Fern Edelweiss

He had first come to the lake two years ago.

None lived around the dense forest – not all were lovers of hermetic life. But the popular but mysterious poet Fern Edelweiss was. In 1978 he had fled from London (where there were too many people for his comfort), all the way to a small city, then to a small hamlet, and finally to a small forest that clung halfway up the side of a mountain. The closest hamlet was around a mile away, and the inhabitants called it Dún Mánmhaí. He didn’t know what it meant and unfortunately, the old man who had told him the name did not either. Perhaps it was just a piece of mock Irish.

The Dun forest (as Fern called it afterward) was not overcrowded with trees. It was sparse enough that having not walked ten minutes he had been face to face with a lake, clear and blue and ice-cold to the bone. There was a small shack, unused but certainly not broken down, that stood next to the lake. Back in the hamlet, the old man had spoken of a man who had lived here about half a decade ago. This was most certainly the place and Fern wished to inherit it. And he did.

He had been living in Dun forest for two years; it was 1980, he was sure, but he didn’t know what that signified, beyond the growth of his mustache (he wasn’t the type to grow beards) and his wily black hair. He didn’t think he’d live here for much longer.

The sun was downing. Fortunately, the forest clung to the southwest side of the mountain, so he could see the sun as it set. He had been sitting by the lake, crickets chirping, night draping over, and watching the sun for almost four hours now, not moving besides taking some water to drink. It was beautiful and he wished he could watch it forty-four times a day. The forest was beginning to grow cold. A few fireflies blinked in the distance.

The trees were gilded gold, like in a mineral mine where gold streaks combined with jade. The sun glided over the water and lined it with gold edges. As the wind blew through the trees, whistling and rustling, the water surface was roughened, the gold spreading out in lines and lines of gold silk. Fern liked it very much here.

He sat in his chair, unmoving, unblinking, unthinking – not wholly unthinking, but he had reached that state of lethargy in which the body is unmoving, but the brain is disturbed to whirlpools below a wide and mindless stare.

He had always been an atheist but now he found himself praying to he didn’t know who. He prayed his poetry would be published. He prayed someone would read it out. He prayed he could see some red clothing. He had never thought ill about his surroundings before, but this evening he was very agitated.

Damn it, he thought, why is there nobody else.

Then it suddenly came to him that he was alone. For the first time in two years, he stared at the lake and felt lonely. He stared at the dark silhouettes of the trees, and he was afraid. He wished someone would come to him. He wished someone would come for him. He wished someone would come.

How old am I? He suddenly thinks. Around forty – he doesn’t want to keep calculating.

As it descended more, the sun became more and more red, more and more blood-soaked. It tore between the craggy mountain spires as if it had been the one to carve out the separations in stone. It took the liberty of shining into Fern’s eyes. He blinked fiercely and was roused from his stupor.

He wished someone would come for him.

The sun was going down, down, down.

His mood went down. He felt dejected. He felt alone. He felt abandoned. He coughed.

And as the last bit of the sun’s rays went down behind a few tall trees and a rocky spire, he fled back into his house. He lighted all his candles swiftly with a trembling hand and sat at his writing desk. He felt something was wrong. He kept coughing. He took a handkerchief and wiped at his mouth.

And he started writing. He didn’t know what he was writing, he didn’t care what he was writing. He only knew as his eyes stared out into that long-gone sunset that he was writing poetry, lines and lines, stanzas and stanzas of it, as he desperately clawed at some inch of humanity inside him, which had long grown wild in the forest.

Fern Edelweiss. My name is Fern Edelweiss. He didn’t want to forget that. He wanted everyone to remember. These poems are written by Fern Edelweiss.

And he wrote on into the night. He fell asleep and all was black and cold.

“Quite a shame, wasn’t it,” a woman’s voice spoke behind a black veil.

“Yes, it was,” a younger voice answered earnestly, “If they’d received his letter a week earlier, they would’ve known he was hiding in Ireland. They would’ve known he was sick. They could’ve saved him. They could’ve published his poetry earlier.”

“Saved him? Dear child, why would they save him? I was only saying that had they found him earlier, he would’ve been there to sort out the will. Everything would’ve been solved in 1980 and not two years afterward because of the infighting of his adopted children whom he forsook.”

“But aunt,” the younger woman replied, “he was a poet. How desperate he must’ve been, to be all alone and know that he had pneumonia and couldn’t live long enough to publish his work!”