Another Mother

In the forest, time took off its mask. Rot eagerly did its luscious work while shoots and roots grew unashamedly. I nursed my baby in the nook of a tree, wet moss leeching into my jeans.

Ellie pulled away, gurgling and cooing. I patted her on the back and grabbed the cloth sling from my bag. She wriggled as I wrapped her snug against my chest and heaved onto my feet in the soft soil.

I’d followed the woman into the little woods behind the Tesco supermarket without a second thought. As always, she evaded me, disappearing the moment I blinked. No matter. I preached to my secondary school students about the value of methodical work in physics. Now, it was my time to be methodical. I started my search again.

Creeping along the dirt path through the trees, I listened closely for any noise breaking the curtain of bird song rippling in the air. Nothing. Soon enough, Ellie stopped wriggling and fell asleep, her head heavy on my chest.

With no sign of the woman on the path, I veered off and followed the perimeter of the rusted fence, which looped around the woods. Needles and cider cans indicated that I was not alone down here. I slowed, a protective arm around sleeping Ellie.

And then — a flash of movement in the trees.

I crouched, gazing through the leaves. I’d found my prize.

The woman squatted, tinkering with something silver on the ground. She sighed and paused to pull her black and grey hair into a loose bun. She wore practical black outdoor clothes, and a splotchy brown birthmark highlighted her nose, surrounded by a constellation of freckles and wrinkles.

She rose from the ground, holding a metallic silver circle.

My heart pounded in my chest as I gazed at her. I should go home. That would be good. It would be wise. Instead, I walked forward, through the trees.

“You’re my mother,” I said.

The woman looked up, startled. Her brown eyes were alive, and there was an energy in her stance like she was about to leap… where?

“You followed me,” she said.

“Well? Is it true?”

She tilted her head, squinting. “In many versions of reality, yes, I am your mother.”

Take it as a testament to the unique nature of the situation that I did not fall to my knees in shock. I took a deep breath. While my more-than-passing interest in quantum mechanics screamed “parallel universe.” My sanity said, “hallucinations, doppelganger, long-lost twin.”

“Um,” I said, intelligently. “So, you’re… you’re a version of my mother from an alternate world?”

Other Mother took a step towards me, swift and powerful. “Yes. Though, I’m from quite a few parallels away.”

Clearly. “And… why did you come here?”

A toothy, wolf-like grin animated her face – half a snarl, really.

“To see you, my dear.”

###

When I first saw Other Mother walking down the high street in town, I’d wondered if I was going insane. She’d glanced at me briefly, and I’d clutched Ellie’s pram in shock. By the time I spun around to get a closer look, she had disappeared in the milling high street crowd.

Over the next week, I saw her in the park, in the supermarket, in the café. Always disappearing down a road or round a corner by the time I’d gathered my wits.

Finally, I confessed my sightings to Tom, my husband, while my real mum pottered in the sun-drenched kitchen with Ellie.

“Maybe it’s a postpartum thing,” he said, soft and gentle.

“Well,” said Mum, emerging from the kitchen, bouncing Ellie in her arms. “I was back up and running after a few days, with you Mel, but I suppose that’s because I also had your older brother to deal with. I just had to get on with it.” She glanced sideways at Tom as if he’d be impressed at her stoicism in the face of her body being ripped apart.

“No,” I said. “I swear, all week I’ve been seeing mum around town, but like it’s not her, it’s some other version of her. She’s, uh, outdoorsy.” What a small word to describe such a vast difference.

Mum ran a hand over her straightened dyed-blonde hair. “Gosh.” She glanced in our living room mirror to check her powdered nose, birthmark neatly covered. “Sometimes, Mel, you do get lost in your imagination. I wish I could give you a good shake.”

She picked up one of Ellie’s toys and rattled it violently in her face, eliciting delighted babbles and coos.

My daughter’s birth had changed Mum in ways I hadn’t expected. She used to be quiet. A column of dignity in the face of my father’s temperamental outbursts: mouth pinched and thin, like she was trying to grow it shut. In fact, I still checked my own mouth in the bathroom mirror sometimes, stretching my jaw ghoulishly wide, just to make sure I still could.

But now, I’d entered her realm – motherhood. She’d found her voice. And it was annoying. Also, very helpful at times. This was not one of those times.

“Oh, you’re advocating shaking your kids now, mum?”

“If they’re all grown up,” she said. “Look, why don’t we make some scones and then go for a walk in the park later? Clear your head.”

“Alright. Maybe that’ll make me feel better.” Perhaps Other Mother would be there.

“God, I wish my paternity leave hadn’t been so short,” said Tom.

“Has Greg approved your request for the two weeks off in summer yet?” I asked.

“Not yet. I’ll remind him today.”

How strange, knowing our little family’s time together would be pre-portioned out and approved with Tom’s manager at the accounting firm over a lifetime. Three weeks’ holiday a year, and about fifty more good years in us. That made one hundred and fifty weeks of unconstrained life, outside of work. Then, the story would end.

“Anyway, your mum’s right,” said Tom. “It’s a perfect day for baking and a walk. You’ll feel right as rain.”

“Fingers crossed,” I said, with false cheeriness.

“I’m off to work – I’ll see my three favourite ladies when I’m back.” He swooped down to give me and Ellie a kiss.

Mum and I passed the day quietly, speaking about the weather and how my aunts and uncles were doing while the smell of baking filled the house. Ellie snoozed in her bassinet on the kitchen table, and the spring sunshine fell through the window. After I set the scones down on the kitchen counter, Mum squeezed my arm.

“You aren’t doing a half-bad job, you know.” She said it gently, in the same way she used to tell me to get into the bath when I came home, muddy and crying from a particularly bad football loss with my team.

She was clearly worried. So was Tom.

“Thanks, mum.”

“Well. Let’s get going, then.”

We packed up, got Ellie settled in her pram, and walked to the park.

On the way there, I saw Other Mother. Of course I did.

I tried pointing it out – Mum’s own twin, there, behind us, in the reflection of the shop window. But when Mum turned, she saw nothing. And indeed, Other Mother was gone.

The next day, in the afternoon, Mum had to go home early. She only lived a few minutes down the road, so she’d be there if I needed her.

The house was quiet and still in her absence, the sun warming it gently. I decided to pop out to Tesco with Ellie. We were out of cheese, and I wanted to make a pasta bake.

That’s when it happened.

There, under the bleached lights of the dairy aisle, Other Mother stood, closer than I’d ever seen her before. She smiled at me and tipped her head – a challenge – and I knew that she recognized me for who I was. She turned and walked out of Tesco, fast.

“Wait!” I shouted, earning stares from the shoppers.

I plunged down the aisle after her, out of the sliding glass doors, and into the forest. I abandoned the pram and put Ellie in the sling on my chest. And we began our search.

###

“I wasn’t meant to stay this long,” said Other Mother. She held up the circle she’d been tinkering with and squinted at it. “This thing broke, and I took a week to fix it. Then, it needed a few days to recharge before it was ready to slice through the realities again.”

Everything in me yearned to believe her. But it couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t.

“Show me, then. If it’s real, show me,” I demanded.

That wolf-like grin flashed again. Other Mother shrugged. Holding the device aloft, she tapped a button twice, and the air rippled before us, parting luxuriously, like water.

A crackling, fizzing window emerged in the air. Through it, I could see another place, where two bloated full moons shone on a roiling lilac ocean.

Despite my quick, shocked breaths, I felt a smile blossoming on my face. Deep down, I’d always suspected – the universe was a vast library and our reality was just one book. I fought the urge to wake Ellie up and show her, but she was still snoozing so sweetly in her sling on my chest.

A million questions jostled in my mind. Half of them about the science of the thing, the physicist inside me a rabid hound pulling at the leash. The other half about Other Mother, her life, her world, the wide-eyed child in me desperate to understand. One question won out.

“Why exactly are you stalking me? All of reality in your hands, and you come here?”

“You really want to know?”

“I… yes.”

She stretched her arms overhead, muscles lean under her shirt. “I’ve spent the last decade travelling with my version of you, my daughter, Mel. We’ve seen the wonders of the universe together.

Parallel worlds where humans never evolved. Ones where they evolved but oh, so very differently. Some places where Earth has a sister planet, and humans fly in between to barter and trade with our planetary neighbours. Others where the physics is topsy turvy.”

“Oh,” I breathed, imagining these endless wonders.

Other Mother’s birthmark wrinkled as she frowned. “In my community, when a daughter dies, her mother may visit the other versions of her. Not to replace our original child, no, but to honour her and ensure the parts of her that live on may be happy and at peace. According to tradition, I may pass her circle – the reality-cutting device – to the version of her that needs it the most.”

My heart beat fast, and through the window, the amethyst waves seemed to pick up, cresting white under the alien moon. The sweet smell of the ocean hit me, and my mind spiralled. “And? Who needs it most?”

Me, surely. I, who had dreamed of other worlds since I was a child. I, who had planned to go travelling before meeting Tom at university, but settled down instead.

Other Mother’s eyes dropped to the soil. “Not you. You seem fine. A boring life, I won’t lie, but my parallel self here is pretty damn boring too, so I’m not surprised.”

She held the circle up again and clicked it a few times. The window pulsed twice and disappeared. I held Ellie’s little body to mine.

Other Mother clicked the circle again, and a new window materialised. This time, it looked down onto an icy plain from atop a glacier, glinting in the light of an ochre sun. Light blue creatures with spindly bodies corkscrewed through the air.

“Well, this was… fine. Your stalker will be on her way now.” Other Mother’s brown eyes, so familiar yet so alien, searched my face. “It was good to see you, Mel.”

She grabbed a bulging backpack from near the base of a tree and pulled out a padded black coat. She slipped the coat on and slung the backpack over her shoulders.

Faintly, from far behind, I could hear the beep of a Tesco’s truck backing up.

“Stop!” I blurted out. “Choose me. Give me Mel’s circle.” How selfish, to simply choose a new mother. Could one do that? I looked at my own child, swaddled against my chest. Would she ever choose a new me?

Other Mother sighed and twisted back. “Well, your life here is almost as dead as my original daughter’s.”

“So… yes?”

“No. Because you are not actually physically dead. You were simply unfortunate enough to follow the rules of this world. There are other versions of you who may be closer to actual death, and the cutting device will help save them.”

But she was wrong. I was dying. I was, and I just had been too blind to see it. Dying of boredom, dying of routine, dying of a predictable life dictated by holiday allowance and monthly paychecks. I looked down at Ellie, starting to stir, her chubby, rosy cheeks squished up against me. And then I looked up at this windswept woman, standing before a window to a new world. And I wanted to be like her.

“Then take us with you. Give the circle to whoever you need. We’ll just come with you,” I said.

“No. You don’t have what it takes,” she spat. “Look at the life you’ve built yourself.” This was my actual mum all over. A cutting remark, all the sharper because it was couched in truth. “Plus,” she said, “it’s not safe for your child… Ellie. You probably named her Ellie, right?”

“Uh, yes,” I said.

“I’m leaving. Be a dear and watch to make sure no innocent dog walker stumbles on the window while it’s closing.”

“Wha… um,” I said, panic cutting off my words. My mind raced.

Other Mother stepped through the window, her feet secure on the icy glacier. I watched her fiddle with the cutting device.

The edges of the window started to blur and crackle.

Other Mother was wrong.

I clutched Ellie to my chest and leaped through the window, supporting her head. I fell to my knees on the sharp bite of ice.

The window closed behind me.

Gasping and laughing, I looked up to the alien sun hanging heavy in the sky. I wrapped both arms around Ellie, who was fully awake and crying with the cold.

“You defied me,” Other Mother said. She bared her teeth in that wolf-like grin. Then, she pulled another jacket out of her bag, wrapping it around me. The warmth and relief were near-instant.

“You knew I would?”

“A mother always knows. Or at least… she hopes.” She gazed along the glacier. “There’s an ice-town about ten minutes’ walk from here. We’ll go check it out, see what other gear we can get for you two.”

I exhaled the tension. “OK. And then, off to the other Mels, to see if they need help?”

“There aren’t that many other Mels. Or rather, there are, but only a few of them followed me. And all of them turned back when I said they couldn’t come with me. Only you made the selfish choice.”

I blinked and thought of Tom with a crashing wave of guilt. But then I looked down at Ellie. I had saved her. Saved us both from the monotony of settling for someone, going for drinks in the local pub, queuing in Tesco, driving on the M25.

I kissed Ellie and her screeching cries echoed across the icy plains, loud and protesting. My other mother grinned at her. So did I.

“So, we can travel with you?”

“If you’d like. Then you can have Mel’s circle.”

I fought back tears that threatened to match my daughter’s. “Thank you.”

She shrugged. “Fortune favours the disobedient.”

I turned towards the ice village. “Then let’s get going.”