After Forever Ends - Ramone Melodie (бесплатные книги полный формат TXT) 📗

What went on inside the house was something to behold as well. Things would move around when you weren’t looking. I’d leave my purse on the kitchen table and find it on the sofa five minutes later. Or Oliver would accidentally drop his keys on the floor while carrying in groceries and leave them while he set down the sacks. He’d turn to pick them up and they’d be on the counter. Or sometimes, items would magically appear, like the time I found the most beautiful pink rose lying on the porch. I ran to the bedroom and kissed Oliver for the gift. He swore he hadn’t given it to me. That rose lasted for nearly six months in a simple vase of water. One morning I came out and all the petals had fallen and were lying, still beautiful, scattered across the table. Oliver was not joking about the socks wandering off, either. His socks were constantly going missing, but he’d set out into the garden and talk to the trees or leave sweets in the faerie circle and they’d show up later sitting neatly on the table. The ones I lost the night before we married had never come back.

Sometimes I was still sure Oliver was playing with me, but usually I had my doubts. The third summer we were there, late at night, when it was very, very quiet, I began to hear a man and a woman speaking so faintly that I could hear their voices, but not understand a word that they said. It always sounded like it was coming from the front of the house, but when I went out there they would stop talking. After a while I started hearing them in the garden as well.

I mentioned it to Oliver one night. “I think I’m going mad in my old age,” I told him.

“You’re not going mad, “He looked at me very seriously, “If I told you, you won’t believe me.”

“You hear them, too?”

“It’s the Lord and the Lady of the Wood,” He mumbled as he shook his fringe out of his eyes. “They’re having a baby.”

“A baby?”

“Aye. A wee baby. They call it their boon. They have loads of them, but they get very excited every time a new one comes along.”

I took a second to consider this before I dismissed the possibility out of hand, “Who are the Lord and the Lady? Ghosts?”

“No, they’re not ghosts. They’re faerie folk. Elves. I don’t know much about them other than they live here in the wood. They have forever-like. They knew my Grandparents and theirs before them and so on.” He seemed a bit tired as he flipped the page of a textbook, “Don’t look at me like that, Sil! I’m not mad! I’ve known them my whole life. I’m actually surprised that you can hear them. Not everybody does. My parents never have. I hear them like you do mostly and can’t make anything out they say, but they’ve spoken to me twice since Grandpaddy gave me the shard.”

“The what?”

“The shard. It’s a little piece of wood, longer and thicker than a sliver. Grandpaddy’s Grandpaddy gave it to Grandpaddy when he was a boy to keep. One day he gave it to me.”

“Why?”

“Because the Lord told him to. Or so he said. Nana gave me something else, too.”

“What?”

“That ring you’re wearing.”

“My wedding ring?”

He nodded, “There’s a story behind it. The Lady gave it to Nana and told her to keep it for her grandson, the Boy from the Olive Tree, whose love would have hair the colour of autumn flames and eyes like blue ice.” He twisted his bottom lip, “When my parents called me Oliver, she figured the Lady must have meant me. Just before they died she gave it to me and told me the story.”

It was an emerald ring set high in an odd design and very old. It was a beautiful ring and probably quite expensive.

“You were very young, weren’t you?”

“Oh, aye, I was just a kid. Mind there was something in the way she explained it that made me know it was a treasure, so I put the ring up and kept it safe until I gave it to you.” He looked at me a long time, “I knew it was you the ring was meant for as soon as I laid my eyes on you. Hair the colour of autumn flames and eyes like blue ice. Nana told me the Lady had said that, those words exaxtly. Plus the second you said you were Just Silvia Cotton I knew for certain I was hopelessly in love with you.”

We smiled at each other, remembering that moment.

“What did the Lord and the Lady tell you when they spoke?”

Oliver sighed. He looked at me for a long time before he spoke, obviously deciding what information he was going to share, “The first time they told me that they’d chosen me to protect the wood. They asked me if I’d honour the promise of my forefathers and keep it safe for them and the creatures that live here. I said yes.”

“And the second time?”

“What they told me they said you wouldn’t understand until you were ready. They told me not to tell you because you have to understand it in your own time.”

For some reason I was able to accept that. Something inside of me didn‘t want him to tell me, not then. In the deepest part of me I knew I had lessons to learn.

Both of us were quiet. I watched him flip another page in his textbook and lift a glass of water to his lips. I whispered, “What does it all mean, Oliver?”

“I dunno,” He looked back up at me and smiled gently, “Love magic, I think. The Lady of the Wood says Love is the oldest and greatest of all the magic in the universe. I guess we wait and see. We’ll know in our time.”

We didn’t speak of it again for a very long while. Not for many, many years. In fact, we didn’t discuss it again until near the time when he left me.

Oliver and I both earned our four year university degrees respectively. Oliver had made up his mind about his future and was going to be a paediatrician. He had always known that he wanted to go into medicine. Oliver, you see, was a healer. It wasn’t anything he did by choice, it was just his way. He knew what to do and what to say to make people feel better when they were hurt or sad or frightened. Even when they were angry. He was drawn to children, always had been. Perhaps it was because of his kindness and his own refusal to never stop defending innocence and trust that led him to it, but he had made his decision to enter into paediatrics after a course in veterinary science where all he did was fiddle with poop. Bringing home two chicken sealed the resolution.

I was not very excited when he drew the cage from out of the truck, “Chickens?”

“Yeah,” He grinned, “I figured we’d grow them.”

“Grow chickens?”

“No, eggs.”

I stifled my laughter, but not my smile, “We’ll grow eggs?”

“Oh, you know what I mean!” He laughed at himself, “They’re hens. They’ll grow the eggs and we’ll steal them-like.”

“Oh, goody,” I teased, “And what’s next? You bringing home a cow?”

“I was thinking about it.”

“I don’t want a cow.”

“Why?”

“They stink.”

“So do chickens.”

“I never said I wanted chickens.”

“Oh, right then! Brilliant! No cow! Can I keep the chickens?”

I pretended to ponder the question. “They were free, weren’t they?

“They were!” He grinned proudly.

I wrapped my arms around him, “You may keep your chickens, Oliver.” I kissed him, as I always did when he arrived, “Welcome home.”

“Glad to be here, Love.”

That was the way every afternoon went more or less, except after that one I was knocking chickens off the porch with a broom most days. I hated those blasted chickens. All they did was run around clucking and depositing feathers and cack all around my garden and porch. The one didn’t even produce eggs, but neither Oliver nor I could work up the nerve to kill it and eat it. We invited the foxes in sometimes, but even they weren’t interested in that useless hen.

I was always home before Oliver since all my classes were in the morning. As a girl, I had been certain I wanted to go into some field of science as a career. I thought microbiology sounded fascinating, but after getting my Bachelors of Science, I started to wonder what I really wanted to do with my future. I was beginning to think that maybe I didn’t want a career and nothing else. After the talk Oliver and I had about the Lord and the Lady and their many boon, plus Oliver suddenly wanting to be a paediatrician, I thought maybe I wanted children, too.