We Used To Be Close, Don't You Remember?
The carousel has been abandoned for a long time. It slowed down years ago, the music fading away to a haunting stillness, and she remembers how it waited, poised, as if an intermission would soon be over. She isn’t prepared for how badly it has crumbled in her absence, or for seeing how much damage neglect can do. Without anyone to care for it - and really, she thinks with a burst of anger, it wasn’t hers to care for, it was the whole town’s - it’s given up, emitted a long sigh and settled down into the cobbles to die. Rust has bloomed under years of sun and rain, dulling the once vibrant colours to ochre. One of the horses lies on its side. It looks obscene, she thinks, cruel, the pole stabbed through its stomach and a pool of dirty rainwater gathered by its mouth. In the twilight, it looks like blood. She walks around slowly, more and more unsettled with each circuit. Faded patterns seep out from the dirt. She can see rococo swirls, the once-glamourous eddies of colour twisting their way in segments across the canopy, one slice for each horse. The colours and patterns match the animal underneath, and the platform floor is still smooth and worn from their hooves. Once, a long time ago, she had thought they were real.
You thought they were real too, she says later to Sister, don’t you remember? But Sister’s face remains blank, eyes staring with no recognition. As she carefully applies Sister’s makeup - because Sister still loves makeup, even now - she feels a pulse. Faint and far away, a shiver running repeatedly through flesh. It makes her think of the horse on its side. A life still beating, but only just. She has to manoeuvre around the IV line and catheter by the side of the bed, and when she touches Sister’s face the skin feels as rough and splintery as unvarnished wood. Where have you been, Sister whispers. The movement of lips coincides with her applying the lipstick; a jagged line of red now juts out from Sister’s mouth, a dripping accusation that makes her angry. She isn’t the only one who should have been here. Carefully, she wipes it off with a tissue. I’m here now, she says. Don’t you remember the carousel? But Sister doesn’t answer. How quickly, she thinks, she is learning to care for the dead.
The horse’s body feels feeble under her fingers. When she tries to lift it upright it wobbles on its legs; the bottom part of the pole that should have supported it is rotten and cracked, and so she leans it against the carousel, letting another horse take its weight. She’s brought a cloth and a bottle of warm water. The wood is smoother than Sister’s skin. She thinks it still holds the smell of the forest, that every time she runs the cloth along its body some echo of fragrance comes away in her hands, but she knows she must be imagining it. She doesn’t really believe that, after so many years of being tamed, any echo of wildness could still exist. But it reminds her of the old house. Of the skies that were full of weather, and the showers of rain and light, and the great swoops of birds. Of the fireplace with flames crackling, stripping down the magic of grain and burl and knot, and the heat that sifted through autumn air like a flower’s scent. Pinewood, rosewood, dogwood. She and Sister had been born in that house, and had come down to the carousel every week from the time they could walk, sometimes to ride and sometimes just to watch. They had each had their favourite horses. When she looks now, hers is missing. Stolen, she thinks. A great gap on the merry-go-round, like a torn-out tooth.
We used to chop wood, she says later to Sister, don’t you remember? For the fire at home. Father taught us. But Sister’s face remains a blank. Sister had never been very good at chopping wood. Sister had been the clever one and the pretty one, the one who could read the skies but whose slim arms had struggled to swing the axe, to bring it down at just the right angle to split the wood evenly, to make a clean cut, to make it quick. Now, Sister’s arms look like twigs. Splintered offcuts from a badly chopped log. When she leans in close, she can smell it in Sister’s hair: pinecone and fern and damp earth, mingling with the heavy smell of sickness that hangs around Sister like an autumn mist. You must remember the storms, she says, the clouds that swelled over the forest like bruises. This time Sister blinks, nostrils twitching like an animal. Sister can smell it too. There isn’t long left, but she isn’t yet sure how to let go of the dead.
This time, she’s brought paints. Bright colours that she found at the back of one of Sister’s drawers, buried and forgotten after the move into town. There are brushes too, in varying sizes, stiff and unyielding from not being used. She warms them between her fingers, dips them in water to soften them up. The old pattern on the horse’s body is still visible, and she follows it like she follows the pattern of lines on Sister’s skin, smoothing, concentrating, wiping away mistakes with her finger or a cloth. The heartbeat is stronger now. On the horse’s stomach, she finds a whorl, a twisted knot in the wood, a cancerous growth that had once been hidden by the girth of the saddle. She can’t cut it out, so she makes a special pattern. A whirlpool of colour in blue and green. Sister’s favourite horse had been blue and green, grass and sky, a glimpse of dusk through the leaves in the forest. She works quickly. The sun sets suddenly at this time of year, like a candle slumping under the weight of its own wax. When she finishes, it’s almost dark.
You used to love painting, she says later to Sister, don’t you remember? But Sister isn’t there. The body on the bed is still, completely silent, empty of Sister’s rattling breath. She knows that Sister left while she was with the horse, but she still talks, still holds the hand that no longer has a pulse. You painted a picture of the carousel, don’t you remember? Only you left out your horse, you said you couldn’t paint yourself. But Sister’s face remains a blank. Outside, the moon is rising, a bright crescent above the rooftops, and as its light grows stronger so does the essence of the forest. Wood, and resin, and sap. She lets go of Sister’s hand, and breathes in deeply. When she listens, the room is echoing with the distant rhythm of hoofbeats.
Elodie Barnes (she/her) is a writer and editor. Her work has been recently published / is forthcoming in Gone Lawn, Reflex Fiction, and Amethyst Review, and she is Books & Creative Writing Editor at Lucy Writers Platform. When not travelling, she lives on the edge of a wood in northern England and bakes vast quantities of apple cake. Find her online at elodierosebarnes.weebly.com.