul? Or would the heart grow like cancer and force the indolent frame apart? The frame that would not say goodbye, at war with itself.

My lane is a pale blue horseshoe in the grass. Rain trots down the gutter and asks again:
Won't you say goodbye?

Will it hurt? I don't like to hurt.
Will I be lonely? I can't bear to be alone.
Will I ever get it back?
But the rain has only one double-edged sword: away, remain. It is my choice to let us grow or to make us suffocate in a body ill-shaped for the shape of our souls. If I say goodbye, if They never come back, will I miss Them? Will other days and people and times come to fill the emptiness They left? And will the day arrive when "remain" will have become too small a word for my life? And will They have to say "away" to me?

Down, down comes the mist and all glistens in the gloaming. Maybe, soon, I could say goodbye.

My blisters cool in the rain.

Away, away, but you: remain.

And somehow it's enough.

Dear Hopeful One: a letter

Dear Hopeful One:
     Yes, you, with your eyes shining and the buds of a thousand stories in your lapel, showing you what you are championing for. You are at that stage wherein writing seems like a world apart from a world; a world that is all your own only so long as it is in your head, but a world to which you will invite an excited public someday.
     You read this blog and other blogs of writers who are published or about to be so, and maybe you're just a little bit jealous. Maybe you wish it was you being featured on other blogs, your book with a Goodreads page and a promise of Amazon in a month or so.
     But dear hopeful one, enjoy your innocence. Enjoy the thrill of stepping into the realm of the written word. Enjoy writing for the pure joy of writing, unencumbered by deadlines and emails and interview queries. There are things you hold right now that I no longer have:
     You have likely never opened a document to find all your careful formatting had been absorbed into the hole of the Never-Never and must be re-done with the painstaking precision you have already spent hours upon.
     You don't have to keep a planner full of all the little things you forget about, like contacting review websites and other bloggers, and arranging guest-posts and interviews and giveaways and then re-contacting all those people to let them know the schedule/details/information.
     Formatting probably means a glorious nothing to you.
    Sitting at the desk till your neck is stiff and your back hurts is entirely optional for you at this point and if you don't much feel like writing, you can always doddle off and pick up the next tantalizing book that's been wanting to be read.
   I realize that for all the hard work and unforeseen difficulties in my stage, I hold something precious too: I have my book in hard copy in my hands and there are few things quite so exciting as your first novel. I'm not trying to tell you it isn't as exciting as it looks; it is. But just because I have printed my novel is no grounds for thinking there aren't difficulties in my writing life.
   Don't despise your youth, Hopeful One. Enjoy the simplicity of being unknown because (as I'm learning) even the littlest bit of being known is enough to change one's perspective on whether writing is a joy or a business arrangement. I intend never to let writing become all business, but dear Hopeful One, you don't need to make that choice yet. Hold onto the joy of word-play and rejoice in anonymity. There are plenty of years in which to print your books, plenty of stories to tell, plenty of areas in which to grow.
   Take your time, Hopeful One, because every stage has a special beauty.

             Ever Yours,
                       Rachel Heffington

Thus runs time

“I demand to know what your business is—why you sought us out. Prithee, what is this, sir?” It was not until later she realized she had lapsed into the graceful lilt of the Scarlettanian tongue."      -The Scarlet-Gypsy Song

A few thousand words back now in my Gypsy-Song I began to notice a strange thing occurring to my characters. At the start of the book--back in London, I mean--the Macefield children were very...childish, for lack of a better term. They were rambunctious children, irresponsible, naughty, cheeky. But as they tumbled out of our world and into Scarlettania something happened to them. Something imperceptible as it was definite.

 My children grew up.

At first I worried--what had happened to my characters? Should they remain as they were? And then I realized that the change had grown naturally out of the rhythm of the tale. As the plot progresses, so do the children. It is, therefore, not surprising that the dastardly Peter Quickenhelm should make advances toward Adelaide before finally kidnapping her. It is not surprising that Eugenie learns to talk and Fergus loses his lisp. It is not surprising that Charlotte becomes the sole caretaker of "the babies." It is not surprising that Darby and Bertram go off to war. How many ten and eight year-olds do you know that are manly enough to handle battle? None, I'll warrant. And yet they were somehow changed in that passage from Earth to Scarlettania. People grow stronger there. They grow older. There is nothing startling in the change but it is a change all the same. I think the change lies mostly within. The children are not noticeably taller and yet they are certainly wiser, wittier, capable of more. Why? Why? Certainly it is not the sweet waters of the River Rhune that made the change, nor the clear air of the East Striding. What then? And then I happened upon it. the change came with the expectations of the people of Scarlettania.
“You have been weighed in the balance and found lacking,” the king said... "But we Scarlettanian-folk specialize in just and noble weights and measures; and if one considers—in addition to the weights of your trespasses, which are heavy indeed—the weights of your lives’ experience, one must acknowledge that is not so grievous a matter after all. You have had a paltry dose of lessons in what matters in this world and your own.”

Once in this new world, the Macefields were required to have their faults weighed and balanced as grown-ups might. They were not treated as children any longer. With this new treatment came the change. When more than customary expectations are demanded from a person, his courage and character [ought to] rise to the occasion. That's what happened to the Macefield bunch. That's what happens to us if we see ourselves in the Lord's mirror for what we are. And then, when we look in the back of the mirror to see Christ's gift, we grow. We grow in ways imperceptible and visible. We grow in ways we'd never imagined. We grow and we are forever changed.

"...What say you, Adelaide-mine?" The long fingers closed around her arm and rooted her to the spot.
Adelaide's heart thundered in her chest but she would not show fear to this man. She raised her eyes to meet his with frank clarity. "I say to death with you. To death with your traitorous wolf-kind."  

-The Scarlet-Gypsy Song