Defenestrationism.net

by Maggie Nerz Iribarne
(this is part III. Read Three Sisters from the beginning)

Supernova

To Daddy, and Mom,

Don’t think I’ve missed out, dying at 30. I’ve done some good.  I’ve even been in love. Jacob -a homeless man – caught my eye on the food line. Afterwards, I walked around pouring coffee. He said, “How kind of you, mam.” It was that mam that caused me to sit down. We talked for an hour. He’d once been a person with a job (a teacher!),  a home, then he lost everything. He even had a son. A back surgery caused an addiction and the addiction caused him to steal. He lost his job, his wife, his son, his home. As he told me this, his tears fell. I reached across the table and held his hands. He moved in with me a month later.  No one expects a saint like me to love a homeless man, a drug addict. No one expects a saint like me to steal or “borrow” as I told myself-for love, but I did. I was so wrapped up I’ll admit I made mistakes, lost touch with everyone, especially Cassie and Laura, and you, Daddy. It’s time to leave that behind in the darkness. 

I am thinking of playing with Cassie and Laura underneath the pine trees in the front yard, sunlight searching through branches. We had plastic baskets left from Easter. We filled them with tuna sandwiches and pretzels. I wheeled my dolls in the wooden stroller-the one Cassie threw down the cellar steps. We sat on the big quilt from the cedar closet, pine needles poking through. 

I am thinking of our bottle club. We dug up old blue and gold and purple bottles in the woods. Their lips chipped, labels ragged. We sang, “Bottles bottles! We love bottles!” 

Flashes of light. One day the wind came, blew it all away. Cassie left, Laura married. I found myself alone – forgotten? I cut off my hair, gave away all of my nice things and went to fill my loneliness with strangers. You never have to worry about the poor abandoning you. There are always more of them, an endless supply.  

I am coming. I am at peace. It’s time to slip away. My sisters shine above me. At last, we are together, a constellation of three bright stars. Their warm hands lock above my cold clasped fingers. I absorb their light, break off, explode into nothingness. 

Ada

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by Maggie Nerz Iribarne
(this is part II. Read Three Sisters from the beginning)

Unseen Star

Long Past

Cassie is dancing at our cousin’s wedding. Her long body and flowy dress whip around, her hands sway above her head, her eyes close above her pink smile. She opens them, fixes her gaze on me, standing in the sidelines, wiggles a pointer finger to  motion me her way.  I am her awkward younger sister, Laura. My face grows hot with hate for my cutesy pink skirt suit I chose for the event. Cassie does not relent, she approaches me with hands held out. I hesitate, acquiesce. She pulls off my jacket and throws it on a chair. I am now wearing a shimmery tank top and skirt. She twirls me around and I laugh. I am dancing with my big sister. I imagine everyone’s eyes on me, us. This must be what it feels like to be Cassie, I think. 

Past

I am sitting beside my dying father.  I am fixated on his breath. He is all bones, a hospital gown drapes over sharp points. The nurse enters, stands beside his bed, pulls open a sagging eyelid revealing a strange, fixed pupil. She holds his flaccid wrist. There is not much to know about a dying man except that he is dying. She glances at me. 

“I think we’re close. Is there anyone else you think should be here?”

“No, it’s just me,” I say, wanting to add a litany of reasons why this is so: My mother has been dead for decades,  my sisters are selfish, absent. My husband left for another woman. I have no children. I am stuck here alone, beside my dying father.

“Okay, well, maybe I can send the social worker here to sit with you.”

“I’m sure they have better things to do.”

“Not at all,” the nurse said, putting a chubby hand on my shoulder. 

I don’t have the heart to call Ada. For some reason I don’t really blame her. I fantasize about calling Cassie, really letting her have it. 

You owe me BIG. I want to say. You owe me an apology. You owe me. You owe me. 

My father’s breaths take their time in between. I feel an impatience, immediately overpowered by guilt. He was a good man. A loving, doting father. He made excuses for my sisters. 

“You gotta give Cassie and Ada passes,” he said once. “Cassie is dreaming big. Ada is saving the world.”

“What about me? When do I get a pass? Don’t I do something important?” I asked him.

“You’re the caretaker and I love you,” he said. 

The resentment and guilt rise and fall like ocean waves. The image of Dad’s solid gold Rolex watch tucked in my nightstand drawer sparkles and then darkens in my mind. 

I’ll take what’s mine. They don’t deserve a th-

“My beautiful daughters,” my father always said,  like a chorus, an answer to every one of our disputes, as though his belief in our inner and outer beauty was enough. 

His lips are parted, dry. Finally, he stops breathing. I sit for a moment, take my purse, leave.

Present

I am at a party, sitting in an overstuffed living room chair. Former neighbors invited me. I picture them saying, Poor Laura, she’s all on her own. They don’t know the half of it. They don’t know about Ada.  I nibble on some Chex mix. Sip my wine. A man sits down beside me. 

“You live on Wagner?” he said. 

“Used to,” I say, “I moved into Dad’s over on Lincoln.”

“Oh. Lincoln. That’s nice.” He drums his fingers. “Where do you work?”

“At a bank,” I say. 

I know I should ask where he lives, where he works. I don’t. 

“You grow up here then?”

“Yes.”

“Family here?”

“Not anymore. ” My napkin falls to the floor. 

In my car, I sit and stare for a while in the cold darkness. 

Cassie returns my earlier message. The one where I tell her our little sister is almost dead. 

That is a lie. Ada died yesterday morning. I enjoy deceiving my sister. You owe me.

“I will come,” she says, audibly choking back emotion. 

“Well if you have time,” I say, “but it’s not necessary.”

Passive aggressive, I know. How I want to release the tears and anguish, the deluge of anger and grief. How I wish I could feel my sister’s arms embracing me. 

I hang up, drive to my father’s house, throw my coat and purse on a chair covered with a sheet. Everything is covered with sheets – bumpy ghosts – the familiar made unfamiliar.   I flip on all the lights, pick up the paint brush abandoned that morning and go back to work. I want everything fresh,  new. I am physically, emotionally exhausted. My little sister’s body lies in the morgue. I paint into the night.

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by Maggie Nerz Iribarne

Faded Star
(publishing December 25th)
Unseen Star
(publishing December 26th)
Supernova
(publishing December 27th)

Faded Star

Cassie listened to the rich old woman breathe, awaiting her call for the commode. The woman’s late husband had owned a production company of some sort. At one time Cassie would have attempted to work a connection. She used to say, “It’s all who you know out here,” but that was in the beginning. Now she just needed the rent. 

The agency told her absolutely under no circumstances was she to fall asleep, so Cassie walked the length of the house. This place, though extremely opulent, reminded her of Grandma Southwell’s place back in Indiana. Old people’s homes, she thought, no matter what level of wealth, all seemed the same – the stuffy air, the mushy vegetables, the pervasive feeling of loss. In the hall mirror she smoothed out her long brown hair, tucked one side behind an ear, recalled washing Laura and Ada’s hair in the bathroom sink. The old woman’s voice croaked from the bedroom. Cassie froze, listened, took one more look at her still flawless skin and wide eyes, all stuck above a lumpy body. She could never return home like this, so defeated, she thought. Silence pervaded again. 

Next, she would go to the room with the safe and look at the money. 

She did this every night. 

***

She had a second, morning job at her apartment building, cleaning the entrance area, watering plants, bringing out the garbage. Arriving after her nightshift at the old woman’s, she went straight to work, despite the heaviness in her legs, the need to shower and sleep. Larry in 1B, stuck his head out the door.

“Bout time you got here,” he said. 

His hand slithered out, releasing a leaky grocery bag to the floor. Cassie waited for his footsteps to disappear before heading to remove the refuse. Shame pummeled her like a tidal wave. Her sister, Laura’s voice in her ear.  

You can’t even pass algebra, how could you act? Please!

Cassie went to retrieve the broom, swept vigorously, imagined dust blowing from her brain, heart. 

“Your leaving. It broke Dad’s heart, you know. Good thing I stayed,” Laura had said. 

Cassie wiped out the window sills, went for the vacuum. 

Her phone rang. Speak of the devil. She let it go to voicemail.

“I don’t know if you’re available,” Laura said coldly. “But-uh- Ada is at the end.”

The punch in the gut pushed Cassie down into the stained orange chair beside the elevator. 

***

She slept the rest of the day in dirty clothes, without even brushing her teeth. She dreamt of Ada, curling her hair with the hot iron, her little face glowing more with each springy tendril. 

Cassie woke with a thick taste in her mouth. She watched the ceiling fan’s slow turn. How does a 30 year old woman die of cancer? she wondered. Her mind went blank.

Perfect Ada. Ada, the worker, the one who loved to rake leaves, wash dishes, collect clothes for the homeless.

“Why don’t you just become a nun?” Cassie had once said. 

Then, after Cassie moved out west, the cards with cash.

 “I just want to know you’re eating something out there,” Ada had written. 

Cassie spent the money on drinks, manicures, never writing to say thanks. 

In the shower she spent a long time lathering, shaving her legs. Her father’s voice repeated in her head, “My beautiful daughters. My beautiful daughters.” Cassie did not feel beautiful. She took out her hair cutting scissors and carefully snipped at her bangs, a habit she swore daily to quit, but couldn’t. They were much too short. 

***

At 3 AM, Cassie stood before the old woman’s safe. What a strange thing, to have this here, always unlocked, full of cash and jewelry, all this unused wealth just ripe for the taking. She reached in and picked up a large stack of bills. No one would notice if she took some. With this, she could buy a good outfit, even a fancy suitcase, things that would make her look successful. Maybe she could pay for the funeral. She remembered Ada’s hatred of wealth. The thing that divided them. Ada had been too kind to say. 

“You go, Cassie, you’ll be great. I bet I’ll see ya on TV someday,” she’d said. 

Cassie returned most of the money to the safe, kept just enough for a one way plane ticket, slid it in her pocket. 

“Commode!” the old woman called. 

Cassie entered the dark bedroom, pulled back the blanket, lifted the woman’s splotchy stick legs, pulled her up to sitting, guided her feet to the floor, positioned the walker, sat her down. 

“I’m so-so lonely,” the old woman whispered, her bony shoulders hunched. 

Cassie nodded, pulled up the paper brief.

***

On the bus ride home the next morning she thought of lies. She would go home, tell her family she was in between gigs, or that she had a secretarial job at a big TV show that was canceled. She’d arrive in Indiana, watch her sister’s last breaths, attend the funeral, then what? Return here, to this? She scanned the other faces on the bus, a storm of disappointment, anger, grief engulfed her as she sucked in, held back. The bus stopped, the doors opened. An old man with tattered clothes and white beard struggled on. The next stop was hers. She stood, handed the stolen wad of cash to the old man, exited. Something Ada would have done, she thought. 

Unseen Star

Long Past

Cassie is dancing at our cousin’s wedding. Her long body and flowy dress whip around, her hands sway above her head, her eyes close above her pink smile. She opens them, fixes her gaze on me, standing in the sidelines, wiggles a pointer finger to  motion me her way.  I am her awkward younger sister, Laura. My face grows hot with hate for my cutesy pink skirt suit I chose for the event. Cassie does not relent, she approaches me with hands held out. I hesitate, acquiesce. She pulls off my jacket and throws it on a chair. I am now wearing a shimmery tank top and skirt. She twirls me around and I laugh. I am dancing with my big sister. I imagine everyone’s eyes on me, us. This must be what it feels like to be Cassie, I think. 

Past

I am sitting beside my dying father.  I am fixated on his breath. He is all bones, a hospital gown drapes over sharp points. The nurse enters, stands beside his bed, pulls open a sagging eyelid revealing a strange, fixed pupil. She holds his flaccid wrist. There is not much to know about a dying man except that he is dying. She glances at me. 

“I think we’re close. Is there anyone else you think should be here?”

“No, it’s just me,” I say, wanting to add a litany of reasons why this is so: My mother has been dead for decades,  my sisters are selfish, absent. My husband left for another woman. I have no children. I am stuck here alone, beside my dying father.

“Okay, well, maybe I can send the social worker here to sit with you.”

“I’m sure they have better things to do.”

“Not at all,” the nurse said, putting a chubby hand on my shoulder. 

I don’t have the heart to call Ada. For some reason I don’t really blame her. I fantasize about calling Cassie, really letting her have it. 

You owe me BIG. I want to say. You owe me an apology. You owe me. You owe me. 

My father’s breaths take their time in between. I feel an impatience, immediately overpowered by guilt. He was a good man. A loving, doting father. He made excuses for my sisters. 

“You gotta give Cassie and Ada passes,” he said once. “Cassie is dreaming big. Ada is saving the world.”

“What about me? When do I get a pass? Don’t I do something important?” I asked him.

“You’re the caretaker and I love you,” he said. 

The resentment and guilt rise and fall like ocean waves. The image of Dad’s solid gold Rolex watch tucked in my nightstand drawer sparkles and then darkens in my mind. 

I’ll take what’s mine. They don’t deserve a th-

“My beautiful daughters,” my father always said,  like a chorus, an answer to every one of our disputes, as though his belief in our inner and outer beauty was enough. 

His lips are parted, dry. Finally, he stops breathing. I sit for a moment, take my purse, leave.

Present

I am at a party, sitting in an overstuffed living room chair. Former neighbors invited me. I picture them saying, Poor Laura, she’s all on her own. They don’t know the half of it. They don’t know about Ada.  I nibble on some Chex mix. Sip my wine. A man sits down beside me. 

“You live on Wagner?” he said. 

“Used to,” I say, “I moved into Dad’s over on Lincoln.”

“Oh. Lincoln. That’s nice.” He drums his fingers. “Where do you work?”

“At a bank,” I say. 

I know I should ask where he lives, where he works. I don’t. 

“You grow up here then?”

“Yes.”

“Family here?”

“Not anymore. ” My napkin falls to the floor. 

In my car, I sit and stare for a while in the cold darkness. 

Cassie returns my earlier message. The one where I tell her our little sister is almost dead. 

That is a lie. Ada died yesterday morning. I enjoy deceiving my sister. You owe me.

“I will come,” she says, audibly choking back emotion. 

“Well if you have time,” I say, “but it’s not necessary.”

Passive aggressive, I know. How I want to release the tears and anguish, the deluge of anger and grief. How I wish I could feel my sister’s arms embracing me. 

I hang up, drive to my father’s house, throw my coat and purse on a chair covered with a sheet. Everything is covered with sheets – bumpy ghosts – the familiar made unfamiliar. 

 I flip on all the lights, pick up the paint brush abandoned that morning and go back to work. I want everything fresh,  new. I am physically, emotionally exhausted. My little sister’s body lies in the morgue. I paint into the night. 

Supernova

To Daddy, and Mom,

Don’t think I’ve missed out, dying at 30. I’ve done some good.  I’ve even been in love. Jacob -a homeless man – caught my eye on the food line. Afterwards, I walked around pouring coffee. He said, “How kind of you, mam.” It was that mam that caused me to sit down. We talked for an hour. He’d once been a person with a job (a teacher!),  a home, then he lost everything. He even had a son. A back surgery caused an addiction and the addiction caused him to steal. He lost his job, his wife, his son, his home. As he told me this, his tears fell. I reached across the table and held his hands. He moved in with me a month later.  No one expects a saint like me to love a homeless man, a drug addict. No one expects a saint like me to steal or “borrow” as I told myself-for love, but I did. I was so wrapped up I’ll admit I made mistakes, lost touch with everyone, especially Cassie and Laura, and you, Daddy. It’s time to leave that behind in the darkness. 

I am thinking of playing with Cassie and Laura underneath the pine trees in the front yard, sunlight searching through branches. We had plastic baskets left from Easter. We filled them with tuna sandwiches and pretzels. I wheeled my dolls in the wooden stroller-the one Cassie threw down the cellar steps. We sat on the big quilt from the cedar closet, pine needles poking through. 

I am thinking of our bottle club. We dug up old blue and gold and purple bottles in the woods. Their lips chipped, labels ragged. We sang, “Bottles bottles! We love bottles!” 

Flashes of light. One day the wind came, blew it all away. Cassie left, Laura married. I found myself alone – forgotten? I cut off my hair, gave away all of my nice things and went to fill my loneliness with strangers. You never have to worry about the poor abandoning you. There are always more of them, an endless supply.  

I am coming. I am at peace. It’s time to slip away. My sisters shine above me. At last, we are together, a constellation of three bright stars. Their warm hands lock above my cold clasped fingers. I absorb their light, break off, explode into nothingness. 

Ada

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by Elizabeth Allison

(this is part III. Read Timing Out from the beginning.)

Recalibrating

She had to swipe seven times to get to March. Seven.

“It’ll fly by!” they had squealed.

She hated how they spoke for her, for all of them, for all of it. For her, it would be a nine-month battle against the shades of past ruin, every day clenching as she checked the tissue, every night begging the invisible to stay.

“It’ll fly by!” they had squealed.

“Inconceivable,” the blood ghosts whispered back. 

Sara Martin swiped back to August, killed the power button and sank into the sofa. Eyes braced shut, she made out the familiar waft of the large leaves, the muffled swish, the sonorous slither down the ravine, the restful settling back. The small avocado grove along the back slope had entranced Sara when they first moved to the hills so that each morning she had walked under the tousled branches, gently pressing her thumb into the fruit’s rough skin. “Still rock hard!” The Martins did not know that they needed to pick them first, that avocados do not ripen on the tree. Then a neighbor scolded them. “Ripe and mature are not the same!” So Sara boned up. “Did you know the avocado flower has both components? Part of the day the flower’s female, and part of the day it’s male.” She had marveled at the potency in being recipient and donor, then protested when the flowers exploded in spring to block her view of the ravine.

The nausea Sara had expunged an hour earlier began its creeping, so she rose to forget, ambled to the window and pressed her forehead to already-warm glass. Through tassels of green and gold, she could make out the Mennonites’ round sheep to the west, but knotted branches and leathery egg-shaped leaves obscured the Byrne’s massive pool to the east. The family had built it so their daughter could practice crew. Sara never saw the girl use it. She never saw anyone use it. Same with the enormous batting cage two houses down.

Balancing on the sill, Sara wondered if a similar fate would befall the room being saved for “just in case.” Adjacent to the master, the room languished in a confused state of undefined use. In one corner, Ben’s guitars stood propped against a dusty amp; in another, a large keyboard Sara’s aunt had gifted her rested on a squatty table. A drab brown sleeper sofa faced an old television on the opposite wall.

“Too many functions, and not the right one,” the blood ghosts whispered.

She nodded sadly. How hard they had worked to erase all signs that children ever lived here. The week they moved in, the Martins had painted the workout room first, rolling a flat eggshell over so much carnation pink, obscuring with each soggy pass the kaleidoscope of yellow and purple butterflies that had danced along two windowless walls. The following week, they created the office, wiping clean the pale blue room with a matte apricot finish. In a mere two weeks, they had expunged the boy and the girl.

She squirmed on the windowsill. Seven. Her stomach twisting dully, Sara wondered if Mrs. Riley had thought she was in the clear.

The Rileys were expecting a third child and shopping for a larger place when they sold the house in the hills to the Martins. The transaction had felt seamless. The Martins offered the asking price; the Rileys accepted. The Martins asked for two thousand to fix inspection issues; the Rileys complied. The Martins began boxing up their small, tidy townhouse; the Rileys, their sprawling ranch-style. Things moved quickly. Until Ruth called, her voice lacking its customary brightness.

“I just got off the phone with the Rileys’ agent. We have a favor to ask. Mrs. Riley miscarried last week. Eight months, poor thing. She’s just devastated, so she can’t continue house hunting right now. You okay letting them rent back from you for a little bit?”

“But we already sold this place. Where would we go?”

Sara had not known what to feel, but she knew the words had come too quickly. A bloated silence filled all six miles between the two women.

Finally, Ruth lifted it. “I’ll call their agent.”

The sickness rose, and Sara bolted to the bathroom for the sixth time that day. When the still-petite frame feebly emerged, it felt pulled to the silent workout room. The eggshell walls had seen little company since Sara learned she was carrying two, and she scanned the room as if for the first time. Gripping the treadmill’s handrail, she climbed onto the walking belt. It squeaked under her chunky slippers. She ran a finger along the control panel, embarrassed to see she had left a trail. The dangling safety key swayed until it softly tapped her dress. Instinctively, she grabbed it and inserted it into the console, detonating flashes of red, a series of zeroes recalibrating for the promised action. Alarmed, she yanked at the key, and the numbers vanished.

Sara hobbled off the hulking machine to shuffle along the windowless wall being pounded by the sun. Tired eyes burned through the eggshell, searching for signs of the butterflies. She could not find them. She scooted three feet left and squinted to penetrate the layers. Nothing. They had done their job.

She lumbered down the hallway and returned to the sofa, her heavy head atop the hard corner of the throw pillow. Trying to forget, Sara Martin watched the avocado leaves rise and fall on the gales that haunted the ravine. Then she closed her eyes. She could not see the Byrne’s pool, but she hoped someone was using it.

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by Elizabeth Allison

(this is part II. Read Timing Out from the beginning.)

Here They Kill the Mustard by May

While her husband drove, Margaret kept her eyes closed, trying to identify each roll to the right, each jostle to the left along West Road. She had guessed the first curve was the bend around the Tudor house. The one being gutted behind a green privacy fence. “Privacy? Everyone knows what they’re doing,” she had laughed. Moments later a sharp bank had shunted her frail frame into the padded door panel, and she thought they might be at the place with the goats. Her uncertainty, though, had surprised her.

Six long years had passed since they had moved to the hills and found themselves quickly labeled “the kids from the flatlands” after the septic tank overflowed and raccoons tore through the chicken wire. Nearly every day since they had navigated this route, eyes alert to “all” potential threats. Margaret chuckled again, then promptly regretted the expended energy. In the momentary quiet she sensed her husband was staring so that the familiar pang of guilt struck. Six long summers ago she had asked him to trust her as they tracked the petite flags and glossy plastic signs along snaky one lane roads to the Open House. Six long autumns ago they had moved into their “forever” home. She tried to find it funny.

Soon enough, her contrition morphed into something warm as they descended a long, gentle slope. She knew they had reached the huge empty lot where the wild mustard grows. Where tall stalks burst out of compressed cracked earth with spectacular speed, growing taller than her in spots, revealing a radiant splendor seemingly overnight: intense yellow flowers arranged in delicate x’s atop sturdy hairy stems, their billowy ballet summoning dainty white butterflies. Margaret’s mother said that in the parable mustard represents faith. Well, here they chop it all down by May. In early spring, weed abatement notices start arriving. “Dried mustard plants? Highly combustible! Be safe and clear it out!” She chuckled for the last time. “Nothing that invasive is gone forever,” she thought. “After a fire destroys this place, the mustard will be the first thing to come back.” In her life before treatment, Margaret had jogged through the field each night, had stood rigid to hear what swaying sounds like, had heard the crunching beneath her shoes. She understood that well before the trucks and chainsaws rumble up to pull life out by the roots, wild mustard plants have already dropped much of their seed. She opened her drained eyes onto her husband. Oh, how she wished now that they had done the same.







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by Elizabeth Allison

Willing the Other Line
(publishing December 22nd)
Here They Kill the Mustard by May
(publishing December 23rd)
Recalibrating
(publishing December 24th)

Willing the Other Line

The thin print paper crackled in my quaking hands. “The usual,” I thought. So I chucked eight inches of directions, disclaimers and diagrams into the bin. Then I peed and prayed.

Trying to fool the gods into thinking they would be cursing me, I circled the house. In the bedroom I swapped pumps for chunky slippers. In the office I scrolled until I wasn’t reading anymore. In the kitchen I drank water over the sink. In the bathroom cheap plastic conducted a countdown to life, antibodies on a stick waiting to attach to a hormone. If they did, they would trigger two blue lines and the course of the next half-century. If they did not, well, there was always n—

“No,” the mechanical voice moaned. “We’re running out of months.”

I rinsed the glass, dried it and arranged it in the cupboard so that the lip did not touch the others. Then I waited. Again. “That should be enough time,” I thought and tottered along the pictureless hallway to the bathroom.

My heart jackhammered through my blouse as I peeked at the waiting plastic.

One line.

One.

Always one short.

The plastic pinged against the side of the bin.

I started dinner to forget. A soft white onion bled when the knife punctured it, so I ran cool water over my sticky fingers, forgetting to rub them. “Maybe,” I thought, “maybe I didn’t wait long enough.”

In the bathroom I cracked open the bin and sifted. Warm wet trickled along my arm when I lifted the plastic promise, willing something to fight through. From the bedroom the nightstand clock ticked a faint warning.

“That was enough time,” I muttered.

“And now there’s not enough,” it whispered back.     

Here They Kill the Mustard by May

While her husband drove, Margaret kept her eyes closed, trying to identify each roll to the right, each jostle to the left along West Road. She had guessed the first curve was the bend around the Tudor house. The one being gutted behind a green privacy fence. “Privacy? Everyone knows what they’re doing,” she had laughed. Moments later a sharp bank had shunted her frail frame into the padded door panel, and she thought they might be at the place with the goats. Her uncertainty, though, had surprised her.

Six long years had passed since they had moved to the hills and found themselves quickly labeled “the kids from the flatlands” after the septic tank overflowed and raccoons tore through the chicken wire. Nearly every day since they had navigated this route, eyes alert to “all” potential threats. Margaret chuckled again, then promptly regretted the expended energy. In the momentary quiet she sensed her husband was staring so that the familiar pang of guilt struck. Six long summers ago she had asked him to trust her as they tracked the petite flags and glossy plastic signs along snaky one lane roads to the Open House. Six long autumns ago they had moved into their “forever” home. She tried to find it funny.

Soon enough, her contrition morphed into something warm as they descended a long, gentle slope. She knew they had reached the huge empty lot where the wild mustard grows. Where tall stalks burst out of compressed cracked earth with spectacular speed, growing taller than her in spots, revealing a radiant splendor seemingly overnight: intense yellow flowers arranged in delicate x’s atop sturdy hairy stems, their billowy ballet summoning dainty white butterflies. Margaret’s mother said that in the parable mustard represents faith. Well, here they chop it all down by May. In early spring, weed abatement notices start arriving. “Dried mustard plants? Highly combustible! Be safe and clear it out!” She chuckled for the last time. “Nothing that invasive is gone forever,” she thought. “After a fire destroys this place, the mustard will be the first thing to come back.” In her life before treatment, Margaret had jogged through the field each night, had stood rigid to hear what swaying sounds like, had heard the crunching beneath her shoes. She understood that well before the trucks and chainsaws rumble up to pull life out by the roots, wild mustard plants have already dropped much of their seed. She opened her drained eyes onto her husband. Oh, how she wished now that they had done the same.

Recalibrating

She had to swipe seven times to get to March. Seven.

“It’ll fly by!” they had squealed.

She hated how they spoke for her, for all of them, for all of it. For her, it would be a nine-month battle against the shades of past ruin, every day clenching as she checked the tissue, every night begging the invisible to stay.

“It’ll fly by!” they had squealed.

“Inconceivable,” the blood ghosts whispered back. 

Sara Martin swiped back to August, killed the power button and sank into the sofa. Eyes braced shut, she made out the familiar waft of the large leaves, the muffled swish, the sonorous slither down the ravine, the restful settling back. The small avocado grove along the back slope had entranced Sara when they first moved to the hills so that each morning she had walked under the tousled branches, gently pressing her thumb into the fruit’s rough skin. “Still rock hard!” The Martins did not know that they needed to pick them first, that avocados do not ripen on the tree. Then a neighbor scolded them. “Ripe and mature are not the same!” So Sara boned up. “Did you know the avocado flower has both components? Part of the day the flower’s female, and part of the day it’s male.” She had marveled at the potency in being recipient and donor, then protested when the flowers exploded in spring to block her view of the ravine.

The nausea Sara had expunged an hour earlier began its creeping, so she rose to forget, ambled to the window and pressed her forehead to already-warm glass. Through tassels of green and gold, she could make out the Mennonites’ round sheep to the west, but knotted branches and leathery egg-shaped leaves obscured the Byrne’s massive pool to the east. The family had built it so their daughter could practice crew. Sara never saw the girl use it. She never saw anyone use it. Same with the enormous batting cage two houses down.

Balancing on the sill, Sara wondered if a similar fate would befall the room being saved for “just in case.” Adjacent to the master, the room languished in a confused state of undefined use. In one corner, Ben’s guitars stood propped against a dusty amp; in another, a large keyboard Sara’s aunt had gifted her rested on a squatty table. A drab brown sleeper sofa faced an old television on the opposite wall.

“Too many functions, and not the right one,” the blood ghosts whispered.

She nodded sadly. How hard they had worked to erase all signs that children ever lived here. The week they moved in, the Martins had painted the workout room first, rolling a flat eggshell over so much carnation pink, obscuring with each soggy pass the kaleidoscope of yellow and purple butterflies that had danced along two windowless walls. The following week, they created the office, wiping clean the pale blue room with a matte apricot finish. In a mere two weeks, they had expunged the boy and the girl.

She squirmed on the windowsill. Seven. Her stomach twisting dully, Sara wondered if Mrs. Riley had thought she was in the clear.

The Rileys were expecting a third child and shopping for a larger place when they sold the house in the hills to the Martins. The transaction had felt seamless. The Martins offered the asking price; the Rileys accepted. The Martins asked for two thousand to fix inspection issues; the Rileys complied. The Martins began boxing up their small, tidy townhouse; the Rileys, their sprawling ranch-style. Things moved quickly. Until Ruth called, her voice lacking its customary brightness.

“I just got off the phone with the Rileys’ agent. We have a favor to ask. Mrs. Riley miscarried last week. Eight months, poor thing. She’s just devastated, so she can’t continue house hunting right now. You okay letting them rent back from you for a little bit?”

“But we already sold this place. Where would we go?”

Sara had not known what to feel, but she knew the words had come too quickly. A bloated silence filled all six miles between the two women.

Finally, Ruth lifted it. “I’ll call their agent.”

The sickness rose, and Sara bolted to the bathroom for the sixth time that day. When the still-petite frame feebly emerged, it felt pulled to the silent workout room. The eggshell walls had seen little company since Sara learned she was carrying two, and she scanned the room as if for the first time. Gripping the treadmill’s handrail, she climbed onto the walking belt. It squeaked under her chunky slippers. She ran a finger along the control panel, embarrassed to see she had left a trail. The dangling safety key swayed until it softly tapped her dress. Instinctively, she grabbed it and inserted it into the console, detonating flashes of red, a series of zeroes recalibrating for the promised action. Alarmed, she yanked at the key, and the numbers vanished.

Sara hobbled off the hulking machine to shuffle along the windowless wall being pounded by the sun. Tired eyes burned through the eggshell, searching for signs of the butterflies. She could not find them. She scooted three feet left and squinted to penetrate the layers. Nothing. They had done their job.

She lumbered down the hallway and returned to the sofa, her heavy head atop the hard corner of the throw pillow. Trying to forget, Sara Martin watched the avocado leaves rise and fall on the gales that haunted the ravine. Then she closed her eyes. She could not see the Byrne’s pool, but she hoped someone was using it.

   

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by Malina Douglas
(this is part IV. Read 
Shards Picked from the Floorboards
from the beginning.)

Molten Gold Memory Poured from the Sky

She didn’t trust him at first. Not till after they had danced and she felt the sway of his hips against hers, when she had pressed her palm to his shoulder blades, felt the movement of the muscles through the dampness of his shirt, when he had murmured words like breadcrumbs over the thud of the bass, led her out of the dark steaming club, and onto a wide, smooth street. 

There was something in his eyes that asked her to believe him.

Looking back later, she was not sure why she took the risk but she let him lead her, in steps light and smooth, their conversation nimble, spurred by curiosity as she teased out the facets of this intriguing new man beside her, this Anton, and from beneath the smooth square jaw, strong brow and soft lashes his character emerged, in small gradual portions like a gem shifted towards the light.

She remembered how they spoke, in a late night café of blue glowing lights and vinyl seats, drinking tea spiced with brandy and cupping her mug between two hands as she gazed across the table at him, his blue eyes drawing her inwards like the tug of an undersea current.

She dove.

Into his childhood, seaside trips in the roselight of cherished memory, when his father was still with them. His dreams of sailing brushed aside to study medicine, his fear of heights and love of skiing.

Little synchronicities that fizzled like sparks between them. How he had studied at the same university yet never met her because he finished three years ahead of her. How he’d bought a flat in the neighbourhood she had always dreamed of living in. The name of a film he’d jotted down three weeks ago and not got around to watching, that turned out to be the film that she loved most.

They marvelled over the parallels of their lives, living as if leaving gaps for the other to nestle into.

They talked until she set down her mug, long since empty, set her hands on the table and he took them in his, and she was surprised how warm they were, how soft, and still holding one hand, he led her out of the café, down a lane and up a hill, the hill he had told her about in a voice that transmitted his excitement, and the feeling imbued her body and quickened her stride.

She sat beside him on the hill’s cusp as the dawn bloomed, pale as a fingernail, then flushed as it set the sky alive, leaned into him, his arm around her shoulders pulled her closer and when she turned her head their lips met, as the sun rose and its soft warmth brushed her cheek.

They stayed, till morning light lit up the dirt path beneath them, glistened off the dewdrops that beaded the grass and leant a golden glow to Anton’s skin.  

Their surroundings took on a strange, wondrous quality, as if Nadiya had been reborn, and they walked down the hill with their hands interlinked, past pastel buildings and rows of doors sealed, to the entrance of the metro where his fingertips slid from her shoulders like the feathered brush of wings.

Nadiya woke, noticed the chink of light through the curtains, and rolled over. She was alone.

She lingered in memory because that was all she had. A meeting that had blossomed into love, to marriage, to a year that had flitted by in swift, light-filled frames.

Since her parting from Anton, she had met the days weary and sullen, never earlier than nine. Days bloomed into weeks like the mould on the tile of the shower. Tears streaked her face and rimmed her eyes red. Shards of love turned inwards and her body swelled with hurt.

Missiles and gunfire were tearing apart the fabric of her homeland, and Anton was with them. She had a hazy impression of him running while explosions bloomed around him, but did not know the details. It was better, she told herself, not to know. But at times it was worse.

She walked through the city in a haze of memory, a city borrowed and worn for a while that she hoped to soon shrug out of. A city of secondhand history and foundations that rattled like bones, patched with sleek constructions to fill the holes left by buildings destroyed, with a domed church like a frosted cupcake.

Dresden.

A city rebuilt from ashes and thick with ghosts, that drifted after Nadiya and gnawed on her sadness, though she could see only shadows and feel only emptiness.

Nadiya slipped out of bed when the sky was like a dreamer stirred from sleep, the cerulean of Anton’s eyes, lightening by degrees.

She stepped out to streets steeped in silence, wound her way to the edge of the Elbe, sat on a bench and gazed, as a distant sun flooded the bank with golden light and tinged a spread of scalloped clouds peach. As it softened the edges of the buildings on the opposite shore and poured peach light into the mirror of the river.

Nadiya felt something catch within her. She gripped the armrest of the bench as tears streamed from her eyes.

All this time, thought Nadiya, the city had been unfurling its mornings as if waiting for her to see.

She did not know how long she would wait to return to Anton. Only now could she begin to accept it. That she was here. That beyond her stifled longing was a place she could love.

It was an opportune time, when the city was fragile, poised on the cusp of waking, the day was malleable, and only now, when her groggy eyes were impressionable, was the time Dresden’s beauty could touch her most deeply, when a love for her surroundings could be birthed within her heart.

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by Malina Douglas
(this is part III. Read 
Shards Picked from the Floorboards
from the beginning.)

Frozen Moments

Nadiya returned home with a thick Manila envelope. Standing before a blank, cream wall, she opened it and took out photos.

There was Anton, eyes slightly wide because she’d caught him unguarded, lips curling upwards, blond hair ruffled because he’d just sat up from bed.

Then he was beside her on their honeymoon, at the seaside at Yalta. He wore a forced grin because taking the picture had interrupted his sunbathing, his chest bare and ruddy. Nadiya looked at her own face and saw the way she squinted into the camera, the white lines on her shoulders, the rest of her skin an angry pink, the loose strands of blonde hair that had stuck to her lip. The long thin legs beneath her minidress, upper thighs paler.

She stuck it to the wall.

A photo of her mother from Nadiya’s last visit, looking over her shoulder from the batter she was stirring. Then she was standing before the oven, smile tired and palms pressed to her skirt, smoothing out wrinkles even when they were invisible.

Then both of her parents, her father’s arm slung around her mother’s, standing in the garden of their dacha. She saw her father’s steady blue eyes, his sparse grey hair and the smile lines etched into his cheeks. Her mother’s eyes filled with love and pride, with the same button nose that Nadiya had inherited.

There was Anton in deep discussion with Yulia’s husband Sergei, taken from the entrance of the kitchen when they were not looking. The way they sat, hunched forward, elbows on the table, empty cups scattered around them, Anton detailing architectural schemes as Sergei listened, head tilted and lips poised with his response. Captured before her was Anton’s earnest enthusiasm, a remnant of how she imagined him as a boy, and Sergei’s amusement, wry smile lines etched in the sides of his mouth.

There were moments to treasure like insects in amber. Sergei’s mouth, wide open in laughter, the way Yulia snagged his arm and pulled him towards her, the eyes that said you’re mine.

Before both couples were parted at the border. Before Anton and Sergei were sent to war. She and Yulia had been forced to go on without them. And then there was Kseniya, like a long-legged colt and just as unpredictable. A photography student who had joined them in flight from Kyiv.

In a photo she stood outside her apartment, dark-haired and lanky, her arm around Yulia, half a head shorter and gold hair in curls. The pink tones of Yulia’s skin contrasted with Kseniya’s milky features, lavender silk beside wine red, a pair of flowers plucked from different gardens. The innocence of their expressions that could no longer be reclaimed. The home they could not return to.

Nadiya missed her apartment with its flower-painted kitchen and views of a leafy park. The gold domes of St Sofia Church and the wide Dnieper, sipping cocktails from a lounge chair from the river’s pebbled bank while a salsa band played. 

She yearned to go back but bombs were falling, erasing landmarks and leaving rubble like dark splotches on a map. 

Her suitcase stood at the foot of the bed. A sentinel, a gargoyle. The embodiment of her refusal to accept. This was not home. She disliked how Dresden was changing them, Yulia’s retreats and Kseniya’s growing recklessness. Kseniya was growing into the daughter’s she’d never had, and the more protective Nadiya grew of her, the more Kseniya resisted.  

Nadiya could not go back but refused to go forward so she remained in an in-between state, frozen. The photographs returned her to the sweet, simple times that were lost.

There were moments Nadiya had wanted to capture but couldn’t—Anton’s eyes, wide and luminous, just after he kissed her and before he turned away.

A roadtrip in earlier, carefree days, Anton’s arm on the ledge of the window, the wind sweeping his hair back, the quirk in his mouth as he told a joke she had long since forgotten.

Driving to the top of a high, rocky cliff, that she photographed but failed to capture Anton’s light, bouncing stride, the look he gave her when she tossed a handful of flower petals onto his head. The feeling as he chased after her, laughing, as he caught her and tickled her, how she curled her arms inward, squirming away from him till she squeezed her eyes shut and opened her mouth in a burst of surrendering laughter. 

Nadiya’s shoulders sank and she sat on the edge of the bed. She squeezed her eyes shut and thought of her parents, shoulders bowed and eyes sunken, confined to their village because it was too unsafe to leave.

There were moments she did not want to capture, the moments her camera had missed. Anton during a rare storm, eyes fire-bright and mouth twisted into a snarl. Her own pitiful look as she stood before him, pleading.

The resolve that hardened in Anton’s eyes, as he turned away and she could not reach him.

When she got into the car and saw Yulia wide-eyed with fear. Kseniya hugging her knees to her chest. Yulia’s face puffy with tears. Sergei’s jaw clenched as he bashed his fist into the seat.

Yulia’s expression on the first days without her husband, a mirror of Nadiya’s own pain. Her own distant look that Nadiya could not see, as she walked through strange streets submerged in memories, of loved ones severed from her, too far to reach, as the sun shone on and flowers cascaded from hanging baskets with a beauty she did not see. They were moments frozen inside her that no amount of sunshine could melt.

She turned back to the photographs. Her wall was now covered with a mosaic of joyful memories. As her eyes scanned the smiles of the people she loved, she saw in them surety, optimism, and love, and she kept gazing, until there was nothing else.

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by Malina Douglas
(this is part II. Read 
Shards Picked from the Floorboards
from the beginning.)

A Handful of Glistening Stream

Yulia walked, eyes searching for a flash of russet fur. Her road ribboned into the forest, till high slender trees rose to surround her, shafts of sunlight lasering between vivid spring leaves. She had slunk out of her flat on sock feet, before Nadiya or Kseniya were awake, before they could charm their way into joining.

True, the three shared a bond. They had fled Kyiv together to the safety of Dresden. 

Kseniya had been plucked on the cusp of blooming from her life as a student while Nadiya and Yulia had been separated from their husbands.

Their harrowing escape should have brought them closer. Yet every time she saw Nadiya, she appeared like a brooding raincloud on the verge of unleashing her troubles. Eyes wide and haunted, brow jagged, hands clenched.

Yulia knew what Nadiya expected. To float around her, soaking up the tides of emotions that Nadiya released and propping her up every time she overstrained herself.

Yet Yulia could not express her emotions as Nadiya did. Instead of gushing like a fountain, her experiences propelled her inward, and Nadiya’s tirades only drove her deeper. Like a snail delving into a spiral shell, she wound out of reach.

For disappearing, Nadiya would blame her. We’re in this together, she would hiss between clenched teeth. Only Yulia understood that they inhabited worlds of fire and mist, that their realms did not mix.

Now she followed the traces of her secret.

The first time she saw him was in her childhood, deep in the forest, with mud on her knees and sticks in her hair and the path irretrievably lost to her. When, on the brink of despair and exhaustion, she had called out for guidance—and received an answer.

The answer was fluffy with fur in the red-brown of leaves set alight by autumn.

A pair of large eyes beneath a set of sharp ears gazed into her. Then the fox plunged into the forest and Yulia understood she should follow. In the trail of silent paws, she moved till the forest unfurled like a hand and she found herself safely returned to its edge.

The fox turned to look at her, wide eyes gazing into her soul. Then it faded till the trees became visible through it and was gone. 

From then on the fox was her guardian spirit. She named him Mirko meaning glorious peace and drew him in her journal, on papers her mother stuck to the fridge and in the margins of her assignments.

In times of crisis, Mirko appeared and led her to safety. Soon, she reasoned, he was due to return.

Yulia walked into theDresdener Heide.

She crossed a flat wooden bridge and followed the gurgling Prießnitz.

A feeling drove her forward. To delve, like a flower rewinding into its seed. To discover something she could not yet express.

She walked as the sun rose in strength and was buried by cloud. She found the tree-ringed Silbersee, filled with a pale sky’s reflection. She sat on its edge and watched the ripples spread outward as dreams unwound like cotton-wool spools and drifted. She nibbled Schwartzbrot and herb-speckled Frischkäse, walked on and lost track of the hours that passed.

She wanted to curl up on the forest floor and feel the cloud of the foxtail on her cheek. To dig herself a burrow, pile dry leaves on top of herself, and hibernate till the following spring, when she would walk out of the forest rubbing sleep from her eyes to discover the war was over, that planter boxes of flowers filled the streets with a profusion of yellows and pinks, that songs rang out from every balcony and the streets thrummed with people in vivid hues, lifting their voices to the same sun that flooded Ukraine’s silent skies with gold light.

The vision faded to grey-brown tree-trunks and darkening leaves.

Twilight was falling and she was alone.

Yulia walked faster, but she did not turn back. The stream had darkened, water flashing as it flowed over stones. She thought of the storm engulfing her world. Bombs falling over Kyiv, roofs collapsing, windows shattering, people cowering, running, screaming, watching from afar as if covering one eye as her homeland was ripped apart.

 If at any time he should appear…

 Her breath caught like wool on a thorn as she saw him. Lifting his head from the water’s edge to fix his luminous eyes on her.

  “Mirko,” she called, and his pointed ears twitched.

“Mirko, lead me out of this.”

The fox flicked his tail and led onwards. 

“Tell me he’s okay,” she whispered, as she thought of her husband, his unpractised hands closing over a gun, as bullets flew in a hailstorm of fire.

As she walked, she stretched out her hands.

She would pull Mirko to her and breathe in the scent of autumn from his fur, cloves and damp earth, tart apples and cinnamon.

She knew she would return to Nadiya’s questions. That her excuses of fresh air were thinning and fading like mist. That one day Nadiya would corner her, and she would not be able to put into words her experience, as futile as snatching handfuls from a swift glistening stream. The water would flow through her fingers till they stiffened and released. Till her hands gave up grasping and fell to her sides. 

At least for now, she had eluded her huntress.

Yulia walked on, as the leaves joined together into a canopy of shadow. Mirko padded ahead of her, tail a paintbrush on a canvas of charcoal. As darkness erased the lines of her worries, she felt her footsteps lightening.

Mirko stopped at a large blackened tree trunk. A bolt of lightning had split it into two jagged parts. 

Yulia frowned. “This is not the sign I wanted to see.”

The fox only gazed at her.

“Show me something else!”

Mirko faded to an outline and Yulia found herself alone, in a forest thick with shadows.

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by Malina Douglas

Shards
(publishing December 18th)
A Handful of Glistening Stream
(publishing December 19th)
Frozen Moments
(publishing December 20th)
Molten Gold Memory Poured from the Sky
(publishing December 21st)

Shards

Nadiya’s gut lurched as she remembered it was almost Easter. She was supposed to be dyeing eggs and preparing a feast with her mother, niece and aunts.

Yet she was alone, in a cavernous apartment that echoed its emptiness back to her.

Her mother was stranded in a faraway village, her niece was submerged in the tunnels beneath Kyiv and her aunts had scattered across Hungary like seeds.

Nadiya sat at the kitchen table. The dark-grain wood was gouged with knife-marks and an anti-nuclear sticker had been slapped onto its surface.

Memories hurtled her backwards and she was back in her childhood home, on a stool in the kitchen, legs swinging and her mother beside her, marking patterns on eggshells. When Nadiya was five and her mother guided her hand to make pysanky, eggs dyed and decorated in intricate patterns. When she was eight and she copied her mother’s assured lines and made faces at her wobbly ones, then fourteen, drawing bold jagged lines in defiance of tradition.

Then she was twenty, back from university to make pysanky with her mother because that was what they always did, and as the years unfurled like round, complete eggs, no matter where her path took she was back every Easter afterwards, making pysanky as relatives orbited, blinking in and out like planets and stars.

Then she was thirty-four, sitting in an apartment in Dresden that gaped empty like a wound.

She was not sitting in an apartment in Dresden. She was sliding off her chair, lying on her belly and pressing her ear to the woodgrain of the floor as if listening for a heartbeat.

This was not, she decided, how her housemates would find her.

She forced herself up. To slide on boots and her dove-grey coat, pull the heavy door open and let it click shut behind her. To wind down four flights of stairs, trail her hand down the tongue of the bannister and listen to the echo of her footsteps.

Beneath the everglow of fluorescent lights, Nadiya opened each carton and her fingertips brushed the eggs. The palest and roundest, she purchased.

She sat down to begin and she was back at her mother’s table, chatting and singing songs till they lapsed into silence, and the only sound was the scrape of their tools against eggshells.

Nadiya rubbed her eyes. On the centre of the table was a candle wedged into a bottle of green glass, covered with wax in layers like frozen water. She lit it.

She picked up an egg and traced patterns onto its surface. Her pencil wandered.

Of all the impractical things she had packed, at least she had brought her kistka. The slender tool was hollow and used for drawing with hot wax. She held it to the candle flame to heat the funnel at the end and pressed the hot metal to a lump of beeswax. When the wax became molten, she scooped it into the funnel and traced over her lines.

She drew in wax over her lines and halted. How would her mother draw them? Smoother somehow, more delicate. She drew over a curl and the curves came out sharp. She scrunched up her nose but went on. In the landscape of the eggshell, there could be no erasure.

When the wax dried, she lowered the egg into a bowl of yellow dye.

Layer upon layer, she drew with wax and dipped the egg, into cadmium red, royal blue and snail shell purple.

Now her life had broken open, it was as if she had hatched, to a strange new world, where all of her attention was drawn downwards, gathering shards of eggshell as she pieced together what no longer fit.

She coated her egg with polyurethane, for strength. With the tip of a knife she made an incision and drained it of fluid.

How precious it was, like a miniature world.

She held the egg beside the candle flame and watched as the wax liquefied and dripped from the surface. As the lines beneath the wax were revealed, she squinted at them, frowning.

Wax dripped onto her fingers and she let it, each drop a searing reminder of what came before, of what she sought to remember, and the yearning for all she could not reach compacted inside her as pain and the flame was a tiny searing sun and she held the egg closer, made it drip faster, wax falling away to reveal cramped curls of pure, solid colour, till a crack zagged across the surface and the egg shattered in her hand.

A Handful of Glistening Stream

Yulia walked, eyes searching for a flash of russet fur. Her road ribboned into the forest, till high slender trees rose to surround her, shafts of sunlight lasering between vivid spring leaves. She had slunk out of her flat on sock feet, before Nadiya or Kseniya were awake, before they could charm their way into joining.

True, the three shared a bond. They had fled Kyiv together to the safety of Dresden. 

Kseniya had been plucked on the cusp of blooming from her life as a student while Nadiya and Yulia had been separated from their husbands.

Their harrowing escape should have brought them closer. Yet every time she saw Nadiya, she appeared like a brooding raincloud on the verge of unleashing her troubles. Eyes wide and haunted, brow jagged, hands clenched.

Yulia knew what Nadiya expected. To float around her, soaking up the tides of emotions that Nadiya released and propping her up every time she overstrained herself.

Yet Yulia could not express her emotions as Nadiya did. Instead of gushing like a fountain, her experiences propelled her inward, and Nadiya’s tirades only drove her deeper. Like a snail delving into a spiral shell, she wound out of reach.

For disappearing, Nadiya would blame her. We’re in this together, she would hiss between clenched teeth. Only Yulia understood that they inhabited worlds of fire and mist, that their realms did not mix.

Now she followed the traces of her secret.

The first time she saw him was in her childhood, deep in the forest, with mud on her knees and sticks in her hair and the path irretrievably lost to her. When, on the brink of despair and exhaustion, she had called out for guidance—and received an answer.

The answer was fluffy with fur in the red-brown of leaves set alight by autumn.

A pair of large eyes beneath a set of sharp ears gazed into her. Then the fox plunged into the forest and Yulia understood she should follow. In the trail of silent paws, she moved till the forest unfurled like a hand and she found herself safely returned to its edge.

The fox turned to look at her, wide eyes gazing into her soul. Then it faded till the trees became visible through it and was gone. 

From then on the fox was her guardian spirit. She named him Mirko meaning glorious peace and drew him in her journal, on papers her mother stuck to the fridge and in the margins of her assignments.

In times of crisis, Mirko appeared and led her to safety. Soon, she reasoned, he was due to return.

Yulia walked into theDresdener Heide.

She crossed a flat wooden bridge and followed the gurgling Prießnitz.

A feeling drove her forward. To delve, like a flower rewinding into its seed. To discover something she could not yet express.

She walked as the sun rose in strength and was buried by cloud. She found the tree-ringed Silbersee, filled with a pale sky’s reflection. She sat on its edge and watched the ripples spread outward as dreams unwound like cotton-wool spools and drifted. She nibbled Schwartzbrot and herb-speckled Frischkäse, walked on and lost track of the hours that passed.

She wanted to curl up on the forest floor and feel the cloud of the foxtail on her cheek. To dig herself a burrow, pile dry leaves on top of herself, and hibernate till the following spring, when she would walk out of the forest rubbing sleep from her eyes to discover the war was over, that planter boxes of flowers filled the streets with a profusion of yellows and pinks, that songs rang out from every balcony and the streets thrummed with people in vivid hues, lifting their voices to the same sun that flooded Ukraine’s silent skies with gold light.

The vision faded to grey-brown tree-trunks and darkening leaves.

Twilight was falling and she was alone.

Yulia walked faster, but she did not turn back. The stream had darkened, water flashing as it flowed over stones. She thought of the storm engulfing her world. Bombs falling over Kyiv, roofs collapsing, windows shattering, people cowering, running, screaming, watching from afar as if covering one eye as her homeland was ripped apart.

 If at any time he should appear…

 Her breath caught like wool on a thorn as she saw him. Lifting his head from the water’s edge to fix his luminous eyes on her.

“Mirko,” she called, and his pointed ears twitched.

“Mirko, lead me out of this.”

The fox flicked his tail and led onwards. 

“Tell me he’s okay,” she whispered, as she thought of her husband, his unpractised hands closing over a gun, as bullets flew in a hailstorm of fire.

As she walked, she stretched out her hands.

She would pull Mirko to her and breathe in the scent of autumn from his fur, cloves and damp earth, tart apples and cinnamon.

She knew she would return to Nadiya’s questions. That her excuses of fresh air were thinning and fading like mist. That one day Nadiya would corner her, and she would not be able to put into words her experience, as futile as snatching handfuls from a swift glistening stream. The water would flow through her fingers till they stiffened and released. Till her hands gave up grasping and fell to her sides. 

At least for now, she had eluded her huntress.

Yulia walked on, as the leaves joined together into a canopy of shadow. Mirko padded ahead of her, tail a paintbrush on a canvas of charcoal. As darkness erased the lines of her worries, she felt her footsteps lightening.

Mirko stopped at a large blackened tree trunk. A bolt of lightning had split it into two jagged parts. 

Yulia frowned. “This is not the sign I wanted to see.”

The fox only gazed at her.

“Show me something else!”

Mirko faded to an outline and Yulia found herself alone, in a forest thick with shadows.

Frozen Moments

Nadiya returned home with a thick Manila envelope. Standing before a blank, cream wall, she opened it and took out photos.

There was Anton, eyes slightly wide because she’d caught him unguarded, lips curling upwards, blond hair ruffled because he’d just sat up from bed.

Then he was beside her on their honeymoon, at the seaside at Yalta. He wore a forced grin because taking the picture had interrupted his sunbathing, his chest bare and ruddy. Nadiya looked at her own face and saw the way she squinted into the camera, the white lines on her shoulders, the rest of her skin an angry pink, the loose strands of blonde hair that had stuck to her lip. The long thin legs beneath her minidress, upper thighs paler.

She stuck it to the wall.

A photo of her mother from Nadiya’s last visit, looking over her shoulder from the batter she was stirring. Then she was standing before the oven, smile tired and palms pressed to her skirt, smoothing out wrinkles even when they were invisible.

Then both of her parents, her father’s arm slung around her mother’s, standing in the garden of their dacha. She saw her father’s steady blue eyes, his sparse grey hair and the smile lines etched into his cheeks. Her mother’s eyes filled with love and pride, with the same button nose that Nadiya had inherited.

There was Anton in deep discussion with Yulia’s husband Sergei, taken from the entrance of the kitchen when they were not looking. The way they sat, hunched forward, elbows on the table, empty cups scattered around them, Anton detailing architectural schemes as Sergei listened, head tilted and lips poised with his response. Captured before her was Anton’s earnest enthusiasm, a remnant of how she imagined him as a boy, and Sergei’s amusement, wry smile lines etched in the sides of his mouth.

There were moments to treasure like insects in amber. Sergei’s mouth, wide open in laughter, the way Yulia snagged his arm and pulled him towards her, the eyes that said you’re mine.

Before both couples were parted at the border. Before Anton and Sergei were sent to war. She and Yulia had been forced to go on without them. And then there was Kseniya, like a long-legged colt and just as unpredictable. A photography student who had joined them in flight from Kyiv.

In a photo she stood outside her apartment, dark-haired and lanky, her arm around Yulia, half a head shorter and gold hair in curls. The pink tones of Yulia’s skin contrasted with Kseniya’s milky features, lavender silk beside wine red, a pair of flowers plucked from different gardens. The innocence of their expressions that could no longer be reclaimed. The home they could not return to.

Nadiya missed her apartment with its flower-painted kitchen and views of a leafy park. The gold domes of St Sofia Church and the wide Dnieper, sipping cocktails from a lounge chair from the river’s pebbled bank while a salsa band played. 

She yearned to go back but bombs were falling, erasing landmarks and leaving rubble like dark splotches on a map. 

Her suitcase stood at the foot of the bed. A sentinel, a gargoyle. The embodiment of her refusal to accept. This was not home. She disliked how Dresden was changing them, Yulia’s retreats and Kseniya’s growing recklessness. Kseniya was growing into the daughter’s she’d never had, and the more protective Nadiya grew of her, the more Kseniya resisted.  

Nadiya could not go back but refused to go forward so she remained in an in-between state, frozen. The photographs returned her to the sweet, simple times that were lost.

There were moments Nadiya had wanted to capture but couldn’t—Anton’s eyes, wide and luminous, just after he kissed her and before he turned away.

A roadtrip in earlier, carefree days, Anton’s arm on the ledge of the window, the wind sweeping his hair back, the quirk in his mouth as he told a joke she had long since forgotten.

Driving to the top of a high, rocky cliff, that she photographed but failed to capture Anton’s light, bouncing stride, the look he gave her when she tossed a handful of flower petals onto his head. The feeling as he chased after her, laughing, as he caught her and tickled her, how she curled her arms inward, squirming away from him till she squeezed her eyes shut and opened her mouth in a burst of surrendering laughter. 

Nadiya’s shoulders sank and she sat on the edge of the bed. She squeezed her eyes shut and thought of her parents, shoulders bowed and eyes sunken, confined to their village because it was too unsafe to leave.

There were moments she did not want to capture, the moments her camera had missed. Anton during a rare storm, eyes fire-bright and mouth twisted into a snarl. Her own pitiful look as she stood before him, pleading.

The resolve that hardened in Anton’s eyes, as he turned away and she could not reach him.

When she got into the car and saw Yulia wide-eyed with fear. Kseniya hugging her knees to her chest. Yulia’s face puffy with tears. Sergei’s jaw clenched as he bashed his fist into the seat.

Yulia’s expression on the first days without her husband, a mirror of Nadiya’s own pain. Her own distant look that Nadiya could not see, as she walked through strange streets submerged in memories, of loved ones severed from her, too far to reach, as the sun shone on and flowers cascaded from hanging baskets with a beauty she did not see. They were moments frozen inside her that no amount of sunshine could melt.

She turned back to the photographs. Her wall was now covered with a mosaic of joyful memories. As her eyes scanned the smiles of the people she loved, she saw in them surety, optimism, and love, and she kept gazing, until there was nothing else.

Molten Gold Memory Poured from the Sky

She didn’t trust him at first. Not till after they had danced and she felt the sway of his hips against hers, when she had pressed her palm to his shoulder blades, felt the movement of the muscles through the dampness of his shirt, when he had murmured words like breadcrumbs over the thud of the bass, led her out of the dark steaming club, and onto a wide, smooth street. 

There was something in his eyes that asked her to believe him.

Looking back later, she was not sure why she took the risk but she let him lead her, in steps light and smooth, their conversation nimble, spurred by curiosity as she teased out the facets of this intriguing new man beside her, this Anton, and from beneath the smooth square jaw, strong brow and soft lashes his character emerged, in small gradual portions like a gem shifted towards the light.

She remembered how they spoke, in a late night café of blue glowing lights and vinyl seats, drinking tea spiced with brandy and cupping her mug between two hands as she gazed across the table at him, his blue eyes drawing her inwards like the tug of an undersea current.

She dove.

Into his childhood, seaside trips in the roselight of cherished memory, when his father was still with them. His dreams of sailing brushed aside to study medicine, his fear of heights and love of skiing.

Little synchronicities that fizzled like sparks between them. How he had studied at the same university yet never met her because he finished three years ahead of her. How he’d bought a flat in the neighbourhood she had always dreamed of living in. The name of a film he’d jotted down three weeks ago and not got around to watching, that turned out to be the film that she loved most.

They marvelled over the parallels of their lives, living as if leaving gaps for the other to nestle into.

They talked until she set down her mug, long since empty, set her hands on the table and he took them in his, and she was surprised how warm they were, how soft, and still holding one hand, he led her out of the café, down a lane and up a hill, the hill he had told her about in a voice that transmitted his excitement, and the feeling imbued her body and quickened her stride.

She sat beside him on the hill’s cusp as the dawn bloomed, pale as a fingernail, then flushed as it set the sky alive, leaned into him, his arm around her shoulders pulled her closer and when she turned her head their lips met, as the sun rose and its soft warmth brushed her cheek.

They stayed, till morning light lit up the dirt path beneath them, glistened off the dewdrops that beaded the grass and leant a golden glow to Anton’s skin.  

Their surroundings took on a strange, wondrous quality, as if Nadiya had been reborn, and they walked down the hill with their hands interlinked, past pastel buildings and rows of doors sealed, to the entrance of the metro where his fingertips slid from her shoulders like the feathered brush of wings.

Nadiya woke, noticed the chink of light through the curtains, and rolled over. She was alone.

She lingered in memory because that was all she had. A meeting that had blossomed into love, to marriage, to a year that had flitted by in swift, light-filled frames.

Since her parting from Anton, she had met the days weary and sullen, never earlier than nine. Days bloomed into weeks like the mould on the tile of the shower. Tears streaked her face and rimmed her eyes red. Shards of love turned inwards and her body swelled with hurt.

Missiles and gunfire were tearing apart the fabric of her homeland, and Anton was with them. She had a hazy impression of him running while explosions bloomed around him, but did not know the details. It was better, she told herself, not to know. But at times it was worse.

She walked through the city in a haze of memory, a city borrowed and worn for a while that she hoped to soon shrug out of. A city of secondhand history and foundations that rattled like bones, patched with sleek constructions to fill the holes left by buildings destroyed, with a domed church like a frosted cupcake.

Dresden.

A city rebuilt from ashes and thick with ghosts, that drifted after Nadiya and gnawed on her sadness, though she could see only shadows and feel only emptiness.

Nadiya slipped out of bed when the sky was like a dreamer stirred from sleep, the cerulean of Anton’s eyes, lightening by degrees.

She stepped out to streets steeped in silence, wound her way to the edge of the Elbe, sat on a bench and gazed, as a distant sun flooded the bank with golden light and tinged a spread of scalloped clouds peach. As it softened the edges of the buildings on the opposite shore and poured peach light into the mirror of the river.

Nadiya felt something catch within her. She gripped the armrest of the bench as tears streamed from her eyes.

All this time, thought Nadiya, the city had been unfurling its mornings as if waiting for her to see.

She did not know how long she would wait to return to Anton. Only now could she begin to accept it. That she was here. That beyond her stifled longing was a place she could love.

It was an opportune time, when the city was fragile, poised on the cusp of waking, the day was malleable, and only now, when her groggy eyes were impressionable, was the time Dresden’s beauty could touch her most deeply, when a love for her surroundings could be birthed within her heart.

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