This...is an odd one. Not sure how it came about, but I guess I'll have to thank Alexandre Desplat and his gorgeous work on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button soundtrack for this, especially Postcards.
Disclaimer: Artemis Fowl and the rest belongs to Eoin Colfer; I own nothing. Verses quoted here belong to their respective poets.
Postcards from the Ether
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease my pain!
~ Time does not bring relief, Edna St. Vincent Millay
I have often heard that saying, the one people would quote to themselves, to those whose hearts carry the burden of missing someone who is not there, who is not able to be there: 'Time heals all wounds.' I have had the same pithy saying quoted to me too, in so many different ways, with so many different gestures and expressions, with so many meanings for me to construe, enough for me to pick and choose – but they are all lies.
I refuse to believe that Time – that elusive giver, that charming destroyer – could ever heal this ever-present ache I carry with me every day. How am I to describe to the well-meaning, the kind and the sympathetic, that I don't want Time to take away this pain? There can only be one person who will be able to lift this constant weight in me, but he is not here. He has not been here for three years, and there may be many more years to come that he will not be here.
'Tell me another story,' I ask of Butler. He looks at me, the anguish in his face barely concealed beneath his stoic composure. I know how he feels, what he feels – but yet, I am unable to speak of my knowledge or offer any words of sympathy to him.
'Another story?' he says softly. 'But Master Fowl told me not to mention them in the future.'
'It doesn't matter.' Tell me another, and another, and yet another – I want to hear everything that he was up to all those years past. All those years that I didn't pay attention to what he was doing – all those lost years of his childhood.
What mother am I?
Butler launches into a story, a familiar one, about the boy who helped the fairies to save their city from a deranged megalomaniac. It seems like the stuff of novels, fantastic and improbable – but they are all true, as Butler assures me in his hoarse voice. Everything that he has told me is the truth. I can hardly bear to look into his eyes when he pauses yet again over the boy's name.
'You don't have to continue if it pains you,' I say.
Butler passes a hand over his eyes and rises from his seat unsteadily. 'Too many questions,' he mumbles.
He is not the only one who cannot bring himself to speak of the boy.
Timmy hasn't spoken a word about him ever since the twins began to speak on their own. He tells them stories, plays with them, performs his duties as a father with admirable dedication – so unlike the Timmy of the past, who hardly spoke to his only son and who looked upon the child as someone to be groomed as an heir to the Fowl fortune, nothing more. This is a new-old Timmy, the one who had made me laugh and made me dizzy when I was scarcely more than a young girl out of her teens. But for all his change of character, he very carefully does not mention anything about his lost son. I don't blame him for it, for I am guilty of the same thing.
'Story, Mummy.' Beckett climbs into my lap and gives me a rapturous, sticky kiss on my cheek. 'Fairy story!'
Myles and Beckett, despite their differing looks from my eldest boy, remind me of him every day. Too much, in fact. It only takes a glance, one incident, for me to remember that he is missing – Myles poring over tattered old encyclopedias; Beckett begging me to come see his 'garden'; both boys in their cots, asleep and dreaming. They are alike to him – similar, but yet different enough for me to know that they can never take his place.
Sometimes, particularly in summer, I fancy that I see him out in the grounds, a small figure in a golden shimmer. His dark head – so very like Timmy's – would be bowed, as though he is deep in thought, and he would always face away from me, as though he is looking wistfully out over the walls and into the world outside. I can never see his face – he never turns to return my gaze – but I am hopeful that he will, one day. Someday soon he will turn around and meet my eyes with his familiar deep blue ones, and I will be waiting for him at the door, watching as my eldest boy walks over the grass to me, still in his suit, still looking like the young boy who left me – us – without warning.
He will be eighteen, says Minerva casually. I catch the words she tosses so carelessly to Butler, and wish that she would not remind me of the passage of Time.
But what does she know? She is young still, soon to be sweet sixteen.
Time, time. Three years of hearing the unseen clock tick away the hours and the days that he does not return; three years of tearing off the calendar pages of his absence. A mother should never be burdened with the pain of her child's disappearance – how could you do this to me, Artemis? Am I not a good mother to you? I am sorry, so sorry, for neglecting you when your father was gone, just like you are gone now, too –
Hush. Enough of this. There will be time for tears, but it is not now. Not yet. I will not give up hope that he will return, until concrete proof is shown to me that he never will. Even so, I may continue hoping should that come to pass.
I still remember the last words that he said to Butler: "If something goes wrong, wait for me. No matter how it looks, I will return."
When, my boy? Can you not give me an answer to that, with your intelligence and deviousness to help you? I have heard of your misdeeds and adventures – why is it that I have not heard of them before you left? What are you up to now, my little jack of all trades? Or is this all a dilettante's lie?
I am willing to wait until I am no longer able to see your dream counterpart in the light of summer – but Time does not stand still for us, Arty. I fear that your brothers will grow up never knowing you; I fear that your father will never speak of you again; I fear that Butler will never stop blaming himself for letting you leave without him. I fear that I may never be able to stop waiting for you to come home.
If I could stop time – just like the fairies in those stories – I would have Time stopped, just for you. I would even have Time die so we could be here when you return to us; we would be unchanged, exactly as you remember us, willing statues overlooked by Time's unstoppable, unforgiving dance. It would all be done for you.
But all this is merely a fool's wish. We are nothing but ghosts, and Time spares no one, be they in grief or not; being ghosts, we do not have it in us to catch hold and keep the people we love with us.
I can only hope that I will still be here to meet you when you return. I may be a doddering old fool by then, or a woman warped by time and bitterness, but I will still be your mother.
But all this is a dilettante's lie
Time's face is not stone nor still his wings,
Our mind, being dead, wishes to have time die
For we being ghosts cannot catch hold of things.
~ August, Louis MacNeice
A/N: And...how was it? This isn't my usual style of writing - would really love to hear your thoughts on this. Concrit will be very much appreciated! :)