Chapter 23 The Death

Tom died at seventy-eight, in the house, in the chair by the window, with the garden he had half-made and half-inherited breathing green outside. He had lived longer than his parents, longer than most of his ancestors, longer than anyone on either side of his family had any right to expect, and he believed, without sentiment and without arrogance, that the forest had something to do with it. The energy from below, the slow green breath that had seeped up through the thinned boundary and into the air of the house, had sustained him, the way good soil sustains a tree, quietly, without being thanked. His last days were peaceful. He sat in his chair and watched the garden, wilder than any garden should be, filled with plants from two worlds, the tomatoes the size of his fist and the silver-veined leaves of the rosemary catching the afternoon light in a way that was almost, but not quite, like the glow of the forest below. Nora sat with him. She was older now too, and slower, but her hand in his was the same hand it had always been. "I'm not afraid," he said. "I know," she said. "The work will continue. The bridge will be completed. The worlds will merge." "I know." "The figures will guide the next generation. They'll teach them. They'll prepare them." "I know, Tom." He smiled, because she had said I know to all of it, the way she had said I know to everything difficult he had ever told her, from the letter to the root to the door, and the knowing had been the thing that let him do any of it. "I had a good life," he said. "You had a remarkable life." He closed his eyes, and the figure who had first spoken to him, a hundred years late and a hundred years patient, was there at his bedside, having come up through the chamber one last time. It placed its long-fingered palm on Tom's chest, over the heart that had kept the same slow time as the root, and Tom felt the warmth of it, the green warmth of the world below, and he said the only thing left to say. "Thank you." The figure did not speak. It had never needed to, not with Tom, not at the end. It only held its palm to his chest until the heartbeat under it slowed and stopped, and then it withdrew, and Tom Sawyer died peacefully, in his own home, surrounded by family and friends and beings from another world, the way anyone would choose to go if they were given the choosing. The garden kept growing. The root kept pulsing. The bridge kept holding. And the work, as Tom had said it would, continued. The last spring of Tom's life was the greenest the garden had ever been, the silver-veined tomatoes heavy on vines that ran to the porch, the sunflowers standing like sentinels at the foundation, leaning always, always, toward the root below. He spent his days in the chair by the window, the chair that had become his, watching the merged forest breathe outside, and he puzzled, in the slow way of the old, over the strangeness of having lived to see the two worlds touch. The figures came to sit with him. They did not speak, not in words, but they brought him things, a silver-leaved flower, a small glowing creature cupped gently in long fingers, tokens of a world that had adopted him as thoroughly as he had adopted it. Nora was with him always, her hand in his, and the children came with their own children, and the household that Tom had built around the bridge gathered around the chair by the window as the days grew long and then short. He was not afraid, he said, and it was true, because he had done the work, and the work would continue, and the root would keep its watch, and the figures would guide the ones who came after, and there was, in the end, nothing left to fear in a life that had been, as Nora said, remarkable. The figure who had first spoken to him a hundred years late came up through the chamber one last time, and it laid its palm on his chest, over the heart that kept the root's slow time, and Tom felt the green warmth of the forest below rise through him, and he said thank you, because there was nothing else that fit, and the figure, which had waited a hundred years to be understood, understood him back, and Tom Sawyer, who had inherited a house and found a door, closed his eyes in the home he had made of both, and the garden kept growing, and the root kept pulsing, and the bridge kept holding, and the work, as it always would, continued. In the days before the end, Tom spoke little, but when he did it was of the root, and of Nora, and of the figures, and of the simple fact, which seemed to him then the only fact worth stating, that the door was open and the worlds were joined and the long mistake of a hundred years was, at last, being unmade. He asked that the journals be kept, the ones he and Nora had filled with the slow record of the bridging, and he asked that the children be told the story true, without the fear he had once carried, so that they would tend the root not as a thing to be feared but as a thing to be loved, a living hinge between two earths. Nora promised him both, her hand steady in his, and the figure at the bedside did not leave, keeping its palm to his chest as the heartbeat under it slowed, a guardian of the boundary keeping watch at the boundary's end. When Tom was gone, the house did not go quiet; it filled, rather, with the particular busy sorrow of a household that has lost its center, and the figures moved among the grieving humans with a grace that was its own kind of condolence, and the root in the basement pulsed on, steady and warm, holding the door that Tom had spent his life learning to open, holding it now for the ones who would carry the work after. The garden kept growing. The bridge kept holding. The work continued. ---