A Symphony of Cicadas by Crissi Langwell Read Free Book Online Page A

We’ve had this power all along, even when we were alive. But being human has its limitations. However, when our spirit is unleashed from our bodies, the power we possess becomes unharnessed. You are capable of so much, you don’t even realize it .” She looked around at the tree stumps and blackened ground. “Well, maybe you have a hint,” she laughed. She took back her paintbrush and began painting small strokes against the ground. Tiny blades of grass and fern emerged from her paintbrush, multip ly ing across the darkened area in a gradual wave of green. “There now, that’s a start,” she said. She looked at me with eyebrows raised, smiling a small, meaningful smile. “The end of life is real ly just a new beginning.”
    “I don’t understand,” I admitted, leaning down to touch the new growth peeking out of the ashes. “You say your brush isn’t magic, and yet you use it as a wand.”
    “Oh sweetie, I forget how human your thoughts still are. First off, there’s no such thing as magic. Nothing I’m doing is magical at all, but on ly a part of the spirit. My spirit, your spirit, the spirit in the trees, the ground, the sky, and even these blades of grass...we are all pieces of the same source of energy. The lightning was a result of the energy being pulled from your spirit. The rain, that was you, too. Cleaning you up was a result of my spirit talking with your spirit. And this new life,” she said, gesturing to the greenery scattered around us, “it was there the whole time . I just helped it along by combining my energy with the energy of the forest.”
    “But the wand, er, paintbrush?” I asked again. “You keep using it, even though you claim it’s not magic. Sure ly it’s helping you with all this,” I argued, waving my hand to indicate the greenery that peeked out from the ashes. Rose laughed, sticking the end of the brush through the bun on the top of her head to free her hands.
    “The brush on ly makes me feel like all this is my canvas and I am but a painter,” she said. To emphasize, she placed her hand in front of her and moved it across the scene of the forest in one slow motion . The ash was soon covered by a thick blanket of green. Small buds pushed through the ground, unfurling to reveal leafy, vibrant ferns that reached out in all directions. The charred wood of the fallen trees was soon hidden under a spongy moss, as if the trees had fallen years before. The smell of smoke disappeared unde r the damp smell of rain; a carpet of baby’s tears covering a fresh layer of dirt. Soon there was no sign that there had ever been a fire, the garden of green around me so plush I felt I could just lay in it forever.
    “I still don’t understand,” I told her, running my hands over the ferns that surrounded us.
    “Oh darling, I know. I don’t expect you to yet. But it will all make sense soon,” she promised.
    I wanted to be satisfied with this answer. I tried to let it be at that, afraid that all of my questions would eat at her hospitality and cause her to lose her patience . Yet, I was burning inside with so much that still didn’t add up.
    “All this is love ly ,” I told her. “But what if a person had been close by while you were creating this?  I know I never saw anything supernatural like this happen while I was alive. But it doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility for someone to have come upon us while you, or rather your spirit, was drawing all of this out. How do you keep anyone from seeing this happen?”
    “I don’t,” she said. “ Our vision and the vision of humans are complete ly different things. Basical ly , they’re seeing things occur much slower than what we’re seeing .” Her eyes twinkled at my obvious bewilderment. “Time is a much different thing when you’re alive than it is in the afterlife,” she explained. “As a human, you exist on a string of time .”
    She took the paintbrush out of her hair and drew a thin line in the dirt. Using