The Woman

A woman steps out of a quiet place.

Outside, she stops. She breathes, and is assured that she is real. The air is cold in her nose, and burns her lungs. She reaches for her history, and it is not there.

She thinks a moment, and then continues on. If the memories are not just beyond the quiet place, perhaps they will be somewhere else, somewhere further down the path.

As she thinks it, a path develops. It is grey and featureless at first, lacking in any passion. She looks over her shoulder, back at the quiet place, and she remembers a son.

The path changes, becomes colored, vibrant. The son is important: he is everything. With a smile, she goes forward again. It will lead to her son; he is the history, he is the memory, he is the answer.

The path curves, and as she steps around the curve, she remembers a man. The quiet place is too far behind her now to see when she looks back, and the path swallows itself whole a few steps behind her. Curious, she turns around, following the path to the faded end.

A wall is there, invisible, and she cannot go back to the quiet place. She tests the wall. It does not give way. After a time, she turns back again, and studies the curve, studies the memory of the man.

In a moment, she is captivated by him. He is larger than life, golden like a lion, and full of primal rage. She takes a step or two down the path again, tentative, and then runs forward, diving into the memories.

They are rich, her memories, and they consume her. This man, he is life's blood to her, his great rage antithesis to a pain that wakens inside her. She feeds on his anger, taking it into herself as she takes him into her, sucking at it greedily, until her life has become nothing but the man.

Abruptly, he is gone. She pulls free of the memories, water streaming from hair slicked back. Her clothing is lost somewhere in the memories she dove into, and the cascading tides behind her offer no warmth on the road ahead.

It is grey again, the path featureless and still. The man, who ate her heart whole, has left, and she is blind. She stumbles down the path, trying to remember the thing that guided her before, but there's only a dull echoing of her heart, confused as it keeps the life force within her.

There is a quickening in her belly, and color, pale golds, suffuses the path. The quickening becomes a child, and the woman remembers a little girl. Golden like her father, the girl runs along the path, just ahead of the woman, and the woman smiles again, having found her purpose. She chases the girl, and laughter enters the memories.

The girl ages quickly, as they run, and suddenly, the man appears again. In a moment, he has stolen the child, and the woman falls to her knees, staring blankly at the grey path before her.

She looks over her shoulder again, and behind her comes another memory. Another man, this time. As different from the golden man as night is to day, the second man smiles cockily, coloring the path with tones of red, and she wonders who he is. Slowly, she climbs to her feet, and continues down the path, listlessly, without purpose, trying to remember the second man.

She does not see him again; he does not appear on the path in front of her. For a long time, nothing does. It remains featureless, grey, waiting for memories to color it. She looks back once more, and abruptly, she knows the second man. The boy's father. Color flashes through the path, and she looks ahead, eagerly. The boy. He will be there, in the end.

Confident now, she begins to run, gobbling up the path in long strides. The path splits, and she stops, uncertain, staring first down the left hand path, then down the right. They are identical. For the first time, she looks up, into the sky.

She waits a time, and there is no answer. She studies the paths again. Finally, she chooses the left-hand path, and begins to run.

Not so much further along, she looks at her hands, and sees they are much older than they were when the boy came into her life, older than they were when the girl was born, older than when the golden man stole the girl away. She stops, and looks up, at the greyness around her, and then again at her slowly aging hands. She sighs, quietly, and lifts her eyes again to see the gravestone. The boy's eight years are inscribed on it, cool uncaring stone, and she touches the smooth surface with regret. She stands there a moment, and then makes the choice.

This could be her end, to sit here and wait for the quietness to take her again, or she can try the path ahead. Slowly, she steps beyond the gravestone, and the path opens up. She looks back, and blows a kiss. The boy is there, grinning the cocky grin that his father gave him. The girl is there, soft and golden, dwarfed by her father behind her. The second man is there, far off, and he flicks the woman a salute.

She smiles, sadly, then turns to face the path again. She thinks a moment, then continues on. The quiet place lies somewhere ahead, and there are memories to be found before she gets there.

She waits a time, and there is no answer. She studies the paths again. Finally, she chooses the right-hand path, and begins to run. She runs a very long time, steadily, waiting for the boy to appear on the path. He does not; the path remains grey. She runs faster, impatient, running and running and running, and in time, she notices her strides are beginning to grow shorter, her speed lessening. She keeps running. A slow run, she thinks, is faster than a walk, and soon the end of the path will be here, and I will be with my son. She slows more, and more, and more, and looks down, and her hands are the hands of an old woman, bumpy and wrinkled with age. She lifts her eyes, and her son is there. It is a gravestone, unadorned. It has his name engraved upon it, the eight years of his life etched there, and his name. Bitterly, she steps past -- -- and can go nowhere. The path ends at the stone. She pushes against the end of path with all her might, and then the old woman sits, awkwardly, by the stone, and looks back down the long path of her life. It is grey, with a few flashes of color, and the color has been gone a very long time.