Erin Gumbel
Metamorphosis

Jack blinked his eyes slowly, not yet ready to wake up. He heard Yuri's tree chimes tinkling in the March wind and smiled. The tiny house groaned as Jack jumped to the floor, and headed to the kitchen for coffee and a remnant from last night's meal of ziti and marinara-in-a-jar.

Jack stopped at the kitchen door: a strange girl stood flamigo-legged on the linoleum, staring out at the jingling trees in the backyard. Her jeans and sweater were ragged and stained and her wild golden hair stood around her hair in a halo of knots. She smelled like the leaves that lay piled outside the house. Jack wondered whether or not to question this interloper when suddenly she turned to face him. His mind went blank when her luminous faerie eyes met his. She smiled and stuck out her hand.

"I'm Elizabeth," she said warmly.

"Jack," he replied hoarsely. He stood before her in the kitchen, head almost touching the ceiling, ragged pajama pants and T-shirt covering his thin body. Her glance stripped him naked, he thought. Just as he was about to ask Elizabeth why she was standing in his kitchen, Yuri entered. He shuffled to the stove and put a pot of water on to boil.

"This Elizabeth," he said in broken English. "A faerie sleeping under park tree." He looked at Elizabeth adoringly. She smiled and kissed his cheek.

"I'm not really a faerie, but I was asleep under a tree in the freezing park when Yuri found me. We came back here and he let me crash on your sofa." As she spoke, Elizabeth casually opened the refrigerator, took out a handful of bread, and began chewing.

"You mind, Jack?" Yuri questioned, smiling plaintively.

"No, Yuri, it's fine." Jack was relatively laid-back when it came to the occupants in his house, as long as they didn't seem too dangerous. Yuri, for example, had been sleeping in the spare bedroom for four months now. Jack had found the old Russian huddled in the meadow behind the trailer one blustery fall afternoon. His back had a small lump in its enter, and he walked slowly, hunched over. Yuri spoke barely any English then, but he was able to say his name, and to thank Jack for his kindness. He knew more words now, his vocabulary having expanded through people-watching and late-night TV.

Every day Yuri walked down the long dirt road outside the trailer mumbling in Russian and in English about finding something, searching for something that his limited language skills prevented Jack from understanding. Jack let the old man roam, but he kept an eye out for him even though the two were rarely together. It was nice to have a fellow human, someone to take care of, Jack thought, even if they didn't really interact. At the end of the day, Jack was just too tired and unhappy to entertain someone else. Often he would walk alone in the meadow behind the house. He needed something to fill the listless period between work and sleep.

Jack left Yuri and Elizabeth munching in the kitchen and went to wash up for work. He sneezed as he passed Yuri's room, and he leaned over and shut the door. Within his short time in Jack's house, Yuri had amassed a great collection of flying-related things. His walls were plastered with magazine photos of birds and dragonflies, ladybugs and moths. Old feathers and dried leaves filled the spaces between the pictures and skittered across the floor with the slightest current of air. He had transformed the outside of the house, as well.

The trees stood guard around each side of the white house, so old that they were leafless even in June. Previous to Yuri's presence, they had simply been forlorn shapes twisting hopelessly up toward the sky. He adorned one of the trees with Jack's spare silverware. The forks, knives, and spoons turned and shone gently in the breeze and made a melody, if not beautiful, certainly inspired curiosity. Another tree bore the fruits of Yuri's collecting. Feathers hung from bits of sting and ribbon fixed to each branch. Looking quickly, at appeared as if a flock of birds were constantly perched there, waiting for a giant herd of worms. The festive trees made up for the gloominess of the aging house.

Jack was wary of leaving the strange girl in his house while he was gone, but he trusted Yuri, and waved to them as he went out the door and started down the path to work. The small publishing company where Jack was employed occupied a gray, almost windowless building in the town's center. Lack of incoming light amplified the depression Jack felt as he sifted through piles of other people's failures. He sat, day after long day, trying to fix and edit and condense the dreams of thousands of people so that they could give their message to the world. At least they have a message, Jack would think to himself.

Days passed and Elizabeth stayed on. Because of his long workday Jack was unable to spend time with her or with Yuri, but he began to notice small changes in the house. The windows were clean and shining and the tiny scraps of green army fabric serving as curtains were dust-free. She kept her pillows and bedding tucked at one end of the red corduroy sofa. The house sparkled with her efforts at earning her keep. Jack told her that the cleaning was unnecessary, but Elizabeth insisted that she didn't mind and that it gave her something to do when Yuri was gone.

"Read anything good lately?" Elizabeth asked one Saturday morning, trying to make conversation over breakfast.

"I don't read much outside of work."

"Oh, but you must! All of that paperwork has to get boring. Have you ever read Kerouac? That's how I ended up here, you know. I was hitching to San Fran, just like in On the Road."

"So why'd you stop?"

"I'm not quite sure." Elizabeth paused and looked out at the trees waving in the wind, puzzled. "I felt almost drawn here, like Yuri needed me and just me - oh, I'm sorry," She said abruptly.

"Why?"

"Well, I just don't want you to be jealous or angry. You did know him first."

"No, no, it's fine. I'm glad he's got someone to talk to. Maybe you can help him find what it is he's searching for."

"He says he looking for 'the Cloud.' I can't understand anything more than that."

"But how can he search for a cloud at night?"

"He seems to think that this cloud will speak to him, that he will just know somehow," Elizabeth stated matter-of-factly.

"Do you believe him?"

"Of course."

Yuri still took his lengthy walks, but Elizabeth sometimes accompanied him. They would come back to Jack, Yuri in his crumpled coat, Elizabeth with feathers in her hair, smiling and smelling crisply of leaves and world experience. Yuri began teaching her Russian, and soon they were able to speak together entirely without using English. When Jack would ask Elizabeth what she and Yuri talked about, she would answer, "The great mysteries of the universe," with a smile.

Elizabeth always seemed to find time for Jack, though. The house was now warm and welcoming when Jack came home from work. It was comforting, really, and took his mind away from the darkness of his cubicle. Often, he and Elizabeth would sit up even after Yuri had gone to bed, talking about nothing and everything at the same time. Elizabeth told Jack stories of her hippie parents, of growing up practically in the wilderness. "We used to forage for food in the woods, and we lived in a house made of logs." Her eyes would shine strangely when she spoke about things like sleeping by the ocean and stargazing high in an oak tree. Jack was fascinated; she had seen and learned far more than he had, even after four years at a prestigious college.

She didn't just talk at him, though. Her conversation drew him in, and he found himself saying out loud thoughts that he never knew he even had. He talked to her about his job, and he realized how unhappy he truly was.

"Well, what do you want to do, Jack? What would make you happy?" she asked.

"I don't know. I've thought about writing, fiction maybe, but I see so many people fail every day. I don't know if I could do that."

"If it makes you happy, the judgments of other people shouldn't matter. You could be working less and writing more."

He knew she was right. For every piece of him that was missing or broken, she seemed to have the remedy. She looked forward to their talks, too, because he took her seriously. She'd say, laughingly, "You're the only one who listens to me chatter." Jack looked forward to the spaces between work and darkness now. Sometimes they'd stay up until dawn talking, but Jack was never tired.

April came and brought with it rain. Jack developed pneumonia - the doctor thought it was the daily walk to work - and had to stay home. Elizabeth would stop pasting feathers on Yuri's wall or come in from the meadow to bring Jack vegetable soup and keep him company. In the beginning, Jack wrote a little; he completed a few short stories and submitted some of them to local magazines. He got rejections, but Elizabeth consoled him. "Jack, you can't be successful until you've learned the things you need to. Don't give up; you can only get better." She made sense to him, inspired him.

As Jack became more ill, he stopped writing and just slept, occasionally waking to eat or listen to Elizabeth reading aloud or telling storied about her day. Yuri came in too, and told Jack vague storied about his home. Yuri's company was comforting: Jack couldn't always understand him, but his presence made Jack feel less alone. They had a semi lucid conversation one night while Jack was still feeling good.

"Yuri," Jack asked, "have you ever been in love?" Jack didn't quite know himself what it felt like, but assumed that with Yuri's age came wisdom.

"Mmm. Love. When I look at the sky, smell the earth, makes me warm inside. Feels like I am a part of the outside. That is my love, understand? You love, Jack?"

"No. No, not yet. I don't know if I'm the type to be in love. Can't see myself being romantic."

"Ah, no need 'romance' for love. Love is souls: people souls, Earth souls, connecting." Jack had never really considered love outside its conventional definition.

"You're smarter than I thought, Yuri."

Jack's fever rose in the next week. Elizabeth stayed with him while Yuri went off alone. Jack woke from time to tome to see Elizabeth's golden-framed face staring down at him worriedly. He also saw the room was filling up with twigs and flower buds: gifts from Yuri. Most of the time, however, Jack slept as Elizabeth stayed by his bed. She wiped his head with a damp cloth and fed him ice cubes as the days grew longer. One dark night, the fever hit is peak. Yuri had been in his room for hours staring out the window and whispering. Yuri called for Elizabeth, but she did not hear him. Jack thrashed in his sweat-soaked sheets, crying out wordlessly. Toward midnight he became quiet. Elizabeth leaned over and brushed the hair from his face.

"You are a faerie! Yuri was right," Jack whispered deliriously, his eyes roaming the room. "I saw you dancing among them in the moon meadow last night!"

"Hush, Jack."

Jack closed his eyes and slept, and the fever began to drop.

Elizabeth shook him awake two days after the fever had subsided. "Jack. Yuri's gone."

"What do you mean?" he said groggily. "He's probably just searching for his cloud."

"No, he's gone. Look." She held up his brown overcoat, dusty and torn at the shoulders. "This was out in the road. Last night while I slept, I had the strangest dream. Yuri was whispering in Russian, telling me that the cloud was speaking and the sky was right, or something like that." Elizabeth threw a sweater at Jack. "We've got to find him. He could get lost. He may be sick. That lump on his back is getting bigger."

Jack eased himself from the rumpled bed and followed Elizabeth outside. They looked for Yuri all day. Jack searched the meadow and the surrounding countryside and Elizabeth looked in tow. He wasn't in the park, and no one else had seen him for days. As they returned to the house, Jack and Elizabeth noticed the strange, foggy cloud that had crept up on the horizon. It seethed in the sky, changing shape over and over, stretching out above the fields.

"If it rains, he'll get drenched," Elizabeth said nervously. Jack could not reply and went inside. He climbed into bed, exhausted, and Elizabeth followed with warmed-up soup. She was uncharacteristically silent as Jack ate. He looked at her for a moment and watched a tear slide down her face. He set down his bowl and leaned toward her as she began to cry. She sobbed into Jack's shoulder.

"He's my best friend, Jack. He's the only one I've ever met who really digs me. He understands! I can't bear this, I can't." Jack pulled her closer and started to think. She was right. Yuri did understand. He had melted the cynical ice in Jack's heart and brought him back into the real world. Yuri had brought Elizabeth to him. Jack's body was still weak from the pneumonia, but his spirit was stronger than it had ever been. He felt reinvented, and most of it was due to Yuri's presence in his life. His heart ringed with grief at losing Yuri and he hugged Elizabeth hard. She cried herself to sleep and Jack dropped off soon after, leaving the room silent and damp with sadness.

Jack felt Elizabeth wake first and quickly move from his side. He didn't see her eyes widen as she opened the window shade. She turned and ran from the house, banging the door behind her. Jack awoke fully and felt calm until the memory of the previous night washed over him like ice water. In the midst of his unhappiness, Jack heard a noise. He held his breath listening - there it was again! He could hear Elizabeth laughing outside.

Jack jumped out of bed, not knowing what to expect. He burst out onto the most grass and stopped. On the lawn before him, and behind him, and all over the silver trailer and laced in with the ribbons and chimes on Yuri's trees perched thousands of tiny monarch butterflies, drying their wings in the warm sun. Elizabeth sat among them, giggling. She looked almost like a faerie in her bare feet and voluminous nightshirt. The butterflies had come to rest in her hair and on her shoulders and knees and an outstretched finger.

"Look!" she cried. "What a wonderful gift! Where do you think they came from?"

Jack looked up at the suddenly cloudless sky and then at the countryside covered with butterflies.
He shook his head and sat down next to Elizabeth. Soon he too was sprinkled with the fiery-winged insects. Jack watched as they slowly fanned their dew-damp wings. Elizabeth continued to laugh softly in amazement. The monarchs stayed all day, and Jack and Elizabeth did, too. They had a picnic supper on the lawn and watched as the sun started to sink in the clear sky. The butterflies began to take to the air, at first just a few, and then whole trailing sweeps of them alit like fire consuming the sky. Elizabeth's smile faded as the last butterflies winged away.

"We still haven't found him," she said. Suddenly one more butterfly emerged from the tall meadow grass. It fluttered around the two humans and then hovered over Elizabeth. She held out her hands and it landed there a moment. Then it gently flew up and around her head once and took off into the night. Elizabeth looked down at her hands.

"They're shining!"

"It's dust from his wings," Jack said, smiling at her. "Some people say it's good luck."

Back to Issue 2, 1999