Monsters Under My Bed

David,

If you're going to read this, you can't tell.

You can't tell anyone. Not a single soul.

Especially not Mom.

Please.

I already know I'm crazy.




I chew on the end of my pen and look at the words. Then I scribble over them again and again, tangling the words in black lines, so hard the paper tears. I rip the page out, crumple it and kick it off the end of my bed to be devoured by the mess in my room. Maybe by the monsters themselves.

I blink and look to the side. I thought something was there. But no. If it was, it's gone. Except...

Light. Or maybe darkness. It's hard to tell. Maybe it's both. Or neither.

I move my eyes back and forth and this spot of something or nothing moves with them, always at the side of my sight.

It looks like a left-over flash, like an annoying camera took my picture too many times. When I blink, there are smudges on my vision. Black spots? Or blank spots? Their the opposite of the flash, the negative, like the camera turned my eyeballs into un-developed film.

I blink-blink-blink. Blink some more, trying to scrub the reverse-flashes off my retina.

I don't even remember what caused the flashes. It had to have been a flash, right? Darkness can't leave a negative of itself on my eyes.

The spots don't budge.

I scoot off the bed and stand up. The carpet is layered with my things, like a geological measuring of time. (Here are some beat up textbooks three layers down. That must be the end-of-the-school-year era.) I skip-step-hop-trip trying not to skewer my foot on a fork. My butt lands on the humidifier, and I hear a crack.

I push stuff aside to make a safety zone for sitting and blink-blink-blink some more.

Why am I seeing spots?

For that matter, what did I just get off the bed for? Maybe I was looking for something, but finding it in here would take an archeological excavation. I look around, trying to remember. But there's a roadblock in my memory. I try to see around it, but all the other memories honk at me to stay in my lane. This sort of thing happens to me all the time. Talking to my friend mid-sentence and Justin Jersey walks by and my brain detours and that's the end of that thought. Good-bye.

Anything de-rails me. Chocolate. The color purple. Spiders (though not for the same reason as JJ). Any song by Ray Sway, especially "Little Blue Heart." And, apparently, broken humidifiers.

I have no idea what I was doing ten seconds ago. Well, make that more like thirty seconds to a minute with all the brain-wringing I'm doing.

And still those spots. They should have faded. But no.

I rub my eyes, squeeze them shut. Open them. Blink-blink-blink.

Still there. The spots aren't black. Aren't white. They're just there. Or rather, my vision is just not there. Like someone took an eraser to my eyes.

So I sit, fold up my legs in lotus pose, and breathe. This is something my therapist said to do when I feel stressed. I told her I would never go to school or eat or even pee ever again in my whole life if I had to do lotus pose every time I felt stressed. It seems like it should be stupid, this whole meditation thing. But - I would never tell anyone this - it's kind of fun.

I feel all important and together, like a queen ruling her cluttered kingdom. Sometimes I imagine myself all decked out in crown and glittering dress, sitting there, breathing and being.

"Katherine!" Mom yells up the stairs, because of course she can't be bothered to actually walk up them. "Time for therapy!"

The spell is broken. I'm not a queen. I'm not important. I'm just me. Strange little cluttered me with broken pencils in my hair and monsters under my bed.

Oh, and the voices. Let's not forget the voices.

The monsters only come out when all the lights are off.

It's like a little kid, I know, which is why I pretended to grow out of it when I was twelve. A little late, but you should have seen how relieved mom was when I said I'd finally checked under the bed in the middle of the night and there wasn’t anything there, and I was sorry for being a scaredy-cat for so long. Moms like to think their daughters aren't crazy.

Daughters like to think they're not crazy too.

But sometimes, that's just not true.

I don't tell the therapist about the monsters or voices anymore either. I told her I made them up. To get attention. Now, five years later, we talk about my "depression" and my "anxiety disorder," and how it's important that I don't become anorexic.

Mom bought me a "Happy Light 4000" when the therapist said it sounded like I might be struggling with "seasonal affective disorder." (I think they made up that name just so they could abbreviate it S.A.D. and make people who have it feel even worse.) The happy light is supposed to imitate sunshine and cheer me up. I crawl under my bed before the sun goes down and plug it in down there on nights when I can't stand to listen to the monsters. But the more nights I get rid of them, the angrier they get when they finally come back. And they always come back. The happy light bulb doesn't last forever.

And like I said, the voices in my head always want to talk to them.






I fiddle with a pen and draw a big gushy heart on the back of my hand while my therapist talks. But the spots are still getting in the way of seeing. None of them are right in the center of my vision, so I can see straight ahead, but my peripheral vision is severely limited. Like a horse with blinders on. I want them gone.

Like, right now.

"We haven't talked about your brother in a long time," the therapist says.

I can never remember their names. This is - what? - the tenth one I've seen.

I draw a mouth on the heart.

"Last time we talked you said you didn't think closure was possible for something like this. Is that still how you feel?"

I trade the blue pen for a black one and fill in the mouth with sharp pointy teeth.

I'm sure she sees what I'm doing, but she doesn't comment. She told mom my drawings were a way for me to "express my repressed emotions."

Whatever.

"I think that these feelings inside you, this depression, this anxiety, everything like that, can all be traced back to this incident. If we were to finally resolve it-"

"I'm seeing these spots," I say. "In my vision. They won't go away. It's like after seeing a camera flash, but it's been going on for maybe a couple hours now."

The therapist taps her pen against her other hand. "Spots?"

I nod. "They won't go away. They're kind of driving me crazy."

"I'm not a doctor, Katherine. I'm sorry, but I can only counsel you on emotional issues, not physical ones. It could very well be a symptom of stress, but I have to advise you to see a qualified physician. You understand?"

I nod.

"Have you been doing your meditation morning and night?"

I shrug and go back to doodling carnivorous hearts down my wrist. "So, it should go away soon? Like, if I keep doing my meditation? It's just a temporary thing?"

"Have you told your mother about it?"

"Not yet. It just happened right before we came over. But I'll let her know." I glance at the clock. "Looks like our times up. Thanks." I cap the pen and slide it back to her over the desk.







Wherever the monster come from, I can't tell. There isn't a hole or anything under my bed leading to monster kingdom. When I'm brave enough to lift the dust ruffle, it just looks like the underside of anyone's bed. But that doesn't mean the monsters aren't real.

I can hear them, feel them, smell them under the bed. Everything but see them.

When the rocking and thumping and mulch-smell all get to be too much, and the voices are shrieking with laughter, sometimes I whirl and rip up the dust-ruffle, hanging my head over the side of the bed. But there's nothing there. Except laughter.

Sticky-wet laughter.







"What did you talk about in therapy today?" Mom asks.

I shrug.

Isn't the point of therapy that you can talk to some stranger about stuff you specifically do not want to talk to your Mom about?

I can see her eyeing the blue hearts on my hand at a red light.

I pull out my phone and google "blind spots in my vision." The first thing that comes up is cataracts, but I'm pretty sure that's just what old people get. I scroll. After "macular degeneration," whatever that is, there is stuff about "optic neuritis."

Why do doctors make everything sound so weird and serious?

Next is migraines. I know what those are only because Mom gets them every other week. I click the link.

Sometimes, I read, when under extreme stress, people can experience an ocular migraine. This may or may not be accompanied by other symptoms, such as headaches or sensitivity to light. Ocular migraines occur when blood vessels in the brain constrict, cutting off or thinning the blood supply to part of your brain that controls vision and causing partial visual loss.

I might have a headache in my eyes. After watching Mom gulp pills, turn off all the lights, and moan in her room, I would rather take blind spots than pain any day.

We pass the alley and I see a little black kitten next to our dumpster. She's the blackest cat I've ever seen. Not a speck of color on her. I watch her lick her paw and rub it behind her ear.

"Can I get a cat?" I ask.

Mom frowns. "Why?"

"For therapy. Lots of people have therapy cats."

"We're not getting a cat."

I frown as well.

We pull into the driveway, and I unbuckle and bolt before Mom pulls into the garage.













Tonight I sit in a puddle of cleared out clutter listening to Ray Sway and doodling on my pajama pants with a sharpie. The pants are pink with red bows printed on them. There must be a million little bows on these pants. A present from my grandma last Christmas Eve. My sharpie is black and I meticulously turn each of the red bows into a black star, drawing over it in thick lines.

The visual migraine, if that it indeed what it is, is steadily getting worse. Looking at one bow/star, I can't see the bow/star to the left of it. Closing my left eye helps, since it's only in one eye, but I can only keep my eye squinched shut for so long before I feel a real headache coming on and open it.

When I finish all the bows I can get to while still wearing the pants, I cap the sharpie and look at my dust-ruffle.

The voices in my head are relatively quiet for 10pm. They're always silent during daylight hours, like they're nocturnal and only wake up in the late evening. They've kept me up all night before, shrieking and laughing and whispering to the monsters under the bed. Most of the time I can't understand what they're saying, which is probably good.

I can feel little whispers at the back of my mind, like an itch. I can't quite make them out, and I don't try. I watch the dust-ruffle for a long time, an old worn-out pink frilly thing I've had on my bed since elementary school. When I was little, I thought that the dust-ruffle would keep the monsters inside, keep them trapped. Maybe I still think that, since I haven't gotten rid of it. And it's not exactly cute.

I hear a thump from under the bed and a wet squelch. The monsters are arriving. I don't know where they go during the day. Maybe just to sleep. But, like the voices, they only come out to play at night. I don't know what they are or where they came from or why they insist on camping out under my bed night after night for almost ten years now. But I know they're there.

Using the tip of the sharpie, I lift the edge of the dust-ruffle up, bracing against being grabbed again. Is that what they're waiting for? To get me? To drag me under the bed and... what? Eat me? Turn me into one of them? Free the monsters from where they're locked up inside my skull?

Ray Sway sings in the background, "You are the oxygen I need. You are every breath I used to breathe. Without you, my blood turns blue."

I wonder if the voices will leave me alone when I move out, go to college, get a different bed. I've lived in this house, this room, since I was seven. Maybe they've always haunted this one room. Maybe it's not me, just them.

When I was little, and the monsters got so wild they would shake the bed, I'd count to ten and then leap to the floor, heart ricocheting, and race to my parents room. Sleeping on their floor, the monsters couldn't get me. But the voices were still there. The voices are always there, in my head, no matter where I am. Nine or ten at night, they'll wake up and start whispering, murmuring, laughing. By around midnight or one, they've elevated the noise so that I can't hear my own thoughts let alone anyone else talking to me.

Now, I peer into the darkness beneath my bed trying to see. I can hear the voices and the monsters garbling words at each other. Laughing with each other.

Am I really crazy? Is this all in my head? Am I some psycho who's brain went haywire and invented this whole awful situation?

I scan the corners, daring myself to stick my hand under there and see what happens.

I blink.

There is something there.

Something under my bed.

I drop the dust ruffle and jump back, knocking into the broken humidifier so that it pokes me in the back and I yelp.

I am crazy. There is nothing under my bed. I should be locked up in a mental institution. I should be on a handful of pills. I shouldn't be staring at hallucinations under my bed.

The chorus comes on and I close my eyes to listen to Ray Sway's voice as he sings, "Don't let me die here in the dark! Come back and restart my little blue heart!" His voice is like fluffy white pancakes with a whole bottle of syrup poured on top.

He helps me feel a little more sane.

I lay down on my stomach, kicking mounds of dirty clothes I forgot I owned and a moldy bowl out of the way. Then I suck in my breath and use the sharpie to lift the dust ruffle again.

I squeak.

There isn't just something. There are lots of somethings.

Wriggling, squirming, like a knot of twisted octopus legs.

The voices in my head shriek in delight, so loud I can't hear Ray Sway anymore.

I don't look away, like I am watching a horror movie and I know some stupid girl is about to get chainsawed but I have to watch just in case it doesn't happen. Just in case this isn't real.

I can only see parts of them. I blink, and then close my right eye.

It's the blind spots on my vision. That's how I can see them. Somehow, in the blank gaps in my vision, I can see the monsters, like the real world got erased, and the monster world opened up.

I poke the edge of the dust ruffle underneath my mattress so that the dark underneath of my bed is exposed without me holding the pink frills up.

The monster arms squirm and make sucking noises as the separate and twist back together. I slide away from them on my stomach.

What do I do now? Do I try to kill them? Talk to them? Tell my therapist about them?

I shudder. Sometimes therapists and what they can do are more intimidating than monsters.













"It's Wednesday," Mom says while I'm eating chocolate cheerios for breakfast.

I forgot. It's so easy to forget the days of the week during summer vacation. I chew louder.

"Do you want to come with me?" Mom asks. "You haven't been in a while."

"I already have plans. One of my friends invited me over this morning," I lie.

"That's nice. Which friend?"

"Maddison."

Mom puts the dishes from the counter in the dishwasher. "What are you two doing this morning?" She's suspicious.

I drink my milk to give me time to think. "She has a date tonight and she wants me to help her buy an outfit."

"That sounds fun," says Mom. "Will you start the dishwasher after you put your dishes in?"

"Sure."

When I hear the garage door close after her, I get on my tennis shoes and pop in my earbuds. I do have plans. Just not with Maddison.

As I jog down the street, I pause at the alley with the dumpsters, but I don't see the black kitten.

It takes half an hour by bus to get to Happy Sun Ln. I don't know who names streets around here. They're all weird and painfully optimistic.

From there I walk. It's only a couple blocks, but my feet go slower and slower the closer I get. I turn up the volume on Ray Sway's newest single "Forgotten Feathers" but my shirt still feels like it's choking me.

I stop dead at the corner like I waked into a brick wall. There it is. There is our old house.

The feelings press against me and I want to punch them. I haven't seen this house in ten years, but that yellow paint is still the same. That brick wall against the driveway. Those cracked cement steps. I colored the whole driveway in chalk one day and it started to rain before I was done.

I try to take a deep breath but it gets stuck on its way to my lungs. If there was ever a time for lotus pose, this is it. I take a step back.

Whispering. In my head. The monsters have woken up and it's only noon.

The smell of the trees, the look of the neighbor's perfectly mowed lawn, the upstairs window. It all crashes down on me. I am suffocating. I am drowning.

I close my eyes and listen to Ray Sway, but I can't hear him over my own heartbeat and the monsters that are chattering and cackling.

When I open my eyes, I see them.

Tentacles disappearing around corners. Eyeballs peeking through sidewalk cracks. Claws gripping tree branches.

The sun is shining and the monsters are here.

They are coming for me, scuttling from one bush to another, slinking along a white picket fence, slurping out of the storm drain.

I run.

The bus isn't at the bus stop, so I just keep running until I've outrun the monsters and the memories.










The spots are getting worse. Some of them have gotten big enough to overlap each other. More and more of the real world is being obscured.

I don't sleep that night. I sit with my back against the wall and a table knife in one hand. It was the best weapon I could find.

The monsters stay under the bed, but they are restless. I keep the dust ruffle down, but long wet arms reach out and feel around for me before sliding back. I want to vomit.

When the voices get rowdy, I bang my head against the wall to shut them up. It works. But only for a minute.

Mom had a migraine and took a sleeping pill before she went to bed. Good thing or I would wake her up.

Around 3am when the noise is so unbearable I can't sleep even if I want to, I consider climbing under the bed and letting them take me. I wonder how it would feel if they grabbed me and pulled me in. Would they absorb me? Strangle me? How soon would Mom find my body? Would there even be a body to find?

I wonder which is better, being psycho and not letting anyone know, or being sane but having everyone think you're crazy. I think I might have the worst of both worlds.

As the voices and the monsters get louder than a rock concert, I realize that maybe the voices aren't just voices at all. Maybe they are monsters too. Maybe I don't have monsters just living in my room, maybe I have them living inside me.











"I want to see him," I tell my mom.

It's morning. I'm wearing the half red bow, half black star pajama pants again and a baggy t-shirt. The kitchen is clean and bright and after sitting in the dark all night long staring at something that should not exist for eight hours, I feel like hiding under something myself.

Mom looks up from making orange juice. Like, literally making it. Herself. Not from frozen concentrate, but from actual oranges. She does this about once a week. I think it's her final attempt at having the close-knit, cocoa and marshmallow family she's always wanted. Instead she got my brother and me.

"What, sweetie?"

"David. I want to see him."

Mom drops the orange half she's holding. All the juice has already been squeezed out, so it doesn't make much of a mess, but she busies herself cleaning it up anyway.

"I can go by myself if you don't want to go today. I know you just went yesterday."

"No, no, I can take you. I can drive you."

"I know I have therapy, but-"

"I'll give them a call and reschedule."

I take a glass of the orange juice and sip it. It's too acidic for my stomach in the morning, but it's the closest I can manage to saying thank you.










We pull into the parking lot and mom runs over an apple. The ground is littered with them. The trees in front of us are dripping with them. As I watch, one falls right off a branch and rolls until it hits the curb. I get out, pick it up, and wipe it off on my shirt.

Inside, a lady at a desk asks if we have David's visiting code. Mom gives it to her. The lady beeps us through a door.

Mom leads me down a hallway, around a corner, down another hallway, through a door.

And there he is. There is my brother. In a small clean white room, sitting on a tidy bed, fiddling with a wooden 3-D puzzle. There is my brother. Locked up and crazy.

Mom glances back and forth between the two of us.

"I'll give you a minute to talk," she says and closes the door behind her on the way out.

I hold out the apple. "I picked this up for you," I say.

He sets the puzzle down on the ledge of the windowsill. "You came."

"Yeah." I set the apple down next to the 3-D puzzle. I hope he's allowed to have it. He can't have shoes with laces or blinds with the string to pull because he might hang himself, you know. But I can't think what anyone could do with an apple. Bash himself over the head, I guess. I pick the apple back up and test it with my fingers for bashing firmness.

"What's up?" he says.

I shrug. I don't know why I came. Maybe I wanted to tell him about the monsters - one crazy person to another - but now in his fluorescent cube room with a plexiglass window in the door it seems ridiculous. If I say anything, I'll get my own one of these rooms.

I wonder if these beds have monsters underneath them.

"How's school?" he asks.

"Good." It's a lie. Why do people even ask that question? "It's summer. How's- Um. You know... Life?" Why did I ask that question?

He laughs, and he sounds so much like my sane brother that it sets me on edge. People in places like this shouldn't be so normal. If he was always crazy, it might be easier to come talk to him. I could be prepared. But when he's like is, I never know when he's going to flip and turn into a psycho.

"Life's great!" he says. "I love this place!" He stretches out his arms and looks around the room with a big smile like he's welcoming me to his palace.

There is nothing on the walls. There is nothing on the carpet. There is nothing but him and the bedspread on the bed. I wonder if they take his pillow away during the day or if he just doesn't get one. Maybe someone suffocated themselves with it.

Maybe he tried to suffocate himself.

"Well," I say. "I just wanted to come by and say hi. Haven't seen you in a while." I wish I hadn't said that. He's locked up for goodness sake. It's my own fault that I haven't seen him.

"You want to play a game?" he asks.

I look around because there are no board games or card games or anything in here.

"Um..."

He laughs again. "They're out in the main room."

"Oh. That's alright. I just came by to say hi." I turn back to the door. I can see mom out the plexiglass, talking with my brother's psychiatrist, Tim. "It was good to see you."

"Katherine," he says.

I freeze. This isn't his sane brother voice. This is something else. Soft and desperate like a faded old blanket.

"Are the monsters still bothering you?" he asks.

I don't turn around. I wonder if there are cameras in this room. Maybe mom put him up to this. She might not mind having two of us in here to visit between 10 and 4 on weekdays. Maybe the drugs would wash the monsters out of my head, leak them out of my ears.

"I know you told mom they don't, but-"

I twist the doorknob and fling open the door.

Mom jumps.

"See you later!" I say to my brother.

"Everything alright?" mom asks.

"Yep, it's super. Ready to go?"

I wait in the main room while Mom talks with David. Probably interrogating him about what I said.

I squirm in the plastic chair. This place doesn't have many memories for me. I haven't been here much. But something about it presses on my brain, makes it crack like an egg. I watch memories leak out and spill on the floor.

I try to close my brain back up, but it's too late. They've already escaped.

David is on the floor. There isn't blood. There should be blood. He should be lying in a pool of it. I think about adding it to the memory because it would feel more real, but no. No blood. Just an empty bottle. No pills left inside.

David screams at me, and when I see his eyes he is not my brother any more. He is someone else. Something else. I think my brother has become a monster. Maybe he always was one and I never noticed before.

David crying as the medics load him into the ambulance. "Mom! Please! I didn't-"

"Ready to go?"

I jump.
















I am going to die.

Either the monsters are going to eat me, or my brain is going to suffocate with lack of sleep.

My shoes are easy to spot in the mess because they're always on top. I lace them up, grab a hoodie to throw on over my pajama top and black star pajama pants, then creak my bedroom door open. Mom should be asleep, but she didn't have any migraines today so it's not a drug-induced sleep. And she's not a heavy sleeper. I tiptoe down the hall and through the kitchen to the front door. The light on the microwave reads 2:30.

I inch the dead bolt on the front door out of its place and turn the door handle in slow motion. When it clicks open, I slip through the crack and ease it closed. I'm out.

This isn't any safer than being in my room, but at least here there's fresh air to breathe and the moon as a witness. I walk. I don't have a destination in mind. I just need to move.

Halfway down the block, something in the alley dumpster clanks. I freeze. Only hooligans and people with monsters eating away at their brains are up at this hour. It clanks again like an empty bottle against the metal. There's shuffling. I back away. Is someone seriously dumpster diving?

Something small and dark leaps out of the dumpster and I jump in surprise. It's black and I can see it's fangs. A monster.

As I'm turning to run, my brain finishes processing what I saw. Not a monster. A cat. A kitten. I stumble a few steps, and turn. The kitten is puffed up, hissing and spitting at the dumpster. Something - several somethings - slither over the lid of the bin. Teeth and small eyes stick out of the tentacles. My throat closes up.

The kitten backs away, making a deep throated noise. I look from the kitten to the monster and back. The tentacles lunge and the kitten jumps, claws out. But the tentacles are bigger and the kitten never stood a chance. The tiny thing hisses and claws and bites, trying to kill the thing that is strangling it.

I lunge forward. I know I'm insane and these things will kill me and eat me too. But this is the first living thing that can see what I see, that has tried to fight back. There is no way I am letting it go. I grab a tentacle and yank, feeling its teeth cut into my palms. I tug and squeeze, but its no use. The kitten is going quiet.

A feeling wells up inside me. I haven't felt anything this strongly in months. Maybe years. It bubbles up until it erupts from my mouth. I let out a scream - part battle cry, part despair. I slam the tentacle I'm holding against the dumpster and kick it again and again and again letting this new found rage boil inside me, make me superhuman. I kick and scream even after the tentacle goes limp, even after the kitten drops to the ground, even after the tentacle breaks away from the rest and hangs limp and oozing in my hand. When the screaming and the kicking have sapped every particle of energy inside me, I drop the severed piece of monster and stumble back. The kitten isn't moving.

I kneel knew to it and slide my hands under its head and tiny hips, scooping it into my arms. Its black fur is matted and dirty, but when I lean my ear softly against its side, I can feel a flutter of heartbeats.

Stroking her, I feel my own heartbeat settle. I'm not crazy. This kitten knows it.

Cradling her, I make my way back home. I don’t know what I’ll tell my mom, but I need this cat. I need her more than medication or sleep or even meditation.

I feel the purring first, vibrating my arm that's holding her. When I peek at her, I see her eyes have blinked open. She regards me with perfectly round pupils. Her eyes are a bright green.

"Hey," I say. "Hey little girl. Its alright. The monster is gone." She seems to understand because the purring grows louder. She head buts my arm and then starts licking it - little scratchy kitty kisses. "You're welcome." She crawls up my arm and nuzzles her head between my ear and my shoulder, burying herself in my hair.

She's small and she needs protecting. There are monsters out there. Heaven knows I know. Her purring settles into my bones and makes me relax in a way I haven’t in years. For the first time, I think I might survive.

Dedicated to sweet little Violet

2004-2018

Photo by Alexandra Gorn on Unsplash

The Ivory Maiden

The moon was white when it rose that night, shinning on the clear lake, the ring of green trees turned silver in its light, and the small statue in a clearing of untouched dirt. The statue was of a young maiden wearing a long white gown that almost rippled even though it was only carved ivory. Her pale hair was free and wild, thrashing around her colorless face as though a terrible, unseen storm raged about her. Her eyes were tight shut as if this innocent girl did not want to see what was causing the wind and tumult. Her arms were folded tight against her breast. She looked frozen, so still and white.

This was no ordinary statue, and as the moonlight covered it with its pale light, the little statue seemed to stir. If anyone had happened to pass it on their way to the lake, which no one ever did, they would have stopped to stare in wonder as this transformation took place, but as it was, the ivory statue was all alone when she opened her eyes.

Her hair whipped the air around it in sudden motion only a moment before settling down around her shoulders. She relaxed her arms and turned toward the lake, smiling a pure little smile at the sight of the white moon, as perfect and pale as her ivory skin.




In the same forest as the little statue there was a man as black as the night sky when no moon shines and the stars hide themselves behind the clouds. The same moment the statue stirred, the man arrived in a large clearing next to a small cottage with anger smoldering in his heart.

Elephants were grouped around the cottage and beginning to doze where they stood, some of their ears waving lazily with their dreams. The man rapped loudly on the cottage door, and looked up at the moon.

The old witch who lived inside the cottage answered his knock.

He was her captive, forced to work for her and do her bidding as soon as the sun left the sky each night. When the moon appeared, he would come to this clearing in the forest to look after her elephants and guard them against any night thieves.

As soon as the sun rose, she told him he was free to do as he wished as long as he returned with the moon. But even if he ran with all his strength, there was nowhere to go. Everything was too far away to reach in half a day’s journey. When the sun was halfway done with its climb in the sky, he was forced to begin making his way back to the witch’s cottage in order that he should reach it by the time the sun was gone.

There was nothing to be seen in the forest except the trees and the dirt. Every day he began in a different direction, hoping that he would find something – a village, a well, a den, a stream, a meadow – but there was never anything except the forest.

Always his black eyes were filled with hate at this curse that bound him, and at the witch that had cast it.

He spent that night walking in circles around the sleeping elephants, his smoldering eyes squinting into shadows, clutching a staff of ivory the witch told him he must always hold onto while tending the elephants if he valued his life. There had never been any thieves. There never would be. Both he and the witch knew this. Yet every night it was the same. He was not allowed to pause in his restless stroll or close his eyes for a moment in sleep. Always moving. Always watching.

When the sun finally rose, burning the sky orange and chasing away the moon, he threw the staff to the ground and ran from the clearing, almost blind with exhaustion. He kept running, his legs numb and stumbling. This was as he always did.

He would need to sleep soon, yet he hated to be any where near the witch, so he made himself run as far as he could before sleep caught up with his speed.

His legs carried him into the small clearing where the little ivory statue, now as still as it was carved to be, stood next to the lake. He had never seen either before, and even now they were lost to his sight in his dash to freedom. He tripped against the smooth stones of the lake’s shore, unaccustomed to their hardness, fell to the ground and into sleep.




The little statue was as frozen as ice, her eyes squeezed shut once more, her arms hugged against her, her hair caught in a moment of a storm. She could not see with her eyes closed, neither could she move without the moon in the sky, but she could hear.

She listened to the man as he breathed, lying on the black stones of the lake’s shore, and the sound terrified her. She had never heard a sound like it in all her time standing here beside the lake. There were birds that sang, and fish that splashed and the wind that sighed, but never anything like this.

She dimly remembered the sound from a long time ago.




She had been a beautiful maiden, the daughter of a hardworking basket weaver.

When gathering plants in the forest one day, she heard a great noise in the distance. Catching up her skirts and running toward the sound, she soon came upon a group of wild men who had captured a young elephant. Keeping back from them so that they did not see her, she watched them from between the plants.

They had set a trap for an elephant, and now they had caught a young one, just old enough to begin to wander from its mother’s side. It was thrashing with fright against the strong ropes. The men laughed, knowing its tusks would hardly fetch any money at market, but hating to pass up such an easy opportunity.

One of them, his bare arms thick with well-used muscles and lined with dark scars, caught a hold of the baby elephant by its tusks while another rushed at it with a sharp spear. The elephant called out in terror and tried to shake the man off, but he was too strong for it. The man pierced the elephant’s side with the spear, and the elephant fell. The men shouted and rushed at it, holding it down while men began to saw at a tusk.

The maiden watched, white with fear, as the men broke the first of the elephant’s tusks away. Her own pale skin, so colorless in her fright, gave her inspiration.

She opened her mouth and began to sing, a cold haunting melody that no one had ever heard before, for singing was what she could do best in the world. The men stopped, terrified at the sound. She stepped out from the protection of the plants toward the men still singing, telling them in her shivering song that she was a ghost who haunted this forest and protected the beasts that lived within it.

The men’s skin paled.

She told them in chilling notes to leave the elephant and flee to their homes if they valued their lives. The obeyed, dropping sharp spears in their haste. The maiden’s song faded into the forest as the men disappeared into the plants.

Tearing cloth from her own skirt, the maiden bound up the wound that was bleeding freely and sang prayers over the elephant to help it heal. Then she dropped to the ground beside the wounded animal and picked up the severed tusk.

The elephant spoke to her, saying words in her own language, for that was some of the magic that her song had created, even though she had not known of it. The maiden listened to the elephant speak to her, her eyes wide.

The young elephant told her to always keep the tusk close beside her. When she held it in her hand, it would protect her as she had protected the baby elephant.

She thanked the animal and rushed home to tell her father of this strange happening. He told all his neighbors and immediately they sent out a search for the injured elephant.

The young elephant happened to belong to the rug maker of the town. He was overjoyed at seeing the elephant safely returned. It had wandered off and not been seen for many days, and he had assumed it dead. He thanked the young maiden and her father, and then, at the request of his son who had seen the beauty of the maiden, asked for the hand of the maiden in marriage to be promised to his son.

Her father agreed. For her hand in marriage, the rug maker had presented her father with the young elephant she had rescued, and she had grown up with the elephant and the knowledge of whom she was to marry, always keeping the white tusk at her side.




Several years further into her life, when at market to buy dates, she was suddenly overtaken by thieves. They grabbed her wrists and told her to be quiet. Afraid at what they would do to her, she had cried for help. Imperial guards that protected the streets rescued her from the harsh hands that held her.

Seeing her beauty, the guards brought her to the palace and presented her before the Sultan to see if he might fancy her as a wife. He exclaimed much over her, praising her beauty and asking her what she could do best in the world. She began to sing, and everyone was entranced by the sounds she wove into the air.

The Sultan declared that she was to become his most important wife and have everything her heart desired, so long as she would present herself to sing for him and his court each evening. He asked her father’s name that he might pay him for her hand in marriage.

Her father, once fetched from his home and brought to the palace, was astonished by all that had happened. He explained that she was already promised to a rug maker’s son who had paid an elephant which had grown up strong and healthy, symbolizing that their agreement was strong and unbreakable.

The Sultan demanded the rug maker and his son to be brought before him. Cowering, wondering whether the Sultan might order to have their heads cut off for an unknown deed, they bowed before him. The Sultan ordered them to choose an elephant from his own herd in payment for the wife that he was taking away from the son.

The rug maker protested, but was soon silenced at a gesture of an Imperial guard. He meekly chose a large mother elephant and led it home, his son barely containing his rage at being deprived of a beautiful wife.

The Sultan then ordered a white elephant to be brought and given to the maiden’s father in exchange for the girl’s marriage. This was done, and soon the palace was rejoicing at the marriage that would happen in three days time.

As the girl lay in her bed that night, she pondered upon all that had happened. The little elephant she had saved from death was at her father’s home and she missed it terribly. It’s tusk lay on the table beside her and she reached out to touch it for comfort.

The door to her chamber opened and one of the Sultan’s wives entered. It was too dark in the maiden’s chamber with the curtain drawn across the window to see the woman clearly. The maiden sat up, startled, and asked what the woman wanted.

She did not reply. She was the Sultan’s most important wife, and she was angered that this maiden, the daughter of a basket weaver, should take her place. She had concealed a dagger in her robe and now she drew it out, intending to kill the maiden to ensure her own importance in the Sultan’s life.

The maiden became frightened at the woman’s silence and slid back in her bed against the wall, asking again what the woman wanted.

The woman rushed at her bed. The maiden called out in terror, but no help came. The woman pierced the maiden’s side with the dagger, and the maiden fell. The woman knew her terrible deed was not finished, for the maiden still breathed and she prepared to end the poor girl’s life. But just as she brought the dagger down again, the maiden rolled away from her and off the bed. Then the maiden leapt to her feet, trying not to feel the pain from her wound, and wrestled the dagger from the woman’s hand.

The woman was frantic. If her deed was unfinished, the maiden would tell the palace all that had happened and the woman would loose her own life. She grabbed the elephant tusk from the maiden’s table, turned, and thrust it through the maiden’s heart.

The maiden fell to the ground and the woman let the tusk fall after her, so that it landed beside her on the bloodstained ground.




Now, the young elephant to which the tusk belonged had promised that the ivory tusk should save the maiden, as she had saved the young elephant. The maiden’s body was dead, but her spirit stayed alive and well, unharmed, and as pale as the ghost she had pretended to be when saving the young elephant.




In the morning, the Sultan was horrified at finding his bride murdered before he had married her. He demanded that everyone be brought to the throne room. His guards walked among the people of the palace, asking to see each person’s hands, examining their clothes, and then looking into their eyes and telling them to answer honestly when they asked if they had murdered the Sultan’s bride.

The woman was determined to not be found out. The guards questioned her as they had everyone. There was no blood on her clothes, but the sides of her hands were still stained a dark color. She denied, saying she had eaten berries. Then they asked to her to answer honestly and though she said she had not, she could not look into their eyes. They brought her before the Sultan who ordered her to be executed, just to know what her reaction would be.

She screamed a hideous scream and drew a dagger forth. The Sultan’s then knew that she was the murderer and called for his guards to drag her away. She threw the dagger toward the Sultan and escaped before anyone could restrain her.

The Sultan was unhurt, the dagger having just missed his left shoulder. He sent guards after the woman and then ordered the maiden to be given a proper burial.

Upon finding the tusk lying beside her, he recognized that she had been stabbed with it, and commanded that it be fashioned into a dagger to plainly reveal to all the terrible deed the tusk had done. He then ordered the best craftsmen in the kingdom to carve a statue in a perfect a likeness of the maiden out of pure ivory. He paid them handsomely for it and set it up in his throne room that he might look upon it every day and remember the maiden’s loveliness.




The woman, who had murdered the maiden and fled, began to learn dark magic. She built herself a cottage deep in the forest that no one should find her.

When she determined that her magic was strong enough, she flew to the palace disguised with invisibility and stole the ivory statue out of the sultan’s throne room. She brought it to an uninhabited place beside a wide lake that reflected the moon’s light when the moon rose. Then she spent the night working dark magic.

The maiden, discovering that the statue had disappeared, set off in the dark to find it. Dawn was approaching when she saw the woman on the shore of the lake, murmuring over the ivory statue. The maiden came closer, her ghost as white as the ivory.

The woman suddenly turned and threw a spell upon her. The maiden folded her arms and closed her eyes against the violent wind the spell created, and as she did so, the woman slid the statue right into the place where she stood. The ivory shuddered and moved under the direction of the spell, fitting itself into the position of the maiden and then holding her frozen in place, just as the sun’s light touched the sky.

The witch, for that was what she truly was now, screamed in delight and told the maiden she would never be free. Only when the moon came, would it release her with its white light, and even then it would only be for a night. As soon as the sun’s light touched her, she would become a statue once more.

Remembering the maiden’s beautiful voice, the witch further proclaimed that even when the maiden was freed by the moon, she would not be able to speak or sing, thereby ensuring that her song could not haunt the night nor charm people who might be able to help her into her path.

Wild with excitement for what she had done, the witch left the ivory maiden to hug herself with grief, frozen in the sun.




Now, as the ivory maiden listened to the man lying on the lake’s shore breathing as he slept, it reminded her of all that had happened. It had been so many years ago that she would not still have been alive, had she not been trapped by magic and ivory, and everyone she had known was dead, except the witch who kept herself alive through her dark magic.

The maiden’s terror left, and she began to feel a tremor of hope rise in her. If he stayed until the night, she would be able to open her eyes and look upon him. Perhaps she could communicate to him. Perhaps he could speak to her and help her.

As the day wore on, she stood there, perfectly still, listening to his breaths and waiting. At last he stirred. The sun wasn’t even halfway through the sky yet. She heard him yawn, and then he gasped. She wondered at what he was gazing.

He had never seen anything but trees for more years than he could count on his fingers, and here before him stretched a wide, sparkling lake, dancing with fish. He got to his feel slowly, one foot at a time, pushing himself up from the black rocks on which he had lain. He played his hands through the water and picked up a smooth black stone that matched his dark skin.

Then he turned and his eyes began to sparkle as much as the lake when he saw the little ivory statue of the maiden. Still holding the black stone, he stepped toward the statue and touched one of the ivory hands.

The maiden’s heart thrilled. She still could not see whom this man was, but his skin was warmer than even the sun that burned down upon her. She wished her hand could reach out and take his. He stood before her a long while and she wanted to be able to open her eyes and look at him as he looked at her.

Then the sun reached the middle of the sky, and the man knew he had to begin the journey back to the witch’s cottage if he was to reach it before moonrise.

The maiden’s heart was filled with sorrow as she heard him turn and walk away. She wished with her whole soul that she could call out to him and beg him to stay, but her ivory lips stayed carved and silent.

The man with skin as black as the stone he held, did not want to forget how he had reached this place. The witch’s cottage pulled him toward it with each step, yet there would be nothing to guide him if he should try to find this lake again. The black stones were too heavy to carry enough to leave a trail, so he clutched the one he had, and marked the trees he passed with deep bruises, denting the bark with his strength and the hard stone.

When at last he reached the witch’s cottage at sunset, she answered his knock as always. Upon seeing the stone that he still held, she became outraged and demanded where he had gotten it. He refused to tell and she threatened to curse him. When he still would not speak, she handed him the ivory staff and left, glancing back only once to see how he gazed down at the stone and touched it gently.

The witch flew to the statue’s clearing and found the maiden staring out at the lake and the moon. The maiden was startled to see the witch. They had not met since the maiden had been trapped inside the ivory of the statue. The witch demanded to know if a man had been there. The maiden could not speak, of course, but she refused to answer even by gesture or sign.

Yet the witch saw the way the maiden looked at her hand and touched the back of it softly, remembering the man’s touch, and so the witch knew that it was true. But the witch hid her knowledge from the maiden and flew away at once, thinking to cause the poor girl further mischief.

The next day the man returned again. He had been afraid that he would not be able to find the place and that perhaps he had dreamed it, but his marks in the trees led him true.

The maiden was filled with excitement when the man entered the clearing. He walked directly to her and touched her carved hand. She felt how warm his skin was and wanted more than ever to open her eyes.

Then he stood beside her ivory form and looked out at the lake. There was nothing for her to do but listen. There was nothing for the man to do but speak, and so he did. He spoke to the ivory maiden, imagining that she was more than a carved statue and her heart took courage at that. He told her all his adventures with the witch and why it was that he must leave the ivory maiden in the middle of the day.




As a young boy, he had found that he had a great talent for blending into shadows and remaining inconspicuous. He could sneak into any place, eavesdrop on any conversation, and steal anything. This proved to be useful, as he had no mother and father to care for him since they had died in a plague.

One day, he chanced to be careless in his attempt to steal from an Imperial guard. It had been too easy for his liking with one guard all alone and almost unarmed, so he had played up the risks and now found that he was caught. It was late at night, and the street was almost deserted. Knowing that he would have his hand severed if he should be revealed to the Sultan, he grabbed the man’s wrists and told him to keep quiet. Afraid at what this angry thief would do to him, the guard called for help.

There were no other Imperial guards that protect the streets, since the village was poor and ill thought of, so no one rescued the guard from the harsh hands that held him.

The lad, his eyes terrified and determined, grabbed the ivory dagger that he had been attempting to steal from the guard’s own belt and thrust it through the guard’s heart.

The guard fell to the ground, and the lad let the dagger fall after him, so that it landed beside him on the bloodstained ground.

Then he fled.

He scrubbed his hands in the filthy stream running on the edge of the village, and tore his stained clothes from him, letting the stream carry them away as well. Inside, his heart was aching and beating faster than ever before, as though it were beating all the extra beats the innocent guard’s own heart should have been beating.

Facing the setting sun, the lad pressed a fist over his heart to bid it be still and closed his eyes against the pain and tumult that he knew he should feel, and as he did so, he slid himself away from it all. He shuddered, leaving all the pain at his actions behind and then holding his heart froze in place in the middle of beating so that it went still, just as the moon’s light touched the sky.




The man stopped speaking to the ivory maiden for the sun had reached the middle of the sky, and he knew he must return to the witch’s cottage. He promised the statue to return the next day and departed.

The maiden waited for the moon to release her so she could cry.




The next day the man did return. He had to sit on the black stones for a long time to catch his breath, since he had run the entire way, and he even dozed off for an hour.

The maiden waited with her eyes closed, listening to his even breathing.

Eventually he did wake, and walk over to the maiden, and touch her hand a third time. Then he continued his tale, and the maiden thought he must think her no more than ivory to reveal himself to her like this.




Unfortunately, the witch could sense fear and murder in the air, for they were things she herself was very well acquainted with, and she had flown to the where the lad stood, his heart frozen, and she had watched him for a moment. Then she moved from the shadows where she had been concealed and presented herself to him. He had drawn back in fear, but she assured him everything would be well if he obeyed her every word. She promised him further that, should he do exactly as she commanded, he should have the Sultan’s daughter for a wife.

All knew of the Sultan’s daughter’s beauty. The lad wanted her for a wife as much as every man did, and he agreed, his frozen heart not able to warn him against it.

Reaching into her cloak, she brought out the ivory knife that the lad had just used to kill the guard. The guard had received it as a gift from the Sultan for saving the Sultan’s life from assassins and had carried it with him always. The witch told the lad to take the ivory dagger. It was his now.

His black hand closed around the white blade.

The witch began to use the lad to overhear secret conversations, to steal ingredients for powerful potions, and to kill people who got in her way. The lad did all that she asked of him, and he was very good at it.

One night, she told him that he must go kill the Sultan himself. Now, this was a different Sultan than the one that had wanted to marry the maiden who had saved the young elephant. That Sultan was long dead. The Sultan that the witch wanted killed was a descendant of the other Sultan. The story of the beautiful maiden who was murdered by the Sultan’s most important wife had been passed down through the years, and every child in the palace knew of it. The witch was still full of revenge and sought to do the long-dead Sultan’s family harm.

The lad nodded once and slipped out of the cottage where he had lived with her for a year now. He used a magic potion to transport himself to the palace and then crept through the corridors looking for the Sultan.

The Sultan’s bedchamber was not hard to find, and it was easy for someone so clever at his horrible deeds to distract the guards away. He snuck into the Sultan’s chamber and pulled the ivory dagger from his tunic.

Just as he lunged for the Sultan, the Sultan’s most important wife, the Sultana, awoke from a horrid dream of her husband’s death. Seeing the lad above her with an unconcealed weapon, she screamed.

The lad was shocked at her having awoken, and delayed a precious second. In that second, guards swarmed into the room, wrestled the ivory knife from him and held his hands behind his back, their arms strong as iron. He fought against them, but all in vain.

They took him to the dungeons to await execution.

The witch became furious when he did not return at the appointed time. She flew to the palace to see what had happened, arriving just as he was brought from the dungeon and into the courtyard, blindfolded, to be beheaded.

The witch cast a spell over everyone present and snatched the lad away from his death. At the cottage, he explained what had happened. The witch was so angry she began screaming spells and incantations until the whole cottage was cursed with dark magic. The lad tried to run, but she caught him with magic and laid a powerful curse over him so that he could never leave when the sky was as dark as his skin.

To punish him for not being strong enough to fight off the guards, she gave him the task of carrying an ivory staff she had made, telling him that if he should ever let go of it in the night, he should die. The staff was enchanted to weigh as much as an elephant. The lad himself had stolen all these elephants, and at first he could not even lift the ivory staff.

But every night the witch handed it to him, and he was forced to walk around and around the elephants, dragging it as he went, until the sun appeared. As the days went by, and then weeks, and then months, and then years, he grew stronger and stronger, until, as a man, he could carry the staff with ease.

But ever since that night he had hated the witch for what she had done to him. He felt hatred toward her more than he felt any other emotion in the whole entire world and it consumed him until it was all that he thought about night and day, as he ran from her each morning, as he slept, and especially as he returned to her cottage each night.




The sun reached the middle of the sky and the man was forced to leave.

But before he departed, he looked at the pure white ivory statue and thought that her face, with her eyes closed against a storm, showed much of what was happening inside him. A little thought crept into the corner of his mind that perhaps his captivity had something to do with his own actions, not just with the witch’s. He wished for a moment that he could be as unblemished as the ivory she was carved from and feel as beautiful in his frozen heart as she looked.

Then he turned away, and anger at the witch filled him again, only now it was mixed with anger at his own actions, as he began to run toward the cottage.




The ivory maiden was restless the next day, waiting for him to come and speak to her again. She wanted to open her eyes and walk about on the shore of the lake, yet she stood still, trapped in ivory.

Yet still he did not come.

When the sun reached the middle of the sky, she realized he was not coming. Her heart ached with dread and sorrow as she wondered at the reason. She listened to the trees rippled by the wind, and to birds calling to their mates, and heard nothing of the man who had visited her for three days.

When the moon rose, she opened her eyes in its light, full of determination to travel to him herself in the night. Surely she could run to where he was. She would leave when the night was half over to be sure that she was beside the lake when her curse bound her again. But until then, she might be able to talk with him as he carried his ivory staff and walked around and around the elephants he was guarding.

She turned and began to run, her bare feet as light as a doe, her hair as slippery as moonlight flickering through the shadows. It was easy to follow the heavy marks he had left dented into the trees, and soon she was upon the clearing where the cottage stood.

She gasped in her breath, for never before had she seen him.

He paced around and around, clutching the heavy staff in his hand. His skin was so black that he looked to be a piece of the night around him.

She wanted to call out to him, but her voice was still bound by the curse even in the light of the moon, trapped inside her. She moved from the shadows and approached him, her footsteps like the whisper of wind.

He didn’t see her until he was almost upon her, so occupied in his own thoughts was he. Then he gasped in his breath as well, for though he had seen her as an ivory statue, never had he truly imagined that she might live. At the sight of her, his heart stirred the faintest bit, as if reminding him that it used to beat, but then it went still.

For a long while they both stood there, staring into each other’s eyes – one black as the sky, and one white as the moon, but both filled with pain.

Then the curse began to tug at the man and he began to walk around the circle again. The maiden walked beside him, her light steps quick beside his long one. Around and around the circle they walked in silence, looking up at the stars.

The maiden knew the night was about half over, and that she should leave to be sure the curse did not catch her unaware in such a strange place. She reached out and touched his hand once, and then she fled into the night.




The man did not visit her the next day, but when the night came, she ran to where he was. She touched his hand once in greeting, and then they began to walk around the circle together. The man, seeing that she would not speak, filled the silence by telling what had kept him from visiting the lake.




The witch, knowing that the maiden would seek out the man if he should not appear, had kept him from going to her in the day. She set up spells and enchantments to confuse the man as he wandered though the forest trying to find the markings he had made on the trees. The man did not know anything of this, and he searched until the sun was high in the sky, but the witch’s spells worked well, and he was forced to return without having seen the lake.




The third night the maiden ran to the man’s side, her heart thrilling at the sight of him waiting for her. He had not come during the day, but the maiden did not mind, for in the day she could not walk beside him.




The next night she tried to run to him as well, but try as she might she could not find the cottage. She got lost among the trees and could not find the markings the man had dented into the soft bark. She wept and wanted to call out to him, for her heart ached at the thought of never seeing him again.

Finally she was forced to return to the shore of the lake. She bent down and touched the black stones before the sun rose. Its light touched her and her ivory body shuddered in its light. Her hair began to blow about her, the spell renewing itself upon her. Her eyes closed, even though she desperately wished to keep them open, and her arms folded across her breast. Then she went still.




The witch came to the maiden that day and spoke to her, even though the maiden could not move or answer. The witch told the maiden that the man with black skin had found a young girl who had wandered into the forest and been lost. The moment the man had seen the girl he had fallen in love with her.

The maiden’s heart hurt with grief at this news.

The witch told the maiden that now this girl was all the man could think about, even though the girl had told him she was the daughter of the Sultan and betrothed to a great prince in a distant kingdom. The man was very determined to marry this girl.

The maiden was glad that the moon had not risen yet, so that the witch could not see the way she wished to weep. She stayed perfectly still and felt her heart trembling with anguish.

The witch then stepped right up close to the little ivory statue and whispered in her ear. She whispered that there was still a way that the maiden might win the man’s love for herself if she desired it.

The ivory maiden listened, her heart full of dread and longing.

The witch explained that the maiden’s own voice could capture the man’s heart. There was a song that the maiden could sing that would cause the man to forget the girl he had found lost in the woods, and think only of the maiden. Her song could make the man fall in love with her.

The maiden thrilled with hope for a moment. Then remembered that she could not speak or make any noise with her voice at all.

The witch smiled a wicked smile that the ivory statue could not see. She then said that she would let the maiden have her voice back for a few moments at twilight that night, just as the sun was setting and the moon was rising. She would let the maiden find the man in the woods, halfway between the statue’s clearing and the witch’s cottage. She would have a few moments to sing.

In exchange for giving her back her voice for a few moments, the witch would lay a spell in the maiden’s song. This spell, she told the little statue, would cause what she sang to be like a dagger to heart of the Sultan’s daughter and would end her life speedily.

The witch smiled her curved smile once more, and left the maiden frozen in ivory to ponder all this in her heart.




The man had spent much of the day with the Sultan’s daughter. The girl said she must return soon for her father would worry. When the day was half over, she bade him farewell. Before she left, the bewitched man promised that he would find a way to come to the palace and claim her hand in marriage.

Now, this girl had not gotten lost in the forest of her own carelessness, but rather it was the witch’s doing. The witch, intent on destroying the Sultan’s family completely, had cast spells to make the girl loose her way while she walked in the forest, then put an enchantment over the man so that he should be forced to fall in love with the girl when he should first see her. This had been done and had all gone as the witch desired.

With terrible intentions in her heart, the witch approached the man. She told him that while the Sultan lived the man could never have the daughter’s hand in marriage. He would need to kill the Sultan to accomplish this desire. Yet, before he could do this deed, he must do another.

The man listened, his frozen heart unable to feel anything but anger and the bewitched love that the witch had cast over him.

The ivory dagger that he should use to kill the Sultan was enchanted. It was made from the same tusk that had killed the ivory maiden, and while the maiden was still partway alive inside her carved statue, the dagger could not kill anyone she had known in her life, or the descendants of anyone she had met while alive. This was the true reason the man, as a young lad, had been unable to kill the Sultan when he had tried.

The witch whispered to the man, who stood as still as his heart staring at the bright sky, that if he was to marry the Sultan’s daughter, he must first kill the ivory maiden. It could be easily done if the man used his enchanted ivory staff to shatter her carved body.

She then said that she would let the man have his freedom for a few extra moments at twilight that night, just as the sun was setting and the moon was rising. She would let the man find the maiden in the woods, halfway between the witch’s cottage and the statue’s clearing. He would have a few moments to kill the maiden.

Then the witch left the man alone with his frozen heart trapped inside him to ponder on all of this.




The little statue found that the moon began to come up into the sky before the sun had finished setting. She blinked her eyes, able to move a little, and yet still stiff with the sun’s light upon her. She turned toward the forest, thinking of her voice that she should soon have returned to her, and of the man with warm stone-black skin. She ran forward.




The man found that the curse did not pull him toward the witch’s cottage as the day drew to a close. He walked there on his own, knocked on the witch’s door, and, when she answered, asked for the ivory staff. She handed it to him with a curling smile, reminding him that he was still partly bound, and that should he let go of this staff during the night, he should still loose his own life. His black hand closed around it.




The sun and moon were side by side, each halfway in the sky on the very rim of the earth when the ivory maiden and the man with his ivory staff reached the middle of the forest and looked into each other’s eyes.

The maiden saw how his black eyes were smoldering with anger, and she saw how he was thinking of the Sultan’s daughter. Her heart was in pain. The man saw how her white eyes were filled with anguish and how she was thinking of him. His heart stirred inside him, just the smallest bit, at the sight.

They looked away from each other.

The maiden took in a breath of air and felt how her voice would work now. The man lifted the staff from the ground, feeling how easy it was to lift after all these years.

The precious moments were going by, and they both stood silent and still.

The maiden was afraid to open her mouth for fear that she would sing the terrible song she had come to win the man’s love with, and yet wanting to sing it more than she had ever wanted anything in her life before.

The man tried to make himself lift the staff, afraid that if he looked into the maiden’s eyes again, he might not be able do what he had come to do to her. He thought that he wanted to marry the Sultan’s daughter more than he wanted anything else in life, yet the staff stayed motionless beside him.

They both took a breath of air. The man raised the staff and looked at the maiden. The maiden looked at the man and spoke, “I want to sing for you.”

The leaves themselves seemed to hold their breath and the wind ceased to blow. Everything was as still as though it had been carved ivory.

“But I cannot,” the maiden whispered.

Then the man saw her eyes, and how they shone like the lake with tears, and his heart stirred. “I cannot,” he whispered back to her, and then, with a last look into her eyes, he let the ivory staff fall from his hands.




The witch knew the instant the man was dead. The ivory staff had touched the ground only a moment before he did. Outraged, the witch flew to where the ivory maiden lay weeping over the man with skin as black as the night sky.

The maiden turned just as the witch snatched the ivory staff from the ground and raised it above the maiden. Her tears shinning in the moonlight, the maiden reached out and grabbed the ivory dagger from the man’s belt. She rose to her feet, her skin pale and white as a ghost.

The witch smashed the staff down, but it did not harm the maiden. Startled, the witch let the staff sit loose in her hands and the maiden was able to yank it from her grasp. Then, holding the witch by the wrist she placed the dagger at the witch’s heart and whispered, “This dagger is more powerful than your magic. You cannot harm me while I hold it. I can kill you with it if I desire to, and I will succeed. It is the same dagger you tried to kill me with many years ago.”

The witch knew all of this was true.

The maiden looked into the witch’s eyes then thrust the witch away from her, unharmed. “Leave!” she told the witch. “Leave and never return.”

The witch knew that the maiden had spared her life, and she knew that she did not deserve it. She realized just how horrible she had been to the ivory maiden, and her rage and grief consumed her until she screamed a horrible scream and fell down quite dead. The wind moaned through the dark trees and swirled around the witch’s body until it had disappeared, leaving behind only a single black stone.

The maiden turned to the man lying dead on the forest floor. She reached down and grasped the heavy ivory staff in her hands, looking at it a long moment. Then she dragged it across the grass to her side. She placed the dagger gently back into the man’s belt, hoping it could protect him as it had protected her. Then she began to sing.

It was not a song to win his heart. It was not a song that would cause the death of a poor innocent girl. It was simply a song of pure love. She sang all through the night, her tears falling freely onto the man lying before her, her heart sparkling with the sounds of the music, her white ivory skin glowing in the fading moonlight.

The sun was bright when it rose that morning, burning in the clear sky, and down on the green leaves turned gold in its light, and on the small statue in a clearing of scuffled dirt. The young maiden stood frozen, so still, white, and silent, for even though the witch was dead, her curse was still very much alive.

The maiden listened, and hugged her arms to her, and wished that she had not had to let her song fade when the night did. If she had been able to stay kneeling beside the man, she might have laid her tired head down on his chest, and she would have been filled with wonder. But as it was, the man was alone on the ground when his heart began to beat. He opened his eyes, and saw the small white statue standing beside him. Her music and her love was its own kind of enchantment, and it has stirred his heart to life, for while his heart was frozen he could neither truely live nor die.

The man stood and touched his lips to hers. As the sunlight covered them both with its brilliant light, the little statue seemed to stir. Her white lips flushed a deep red, her pale cheeks turned as pink as the sunrise, and her hair thrashing about her face calmed as gold returned to it. She relaxed her arms, and turned toward the man, smiling a pure smile at the sight of his black skin and eyes and his beating heart, as alive and warm as the maiden herself.




Then, just as the sun was about to rise, she let the song fade away, and laid her head upon the man’s chest. She was asleep in an instant, so she did not feel that the man’s heart inside him was beginning to beat.

He opened his eyes, now blue like the midday sky, and listened to the sleeping maiden breathing and his own heart beating. He sat up, his skin pale brown once more, and gently touched the maiden’s hand. She awoke and saw him sitting there beside her, alive and healed, more so than he had been before, for now his heart was alive as well.

Knowing she had saved him, and that it was she that he truly loved, he bent down and kissed her. Her lips warmed under his touch and their whiteness faded into a beautiful red. Her cheeks flushed pink and her long hair became golden as the rising sun.

She was no longer ivory, carved and cold. She truly lived.

(photo by Aditya Chinchure)

Control

She would never lose control again.

6:30am – Throwing her hoodie into a corner of the college workout room, Stacey put in her ear buds, hit play on her iPod, and stepped onto a treadmill. She pushed herself hard until her tank was soaked with sweat. After the treadmill she did squats and calf raises. Then stretching. Then back to the treadmill.


7:30am – Her phone alarm vibrated, and she immediately slowed to a stop in her run. After a quick rinse in the girls’ locker room showers, she pulled on a shirt that was too big for her too-thin body, slid her legs into jeans that needed a tight belt to stay up, tied her hair up in a neat bun, grabbed her backpack out of her locker, and ran the whole way to calculus just for the feel of the steady rhythm it gave her.


8:50am – “So, Tim and Clare and I are getting together with some people tomorrow night to get ice cream at Spoons and see the new Escape movie. It just came out yesterday! I am so excited!” Jake dropped his calculus textbook into his backpack.


“That will be fun.” Stacey didn’t look up from the lecture notes she was finishing writing.


“Yeah, I’m sure it will be! You should come!”


“I have homework.” Stacey flipped her folder closed and slid it into her backpack.


“Stace, you never do anything fun anymore! It’ll be good for you! It’s Friday night, for goodness’ sake! And you love Spoons ice cream! Triple chocolate chunk? Come on! You’ll have plenty of time to do homework tomorrow.”


“I have a paper due in technical writing, and-”
“Due on Monday? And you haven’t started?”


“No, it’s due in a while, but I really want to get it out of the way, and besides, I’m not going miss my evening workout.” Stacey swung her backpack onto her shoulder and stood up.


Jake looked down at his desk. “I know what day it is tomorrow.”


Stacey stood very still.


“Look, I’m sorry. I know it’s rough. I just thought that it might be good for you to get out and have some fun. Like you used to.” He looked up at her. “You can’t keep acting like this. It’s not good for you. You have to let it go. It’ll help. I promise. Come? Please?”


Stacey shook her head, and closed her eyes for a second. When she opened them, she looked distanced from the conversation, like she had put up a wall inside herself. “Can’t.” Stacey headed for the classroom door.


“You’re freaking my out, Stace!” Jake stood up. “Don’t you know that it’s hard for me too? He was my roommate – one of my best friends. But we have to deal with it. You have to start fixing yourself sometime. You can’t just run away.”


“I’ll see you later.” Stacey pushed the door open and went through. The moment it closed behind her, she began to run.



----------

10:30pm – She should have been asleep half an hour ago. But sleep was the one thing she could never control – sleep and nightmares. She had Googled it, researched it, asked doctors about it. She didn’t eat big meals or exercise for three hours before bedtime. She always drank a mug of chamomile tea and had one banana before bed. She made it pitch-black in her room and turned on her fan for white noise and didn’t wear her socks to bed and focused on her breathing and did anything else she could think of to make herself fall asleep, but she never could. Not right away. And when she did fall asleep, it was always restless.


Maybe she would be lucky tonight and fall asleep before 11:00, but usually it was midnight or even 2:00am before she was finally out. She didn’t understand. She woke up at 6:00 sharp every morning to the steady beeping of her cell phone alarm. She never took naps. Her schedule was set up to allow her exactly eight hours of sleep, so her body should have received it gratefully and fallen asleep the moment she put her head to the pillow. She was tired; she knew she was. Yet no matter much she tried to force herself to sleep, she couldn’t.


It had been exactly a year. She shouldn’t wake up drenched in sweat and screaming anymore. A year is a long time. Long enough to heal.


-------------


7:30am – She had just pulled out her ear buds and wound the cord around her fingers, breathing heavily at the end of her workout with weights, when she heard it. One of the girls in the exercise room had a more old-fashioned CD player hooked to her pocket, the headphones around her neck. The volume had been up too loud when she pushed play, and the first song on the CD came out clear: Today is a Brand New Day by Slipstream. It had been their song. Stacey moved to grab her backpack and was out the door before the girl had a chance to slide the volume down.


Stacey tried not to let herself think as she turned on the water in the girl’s locker room shower full blast and stepped under the spray, but the memories were too hard and fast to avoid. She breathed in and shoved against the images crowding her conscious, trying to make them leave. Putting her fists over her eyes, she hunched over, not entirely aware of what she was doing, and tried to make that steel wall in her mind, the one she had laboriously built one year ago, rise up high enough to block out the sounds, the smells, the look he had given her.


“I just gotta say, ice cream is the best!” Brian licked the triple chocolate chunk ice cream cone they were splitting between them as they drove home.


She lsughed. “Remember how you used to always say vanilla was your favorite, and I kept telling you that you needed to try Spoons chocolate ice cream because it was the best in the world, and you didn’t believe me?” She turned to poke his shoulder.


The windows were rolled down, and her long hair was free to blow around her, like it was dancing. She looked down at the radio where their song had just come on to crank the volume up and did a few seated dance moves, steering with one hand. Brian always let her drive if she wanted to.


“Hey, that was like forever ago! Way before we were dating!” But he was smiling too. And nodding his head to the beat.


“Oh, I know, because our very first official date was getting chocolate ice cream at Spoons and anyone who takes one lick of this ice cream is converted for the rest of their lives!”


He laughed and held out the ice cream to her. Leaning over for a taste, she took her eyes off the road for just a moment. The ice cream was sweet and cold and made her feel like the girl singing on the radio – thrilled to be alive.


Then Brian’s smile disappeared, his eyes went wide, and he lunged for her steering wheel.


With an awful gasp, she pulled herself away from that night. She was grateful for the deluge from the showerhead because crying was something she did not allow herself to do, and maybe it was only shower water on her face. It was then that she realized she was still wearing her workout clothes, standing in the downpour of the shower, totally drenched through.



-------------


6:30pm – Her run that night was hard and fast. Too fast when she started, and she knew it, but no matter how fiercely she had practiced the piano, or how many calculus problems she had solved, or how diligently she had edited her technical writing paper today, images kept interrupting her in her head, suddenly standing out with rude white and blood-red lights colliding. And sometimes his eyes, opening wide, again and again and again. She couldn’t let the images in. She was in control. She told herself this over and over. She was in control. So now she ran. Forcing her body to move, keep moving, even when it screamed at her to stop after ten miles, because she was in control. Of herself. Of her life. Of her every movement. She wouldn’t lose control. She couldn’t lose control. Not again.


Her feet thumped on the grass. The piano concerto in her iPod was only background noise now; she wasn’t listening. Her arms traced back and forth. She struggled to keep swinging her elbows in front of her body with each stride, forcing her steps to lengthen. Her blood was hot as it pulsed in her forehead. She could feel the pressure of dehydration pushing on her brain, making it ache. She told herself to ignore it. Her form was slipping. Her stomach was tightening, making her nauseous. She straightened her spine again and focused her eyes ahead. She couldn’t lose control. Her mile tracker on her arm beeped that it had been fifteen miles. She had run this far before. Not this fast, but she had done it. She didn’t want to stop. Maybe tonight would be the night she ran a marathon. Full-out. Because she could.


Sixteen miles. She focused in on what she was demanding of herself, concentrating on the way her lungs burned, the way her ankles tensed at each step. Then an ambulance went by with screaming sirens and panicked lights. And for a second it wasn’t the sirens screaming, but Brian. She could hear metal crunching. Glass shattering.


Her foot caught on a crack in the sidewalk. She caught herself before she fell and kept running.


Seventeen miles. This was new to her body. She could feel her muscles responding more slowly. Her throat was too dry. She hadn’t thought she would run this far when she started and her water bottle had been empty for a few miles. Her head pounded. She had to keep going.


Eighteen miles. Her vision began to blur at the edges. Squinting and blinking, for a moment, she could see him hanging there, held in place in the sideways car by the seatbelt, broken against the torn bent-up metal, bleeding. She shook her head. Pushed herself harder.


Nineteen miles. Her feet tripped again. And again. And then again. Pulling on the little energy left in her body, she tried to drown out the crying in her head with the screaming of her own body’s pain. Don’t stop. Keep going. She wouldn’t endure it. Not the memory. Not the accident. Not again. She had already lived through it once. What if she couldn’t live through it again? She wouldn’t let herself relive it. She couldn’t.


Twenty miles. She could hardly see. The pain in her head and the sweat in her eyes made everything darker. Her vision was tilting and tipping. Her legs were shaking and trembling. She was barely jogging, but still, she was moving. Don’t give in. She demanded that her eyes stay open, that her legs keep moving. Keep moving. Keep moving. Stay in control. In control. Control…


The bright neon lights of the Spoons ice cream place suddenly caught her attention from across the street.


“Don’t you ever want anything besides triple chocolate chunk?” Brian had asked her on about their seventh date to Spoons.


“I’ve tried just about every flavor of ice cream here, and they’re all good. But nothing beats chocolate.” She held up her cone so he could have another taste.


The sidewalk collided with her shoulder. She was down without ever realizing she was falling. Trying to pull herself backup, she struggled against the heaviness holding her down. Her strength gave out, and her scarred cheek landed on her arm.


She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t save him. She couldn’t run. She couldn't stay ın control. She couldn’t even move. He wasn’t alive. She had lost control of the car. Of him. Of her life. Of everything. And she couldn’t ever get ıt back.


---------------



10:00pm – She was still under the same tree where she had fallen about half an hour ago. Her hoodie was zipped up around her, and her hand was limp around her iPod. That song, her favorite song, the one she and he were listening to the night she crashed, had played on repeat over and over again on her iPod as she sat there, because even though she had thought she would never listen to it again, sworn she never would, she hadn’t deleted it. She wasn’t sure why.


A car drove past, turning in at the parking lot for Spoons. From across the street she recognized Jake as he climbed out of the driver’s side, laughing with his friends. Maybe he could feel her looking, or maybe it was just chance, but he glanced her way, and then did a double take. She saw him say something to the other guys and then start heading her way.


She looked down at herself and pulled the ear buds out. She didn’t have the strength to push herself to her feet. Her chin was still dripping with tears. She didn’t bother drying them off.


Jake jogged across the street between cars. “Hey, what’s up?” he asked, squatting in front of her, a line in his forehead looking like a frown.


“Just out running.”


He looked around. “Seriously? You ran here? It’s gotta be like-”


“Twenty miles. Yeah.”


“Wow!”


Stacey looked down at her feet. “I wanted to run a marathon. I thought I could.”


“A marathon? Stace, that’s seriously intense! People train for those things for years!”


“It’s been one year…” That feeling that had consumed her while she lay on the grass rose again, pushed against her eyes, making them wetter. She had fought against the feelıng for so long. She was too tired to fight it anymore.


Jake sat down next to her and put his arm around her shoulders. “Yeah, I know it has been. Believe me, I know.”


She leaned her head on his shoulder and let herself shake, let herself sob.


“It was my fault,” she choked out. “I lost control! I didn’t mean for it to happen! But it was all my fault!”


Jake didn’t say anything, just gripped her shoulder tighter. His tshirt was drenched in salty tears.


“I can’t let that happen again!” Her voice was high and broken, so out of control that it scared her, but she didn’t swallow the words. She let them come out, tangled and out of tune. “I have to stay in control! I thought, if I never slip again, then I can fix it somehow!”


“You can’t fix it,” Jake said. “It’s overwith. All you can do now is work on fixing yourself.”


She continued to cry, tears running off her nose. “I know I can’t fix it. I can’t even stay in control of small stupid things, like running.”


“You don’t need to be in control,” said Jake. “This isn’t a calculus test. This is life. Stuff happens. You can’t be in control all the time. Sometimes you’ve got to let things go.”


She sniffed and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. Her dehydration headache had worsened with all the water her body had cried out.


“I know,” she whispered. “I know. But it isn’t easy.”


They just sat there for a moment, looking at the black street and the dark sky.


“It won’t ever go away will it? This feeling?” Stacey asked.


Jake shook his head. “No, but I don’t think that means you can’t ever enjoy life. You need them all, the sorrow, the guilt, the pain, to have the happiness.”


“Happiness…” She took a deep breath and looked up at him. “Like triple chocolate chunk ice cream? I can’t think of anything both sadder and happier than that.”


Jake’s smile was small and sad. “Just like that.”


He helped her to her feet and let her lean on him as they made their way across the street toward the memories.

Sky Girl

Ference had always loved the sky. That great, perfect expanse that stretched over the desert village’s mud brick houses.


“It’s like water,” she had told her mother when she was little. “The sky and water and bellflowers. Those are the only things.”


“The only things?” Her mother had asked. “What do you mean?”


“I don’t know. They’re all the same. Somehow, they’re all the same –the water, the bellflowers, and the sky on a warm day. I don’t know how.”


Her mother had scooped the little girl into her arms and brushed Ference’s soft hair with her gentle fingertips. “Your father would know what you mean,” she had whispered. “Your father would understand. He told me about the sky. And about flowers and grass and what happens when the sun leaves the sky at night. He told me all about them.” She had hugged the small girl tight and rocked her back and forth. “I wish I remembered the words he told me. The words that you need. Because you’re different, Ference. You’re different. Just like your father was. He knew what it was called – that similarity between the sky and the water and the bellflowers. I wish I understood. I wish he were here to tell you.”


Ference knew the story. Her father had left his own village and traveled through days of sand dunes, ending up in the desert village – the blind village. He knew it was forbidden for people to enter the place, but the first person he met there was Ference’s mother. She was too sweet and gentle to leave. So he had stayed. Viewed as an exotic from the north, he was partially welcomed into the desert village when he and the girl’s mother announced they would be married. Only three weeks after the marriage, the large men from the north came searching. They found Ference’s father the day they arrived and arrested him for having entered the desert village where no outsiders were allowed to come. That was the last day her mother ever saw her father.


Nine months later, Ference was born. Her mother told her that she knew, when her little girl was placed in her trembling arms, that Ference was like her father – different. She knew because of the way the baby’s eyes moved, the way her eyelids opened and closed, and the way her soft lashes brushed her mother’s wondering hand. She was like her father.


The village children liked to tease Ference and leave her to curl up against a mud brick wall, crying and wishing she knew how to tell them. But there were no words to explain how she knew a girl was crying, even when she hadn’t felt the wet tears or heard the shaky breaths. Why did she think that lips and roses and blood had anything in common. How did she know what a book said before her fingers read it?


It had something to do with her eyes. She knew that much. Something about her eyes was different. The other children didn’t open their eyes all the way. They didn’t turn their eyes toward movement. They didn’t use them.


“What are our eyes for?” she desperately asked her teacher.


“For tears,” she was told. “We have ears to hear, and hands to feel. We have noses to smell, a mouth to taste, and eyes to cry.”


“But we can sense things with our ears, and our hands, and our nose and our tongue. We can sense things. I can also sense things with my eyes.” She swallowed. “I can.”


The boy standing behind her in the classroom had laughed and run out of the room to let his friends share in the ridiculousness of Ference’s words.





The morning that the new boy arrived, Ference was crying, pressed into a corner of her one-room house, begging her mother not to send her to school.


“I can’t go today. Please don’t make me! I’m so tired of pretending to be like them, and failing, and being mocked, and trying even harder to not be so strange. I don’t want to go!”


Her mother held her in her arms, whispering into her hair, “You don’t have to be like them. You are different. Just like your wonderful father. Be glad with who you are, Ference. Don’t mind what they say. You have a blessing. Don’t be afraid of it. Don’t try to be like them.”


Ference dragged each foot through the dust as she made her way to the small, thatched-roof schoolhouse. She wanted to be like them. She didn’t want to be like her father. She didn’t want to be different.


The girls were all gathered at the door of the school, pressed in around a tense boy that Ference did not know. He was exotic. His hands were hard and square, his shoulders broad and strong. The girls brushed their fingers across his defined cheekbones and felt his loose hair that almost covered his ears. His hair reminded Ference of sand dunes.


He turned so that his face was towards her, and his eyes – like the sky, like water – pointed straight at her. It felt as though her insides had been doused in hot water. She gasped and turned away. No one’s eyes had ever done that before. She didn’t know what it was – what ever the boy’s eyes had done. But it had made her feel as though she were exposed. Like he knew who she was, through her eyes.


He was different. Just like she was. The same sort of different. She knew it.


She turned her head toward him just a little, to know what he was doing. His face was still towards her. Slowly, he extracted himself from the puddle of giggles that had collected around him, walked across the small dirt yard toward her, and extended his hand.


“I’m David,” he told her.


She took a step back from his hand. “I’m Ference.” Her voice was tight.


He dropped his hand, still seeming tense, and stood still in front of her for a moment, his eyes pointed directly at her. Unable to let her eyes do the same, she reminded herself to breathe.


“You can see, can’t you?” he said.


“What?”


“Were you born here?” he asked.


She hesitated.


“Are you from up north?”


She returned a question rather than an answer. “Is that where you came from?”


The teacher rang the loud brass bell and Ference darted around the new boy – David – and into the classroom. Her breaths were fast, her lungs feeling too small to draw in enough air. Sliding into her seat, she covered her face with her hands so that everything seemed like night. She didn’t learn much in the lesson that day.


David was leaning against the side of the schoolhouse when she emerged in the afternoon. She turned her face away from him, feeling her cheeks get warm, and hurried up the path leading home.


Catching up to her, he asked, “How long have you been able to see?”


“I don’t understand what you’re saying.” Ference kept her face turned away from him.


He was silent for a moment.


“Did you come from the north?” she asked again.


“Yes, I did. Did you?”


“No,” she replied. “I was born here.”


“But, your eyes work like mine do. You’re not blind. Up north, they told us none of you could see. We thought you were all blind. But you can look at things, just like I can.”


Ference stopped walking.


“I don’t think there’s anyone else in this village who can see,” David continued. “How is it that you can?”


Still unable to raise her eyes to meet his, she kept her face toward the path, but her heart had begun to beat harder. “What does it mean?” she asked. “To see? Is that what I can do? Is that what it’s called? Being able to sense things with my eyes?”


“You don’t know this?”


She waited.


“Yes.” He shifted his weight. “You can look at things. You can see.”


“I can see…” She breathed out the sentence. “I can look at things…” Ference’s chest was burning. “What about the sky?” she demanded. “Is there a word for it? For whatever is the same about the sky and bellflowers and water? What’s it called?”


“What do you mean?” he asked.


“The sky!” she gestured to the expanse above them. “It’s perfect, and it changes, and no one understands. And when I crush bellflowers and rub them into my dress the fabric is different. Then my dress isn’t like sand and mud anymore. It’s like the sky is sometimes during the day.”


David laughed. “You have never heard these words before? It’s blue. That’s what is the same about the sky, bellflowers and water. They’re all blue.”


“Blue?” The word tickled her mouth and she smiled. “They’re blue!”


“Yes, it’s one of many colors.”


“Colors…” She turned her face right towards him – she looked at him. “How about the sand and mud and people’s skin?” she asked.


“Brown,” he replied.


“And lips and roses and blood?”


“Red,” he told her. “And now I have a question for you. There was a man who left our village in the north for several months. When he came back he said he’d been to the blind village and married a woman there.”


Ference felt prickles across her skin, like hard wind in the first moments of a sand storm.


“His name is Lyon,” David continued. “He still talks about the desert village and the girl he met there. Do you know if he’s your father?”


Ference took in long breath. “I don’t know. My mother doesn’t talk about my father much. But he might be. The story sounds the same. The men from the north found my father here and took him back right after he married my mother. I don’t know much else about him.”


David shifted his feet. “I’m sorry.”


There was a pause.


“What about plants and leaves and some people’s eyes?” she asked. “What is that?”


“Green.”


She wrote down every word he taught her so that she would never forget. She knew that no one in her village would understand her if she told them the sky looked blue, but it didn’t matter. She suddenly had words for everything she had wondered about, and it felt good and powerful. She wanted to be different.





Ference flung open the rough wooden door of her home that evening.


“Mother! I know what it’s called! I know the words! The sky is blue! And I can see!”


Ference described David – his brown hair and blue eyes – and tried to explain the words, even though she knew her mother couldn’t understand, exclaiming over them again.


“And,” Ference hesitated a moment before going on. “I think David knows Father.”


Her mother started from her chair at the table. “Why do you say that?”


“David said there was a man who left the village up north for several months, and when the man was brought back, he said he had been to the desert village. The man said he had married a woman there. David said the man still talks about that woman.”


Her mother began to pace the one small room of their house, trailing her hand along the wall to guide her. Swirls of dust rose off the dirt floor in her wake.


Ference cleared her throat. “David said his name is Lyon.” Then she turned her face away as she saw tears begin to streak down her mother’s cheeks.





The next morning, Ference woke without the smell of breakfast. Detangling herself from her scratchy blankets, she looked around the small room of the mud house. It was empty. Sweat was trickling down her back – her mother had forgotten to open the door that morning to let in a breeze. Rubbing her eyes, Ference made her way across the room to the closed door. A piece of paper lay on the floor in front of it. The writing was bumped out of the smooth surface.


Ference- I know this is sudden, but I am traveling north to find your father. I don’t know when I will be back, but I know you are able to take care of yourself well. I will miss you terribly, yet what you told me yesterday has caused a hope to rise inside me that I cannot disappoint. I do love you. Stay safe. –Mother





Ference found David at the village well, drawing up a bucket of water for a threesome of laughing girls. She thrust the note into his hands.


His eyes were large when he looked up from the paper. “She can’t go.”


“Why not? She already has.”


“It’s too dangerous. She’ll get lost in the sand dunes. Or she’ll be caught and arrested. No one is allowed to interact with people from the blind village.”


Ference snatched the note back and then smoothed it in her palms. “If she’s arrested,” she asked quietly, “what will they do with her.” Her eyes wetted with tears.


David softened his tone, and laid a gentle hand on Ference’s shoulder. “Probably just bring her back here, to her own village.”


Ference looked at David. “What if they find you in our desert village?”


David wiped away a stray tear trickling down Ference’s cheek. “What if they find you?” he asked very quietly. “A girl who can see? I don’t know if they’ll believe you were born here.”


Ference stared at him.


“Fire!” The cry came from the village center.


David and Ference turned. The three laughing girls who had been whispering while David spoke with Ference froze at the cry and backed away from the direction it had come.


Ference’s eyes grew large. Grabbing the bucket of water David had drawn up, she began to run toward the cry. David ran beside her, trying to take the bucket from her, but she held on.


People were streaming past them, hurrying away from the source of the flames, crying and calling out to one another. Black smoke began to rise, licked on the edges with orange. Ference gasped. She had never seen anything as violently beautiful as her first sight of fire. It was like the sky when the sun went down – red, orange, yellow. Maybe the sky burned.


“Are they running to the well to get water?” David asked above the cries of the villagers.


“No. They’re running away, abandoning the village until the fire dies,” she told him. “No one’s seen fire since the year I was born. I’ve only ever heard of it. Everyone is terrified of it. It’s so dangerous. Last time the whole village burned. It took months to rebuild. People starved.” She ran harder. “I’m not going to let that happen again!”


“Ference! You can’t stop the fire by yourself!”


“Then help me!” she shouted back. “I’m the only one in this village who can see. Anyone else would be in too much danger. I’m the one that has to do this!”


They had reached the source of the smoke, and Ference coughed, but did not slow her pace. Flinging the bucket of water on the burning roof of the building, she stumbled and stopped running. The water fizzled, and then the flames closed in around the dampness again.


Only then did Ference realize how powerful the bright flames were. How useless one bucket of water was. How useless she was. How useless it was to be different.


“We need more water!” David shouted.


“I can’t carry it there and back again in time! I can’t carry enough!”


“No, not by yourself you can’t. But everyone in the village can.”


“They’ll get hurt,” she cried.


“Tell them to line up and pass buckets of water along. They know you. They’ll listen to you more than they would to me. Most of them don’t have to be close to the fire at all.”


A small piece of burning wood crumbled away from the building and fell, scorching Ference’s hand. She gasped and put the burn in her mouth, tasting smoke and ash. The pain flared inside her hand. She didn’t want this for her village. And she was the only one who could stop it. She was the one who was different.


“Come on!” Grabbing David’s hand, she pulled him towards the well. “Wait!” she cried to the last of the fleeing people. “We can stop the fire!”


She grabbed the nearest woman, thrusting the bucket into her hands. “Draw up some water! And you,” she clasped a boy’s shoulder. “Find more buckets. We need them all.” He stood there listening and hesitating. “Hurry!” she shouted. “We don’t have much time!”


She ran through the crowd, shouting orders and pulling people to the well. Buckets were soon dumped into a spilling pile. David began hauling up water and thrusting heavy buckets into people’s hands. Ference organized them into a line. No one objected. Soon the line was long enough to reach into the village center.


The flames were spreading, catching on the thatched roofs of the shops all pressed in close to one another. Ference grabbed the bucket of water that had reached the end of the line, sloshing water down the front of her dress. Darting toward the smoke, she dumped the water on the fire, feeling its close hot pressure. Handing back the empty bucket, she took the next full one.


Again and again she emptied buckets of water, struggling not to tip them so that every drip of the precious substance would help in extinguishing the orange flames that danced and taunted her. The front of her dress where she had sloshed water began to steam and her skin ached, but she knew she had to keep going.


The flames had almost ceased to spread, surrounded on most sides by burned-out ash. One path was left for the fire to burn – along a line of houses that spread and circled the rest of the village. Ference stumbled forward, clutching a bucket of water, sliding on soggy ashes and coughing, trying to reach the flames before they reached the houses. She flung herself at them, emptying the water onto the fire, and slipped. Her side hit the hard ground. The drenched bucket tumbled away from her, and she saw it be consumed in the dwindling fire, choking the fire and steaming as it was taken. Ference heard a crunching noise and tried to push herself to her feet. Someone from the line of people shouted. The blackened frame of the burning building gave way above her, and a fiery beam fell, turning her world into darkness and pain.





“This is what happens when people leave or enter the desert village.” The man’s voice sounded distorted and too loud to Ference.


She blinked her eyes, then rubbed them, shaking her head and letting burning tears fall down her cheeks. The blackness wouldn’t leave. It was like midnight without a moon, or being choked by endless ashes. She blinked more rapidly and groped around her, trying to find something that made sense.


A soft hand grabbed her own, pulling her to her feet. She was encased in a safe hug.


“Mother!” Ference sobbed.


Her mother did not let go. The man’s harsh voice continued. People’s murmurs around her softened his loudness.


“It is strictly forbidden. I trust none of you will ever leave again, nor let any foreigners into your village after seeing the destructive consequences that occur on such occasions.”


Her mother hung on more tightly to Ference and whispered, “I saw your father.”


David touched Ference’s shoulder. “Is she hurt?”


Ference’s mother finally released her.


“I can’t see.” The darkness was oppressive. Her eyes hurt. “I can’t see anything!”


The man’s voice was coming closer, followed by several sets of hard footsteps. Ference felt David’s hand leave her shoulder.


“Your name?” the man demanded, and Ference guessed he was addressing David.


A hush fell over the people of the village.


“David.” His voice was loud and clear.


Ference strained her eyes, trying to penetrate the blackness, yet she could see nothing.


“Where is your family?” The man’s voice was rough.


“Dead.”


“What color does the sky look?”


Ference’s heart pounded against her chest. They knew he could see. They were going to take him away. Just like they had taken her father. She reached out blindly and found David’s arm, then his hand. Wrapping her fingers in his, she squeezed his hand tight.


There was a moment of silence.


“I didn’t understand the question,” David said.


“What color,” the man repeated, “does the sky look?”


Another pause.


“I don’t know what you mean. I’m sorry.”


The man cursed and turned away. “Blind idiots! All of them. Let’s go!” The group of heavy steps retreated. “Remember this last warning though!” he called to the desert people. “If we hear of another person leaving or entering this village, we won’t be so kind again. Fire is the least of what we could do to this village.”


Silence descended as the man left, and Ference’s mother pulled her into a hug once more.


“Only the shops burned,” her mother told her. “None of the homes are gone.”


Ference sighed. “How was father?” she whispered.


She felt her mother’s tears as they wet her own cheeks.


“He was alright. It was so good to see him one last time.” She hugged her daughter more tightly. “Ference? I think I will have another child.”


Ference could hear David’s voice as he organized the villagers into groups to begin cleaning and rebuilding the center of their village. The men hadn’t taken him away.





Maybe the little child her mother would give birth to would be different – like Ference’s father, like David, and like Ference had been. Maybe Ference would hold the child in her arms, and feel the flutter of the baby’s lashes against her palm, and whisper words to her about what David’s eyes and bellflowers and precious water have in common. And maybe Ference would teach the child to look at and know all the words for the perfect colors of the sky.