I Asked for the Way

T.S.J. Harling

Sometimes I would hear the scratching at night, a nervous scratching at the floor and the walls, making a scrabbling sound as if searching for something, and I could tell it was in rat form. Other nights I would wake up and hear what sounded like a donkey hawing, and hooves clattering, and my sister's voice reassuring it, pacifying it with strokes and whispers. Yet it was the silences that I struggled with, knowing as I finally fell asleep that when I awoke, I would find a long green snake, lying across her neck.

Sara swore she could handle it. Most days, she could. Most days it was a weasel, and it would half climb over her as she tried to go about her life, and she would half carry it, and she would muddle on, trying to work, trying to live. Other days, it was harder, and she would retreat to her room, hungry and tired and subject to the vagaries of its needs.

I would say things like let me kill it for you. She wouldn't object, only hurriedly shake her head. Can't be done, she'd say. It is what it is.

I would plead with her. Why don't we try? Let me try. She would only shake her head again, look into the distance, and wait for me to finish.

It went on like this until one evening I noted that she had not left her room for five days. It had gotten louder, too. During the day it was a growling dog and at night it was a shitting pigeon that pecked at the glass of her windowpane, so neither of us could get any rest. I started coming in with food and something to drink, Sara barely speaking, only barely managing to consume a little of what I brought.

Occasionally I would lash out and scream at it like a silly, naive child. Leave her alone! I would shout. She doesn't want you here. I don't want you here. Oftentimes when I did this it would switch to being a cat, sitting neatly up on Sara's chest, yellow eyes blankly staring at me while the fluffy tail whipped back and forth, back and forth, over Sara's chin.

I was exhausted. I despaired. I raged. I went to our friends’ houses to ask for advice. They didn't know. I went to the doctors, and to church, and to our old school. And they didn't know either. I was stuck and out of options.

There was nothing left for me to do but cast a spell. So cast one I did, praying to the moonlight and all that is good and holy, asking for guidance and fortitude and a direction. I didn’t ask for an answer. I asked for the Way. Then I waited. And it was the waiting that did it. The spell conjured stamina for me.

I fed and bathed my sister and ignored it. It flapped around the room, it reared up, it whistled and whined. I kept feeding and bathing my sister. I held her up when she went to the toilet. I put her to bed when she felt ready for rest. It bit me, it scratched me, it breathed its stinking stench up my nose. But I kept feeding her.

One summer afternoon, I came in and she was sat up in bed, legs slightly bent, fingers clenched, sweating. She was focusing on the floor, and it took me a moment to see what it was. I peered at the floor and saw something very small, wriggling. She had transformed it into a worm.

I stayed at the door, hesitating.

Suddenly she exhaled, flung herself back into bed. It instantly loomed up, a spiteful cobra, hissing and spitting and menacing her. I rushed to her side, kneeling, and it wrapped itself around my ankle, trying to pull me away. But it was too late for that.

Now she knew what to do.

I will be strong for you, Sara, when you can't be, I said quietly, leaning and speaking into her ear behind my hand, as if telling her a secret. I won't give up on you. All you have to do now is keep going.

She kept going. It seemed to become a snake more and more often, still lying across her body, languid and weighty, asserting itself with a confidence we knew it didn't have, getting smaller and slower.

Days and nights and months and years rolled on. Now, she keeps a little mouse about her person, and goes for walks in the morning, and eats with me at the dinner table. A little pet, instead of something frightening. Sometimes, she cooks for us, buttoning the mouse in her shirt pocket so it can't upset the dinner. We sit down together and go to bed at night, and how well we sleep.

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