What can Eliza Fisher do aside from continue to put one foot in front of the other and walk away?
The steadfast determination that cleared the way for her all her life is dislodged, washed away with her home and her echoes. They had confidence in their hands, when they wove income for their mother and sisters in the absence of their father and brother. They had trust in their own judgement, when they saw those sharp, jagged echoes and chose them to live on, and certainty in their steps each day they walked that path that exchanged small time for enduring memory. Exchange; all Eliza has ever done is given. She has tried, feeling it was right, feeling it was the mantle left to her by her father and then her brother, to sustain the family; teach her sisters, care for her mother, attend to her grandfather, protect her cousins. Eliza Fisher, waiting pensively until the time comes to intervene, taking her twisted pilgrimage through the pain Little Avoning would have forgotten. Hearing secret confessions whispered in familial suffering, enduring the pinpricks that accompany being everybody’s favourite confidant.
Murky floodwater has removed the clarity with which Eliza saw the world, and rainwater pools in their gut as they reflect on all the time they marched forward steadfast along a path that would only ever lead away from home. Is it the fate of all Fishers, then? To leave Little Avoning for a watery bed? They had stayed all this time and at last the sea had come inland to fetch them, tired of waiting while they ignorantly ploughed down a self-forged and aimless path.
They clutch their bracelet, slick with rain but only faintly able now to send a shock of ice down their spine. There is no rushing water drowning out the argument anymore.
“Why don’t you just go away, Eliza? Go away!”
How could she? What would they be without her? What will they become when they lose her now, for it is not self-centered for Eliza to understand that she feeds her family in more ways than one, and to know that some essential fabric of herself has been lost in the flood. Parts of them that can’t be unrooted. She is on the precipice of making a series of decisions that might not be able to protect everybody anymore. She might want things selfishly.
Cold, paper skin caresses her cheek, and Eliza comes out of their reverie to find Jemma in step beside them. “Are you cold?” Jemma carefully pries the bundle from Eliza’s arms, unfurling some fabric to wrap over her shoulders.
Long grass swipes beads of water over your ankles, and you see Edith and Esther smiling. When the grass fades the smiles remain, and Eliza’s sisters envelop her.
“They’re saying it’s not far now. Just a little longer, Lizzy, then you can rest.”
There are difficult descisions on the road ahead. But Eliza has no obligations that are not torn apart in a flood; she will be able to make choices.