The Whimsy

conclusion

by RD Larson

“What unusual rocks — I’ve never see rocks like that before,” Bethany exclaimed.

“Don’t think so. Don’t think so at all.” Fiona muttered in reply as she went down the cut-in steps. She began to circle the path around the headstones, chanting to herself. “Aunt Rebecca, Baby Charles, Grandpa, Grandma,” she chanted as she slowly walked around the circle, now mostly in shadow. An eerie feeling chilled the back of Bethany’s neck as she went down the steps after Fiona.

“Mommy and Daddy, Uncle Connor,” said Fiona. Bethany jerked, startled as she heard her employer’s name.

Bethany bent to read the brass plaque on the first blue-black rock headstone. It read:

Rebecca dwells still
By the sea
Untaken
She walks among us
Pursued by the
Whimsy
Saved by the
Blood of the Heart
Of the
One
Who
Loves her still

Green tarnish grew between a few of the letters, but there were no dates on the plaque. How long had Rebecca been dead and who was the “he” that was mentioned? Gibson, perhaps. The rock was amazing, a deep dark blue the color of the bottom of the sea, and shining, it seemed to Bethany, from within its heart.

She went to the next rock, reading, and on to the next. The messages were all about the Whimsy. Some had been saved by the heart’s blood but some had not. One of the dead was named Siobhan. Gibson’s wife? A frightening comment was engraved on the brass:

Siobhan,
Mysterious Woman
Married in love,
Frightening in her power,
A wife and a mother
Whose short life
With unborn son
Torn from us
By the Whimsy.
We fight lest we forget her
Violent end

Bethany looked up, hot tears on her cheek, not seeing Fiona anywhere. She called out to her. “Fiona! Fiona!”

“Here I am,” said the girl rising from the base of the obelisk. “We have to hurry, Bethany, it’s getting dark and the wind is on the rise.”

“Wait, I want to read the last one,” Bethany stopped at the last one and bent forward. At once she saw Fiona’s name. Shock made her tremble and she dropped to the ground as she read the words.

“Run, Bethany, run,” shouted Fiona. She pulled at Bethany’s hand, but the woman felt limp and confused. She struggled to get her legs under her body.

With a great swollen force the wind blew into the circle of headstones. Fiona screamed and ran away up the earthen stairs. Bethany saw the stones roll and tumble as the gale struck her, throwing her back on to the ground. She saw Fiona blown back part way down the steps. The roar was so loud that Bethany couldn’t hear her screams of fear. Her eyes were rolling and she stumbled before she could struggle forward.

“Fiona!” cried Bethany, pushing against the wind. “I’m coming.”

One of the blue-black boulders rolled toward her as in a warning. She skirted it, running to the left, and then jackknifing back toward Fiona. Horrified, she saw the same rock roll toward the child. The rock with Fiona’s name on it. She raced toward Fiona. The child was trying to claw up the embankment of the cemetery circle.

In a sudden twist the rock smashed into Fiona’s body, crushing her. Immediately the wind ceased. Bethany ran to Fiona. A great gash sliced through the child’s dress and chest. Bethany’s screams ripped out against the dusk.

“Oh, no, no,” cried Bethany, kneeling, keening. Fiona’s face was white.

“Don’t touch her! Stay back,” shouted Gibson from the rim of the burial circle. His eyes were huge black orbs. His white shirt flapped around him as he ran to Fiona.

He scooped up the girl and knelt with her bleeding chest against his white shirt. Bethany stared unbelieving as he pulled his shirt open. He reached into his chest, through flesh and bone to his heart. Jerking it out, he squeezed it over the wound of the lifeless Fiona. Brilliant drops of his blood fell into her torn chest.

She was wet with both her blood and with his.

“What are you doing?” Bethany moaned.

“It’s the Whimsy, forever taking my loved ones.” Gibson rocked as he squeezed his heart again and again. “Only my heart’s blood can save them. It’s the Whimsy, come to punish me.”

As suddenly as the wound had occurred, the gash in Fiona’s chest closed, leaving her bloodied dress clinging to her small body. Gibson pushed his heart back into his chest, and fell aside, collapsing from the effort. The only evidence of such a miracle was the wet blood staining the shirt front.

“What is this about?” Bethany realized that the world she knew had tilted, forever altered and contaminated.

Gibson didn’t answer. He picked up Fiona and stood. Panting, he beckoned to her; he went up the steps and started toward the house.

She followed him, listening as he crooned a lullaby to his niece. The ferocious wind was now gone completely. Still it blew in her mind’s eye. What was it? How had it come to be? Did Gibson know why?

Bethany tried to pray. Her own heart felt bruised and twisted. Would Gibson tell her? Could he explain it? When they reached the house, Gibson took Fiona into her bedroom and called to Regan to undress her as he came out. Without a word, he tore off his shirt and went up the stairs to his rooms. He dropped his bloody shirt on the parquet floor.

Bethany shook her head in disbelief. She looked into the parlor where a fire was lit and lights burned. It looked so normal that the scene calmed her. She went into the kitchen meeting Regan as she was coming out on her way to Fiona.

“There’s kettle of water simmering. Make a cup of tea and you’ll feel better,” Regan said as they brushed past each other.

Bethany, numb to the core, unconsciously made tea and took the cup and saucer into the parlor. Sinking down in a upholster chair, she felt her body shaking. She carefully set the rattling teacup down on a table near the chair. Then the tears came.

She’d been through so much, now this. How could she go on? None of it made any sense. She sensed Gibson’s return; heard his steps to the kitchen, heard the sounds of tea being brewed and dazedly felt his presence in the parlor. She turned her back to him.

“I have to talk to you, Bethany. I want you to stay, to help me, and to help Fiona. Fight against the Whimsy. You were very brave tonight.” Gibson said slowly, his voice quiet.

“It terrified me. What is it?”

“I don’t know. It’s something otherworldly.” Gibson leaned back in his chair, his eyes closed. Not looking at her, the steaming cup held on his knee. “After the prize, I was so involved with myself, I paid no attention to my sister, Rebecca, I dearly loved her, but she had married a man I neither liked nor tolerated. I kept my peace but I also kept my distance. After the Titus Award was given I was swept up in a round of readings and appearances. I met a woman, a woman that I married. My sister and her husband and child, Fiona, lived with me. The three of them lived on the bottom floor. When I wasn’t away on speaking tours, my wife and I stayed in the rooms upstairs. I want to create another book of prose, better than the first, more poignant, more intense.” He paused and sipped his tea. “My wife, Siobhan, also found herself unnoticed. I had work I had to do. She blamed my sister.”

“My wife grew to despise my sister. She treated Rebecca viciously. I could only try keeping Siobhan away from Rebecca. In time she clawed at me and tried to keep me from writing the history of Gypsies that raised her.”

“One night there was a fire in the kitchen. I was able to save Fiona. But Miles, Rebecca’s husband perished. And Rebecca herself was seriously burned. She spent days in the hospital recovering. I was frantic because I blamed myself.” Gibson went on.

“And Siobhan? Where is she now?”

“Buried in the Circle. Siobhan died in my arms in rage the same night I brought my sister home. I wanted her to live. I swore to her that I would spend my heart’s blood to keep her with me. But her own heart broke. And it just happened. Just like you saw tonight. So my wife lives yet she is dead. I can’t explain it. Nothing makes any rational, scientific sense.”

Bethany stood and he raised his head to look at her. As she looked down into his face she could know his pain.

Gibson bent his head. “I wanted to die when I thought that I had brought Siobhan here to my house, to my place. You see, she had started the fire. She had killed my brother-in-law and tried to kill Rebecca.”

He paused, his eyes glazed by his inner visions. She started to leave. Reaching toward her, Cleve went on slowly, carefully choosing each word.

“I absorbed the truth of the Whimsy, the truth about that wind. Death is not nearly as attractive as envisioned. What if death is not the end? What if there is in fact no freedom from everlasting pain? Would that make religious believers of the atheists? Or would it make the believers take up a life of hedonism to pleasure themselves before the inevitable?”

“So your sister is sustained by your blood? Where is she? The other members of your family? Who is saved? Who is not?” Bethany asked backing up slightly. She felt the top of her head and the back of her neck prickle with fear of the unprecedented.

As though he had not heard her, he continued. “Some deaths are an excruciating pain of life; for under the Whimsy of the wind I am destined to suffer the torture of a life of agony. Siobhan cursed me into a final purgatory,” said Cleve Gibson. He looked up at Bethany.

“The others are truly dead, but Fiona has been spared time and time again by my heart’s blood.” He said this to Bethany his face full turned to her and his eyes locked to hers. “I failed her mother because I was not at home when the Whimsy struck and killed her.”

“Poor Fiona. How can this be? Do you pray? What do you believe? Gibson, this doesn’t make sense,” cried Bethany, her voice raising a note with each sentence. “Answer me, answer me now.”

“I married Siobhan because I loved her, but it wasn‘t a pure love, and she cursed me with the Wind God. “ replied Cleve, dropping his face into his hands and his body quivered with silent sobs. Bethany stood, pulling off her shawl and draping it around the man’s shaking shoulders.

“I cannot stay here; it is more than I can stand. I will leave in the morning,” Bethany said quietly. She laid a brief hand on his shoulder and then walked down the hall to her room just past the living yet dead Fiona.

As Bethany shut the door behind her, the wind caught it and slammed it into her shoulder. With a small cry, she latched it and sank down on the bed. I know he needs me in some way, but what could I do to help him? I have no knowledge of gypsy magic or miracles, thought Bethany. As she undressed and put on her gown, she tried to imagine what the Whimsy could be; Gibson had called it the Wind God. But that wasn’t possible.

He must have lost his mind, she decided. I will find other work. Somehow. I will have Catherine with me again some day. I cannot help Cleveland Gibson in any way.

Finally, exhausted, Bethany dropped into a sound sleep.

Suddenly she woke clear and fearful. She sat up, and quickly jerked out the rug from beneath the bed.

She stared at the purple twisting vine woven into the fabric of the rug. It was spiderwort. And it grew in a patch by the back door of Gibson’s house!

There was a great moan in the wind as it whorled around the house. It called to her and baited her. Bethany got up and walked out of the door straight to the patch of purple barely visible in the darkness.

She broke off a piece, and chewed it. The juice burnt and stung her tongue. With a clear vision she swallowed it. Then she ran to the burial circle.

The wind drove and pummeled her, bruising her back and arms. At the rim of the circle she stopped. The obelisk stood piercing the windy sky as its headstones defended it.

Bethany sucked in a deep breath and walked to the obelisk. Resting her hand against its smooth side she spoke softly, mindlessly knowing the words to arouse Siobhan from the blue-black slab.

“I have come, Siobhan, to ask you to release Cleveland Gibson from your curse. He did not know the story of the Gypsies of the Wind. But I do. I know all of our histories and we have fought before in other lives, in other times. I ask you to die in peace and live in another century. Siobhan, find a new love and let the torture stop.”

A groan erupted from the heart of the stone. A white arm and hand reached from nowhere to clasp Bethany’s throat.

“No, Siobhan, you will not,” Bethany shouted, twisting away. The blue-black rock melted and eddied into a pond.

Bethany let out her breath.

Too soon.

The pond reformed and gleamed, becoming a shadow, then a mist and finally became the form of a woman. Siobhan flew at her, jerking her hair and body with an unbelievable power. Bethany fought back, trying to keep her away.

Just as Siobhan engulfed her mind, succeeded in containing her will, a white-shirted man leapt into the Burial Circle. His dark hair blew wildly in the terrible wind. Gibson! Bethany cried his name, beseeching him,

“Run, run away while you still can. She can’t follow you. Run.”

The Whimsy turned to her beloved, her mouth open and bloody, her fingers reaching for his heart, his living heart.

“Hear me, Siobhan,” Bethany screamed, her head back and her arms uplifted.

“I say to you, Daughter of Whimsy, go back to another century. I am the Storm Lord’s Gypsy Daughter and I have the power of purity.” She began to chant, over and over again.

Ekkeri, akai-ri, u kair-an.
Fillissin, follasy. Nakelas ja’n...
Illssin gaetic dai faris dire
Ekken u dar di’a...

“Go, go back,” shouted Gibson, his hands striking like hammers on the face of the Whimsy, and his heart bulging against his shirt. Her fingers curled toward his heart. Her eyes were fierce and smoldering.

“I banish you from this community and from this man. Go back to the place of your birth!” Bethany cried out loudly, her bell voice ringing against the night wind

With a howl of pain, the Whimsy whirled away blowing out to sea beyond the distant shores.

“Bethany, how did you know?” Gibson held her tight in his arms, breathless.

“I was born a gypsy and lived as a gypsy. I have left that life behind me forever.”

“And you’ll stay here? Help me? Help Fiona? Please, I will ask nothing more of you than your friendship.”

Bethany nodded, but her eyes turned toward the whitecaps on the sea. She knew the rock monoliths would form a circle somewhere, sometime out there.