I am so close to home now. Just over the hill and down the other side and I will be there. In my own little valley the moonlight will already be streaming down, creating shadows amongst the now skeletal trees. I can already picture the warmth of the fire that will, by now, be burned low, but still with plenty of popping embers as they finish charring the last of the logs I had laid in the fireplace before heading out.
The path is well remembered, from years of travel between my house and Emma's, and I don't mind it's length. It is always nice to spend a day with her, and today was no exception, the two of us taking the time to can the last of her garden's bounty for the year. Tomorrow she will doubtless walk the path to my house and help me with mine, even though she is nearing eighty, and can't see as well as she once did.
Her spritely legs still work just as well as they ever did, and she is always glad for company. "Many hands make light work", she has told me more than once, probably more than a hundred times by now, over the course of our decades long friendship.
It was Emma who took my clueless hand and showed me how to gather the forest's varying bounty, each item in its season, and what to do with it once I had it safely home. I was so naïve when I first moved out here, having inherited a little parcel of land from my hardly remembered great-grandmother.
Emma came as the most delightful surprise, showing up on my doorstep one bright morning with a basket tucked over one arm. I still remember how I had stood there as she looked around back, noting silently how I hadn't even cleared the old garden plot, even though I had moved in only the day before. She simply handed me the basket, stepping towards the plot and rolling up her sleeves. She had only made it a couple of steps before turning her head towards me as if to verify that I would be following.
By that afternoon we had cleared out the modest space that had been used by generations of my family, and we were just finishing sowing all of the seeds she had tucked into that basket. At first I was dumbfounded to see the folded pieces of paper with precious seeds tucked safely within. These were not seed packets, but rather seeds she had harvested herself from her own garden the previous year.
I admit I felt pretty stupid, thinking seeds only came from the home and garden center in town. Of course they had to have been harvested from somewhere, they weren't manufactured. Emma, however, took it in her admirable stride and kindly suggested other varieties I may want to try if I wanted to expand the garden space next spring. She had plenty stashed away, as she delightfully informed me, "You won't want to keep eating the same old things year after year. A person needs some variety, and besides, this isn't the best year to be planting some of them. We're in for a wet summer this year, I'm afraid."
And she was right. Emma was a human barometer, even better than the little Farmers Almanac I had picked up on my next trip to town. The seedlings took, and, despite the wetter than normal summer, I was facing a lot of waste if I couldn't figure out what to do with it all. It's then that Emma showed back up one day, basket in hand, ready to pull a bunch of bottles out from a cupboard I had somehow overlooked.
That was our first time canning together, and I was amazed by not only how knowledgeable she was, but how fun such a domestic and seemingly outdated chore could be. We've shared canning and baking and gathering off and on every year since, and today was just the latest in finding still more surprises up Emma's sleeve. Today she had pulled out a new recipe we hadn't covered before. I wondered where she kept them all, as I never once saw her refer to anything written down.
My own basket clinked gently, reminding me of the sauce she had sent home with me. Two precious jars to be kept for some special occasion. "It's going to be a long winter." she said. She seemed to think I would understand when the time would come for them, and over the years I've just learned to trust Emma's recommendations, as she hadn't steered me wrong yet.
The night was calm, cool and peaceful as I began to climb the hill. The moon was still climbing the hilltop before me, and I knew my shadow would be stretching out impossibly long behind me. It was the sudden rush of wind that made me pause. It wasn't a large gust, but the noise of it seemed incredibly loud in the relative silence of the night. I glanced behind me for a moment just as something blocked the moon's light for a moment. My shadow was obliterated by darkness for a moment, and then blinked back into view. I glanced up at the moon before me, but there was no errant cloud above that had drifted across.
Shaking my head I turned my feet towards home and began walking slowly again, finally reaching the crest a few short moments later. Below me, tucked in safe and sweet at the edge of a small glen, glowed the windows of my dear little home. Faint glow, to be sure, given it was only the remaining firelight that offered illumination, but more than enough to see from my vantage point. In another five minutes the well-worn path I followed would take me straight to my front door, and I wanted nothing more than to stoke the fire, make a soothing cup of tea and settle in for the night.
I owed so much to Emma. I never would have managed on my own for so long without her guidance over the years. There were no thanks large enough to encompass just how much she had helped me to build a new life, a worthwhile life, from the young woman I had been when I first moved in. I still had a few bottles of a raspberry jam I was especially proud of canning on my own, and maybe I would pull a bottle out tonight and set it aside for her visit. It would be delicious with some fresh scones or biscuits.
I could almost taste those scones now, and as I headed down the hill I found my pace picking up a little. It wasn't so late that I couldn't pull the dough together tonight and setting it aside for the morning. That way it would be a quick bake and we'd have more time to finish storing any last items I can pull from the garden. I would rather we get done early, so Emma could get safely back home before dark. As well worn as our path was, I certainly didn't feel well with her walking home alone after dark.
So lost in my thoughts, I almost didn't register that rush of wind again. Given that I was now protected from behind with the hilltop receding behind me, I vaguely knew I shouldn't be feeling a wind at my back, but it wasn't enough to make me pause. A sudden feeling of vertigo, however, threw me off track.
I couldn't clear my head, and I couldn't feel the earth or the leaves beneath my feet. It felt as though I was floating, but there was a wind now rushing by my face. I couldn't fathom how the wind had suddenly shifted direction. I turned my face towards the moon, but something was blotting it out. Something impossibly close. I looked down and there was nothingness below. There was no ground.
I couldn't make sense of what was happening. Where had the ground gone? Suddenly a brief flash of light below and then gone- the windows of my home fading fast behind me. Somehow I was in the air and moving impossibly fast.
Wait, where was my basket? Had I dropped it somehow? Would poor Emma come across it in the morning on her way to my door, lying abandoned in the middle of the path? Would she worry? Would she ever know what had happened to me?
The weightlessness lasted forever or mere moments. I was still trying to gather my thoughts when suddenly I felt ground beneath my feet again, and I stumbled, but managed to stay mostly upright. The clink of bottles broke into my tumbling train of thought and I clutched at the basket I realized I was still holding onto. The thought that, without the basket to find, Emma would never know where I was or what happened.
But what had happened? And where was I? There was no moon or stars, and I could feel the roughness of rocks underfoot. Was I somehow in a cave? My mind seemed to finally register the wrongness of what was happening as my heart began slamming in my chest.
It was only then that I felt the basket suddenly lightening as if the weight of the jars had been removed, as if someone had lifted them out unnoticed.
"I am sorry, my dear", came a kindly voice from one side of me, and I turned in the dark, struggling to see who or what was there. "It's time for me and mine to renew ourselves. We are old now, and our bones ache. It isn't much that we need, or often, but we need to partake in order to grow young once more. It is going to be a long and hard winter and then there will be much to do this spring."
What? Wait.
"Emma?" I whispered, a feeling of relief coming across me for a moment.
"Yes, my dear," came her reply, and her withered hand stroked my cheek.
"Is it time already?" came a voice from behind me.
"Ooh, this one is plumper than the last," said another.
If I hadn't been scared out of my wits, I might have responded to the jibe about my weight. So maybe I had been eating more of the scones and jam than was good for me, but that was my own business.
In the darkness about me I could hear shuffling and whispering as if a multitude of people were slowly closing in around me, and I couldn't help but let out a whimper as leathery hands pinched and grabbed at me.
And then I heard it. The pop of a canning jar lid. It seemed so loud to my ears, and it was followed by the other jar.
"Remember my loves, many hands make light work", came Emma's gentle voice before my world ripped apart and was no more.
