The River Wife by Heather Rose

is to be human?’ I asked the river. ‘To feel this restlessness?’

L eaves shivered and the shiver passed on, reflected in the surface of the lake. The sky lay low on the hills and the air was so quiet in the mist that no sound other than our breathing came to us. Across the sheen of lake came bubbles of light floating towards us, rainbow domes of swirling pink, gold, palest green, mauve, the finest fabric water can make, each bubble holding within it the breath of the lake. They passed us by, that fragile flotilla, and drifted onto the shore, still whole, still rainbow lined.
    ‘What is that?’ asked Wilson James, his breath no more than a whisper, as if his voice might burst the fragile membranes that held the rainbow spheres afloat. ‘Where have they come from? Is it something in the lake causing it?’
    ‘They are the dreams of children that have risen from the Lake of Time,’ I said, for that is what my father told me. As a fish I had watched them form beneath the lake’s surface, the cold and warm currents spiralling in long strands until they slipped free and rose into lines of bubbles transporting the sky’s smallest rainbows.
    Wilson James closed his eyes. The bubbles vanished mutely one by one. When he opened his eyes again Wilson James said, ‘How old are you?’
    ‘That is not a question I can answer,’ I said.
    ‘I thought not,’ he said.
    Brushing off the crumbs of food he had eaten, he said, ‘You do not feel the cold, you are not dressed for this place and yet you seem more of this place than the trees.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘What do you eat? I saw no food in your house.’
    ‘I liked the bread of my father and the soups he made. But he has no need of such food anymore and neither do I.’
    He nodded. Wilson James had taken the human path that was marked with red shapes on trees. For a little way the music of the river followed the path through the lichen-covered trunks of the forest. But the path left the river behind as it climbed higher. Once Father and I climbed the mountain to the west and he thought it was a walk we could do from sun-up to sundown and that it would be safe for me. There were small streams and water pathways, but as soon as the river’s voice was gone I felt a darkness about me as if I was entering a world where I was blind. I chose never to walk the human way again but took always the river’s path.
    I found there was much I wished to ask Wilson James as we sat upon the shore. Wilson James, I had discovered, had words for every thought and colour, each mood or expression. It reminded me of Father and the words he had kept for each plant in the forest, each colour and texture of rock. Words were the clothes Wilson James wore, as if in speaking he cast a cloak about the world and it kept him safe as he walked.
    ‘Where are your parents?’
    ‘Oh, my father died last year—a stroke. He was on his way to an appointment. And my mother died some years back. Cancer.’ He looked up at the sky and rubbed his thumb against his other hand. The deepest sadness in Wilson James was still buried like a treasure inside him.
    ‘Is your heart broken?’ I asked Wilson James. ‘Are you in need of moss and spider web and rainbow scales?’
    He looked startled. Then weary.
    ‘My heart is as it is. I am not sure there’s much to be done with it,’ he said.
    ‘Tell me about the sound of your river.’
    Wilson James sighed. ‘The river is as wide as this lake and the colour of yellow mud. It has roads and bridges and high-rises built beside it. There is one big park right in the middle of the city that has lots of trees. But not like these trees. I’ve never really had much interest in trees. Until I came here I’d never sat on the edge of a river. I used to go fishing on the coast with my father as a kid. But we only went a couple of times. It’s very strange to find myself here. It’s so quiet. Yet I am occupied. Occupied in a different way. I have mastered an axe. I watch the