Jason Mott - Ava's Gift

Heather walks out in front, checking the ground for snakes and pitfalls like a concerned parent, and Ava, for her part, does the job of running up ahead and causing her mother to worry just enough. As Heather walks she thinks about how their lives might change in the years to come. She foresees the day when her daughter will not need her. The day when her child will not be a child but will become a woman who runs ahead into the world and, perhaps, does not look back. What will become of her then?

“Come on, Mom!” Ava calls.

“I’m coming,” Heather replies.

The sun is high and the wind is still and the earth is buzzing with the sound of life. The birds sing. The insects hum.

“Mom?” Ava calls. She has flitted around a bend in the trail, and there is something different in her voice now, as she stands in this place where her mother cannot see her. A knot of fear rises in Heather’s throat.

“What is it?”

“Mom!” Ava screams.

Heather rushes through the brush. It is inescapable, the fear she feels now, the fear she did not know was possible. But she has always been afraid; she simply lacked a location to affix to it. Now she has that: she has a child.

By the time Heather rounds the corner she can hear her daughter crying. It is a wet, choking sound, a soft shudder like the sound of ice breaking. “What is it?” Heather asks, just as she sees that her daughter is unharmed. Sprawled in the thick green grass is a deer. It is a female, its pelt the color of the late evening. There is an arrow rising out of its chest. The animal wheezes, slowly.

“Mom...” Ava says. Her face is streaked with tears. “Mom,” the child repeats. The word is a mantra. Heather looks around, hoping to find the hunter, hoping that things might be brought to a quick and less painful end for the animal. But there is no one. “Is it going to die?” Ava asks.

“It’s not your fault,” Heather replies, though she does not quite know why.

Ava weeps. She tries to understand. “How long is it going to take? What happens after? Is anyone going to bury it?” On and on, she gives voice to the questions that dance in her head.

Her mother does not have the answers. And so the two of them sit in silence, sharing this moment of time, this small plot of a large cruel world, with an animal in its last breaths of life. The deer watches them without fear and it does not flinch, does not withdraw when the child reaches out a trembling hand and places it on the animal’s neck. The deer’s hide is smooth.

Heather kisses the top of Ava’s head. They are both crying now.

The animal’s breathing slows. Without asking, Ava reaches up and grasps the arrow that has pierced the animal’s lung. She pulls it and, after a moment of resistance, it comes free. The deer trembles. It releases a sound like the bleating of sheep. Ava tosses the arrow away.

“Ava,” Heather says, “it’s too late.”

Heather can see in the child’s face that all she wants is for the creature to be better. All she wants is for the blood to stop. All she wants is for death to turn away, just this once. Ava places her hands over the wound. The deer’s blood flows in pulses, like a heartbeat. Ava closes her eyes and wants for nothing other than for the deer to be better.

What comes next is a trembling of her hands, like the spark of electricity placed beneath her palms. Then the deer is up, on its feet. It is still bleeding, but it is able to walk, ever so slowly.

Heather takes Ava in her arms and scuttles backward in the grass. Ava is limp. “Ava!” Heather calls. “Ava!”

Heather watches as the deer walks slowly away—still wheezing, the blood still flowing from its pierced lung, though not as vigorously as it had been. Step after step, the animal disappears into the forest, leaving a trail of blood.

“Ava?” Heather continues, again and again. “Please wake up,” she pleads. The minutes grow into one another like vines until, at last, Ava stirs.

“It’s okay,” Ava says in a voice so low that her mother can barely understand.

Heather weeps with joy at the sound of her daughter’s voice.

“The deer,” Ava whispers. “It’s okay? I wished for it to be okay.”

Heather looks at the trail of blood leading into the forest, but she does not understand anything of what has happened.

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