Wonderland Read online

No one else was complaining. Although Orla hadn’t exactly been forthcoming with her own sensations and delirium. If she couldn’t chalk things up to something obvious or shared, she’d keep working on putting them out of mind. Lock up the strangeness in a little mental box so she wouldn’t risk infecting her entire family.

  10

  Saturday began and ended with rainbows of color. Orla first saw them in the morning, reflected on the wall as she sat on the toilet. As the sun beamed through the frosted window, the pattern bedazzled a small section of wall with dots of color. She gazed at it, tempted to call Shaw or the kids in to see it. Specks of refracted light, tiny as pieces of glitter.

  That night, after supper, Shaw stayed in the kitchen to wash the dishes, and Orla headed upstairs to hang the last of the bedroom mini-blinds. She’d hang the simple curtains another day—an attractive accessory rather than a necessity. Shaw didn’t even think they needed the blinds, with the dark nights and no streetlamps. But Orla anticipated the longer days—months away—when the sun would creep in to set their eyes afire before they were ready to awaken. And she still didn’t like the possibility of anyone looking in on them. Even if, in theory, there was no one out there.

  She’d done the children’s rooms earlier in the day, with Tycho, her helpful assistant, who kept dropping the screws onto the floor. Alone, it would take her a fraction of the time to finish the last upstairs window in her and Shaw’s bedroom. Afterward she’d see if she could drag the kids away from the TV, their addiction so easily renewed.

  The step stool squealed along the wood floor as she kicked it into place in front of the master bedroom’s big window. On the middle step, drill in hand, she was just about to start when something outside flashed across her field of vision. She gasped and had to clutch the window frame to keep from losing her balance as she almost stepped backward into empty air. Hopping off the stool, she tossed the drill onto the bed and ran out of the room.

  “Shaw? Eleanor Queen? Tycho? Get your boots on!” she called as she sprinted down the stairs.

  The kids had that vacant, gaping TV-glazed look on their faces as they watched Orla pass in front of them and hurry toward their new boot tray and their coats hung neatly on hooks. “Come on! Everybody! Boots, coats!”

  “Are we having a fire drill?” Eleanor Queen asked.

  “You’ll see, come on.”

  The kids jumped up and joined her, stuffing their feet into their boots.

  “Shaw?”

  He peered around the kitchen doorway. “What’s up?”

  “Come on! Outside, you have to see this.”

  “There in a sec.” He wiped his hands on a dish towel.

  Orla zipped up Tycho’s jacket and plopped a hat onto her own head. When the kids were sufficiently bundled up, she opened the front door and ushered them out. She led them to the edge of the porch and watched their faces light up as they looked skyward.

  “Wow!” Eleanor Queen sounded awed, and her eyes went as round as the previous week’s moon.

  “Isn’t it amazing?” Orla could barely contain her exhilaration. She’d always wanted to see the aurora borealis—and here it was, in her front yard. Ribbons of green and teal, pockets of purple and pink. The colors undulated like a dance.

  “What is it, Mama?” Tycho asked.

  “The aurora borealis—the northern lights. Isn’t it beautiful?”

  She saw the greenish glow twinkle in his eyes, but Tycho looked more perplexed than impressed. Eleanor Queen, on the other hand…

  “It’s…wow. All my favorite colors!” She reached up as if she could touch it, and the dancing colors seemed to respond, contracting toward the invisible tip of her finger. Orla gasped at the illusion before howling with delight, and even baffled Tycho giggled, pointing at the sky to try the trick himself.

  “What are you guys oohing and aahing about out here?” Shaw shrugged on his coat as he stepped onto the porch.

  “Look! You didn’t tell me about this!” Orla grinned at the heavens above them.

  Shaw came to her side, interlaced his warm fingers with her cold ones. He looked upward. The lights performed their cosmic tricks, wavering and rippling. But his face didn’t erupt in wonder or awe. Orla was about to mutter something about the boys in the family and their lack of appreciation for something that people traveled far and wide to cross off their bucket lists.

  Instead she said, “You don’t think it’s beautiful?”

  “Of course. But…what’s it doing here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re too far south—we don’t get the northern lights here. I mean, a glimmer, maybe, under just the right circumstances, but not like this. You have to be near a magnetic pole, like in the Arctic—Alaska, Scandinavia—to see it like this. And it would have been in the forecast.”

  He sounded almost angry. Orla’s good feelings started slipping away, dripping down her arms, pooling in the snow beneath her fingertips. It was only a week since the whiteout; she hadn’t forgotten the terror in her children’s screams and Shaw circling their property like a ghost, unable to find his way home. And since then, even if not every day, there were the other things that maybe weren’t possible that she’d shut away in her mind.

  “You can also see it at the South Pole,” Eleanor Queen said. “But then it’s called the southern lights.”

  “That’s right. Aurora australis,” said Shaw. “But still. We’re even farther from the Antarctic.”

  Orla wanted to punch his arm, get him to snap out of his weird mood. He watched the sky in a wary way, like a hiker waiting for a poisonous snake to wriggle off his path. But the defiant lights gamboled on.

  “Did you read about the aurora australis for school?” Orla asked Eleanor Queen, impressed by her knowledge.

  “No, it was in one of Derek’s books.”

  Eleanor Queen had never shown much interest in weather or astronomy in the city; Orla felt renewed gratitude her children had gotten to spend time with their cousins; maybe it had helped them transition more than she’d realized.

  “That’s a good idea,” Shaw said, coming back to life, his response a puzzling non sequitur. He reached into his pocket for his cell phone.

  “What are you doing?” Orla asked.

  “Calling Walker. See if they see it too.”

  He needed a rational explanation, and she couldn’t blame him. They hadn’t talked again about his scare the previous Saturday, but neither of them had felt comfortable enough since then to go exploring with the kids. Orla had been impressed with his discipline all week, the hours he spent locked in his studio, the multiple paintings in various stages of completion. He’d ordered a second easel, which would be delivered on Monday; for now, his assembly line of canvases were propped up around the perimeter of the room. But maybe his series hadn’t, after all, been his only motivation for staying in. Maybe he was afraid to go outside. It was clear he didn’t appreciate the light show and, perhaps, feared it on some level. She was glad when the kids leapt into the yard, giggling and tossing up handfuls of snow; they wouldn’t overhear Shaw’s conversation with his brother, his concern and doubt.

  “Hey, it’s me,” he said into the phone. “Nothing, just standing outside, looking at the sky. What are you guys up to?…Hey, so I won’t keep you, I just wanted to see—do you have unusual lights? Colors in the sky?”

  There was a longer pause, and Orla imagined Walker getting up from whatever he was doing and going to the nearest window to pull back the curtain and peer out.

  “You sure?…No, I was just wondering—reminded us of the northern lights, and it wasn’t in the forecast, that’s all…okay, yeah. And one of these days we’ll get a proper table and have you guys over…okay, talk soon.”

  He put the phone back in his pocket. “Nope. Not there.”

  “Well, maybe it’s regional.” She didn’t want him ruining something so beautiful. She didn’t care if the lights weren’t supposed to be there—she’d always wanted to see them.
They were a blessing.

  “The sky isn’t regional.” He still sounded resentful.

  “Maybe it’s global warming, or—”

  “There’s nothing global about this.”

  They stood shoulder to shoulder for a time, but Shaw wouldn’t relax and enjoy the cosmic display.

  “It’s nothing, Shaw. Don’t get so worked up about it.”

  “I want to know how this is possible. And last week. And—”

  “So what do you think it is? An apparition?”

  “What?”

  She didn’t want to ruin the moment. She wanted to believe what Shaw had promised though perhaps hadn’t meant so literally—that they’d find magic in their natural surroundings. But the odd instances were starting to pile up.

  “This isn’t the first thing I’ve seen,” she said, her voice low. In the yard, the children slapped clumps of snow onto the dragon, adding ridges to its spine.

  “What are you saying?” He turned to her, his eyes wary and hyperalert.

  Orla wanted to take it back, blabber about miracles instead, but they’d never make it here if they didn’t communicate with each other, and she’d already withheld enough.

  “I saw some things, that’s all. Things I couldn’t explain. Nothing harmful—not like that day with the whiteout. I’m just trying to figure it out. Would it be better for these lights to be here? Just here, where no one else can see? Or better for them not to really be here but we’re seeing them anyway?”

  Was a collective family hallucination better than a personal one?

  Tension registered in Shaw’s face as he considered her words. A muscle in his jaw clicked and he nodded.

  “No. You might be right.”

  But instead of clarifying what he was agreeing with or what it meant, he summoned the children in an urgent voice, as if a threat were at hand: “Bean, Tigger, let’s go back in. Let’s get ready for bed.”

  They loped through the snow and onto the porch, where Shaw helped them brush off their pants legs.

  Maybe there were wonders that none of them understood. Mother Nature could have tricks up her sleeve that newbies like them didn’t know about. The snow rollers, she remembered, were a natural phenomenon. But Shaw wasn’t waiting around to debate it. He ushered the kids inside and followed them in, leaving Orla alone with her thoughts, pieces from disparate puzzles that wouldn’t lock together.

  Natural. Phenomenon. Natural. Phenomenon.

  She rolled the words around in her mouth until they felt like a secret language.

  This new world was strange—but wasn’t this what they’d wanted? To get out of their city bubble and have new experiences? She wanted (was desperate) to have faith in all the things that left her uncertain, to believe that the move (their home) was a good decision—even if that meant examining paradoxes and acknowledging anomalies that hadn’t been relevant in her urban life.

  “There could be miracles,” she said to herself. And after a lifetime of vivid dreams that always left her questioning the foundations of consciousness, she couldn’t rule out the possibility of a higher power—one not beholden to explain its every move to her. Mother Nature, Gaia…these feminine, terrestrial (celestial?) energies seemed more plausible to her than the masculine godheads that propped up organized religion. In this new place, she needed to embrace new possibilities, even if just to discover the natural world that she hadn’t previously given much thought to.

  Orla was willing to accept the possibility of mysteries—especially if they manifested in such beauty. The sky danced. She’d wanted her family to marvel at it, to revel in it, but maybe this dance, this moment, was just for her. She’d never been a religious person, but she felt, all around her, something omnipotent that she couldn’t explain. This is what draws people to nature. She felt it in her bones, the stardust of her cells acknowledging the stardust of her ancestors. And who was she but a speck among the vastness of the universe? It was important to be reverent, to be grateful—not just scared—as she bore witness to a holy power.

  This is why we came. It was starting to make more sense, how Shaw had been called to return.

  What an amazing place. A place not to be underestimated. A place that redefined impossible; maybe her imagination was more limited than she’d ever considered.

  When the chill started to seep into her toes, she turned and let herself back into the house. She kept telling herself, It’s a good thing, it’s a good thing, it’s a good thing. And hoped she wasn’t just rationalizing, just talking herself into it (just ignoring her intuition).

  When Shaw didn’t come up to bed, Orla crept down to his studio. With the furnace set low for the night, the floorboards were cold against her bare feet. She’d been thinking about their situation for hours. It made her feel resourceful, and she wanted his approval for finding both a rational explanation and a solution for something beyond her everyday experience.

  She tapped lightly on his door before opening it. He didn’t acknowledge her as she stood in the doorway; he stayed poised in front of his easel, making quick strokes with a thin brush. From this angle he looked…different. Burly. He needed a shave. There was something almost werewolf-like about him, as if he were becoming as unruly as the land. She had the impression, from the gargoyle-intense expression on his face, that he wasn’t painting but performing a dissection.

  Curious to see how his work was developing, she crept closer. It was another tree, rendered in dark colors. It had a morbid quality—and subtle details—that drew her in, so near she practically stood beside him. The tree branched into a Y, and within its trunk…a human form, a figure divided, with two torsos but only one set of legs. It reminded her of conjoined twins and then—she gasped—of the hybrid animal she’d seen in the snow.

  Beside the tree was something much less ghoulish: a cabin. He hadn’t gotten to its finer details yet, but she recognized the stone chimney. The picture was from the same angle as the printout on the wall, only instead of painting the young trees that were growing beside the ruin, Shaw had conjured the structure that might once have been there.

  “Huh.” It struck her how well proportioned it was.

  He started, uttering a little noise of surprise. “Hey.”

  “That really looks…right. Like, it fits with the chimney perfectly.”

  It was as if he’d come out of a trance and now, awake, he looked back to his canvas. A smile softened his features. “While I’d love to take all the credit, I did a little digging around online. Architectural styles of the region and time—guessing a bit, of course. But it might be pretty close.” He rubbed his eye with the back of his hand, leaving gray smudges in his eyebrow. “What time is it?”

  “Almost one thirty.”

  “Geez, sorry.”

  “No, I didn’t mean to interrupt you, but I had an idea.”

  “For a painting?”

  The question confused her for an instant. “No. An explanation for the weird…things.”

  “Oh.” He set his brush down and picked up the old tea towel flung over his thrift-store ladder-back chair, now repurposed to hold his supplies. He scrubbed off his hands.

  “So, remember when we tried smoking weed all those years ago, and after a few times I had that scary moment?”

  “When you hallucinated?”

  “Exactly. That was a chemical disruption in my brain. And upstairs I started thinking…we didn’t have the well water checked.” It made so much sense to her, but his face remained fixed and confused. “Let me back up. So there’s a lot of stuff in the news associated with fracking, but this doesn’t have to be that. Well water getting contaminated by drilling and chemicals. And what if that happened to our water? We have no idea what’s in it, but maybe there’s some kind of pollutant in it and we’re…”

  “Hallucinating. Interesting theory, Orlie.” His head bobbed, and she could almost see him thinking back on things.

  “We can call someone to come out and test it, and in the meanwhile we can
boil everything or buy bottled water for drinking and see if these weird…visions or whatever stop happening. Maybe we’re under the influence of…something…half the time and don’t even realize it.”

  Shaw nodded more enthusiastically. “Yeah…yeah, that’s good.” He grabbed her upper arms and planted a kiss on her forehead.

  That’s when Orla realized just how worried he’d been, how he’d hidden his troubled feelings from her. But now she didn’t feel the victory of her resolution. He could call it inspiration—he could call it being considerate, staying inside and not leaving them alone—but it was more evident than ever: He was hiding; he wasn’t wholly comfortable out here. Maybe he really was the city boy she’d always known. Or maybe he’d been seeing—or hearing—unexplainable things too. She wasn’t sure which possibility was worse—that they didn’t trust each other with the truth anymore, or that they were both doubting their own sanity.

  11

  Usually the mail carrier just left the mail in their box, situated next to the road at the end of the winding driveway, not visible from the house. They’d met him only a couple of times, when he’d driven their packages up to the porch. He wore a hat with earflaps and drove a four-wheel-drive postal service jeep, and he’d told them he always delivered to them early, as they were near the beginning of his route. Orla had established a new favorite routine, something she never would have imagined enjoying: strolling the sixty yards down to the mailbox every morning, cup of tea in hand. Now, almost two weeks into their new life, she looked forward to seeing how the routine would change as the seasons turned over—come summer, would she brave the walk in bare feet? Would the path be dotted with wildflowers?

  It was another crisp, clear day, but she didn’t mind putting on all her winter gear to make her serene walk. Steam rose from her mug, and the warmth of the tea, as she swallowed it, countered the chilly air. They were on their fifth day of using boiled and bottled water, and someone had come out two days before, Tuesday, to test their well water. She and Shaw had started consulting with each other every night before bed, but there’d been nothing new or odd to report. The household had been filled with giggles and music and chatter all week, bolstered by a renewed optimism.