Ash Eater Read online

  Ash Eater

  By Joanna Emerson

  © 2016

  Ash Eater

  © 2016 Joanna Emerson

  No portion of this work may be reproduced without permission from the author.

  This is a work of fantasy fiction. Characters and locations are a product of the author’s imagination.

  Fiction—fantasy—faeries—elves--giants

  Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

  Dedication

  To P. Hewson: Because you had the courage to write and sing Iris (Hold me Close), and all the Songs of Innocence, it gave me the courage to finally publish this.

  And to the lamb, because wholeness is real, thanks to you.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  “I eat ashes as my food

  and mingle my drink with tears…”

  ~ Psalm 102:9

  All day long my enemies taunt me;

  those who rail against me use my name as a curse.

  ~ Psalm 102:8

  Late Autumn, 1988

  Chapter 1

  The Red Stain

  The drab yellow sunlight of autumn—pale, sickly, drowning in summer’s rejection—spits across my concrete path. Its slant in the sky blinds me. What’s there to see, anyway, when the world is devoid of wonder?

  I drag my feet over the gravel-strewn sidewalk, feeling like a juiced lemon. I must look no better. All my pulp and substance dangles off my edges.

  Small stones fly toward me from across the street, they ping off the curb or thud against my shoes. My classmates from the new elementary school are too spoiled to be angry, and the fact that they’re merely repulsed isn’t enough to propel the pebbles toward my head. No one wants to get within range of me.

  During lunch today, one of the kids asked if Mom and Abbie are really sisters. I lied. Horribly. My hesitant answer betrayed me. And the rumor spread like wildfire. Now these kids are so disgusted by the thought of me and my family they don’t want to cross the road to throw the gravel at me within range. As if they think I’m a lesbian too, just because Mom is. As if it’s contagious, and they might become gay just by sharing the same air as me.

  Having a mom who’s a lesbian is a better shield than even my period-stained backside.

  Earlier, I tied my sweater around my waist, but what sixth grader can forget a classmate with a red stain on her backside? Even when it’s well hidden.

  Can the day have been any worse? I mean, a bomb going off may have improved my social standing a bit. Or I’d be spared tomorrow.

  I can’t bear the thought of tomorrow.

  Especially when I have this haircut. Whoever thinks a mullet is cool should never be allowed near a pair of scissors. Including me. What was I thinking? Not even hairspray can help me now. I won’t ever touch that ozone-hole-inducing stuff anyway, even if it does help.

  I duck into the dappled shade of a well-worn path. A cool autumn breeze carries the faint smell of cigarette smoke.

  That means Ryan’s out by the pond. Maybe my brother will look at me when I walk by. Maybe he’ll talk to me.

  It’s been a week.

  The last time he spoke to me, it was over my first cigarette. He’d handed it to me along with a statement I’d heard from him all too often. “Don’t tell Mom.”

  What he doesn’t seem to know about me is that I will never betray him. Not to anyone. Not even to Mom. Eight months ago, during the custody battle, I sat in the small room where children sit while the grownups haggle over who is the most unfit parent and why. That day, I looked at my two older brothers and made a vow in my heart. I would never betray them. Ever.

  Especially not over cigarettes, my one excuse to hang out with them.

  Nate, my other brother, gave less savory motivation last week. “Smoke it, Miya! It’ll put hair on your chest!”

  “But I’m a girl. I don’t want hair on my chest.”

  “It won’t really do that,” Ryan assured me. “Come on, you’ll be one of us.”

  My hunger for those words leaves my soul emaciated. I gobbled them up that night like a ravenous bear. It took three puffs for me to even get it right. I coughed and sputtered and nearly threw up on the sidewalk.

  This afternoon I’ll get it right.

  Both my brothers are out by the pond today. They’re smoking these long dainty cigarettes and try to pass it off as if it’s cool.

  Nate even has his electric guitar out to complete the look.

  Ryan sits stoically on a log. At the sight of me, he always becomes rigid, statuesque. Perhaps today he’ll say something beyond, “Yo, sis.”

  Elm and willow trees surround the pond, pointing branchy fingers downward as if to scold any signs of a rebellious teen. Or, in my case, preteen. Every time the wind blows, another elm tree discards an accusatory branch. Sometimes the branches plop into the algae-caked pond.

  “You got another cigarette?” I ask.

  “As long as you really smoke it. This pack cost me a dollar.” In our family, a dollar is always more than we can spare. Where does he find money?

  “I’ll smoke it.” Anything to be close again, spoken to, accepted.

  The autumn light pours through the rustling leaves. We smoke together and I pretend these are the only moments in the universe. No messy custody battles. None of my inexplicable shaking and blackouts. No kids who throw gravel at the least popular kid in the sixth grade class. Heck, I even forget for a few moments that my period leaked through my pants sometime after lunch, an episode that made the new rumors about Mom that much more unforgettable.

  Memories of the school day begin to fade as we sit and smoke, or, in my case, pretend to smoke. For the first time since school started this morning, the chatter of my classmates no longer rings in my ears or my mind. Their rumors make me queasy. Their voices make me stiffen.

  Nate practices the same guitar riff over and over. Ryan and I throw the elms’ and willows’ discarded sticks into the algae-caked pond.

  “You’re not gonna tell Mom about anything, right?” Ryan leans in close enough for no one else to overhear.

  More memories, worse than any from my wretched day, jolt me, slash through me like the razor I’d attempted to use on my legs Monday night. “I won’t tell her anything. I promise.” Besides, he’ll give me the cold shoulder again.

  I have to figure out some way to bury all these memories. I sit on the ground and stare at the pond.

  Ryan leaves with Nate, and I’m alone.

  Always alone. And like so often lately, I can’t get up, not even if I wanted to.

  The ground is wet, but nothing more can add to my humiliation, so I sit. I pull my knees close to my chest. Light is sti
ll in the sky, so maybe the shaking won’t overtake my body. Hopefully. I don’t even know why my body shakes. It started a few weeks ago. And I don’t want anyone to see.

  The slanting sun shines right in my eyes. I squeeze them shut. The brightness assaults my eyelids. An old light. Maybe the autumn sun feels even more rejected than I do. If that’s possible.

  Setting my cheek against my knee, with my eyes still squeezed shut, I turn away from the sun and open my eyes again.

  I’m no longer in the woods beside the pond, but in a green field, greener than I’ve ever seen before. It stretches for miles all around me. Hills gently rise and fall. The perfect shades of blue adorn the sky.

  Something the size of my hand flutters through the sky. It’s probably a butterfly, but it looks like a faerie with orange gossamer wings. I smile at the faerie and imagine she smiles back.

  “Miya…” the flying creature whispers. It startles me to hear her voice, but I’m not afraid. I strain to hear her better. “…there is beauty.”

  Beauty. For a brief moment I not only see beauty, I feel it. I lift my face again to the sun, closing my eyes tight.

  “Miya!”

  At Mom’s voice, I open my eyes. I’m back again in the woods beside the algae-covered pond, surrounded by cigarette butts. Yuck.

  *

  “There you go again.” Abbie’s voice sounds distant, as if it’s traveling through water. Or through millions of miles of space instead of across the brightly lit kitchen. “Are you okay, Miya?”

  I try to answer her. There are light-years of darkness between me and the table where I sit, let alone from me to her.

  “We’re going to have to call someone if this continues.”

  I tug at the edges of my consciousness, willing my mind to obey. So many miles to fly through to get back again. And there’s so much darkness between there and the kitchen. I swim and soar and coil back into the blackness, back into the safety of my private cocoon.

  I emerge just long enough to placate everyone’s concerns about me. “I have homework I’m trying to figure out.”

  “Okay. No problem. Your mom and I have just been worried.”

  As soon as she turns around, I let go of the pretense that I can control this, whatever this is that happens seven or eight times a day. I’m glad I’m not shaking this time. I allow the darkness to envelop me. It’s so much easier than fighting it. Fighting it makes me sick, and if I’m sick I’ll have to stay home. In this house. With its ghosts. And my brother. Even school is better than that.

  There’s a certain relief to finishing homework and dinner early. The family scatters their separate ways, and I can slink upstairs before the encroaching twilight reminds me of all my fears. I can switch all the lights on in my room and sink into another U2 album while pretending that Daryl is all I think about.

  Daryl—so safely out of my league. He’s the drummer in Ryan and Nate’s band. I write another love letter on stupid, cutesy stationary and imagine it can be requited. It is, after all, the most beautiful love letter ever composed, and it comes from a well of sincere love.

  I hide the letter under my mattress and take out my latest story in progress. I write and write until sleep starts to overtake me. I turn down the music so Mom won’t turn it off when she comes to turn out the lights. If I fall asleep with the lights on, I won’t have to face my darkness in the dark.

  With the tunes of U2’s Unforgettable Fire in my ears, I can keep the lid over the volcano inside me. And I can cover the volcano of my family and all its secrets that threaten to erupt. Some secrets can utterly destroy, and I keep those locked tight.

  “I lie awake; I have become

  like a bird alone on a roof.”

  ~ Psalm 102:7

  Early 1989

  Chapter 2

  Unwilling Pioneer

  It’s almost spring and I’m still the anathema of the school. Just like I was at the last school. Popular the first two days, despised the next 178 days.

  How do you celebrate your birthday when you’re the least popular kid in the sixth grade?

  “Miya, do you want anyone to come over for your twelfth birthday?” Mom asks.

  As easy as it is to lie for her, I lie to her. “No.”

  I lost every opportunity for friendship on account of questions and lies about her and Abbie; I have no desire left for telling the truth.

  “You can’t spend your birthday up in your room.” I wish Mom didn’t try to syphon the truth out of me like this.

  I’m ready to implode. I love her, but I can’t get into this discussion. I can’t.

  Abbie wants to keep the peace. I can see it all over her face. “How about we celebrate it with just us, as a family.”

  We’re a normal family, right? A happy family—a model of suburbia at its finest, pioneering a future where every kind of family is accepted.

  We rent Star Trek and all of us gather on Mom and Abbie’s bed to watch it.

  As soon as that sequence starts of space as the final frontier begins, my unwanted darkness enshrouds me. Through blackness and water and deep space I swim. My family is so far away and altogether too close.

  Ryan’s elbow leans against my shoulder and the comfort I long for stabs me like misplaced acupuncture needles. I long for a cigarette I don’t know how to smoke, for the open air that terrifies me, for the cave of my room to cocoon me. But I can’t swim up through the blackness to leave.

  “Stop it, yo.” Ryan elbows me again.

  “Miya, you’re shaking,” Mom says.

  I can’t breathe, I can’t find the air to speak. I can’t feel myself shaking. I want my room. I want light. I want the hum of Bono’s voice around me, against my ears, near and far away at the same time. Safe.

  The stairwell feels cramped as both Mom and Abbie lead me to my room.

  Mom’s cold hand presses against my cheek. “She doesn’t feel hot, so it can’t be a fever.”

  “I’ve been telling you for weeks now—this is more like seizures.” Abbie lifts me to my bed.

  “But my daughter never had seizures.”

  “Perhaps these are a puberty onset kind.” Abbie reads and studies so much. Maybe she’s right.

  “I’ll call the doctor on Monday.”

  They walk back down the stairs, leaving a gaping cavity within me. Several minutes pass before I can work up the nerve to press past this darkness, swim to the surface, crawl across the room and bring the boom box close. Yearning for music to chase the darkness away, I press play.

  Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dogs” jolts me. Somebody’s been in my room. They could have read my latest story, found my love notes to Daryl, seen my period stained underwear.

  Robert Plant’s words stab me. He sings about things I want so desperately to be private. He let secrets out of the bag that should be kept locked tight. I hope I can keep mine locked tight.

  I slam the stop button and curl on the floor, fetal, shaking. I can’t even hide here.

  “Yo, sis, I forgot to tell you that Daryl borrowed Unforgettable Fire.” Ryan is standing at my door.

  I peer at him over my shoulder and push myself up from the ugly mauve carpet.

  Oh, well. I had hoped Daryl was perfect, but it turns out he’s like the rest of us. A thief. But I forgive him. “Do you have any other albums?”

  “I have Boy. It’s better than Unforgettable Fire anyway.”

  “Okay.” I don’t believe it’s better, but I accept the exchange. Anything to hear Bono’s voice, to sink into the soulful yearnings of a seeker, to forget my own anguish.

  “I’ll go get it for you.”

  Lonely and hollow, I count my breaths until Ryan returns. I will my body to sit up, not curl into a ball.

  “Here you go.” He tosses the cassette tape onto my bed, five steps away from me, as if he doesn’t want to be contaminated by my room any longer. “Yo, you gotta pull it together. People are getting really worried about you.”

  “I will,” I say to the air he al
ready vacated.

  I crawl to the bed and fetch the tape. Boy doesn’t resonate like I hoped it would. Not until the last song, “Shadows and Tall Trees”. I sink into the lyrics, wrap my blanket around me, and memorize how long it takes to rewind the tape to the beginning of that song. Life is safe again. The lights are on. I can face my darkness. And I will beat it before people start asking too many questions.

  Because I can’t even think of suitable lies.

  My eyes slide shut and I force them open again. Except, I’m not longer lying on ugly mauve carpet in the room in the Silver Meadows housing estate.

  I’m on a wooden floor in a hallway, and the old house I’m now in is warm and inviting, not ghost-filled and suffocating like in Silver Meadows. I’m as light as an iris petal. I push myself to my feet and wander to the kitchen. Sunlight pours through an open window. I smell flowers like the ones Mom plants. I wish I could stay here rather than return to the place where people always turn away from me.

  The wind blows through the window, rustling my hair. Or maybe it’s a whisper, because I swear the wind says the word, “Soon.”

  Excited and frightened, I close my eyes again.

  *

  “Miya, why are you sleeping on the floor?” Mom gently nudges my shoulder. “Come on, it’s time for church. I called you three times already.”

  “I’m up. I’m sorry.”

  “You’ll have the day off tomorrow. I’ll be taking you to the doctor.”

  I cringe. That’s the last place I want to go. I’d rather go to school than to the doctor. The kids make fun of me, but I can dodge their questions. At least at school I don’t have grownups trying to ask me about my family and life at home.

  *

  “The doctor said it’s another bladder infection and that there’s no evidence of seizures.” Mom and Abbie talk openly while making dinner. My brothers’ band, wailing in the basement, drowns out the possibility of eavesdroppers. I keep my head down, focus on my language arts assignment and pretend I don’t hear them.