Indomitable

“I believe the human spirit is indomitable. If you endeavor to achieve, it will happen given enough resolve. It may not be immediate, and often your greater dreams are something you will not achieve within your own lifetime. The effort you put forth to anything transcends yourself. For there is no futility even in death.” – Monty Oum

~

I didn’t know I was running trough the woods until the bottoms of my feet hit the rocks. They were slick from the water splashing before tumbling down the cliff. I must have followed the river—my roadmap to freedom. My chest ached and sweat dripped off my forehead. My finger twitched. The waterfall was tall. I didn’t know how tall. The wind funneled through the trees and, combined with the rushing water, created a wind. I wonder what dives I could do off the waterfall. I wonder. I curled my toes over the edge of the rocks and leaned forward. I couldn’t make out the pool at the bottom through my glossy eyes. The water is cold. The rocks are grey.

The waterfall is tall.

My mom was making little woven figurines in her workshop off our garage. She liked to send me out to get thin sticks from the forest and pick overgrown blades of grass. I’d come back to her with a mouthful of stems in her mouth, her glasses dipped on the end of her nose—her mouth pouted in her thinking face. I’d set the basket quietly next to her and sit on a stool across, testing how long it would take for her to notice I was back. Sometimes it was hours that I just watched. I used to ask her how she could be so focused.

“Well, when you really love something, you just lose yourself in the magic of it.” She’d ruffle my hair and stick a step behind my ear. “Why don’t you make something of your own?”

“It won’t be any good compared to yours.”

“I’ll teach you.”

I never let her teach me. I was afraid I’d love it so much I’d steal it from her. I didn’t want her to lose that magic. I did try once, though. I tried to make a unicorn. The pieces were too small for me to handle. I replaced the materials I used and threw my attempt away.

When she was finished with a piece, she’d price it and have me run it to her shop. We had long, wooden tables in two lines and baskets were strung across the ceiling. She had strings of bells on different lengths strung from the ceiling by the garage opening that people ran when they came—beautiful mismatched pitches. The edges of our garage had assorted cabinets and workbenches where she worked sometimes to show off how she makes things. Her fingers moved so quickly, then. They don’t get to see the prep that happens before or the detail that happens after. Dad stood in the garage door and told me I shouldn’t help her. It encourages her hobby too much.

I took up painting when I was eight. My mom told me I was a natural. She started letting me paint some of her test figurines. She would’ve let me paint her real ones, but I didn’t want to mess them up. My mom got my dad to agree to let me paint a mural in my room. For weeks I wracked my brain for the perfect idea—my perfect world.

One day I was playing outside in the grass in our garden and my mom brought some of her painted figures out to me. Without saying anything, she posed them in the grass and around the flowery archway separating the two sections of the garden. Some dove into the hedge and others trying to climb the arch. Some sniffed the flowers and others took naps. I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

She helped me paint the base coat, but I did all the real painting. I started with the garden. My dad complained that the colors were too bright.

“I can’t imagine a garden being anything other than bright and happy,” she said. She was losing weight. I painted quicker. She let me borrow her figurines as references while I painted them into the landscape. I wanted them to become part of it, but they all just seemed to float on top of everything else. They weren’t interacting with the environment at all. Mom said I’d figure out a way.

Mom died, and father covered her workbenches with black sheets and emptied the garage. He painted my mural black.

I sat on the overhanging rocks, my feet dangling like silent windchimes in the breeze. The rocks were cold on my palms and the water splashed onto my clothes. The world became a blur. Goosebumps covered my arms. My glasses began to fall from my face. I gripped the edge. The water is cold. The rocks are grey.

I heard a rustle behind me. A girl—no older than 16, like me. She wore a white, knee length dress that swayed with the wind. She didn’t seem to see me. She walked away, picking up twigs as went. She was barefoot.

I followed behind her, dodging the leaves and bushes. After a while I thought I lost her, until I found her sitting in a small break in the brush next to a tree, setting her spoils next to her on the ground. I watched, confused, as she began to make the structural beginnings of a figure—weaving. I felt myself sink to the ground behind a tree. How could she do that? Her hands moved slowly and deliberately, pausing between each movement. I found some sticks and grass around me and tried to follow along, but she was moving too quickly. After a while I became engrossed in my work, and everything around me became muffled. My fingers ached from trying to manipulate the small pieces to do what I wanted.

“Magical, isn’t it?”

My elbow cracked against a tree.

“Ow…” I rubbed it with my hand and looked up to see the girl standing above me.

“Sorry, are you okay? Let me look—” She bent to touch me, but I scooted away.

“No! No. Who are you? Why are you out here?”

She looked taken aback. Her eyes were a soft hazel and her skin was like porcelain. Delicate.

“I was inspired and wanted to make something. Don’t you ever get that way?”

“Not anymore.”

“That’s a shame.” She swirled a toe in the dirt. “Want help?”

“No. There’s no point. My fingers can’t do it. The pieces are too small.”

“Why don’t you make them bigger then?”

I stood up, my hand still on my elbow.

“Who are you?”

“Telling you would really ruin the fun.”

“What?”

“You heard me!” She nudged me and trotted away to her tree. She dropped to the ground and took up her creation—a unicorn. She held it up. “Think you could make this, but bigger?”

“Probably not.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t.”

“Probably can’t? Why?”

“Because I can’t! Geez, is that all you ever do? Ask questions?”

“Now you’re the one asking questions.”

I blinked.

“I’ll go now.” She stood and brushed off her dress. It wasn’t dirty. As she turned to go, she asked me one last thing. “So then, why won’t you make something?”

“I’m a painter.”

“Why not both?”

I turned to respond, but she was already gone.

~

I searched the cupboards for breakfast, but they were bone dry. I’ve been telling dad he needs to go shopping, but he just waved me away and said he was busy today. Far cry from mom, who at least had muffins, if nothing else. Strawberry. As he left for work, me munching on a cracker.

“Where are mom’s shaping tools.”

“Hell if I know. I don’t touch ‘em.”

“Okay.” He left, and I went to her workshop. I used to go in there every night after my dad fell asleep. The black sheets were black holes in the night. Today I pulled a sheet off to find the tools she had used to shape branches.

It didn’t take long for me to reach the clearing. The girl was nowhere to be found, but her unicorn figure was still by the tree. I gathered up sticks of all sizes and even managed to cut some vine into thin strips—a slow and painful task. Then I set to work.

“Told ya you could do it.” I flinched, nearly slicing my figure with one of the tools.

“You really have to stop jump scaring me. I keep getting hurt”

“Oh, sorry!” She said. She was wearing the same thing as yesterday. “I did say you could do it though.”

“I didn’t do this for you.”

“Good.”

Silence. I sat back on my heels, hesitant to work while she watched.

“You should bring lunch and dinner with you next time.”

I went to tell her that I had plenty of time to eat lunch, when I noticed the sun shining through the trees was orange and casing shadows over my skeleton of a figurine.

“It’s late.”

“Yes. It looks great. This is the hardest part.”

“It looks okay.” All I had was the bare skeleton of a creature that could be a horse. It looked vaguely proportional, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to fill in the details. The sticks looked like they could fall out of place at any moment.

“Bring dinner next time.”

“I’ll think about it.”

One week later and I was making a dwarf. At least, I was trying to make a dwarf. It looked more like a small person, with no outlandish characteristics making it a mythical anything. It had to have a bigger feet, but I didn’t know how to do feet to begin with, so I stole an old pair of dad’s boots that I didn’t think he’d miss—not that I cared—and went with that. I had just finished the outline when I heard a bell ring behind me. I turned to see the girl setting a bag on the ground a few feet away.

“Lunch.”

She was gone before I could say anything. I went to the bag and saw a ham and cheese sandwich with a string cheese and a bag of strawberries. Inside was a note that read: tomorrow I’ll make muffins. I ate the sandwich first, and then the cheese, saving the strawberries for last. Mom always said leave desert as a reward for finishing the meal. About the time I was on the strawberries the girl came back with an armful of vine strips.

“How did you—”

“Experience,” she interrupted. “I figured I’d give you a little bit of boost, because I really want to see this dwarf come along. Your unicorn turned out so beautifully.”

“I had to redo the head because it fell apart.”

“Still turned out. Can I have a strawberry?”

I handed her one, watching to see if it would fall through her hands. She seemed ethereal. Her dress was still unstained. It didn’t fall through. She took it and ate it as I ate mine, but juice didn’t dribble on her dress like it did my shirt. She smiled. I didn’t ask.

~

“Do whatever the fuck you want in the woods, but don’t expect me to give you a damn thing.”

“What are you going to do with the land deed?”

“That’s for me to decide, not you.”

We stood off in the kitchen, me on one side, him on the other. Each of us with words waiting in our holsters, and boy were we trigger happy.

“I’m part of this family too.”

“Oh really? You think you can run a household, do you? I don’t see you working a job. I don’t see you cooking dinner or running errands. I don’t even see you going to school.”

“It’s summer vacation.”

“Even more time to help out around here! You don’t know how to do taxes. You don’t know how to pay bills.”

“You’re just gonna sign the rights to this house away to some stranger? Doesn’t she mean anything to you?”

“Well you’re clearly not ready to be entrusted with this. You’re what, 14?”

“16. Thanks for forgetting my past two birthdays, by the way.”

“I didn’t forget.”

“Assuming you don’t find a way to die in two years, I’ll be a legal adult. It’s a decent gamble, even for you.”

“Being a legal adult is a far cry from being a real one. I should be putting you in your place. Lord knows you deserve it.”

“I don’t think the Lord would condone abuse.”

“Oh abuse—” Dad’s hand rattled the counter. I flinched despite myself. “Look at you. You’re afraid. Come talk to me about this when you can actually prove you’ve done something other than fail to move on.”

I was out the door in seconds. I couldn’t see the trees flashing by me. My eyes were the waterfall. I failed. I ran. I failed. I proved him right, damnit. I proved him right. My hand cracked against a passing tree. The trees are grey. I burst through into my cove. This wasn’t where I wanted to—The scene in front of me came into focus. The girl sat on a picnic blanket with a muffin in front of her. In the muffin was a candle that she was lighting with a match. Behind her was a decorative arch with vines and flowers traveling up and around it.

“Oh! Happy birth—” her eyes widened and locked with mine. In one movement the match was extinguished and she was wrapping me in her arms. My legs gave out and I pulled her down with me. My body shook and I couldn’t stop the tears. She rubbed my back with one hand and ran her fingers through my hair with her other.

“He won’t agree to let me inherit the house. The land. He said he won’t sell it until he—he dies. But he won’t give it to me. I’ll lose it. What if he dies and I’m not 18? I’m not old enough. He doesn’t care about mom. He never did. He wants everything to disappear. I re-remind him too much of her. That’s why he resents me. He would rather I disappear. It would be easier for him. He doesn’t care.” I found myself hugging the girl closer. I couldn’t help it. I felt something wet on the back of my shirt.

“I didn’t think I could lose anything else,” I whispered before everything disappeared.

I woke up to rustling. My eyes took a minute to focus and it took even longer for me to realize where I was. I was laying on a blue quilt in the center with my woven figurines. The unicorn and the dwarf were both looking at the path to the waterfall. Were they always like that? I rubbed my eyes and got up.

Memories started to rush back. The fight. My run. My tears. The girl…

I jolted to a stop. My breath hitched. My legs shook.

Hooked to a branch by the waterfall edge was a long streak of white fabric. Another piece was caught on one of the rocks. The rocks are grey. My body ran over without my telling it to. The waterfall is cold. I didn’t’ think I could lose anything else.

I sank to the ground, my finger feeling a piece of paper weighed down by some pebbles. I opened my eyes and noticed over ten small, woven figurines around me—my mother’s old figurines—figurines I assumed my dad had burned one winter in a fire lit by vodka. They surrounded me, perched on rocks, branches, smelling flowers…They interacted with the land. I looked at the piece of paper.

It was a picture of the mural I painted all those years ago. On the back was a note:

Make them your own.

Make them my own.

~

“How do you feel? You’ve been working on this park for well over five years now. Do you think your hard work has paid off?” The reporter asked.

“Well, it’s been well over eight years since I first started making creatures in the forest, but five years with the goal of it being a park in mind. It all started with the unicorn.”

“What was your inspiration? I’ve never heard of someone doing this before.”

“My mom used to weave little figures out of vines and tiny sticks in her workshop. I painted a mural when I was young of her figures in our garden. I always thought I’d be a painter, but I guess I’ve done a little bit of both here, bringing my childhood mural to life.”

“How did you learn to do this?”

“I picked up tips when I was younger.”

“Can you give us a quick rundown of the park?”

“Well, you go through the archway and down the cobblestone paths. If you go straight. You’ll reach the main clearing where it all started. You can see the original unicorn and dwarf and a few other creations I built shortly after, as well as a monument in the middle. If you take the path to the right, you’ll come to the medieval village. The buildings are serviceable to go into but aren’t fit for living. Trust me—I tried. The portion to the left is currently off limits, but on the way to each location you can find hidden figurines interacting with the environment naturally. Think of it as a scavenger hunt for secret treasures. There’s always something else to discover.”

“What do you envision for the future?”

I hesitated.

“Sir?”

“Sorry. I guess I’ve been so focused on creating that I haven’t thought that far ahead. I wanted to create a safe place for kids to explore with a completely free imagination. I’ve toyed with the idea of teaching weaving and painting classes and see if I can’t involve my visitors moving forward with the expansion of the park.”

“Do you have a plan for getting the land deed?”

“Well, first I have to figure out who has it. Then I have to rely on money being a powerful motivator if good will isn’t.”

“Very good. That’s all the questions I have. Enjoy your grand opening!”

“Thank you.”

The reporter backed away, but I could see the cameras fixated on me. I smiled at the crowd around me and bent forward in a bow. I reached up to a string and pulled it. Hundreds of bells I’d collected over the years dropped from the trees and rang, creating a symphony of mismatched musical notes. I smiled as they danced through the air. I couldn’t even hear the crowd cheering.

My day consisted of standing on the front path shaking hands and handing out maps. I had cameras set up around the blocked off left path that I monitored on my phone. Most of the time I just rocked back and forth on my feet and adjusted my tie. Ties really are restricting. Every other minute I spent smiling at guests and wishing them best of luck on their adventures. So many people. The kids ran around excitedly. The parents saw the park through their phone camera recording every movement their kids made. I didn’t get offended. Most adults grow out of their imagination.

Everyone was gone by closing time at six. I stared down the path, but nobody else came. I turned and escaped into the woods, tearing off my jacket and tie in the process. I unbuttoned one button from my dress shirt and followed the unicorn’s gaze past the do not enter tape.

The waterfall.

I got there and gazed at my final creation—a figure of a girl—the outline of her body reaching through a voluminous black fabric. She wanted to escape. It was about time I let her. I heaved a breath. The black fabric was as complete as a black hole, swallowing the space around her. The waterfall splashed behind her, but not close enough to reach her. Too cold. Wildflowers grew and spread along the base of her feet that sunk and became one with the earth.

I rigged the black fabric to be connected to a clear wire that I traced back to a different tree. I went there and took one last look at the hidden shape.

“Time to be free.” I cut the wire and the fabric collapsed, transforming from a black cage to a billowing, perfectly white gown. The skin shone like porcelain and the eyes a gentle, welcoming hazel. Her smile was ever-present, and her shoulders relaxed. Her arms reached out as though to welcome you home. Home…what a strange concept. I heard a choked noise behind me. I turned.

“Dad?” He stood behind me a ways, a hand over his mouth.

“Where did you get that image?”

“How did you find me?”

“I followed you. I wanted to see for myself. How did you get that image?”

“What do you mean?” I turned to face him and subconsciously braced myself, putting myself between him and my statue.

“That—the resemblance is uncanny. It looks just like—” tears flowed down his cheeks and his body twitched. “It looks just like your mom.”

“Mom…?”

“I’m so sorry.” Dad dropped to his knees but kept his eyes fixated on the figure. “I was so scared. I didn’t know what to do. But all I did was push you away. And now it’s too late.”

“Dad—” I didn’t move.

“No. I have something for you.” He pulled out a roll of paper from his coat pocket and held it in front of him, locking me with a painful gaze. “This is the deed to the house. And the land. Your name is written on the bottom as the sole inheritor of this land until you write otherwise.” Eyes on the statue. Damn it, look at me.

I sank to the ground where I stood. The ground is soft.

“You didn’t sell it.”

“I backed out I. couldn’t. I just couldn’t.”

“You didn’t sell it.”

He looked into my eyes.

“I am so proud of you.” He looked around him, shaking his head in awe. “How did you do it? How did you do all of this?”

“I looked behind me at the figure smiling gently at us, the white fabric rippling in the wind. The sound of the river performed ballads in the night. I pulled a bell out of my pocket and rang it.

“Someone once told me that if you love something enough, you just get lost in the magic of it.”