One day, Alba’s sister Bérénice asked her to join her out at the Houselands. They packed lunches, got in the car (Bérénice was the only one who could drive) and filled an hour or so with gossip, idle talk and speculation about the nature of an Antarctican summer.
Alba had always enjoyed the houselands… it was located somewhere near the meadowlands, not quite next to the grasslands, along Crick Rd. No one exactly knew why the houses started growing there… or even if it wasn’t, as some had suggested, that the houses were in fact sinking there. Alba and Bérénice would go there when they had the day to themselves and take pictures among the halfway houses, scrape weeds away from window panes and generally explore. Bérénice carved her name in an attic once, kneeling on the grass inside, while Alba ran her fingers along the inside of the roof and joked that she would come back in twenty years to see how tall Bérénice’s name had gotten.
“You can’t even recognize one from the next whenever we come,” Bérénice teased.
“I can’t help that they grow,” Alba had said scowling, “Or … maybe that they change. I think they get done growing and that’s why we dont see them again.”
Bérénice turned the car onto a dusty clearing and parked beside a pretty little Bungalow that seemed nearly complete. They got out and ate lunch on the porch, kicking at the dirt as they talked. Bérénice seemed distracted, hardly touching her sandwich.
“What is it?” Alba finally asked.
Bérénice turned from the housetops, all lined in rows and jutting at angles and said to her, “I have to go. I’m a little scared, but I told Dad I would.”
Alba stared. “Dad’s dead, Bérénice.”
“I know. But I still talk to him. Don’t wear that face because I know you do too.”
Alba was looking at the pretty wooden heels on her white shoes as she scraped them across the dirt, making a two lane express road in her mind, one that could lead to anywhere at all. “Where do you have to go?”
Bérénice thought a moment, “All sorts of places. Some I know. Some I don’t think have even been made yet. Grandmother gave me these… a long time ago,” Bérénice reached into the lunch basket and brought out an old handkerchief, folded over something. She opened it up and Alba saw tiny little silver sticks. No - not sticks, she saw… they were tiny arrows.
“Grandma Artemis gave you those?”
“Yeah… she said these were special, and that it was my job to put them to good use one day. I’ve been thinking a lot about it lately.”
“What’re they for?” Alba asked, not liking the idea at all.
“They’re,” Bérénice’s face darkened, “They’re for the hunt. But not like the way Gram used hers. These are for the others. The wrong hunts. The ones that aren’t supposed to happen, that shouldn’t happen. The ones we’d take back if we could…”
“Do they hurt?”
“No… that’s the point. They don’t hurt - they’re just like Gram’s. She said to use them to help. Use them in the second breath, so they won’t feel the last. Use them to steal the quarry away”
“…And then what?”
“Then I take them home, to where they were supposed to go” she said, turning to smile at Alba.
They spent the afternoon together, talking around in circles while walking in the tall grass. Alba would almost forget their talk at times, and then be starkly reminded by a mention of the future, of teasing husbands or children or holidays. She said, quietly, during a lull in conversation, “You’re going to miss my birthday…” and then Alba started to cry quite uncontrollably.
“Hey… Hey I won’t be far.” Bérénice said, “And I’ll always write you letters. You can visit me on my island”
“Will it be big?” Alba asked, not quite reassured.
“Big? Why it’s going to be ENORMOUS!” she yelled, throwing her arms out to take in the whole of the countryside, “My house will be on a cliff, and it will be huge!” she yelled it out until the echoing came back and shook the window glazing around them. She told Alba about all of the animals she would keep for her to visit, whenever she wanted.
They said their goodbyes, finally, and Alba asked her where she was going first.
“South. I think I’ll be going south for a while,” she said sadly.
Alba taught herself how to drive on the way back home, to the detriment of one fender. The neighbors never saw Bérénice again, but if they wondered why they never seemed to bring it up around Alba or the family. Alba visited the houselands regularly, and always by herself. Sometimes at night she would see lights, soft and blue, move through the rooms just beyond the windows. There were less and less houses as time went by. People noticed in her pictures, and asked her why. “They got full. They floated away to someplace else,” was all she would tell them.
Alba would get letters every now and again. Some years kept Bérénice busier than others. Those were bad years. Alba got only a single letter during the war. It was from Poland. Bérénice only wrote, “I miss home.” …That was the entirety of the letter - one line.
When she was old, Alba would take vacations - always by herself - to an island somewhere. She would never say where. Friends never understood house shopping with her either. She would always demand upon looking in the attic before seeing anything else. In fact she would hardly ever look at anything else. She’d just go house by house until she came down from a particular attic of a particular house that looked just like all the others she’d looked at, smiling and saying, “Found it!"
