Seismic or vibrational communication is an ancient sensory modality of conveying information through vibrations. Earth, a plant stem or leaf, the surface of a body of water, a spider’s web, a honeycomb, or any of the myriad types may be vibrational substrates.
That day, it seemed to him, was the first that mattered. Every memory and thought after bright and real, clarified through a looking glass. Everything before a dream with edges runny like broken water.
❖
Soft rain pelts on his nose and eyelashes, beading on his blue sweater where they land.
To his north east, neat rows of pine trees raise their branches coquettishly, needles shaking off the last of their white winter cap. As the row curls westward, it begins to lose its form. Pelts of moss sidle up the base of trunks like quaint socks. A little ahead of him — pressing its slobbery nose over the grassy mounds — trundles a dusky bronze Labrador. At times, it cavorts over with surprising agility for its size and age, winding between his legs, heavy tail whipping carelessly at his thighs.
For a reason that has yet to coalesce in his consciousness, he finds himself walking to where the trees sit haphazardly, unkempt.
❖
His scale is steady, even as one step rises to ragged rocks while the next sinks into a cluster of prickly ferns. He feels curiously safe, cradled by the bubbling brook, the occasional whistle of a lone bird that does not tire of its tune. When twigs give way beneath his boot with a wet crackle, he finds footing reliably on the padded marsh beneath.
He is not sure how long it has been, only that the sun filtering through the pinewoods above have sharpened into columns and are bleeding into orange. The trees rise higher here, while the sun makes its way down. The brook — he concludes from the swelling, constant burbling around him — is now a stream. It muffles the huff of his breaths, but each inhalation now brings greater flavor: the sweetness of pine, mellowed by the earthiness of mushrooms before dissipating with the frostiness of winter’s passing.
He notices first the shaft of golden light pouring from its mouth (or a gaping hole that could have been one) spilling into a pool of amber, illuminating the square of forest floor before it. The surrounding browns and greens dulled, it seems to him, in an instant. The stream drums on, almost eagerly.
❖
The skull sits on a fallen bough, horizontal at knee-height, like a child’s makeshift swing. Near the bough’s midpoint protrudes a broken branch threading through an oval crevice adjacent to its eye socket, cozily fitted like a natural horn. The rest of it is dominated by that light-yielding cavity, framing it a fine jaw bone lined fastidiously with blunted teeth. From an angle, he can almost imagine the skull to be held in place with its bite on the mottled bough.
In his trance-like examination, he has come eye-to-eye with it. The dual chambers glow gold, amber, white — lit within from the sunlight’s shifting angles on its westward descent. Now, he cups the jaw, tender as he would a lover, and unsheathes it from the horn. Gingerly, he tests its mass and matter. It dawns on him that he cannot know any more about the skull: he already knows it, and is merely re-acquainting with its shape and form; with its startling lightness and powdery touch.
Without much forethought he brings his lips close to the cavity, pursing them like he would a mindless whistle; a casual kiss. He blew soundlessly into the skull.
❖❖❖
Years later (and yet more years later), in places far from his childhood, the forest, the Labrador, and his self that day, he would find the skull again, many times and in many ways.
In the passing of a subway train, the all-encompassing rumbling, the flit of fluorescent lights, shadow, lights. The skull grinning back at him from his blinkering reflection before rushing away with the last carriage.
Ducking under the shadow of a building to shake musty rain off his coat, glancing skyward at the mural-sized glass glittering proudly to no one. The glint of the skull’s wink with hollow eyes set aflame.
At the carefully clipped green mats of a sprawling lawn, walking a friend’s dog, the skull dancing in a mist of sprinklers. The back alley of a bar, in the steam hissing from colourless bricks where he pressed his knuckles, heaving emptiness.
In a bed that had lost all spring. A sleeping female shape next to him under custard yellow sheets, the cold plastic of a remote in his hand, staring at the TV until the static burned into a floating afterimage of the skull.
Each time it calls for him. He knows it from the hum at the base of his neck and the back of his throat. A reminder, a trail, a knowledge gifted and slipped away.
❖❖❖
He blows into the skull. It may have lasted seconds, minutes, as long as his breath can hold. But there is no strain, and there is no sound. Only an unearthly frequency that reverberates, at once hollowing out his bones and filling him brimful with an ancient song. The forest is listening, rapturous. The Labrador stands at attention, majestic in its serious, knowing expression. Blades of grass twitch in remembrance. Roots tunnelling closer to core than land yawn beneath his feet. Mushrooms, shied under their thick brown caps, stir and bare their intricate patterns to surface.
When it ends, he is not sure if it was him or the skull who willed it to.
As if the forest has been holding its breath, a deep, collective sigh released the flow and flurry again.
He knows the forest murmured a secret to him, and he is to understand and know. In the days that follow, much more became clear. But the one he was to know remains obscured. All he can be sure of is that at the moment of the forest’s sigh, he heard softly but surely the give of water: a small creature diving cleanly into the stream.
Not a month later, he packs a compact suitcase and starts a trek of cities with fluorescent lights; clipped lawns; glittering buildings; warm figures he seem to always find but never keep.
❖❖❖
In one of the cities where his suitcase landed, foreign ferns are streaked with maroon, with leaves wide and wet as newborns. In the summer, when the heat is feverish, he cools off by the pool with a paperback and his sandals kicked off. In the languid air hung a cloying scent of sunblock and shrieks of children romping dangerously near the pool’s edge, but he does not mind. Resting his eyes, he watches them tumble and fight like puppies.
It is while resting that the glimmering, chlorine blue of the pool’s surface began to eddy again to that familiar shape, the drumming and hum catching in his core. This time though, he is jolted by another long-known sound: body breaking water.
All he can see of her from the surface is a crown of raven like seaweed undulating in the water. Around her, the skull ripples and dissolves, its grin wider than ever. Now, the body turns towards him, rises from the water. On her face that biding, knowing look the skull, the Labrador, the whistling bird and coy mushrooms had held.
And then, as if two looking glasses rolling at random now snap to perfect alignment, he saw with clarity the knowledge the forest had gifted: “You’re home.”
❖
Q
Q 