Silver Roots

Phinnaeus Silver was a Doctor of Philosophy at a small university in New England. His life was simple and his time was happy. His wife, Cassie, was loyal and loved him and gave him five children: Judah, the oldest, who liked to climb trees and buildings and who loved the power of words; when he grew up, he wanted to be a Doctor, just like his father, but in the discipline of literature. Annie, who dreamed of going to space, who kept her body in top physical shape even at the age of fifteen, because she needed to be at the top of the physical game as well as the intellectual; she studied physics and mathematics and prepared herself for aerospace engineering. Mato, who read away his time, dreaming of other worlds while ignoring school assignments, but somehow, always got by well enough for his parents not to complain. Olivia, who loved to watch things grow and spent her time in the garden, planting, whispering encouragment and stroking baby leaves so that they might grow tall and outlive her. Agnes, the youngest, who trailed her father like a shadow, and whose grasp of his ideas surprised everyone.

Phinnaeus's particularly close relationship with his youngest child began when she was just four years old, when Agnes walked into the study and planted herself in the big, leather recliner while Phinnaeus was talking to himself out loud in preparation for a lecture on Boethius's concept of time. He turned to her and asked, "Well, what do you think, Agnes? Do you agree? Is it all just now, do we exist in one moment and the illusion of linearity, or is the line of time what's true?" It was meant to be a rhetorical question, and as soon as he'd asked it, Phinnaeus had turned back to his papers. Agnes surprised him.

"Just the dot, Pappy," she said and Phinnaeus turned back around.
"What was that?" he said.
"Just the dot," she repeated.
"What dot?"
"The 'now' dot," she said. "No line."
By the time Agnes was six, she'd sat in almost all of his classes and understood it all, although sometimes with a little help.
"My little genius," Phinnaeus said, ruffling her hair. The girl smiled up at him before skipping off ahead down the sidewalk.

Despite her grasp of complex philosophical ideas, Agnes was a relatively normal child and balanced childhood and intellectualism with an ease that bewildered Dr. Silver's colleagues and that please him and Cassie. Agnes would come home from academic immersion and probing by intellectuals and jump into the family activities. She'd climb trees with Judah, stargaze with Annie, sit reading with Mato, and get full of dirt, gardening with Olivia. None of her siblings resented her in the least. They loved their youngest sister and boasted about her almost as much as their parents.

So life went on until one day in the summer of Agnes's eight year. Twelve-year-old Olivia's plants were thriving, having been moved to her makeshift greenhouse. Judah was lazing around in his last summer before college and Mato and Annie were studying, as usual.
"Hey, guys," Olivia said, after she'd gathered them all together. "Let's do something together."
"Like what, Livia?" Judah asked.
"I don't know. Build a campfire or something. Just hang out," she said.
"Sounds good to me," Mato said, looking up from his book.
"Yeah, just put that down for a minute, all right?" Olivia said.
Mato sighed and dogeared the page. "Fine."
"Oh, come on, Matt, it's nothing personal," Annie said, poking him in the arm. "Plus, this'll be good. Our last stint together before Judah hauls off into the horizon of intellectual hermitage, right?" She grinned.
"Shut up, Annie," Judah said and rolled his eyes.
"Yeah, yeah," Annie answered.
"Ok, ok. Where's Agnes? She was just here," Olivia said, biting her lip.
"Oh, you know her," Mato said.
"Yeah. Probably lost in some book just like you," Olivia answered. He stuck his tongue out at her.
"Oh, come on," Annie interjected. "She's always late to everything."
"But she was just here! That's not being late."
"It's being vanished," Mato said. "But what else is new? She's probably with Dad."
"Ugh!" Olivia grunted and stomped her foot.
"It's all right," Judah said calmly. "I'll just go get her." He bowed out of the little clump they'd made in the backyard and turned toward the house. Agnes came bounding out of the door so quickly, it almost knocked Judah over.
"Whoah, there, missy! What's going on?"
"Sorry! I had to just get..."
"A book."
She nodded and blushed slightly.
"Well, I'd keep it far away because we're making a campfire. Come on."
Agnes put the book in her back pocket and followed her older brother back out into the yard where everyone else was.
"Ok. So marshmallows for s'mores, right?" Olivia was saying.
"Yeah!" Agnes exclaimed jumping up and down.
The Silver children set to work.

Agnes didn't realize what was happening until it was all over and by that time, of course, it was too late. She and her siblings had spent a good part of the late afternoon and early evening talking and singing, making s'mores and laughing about God knows what around the fire. Her siblings had tossed her around like a ball, a game they all played because Agnes was so little. She loved flying through the air and knowing that no matter what, someone would catch her. The five of them had developed a nearly perfect trust.

When they were done, with the summer air dry and hot around them despite the dark, with Annie's stars clear and bright above them, and with fireflies lighting up the air around them, blinking in time to the crickets' song, they put out the fire, covered the pit with dirt, and went back inside.

The burning started at the back of the house, so Phinnaeus's and Cassie's room got hit first. Sharing a wall with their room was Judah's and Mato's. The fire spread quickly. Annie smelled the smoke and was awoken by the crackling sound, and was the one who called 911. Olivia and Agnes were the first ones out, because they were at the front of the house, and they were the youngest. Annie ran back to get her parents and her brothers.

Phinnaeus had awoken to a room engulfed in flames, all exits blocked, and his wife already swallowed by them, screaming in agony and fear and calling out not for her own life, but for her children's. Annie ran back to find her father covered in fire, having run through the door despite the flames in order to get to his children. She watched him burn and ran without thinking to her brothers' room, knocking down the door and releasing the pressure, which released the fire and killed her instantly.

Olivia and Agnes were held by the state until the family's lawyers dug out Cassie's and Phinnaeus's wills. The two remaining Silvers, who happened to be the two youngest, would be sent to Georgia to live with Betty London, Cassie Silver's best friend and confidante, and her husband, Charles London. They lived on a farm where cotton grew along the fences and goats roamed the fields, where peanuts grew under the earth, where it rained oceans in the summer, and where the divide between human races remained at the forefront of everyone's mind.

Olivia was silent for a year after the death of her family, unresponsive, always staring off into the past. If only I'd just picked something else, she kept thinking. And she layed the blame on herself.

Although Agnes had the intellectual capacity of an adult, she was, essentially, just a child. Nearly everyone and everything she'd ever known was gone. She clung to her silent sister.

"Livia," she whispered. "Livia. It's me. Wake up, Livia."
But Olivia never answered. After a year of silence and numerous sessions with a variety psychologists, the Londons sent Olivia Silver off to an institution paid for by her inheritance. Agnes saw her once every three months until she turned fifteen. By that time, she couldn't take seeing her sister like that, refusing to eat, forced to be fed nutrition intravenously, saying nothing but the words, "I am guilty. I'm a murderer," if she ever said anything at all.

Agnes still remembered her family clearly and understood Olivia more than anyone could imagine. She thought back to the first day she'd exposed her affinity for ideas to her father, and to her assertion that time was a point, one, eternal ungraspable point and that the linearity of time was an illusion. It's funny, she thought, that I end up here, with the Londons in the deep South. Maybe two states over, from Faulkner's Mississippi. Olivia! she cried out in her mind. You've become Benjy and all pain is forever and ever and ever. Can't you make it joy, too? But she knew Olivia couldn't. Pain was more powerful than joy. Pain was sustaining and it corroded her sister away.