The Northern Lights

Chapter 8. Adventurier.

France, 1980

"Mama!" the little boy utters in a high-pitched voice, fingers barely big enough to wrap around the crimson model airplane that is missing a flap on its left wing. His mother does not respond, she is in the kitchen dicing onions. He waits a few seconds for her voice to come running through the halls and into his room. But his ears are met with no reply.

On his walls are maps of the world, posters of old war planes he wished he knew how to fly and a shelf with atlases and fantasy books, a Bible that has been collecting dust. His tiny ears are met with a knife thumping on a wooden chopping board, "Mama! Mama!"

Edith's attention finally breaks, "Yes Eden?" she yells, though her voice somehow managed to keep its soft feathery tone.

"Come here mama!" His voice bombards each corner of the house.

She lays her knife on the marble bench, her apron flows loosely as she paces towards Eden's room, "What is it dear?"

Eden's on all four limbs, head squeezing under his bed frame, where he believed the bogeyman existed. On his messy blue bed lies a petite airplane that he has been working on for the past week, glued together with his cautious fingers. His blanket resembles the texture of the ocean from high above.

"What are you looking for?" his mama asks, arms crossed, leaning on the open-door frame.

His arm enters the void of darkness under his bed, hand flapping around in search for a tiny plastic piece, "The flap mama! The flap!" he struggles to say, hand tapping around the ancient floorboards. His hand comes out, thick clots of dust as grey as storm clouds are stuck between his fingers.

"Where did you last put it?"

"I can't remember!" he cries, "I need to finish this plane mama!"

Edith has always sensed that drive in Eden, he always kept pushing forward until the job was done, she admired her son's persistence, even envied it, "Well, maybe it will show up later."

"How could it possibly reappear mama?" his expression is filled with confusion and curiosity.

Edith couldn't admit how much she hated how he questioned everything she stated, "I don't know Eden, but it'll be easier to find if you don't have an empty stomach dear."

His expression is filled with resistance, but he must obey his mother, at least, that's what his papa demanded, "Okay mama," he whispers, leaving his model airplane behind on its own, getting up from the floor and taking her hand as if she will guide him to a place he does not know.

"Bonjour Grand-mère!" with his little legs, Eden bolts with excitement from the outside of his room to the dining table.

With a wide wrinkled smile and bits of hair flowing loosely on her face, the elderly woman sitting closest to Eden waves before opening her arms wide, "Bonjour!" a wave of warmth and youthfulness comes crashing into her. Eden gives her soft cheek a delicate kiss.

They sit at a glass dining table, with four plates and four chairs. Only three seats are taken. The fourth is isolated, occupied by what Eden assumes is a ghost. He said he would be home for dinner. Edith thinks, knowing that the food will not stay warm forever.

The young child's head pivots in all different directions, his eyes flick to each corner of the room. He is so obsessed with the ceiling, that Edith begins to wonder if he sees something else. His Grand-mère knows he see's something else. Maybe he sees clouds, or twinkling balls of hydrogen and helium combustions that are sextillion kilometres away. But like the two mothers in the room, he sees nothing more than a grey ceiling, but he imagines the phenomenon that he read about in the Atlas his Grand-mère had bought him for his birthday, the blissful arrays that shine in the Scandinavian sky from time to time.

His thick book tells him that these lights come in all different colours, diamond blue, apple red, but he is obsessed with one particular picture in the atlas, an Aurora that looks as though a dragon has roared flames of ethereal emerald green and violent violet purple. The first time he saw it his fingers drifted upon the image, the colossal mountain range that laid beside it fascinated his curious mind. Under it he read, 'Tromsø, Norway.'

They sit in silence, his mother gazes at the empty seat. Eden's mind has finished transforming the dull, blank canvas of a ceiling into a flicker of fairy lights, they have faded away, like the steam that was rising from his plate.

"Mama, I don't think he is coming." Eden whispers in a velvet voice.

It takes her a while to comprehend what he says; her mind was occupied with a million other thoughts. She nods, "I think you're right."

Eden notices an emptiness in her voice, a hint of betrayal. His mother's fingers reach for the cutlery, but she is interrupted by Eden, "Mama!" he blurted, "you forgot to say grace!"

"Oh, yes" she sighs, before noticing her son's youthful smile.

They say grace, without the fourth member of the family. Eden's father, Ivre, is in a drunken daze many streets away, at a bar with his gambling buddies. It has been four days since Eden saw this version of his father. A year since he spoke with the prior one; the one who swung him around in the backyard like he was an airplane, the one who helped him climb trees and called him a cheeky monkey, an adventurier.

The empty sound of unspoken sadness has passed, now the dining room is filled with the sounds of knives and forks scratching at plates while glasses softly smack against the dining table after being lifted. Eden hasn't seen his mother this quiet in a while, he swallows the vegetables Edith always urges him to eat before speaking in his hushed voice, "Grand-mère."

Her dark, aging eyes glance up from the plate, into his similar coloured ones, "Wi?" she says simultaneously. Edith plays with her food, picks it apart with her fork.

"Do you know what the Aurora Borealis is?"

"No, I don't," she states in a high-pitched tone, "What is the Aurora Borealis dear?" she asks begrudgingly, not wanting to admit to Eden that she knows exactly what they are.

Edith stabs a few pieces of freshly boiled broccoli with the trident of her fork, before pulling it towards her face. She notices the expression on Eden's face, the excitement.

"The Aurora Borealis are lights that shine in the sky because-" the handle of the front door rustles. Its brass knob shakes Eden's whole world. The groans of a familiar, yet unaccustomed man echo in the wooden halls. It is as though he is a zombie. Eden's father disregards him and his mother's presence as he stumbles straight to the master bedroom, oblivious to the pain he has caused them both. He aggressively slams the door shut, it leaves a ringing in Eden's ears, a sting in Edith's heart.

A few seconds of silence follow, before Edith breaks the tension, "Keep explaining Eden,"

His mind races, but his voice continues, "Well, the Earth is always being bombarded by the Sun's solar winds," his Grand-mère nods, impressed but unsurprised by his use of the word bombarded, Eden smiles, "and sometimes, at high enough latitudes, they create these magnificent works of art in the sky." For the first time in his life, Eden feels as though he is being listened to, as though someone wants him to keep explaining, and so he does, "Sometimes, they're called the Northern Lights. And they are magical!"

"God's creations are always magical," his mother states.

For the first time, Eden supports her statement with passion, "Mama, maybe they are the lights of heaven!" he suggests.

"Maybe."

"Grand-mère, mama! I promise you," he pauses, "I will travel to faraway stars. To the mountains of Norway! To the ends of time!" he states so thunderously that the neighbours can hear, but his father still lays in an intoxicated coma.

Judice beams and wraps her hands around her son's from across the table, tears of pride almost falling from her eyes, "I know you will darling. You are my everything. You are an adventurier."

Instantly, his heart is forged with a promise. A promise to climb the great mountains of Norway, to witness with his own eyes, the boundless Northern Lights. The mighty gates of heaven.