The Hill

by Pil Lee

At the back of the house was a hill that stretched away from the garden like a huge frozen wave. Right near the house it was grassy and green but as it started to rise it turned sandy and bare, then a rocky scree covered the long long slope to the top. At the jagged crest of the hill perched another house, a mansion, tiny and white on the far distant cliff, but even at that great distance it was a house of majestic and graceful proportions.

The hill was only there after dark. It was bright and sunny on the hill and the ground was hot for climbing. It took almost a whole night to struggle to the mansion, but the grass up there was unimaginably cool and soft and the hill was instantly forgotten. Turning and looking back over the cliff there was now a sheer drop to the ocean below, but a river of sand ran down a groove in the face for a rushing slide to the bottom. The water of the ocean was dark and warm, like fine blue silk against the skin, and so still that the pontoon tethered against the cliff hardly shifted in the breeze.

Every night for as long as she could remember, Marybeth had left her bedroom as the stars began to twinkle in the sky outside her window. She had walked to the bottom of the garden and, for the next six hours, made her way slowly up the sunny hill to the mansion. She had never been inside it, for as soon as she arrived there she turned back the way she had come and saw the beckoning ocean. It only took a couple of minutes to slide down to the water, and as she sat on the pontoon she would see the great white house, like a tiny shining cloud, on the top of the cliff behind her. Just as she decided to climb up again, she would slip off the pontoon and swim away, towards the horizon and back to her bedroom.

Marybeth had first decided when she was five years old that she would do everything possible to try and get inside the white mansion. When she was ten she managed to stay on the pontoon for a whole hour before she had to swim home. When she was twenty she managed to walk all the way around the mansion before sliding down the cliff to the ocean, and when she was forty two she finally stood on the grand white marble doorstep and rang the huge gold bell. She had not slept for 40 years, had never spoken a word or sang a song, and her bare feet were hard and black, like slippers of smoothest ebony.

The door opened soundlessly and Marybeth stepped inside. A long hallway stretched away from her and she started down it. The door closed behind her and then a young man rose from his chair beside the doorway and spoke to her.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

Marybeth froze, the breath shocked out of her, then she turned slowly to face him. He wasn't very tall, with slim hands and shoulders and pale straight hair. She tried to answer him, but she couldn’t think of what to say.v

A look of impatience crossed his face. “Why are you here?” he asked.

Marybeth looked at him hopelessly, still silent.

The man took a step towards her. “By what right are you in this house?” he said.

Marybeth smiled, relieved. This she could answer. “I climbed the hill”, she said. Her voice was croaky. “I swam across the ocean.” She coughed into her small hand. “I never gave up.”

The man turned his head slightly on the side. “ But you did, I think,” he said. “You gave up everything else.”

He took her arm and started to walk down the hall with her. “How old are you?”

She couldn’t tell him. “Who are your parents?” She couldn’t remember. “Where do you come from? And what is your name.”

They had arrived at the door at the end of the hall. “My name is Marybeth and I come from the bottom of the hill,” she said.

He opened the door. “Welcome Marybeth”, he said to her as he gently pushed her back into her old bedroom.

The next night Marybeth left home again as the stars came out. She toiled up the long barren slope of the hill and went straight to the door of the mansion. As soon as it opened she spoke to the man on the chair. “I am five years old,” she told him.

He looked at her blankly. “Can I help you?” he said.

“It’s me, it’s Marybeth from last night,” she said.

“I’m sorry, Marybeth, you have me at a disadvantage,” he said. “I don’t believe we’ve met.” He stood up and took her arm. “But welcome.”

They started down the hall, but Marybeth pulled her arm free. “I’m not going back,” she said. “I have the right to be here.”

“What right?” he asked.

“I climbed the hill,” she said, clenching her teeth. “I didn’t give up, even if you think I did. I know how old I am, I know my name, I know where I come from and I know what I want.”

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I want to live here, to stay here,” said Marybeth.

The young man regarded Marybeth for a moment and then pulled her towards the side of the corridor. “You don’t look five to me,” he said.

Marybeth gazed into the huge blue eyes of the tall woman in the mirror on the wall, her long black hair tangled down her back and beads of perspiration making dirt trails across her brow. She wiped away the dirt and the woman in the mirror did the same. “No,” she whispered, confused and scared, “I don’t look five.”

The man walked her back to the front door. “It was nice to meet you, Marybeth,” he said politely. She grabbed his arm as he opened the door and pushed her back into her bedroom. “Wait,” she gasped. She tried to distract him. “What’s your name?”

“It’s Denton”, he said and then the door closed between them.

Marybeth didn’t go straight to the mansion the next night. She stood at the top of the hill and gazed at its white magnificence and curled her toes in the cool lush grass. Then she turned and looked at the deep blue ocean below. Shielding her hands against the sun she strained to see beyond the horizon, but sea filled all her view. She felt no urge to slide down the cliff and immerse herself in its warm luxury, but she could remember the joy of the feeling as a distant, special memory. It was only two days since she had first knocked at the door of the mansion, and already the myriad nights of her past blurred away.

Finally she turned to the great house and walked slowly to the front door. She felt the soreness of her feet, for the first time it seemed, and she found herself thinking of the hill she had climbed so many times. Where had it come from? Why did no-one else ever climb it? Her hand paused just short of the bell. “What am I doing?” she suddenly asked herself.

Before she could even ring the door swung open. Marybeth entered and closed the door quietly behind her. The young man on the chair looked up and she met his gaze. “Do you know who I am?” she asked before he could speak.

He looked surprised and shook his head.

“I’m Marybeth and you’re Denton,” she said.

“I am Denton,’ he said, nodding slowly. “Hello Marybeth.”

She made to walk past him, and he put his hand out in front of her.

“By what right are you in this house?” he asked.

“By whatever right you give me,” she said to him. They stared at each other and she watched his strong mouth give a rueful smile.

“How do I know if you have the right?” he said.

“I made it here alone,” said Marybeth. “Now you have met me. I don’t know how you judge me. I don’t know the right thing to say. You decide.”

He looked at her hands, curled tightly in her shift, and her feet, filthy with the dust of ten thousand nights.

“Alright,” he said at last. “Welcome Marybeth.”

He made to take her down the hall but she skipped out of his reach. “Oh no,” she said, “I will find my own way.”

She turned into a wide opening halfway down the hall and before her was a sweeping staircase leading up to a gallery lined with doorways. She climbed to the gallery before the young man could stop her and ran down its length, glancing in all the doors as she passed. Each room was full of graceful, elegant furniture, richly coloured rugs and hangings and books and paintings. At the end of the gallery were immense glass doors, standing wide, and she rushed through them and into a ballroom with shining mosaic floors and glittering chandeliers. She looked back to see if Denton was chasing her, but there was no-one there. No-one in any of the rooms, no-one in the ballroom, no-one on the stairs.

She turned around in a circle and saw that she was standing in the very centre of the room with the light from a hundred crystal windows embracing her. She walked over to the centre window and looked down into the garden, scented bushes surrounded by the green green grass. She could feel vividly the cool of the grass beneath her feet and her eyes followed it out beyond the garden to the top of the cliff. And here, from inside the house, there was no ocean but instead there was the hill, covered in rocks and gravel and, at the bottom of the hill, for the very first time she could see her home. It wasn’t white, it wasn’t large, it wasn’t graceful. And it was covered in night. But as she watched, she could see a faint light in one of the windows, shining like a tiny star, and suddenly she wondered, who turned on that light? What kind of life do they have? What do they see?

She came slowly back down the stairs and down the hallway to the front door. Denton sat in his chair again, and he got to his feet as she approached.

“I don’t have the right to be in this house,” Marybeth said to him. “This is not my home. My home is at the bottom of the hill.”

Denton opened the door without speaking and she went down the steps. She heard it close behind her and she didn’t look back.

She took the first few steps down into the dust and then heard a noise behind her. She turned around to see the young man picking his away across the scree towards her.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“I thought I’d come with you,” he said.

“Denton,” she began.

“Marybeth,” he said, with the same crooked smile as before.

“I’m not who I thought I was,” said Marybeth. “I’m not a child, I’m a grown woman. I have a home where I have never slept, I have a family who I have never spoken to, I have a life that I know nothing about. I have nothing to offer you. There is no reason to follow me.”

“You tried like no-one else,” he said to her. “You never gave up, and now that you can see the truth you still haven’t given up.” He took her hesitant hands in his. “Marybeth.”

Marybeth stared at him. “Who are you?” she said.

“I’m someone just like you,” he said. “I never gave up either. I made it to the mansion long ago. But I never realised until I saw you that I had given up, from the very beginning.”

Marybeth looked back up the hill. “Are there others?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I never realised there was anyone in the world but me until you came through the door.”

“What if there are,” she said. “What if you’re not there to help them, to ask them the question, to help them back home?”

“My time is over,” he said to her. “We’ll have to try and help them from the bottom of the hill.”

He smiled at the exhausted woman at his side and gathered her into his arms.

“We’ll leave a light on.”