Moonlight, Reflected in Dewdrops*
magical realism by Shauna Roberts
“Whatever is born, become, compounded is subject to decay,” the Buddha said. Despite my beliefs, I could not accept my father’s death. My teacher at the Buddhist center suggested I take photographs demonstrating annica, impermanence.
The series, showing Ohio wildflowers as buds, in bloom, and in decay, was now touring Japan. Reviews praised it for evoking mono no aware. Orders for prints poured in. But I was no closer to acceptance.
So in the fall, I headed for Shawnee State Forest to take more pictures. I never arrived. Driving south on Route 125, I saw a brilliant blaze of flaming scarlet. I clutched the steering wheel, for a moment back in Cincy watching a skyscraper burn, the skyscraper my father could not escape.
I blinked away tears and saw no fire, no skyscraper, only a grove of Northern red oaks in full fall glory. I had to capture it! A dirt road took me close. I spent hours fixing the fleeting display permanently on film.
Two months later, I bundled up against the icy wind and returned to photograph the oaks in winter, naked of leaves and reduced to stark silhouettes. But when I got to the turnoff, I screeched to a stop.
To my left, a new Arby’s stood on a spot carved from the rock. To my right, an asphalt road lined with house frames had replaced the dirt road. I parked and photographed the scarred hillside, the corpses of downed sassafras and hickory trees, and other destruction.
Tears blurred the image in my viewfinder. Others saw the beauty of impermanence in my photos, in life, but it escaped me.
As I drove toward the oaks, I repeated the Second Noble Truth like a mantra. “The origin of suffering is attachment.” I was here to document, not to judge, not to love. If the trees were marked for removal…
…I would grieve. Would I ever be ready to take my bodhisattva vows?
To my relief and surprise, the oaks stood unmarked. Under their branches, young women danced. Their dark hair gleamed despite the grey winter sky as they pirouetted. All beautiful. All graceful. All naked.
I grabbed my camera and lumbered over, as clumsy as the Pillsbury Doughboy in my down coat and layers of sweaters. “Are you protesting the development?” I asked the first woman I reached. My breath misted the space between us, making her look fairylike.
“No; we are celebrating!” She pulled me by a mitten toward the others. “Join us.”
“I’m here to photograph the oaks.”
“A kindred spirit! I’m Aglaia. Take all the pictures you wish.”
“I didn’t bring release forms.”
“Legalities, bah.” Aglaia winked, let out a tinkling laugh, and skipped back to her friends.
Professional ethics slid away with my thoughts. I shot a memory card full of pictures. I climbed onto the Land Rover; I lay on the ground. I swapped the full card for an empty one and kept shooting.
Exhausted and dizzy, still I shot. The trees rotated in a dance of their own, and the women seemed like trees with their branchlike uplifted arms. I stopped only when the sun set.
Then I was among the women, next to Aglaia, my coat shucked and my arms upraised. They sang in a language I didn’t know. I sang the words and stepped in intricate patterns as if I had done both forever.
With darkness, the dancing turned ecstatic. We formed lines that interwove with each other and the oaks. Under the light of the full moon, the leaping, spinning women glowed as if lit from within. Branches overhead swayed in time with our steps.
Garter snakes woke from hibernation and added their own slithering formations to the dance. Rabbits hopped in circles around us. I was one with the dance.
The tallest woman abruptly raised her hand. “Midnight! An end, and a beginning.” The dancers stopped cold.
The woman flickered like an old TV screen and winked out. I screamed; the others bowed their heads. They were fading. Trunks became visible through their bodies.
“No!” I grabbed Aglaia as if my embrace could keep her there. “What’s happening?”
“No one leaves us offerings anymore. People no longer respect the oaks. We had our time, but it’s over.”
“You’re going into hibernation?”
She shook her head. “Dryads have been fading away. We did not want anyone left alone. Yesterday we celebrated our millennia together, and today we go together to whatever lies beyond.”
“Wait a week! I’ll buy this land. You’ll be safe.”
“Too late.” Aglaia kissed my forehead. “Take a photograph to remember me by.” My camera appeared in my hand. I shot quickly, desperately.
“Don’t mourn,” Aglaia said. “Spring follows winter. Something equally marvelous may follow us.”
“But it won’t be you.”
She faded without reply.
#
I woke to sharp light coming through the windshield. Ice glazed the road; diamond-tipped grass blades sparkled. Groggy and confused, I flexed my fingers and toes; no frostbite, at least.
But why hadn’t I gone home after photographing the oaks? I remembered nothing. I fumbled the camera from my pack and clicked through the last shots.
Aglaia, already diaphanous. My memories returned, and I shuddered with grief. She was gone forever. Heavy-hearted, I climbed out of the Land Rover to look for some memento.
Among the oaks, my ribs vibrated to a rumble too low to hear; something mighty moved nearby. I saw nothing; nothing remained from the revels but a newly shed snakeskin. I leaned against a tree, trying to accept the dryads’ departure in the same spirit as the dryads had.
Molasses-slow waves of solace caressed me. Ancient thoughts comforted me. I realized my ribs vibrated to an overtone of the glacially slow movement of tons of sap. Aglaia was not gone completely; she had left me a part of herself in this gift.
I would have much to meditate on later. But I felt content. The bodhisattva path felt within reach; my life almost had meaning again.
* Title comes from a poem by the Buddhist teacher Dogen (1200–1253)
Copyright January 2012 by Shauna Roberts
Shauna Roberts lives in Riverside, California. She has published science fiction, fantasy, and romance short stories in anthologies and venues such as Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine and Jim Baen’s Universe, as well as a novel, Like Mayflies in a Stream, based on the Epic of Gilgamesh. She is a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop and winner of the 2011 Speculative Literature Foundation’s Older Writers Grant. She is a member of the Romance Writers of America and an associate member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.