When the rains may come (Science Fiction)

12. Rosemary is remembrance

11 years ago.

Cathy's eyes were red and puffy from crying when she walked up to her father with the dead bird in her hand. "Dad, Milo isn't singing anymore." She held out her little hands in which a little blue breasted weaver lay still, his feathers seemingly had lost their luster, and his unblinking eye stared right back into your soul.

Cathy's father regarded her with a look of sympathy. The same look he gave her when she came back with scabby knees from the playground.

He had been reading the newspaper at the kitchen counter when his daughter came up to him with tears running down her chubby face. "It's okay, honey." Dad said. He is at peace, I assure you."

"Is this what you'd talked about?" she said. "Is this...what death is? When birds stop singing?"

Dad folded the newspaper and put it aside. "First let's put Milo to rest," he said. "I'll explain it to you then." He got up from the stool by the counter and led his daughter out into the backyard. "Let's put Milo next to the roses."

Cathy nodded, sniffling. She brought the trowel from the garage and a little piece of wood and a thick pointed marker.

"Death is a part of life, Cathy. It is not the end of anything." Her dad started to dig the earth beside the bed of roses by the fence. "Nothing ever ends completely unless we forget it. Unless every last memory of it disappears from the mind of anyone who cared." It took him a few minutes to dig a hole that was about six inches deep.

Cathy gently lay Milo within the small pit. She folded his wings across his blue breast and touched his tiny green beak one last time before pulling back. She was about to smother him with the soil again when her dad stopped her. "You forgot this." He waved a purple flower of rosemary at her.

Cathy's lips formed a little 'O' and she nodded. She put the flower on Milo's still body. Then they started to fill the grave. "Why do we put rosemary with the dead, Cathy?" dad asked her. "I'd told you, remember?"

Cathy nodded again. "Rosemary is remembrance. It is to let Milo know that we will always remember him."

Dad ruffled her hair. "Good girl."

Once they'd buried Milo next to the roses, they both joined their hands and dad said the prayer, "Whatever came from this earth, goes back to it after death. May your bones become the soil that we walk on so that we can feel your gentle touch everyday. And may your breath become the air that whispers around us. So that we may hear you even when you are gone. Bless you, Milo."

"Bless you, Milo."

Then Cathy scrawled Milo's name on the piece of wood with the marker and stabbed the wood into the earth by his grave. The little wooden headstone read: Milo (a best friend and the prettiest blue weaver).

Cathy's dad smiled down at her. "Cat, don't ever forget Milo," he said. "That's when Milo will really die."

Cathy wiped her tears and shook her head. "I won't. I put the rosemary on his wing. I'll never forget him. I'll never--"

###

"--let him die..." Cathy mumbled in her sleep. Lisa gasped. She paused from cleaning up the wound on Cathy's chest.

"Honey?" Lisa stroked the girl's hair. "Are you awake? Talk to me. Please?"

"Don't stop cleaning the wound," the man in the plexiglass helmet said. He was sitting in the opposite corner of the armored truck. His rifle was resting across his lap. "You wouldn't want it to be infected now, would you?"

Lisa frowned and went back to cleaning the cut on Cathy's chest. Almost dousing it with peroxide. Hoping that the windshield that had stabbed the girl wasn't contaminated with the virus. Hoping that the disinfectant would be enough to cleanse it. After she was satisfied, she covered the wound with gauze and cotton and then covered Cathy's bare torso with one of the kevlar suits like a blanket.