What Happened to Little Red Riding Hood? (Flash Fiction)

Esther ArielLeave a comment

After the woodcutter slew the wolf, Little Red Riding Hood wasn’t the same. She returned to her mother silent, pale as a gravestone, and night after night she woke from dreams of rending teeth and hot, stinking breath.

She remained housebound, which her mother in some ways loved, as she was safe. But as the girl grew older, became an adult, it was more worrisome.

“The world isn’t all bad,” her mother said. “Just don’t go into the woods.”

Suitors showed up. The baker’s son, the falconer’s younger brother. Little Red faced each listlessly, as her mother spoke to them. With each man, she found fault, and as the days passed, she began to wish herself away from home.

Then the hunter appeared. He became her mother’s favorite. He was tall and broad with gleaming, black hair and a sleek beard. With large teeth, he grinned, charming her mother.

In his presence, Red’s bones quaked. She excused herself and quickly left the room.

Later that night, when her mother said, “You’ll marry him,” she fled from home.

The only place to go, really, was the woods. Red didn’t think much beyond the moment and the need to disappear.

The woods were waiting to swallow her up. Unlike her life-changing visit to her grandmother, Red was now penetrating the forest in the dark of night. She lurched and stumbled, she bounced off of trees. The shadows were like blankets smothering her.

Red welcomed them, because she hoped to disappear. Each time she pressed between trees, she hoped to find a doorway into oblivion. If that happened, she would no longer know terror. She would be as formless as shadow.

But she remained frustratingly alive and solid. She couldn’t escape the sound of her heavy breaths. She couldn’t ignore the sensation of her heart juddering in her chest.

Then the howls started up.

They were distant at first, so Red did not want to believe that they were real. But they drew closer. One howl came from somewhere far off to her left. Another responded more closely from her right. Her own breaths grew louder, like an answering roar.

She plunged deeper into the forest, branches smacking her, twigs clawing her face and arms. The howls sounded ahead, behind, and closing in at her flanks.

The darkness thinned, and she burst into a clearing where a ruined cottage stood. The moon in its fullness showed her familiar details: a door with a diamond-shaped window, a chimney made of fat gray stones. It was her grandmother’s old cottage, now with soft, decayed spots in the roof thatch.

After staring at it, shocked, for a few seconds, Red ran towards the front door. But it was too late for her to reach it. Four wolves emerged – one slinking around from the other side of the cottage, and three more from the woods. She was surrounded.

Unlike the Big Bad Wolf of years before, these wolves had glossy white and light gray fur. They also didn’t disguise their wolfishness. In the moonlight, they were not only terrifying but beautiful. Stiff with terror, Red couldn’t help but think what an honor, in a way, it would be to end her life at the feet of these magnificent creatures. If only they would make her death quick.

They padded closer, and their beauty faded somewhat as she felt their hot and feral breath pulse against her face. She began to quiver, her body readying itself for one final futile run.

That was when a sharp command, in a human voice, came from the cottage doorway.

For a wild moment, Red thought it was her grandmother. She expected a lady with a shawl and slouched shoulders to emerge. But the command was in a language that she didn’t understand, although the wolves did. They lowered their heads and retreated several feet. Red’s grandmother would have never been able to issue orders to wolves.

The lady who stepped into the moonlight was young and old. She had an unlined but severe face, and all of her clothes – from a hooded cape to a long skirt – were a dull silver. Her figure was diminutive, but her bare feet were large. She padded across the grass towards Red, each of her steps a decisive crunch.

“Welcome. I am the Woman in Silver. Why do you run, and where do you wish to go?”

Red was silent, her throat stopped up.

“You have two choices,” the Woman in Silver said. “The first is to leave the woods. If you do, you will never be welcome here again. The wolves will tear you apart. I will not stop them.” She extended a silver-draped arm. “Your second choice is to stay with me. I will teach you how to survive the woods. I will teach you how to command wolves.”

The wolves, meantime, were as still as statues, their fur tantalizingly soft and inviting. Red didn’t dare lay a hand on them.

“How is that possible?” Red asked.

“You will find out,” said the Woman in Silver. “Of course, there is always a risk that the wolves will turn on you. One cannot learn to command them without risk.”

Red stared at the wolves, each in turn, and their beauty brought tears to her eyes.

“I don’t know if I can,” Red whispered.

“I, too, do not know if you can.” The Woman in Silver turned and padded back to the cottage. Over her shoulder, she added, “Do you wish to find out?”

Quivering in terror and excitement, Red followed the woman into her grandmother’s old home. The wolves remained outside, waiting.

Low Point (a work of flash fiction)

Esther ArielLeave a comment

As a paramedic, Paul has his share of run-of-the-mill cases. Breathing problems, digestive pains, heart complaints, slips and falls on slick sidewalks. Bike rides that end with a broken arm or a busted knee.

He’s also seen his share of the absurd and annoying. People getting stuck on toilet seats or calling in an emergency at 3 AM because they feel vaguely uneasy and want someone to bring them a drink of water.

He has long learned that common sense isn’t common. He has also developed a thick hide and a keep-your-head-down, do-your-job mentality that gets him through his shifts. But every so often, there’s an incident that rattles him.

Last time was several months ago – what the family of three looked like when their car collided with a semi. The way the child had remained alive, but not much longer than the parents.

Tonight, a different case rattles him. Which is strange, because he succeeded in saving a life. He was called to an apartment where a middle-aged woman was lying on her back in front of the couch. The only person with her was a man pacing around several feet away.

Within seconds, Paul learned the immediate facts: opioid overdose, Narcan already administered once, second dose necessary now.

Paul remained in a crouch beside her, as the woman blinked her eyes open and settled her hand on her forehead.

“Welcome to the land of the living,” Paul said in a jaunty voice.

The woman’s bleary eyes rested on his. “Why didn’t you let me die?” she whispered.

“Excuse me?” Paul forced a laugh. “I wouldn’t be very good at my job if I let that happen.”

“Can you get her out of here?” the pacing man burst out. “My kids could’ve been home – my kids could’ve been home – and this selfish b*tch pulls this stunt right here. Right in my living room. My sister! My own f*cking sister!”

“Why didn’t you let me die?” the woman repeated, sounding perfectly serious. Not a suggestion of self-pity in her voice, just a bone deep matter-of-factness, and Paul felt her words settle into his stomach.

A call is never a time to philosophize. There’s never room for a deeper “why.” So his training helped him along, and the overdosing woman, with hair thinning gray hair and fat cheeks and burned bridges, became just another case. And it was on to the next one: a senior with chest pains. And the next one: a drunk man passed out at a shopping plaza in the middle of the night.

It’s only during the following afternoon, when he’s on his couch eating a burger, that Paul notices that the woman’s words are gnawing at him. He dwells on the words, until the burger roils in his stomach, and he hears the question behind her question. “Why didn’t you let me die?” becomes What’s the point?

Paul pushes himself off the couch, gathers the debris of his late lunch, and shuffles to the kitchen to shove it into the trash. His roommate will expect him to empty the bin, but Paul’s back aches, and so does his head. He always feels like crap after a shift, especially now that he’s in his 30s.

He leans with his palm against a cupboard. What’s the point?

There are no answers in the empty apartment. “A paycheck,” he says out loud, his voice sounding flat in the silence.

What could he have told the woman had she asked him for a reason to live? Paul thinks he’ll have to come up with something for why it’s all worth it before his next shift.

12 Glasses (a work of ekphrastic short fiction)

Esther ArielLeave a comment

(This short story is inspired by Janet Fish’s “Painted Water Glasses.”)

Ellen has a disturbing gift, unheard of and defying belief. She can glimpse something about a person’s future just by touching her finger to the rim of their drinking glass.

What she sees may be only one of multiple possible futures. But it’s hard to tell, because her visions are like fractured glass. They’re sharp, bright, and sometimes painful, and her mind quickly sweeps them away. She doesn’t see the chain of events, the cause-and-effect leading up to them. She can’t control what she sees or how far into the future. The knowledge she gains is piecemeal and ambiguous. There is, she thinks, no use to this strange gift. But she still feels compelled to use it, just in case something comes to light that she can prevent or at least prepare for.

Yesterday, she held a party at her poolside. Herself, her husband, Andy, their three adult children, and seven guests. The day was cloudless, and the patio table with its tempered glass surface seemed liquid, bathed in heat and light. The guests slid in and out of the pool, lounged with legs spread on the lawn chairs, and churned out conversation and laughter.

Continue reading “12 Glasses (a work of ekphrastic short fiction)” →

Open-Ended (Flash Fiction)

Esther ArielLeave a comment

The coffee shop has a pale blue wall of painted birds. Whenever Ellie steps in for some tea and a hot sandwich, she picks a table beside the wall. Sometimes, she’s at eye level with a nuthatch. Other times, there’s an oriole or cardinal above her head.

What no one seems to know, other than her, is that the wall sometimes isn’t a wall – it’s actual sky. She feels the stir of a breeze from it. The pulse of a faint warm sun. The flight of the birds tickles her cheek, and birdsong patters in her ears.

She never knows, when she visits the coffee shop, whether she’ll find an unresponsive wall or a living sky. When she sits at one of the glossy dark tables, she touches her fingertips to the wall. Before the moment of contact, she doesn’t know if it will feel solid, or if it will ripple at her touch.

When it ripples, she feels it give way, and her fingers sway in the pale trembling light. She hears the birds and the sighing breeze faintly, and she knows it isn’t a wall but a portal inviting her to disappear. She’s afraid to see what will happen if she sticks too much of herself into it. She doesn’t dare advance more than a couple of knuckles per finger.

Ellie doesn’t tell other people about the wall that is sometimes real sky. She only recommends the coffee shop to them, and then she waits to see if they say anything. When they tell her they liked the pumpkin pie, the coffee, or the sandwiches, she peers into their eyes to check if there’s some secret they’re holding back for fear of looking crazy. But everybody seems ordinary enough, not as if they have ever touched a wall and felt it give way.

There is, of course, another reason she recommends the coffee shop to anyone she knows, even to strangers at a supermarket checkout line. Her daughter works there, all day and into the night, each weekend.

Ellie never goes to the coffee shop when she knows her daughter is working. She times her visits for Tuesdays at 4 PM, Wednesdays at 11 AM, and Thursdays at 10 PM. Never when her daughter has a shift.

Because what would they say to each other? Last time they spoke, she and her college dropout daughter, they were hoarse with shouting.

You’re difficult. You’re impossible. You didn’t turn out the way I thought you would. I gave you everything, and now look at you.

If she were to bump into her daughter… Let’s say her daughter switched a shift and came in on a Tuesday, a Wednesday, or a Thursday, maybe to fill in for somebody else. What would they say to each other, if anything at all? Maybe they would ignore each other, and Ellie would instead study the birds and test her fingertips against the wall.

Because one more poorly chosen word might close the door forever.

So she lingers in the coffee shop on the days her daughter isn’t there. She picks a seat beside the wall, which sometimes isn’t a wall but an impossible free space full of faintly warm sky. The birds are wheeling, gliding, stabbing through the air. They sing, they cry, all distant and muted. And when the wall yields to her fingers, she can just barely feel their wings brushing past her.

The Disappearing Woman (a Short Story)

Esther ArielLeave a comment

Once a week for an hour, I visit Mrs. Jenkyns. 

Why do I go to her dark, smelly apartment? To pad my resume.

The volunteer activity I actually wanted – teaching jazz dance to poor kids – conflicted with my class schedule. So this semester I’m stuck visiting a senior citizen.

I’m supposed to be learning from the experience. Apparently, she has some wisdom that will benefit me. But Mrs. Jenkyns doesn’t talk much. When I show up at her place, each time a few minutes late, she greets me with a vacant look past my shoulder. I’m not even sure she knows my name.

Her apartment is in dusty shadows, the blinds down. I think she douses herself in hand sanitizer. Her perfume has an antiseptic sting.

I would probably like her if she was a cute granny, rosy and plump and gently chiding, sharing harmless jokes and pleasant anecdotes. If she was full of gratitude for visits and laid out a tray of cookies on the coffee table for me. But Mrs. Jenkyns is mostly silent and looks like she’s made out of broomsticks.

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve visited her. (Is today the sixth time?) Nothing has changed about her apartment, except maybe there are more flecks of food congealing on the kitchen counter. I sit on one end of a dull red sofa, and she lowers herself into an adjacent armchair of the same color. 

The same photo album, with the cracked mauve cover, awaits us on the coffee table. It’s full of people Mrs. Jenkyns has mostly forgotten about. She has told me aborted stories about them. These stories tend to hit walls in her memory and crumble into silence.

Today, she lingers over a photo of a thin, middle-aged blonde lady who bears a faint resemblance to her. Now and then, she stares at the wall and mutters something. This is how we’re going to pad the hour.

I notice one difference with the album: It has fewer photos compared to last week. I’m pretty sure there are more empty sleeves. But I don’t know if that’s true, or if I’m just inventing a difference because of how bored I am.

To give life support to our conversation, I ask, “Are any photos missing?”

She stares some more at the middle-aged lady before flipping to other pages in the album. Her hands then drift to each side of her body, her fingers stroking the armchair cushion. When her hands rise again, she’s clutching a remote.

“Why don’t you watch TV?” she murmurs. With a trembling finger, she presses the red power button on the remote, and a talk show pops up, featuring three women with babies on their laps. 

Mrs. Jenkyns passes me the remote and levers herself off the chair. She totters away, broomstick arms swinging, and disappears through her bedroom door, which she shuts behind her.

For several seconds I stare at the door, incredulous. Has she really let me off the hook? Can I spend the rest of the hour just watching TV?

The talk show is about surrogate babies who were never claimed. I flip through the channels but soon end up back where I started, because it seems she only has a basic cable package.

I tune out the show and scroll through my phone. As the hour inches to a close, I glance uneasily at the bedroom door and wonder if Mrs. Jenkyns will come out. Is she taking a nap?

Maybe she’s dead.

I picture myself poking my head into her cold, stale bedroom. I see her lying under a pink quilt. It’s nearly flat over her thin body. Her bedroom is silent, and it has become a mausoleum.

As I imagine reporting her death to the police, she emerges from her bedroom right on the hour. Without looking at me, she thanks me for coming by.

Another week passes, and I’m back at her apartment for the same old, same old. The situation is depressing, when you think about it. So I try not to. I try not to wonder if one day, decades from now, I’ll also be dependent on a college student for a weekly dose of human contact.

She offers me something to drink this time, but I’m not going to take any chances putting my lips on anything she owns. The glasses on her countertop look cloudy. One mug is brimming with a black, lumpy liquid, maybe prune juice she’s left out for too long.

I settle on the sofa, she on the armchair, and the album with the cracked cover gets another look through. More photos are missing. Multiple pages in a row are blank. I wait for Mrs. Jenkyns to explain, but she maintains her vacant silence.

Among the remaining photos, one is half out of its sleeve, as if it’s trying to escape. It shows a young, thin blonde woman staring bug-eyed at the camera.

I lock eyes with the young woman, and my shoulders suddenly bunch up, as if someone has laid a hand on the back of my neck. I also have blonde hair, and for a few seconds, I think I’m looking at a photo of myself. But it isn’t me, of course. It’s just another blonde girl.

“Why don’t you watch TV,” Mrs. Jenkyns says. She scoops up the remote from the armchair cushion and jabs the power button. Shadowy figures pop up on the screen. They’re skulking through a forest, against the backdrop of a full moon fringed with clouds.

“This looks weird,” I say.

Mrs. Jenkyns leans forward and flicks the album shut. Then she heads for her bedroom, moving with more vigor than I’ve ever seen, her broomstick arms swinging steadily.

The program has something to do with witches. Maybe it’s a documentary about witch trials in history? I can’t focus well. The apartment has an airlessness that presses into my brain.

With a grunt, I reach for the remote, which Mrs. Jenkyns dropped on the other end of the sofa. I cycle through the channels – seems like fewer channels than last time – and again I’m looking at footage of shadowy figures and a flickering fire. A soft, flat voice discusses powers attributed to witches, like mind control and body swaps.

I mute the TV and turn to my phone. The Wi-Fi connection is painfully slow today. Websites take longer to load, and I spend the rest of my time in Mrs. Jenkyns’ apartment sighing impatiently and feeling a mix of restlessness and lethargy.

She emerges from her bedroom a few minutes after the hour is up. I blink at her, and my eyes feel gritty.

“Thanks for stopping by,” she says. “I’ll see you next week.”

I don’t remember walking out of her apartment. But somehow I’m in the second floor hallway, with its carpet cleaner smell, and my head and legs feel heavy. I tell myself I’m not coming back.

For a couple of days, I hold firmly to that resolution. I barely think about Mrs. Jenkyns. She’s buried somewhere in my brain, locked in her apartment as if in a moldering box.

But misgivings creep into me. Mrs. Jenkyns starts tottering into my thoughts at all times – when I’m about to fall asleep, and when I’m showering, and even in the middle of a math test, so that my answer doesn’t add up.

Won’t it look bad, I think, if I back out, leaving a lonely senior citizen in the lurch? I made a commitment, didn’t I? I don’t want to be a flake. I want to see things through.

It won’t be much longer until the semester is over. I can stick it out.

And so I go to her again. With a lurking dread I can’t explain, I arrive at her door for the next scheduled visit. It springs open shortly after I knock. Her eyes meet mine, briefly and searingly, before she peers into the hallway, as if to make sure that nobody has followed me. I step into a cloud of her antiseptic perfume, and my eyes water. I fumble my way to the couch and lower myself onto it unsteadily, while she waits for me perched on her armchair.

“You look tired,” she says. “Do you want some coffee?”

“Sure,” I manage, feeling a wateriness in my bones, as if I’m coming down with a bad cold.

I rest my eyes, and open them to find her standing before me with a mug full of dark liquid. I reach for it, and it sears my palms. My hands shake as I bring it to my lips.

It doesn’t taste like coffee. There’s a suggestion of a coffee flavor, but it overlays something faintly metallic. If I didn’t know any better, I would think it was blood.

It also makes me feel sleepy, which coffee shouldn’t do. The mug goes slack in my hands, and I feel it getting taken from me.

When I open my eyes again, the TV is on. A figure in a purple cloak, the top half of its face swallowed in a hood, is facing the camera. I’m pretty sure it’s a woman. The volume is off, and for a minute I stare at her purple painted mouth as it contracts and contorts. In the background is nothing but a black screen.

The remote is within reach, and with a trembling finger I increase the volume.

“You’re awake,” the figure is saying, in a woman’s pleasant lilting voice, “but you have no life. You don’t ask what’s in store for you, because you already know: There’s nothing but this. No one is coming. No one cares. And you’ve stopped caring too. So go lie down. That’s the only thing to do. Pass the time, until you pass from life.”

With a crackle, the hooded figure vanishes into static. 

I lower the volume, my hand shaking even more. Then I try switching channels. All static. The TV hisses like a noisy stream. It displays nothing but a river of noise.

Exhaustion washes over me. I’m on an ocean shore, and waves tug at my ankles. Slowly, they drag me from the beach into the water.

I rise, wavering, and want nothing more than to lie down for a while.

From under the bedroom door, there’s a glow. I aim for it with faltering steps. When I push the door open, I find an inviting scene. A warm bedroom, a pink quilt on the bed, a lamp with a peach pink shade on the nightstand, a folded newspaper and reading glasses beside it.

Leaning on the bed, I toe off my shoes and pull aside the quilt. The bed murmurs when I lie down, and my whole body sighs. After tucking the quilt around me, I settle the glasses on my face and reach for the paper.

It’s a local paper, and I skim it with a mind that’s already halfway to a nap. There’s a story about sewer repairs, another about a city councilman’s arrest for drunk driving. A new exhibit at an art museum, a massive cleanup of a park, and a feel-good piece about college students volunteering in the community. Photos show a dark-haired young man tutoring in an after-school literacy program and a thin blonde girl teaching jazz dance to disadvantaged kids.

I close my eyes in sudden pain and set the newspaper aside. It slithers to the floor. I remove my glasses and rub at my eyes, but the pain only settles deeper into my head. The pillow has a faintly antiseptic smell, and part of me finds it familiar and comforting. Another part of me recoils from it with a silent scream.

There’s something important I have forgotten. It’s lost to me. I have been robbed. Or maybe I’m just a silly old woman, afraid of accepting her own frailty. I’m at home, exactly where I need to be.

Human After All (A Short Story)

Esther ArielLeave a comment

This story was first published years ago on Front Porch Review (as “Human After All” by Hila Katz).

After the fire ruined her face and body, Aisling didn’t want to live among people. She moved upstate to a cottage that had stayed unoccupied for years; it was set down a narrow drive and surrounded by forests and fields. The first floor was divided between a kitchen and a sitting room with a fireplace opposite the front door. The second floor was furnished with a bureau and bed. During the day Aisling worked from her computer or poked around the derelict garden out back. Sometimes she took long naps from which she was faintly surprised to wake up. In the evenings she made a point of lighting the logs in the fireplace. Though they made her stomach clench, she ate dinner in front of the flames and watched them lick and consume.

It took a week for her to get used to the absence of city sounds. Instead of cars grinding and voices shouting up and down the street, there was a thick silence disturbed unpredictably by cries, chirps and lonely calls. Her keyboard sounded loud and percussive in the quiet; the water came out of the kitchen faucet in a roar. She felt she was in another world. The silence formed a membrane that folded around the cottage, and the cottage and garden conspired to keep her tucked away. The two windows on the cottage’s first floor were coarse with dust and dirt, as good as curtains for frustrating curious eyes. Weeds spilled over from the garden and the woods, flanked the cottage walls and kept sentry at the front door. At her roll-top desk or on the ratty armchair before the fire, Aisling ate, read, dozed, and wrote instruction manuals and technical articles for pay. She told herself that in time the seclusion would seem completely natural.

Real people were impossible to be with. As if she needed a reminder, she ran into two of them on a walk through the woods several weeks after moving into the cottage. During the walk she wasn’t wearing her veil, which she kept only for errands in a nearby town. She thought she would have the woods to herself. As she strolled along a narrow dirt path between the trees, her hands skimmed over leaves that were deep green in the shade or bright green-gold where the sun touched them; her heart was lighter than it had been in months. From somewhere nearby a stream whispered to her, and she was listening to it so intently that she almost missed the voices drawing closer from up ahead. Within seconds an elderly man and a young boy appeared with fishing poles slung against their shoulders.

The boy saw her first. He screamed and hid his face against the man’s side. The man placed a hand on the boy’s head and stared at Aisling with horror and pity.

Aisling turned around and jogged home, her throat tight. Memories swelled up – pity, misery and revulsion from the few people close to her, her niece crying at the sight of her face, the taunts from neighborhood teens and some adults (nicknames of “Lava Woman” and “Third Degree,” the boy who pulled her veil down and snapped a photo with his phone). Surgeries, infection, skin grafts that failed, flesh that either didn’t feel anything or blazed with pain. When she got to the cottage, she climbed the stairs to the second floor and curled up on the bed, her fingers fisting into the deep green coverlet. Her mind roared faintly, like an inferno heard from miles away. An hour passed; her breathing steadied, her mind went quiet and numb. She sat up, tugged off her boots, and forced herself to go through with the rest of her day. There was a lawnmower manual to finish writing and vegetables to chop for a stew. She needed to send her weekly email to the handful of family and friends who still kept in touch, to assure them she was alive and functional enough to use a keyboard, or voice recognition software when her fingers were too stiff. When night came she lit the logs in the fireplace.

Aisling stayed indoors for two days. On the third day, when she stepped outside to bring in more firewood, she paused just past the front step. Several tall thorny weeds that had crowded around her door were gone. On the step lay a dandelion, yellow and crumpled, as if the wind had played with it for a while before tossing it her way. Aisling picked it up and rolled the stem between her thumb and forefinger. She made her way around the cottage to the garden. No one was there. The corner closest to the woods looked like it had been weeded a little, though she wasn’t sure.

These tweaks to her property wouldn’t have amounted to much had she never noticed anything like them again. Instead Aisling spotted new changes every few days: more garden weeds gone, some fresh loamy soil in spots that had offered only cracked earth. Random dandelions appeared on her front step, sometimes two or three at a time, more than could be explained by a stray breeze. She placed them in a glass jar on the sill above her kitchen faucet. Against the dirty window their yellowness seemed unhealthy, a color stemming from illness and pollution. Aisling ran a rag under the faucet and scrubbed at the windowpane until her arm ached.

At two or three in the morning most nights she woke and drifted downstairs to fill a glass with tap water. She drank it by the dark kitchen window. She didn’t expect to see anything or anyone, but she still wondered about the small acts of kindness around her cottage. Maybe there was a friendly elf in the woods. It wouldn’t feel any disgust towards her or perpetrate any cruelties. It would be sensitive to her and try to help as best it could, giving her dandelions as tokens of good will and staying out of sight so as not to make her self-conscious.

After her woodpile was tidied and a wheelbarrow she had left overturned was righted, the impression of a benevolent presence strengthened. She began to write notes on index cards and leave them on the front step before going to bed. Who are you? the first note said. And four nights later it was a Thank you after another small patch of weeds vanished from the garden. On a round of errands in town, Aisling bought seeds and gardening tools, a shovel, hoe and spade, and she liked the sight of them propped up inside her cottage by the front door. I can do something with the garden now, she wrote. I’ll start soon. And feeling foolish but also a little happy she left the note where the others had been.

She received no replies. The notes were never on the front step by the time she checked at eight in the morning; it was possible the wind blew them away just as it sent dandelions to her door. Aisling was too nervous to find out for sure. She never pinned the index cards down with a rock. On two nights she set up a video camera aimed at the front step, but never hit record. What if the camera showed her no one at all? She suspected sometimes that she was fooling herself. She might be caught up in a daydream, the pathetic but potent longings of a woman still unaccustomed to living alone. Maybe she was completing those minor chores herself, in fits of absent-mindedness.

When she heard a knock at the door at 7:30 one morning, just as she was cleaning her breakfast plate, Aisling turned off the faucet and stood still, listening. Another knock came, and she set the plate down with hands that had started to shake. She dried her hands on her skirt and took a few abrupt steps to the door. “Just a minute,” she called, and her voice came out in a croak. She cleared her throat. “Just a minute.” She leaned her forehead against the door and held her breath, trying to listen for any noise outside. But she heard nothing, only felt someone or something there. She shouldn’t have announced that she was at home. But whoever was out there knew already, so what was the point of pretending? She gripped the doorknob, then released it and put on her gloves and veil first.

When she yanked open the door, the boy standing before her front step flinched. He was staring off to the side, and Aisling in her shock had several moments to study him. It was the young boy she’d run into in the woods, who’d screamed when he saw her. He was nine or ten years old if she had to guess, with a long pale face and brown hair matted with sweat. An index card, probably the one she’d left outside the night before, poked out of the front pocket of his jeans.

His head turned fractionally. Then his shoulders relaxed, and he turned to face her fully. His hands were clenched, but he stared resolutely at her, at the veil and through the veil, then down the length of her, then away again, his cheeks red.

Aisling sensed that she had to be the first one to speak. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to bother you.”

“You aren’t.” She leaned against the doorjamb, and saw his gaze slide by her into the cottage.  “Is anyone with you?” she asked.

“Uh…  no.” His voice was high and nervous. “I know a shortcut to get here from my grandparents’ house. I can get here in ten minutes flat.” He looked up at her face, his eyes tracing the patterns on her veil. “Grandpa and I followed you here. You know, when we bumped into you.”

Aisling reached back and shut the door. She stepped towards the boy, and he stumbled back. She stopped, laced her fingers together, and spoke over the pounding of her heart. “You should go home,” she said, feeling nauseous suddenly. The boy’s fear of her, the disgust he could barely control, was like a brand on her skin. A wild thought crossed her mind – to do something wicked to him, disfigure him – but it passed quickly and left her even more nauseous.

He cleared his throat. “I just…  I wanted to say sorry for screaming. I felt really bad.”

His face was pained and earnest. She looked down and saw his hands, grubby, as if he’d been messing around in the dirt. “Apology accepted,” she said, “on one condition. Tell me if you’ve been here before. Not with your grandpa but by yourself.”

The boy licked his lips and glanced at the woods, wondering maybe if he could make a run for it. “Yeah,” he admitted at last.

“Why?” she said. Then she spotted a thread of fresh blood between the thumb and index finger of his left hand. “You’re hurt.”

He stared at his fingers. “I couldn’t find the gardening gloves today. Grandma must have put them somewhere else.”

“Wait here,” she said, and slipped back into the house. She fully expected that when she returned with the antibacterial wipes and band-aid he would be gone. Maybe she was imagining this conversation too. But he was still waiting by the door. He mumbled his thanks and cleaned his hands; there were smaller cuts on his palms.

“Where do you live?”

He hesitated. “I don’t want to get in trouble.”

“You won’t.”

“Just across the woods.” He looked at her again. “I wasn’t doing anything bad. I wasn’t playing tricks on you.”

“Wash those out again when you get home.” She didn’t know why it was so hard for her to ask the next question; maybe it was because she was afraid of what she’d hear. “I still don’t understand why you’re here. Why did you go to so much trouble? You’ve been here most mornings, right?”

“I need to go,” he said, as he wound a band-aid around his index finger. “I can sneak back into my room easy, but it has to be early enough or else they’ll know.” He shrugged. “Grandpa feels bad too.  He’s probably going to come around and say hi some time. He hasn’t done it yet because he thinks you’d be embarrassed.”

Aisling was sure it had more to do with not wanting to look at her again. “How about you?” she said.

“The first time I came here it was just to say sorry. I meant to. But I was afraid to knock. You know, because I don’t know you,” he hurried to say. “I thought maybe it’d be nice to help out in the meantime. Your garden’s a mess.” He bit his lip. “But today I told myself I’d do it, I’d knock. I heard you washing up so I knew you were awake. I’m sorry I bothered you.” He stepped away from her. “I need to go.”

Was this it, then? Would he never come again? She looked around the yard, thinking of the disappearing weeds, the righted wheelbarrow, the notes she had left at the door. Had he read them all? Had he kept each one? There was still so much she didn’t know, and already he was edging away from her.

“I’ll go with you,” she said.

His eyes widened. “You…  you don’t have to. I got here by myself.”  Then he muttered, “I’m not a baby.”

“It isn’t safe,” she said. “No one knows where you are.”

“You know,” he said, and for the first time he cracked a little grin.

She huffed a laugh. “Let’s go.”

The trees closed in around them. The morning was cool, and patches of mist were parting with reluctance from the branches. A couple of minutes into the walk, the kid wriggled into a clot of shrubs. Aisling followed, holding her veil in place to keep it from catching on something and tearing off.

They were now on another path, more neglected, with tree roots and broad-leafed plants crowding against them. Aisling stumbled a couple of times, the toe of her shoe jerking against a root.

“You ok?” the kid asked her.

“Yes, thanks.” She was uncomfortable with his concern. “You’re visiting your grandparents for the summer?” she said.

“No. I live with them.”

They were silent for the next few minutes.

“My parents died,” he said, not turning around to look at her.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured.

This time he did stop, and she almost bumped into him.

“Car crash,” he said, glancing back at her. He started walking again. She could barely hear his next question as they crunched over some loose stones. “How did you get hurt?”

“House fire,” she said. She had lived on the top floor of a four-story walk-up, a narrow Victorian home that had been converted into a set of apartments, one on each floor. She didn’t tell him that a bunch of middle school kids, drunk on their parents’ pilfered whiskey, had started the fire by accident.

She heard him take a deep breath. Then he said, “My mom was burned too.” He looked at her over his shoulder, then turned away quickly. “When she died.”

“I’m sorry,” Aisling said again, but this time her words barely had a sound.

The woods were starting to thin out. The path broadened.

“I didn’t get to see her after,” he said quietly. “They wouldn’t let me.”

They reached the edge of the woods. Up ahead was a house painted the color of goldenrod, with a dark gabled roof and a vegetable garden in the backyard.

“My house,” he said. He didn’t look at her. “Do you think I could bring Grandpa some time?” 

“Bring Grandpa?”

“To your place.”

Did he really mean to visit? The thought of him knocking on her door, his grandfather with him, gave her a thrill of fear and delight. She could picture it, the three of them awkward in her cottage, staring at the floor and walls, the conversation strained. She would be wearing her veil to spare them. At least she would be hospitable, offer them tea. Maybe she would bake something when she got home. Or work on her garden some more, make her place look less derelict. It would look better to her too, even if no one did come.

“I don’t see why not, but it’s up to him.”  There, she’d given him an out. If he never came again, he could always tell himself that his grandpa didn’t let him.  “You can’t come alone. Promise me.”

“You don’t have to treat me like a baby.”

“Promise.”

“Fine.” He blew out an exasperated breath.

“I’m Aisling, by the way,” she said.

His eyes brightened, and he smiled. “Kevin.” He stuck out his hand.

She stared at his hand, before catching it in a light grip. He tensed – no doubt remembering what was hidden under her gloves – and his smile slipped. They kept their handshake up for three seconds (Aisling counted, maybe he did too), before letting go.

He hurried away across the yard, ducking between the raised vegetable beds, until he reached a window at the side of the house. He hauled himself over, out of sight.

Aisling remained at the edge of the yard until the patio door slid open and the grandfather stepped out. He didn’t notice her; he was holding a blue mug and looking up at the sky. Just as well. He’d be startled if he saw her now, even with her veil. Aisling helped herself to another look at his house, before retreating into the woods, out of sight.

Viola Inspiration Playlist

Esther ArielLeave a comment

Tired of being made fun of for playing viola in his school orchestra, Max has put together a playlist that reminds him about the potency of violas, their awesome potential.

Roland Glassl: Capriccio for Viola by Henri Vieuxtemps and the William Primrose arrangement of Paganini’s arrangement of Liszt’s La Campanella (with Cornelia Weiss on piano).

Amber Archibald: Rebecca Clarke’s Passacaglia on an Old English Tune (with Jamie Namkung on piano).

Paul Neubauer: Hermann Schulenburg’s Gypsy Romance and Csardas (with Arnaud Sussmann, Rafael Figueroa, and Michael Brown on violin, cello, and piano).

Kim Kashkashian (not to be confused with another Kim K.): Benjamin Britten’s Lachrimae Op. 48a (with the New York Classical Performers) and Tigran Mansurian’s Three Medieval Taghs for Viola and Percussion (Jonathan Hepfer on percussion).

Roberto Diaz: Elegie for Viola and Piano, Op. 30 by Henri Vieuxtemps (with Robert Koenig on piano).

Sebastian Peszko: his own composition, Detective Bach (with Laurent Humeau and Charles Frechette on guitars and Francois Perdriau on bass).

Sarah Sung: Rebecca Clarke’s Viola Sonata, 1st Movt. (Molly Sung on piano).

Marc Sabbah: Mikhail Glinka’s Sonata for Viola & Piano in D minor, 1st Movt. (Elaine Reyes on piano).

Tabea Zimmermann: Alexander Glazunov’s Elegie in G Minor Op. 44 (with Thomas Hoppe on piano).

Lillian Fuchs: Prelude from J.S. Bach’s 6th Cello Suite (arranged for viola).

Nobuko Imai: Viola Sonata in B-Flat Major, Op. 36: I. Maestoso by Henri Vieuxtemps (Roger Vignoles on piano).

Lee Sanghae: Henri-Gustave Casadesus Concerto for Viola in B Minor in the style of Handel, Movts. 2 and 3

Lawrence Power: Intro to Romeo and Juliet, Op. 64 (Arr. for Viola and Piano) by Pyotr Tchaikovsky (with Simon Crawford-Phillips on piano)

Gérard Caussé: Ernest Bloch’s Suite Hébraïque, I. (with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande)

Alexandra Telmanova: Max Bruch’s Romance for Viola and Strings in F major op. 85 (with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra)

Antoine Tamestit: Max Reger’s Solo Suite No. 1 in G-Minor

Adrien Boissseau: Viola Sonata op.120 n.1 by J. Brahms (with Gaspard Dehaene on piano)

Pinchas Zukerman: Franz Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata (with Marc Neikrug on piano)

Jane Atkins: Paul Hindemith’s Sonata for Viola and Piano No. 4, Op.11 (with Pamela Lidiard on piano)

(… and he’ll probably be adding to this list.)