“The memory haunted mill ruins bordering the falls circumnavigated time and opened her heart to the voices of her childhood. This was her secret and sacred place.”

 

Excerpt: Part 1, Chapter 6 – Peregrines and Mill Ruins

 

FAITH followed the rock-strewn path through the pine and oak woods. Catching the scent of Sixteen Mile Creek even before the whispered rumble of Hilton Falls reached her on the breeze. Chickadees fluttered out from the branches angling for handouts. But she had nothing to give them. Submerged memories nudged the edges of her consciousness like the ancient coral reefs and sea creatures that lay buried beneath her feet in the layers of sedimentary rock. The sound of cascading water grew audible as she neared the falls coaxing the memories up through the layers of emotional shale.

 

            At last Hilton Falls came into view tumbling over stepping-stone rock ledges and plunging 10 metres into the cool, clear pool below. The memory haunted mill ruins bordering the falls circumnavigated time and opened her heart to the voices of her childhood. This was her secret and sacred place. Secret because she only came here alone and when she felt troubled. Sacred because of the memories it held of her father. He brought her here as a child to tell her the story that shaped her childhood and her adolescence. The story of the mother she had never known. How she had done what was unthinkable in that day and age. Leaving her husband and her one year old child for another man. Faith had never asked why although the question burned in her mind. The sadness in her father’s eyes when he spoke of it made her understand intuitively that he could speak of this once and once only.

 

He was in a nursing home now lost in the thick haze of Alzheimer’s. Drifting backwards and forwards through time but often dwelling in that single year of joy between Faith’s birth and that day. She visited him often but not often enough. There was no such thing as enough for him.

 

Faith sat on the edge of the mill ruins and tried again to remember her mother. Scouring her memory for details of that one year of happiness. For her father’s sake she wanted to find it and own it so she could share in the experience with him. And for other reasons that had nothing to do with him. But her memory bank did not reach back that far. In her mind she had no mother. Only a father and a void where her mother should have been.

 

The ethereal, spiraling flute of a Thrush surrounded her. She shuddered at the loneliness that suddenly took hold of her.

 

“Is it possible? That I never fully committed to the relationship? That I just skated across the surface of it for seven years… Come on, Faith. You’re the therapist. What does that say about you?”

 

A Kingfisher dove into the pool below the falls, came up empty-handed and protested with its strident, rattling call. Sadness and hurt ebbed out of her a few tears at a time. Tracing the lines and curves of her face the way his fingers had once done but never would again. He had proposed, she told herself. Actually proposed. But she had not been able to love him enough to say yes or even no.

 

Reality settled in like a stone sinking to the bottom of the clear pool. She was alone again. The motherless child once more. She would have to learn how to go to sleep without the sound of breathing next to her. How to wake up in an empty bed. How to contain that bubble of fear that gathered in her chest in the dark of night. How to visit her father knowing that the only person intimately connected to her could no longer protect her.

 

She was alone.

 

Faith looked down to the creek where it emerged from the pool renewed and reborn. Sensing the current that throbbed beneath the surface like her own restless heart. She longed to release herself to it. To float like a fallen leaf content to be at the mercy of the water. Carried for miles and miles through city and country to a destination foreshadowed but not foretold. Perhaps then her destiny would finally reveal itself. The meaning and purpose of her life might become clear.

 

This was a sad and pleasant image that she dwelled within for a time. But in her heart she knew it was not within her to give up control in that way. Life called out to her laying its injustices at her feet and defied her to ignore them knowing full well that she could not.

 

Her thoughts returned now to the Raves. Of course Greg was right, she conceded. She was putting Youth Voice out on a limb. But risk was the price of courageous decisions. The Raves were an olive branch to that disenchanted generation of young people. A way to break down barriers and make a connection with them. They were also a turning point for Youth Voice.

 

“This is why you worked so hard to build this organization. So you could make a difference. So lives like Sarah James wouldn’t be wasted. You can’t let the pessimists stop you. There’s too much at stake here.”

 

Faith felt her strength returning now. She rose, picked up a stone and gave it a sidearm flick watching it skip it four times across the surface of the creek above the falls. A good omen. Her own version of a four leaf clover. Let them try and stop her, she vowed. Let them try. They had no idea what a bulldog she could be. Come hell or high water the Rave Series would go on. Her mother, wherever she was, would be proud.