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there's another, not a sister
"They're always wanting the big scholars to recite. Gilbert Blythe does often and he's only two years older than us. Oh, Anne, how could you pretend not to listen to him? When he came to the line, 'There's Another, not a sister,' he looked right down at you."
— Anne of Green Gables, "A Concert, a Catastrophe, and a Confession"
"There's another — not a sister — in the happy days gone by…I dreamt I stood with her, and saw the yellow sunlight shine, on the vine-clad hills of Bingen — fair Bingen on the Rhine."
— Bingen on the Rhine, Caroline Norton
~
The first dream comes the night after he sees a shell go off.
It is a tangled thing, full of everything he has seen ever since they shipped out to Belgium. Walter never thought much of Belgium; never knew the names Ypres or Flanders. Europe was always grand, romantic places like Paris and Rome and London. These small towns, with their unknown names and plain landscapes, were nothing to him before. But they are the only places that matter now — their muddy fields, their torn landscapes, their unmarked graves.
He wakes with a start and he realizes he has soaked his thin army-issue sheets with sweat. He has had vivid dreams before, but never this vivid — this lingering. He shuts his eyes again but the fear doesn't stop. The images are still so clear, the bodies that went flying with the spray of dirt and smoke. Walter had half-expected them to get up like Jem or Ken after a tackle in football, but instead they had just disappeared into the earth, into the haze. He sucks in breath after breath, but his heart won't stop pounding.
Some men get like this after a skirmish, he was told — and he has seen it, too, the men that have been here longer than him. They cry out at night or worse, don't sleep at all. During the day, they say nothing, marching through their orders with eyes blank and staring. Everyone knows better than to speak to them. Some men suffer from a simple lack of nerve, one of the officers had told them during training. Nothing to fear if you've the constitution for it.
He doubts it, doubts everything the tall man with the deep-set eyes and authoritative mustache had told them all those months ago. He doubts, and when the assuredness gives way, all that's underneath is a chasm of fear.
~
He drifts in and out of sleep, darkness pulling him under into a world where he doesn't see, doesn't feel. Then, slowly, it surfaces: he is running, running, knowing that the shell will hit soon, trying desperately to get ahead of it. He knows, somehow, when it lands — he doesn't hear it, he simply knows in that strange dream-logic way, and suddenly it doesn't matter that he has already outrun this blast, has been lucky enough to be in a different foxhole — this time, he doesn't escape.
He wakes with a start and perhaps a cry — he isn't sure if it's real or in his head, and none of the men will ever tell him.
He rolls over and punches his flat pillow, then he closes his eyes, waiting for sleep. If he tries, he knows he can drift in the darkness for a little while before the dreams come back, before he wakes again like a clockwork.
What a proper soldier he is turning out to be. Even his nightmares are regimented.
It is only — it is so constant. He cannot bear it, every waking moment like this. He wants a warm cup of tea and the soft chatter of crickets in Glen St. Mary. He would even take the sound of students walking up and down the street outside his boarding-house in Kingsport in the middle of the night, girls laughing as college boys tried to impress them. He wants it back, the certainty of those days after he had enlisted, the vision of himself in a wave overtaking the Germans, ending the war in an instant. As hopelessly childish as it is, he wants his mother, wants her to smooth his hair back from his brow and tell him that this is all in his head, that it will be over soon.
Instead, he hears the pattering of rats crawling over their supplies and the sickening squish when one of his comrades manages to bayonet one. He will never get used to that sound, he thinks — not with rats, not with another human…
But he has to. He has to, because there is no way out of this. One cannot quit the Canadian Expeditionary Force like leaving a teaching post or dropping a class at Redmond. This cannot end, will not end, until someone else decides it, until it becomes too much and one side has to break — but it is already too much, can't they see?
It could take months, years, and until then, he is here, here…
The tent feels like it is closing in on him. Walter shuts his eyes and gropes for the comforting dreams of his childhood, the visions of castles in the air, but he is painfully aware of the hard dirt at his back, the strangers surrounding him, the cries that none of them will admit to in the morning.
~
There hasn't been an attack in weeks and the days have settled into a numbing monotony. At night, Walter lies awake, trying to touch it again — the world of his dreams and fantasies, the bottomless well he'd always dipped into for his stories and poems.
But he can't. Even when the worst of the nightmares don't come, in their absence is an emptiness, the sensation that he's being pulled apart and there's nothing in between. He doesn't know what it is he needs, how to stitch himself back together.
He tries to listen, tries to remember the bright colors of the lands he imagined, the secret language of the characters he invented. All he hears, though, is a language that is quite human: the Germans praying, only several yards away. The distance that is so deadly to run in the daytime, strewn with shells and corpses, is laughably close in the quiet of the night.
Vater unser im Himmel, geheiligt werde dein Name...
Walter wonders if they are praying for forgiveness. He thinks of the men he went through training with — Saunders, MacLennon, Barrett — so many already lost in the space of a few months. Barrett was killed in action just last month, blown to pieces by a mine, his body scattered anonymously across the fields of Belgium.
You don't deserve forgiveness, he thinks hotly.
But he knows, too, that they have done just the same, that Walter himself has planted mines, has rushed through the dirt with his gun at the ready. If the Germans are guilty, so is he. If they are begging God for forgiveness, then that is more than he has done.
And if he is no better, if they are no better on this side of no-man's-land, then this — all of this —
He cannot think the rest. He cannot admit to it, not yet.
~
He is in Rainbow Valley in late spring, mud under his shoes, but not the kind that sucks you under. The world is beautifully still around him. He doesn't care anymore for the future, for his life to start. If time freezes forever here, that is perfectly all right with him.
There's a woman waiting for him by the creek, dark hair pinned up under a gray hat. Her fingers dance with a pair of needles as she knits. She is quiet and pale, but there is something musical in her hands.
She looks up at him when he approaches, and she has Una Meredith's face. He opens his mouth to tell her everything, to explain all that he's done — everything he wishes he could put in his letters but can't. Words don't come to him so easily anymore, but then, Una has never been one for talking, so perhaps it's all right.
Calm blue eyes meet his, and she reaches for his hand. Her fingers are cold, but Una's have always been, and it is comforting in how familiar it is.
"Sit with me," she says, and he does.
~
It's easy to be brave here. Jem and Jerry are funny — for the first time, they are in awe of him, they are asking how he has done it — how he found the pluck to dash out into no man's land and drag Lawson back from where he'd fallen. I hate to say it, but I could never run out after I'd made it back to my foxhole, Jem had written.
Walter hadn't been thinking, not really. It had been a split second decision, only a brief thought that — I might die out there, too — and then, even quicker — So what?
He does not count that as bravery at all.
He ought to write to Una Meredith, he thinks. It seems only right, when he sits with her at the bank in Rainbow Valley night after night, waking up with just the memory of her pale fingers knitting something formless and lost to sleep.
Dear Una, he starts, then stops. He suddenly realizes that he does not know what to say. They have written to each other before, when he was teaching, when he was at Redmond — it all feels like a lifetime ago, when he wrote to her about classes and teachers and whether or not he thought the literary magazine would accept his poem. She would write back about the manse and arranging choir practice, and — and all of it just feels so damn pointless now.
He doesn't know why it is always Una that he finds by the stream in Rainbow Valley, why not Di or Faith or Rilla. In the real world, in his memories, they are the ones who have always been at his side — he hasn't spent much more than a few hours with Una, really, over the years.
But he knows her still, he likes to think, knows her steady presence in the room at dances and dinners, even when she doesn't speak. Perhaps that is why his dreams call her to him, wanting her quiet and her calm.
Nothing here is the way I thought it would be, he tells her. In some ways, good — the bravery and the sacrifice is nothing I would have ever expected from college lads whom I know used to care more for football and parties than anything than mattered. In other ways — all there is to say, I suppose, is that it already feels like I have been here for years and years. I look back at myself just before I left and already feel that he was such a child, a Walter that no longer exists. I fear sometimes that what it is happening here is so unnatural, created so purely by human pride and cruelty, that none of us will ever…
He almost writes it down. He almost writes that he's afraid he'll never be the same, that he is being broken and put together again in a shape that no decent person would ever recognize. Some part of him will always be left behind here in Belgium, he suddenly knows.
He stops himself just in time, imagining Una's reaction to the letter. She would be shocked, her pale face would turn even whiter, and when she thinks of him, she won't remember him as her childhood friend. She'll see everything that he's done — firing his gun across the trenches, setting mines and cannons, pretending he doesn't know what they'll be used for.
None of us will ever understand it, he finishes the sentence instead, but it is a lie. He understands what is happening here all too well.
~
I pray for you every night, Una writes. I don't know how much good my thoughts do you — meaning well doesn't always make a difference, does it? Mrs. Clow made the most horrid casserole for us one winter when Father was sick, and it didn't feed us one bit, physically or spiritually. (Here Walter laughs, taken aback by her frankness.)
But — you wrote to 'keep faith', and maybe it will help you to know that I do.
He traces the fine lines of Una's writing, the faint spidery legs of ink extending from the letters. He feels suddenly undeserving of these letters, of Una's kindness. She would hate him if she knew what he has done. She is too kind, too good — never involved with any of their childish arguments in Rainbow Valley, never the kind of girl to walk with a boy to church and then snub him at a dance — not that Una dances; she is not that kind of girl either.
I could never be so patient as you, Walter writes, and weeks later, Una writes back, I can be horribly impatient. I try to hide it and I guess I must be doing it well. People can be so strange, can't we? No one ever truly shows anyone all of themselves. It's not that I mean to deceive people — most people don't — it's only that I don't always think that people would understand.
Walter squints at the letter and sees that where she has written I try to hide it, she has written something else first: I wish that people would — and then she has crossed it out. What does she wish people would do?
I don't always think that people would understand.
Maybe he does not know Una Meredith so well, after all. In his memory, she is always there, sitting in their circle in Rainbow Valley, but — not with them, not really. He can picture her, sitting by the creek just as she does in his dreams, her eyes serious and distant, never laughing at Jem's jokes or Carl's pranks. Like she knows something, secret and sorrowful, that the rest of them haven't learned yet.
Maybe it wouldn't shock her, then, to find out that this has been inside him all along. He has tried to hide this side of himself, ever since the day that he fought Dan Reese — ashamed that he feels it, and worse, scared that people want him to feel it. Dad and Jem and Jerry liked him best when he proved that he could fight as well as any other boy, but he has never wanted to be that person. It frightens him that he feels it again now, that he knows — he can still be angry. He can be bloodthirsty, too.
Do you think there is any hope for me — for any of us — after all of this? he wants to ask. He doesn't know why, but — it matters to him, suddenly, what she might say. Una is no scholar, but there is a thoughtfulness, a quiet conviction to the way that she writes — it seems quite natural to her, now that he is bothering to think about it. He likes it. He wants to know what she thinks, what she really means to write before she crosses out words and sentences. He wants to cross the valley to the manse, knock on the door and ask Una to walk with him.
But he can't. Even the smallest, most commonplace things are impossible now. It is such a small thing, nothing compared to all the horrors he's seen, and yet — it brings a pang of regret nevertheless.
~
"Letter from your girl?"
Walter looks up to see Donaldson carefully spreading their meager ration of beans onto his only slightly less meager share of bread.
"No, it's just — it's from — she's a friend," Walter says, aware that he stumbles to the end of the sentence in a way that's not at all convincing. Donaldson makes a sort of huh sound that might've been a laugh in another life.
"Sure, she is," he says. "That's why you're reading the letter, like so — " He makes a face like a dog's, his tongue hanging out, panting. Walter assumes that must be an impersonation of him.
"I'm fairly certain I didn't look like that."
"Alright, it was more like this," Donaldson says, pasting a dopey smile on his face instead. The smile doesn't touch his eyes at all, and he simply looks half mad. Walter puts his head back down, letting himself get lost in Una's words. She's sent along a small handkerchief embroidered with the flowers that she says are growing in Rainbow Valley. It's not the first one that she or his sisters have sent — everyone sends handkerchiefs, since they are small and practical, and the men are forever losing them. Walter traces the raised threads and imagines Una's fingers dipping the needle through the fabric, quick and surprisingly graceful, the way she plays the piano at church.
I never thought much about it before, but do you know, I miss hearing music, he writes. Play something for me — he almost says, when I come home, but stops himself. It's hard to picture going home — oh, he can see it all well enough, the big chair in the living room, the table where they would lay out the board for chess or draughts. He can see Mother knitting and Rilla laughing — Jem and Shirley walking through the door — but try as he might, he cannot see himself there with them.
Play something for me when you get this letter, he writes instead. I'll be thinking of you and maybe I'll hear it somehow.
~
One of the men has a harmonica, a little thing he keeps in his pocket. Its metal case has long crusted over with gray and brown dirt, but the private plays it anyway. Walter's seen him patting his pockets, checking that he still has it every time they must change positions.
Usually he plays popular tunes, sometimes taking requests for the others' favorites, a parody of a concert. Tonight, though, he is simply fiddling with it, playing a few idle notes here and there.
Slowly, the notes start to spin out into a melody, one Walter doesn't recognize. It's not rhythmic or jaunty like the usual songs that the men request; there is something pretty and wistful about it, the notes long and yearning. Perhaps it's something older, a folk ballad that he can't recall.
"What song is that?" Walter asks.
"Dunno," the other man says. "Jus' came into my head."
~
He dreams that night, sweat breaking out over his skin. He has thought about lovers before — dreamed of men and women, of lips on his skin, of hands touching his chest, over his heart. The dreams were always hazy, his usually vivid imagination blunted by his lack of experience.
This time, it is not so.
The woman has Una's face, as she always seems to, these days. She takes her hair down, dark strands spilling over pale shoulders, then she takes his hands in hers.
"I dream about you," Walter says.
She only steps closer to him and says, "I dream about you, too," and then her mouth is on his, hair soft in his hands.
He dreams of Una touching him the way he used to touch himself some nights, in the quiet of his rented room in Kingsport. He dreams of her hands on his chest, dreams of her hooking a finger through his belt the way she wraps yarn around her finger when she knits. He dreams of touching her in return, kissing the dark freckle on her chin that he's heard her complain to his sisters about, making her sigh when he reaches somewhere softer and more secret. Desire saturates every one of his senses, he feels warm and liquid, like they are pouring themselves into each other. Like she is filling up the emptiness inside him.
Nothing about it feels strange or foreign; it's as though he has loved Una Meredith forever and this is simply where they are meant to be. When his eyes fly open, breath caught in his throat, for a moment all he feels is loss, grief that it wasn't real and he is still in Belgium after all. It is only after several seconds pass that he remembers to be ashamed. Una is his friend — and only just; their renewed correspondence is the most they've spoken in years. It's not at all right to think of her this way.
But you have kissed her, his mind whispers unbidden. It's strangely clear in his head, the way Una had looked up at him at the train station, her eyes dark blue and wistful. Everyone else had been laughing, encouraging, but Una — she had looked at him as though she knew that he was still afraid, as though she knew all his fine words about honor and sacrifice were meaningless. (Sometimes, he thinks — he knows — that real bravery would have been refusing to go despite everything, facing the scorn of his friends and neighbors and family.)
Una had seen all of him, then, but she had still taken his hand in hers, had turned her face and let the corners of their mouths brush together. When he closes his eyes, he can still feel the strange feathery-light touch of her kiss. At the time, it was only friendly, a kindness — now the memory is maddening, tantalizing. It could have been more.
Or maybe it could not have been. Maybe only the man he is now wants her; maybe the boy he once was never would have. Maybe this is the way it always had to be.
~
It has begun to rain again, after the dry summer. The mud squelches under his boots and it's all painfully familiar; the seasons have come round full circle. A month past a year, that is how long Walter has been — here. Away no longer seems like the right word, not when Glen St. Mary feels more foreign and distant than Flanders.
Tonight, though — tonight, he is in some sort of no-man's-land himself, in a strange state of unreality. It's hard to focus on the words he is trying to write, his letter to Rilla — they keep swimming in front of his eyes, he keeps hearing things — the old tune of a wooden flute, coming tantalizingly close, then fading away, as though beckoning him to follow.
He can see Ingleside tonight, too, memories of his childhood playing as clearly as though they're being reenacted on a stage in front of him. There they are, the night they invited the manse folk over for dinner — everyone Walter cares about gathered at the table; his family and friends. Jem at his father's right side, sitting tall and straight — Faith, laughing and beautiful and in love with Jem, so beautiful and untouchable that it almost hurts to look at her sometimes. Nan and Jerry, bickering across the table, Nan making a show of refusing to pass Jerry the salt until he agrees with her. Di to Walter's left, nudging him and making quiet commentary about everything that's going on.
And then, at the end of the table — Rilla and Shirley and Carl and Una, always apart from the others, in their way. Rilla is pouting over being treated like a baby, convinced that she is grown up at the age of thirteen — Carl is trying to cheer her up, Shirley and Una are watching in silence.
He sees Una, tucking a loose strand of dark hair behind her ear, watching somberly. She turns to look down the table, the warm glow of the lamp turning her blue eyes a strange shade of dark gold. When she catches Walter's eye, her unreadable expression flickers for just a moment — a quick, faint smile tugging at her lips before it disappears. Una smiles so rarely; it feels like a secret, like Walter has learned a language no one else speaks.
He touches his pen to the paper and almost writes, Tell Una, but then he stops. Tell Una what? That he dreams of her? That seeing her handwriting pulls at something in his chest? It is so little, no real claim to her heart.
I'll think of you both—of your laughter, Rilla-my-Rilla, and the steadfastness in Una's blue eyes, he writes instead. It is the most he can say. He doesn't wish to write of things that can only ever be what-ifs. He's not sure he even knows what he feels, if the turn his thoughts have taken is merely the result of loneliness, if he only wants something warm and good to cling to. Perhaps Una does not even think of him this way.
But she must know, at least, that he thinks of her. That he can see her clearly when he closes his eyes, more clearly than he has ever seen her before.
He folds the letter, the weight of finality in his chest. The sky is strangely clear tonight and the stars look close enough to touch, close enough that he could float out of his body and walk among them. Walter already feels it, as though his soul is somewhere else, already beyond this flesh-and-blood world. Whatever is coming tomorrow — it won't hurt anymore, he is sure.
And what if I live? The thought jerks through him unpleasantly. It seems almost laughable — how can he live after this? How can he return home, return to university, go to classes and find work and go on, when all the beauty has been stripped from the world? He cannot. It would be unbearable.
The Piper must be calling him west tomorrow, because if he does not — if he does not —
Walter closes his eyes, and all the world goes black.
~
The sun is coming up.
Una Meredith stands on the small hill of Rainbow Valley, the one that Jem and Jerry conquered so many times as children, Walter always watching from the side.
She reaches a hand to him and Walter takes it, climbing the slope to join her in just a few steps. She is a head above him when he is on the flat ground, but then they are side-by-side and he is the taller one once again. He looks down at her, at the curve of her cheek, the solemn profile of her face, the dark fringe of her lashes. Una's fingers are cold, but Walter doesn't let go of her hand.
And what if I live? And what if he does? Walter thinks of the poppies and the pale grass fighting their way to the surface in no-man's-land, weathering the storm around them. He feels the press of Una's fingers, the steady strength of her beside him.
Here, Walter thinks. I want to stay here. Whether the Piper takes him away tomorrow, or if fate laughs at his premonitions — this is where he wants to be. In this valley, the sun rising over the distant hills, Una Meredith's hand in his own.