Shards Picked from the Floorboards
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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