The War Chamber (3 page)

“I'm glad there's no draft, Dad. I know I couldn't get drafted even if there was one, but I couldn't stand seeing any of my friends go through what you did.”

“Your mother hated war for all the womanly reasons, probably the best reasons. When you were born, she used to say she would go to any lengths to keep you from going into the military. But when you became sick and lost your hearing, she tormented herself constantly, thinking it was her fault. She felt surely she had brought your deafness upon you as a way to keep you safe at home. She was devastated, but a tiny, secret part of her was relieved. That was her guilt.”

David ponders this bit of information a moment.
Nobody can make somebody else deaf. They can't, can they?
The possibility stirs up unwelcome conflicts in David, adding more fuel to the fire of his resentment over his mother having abandoned him.

* * *

During an agonizing week of waiting, David observes the change in Port Avalon's ambiance. Kids playing war games on the beach instead of splashing in the surf. The old-timers having heated let's bomb-the-bastards debates over their afternoon game of checkers. Shopkeepers scouring the national headlines for political news instead of the weather forecast that would give them a hint of the possible tourist traffic for the day. He knows what the vote will be even before the final tally is in. So does his father.

“An overwhelming Yes to accept the government contract.” Janice hangs up her office phone after receiving the news from the Mayor's office. “I'm so sorry, Isaac. Mostly, I'm ashamed of my behavior at the meeting, pumping up the positive aspects of this very distasteful venture.”

Isaac shrugs, his face says he is deflated but resigned. “You did what you thought was right, Janice. I was as evangelical as you with my anti-war sermon. The people deserved to hear both sides, and they did.”

“But maybe there's another side, Isaac, one that neither of us thought of.”

“What other side?”

“I don't know. Some kind of alternative. A way to reject the contract and still help the economy of Port Avalon. We didn't offer any alternative, so they had no choice.”

“Well, if you can think of anything before we have a million tons of battleship gray steel roll into our warehouses, let me know.”

“We'd have better luck if we both tried to come up with a solution. I don't want to be the only one lying awake at night racking my tired brain.”

Isaac's dark, moody expression is softened by Janice's conciliatory tone. “Yep, two heads are better than one. Unless they're three heads. That's how we got into this,” he says, referring to the public platforming of the issue.

Janice winces. “
Touché
. Don't remind me.”

After a restless night stewing over the town vote, David awakens with the dawn. He rolls out of bed and plops down sullenly onto the window seat. He stares out at the sky, mesmerized by the brilliance of the rising sun.

By the time David plies himself out of the window seat again, the afternoon sun is pouring into his room, hot and insistent through the glass panes.

He opens the drawer of his desk and removes the silk pouch he had tucked away there three months ago, unties the string and carefully empties the crystals onto his desk. Each one of them has a story to tell, and not just the little folk tales he made up for Sally's amusement.

Particles from the tourmaline, amethyst, and smoky quartz had been turned into an elixir by Ishtar to make him well when he fell down that bottomless hole on the Island. The Moldavite had given unprecedented power to David's hearing aid, allowing him to communicate with Ishtar from the palace tower as he searched for Saliana. With the rose crystal, David had brought back Saliana's miracle of love to Sally and let her walk again, if only for a short time. Sally still wears the rose crystal in the same pendant Saliana wore, but no longer a recipient of its healing powers.

Now the crystals all look cold and ordinary, just pretty colored stones that belie all the wonders they invoked on that memorable first day of summer. Even the Singer, the boat-shaped crystal that he and Dorothy had dubbed his mystical “crystal clipper,” seems unable to instill in David the same transcendent feeling he had when he first held it.

“Many people can handle a crystal,” Dorothy had said as David watched the rainbow colored sunlight dance on the Singer's sculptured planes. “But a crystal has but one true owner. If he works with it and believes in it, he can develop extraordinary powers of communication…”

“What do I have to lose? I can't get any more confused and miserable than I am now.” David fastens the pouch of crystals to the belt loop of his white deck pants, slips on his canvas moccasins and heads downstairs. On an impulse, he returns to his room and rifles through the shirts hanging in his closet.

He pulls out the blue cotton, slips it on, buttons it up - except for the two top buttons - and tucks it in. He likes the comfort of the collarless neckline and the roll-up sleeves. Checking himself in the mirror, David runs his fingers over the monogrammed initials, “D.N.” His mother had embroidered them herself. In fact, she had made the shirt, a triumph of tenacity over an all-thumbs ineptness as a seamstress. The shirt and a pink silk sheath dress were all Billie had made before she died. She was buried in the dress.

Moving more swiftly than he has in weeks, David takes the stairs two at a time and barrels out the front door. He jogs to the cemetery, but stops short at the entrance. David stands rigid for a moment contemplating, feeling doubt take control of him.
This is crazy
, he thinks.
Even if Mom could hear me, she'll think I'm nuts or something.

He turns on his heels to leave, but halfway across the street, David is overcome by an inner impulse. Bolstered by this force, he enters the cemetery and makes a straight, sure path to his mother's grave.

The flowers David and his father placed on her grave last Sunday still make a colorful, fragrant quilt, even though some of the petals have withered. Looking at the halo of petals around the violets, he is reminded of the gridwork patterns he experimented with on that fateful day in June. Trying to decide on an opening line, David paces back and forth, kicks up some loose dirt, and teeters back and forth on his heels.

Finally, David blurts out, “Why is this so hard. All I want to do is talk to – “ David chokes on the words. “ - talk to you, Mom. But how do I know you can hear me now? You didn't hear me in the hospital when I begged you not to die. Maybe you don't want to. Maybe it's so great where you are that you don't want to know about us anymore. You don't want to know about our problems and how much we need you. Is that it? Did you get tired of being needed so much, of always having us on you about something? Mom, fix my lunch. Mom, ask Dad if I can stay out late tonight. Mom, I'm not a kid anymore. Leave me alone…leave me alone…”

David drops to his knees and cries all the tears he hadn't let himself cry for months, rivers of tears, flowing in torrents, so many tears his eyes swell up and his nose runs. He wipes it with the back of his hand.

“Damn it! Why didn't you listen to me,” he yells, pounding the ground with his fist. “Do you have any idea what's happened since you left? Dad nearly died himself from the guilt. Sally's legs are useless. And me - I'm a mess. I don't know what happened to me. I went to some strange place on this mystery ship and had all kinds of insane things happen - a storm, and monsters, and…and all kinds of wonderful things, too. There was a girl there. I think I loved her and I think she loved me…”

David swallows hard, remembering how he rescued Saliana from the palace tower, beautiful Princess Saliana with the angelic voice, a voice they said had the power of healing and immortality. His intellect knows there is no such place, no such princess. And no mortal could sing the way she did. But there is one phenomenon that he cannot erase from his mind.

“Mom, I could hear there. I could hear everything, but I don't understand how or why. And I can't talk to anybody about it. Not Dad or Aunt Dorothy, though she'd understand probably more than anybody. Not to Sally - she'd believe anything I said, she believes in me so much. But I let them both down. I don't have any special gifts,” he sobs softly, “except in my dreams. The worst part is that I'm so mad all the time. Aunt Dorothy thinks I'm mad at you. She told me to come here today, to talk to you about my crystals, and maybe I'd stop being so mad.”

David removes his crystals from the silk pouch and lays them out on the grave by the headstone. Carefully, he arranges them into the mystical Star of David gridwork pattern with the Singer crystal at the apex.

“The last time I did this, I was taken far away. Maybe I can do it again. Only this time, I want to be with you, Mom. I want to see you face to face again so I can understand why you left and what I have to live for!”

David heaves a deep, longing sigh and settles back on his haunches. Sweat beads up on his forehead and he becomes acutely aware of the sun's intense rays. He weaves slightly, his strength sapped. Relentlessly, the sun bears down on the cemetery and on Billie Nickerson's grave. The Singer glints and sparkles, creating a glare so strong that David must shield his eyes.

Now he is encased in a mantle of white light, obscuring his view of everything around him. Now David hears a soft hum that builds to a frequency so shrill he squeezes his hands over his ears. The unbearable tenor persists and David protectively pulls out his hearing aid. But instead of total silence, the piercing tone becomes a celestial voice, unlike anything David could ever imagine, sweeter even than Saliana's song. David looks up and the marble angel is with him in the light. He swears she is singing to him. In the intense, blinding radiance, the angel's wing cracks as though struck by a bolt of lightning. David screams, and screams again. “Mom! Mom, help me!”

The vision before him is more than David can comprehend, holographic at first, an image from a distant dimension, shimmering and ephemeral. But it's a vision so warm, so embracing that David moves toward it, willingly, longingly, unafraid. Now it takes shape, form, content. Her gold hair moves freely in the gentle wind. She is more lovely, more serene, than he's ever seen her. Had it not been for the dress, David would not have been so certain who she was. The pink sheath, the one she made, the one they buried her in, caresses her body demurely. She is vibrant, breathtaking, alive, and her touch is real.

“I'm here, David. I'm here. I will always be here, though you won't always know me. Take the journey, David. Take the journey and I will take it with you.”

Suddenly, someone else is calling his name. The louder she calls, the fainter his mother's image, until it is gone completely.

“David! David!” the voice calls again.

He scrambles to his feet, then spins around to see who it is who calls his name, a name he actually hears, he actually
hears
. There is no one there, but he follows the call, running swiftly from the cemetery down to the beach and over to the pier.

The flotilla of small boats is about to set sail for the Port Avalon Autumn Celebration. Dorothy's sloop is laden with excited children waiting to set sail, the sloop that she named Moon Singer at David's suggestion. “
Just an inspiration,
” he had told her.

Seeing David, Dorothy waves him on deck. His heart pounds with excitement and he eagerly wants to share his experience with his aunt. Perhaps now he can tell her all of it, the Island adventure and now this graveyard vision.

“Come on, we're lagging behind,” Dorothy calls. “Help me hoist the sails and open her up.”

“Aunt Dorothy! I've got to tell you something. You won't believe…”

“Tell me, later. We've got to join the flotilla.”

David jumps aboard and helps his aunt with the halyards. The boat slips smoothly out of the harbor between the jetties to the open sea. In his haste and bewilderment, David doesn't see the line spring free from its mooring. In one fell swoop, an untethered sail boom knocks a stunned David overboard and he goes under.

Even beneath the water, David feels the sharp throbbing pain where the wild sail knocked him in the head. Frantic voices, that he can actually hear, yell above him, above the water, but he cannot discern what they are saying. He tries to swim toward the top, toward the voices, but something restrains him. Desperately, David struggles and kicks at the soupy bog below him, trying to get free before it swallows him up. His lungs fill to bursting and he is drowning, drowning, helpless in a claustrophobic terror.

Now comes a distant throbbing, a convulsing, forcing David through the cavernous depths of a black unknown, where screams are inaudible and escape is impossible. But then, comes a thrust, and another, and he is catapulted out of the bottomless prison. Suddenly, he floats free from this nightmare into a dreamy blue abyss. He paddles effortlessly as remnants of his memory drift by him like flotsam. David reaches out to touch them, but they are elusive.

First Saliana, her face radiant as she plucks her harp and sings that celestial song he first heard in the Prism Palace tower. There, now, is the fortune teller, Dorinda - or is it Aunt Dorothy? - caressing the crystal ball wherein lies the mystery of David's journey aboard the Moon Singer to the Island of Darkness. And next, is the high priestess Jaycina, a glittering, alluring jewel, a Neptunian lure for the unsuspecting adventurer.

David tries to swim to them, but with his every stroke their images fragment, then obliterate. Surprisingly, he feels peaceful, at home in the depths of his soul. But when another image looms close, he is struck with both fear and longing at the same time. David struggles toward it, tenaciously propelling himself close enough to touch it. But the vision eludes his grasp, while at the same time it draws him in, encourages him to follow.

“Please wait for me,” David pleads. “Let me reach you. Don't move away. Oh, please, Mom, wait for me, please…”

Gurgling, coughing, spurting water from his lungs, David springs to the surface. He gulps in the precious air, too much, too fast. Hyperventilating, David blacks out and the nothingness enshrouds him.