Pan Memorial
The dead remember us.
A boy hid amid dusky light filtering through filthy upper windows. He lounged on the window ledge of a dusty artist studio, listening to two adults discuss a clay mold half as tall as the shorter adult. Cold air seeped between cracks in the walls.
The clay depicted a young woman falling. Her skirts yet fluttered amid her upflung feet. Her body arched, denying the ground any hold. Her arms reached up, grasping at an infant being borne away that moment by …
The boy flicked a speck off his shadow. It was difficult to keep those sorts of things stuck on, never mind clean.
“That ever happen to you?” asked the bearded adult.
The woman artist shrugged an errant strand of grey hair from her face.
“Couldn’t have done it so …” The bearded one walked a quarter round the sculpture. “So poignantly if it hadn’t. Mary, this is your best piece.”
“Worth the penny you’re spending for it?” Mary quipped with one side of her mouth twisted sideways. She sat hunched on her little artist’s stool, knife still in her clay-laden hands.
A tear graced her cheek. The boy noted its sparkle in his pocket book.
“Him or her?” the bearded one asked.
“Him.” Mary whispered.
“What did you call him?”
“Frederick. The ‘er’ is important. Not just “Fredrick,” y’know?” Mary stood up. “You think it’s good enough for your daughter?”
“A thousand daughters.” Tears coursed down the bereaved father’s shiny cheeks and soaked his beard. The boy scribbled in his book. “Did you see him?” The man pointed to the infant’s abductor.
“Now and then.”
“What? Still?”
“I imagine he takes news of me back to Frederick.”
“That’s nice.” The father wiped his eyes with a cloth hanky. “Could you …?” He stared at the statue, not seeing the fine cotton of the infant’s dress glancing off the young woman’s fingertips. He coughed into his hanky. “Would he take news of me to Marina?”
The boy flitted through the window into the evening sky. The stars brightened until he could find his way. Marina would dance with delight when she knew she had a statue. Frederick would take her hands and dance along, knowing his mother had put her love for him into this form.
Thank you to the fine editors of Microcosm for the prompt!
I saw the statue I depict in this story somewhere in England. I have hunted through my photos and not found it, but the memory remains with me.
