Fiction | Autumn 2022

The Tower

by Jade Oates

Out on the porch wrapped in blankets, the family sat with their eggs and coffee watching the fog clear away. “I’m taking Remmy to the Tower!” I announced. A cousin spit out her coffee. The family looked at me, horror struck. 

“Not the Tower!” my aunt exclaimed from the far end of the porch. They whispered among themselves in dismay and shook their heads. 

“Why are you taking him there?” my brother turned to me seriously. “It’s dangerous.” I looked at my beautiful baby, happily eating his eggs. He beamed hugely at his uncle. 

“Remmy wants to go.” I explained simply. “The Tower is beautiful. It will be an adventure for us both.” 

“It’s no place for children,” my brother insisted, “It’s not even a place for any of us.” He gestured to our family members sipping their coffee. Older people–they had had their own businesses, raised their own children–I should listen to them, they know what’s good for us. 

But I looked at Remmy again, smiling triumphantly, looking out over the valley. I followed his gaze over the railing to the Tower perched on the valley’s opposite wall. As the fog began to dissipate, the white spire came into luminous view. It gleamed like a crystal in the sunlight, or like the warm glow of his smile. Doves nested and fluttered around the lapis shingles of the conical roof, and I thought for a moment I could hear the sound of a violin coming from an upper window, even this far off.

My brother followed my gaze and the Tower darkened; lightning flashed around its base. “It’s no place for children!” He said it now with anger. 

I turned to him then, and looked at him sadly. “Perhaps,” I started gently, “it is no place for all of you. And so I think that even you, my dear brother, cannot come with us when we leave tomorrow.” Remmy clapped his hands ecstatically and beamed at his uncle again. My brother looked at me in bewilderment then. He groaned in frustration, and then he sighed. He picked up Remmy and led us into the house. He pulled out his old leather backpack–sunbleached but still sturdy–and still sighing, still bewildered, he filled it with all the everything we needed for our journey. I sat on the bed and Remmy sat on my lap and clapped gleefully as each item was packed carefully by his uncle’s hands. And when the bag was packed, my brother put it down on the bed beside me. He knelt down in front of us, looking at me with mystic love I had not seen in him before, and he put his hand on my head and closed his eyes. Then he looked at Remmy, and they played Lions: rubbing their foreheads against each other and growling until Remmy erupted with laughter and applause. And my brother stepped back then, and I saw tears falling softly from his eyes. And he smiled at us and nodded. 

My brother was the only one at the gate to see us off when we left the next morning. He waved goodbye with the white silence of a mystic. But I noticed that when he turned his gaze to The Tower now, it glowed pink and bloomed with wild rose against the valley’s emerald hillside.