Go To Chapter 1

The Ordinary Woman

Chapter 3

by Ruth Apolonia Zamoyta

One red brick, slightly worn, about six inches long, three inches wide, and three inches high, with three one-inch holes through the center.

She corrected the spelling and then clicked for the next picture.

It was Orville.

Ordinary brown bird on a limb of a white pine at the top of a mountain. His mouth is open so he is probably singing a song warning me not to feed the monsters words and water.

The ordinary woman suddenly missed Orville and felt guilty. She thought of the long hours she put in every day and felt she deserved a wellness break. She decided to do the scramble. It was a cool autumn day. Ten cords of wood had recently been dumped in her yard, and the daunting task of stacking the logs awaited her. But she laced her hiking boots, zippered her fleece vest, donned an old baseball cap, and set out.

The climb was more arduous than it used to be, as she was out of shape. Her heart was racing, so she had to stop frequently. She relied on the notches in the trees because the path was hidden already with a blanket of red maple leaves and yellow birch leaves. The beeches were all dead and leafless: standing corpses covered in black “O’s.” When she got to the top, she climbed the white pine but no Orville came to greet her. It was too early to fly to Florida. Where was he? The ordinary woman suspected the worst and tears welled in her eyes. She looked down at the lake. Her eyes could not see distances clearly anymore. From what she could make out, the lake looked different, but she couldn’t tell how. The ordinary woman looked at her watch and started home.

On her way, she decided to walk to the lake before going back to the cabin, to see if there were indeed something different. She went to the small, sandy patch of beach and it was covered in a carpet of dead fish. The water was more stagnant than usual and she could tell from the shoreline to the right, where the land directly met the water, that the surface was 12 inches lower than usual. Suddenly the ogre rose up from the cold water. He was as large as a house. He told her to go back to work, so she did.

White, plastic, oscillating fan sitting on a small pine bookshelf next to a digital alarm clock. The fan is dusty. The fan is off. The clock says 9:23.

Old, medium-sized mutt, fur patched with brown, black, white, and gray. Its tongue is hanging out, and it is sitting in the middle of an asphalt road.

Her legs hurt from the walk. She took one of her father’s pills. They were continuing to be delivered. She felt wonderful and kept working.

A cracked plate, delft china, with an image of mountains and a girl in a tree…

~ ~ ~

On the last day of summer, years later, the ordinary woman drove Louie to the spring and there was no water. She then drove to the lake. The waterline had receded two feet. The water was muddy. She could see the weeds that were typically under water now wilted and splayed on the exposed bed. There were dead fish and frogs everywhere, and a rotten smell. The ogre raised his head out of the lake. He was dripping with mud.

“I quit,” the ordinary woman shouted.

He laughed. Mud dripped between his teeth. She turned around, went home, and took the last pill from the purple velvet pouch.

She knew she had no choice but to leave, like the rest of the families who lived in Loon Lake had obviously done, judging by the closed-up cabins she passed on the way to the hers. The ordinary woman threw what possessions she could in the back of her truck and covered it with tarp. She shut everything in the cabin—the faucets, the propane, the electricity, the flue, the windows, the doors—and drove into town. She would see if any shop keepers were hiring and if they had a room she could stay in. She would talk to a Realtor about putting the cabin on the market.

But most of the shops were closed. The streets were mostly void of cars and people. The library looked open: its American flag was flying outside. Indeed, the door was open, but the only one inside was the oracle. The ordinary woman asked the oracle what was happening, and she explained the lakes were low, the rivers dried up, and most residents had fled to Canada. She said trucks had stopped making the trek into the mountains because fuel was so expensive, and the extreme weather made planting and even raising livestock difficult. The doctors and teachers had fled back to the city, where there were desalinization plants. Anyone ill or with children had left long ago.

“What should I do?”

The oracle smiled a wide, lipsticked smile, and said, “I know what you will do, but I can’t tell you what that is. You have free will, so use it.”

The ordinary woman went back to her truck and headed to the nearest gas station to fill up the tank for the long journey to the city. But the gas station was closed. She went to another one: closed. She went to the last: closed. She looked at her gas gauge. She didn’t have enough to leave the mountains. She had just enough to get back up the hill, but she wouldn’t be able to come back down. She turned the truck around and headed back to the cabin.

The truck sputtered to a stop, using the last drop of gas, right in front of the cabin’s front stoop. The ordinary woman got out, sat on the stoop, looked around at the hardwoods with brown leaves (that should have been turning red and golden by now), dried to a crisp. Even the evergreens were beginning to turn brown. The grass was dead and the soil cracked. There wasn’t a sound: not even the humming of a last mosquito, bee, or cricket of summer—even the insects had fled. She was thirsty and took a sip of water, thinking soon there might not be any more.

Then, she heard a cacophony of birds in the distance. Soon they came into view: a vast murmuration of ordinary brown birds. They flew towards her satellite dish and filled its concave surface. They pecked at the feed horn, signal cable, support arm, and mount. Orville flew down and perched on the railing of the stoop.

The AI monsters have their fill
But we can’t drink without getting ill.
There is no water anywhere.
The ogre master doesn’t care.

The ordinary woman told Orville that she had no water, the spring was dry, the lake was putrid, she was out of gas for the truck, and all the gas stations were closed. Orville continued his song:

But nature always does prevail
On it’s own time, at it’s own scale.
We birds have taken the first step
To peck apart the world-wide web.
The creatures on the central plains
Are declaring eminent domain
On data centers everywhere,
Leaving not one cable to spare.
Rams bring down the plates of steel,
Goats grind wires into bonemeal,
Tanks are horn-pierced by the bucks,
Groundhogs gnaw the water ducts,
Bears rip motherboards to bits,
Elk pommel distribution units,
Hawks drop rocks onto the servers,
Wolves kick sand with untold fervor
Into the monsters’ A/C system—
Nothing can stop the animal kingdom!

The ordinary woman laughed at the silly bird, who was so excited. Suddenly, there was a crack of lightning, the roar of thunder, and the rain began to come down in globs.

Orville fled, and so did his friends, leaving behind a destroyed satellite dish. The woman quickly ran to the cistern and opened its lid. She then dashed inside the cabin and brought out every bucket, pot, pan, pitcher, carafe, tub, can, bin, basin, and bowl she could find. Then she went into the cabin and came out a moment later, naked, with a bar of soap.

~ ~ ~

The rain came down for days and although the woman was in agony without her pills (which had stopped arriving after she quit), she systematically forced herself out of bed every hour, donned her rain gear, brought the captured water to the cistern, then put the empty receptacles back on the ground in the clearing to capture more rain. She wasn’t happy without her pills, but she knew there would be a time, very soon, she could be happy again.

When the cistern was full, the rain stopped and the woman walked outside to see the soaked trees glistening in the sun, to smell decaying leaves and the smoke of her wood fire, and to feel the icy air of the north begin to move in. Soon, there would be snow, never-ending snow, and she would melt it on her stove and have enough water until spring. Her root cellar was full of potatoes, squash, onions, carrots, and beets, and her pantry was stocked with rice, oats, canned vegetables, and good French wine, thanks to her father. There were books and the old radio for company. The ten cords of wood that had recently been dumped in the clearing still had to be split and stacked, but it would get her through the winter. She grabbed the shotgun from the cabinet, put a shell in, put more in her pocket, and set out to find dinner.

The End.

~ ~ ~

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Go to Chapter 1

The Ordinary Woman

Chapter 2

by Ruth Apolonia Zamoyta

Orville departed and the ordinary woman turned back to the view of the lake, and listened to the beautiful melodies of a song sparrow nearby. The tips of the maples were beginning to turn red, and the clouds caught the slanted rays of the setting sun, turning the whole sky crimson. The air smelled of balsam and wood fires.

The next day, the prince came back on Zoom to deliver his instructions. He was so well spoken, kind-mannered, knowledgeable, and handsome that the ordinary woman had to struggle to untie her tongue, but she did, at last. He demonstrated how she would log in and would be automatically shown photographs of various things: a chair, a pocket, a watermelon—and she would have one minute to describe it by voice into a microphone, and another minute to check the transcription for accuracy of spelling, grammar, usage, and punctuation. The ordinary woman had only an ordinary understanding of these things, but she needed the job, so she didn’t voice any doubt to the prince.

The first few days were fine—even a little exciting or fun.

Beige surge protector with six receptacles and four white wires plugged in. The on/off switch is glowing red and the surge protector is resting on a jade green carpet.

Long-haired, full-grown ginger cat with tan eyes, sitting on a parquet floor next to a red porcelain statue of a sitting Buddha, about 12 inches tall.

Then it became routine. She had a check-in with the prince every Friday, which she enjoyed, because it would leave her with someone to dream about the whole weekend through. She asked to pick up more hours, as her father grew so ill he couldn’t cook and neither could she, since she was working many hours. She found herself buying more prepared meals which were more expensive and tasted awful. She apologized to her father and he apologized to her that she had to work so many hours. All his life, he said, he thought he had saved enough, but now there were forces making sure that ordinary people would never be comfortable.

Winters were long and full of never-ending snow. One day when three feet had fallen and the ordinary woman had to climb out the kitchen window and dig out the front door, then dig out the electrical generator, and then shovel a path to the wood pile, her father announced he could not get out of bed. She threw another log in the stove and called the boy whom she had sat next to in homeroom, to ask if he could plow out their pickup truck by five o’clock, when she finished work and before the next snowfall would start. She needed to bring her father to the clinic. The boy—now a man—said he could do it, and he’d help her get her father into the truck.

It was a Friday, but when the prince came online, she recoiled. She was looking at an ogre. The ogre had the prince’s voice and turn of phrase. He picked up where the prince had left off last week. Was this the same person? The ordinary woman doubted herself and tried not to react, but when the ogre looked into her eyes through the screen and saw his own reflection, he quickly pushed some buttons and transformed once again into the prince.

The two stared at each other through Zoom until the ogre-prince said, “You know my secret now.”

“You’re really an ogre taking the shape of a prince. But you look so real.”

“It is your hard work that has helped me replace my hideous form with the visage you see right now.”

“You lied to me,” she said, still stunned.

“I didn’t lie to you. I just changed my appearance. People do it all the time. There’s nothing wrong with that. Are you still going to work for me? There aren’t any other jobs out there as accommodating as this one.”

The ordinary woman had no choice. She continued to work, taking on more and more hours, leaving her father alone in his bed, with staticky music to listen to on the radio, as his eyes were gone and he could not read books.

Circular rose garden, about 100 feet in diameter, with two cement paths cutting through it, crossing in the center, where there is a bronze statue of a mermaid.

Once a week she would leave her father and buy the cheapest meats, fruits, and vegetables at the supermarket. And whatever canned goods were on sale. She was always careful to keep the root cellar and pantry full. With the increasingly harsher winters, they needed more propane and electricity, and they were being charged more per unit. Checks from the government stopped coming and her technology was becoming obsolete but she didn’t have the funds to upgrade it. She kept increasing her hours, speaking into the computer descriptions of doors, rivers, treadmills, and shoehorns, till her mind was fuzzy, her voice was raspy, and her fingers ached.

It was the height of winter and her father was in pain. She was behind on bills, ignoring the collection agencies, failing to file her taxes, neglecting the Medicaid paperwork, and playing credit-card roulette. Her only income was from the ogre-prince, so she was kind to him and would always do a good job.

A close-up of the middle part of an old wooden ladder painted red, but the paint is peeling off. There’s a tiny heart carved into the side, and inside it the initials JM + KL.

The next Friday when she had her check-in with the ogre-prince, she noticed that her feelings about him had changed. She didn’t dream about meeting him in real life and him taking her to Morocco or somewhere exotic; rather, she looked to him as the only source of help she had, like a fearsome god. He didn’t seem to care either way. He had on his prince-mask and asked her questions with detached professionalism. But as the ordinary woman was reporting on a glitch she experienced that week, her father suddenly wailed in the background. The ogre-prince heard and was startled.

“What’s that?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Right, but what is it?”

“My father. He is very ill.”

“Why doesn’t someone take care of him?”

“He’s in pain. I’m doing everything I can.”

“Is that why there are lapses in your work from time to time?”

She was shocked, but not surprised. She had often wondered if the ogre-prince could track her every move.

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t he have medication?”

“We can’t afford it.”

“I’ll send you something.”

That afternoon, a delivery truck appeared. The ordinary woman wondered how it got through the snow. Since November’s blizzard, she had been told by every delivery service that they couldn’t access her cabin and she would need to pick up her packages in town. But this truck made it, fine. The delivery person knocked on the door, handed her a purple velvet pouch, and left. Inside were magic white pills. She knew immediately they were from the ogre-prince for her father, so she brought them back to him, gave him one, and he was comforted.

Weeks passed. The pills made her father restful and a less sad, so she was able to do more and more work.

A clear bottle of white hand lotion, half full, with a white pump on top. There are about six ounces remaining. There is an image of pine needles and pine cones on the bottle.

Wicker laundry basket, about three feet wide, woven in an oval with handles on the long ends. There are clothes tossed in, including a mustard-yellow T-shirt and light blue panties.

This is how the long winter months proceeded. Then in April, the moment came when enough snow had melted that she could climb the scramble. Her snowshoes suddenly fell from the peg beside the front door, as though some force was encouraging her to go outside. She grabbed them, took them out to the yard, and strapped them on. She walked to Crusher through the melting snow, over the semi-frozen stream, brushing icicles off the rushes, watching clumps of snow decide it’s time to leave the cradle of the pine boughs, and spying a rabbit and then a fox pop up and look around, astonished they had survived the winter.

She was able to follow the path marked by notches up the scramble, gripping the narrow trunks of bare saplings for balance. When she reached the top, she looked down at the half-frozen lake and snow-powdered mountains that embraced it on all sides. She climbed the white pine and waited. Soon Orville arrived, just back from Florida.

I beg you, friend, to end your work.
Stop listening to that ogre jerk
And re-confirm your love of nature,
Or you will be a sorry creature,
And so will our lovely lakes and streams.
The labor you do is not what it seems.
You are feeding monsters information
That will bring about our annihilation.

The ordinary woman took heed of the bird, but argued,

“Look! We still have the lakes and mountains and trees. These things can never be annihilated, and, anyway, they are many miles away from these monsters you’re talking about.”

The world is smaller than you think.
The water in which you bathe and drink
Is part of an enormous ecosystem
That we must keep in good condition.
I know you are a faithful daughter
But, please, stop feeding monsters water
And stop feeding them human words
Or you will lose the trees and birds.

The ordinary woman knew she would never win an argument with Orville. She also knew she had no choice but to do the only job she had. Her father was needing more and more pills every day and they magically came, with bills attached. Her pay had gone up one dollar an hour, and the ogre-prince told her she was doing a good job.

Two clear, flexible plastic storage bags under a black box spring. The bags have zippers around the white edges and manilla folders containing papers zipped inside.

Magnifying glass with a black handle and rim, about 6 inches long, the glass three inches in diameter, resting on top of a poster of the United States Constitution.

Her father died quietly in the middle of the night. When she found him, it was clear there was no spirit in his body. His eyes were lifeless glass balls and his mouth was open in a breathless black “O.” She sent word to the ogre-prince who told her there was a bereavement policy and she could take one week of unpaid leave.

It didn’t take her the full seven days to bury him, so soon she was back at work and oddly feeling released. Her school-girl dreams came back to her, now that her father was dead. Maybe she would sell the cabin and travel and do something completely different, be someone completely different.

But her debt had built up and prices continued to rise, and she needed more and more technology upgrades so she could do her job describing pictures twelve hours a day. The weeks, months, and years passed and she didn’t visit Orville in all this time. Until one day she was at her computer and a picture popped up that surprised her.

~ ~ ~

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The Ordinary Woman

Chapter 1

by Ruth Apolonia Zamoyta

There once was an ordinary girl who lived in the beautiful mountains in a sleepy hamlet called Loon Lake. She led a carefree life, alone with her father in a cabin made of logs her father had felled, himself. The cabin was embraced by trees on either side: hemlocks on the left, maples on the right—and in the front and back there were clearings. In the back were a propane tank for the kitchen stove and a cistern for water, and in the front was a clearing for their rusty pickup truck and a fire pit where the father grilled the meat he would bring back from occasional hunting trips. Inside there were two bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen. The rooms were simple and humbly furnished except for an enormous bookcase full of the father’s books and an enormous gas range. The father had been an extraordinary chef back in the days. In the living room was an old iron stove to keep them warm.

They lived on the side of a mountain, so had no well, but had to drive their golf cart, which the girl called Louie, to the spring each week, at the bottom of the hill, and bring enough water back to drink, cook, and bathe in. Her father would lift the heavy plastic bottles and pour them into the cistern behind the cabin. The girl had many jobs around the house, such as hanging laundry on the line and keeping a vegetable garden, though the planting season was short. Since her father had been a chef, they always had a full pantry and root cellar, and they ate and drank well. Otherwise, they lived simply, and were grateful for the dramatic autumn leaves, the smell of wild strawberries in the sun, the monarchs that roosted on the milkweed, the majesty of the Norway spruce cradling armfuls of heavy snow, and all the other beauty that surrounded them in the mountains.

When she wasn’t busy, the girl would scramble up Crusher Mountain, which was down the road, on the other side of the lake. She would rarely meet a soul as she climbed up the path, which she knew by the notches in the trees, first padding on the soft bed of white-pine needles, then hearing the giddy rustle of birch and aspen in the wind, then came the quiet hemlock grove, and then there was a mix of trees—even some beech, spotted black with blight—until she reached the rocky skull. There was an old white pine at the top, and she would climb its branches, getting pitch on her clothes, and look down at the glistening lake, anticipating a cool swim after her descent.

And when she had climbed the white pine, about three boughs up, she only had to wait a moment for Orville to arrive. Orville was an ordinary brown bird whom she would feed the berries she had picked along the way, and in gratitude he would sing to her lovely songs in English.

I once had a friend, a little chickadee
Who went down the river to the vast green sea
And the chickadee said
With a feather in his head
It was cool, it was fresh, but undrinkable to me

Orville’s songs made the ordinary girl laugh, and wonder what the sea in fact looked and tasted like.

Most days, like all ordinary children, the ordinary girl had to go to school, and in school she was told there was nothing she couldn’t do, there was nowhere she couldn’t go, and there was nothing she couldn’t be. She did research papers on Bolivia and Bhutan, and watched famous films like Edward Scissorhands. She read books like Gone with the Wind and Jane Eyre, finishing them late at night by the glow of her flashlight, because books and movies were not allowed to interfere with her chores. At school, the girl would dream of doing something heroic, going somewhere adventurous, being someone famous, but she would come home to her little log cabin and eat an exquisite dinner made with simple ingredients, tell her father about all the places she would like to go, and her father would tell her he needed her to stay home, help him manage the cabin, and bring in a little money. The cost of everything was going through the roof, like gas, electricity, cell-phone service, healthcare, all the electronics and technology he had no choice but to buy, and even eggs. Although she felt disappointment, the ordinary girl needed only to look out the window at the fire-red sunset caught by the clouds in the sky and hear the howl of a coy dog in the distance, to tell herself, this wasn’t such a bad place to be stuck.

This is how things were in her life and the years passed slowly by. One day the ordinary girl—now a woman—scrambled up Crusher and climbed the old white pine, and before long, Orville greeted her. She gave him a fistful of shriveled blueberries—the last she could find, as the summer was winding down and the air was getting cool. It was one of those days where she yearned for more, so she cried and told him of her stunted dreams. Orvile sang:

My friend the morning lark wakes up
And soars above the chimney tops.
She says she’d like to reach the sun
But the truth is known by everyone
That if she vanished in the sky
Her nestlings all would surely die.
So, every day the lark flies high
But comes back from the morning sky
To give her young the tenderest care
And a zesty taste of the highest air.

The ordinary woman thanked Orville for reminding her what was most important in life. She also could not imagine going away and not hearing the beautiful songs of her dearest friend, Orville, the ordinary brown bird.

Every day the ordinary woman checked the Internet for jobs she could do from home, because her father’s savings were no longer sufficient. He couldn’t look for a job, himself, because his heart was frail and even if there was a restaurant nearby that met his standards, he wouldn’t endure the stress of a commercial kitchen. In fact, the ordinary woman was unable to take a job outside her home because occasionally her father would collapse and she needed to tend to him.

“Thank goodness for the Internet,” she thought to herself, “but I wish those politicians I voted for had kept their promise and got us broadband.” There were some jobs available that would allow her to work online, but when she would have her interview on Zoom, her service would inevitably cut out mid-interview and she wouldn’t be called back.

One day she received a text offering her at-home work for $17 an hour, up to 40 hours per week “flexible hours.” She did the math and even though it was minimum wage, it was something, so she replied “Y for Yes.” The person who texted back seemed lovely and gracious over text, and when the ordinary woman logged on for her Zoom interview, she saw it was a very handsome young man in sharp clothing. She immediately thought, “Prince Charming.”

“Hello, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said.

The ordinary woman was struck mute by his beauty. He waited for a response, but not hearing any, he continued:

“Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself?”

Still, the ordinary woman could not speak, so Prince Charming continued:

“Well, let me tell you about the job.”

The prince explained what he needed done and it seemed the simplest thing in the world: describing pictures that would appear on her screen. He asked her if she would like the job, and she nodded. He said she could start the next day.

When the prince ended the call, the ordinary woman was embarrassed, but also happy that she would see the prince again. She told her father, who was caramelizing onions. He was very pleased. She scrambled up Crusher, climbed the tree, and told Orville the news, after giving him sunflower seeds from her garden. Orville sang a doubtful song:

My friend the warbler who once did fly
Across the land to a place hot and dry
Came back to tell us of a vast pavilion
With steel monsters that numbered a million.
And all the rivers, lakes, and streams
Emptied into these monster machines.
I asked the warbler if he could spy
What they were, and he replied, AI.
He said the rivers, streams and lakes
Were drying, according to a friendly drake.
I asked, what do AI do all day?
He said, humans teach them how to say
What pictures are.

The ordinary woman said she would ask the prince if that was what he wanted her to do.

~ ~ ~

Is that what the ordinary woman has signed up to do: feed AI? Who is this prince, REALLY? Don’t miss the next chapter! Subscribe now to have it delivered to your inbox!

Goat Girl

Chapter 3

by Ruth Apolonia Zamoyta

“You’re being ungrateful.”

“Mommy?”

“What?”

Prissy looked at Josie, tears behind the mask. “I can’t take my mask off.”

Bristles of fear ran up Josie’s body. “Here let me—”

But Prissy pulled back, not allowing her mother to try. Josie assumed her “can’t” meant “won’t” and felt relieved.

“If you change your mind and want my help, let me know.” Josie went back into the room, woke the sitter, paid her, and let her out.

Splash!

Josie dashed back to the balcony, but Prissy was still there, leaning over the rail, looking into the water.

“What did you throw in?!” Josie demanded. She didn’t know what it could possibly be. Prissy turned around and looked at Josie, her hands joined behind her back.

“Meh-eh-eh-eh.”

“Come then. Let’s get you to bed.

~ ~ ~

The next morning, after Prissy again chomped down everything from her breakfast plate at the hotel, they met Sergei at the Doge’s Palace. Even though they were early, Sergei had preceded them and was leaning against a column, glasses on, reading an old book.

“What are you reading?” Josie flashed him a smile.

“It’s for Priscilla.”

“Thank you!” Josie glanced at the cover which had a beautiful illustration of a mermaid. The Collected Stories of Hans Christian Anderson. An English translation. The book must have been a hundred years old. “It’s absolutely gorgeous. You shouldn’t have.”

“She’s a special girl. She lives fairy tales.”

“I hope she doesn’t live this one,” Josie joked, indicating the little mermaid on the cover. She turned around and called, “Prissy!”

It was high tide and, unsurprisingly, Prissy had jumped off the duck boards and was splashing through the deep puddles. Josie was glad she decided to pack the girl’s rubber boots. They didn’t stop her green gingham dress from getting splattered, however. A group of tourists stopped to laugh at the funny goat girl getting herself wet. Embarrassed, Prissy ran back to Josie and Sergei.

“Sergei has brought you the nicest book of fairy tales.”

Prissy reached for it.

“Wait.” Josie produced a tissue from her handbag and wiped Prissy’s fingers.

Prissy was hypnotized by the book, turning the pages one-by-one, looking for the colored illustrations and finding Kai and the Snow Queen, Thumbelina and the toad, a princess sitting atop twenty mattresses.

“Remember to say thank you.”

Prissy looked up at Sergei. “Meh-eh-eh-eh.”

“Would you like me to read you one of the stories after we see a few places?”

Prissy nodded and reached up for his hand. They led the way, Sergei looking back at Josie over his shoulder and winking.

~ ~ ~

They started at the Doge’s Palace with its opulently adorned rooms with frescos painted by Tintoretto, Veronese, Titian, and Bellini that made Josie miss her humble studio in Narragansett. Then they moved on to the iconic basilica with its mixture of Byzantine, Romanesque, and Gothic on the outside, and inside mosaics that seemed to glow from within. Josie was glad Sergei took them into the treasury, where there were reliquaries made of gold and jewels, holding the teeth and bones of various saints. Overloaded with art, culture, and history after only two buildings, the three then snaked around the city streets and landed at Sergei’s favorite pizzeria.

“Meh-eh-eh-eh.” Prissy had scarfed every crumb on the table, and now she held out her book to Sergei, asking him to fulfill his promise of reading a story.

There was never a rush in Venice, it seemed to Josie. There were only a few other diners in the pizzeria, the owner of the restaurant was on his cell phone, they were protected by the shade of a large awning, and there was still some wine in the carafe. She leaned back, watched her daughter climb into the lap of this man who was no longer a stranger, and listened to the story of a frightening, controlling father driving his dear young daughter away, into a world of danger she did not belong in.

They read about the little mermaid’s excursion to the surface when she turned 15, and her falling in love with a prince she spied on a boat, her rescuing him from the storm, and her frequent excursions to the surface thereafter to merely set her eyes on the prince—someone she could never have.

When her sisters could no longer answer her incessant questions about the human world, the little mermaid appealed to her grandmother, who knew everything there is to know. She asked her the hardest question: Do humans live forever? The grandmother told her they do, even if they drown, for unlike mermaids and mermen, they have an immortal soul.

“‘Then, am I to die and turn to seafoam, never again to hear the rhythm of the waves or smell the flowers that grow on the sea floor, or feel our red sun that warms us and gives us light? What can I do win a human soul?’ the little mermaid asked.

“‘Only if a man were to love you with a fierceness that would never die, and pledge himself to you through the holy sacrament of marriage, could he then share with you his immortal soul. But that will never happen, my dear. Whereas we consider our fishtails beautiful, humans think they are ugly. And if any of us were to live among the humans, we would need a pair of those ugly spindly things they call legs, simply to get from place to place.’

“The little mermaid looked down at her tail and was sad.”

“Meh-eh-eh-eh.” Prissy said.

“What do you want, Prissy?” Josie asked.

Sergei looked into the little girl’s eyes. “I think she wants gelato.”

“Meh-eh-eh-eh.”

Sergei put a bookmark in place and they departed.

~ ~ ~

After gelatto, followed by an interpretive gondola ride—with both the gondolier and Sergei interpreting, and sometimes disagreeing—Josie and Prissy found themselves in new territory. Sergei said he wanted to stop at an antique shop, and insisted that Josie and Prissy would like the place, as well. There were indeed incredibly beautiful paintings, statues, candlesticks, and small furniture in the shop, all too costly for Josie to consider.

Sergei obviously knew the shopkeeper well, because the two dove into a serious discussion in Italian, leaving Josie and Prissy to browse. After they had looked at every item in the small shop and Sergei’s conversation was still going full-throttle, Prissy went back to an exquisite jewelry box with beautiful veneer, gilt feet, and a small painting on top of a girl with a staff and a young goat.

“Meh-eh-eh-eh.”

Prissy hadn’t spoken a word of English all day and Josie was beginning to understand her goat language.

“Darling, it’s a thousand euros. I can’t afford it,” she whispered.

Prissy bolted out of the shop. Josie ran after her, calling. Prissy ran past a fountain in a small piazza and around the corner of a building on the opposite side. Josie followed, but her high-heeled espadrilles were no match for Prissy’s rain boots. Josie eventually turned the corner, but Prissy was gone. Josie saw in the near distance a blocky-looking church with an open door, organ music coming from inside. Josie felt her daughter would be lured by the music. She went in.

There was no one in the church except, in the narthex, a girl with a white mantilla on her head, sitting in a booth on a raised platform with a sign explaining the different costs of admission.

“Did a little girl run in here?”

“I’m sorry. No English.”

She pointed at the admission sign. Josie felt that Priscilla was somewhere in the church. She needed to determine that quickly. She found a few euro coins in her pocket and paid the girl.

Josie walked up the nave, but there was nowhere to hide. There were no side altars shimmering with votive candles, like in most old churches. Josie looked up at the barrel-vaulted, coffered ceiling with little paintings in each recessed square. Saints, probably; she couldn’t see that far. The organ music filled the air. Josie wondered why the organ was playing if no one was listening. Did she dare walk onto the altar? It was unique, raised several feet and accessible by about ten marble steps. Surely the girl in the narthex would have seen Prissy run up the altar and stop her. Josie turned around, concluding that Priscilla was not in the church, when she saw, through the wrought iron balusters of the organ loft, a girl in a green gingham dress, standing behind the organist, watching him play. Josie scanned the narthex for a possible entrance to the loft and saw a simple iron ladder: a contrast to the understated opulence and artistry of the rest of the church.

The admissions girl protested, but Josie ignored her and climbed the ladder.

“Priscilla!”

Prissy turned to her mother, said “Meh-eh-eh-eh!” and ran to the iron rail at the edge of the loft. The organist, his back to everything, kept playing the dolorous, ominous music.

“Get away from there! Come here now!”

Instead, Prissy turned around, looked down, smiled, and started to climb over the rail. The organist kept playing. Josie ran to Prissy, calling, “No!” as she heard a male voice below also shout, “No!” But Prissy jumped.

Josie screamed and ran to the rail. Sergei was below, cradling Prissy in his arms. She was giggling. Sergei looked up at Josie in reassurance and then carried Prissy to the pew, sat down with her in his lap and said something to her. Josie couldn’t hear because of the blasted organ, so she watched from above as Sergei talked. Prissy listened attentively, looking at him seriously, then took off her mask.

~ ~ ~

“What did you say to her?” Josie asked.

Sergei smiled at her from across the small table at the osteria at the edge of a canal. A glint of lamplight, reflected from the water, caught his eye. He swirled his Barolo and said, “I told her I was the Prince of Venice, looking for the girl with the golden freckles. Could it be you?”

Josie laughed. “I was beginning to wonder how many fairy tales we’d have to read or invent to get her to take that thing off.”

They sat in silence a moment, looking at each other. There was the slow lapping of a gondola passing by, and in the distance a woman was singing.

“I’m going to New York for a conference in September. Is that anywhere near Narragansett?”

“Near enough.”

“I’d like to see your artwork.”

“That would be nice.” More silence, more string. Then, Josie swallowed her last drop of wine. “I need to get back and relieve the sitter.”

“I’ll walk you.”

Sergei nodded to the maître d’ whom he knew, and they walked slowly back, stopping only to kiss on the corner before the hotel.

~ ~ ~

Once again, in her room, the sitter was asleep in front of the TV, Prissy was not in her cot, and a gentle breeze was emanating through the heavy curtains before the balcony. Josie stepped out to see Prissy overlooking the city like she owned it.

“What are you doing? It’s late.”

“Looking for alligators.”

Josie hugged her. “You are a mighty heroine, saving the city from alligators!”

“No, mommy, I want the alligators to come and eat the goat.”

Josie looked down into the dark lagoon. On the surface, the white, eyeless goat mask was smiling up at her, aglow in the moonlight.

The End

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Goat Girl

Chapter 2

by Ruth Apolonia Zamoyta

Josie scoured the colorful medieval streets, busy with tourists, for any sign that a strange girl with a goat mask had been present. There were artisans inviting tourists into their shops, waiters serving outdoor tables, old women strolling arm-in-arm, but no one was laughing, pointing, or bending down to talk to a furry white creature with pigtails. Josie looked in all directions, then decided to take a certain path at random. The captain was right. The island was only a mile and a half wide. She would eventually find her daughter. Josie typed into her phone, “Have you seen a girl with a goat mask?” and then read the translation aloud to the locals standing outside the cafes and shops: “Hai visto una ragazza con una maschera da capra?” She would mostly get a snicker and a shake of the head. Once or twice, she received a reply in Italian that she didn’t understand, but it was clearly a “no,” so she moved on. She came to a bookshop outside of which a tall blond gentleman, who looked like he worked there, was sweeping the street.

“Hai visto una ragazza con una maschera da capra?”

“A goat mask?!” He replied in English with some kind of non-American accent. “That’s certainly something I would have remembered.”

Feeling relief that someone spoke her language, Josie spilled out her anxiety: “It’s my daughter! She’s only six! She ran off without me!”

“Where do you think she was headed?”

“I don’t know!”

“Come. Sit down. Have an espresso.”

Josie was in no mood to sit down and chat, and the last thing she needed was caffeine. But the feel of his hand gently tugging her elbow was somehow irresistible. Inside the bookshop, there was a wrought-iron café table with a Murano-glass top aswirl with color, and two wrought-iron chairs. Josie sat as the bookseller made two espressos at the machine behind a big, oak desk.

“We should be calculated about this,” he said calmly. “Tell me, what does your daughter look like?”

“About yea high, blond pigtails, a white dress with daisies…and a goat mask.”

“The goat-faced girl?”

“Yes, we heard the story from a taxi driver.”

“So, she might not be wearing the mask?”

“Please god, may that be the case!” Josie exclaimed.

“So, what does she look like underneath?”

“Blue eyes and a lot of freckles.”

“So, she won’t take off the mask?”

“I’ve tried everything. She even sleeps in it.”

“Did you come here for a specific purpose?”

“To Venice?”

“Murano.”

“To get a present for her father. I thought a glass figurine would be nice.”

“Is that what she wanted to get him?”

“No. She wanted to get him a seashell.”

“Then she might be headed for a beach, only there aren’t any on Murano.” He checked his watch. “But the tide will be out in five minutes and I will know exactly where we will find her.”

As they sipped espresso, he introduced himself as Sergei, a Russian expat and scholar of Italian literature who settled in Venice after graduate school. Josie explained she and her daughter were visiting from Rhode Island, and Priscilla was to meet her father for the first time tonight. He was playing violin in a Mahler symphony at the Teatro La Fenice.

Sergei checked his watch again, finished his espresso, and said, “It is time. Come with me.”

He left his shop wide open and led Josie through a labyrinth of pathways. Ultimately, they turned a corner, and there was Priscilla, standing on a sliver of “beach” which had been exposed along an embankment. She was squatting, picking up stones and other items the receding waters had left behind.

“Prissy!” called Josie.

The girl did not look up.

“Are you the famous warrior princess of the goats?” Sergei squatted down so he was eye-level and asked her.

She looked at him and nodded.

“I have what you are looking for,” he said. “Come with me.”

He held out his hands and lifted Prissy onto the embankment. The two ignored Josie as they headed back to the bookshop. Josie followed. Inside, Sergei summoned Priscilla to his desk, where he opened a drawer and showed her a collection of beautiful shells.

“Princess, it would be an honor if you took the most lovely shell for your papa.”

Priscilla picked up each shell, one-by-one, and studied it. After about ten minutes, she had chosen the best one.

“Say thank you,” Josie admonished her. Prissy ignored her.

“It is I who must thank you,” Sergei said to Prissy. “And in gratitude, allow me to read you a story.”

Prissy hopped on his lap and he opened an old book. Josie pretended to browse and left them alone, but she could hear every word. Sergei was obviously making up the story as he went along, but he turned the picture-less pages of an old book, as though he was reading.

“Once the valiant prince of Venice journeyed to the highest mountaintop in all of Italy in order to ask the ice fairy if there was anyone alive who could help him defeat the alligators that slithered through the lagoon and along the canals of his fair city, frightening all the children of Venice. When he reached the ice fairy’s castle, she welcomed him and praised him for his bravery. She told him there was only one person who could accomplish such a daunting task: a maiden with beautiful golden freckles.

“‘Where will I find such a girl?’ the prince asked.

“‘She could be anywhere on earth,’ the ice queen replied. ‘Follow your heart and you shall find her.’

“The prince traveled the world ’round for many months, until he came to Rhode Island in the United States of America. The fine people of Rhode Island said they indeed knew of a girl with golden freckles, but she hadn’t been seen for two days. They feared for her life, and the prince feared for the children of Venice. So much was at stake! Having searched so far and so long—having found her home but having been told she was gone—the prince was bereft. He went back to fair Venice, said goodbye to all his friends, and opened a humble shop selling old books, where you might find him to this day, waiting for the girl with the golden freckles to appear. The end.”

Prissy sat still, looking at the closed book on Sergei’s lap for a long time, as though in a trance. Josie could hear her breath rasping against the plastic lining of the mask. Josie looked at Sergei who smiled back at her, long enough for Josie to get that feeling in her gut she hadn’t felt for seven years.

“What a sad story,” Josie said.

“It’s not over yet,” Sergei replied. “The girl with the golden freckles might still appear.”

“I want i-i-i-i-ice cream,” Prissy said.

She hopped off Sergei’s lap and marched towards the door. Josie prepared to follow her out, determined not to lose her again, yet wanting to spend more time with Sergei. As though she sensed this and wanted to do her mother a kindness for once, Priscilla pronounced in her wake, “He can c-o-o-o-ome.”

~ ~ ~

It was a three-minute walk from the hotel to the Teatro La Fenice, through narrow streets and over a canal. Most passers by smiled at the little girl in the pink taffeta dress, white patent-leather shoes, and goat mask, and the signora in the box office said “Che carino!” Some theatregoers turned up their noses, so Josie took Priscilla straight to the box on the second tier that Hugo had reserved just for them.

Josie cautioned Prissy from leaning over the edge, warning her mask might fall off and onto somebody’s head. Surprisingly that admonition worked. Josie coached Prissy to only clap after she hears at least ten other people clapping, because sometimes you’re not supposed to clap, between movements.

“This is the princess’s box,” Josie exaggerated. “We have to act like a princess and her mother.”

“I’m a goat. Meh-eh-eh-eh.”

“And no bleating during the performance.”

Josie was looking around at the sumptuous décor when the house lights dimmed. Hugo, as first violin, led the orchestra onto the stage. There was applause and a few shouts.

“There’s your daddy,” Josie pointed.

Priscilla watched intently. She sat still and quiet through almost the whole concert until the pause before the last movement.

“Meh-eh-eh-eh.”

Josie saw a few glares from the audience.

“Please, Prissy,” she whispered. “Be quiet so daddy doesn’t make a mistake.”

Thankfully the music started up again before Prissy let out another bleat. The loud bang on the timpani drums and cymbals drowned her out. She wasn’t getting attention, so she stood up and turned to leave. Josie grabbed her but she started whining, so Josie decided to yield, and take her to the restaurant ahead of schedule. The girl was tired. It was 10:00 at night, far past her bedtime, and Josie was thankful she had sat through the symphony as long as she did.

At the restaurant, footsteps away, she explained they had a reservation under Hugo’s name for 11 but needed to come early. The maître d’ said he could accommodate them. Then he looked down at Priscilla with sparkly eyes and said, “Ah! We have the pleasure of serving the little goat-faced girl this evening! Come this way!”

Knowing her daughter would not sit in a restaurant for an hour without food, Josie ordered macaroni and a bottle of Gavi. She tried to engage Prissy in conversation, but unsurprisingly she was overtired and restless, so Josie pulled out her phone to turn on a children’s video. She was surprised to see a text:

“Nice meeting you today. Would you like an insider’s tour of Venice tomorrow?”

She blushed, responded, “Thank you. I will call in the morning,” and pulled up Sponge Bob.

Prissy almost fell asleep, systematically shoveling macaroni in her mouth while under the hypnosis of Sponge Bob. Josie checked the time. Hugo would be here any moment. She called her hotel and asked if the babysitter could come get Priscilla at the restaurant earlier than arranged. She could. When Hugo came in, he was not alone.

After a warm hug which Josie felt was indeed genuine, Hugo introduced Maria Teresa, a perfectly beautiful Italian woman in a designer dress and copious jewels. Josie took her hand, looked into her eyes, and felt the chill of condescension.

“And this must be my little Priscilla,” Hugo said, taking a seat next to the girl who, overwhelmed with emotion, had thrown her masked face downward into her mother’s vacated seat beside her.

Hugo shook her gently by the shoulders. “Would you give your papa a hug?”

“I have to warn you,” Josie said, “She’s been wearing a goat mask we got from a street vendor and refuses to take it off.”

“How charming,” said Maria Teresa, who obviously thought it was not.

“Ignore her,” Josie whispered to the two adults, who were happy to obey. Josie took her seat, trying to shift Prissy’s head from her chair seat to her lap, but Prissy opted to climb under the table, instead.

“Would you like some?” Josie offered the bottle of Gavi, but Hugo looked at the label and said he was thinking of red. Maria Teresa took his lead and declined.

“That was really a marvelous concert,” Josie said to Hugo. “Congratulations.”

“It was actually full of technical blunders, but thank you for saying that.”

“I certainly didn’t hear any,” Josie replied.

“I tell Hugo not to be a perfectionist,” Maria Teresa said, laying her hand on the sleeve of his tailor-made suit.

The fact of Maria Teresa was settling in, and Josie was glad to have received Sergei’s text just moments before—it took the edge off the disappointment.

After introducing Maria Teresa beyond her name—she was in cosmetics marketing and they had met through a mutual friend—the woman graciously said in her Italian accent, “But this dinner is about the two of you and little Priscilla. I’m sure you have a lot of catching up to do.”

Hugo asked the standard questions: if they were still in Narragansett, if Josie was doing well with her art sales, how her mother was, what grade Priscilla was in. They had almost forgotten the girl was under the table, until they heard: “Meh-eh-eh-eh.”

Josie tried to get the other two to play along. “Is that the Goat Princess I hear?” she called in a sing-song voice. But Hugo and Marie Teresa were smilingly confused. Slowly, the goat face emerged from under the table. Maria Terese screamed, then covered her mouth. The other diners looked over.

“What is this?” Hugo said, uncomfortable but playing along. “Could my beautiful little Priscilla have turned into a goat?!”

He tried to take off the mask, and Josie was too late to stop him.

“No!” Priscilla shouted and backed away.

Hugo summoned patience. “Are you the goat who bleated before the last movement?” he asked, not really in jest. Josie wanted the whole evening to end already.

“Meh-eh-eh-eh.” Priscilla looked at her father through the eye holes. Josie sensed she really wanted him to love her.

“It’s a phase,” she explained, trying to get Hugo to lighten up.

“I hope I can see your beautiful face before you leave.”

“Meh-eh-eh-eh.”

“I have a present for you.” He presented a gorgeously wrapped box. Prissy opened it. It was a miniature dog made of Murano glass. “Careful. It’s glass.”

“Oh, how cute! Thank you!” Josie said, happy he had thought to get her a memento of their first meeting.

“I saw it and couldn’t resist,” Maria Teresa said. Touché.

Josie prodded Prissy, “Can you say thank you to your father?”

“Meh-eh-eh-eh.”

“Is that all you can say?” Hugo asked.

“Meh-eh-eh-eh.”

He started to tickle her and she giggled. She was loving it. Until he tried to trick her and remove the mask.

“No!”

Josie had seen him get a good grip on it before Prissy pulled away.

“It won’t come off,” Hugo mumbled, in shock. Then he chastised Prissy: “You see? Your face is a goat’s face now.”

“Meh-eh-eh-eh.”

The babysitter came, a young girl who spoke English, and who had a way with children.

“Are you going to give your daddy a kiss?”

Prissy leaned forward, but Hugo leaned back. “Not with that snout. With your lips.”

Prissy looked at him in disappointment, said, “Meh-eh-eh-eh,” turned on her heels, and left with the sitter.

~ ~ ~

Relieved the night was over at last, Josie stumbled into the dark hotel room, drunk on the entire bottle of Gavi which had been beneath Hugo and Maria Teresa. The sitter was asleep in front of the muted television, and Priscilla’s cot was empty. Josie saw that the curtains had been parted, and the sound of the lagoon was emanating from the window. The casements must be open. She rushed past the sitter to the window and opened the curtains. Priscilla was standing on the slab beneath the colonnade of the balcony, in her pajamas and mask, leaning over, looking into the lagoon. A full moon shone down on San Giorgio Maggiore and shimmered on the water.

“Can’t get to sleep?” Josie asked.

Prissy ignored her. She was holding the glass dog. She looked down at it, then opened her hand and let it roll off, into the lagoon.

“Prissy! What did you do that for?!”

“I never a-a-a-asked for a dog.”

“You’re being ungrateful.”

“Mommy?”

“What?”

Prissy looked at Josie, tears behind the mask. “I can’t take my mask off.”

~ ~ ~

Read Chapter 3

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Goat Girl

Chapter 1

by Ruth Apolonia Zamoyta

Josie woke up, walked straight to the hotel-room window, heaved apart the maroon velvet curtains, and swung open the casements. The sun was rising behind San Giorgio Maggiore. She could hear the lapping of the lagoon, a man’s voice in the distance, and the complaint of a gull, no more. She breathed in the humid air of Venice and smiled, then looked down at Priscilla in her cot. She had slept the whole night in the goat mask. Josie couldn’t believe it had stayed on. She wondered a moment whether Priscilla was dead, as every good mother does, but saw her little chest rise softly beneath her pink pajamas, and was relieved.

Josie could see through the holes in the mask that her daughter’s eyes were closed in sleep. Josie reached down slowly with both arms to remove the mask. Her hands were inches from the elastic band when Prissy suddenly opened her eyes wide and shouted. “No!”

“You’ve got to take it off to get dressed.”

“No!”

“If you keep that on, you’re going to turn into a goat.”

“I am a goat!” The girl protested, and punctuated her assertion with a bleat: “Meh-eh-eh-eh!”

“How are you going to brush your teeth?”

“Meh-eh-eh-eh.”

“Or eat breakfast?”

“Meh-eh-eh-eh.”

Josie studied the mask. It was a fine piece of work, made of white goat hide and plastic horns that looked like the real thing. Even the mischievously grinning teeth encircling the snout looked real. They had gotten it from a street vendor who explained in Italian that it was a “Goat Girl” mask, from a fairy tale about a girl who turned into a goat. At least, that was what Josie inferred from her phone app’s dubious translation of the vendor’s words. It wasn’t cheap, but Prissy had that look in her eye that could lead to a tantrum if her mother didn’t buy it for her.

Josie figured this fascination couldn’t last much longer, so she lifted Priscilla out of the too-small crib and held her steady on her feet till she got her bearings. She followed the girl to the bathroom, held her on the too-big toilet seat, lifted her at the sink so she could wash her hands, stretched the neck of her pajama top carefully over the mask, put on a white eyelet dress with embroidered daisies, and combed her hair into two pigtails. It was a challenge, with the mask. During the procedure, they sat at a vanity and talked to each other through the mirror in “goat.”

“Wha-a-a-a-at do you want for brea-a-a-a-akfast?” Josie asked.

“E-e-e-e-eggs.”

In the hotel restaurant, the maître d’ smiled and said, “Buongiorno, little goat girl! I hope you had a nice sleep.”

“Meh-eh-eh-eh.”

“We did, thank you,” said Josie with a smile to mask her insecurity.

He showed them to a table. As they waited for Prissy’s eggs and Josie’s coffee and croissant, Josie figured it would be best to stop the goat-talk and ignore the mask.

“Are you ready for the boat ride to the island?”

She nodded.

“Are you going to get daddy a present?”

She nodded.

“They have beautiful glass statues.”

“I want to get him a sea-she-e-e-e-ell.”

“All right. He will love that.”

“Why can’t he come wi-i-i-i-ith us?”

“He’s busy getting ready for the performance,” Josie lied.

This was the first time Prissy would be meeting her father face-to-face. Josie was thrilled when Hugo took her up on her suggestion that she and their daughter travel to Venice to meet him and hear the concert, where he was first violin. He offered to pay for the trip, which was only right since she wasn’t in a position to afford it and he was. But, this meant she felt he had the right to set the agenda. And the agenda, with him—even though they would be there for four days—only included the concert and dinner afterwards. At 11:00 p.m., no less, when Prissy would probably be asleep. Josie was glad of that, as she wanted to have Hugo to herself and gauge if there was any chance at a reunion.

When the eggs came out, Prissy lowered her snout into the plate.

“Prissy! No!”

Josie leapt out of her chair, came around to the other side of the table, and wiped the scrambled egg off the mask with a napkin.

“If you won’t take that thing off, you have to lift it up and put the fork underneath it like this—”

“No!” Priscilla shouted, making other diners look. “I’ll do it myself!”

“All right. Do you need help? Do you want me to hold it up?”

“No,” she growled under her breath, embarrassed that she was attracting attention.

The girl figured out how to get the eggs into her mouth by herself without taking off the mask. In fact, after the eggs, she ate the berries that came as garnish, leaves and all, and carefully finished her orange juice and hot chocolate, then took the remaining half of Josie’s croissant without asking, shoving the entire piece in her mouth. She looked in her mother’s eyes as she ground her teeth in a circular fashion, like a goat.

“More?” Josie asked.

Prissy nodded, and drank from the pitcher of cream that came with Josie’s coffee. Josie didn’t stop her. Back in Narragansett, she had all she could do to get her skinny daughter to eat one spoonful of anything at a meal.

Directly from breakfast, they headed to where the concierge said they could hire a water taxi to Murano. After haggling, Josie knew she had gotten a rotten deal, but she tried not to care—they were travelling on Hugo’s dime. She had to concentrate on staying happy and relaxed. This was a long-deserved vacation, yet she was full of nervous anticipation. She wanted to leave behind her menial “survival” job at the supermarket, her aging mother, her penury, and her canvases full of seascapes that no one wanted to buy. She was so prolific she had to tear from the frames the finished canvases that didn’t or wouldn’t sell and use them as drop cloths to catch spills from more artwork. The floor of her studio—built off the side of her parents’ beach house—was probably 10-deep with used canvases. She didn’t know what she was protecting anymore with the drop cloths, or whether she was symbolically trampling her unfulfilled dreams.

After the boat launched, the smiling captain—who spoke perfect English—said he would tell them the fairy tale about the goat-faced girl. Josie thanked him, but Priscilla ignored him, silently leaning forward in the bow, hairy nose to the wind, like an epic heroine on her way to a dangerous adventure.

“A poor man, he had twelve daughters. He had been injured in the fields and could not find work, so the family could not buy food. While wandering along the river one day, thinking about jumping in, the man was approached by a five-foot lizard that said it would provide food and money for his family if he gave the lizard his youngest daughter, Renzolla, with the white dress and the pretty blond hair. The man’s wife encouraged him to surrender the girl. After all, maybe it was a good lizard and would be kind to her. And, at least 11 of her 12 daughters would be fed. Desperate to care for his family, the man agreed. He tricked young Renzolla, saying they were going to the seaside. Instead, he brought her to the lizard’s old, dark castle in the woods, covered in vines. She screamed in fear, but the lizard grabbed her in its claws and shut the door, leaving the father with enormous wealth, but also with the voice of Renzolla screaming in his ears forever.

“The lizard cared for Renzolla and wanted the best for her, so the lizard brought her up in the manner of a princess. Eventually, however, this training made Renzolla think she was better than the common people she came from.

“One day, as you can guess, a prince came by, having heard of a fine and beautiful young woman living in the mysterious old castle. When he knocked on the door, the lizard transformed into her true self: a beautiful fairy. It ends up, the fairy had been the victim of a wizard’s anger when she rejected his love because he was ugly. The angry wizard had therefore transformed her into a lizard. To break the spell, the fairy needed to convince a young woman to accept a homely man as her husband.

“The fairy admitted the prince, who, thank goodness, was ugly (which was why he needed to go looking for a wife in scary castles), and he fell in love with the beautiful Renzolla instantly. The fairy gave Renzolla an enormous dowry, but Renzolla didn’t want to marry an ugly prince. She had to be dragged out, screaming curses at the fairy who had been so generous. The fairy, who still had her pride, showed Renzolla the spite the wizard had shown her. After the fair Renzolla had been veiled for the journey to the Prince’s palace, she turned the girl’s face into a goat’s face.

“When arriving at the palace, the prince lifted Renzolla’s veil. His once-fair princess stared back at him with her rectangular eyes, horns, floppy ears, and hairy snout. Renzolla opened her mouth with the large teeth and complained, “Meh-eh-eh-eh!”

“The prince was horrified, but he was a good prince and although he couldn’t stand to look at her, he didn’t have the heart to cast her out. So, he sent Renzolla to the spinning room with a maid and told them to card ten bundles of flax each. The maid completed her chore obediently, but the ungrateful Renzolla threw her flax out the window. ‘This is pea-a-a-a-asant’s work!’ she complained. Renzolla then panicked, fearing the prince would cast her out on the street, so she slipped away and rode back to the fairy, who, taking pity on the hideous girl, magically produced a bolt of beautifully spun flax for Renzolla to bring back. This kept her in the prince’s good graces, but he still would not look at her.

“The prince then gave both Renzolla and the maid dogs. The maid gave her dog excellent care and much love, but Renzolla, in a fit of rage, said, ‘I didn’t a-a-a-a-ask for a dog!’ and threw the dog out the window. When Renzolla looked out the window at the dead dog’s body, she felt a pang of guilt and again rushed to the fairy’s castle to beg for help.

“But instead of the fairy, she found the old wizard. Because of the fairy’s restored beauty and purified heart, the wizard had come back to her. The wizard held a mirror to Renzolla’s face to show her what she looked like to the rest of the world, and told Renzolla to beg the fairy’s pardon.

“Renzolla obeyed, begged forgiveness, expressed gratitude, and the fairy restored her lovely face and brought the poor dog back to life. The prince fell in love with Renzolla again, not only for her altered face, but for her altered heart, and they lived happily ever after.”

They had arrived at the dock. “What do you think of that story?” Josie asked Prissy as the captain moored his craft.

Prissy still stood sentinel, and simply said, “Meh-eh-eh-eh.”

No doubt jockeying for a large tip, the captain helped Priscilla out of the boat, squatted so they were eye-to-eye, and said to her, “I know there is a good-hearted princess behind that mask. It was a pleasure serving you, my lady.” He then kissed her hand. “And I hope one day soon, the fairy will give you back your beautiful face.”

Priscilla unexpectedly shouted “No!” and took off down the dock, disappearing into the crowd.

“Priscilla!” Josie called. “Come back here, now!”

She fumbled through her purse for euros to pay the captain.

“No worries, lady,” he said. “It’s an island. You can’t lose her.”

Josie shoved a fistful of bills into his hand and ran down the dock. Priscilla was nowhere in sight.

~ ~ ~

Will Josie find Prissy? Will Prissy ever take off that mask? How will the encounter with Hugo go?

Read Chapter 2

The Pestilence

by Ruth Apolonia Zamoyta

Once upon a time all the families had to stay inside their houses or apartments for one year. They played card games, baked bread, played hide-and-seek, and video-chatted with their friends and grandparents who were living inside other houses. Some families prayed together every night, other families watched an old movie together or acted out a play. Older people helped younger people with their schoolwork, and younger people taught older people how to play video games. When one person would look out the window and see the flowers blooming and hear the birds singing, they would smile, but then cry. Their family members hugged them or gave them an ice pop and said, “Some day we will be like the birds, again. Free. We’ll smell the blossoms and touch them to our cheeks.”

One day that time came. Everyone around the world opened their doors at the same time. One family saw another family across the street, or across the hallway of their apartment building, standing in their doorway. One person took a step out, and then another person. Soon children were darting out, screaming with joy. The grown-ups did the same. They hugged and cried and talked and planned. Some immediately went to their gardens to plant vegetables. Others ran to the museums and coffee shops. Others entered the doors that had not opened, and tended to the dead.

3.18.20

The End

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Hopper

Chapter 3

by Ruth Apolonia Zamoyta

Hopper dropped the bottle and ran in the light of the stars, down the beach, hopped the cold, slim inlet, till the sand narrowed and he saw in the brush a pup tent. His head was spinning and he wasn’t thinking straight, if he ever could. He thought the tent would be a good hiding place, and didn’t once wonder would he fit. But in he dove anyway, right into the lap of Marley McGee.

“Hey Hop,” said she.

He didn’t know why she was here. He said, “Hey.”

“Do you know what I sometimes think about?”

He didn’t know that she could think about anything. He just lay in her lap and looked up at her shadow and said, “What?”

“That spot at the edge of McCauley pasture, where you go from the road through the cut in the brush and patch of tamaracks, and then, pow! It opens into a field of tall grass and corn flowers and Indian paintbrush and Queen Anne’s lace and little daisies and flowers I don’t know the names of, and there’s that big ol’ oak in the center of the field, and, my, when the sun hits ya, and the wind’s softly rustling the grass and you hear the odd bee or little brown bird—I’d like to lie in that field again and look up in the clouds and forget there’s any other space or any other time but that moment.”

He didn’t know why he wasn’t scared. She paused. It was his turn to talk. He didn’t know what to say but he knew he had to say something, and what he really wanted to say was, Can I kiss you?, but was that even possible or right?

“Did you ever do that?” he asked.

“Yeah, once. With Bitty. A cricket jumped on his chest and I rested my head in the cup of his shoulder and the cricket sang us a song for such a long time the sun went down and the clouds lit up like they were on fire.”

Hop felt down. He didn’t know about Bitty and her. “Bitty’s out there, ya know.”

“He’s forgot about me, and that’s all right.”

“I haven’t forgot about you.”

“Maybe that’s why you found me here.”

“Can I kiss you?”

“OK.”

He propped himself up with one arm. As his face drew closer to hers, he felt all the lines he was crossing. Her lips were soft and warm and wet, like a real girl’s would be. Her tongue went into his mouth, so he ventured to enter hers. He didn’t know what to do with his hands, and then—

“Hahhh-per! Hahhh-per!” The sweep of a flashlight, the voice of his mother. Marley vanished like that, but he was happy.

~ ~ ~

Now, four years gone, Hop curled into the day-glo pup—the same one from graduation night?—no one ever knows who these tents belong to. He smoothed his lips ’round the rim of the bottle of Beam (now empty) to lick the last sting. He breathed to the rhythm of Huck’s snores, flinched at each knock of Ohm’s axe upon the fallen fir, and dreamt of leading Marley McGee to the skirts of the McCauley pasture. “Lovely,” she’d say, then splay the white crepe of her dress with the strawberries, and squat right down in the long grass and daisies.

Then Bitty rubbed into the pup. A wet palm slithered up Hop’s chest, curled the Mobil smock up and over his neck and head. His belt clicked open and his jeans slid down.

“What you doin’?!” Hop asked the naked silhouette near the flap the pup, the final flames of the fire spiring behind him.

“Let’s go to the bluff,” Bitty whispered, and tried to lug the giant out of the tent.

“Ok. Ok.” Hop slid out and stood up. His head swirled. His pants dropped. He stepped out of them and followed Bitty through the woods, popping twigs and crushing huckleberries, swinging through beeches and stubbing their feet on roots till they reached the dark side of St. Jude.

They stood there, naked, on the top of the bluff and looked down. Thirty feet below the lake lapped against the stone. The moon puffed a breeze that hop felt in his hair—on his head, chest, and down below. Thunderheads began to show in the glow of the moon. Far out, a yellow lantern rocked in the waters that started to bubble and shimmer.

“Probly someone trawlin’ for trout,” said Bitty, looking at the light. “They better head home.”

St. Jude moaned, moved by the dark stare and rushing air of the impending storm. The putter of a freeboard. The light grew nearer. Hop saw the chapped, heavy frown of his mother in the swing of the lantern.

“This is how she drowned,” Hop said to Bitty, as they stood there looking down the bluff.

“Oh shit, Hop. I wasn’t thinkin’. I shouldn’ta brung you here.”

“I wasn’t talking ’bout my mom.”

“Who then?”

“Marley McGee.”

Bitty had to search his memory. “That was high school, Hop.”

“She came to me.”

“No shit. When?”

“At the graduation party.”

Bitty looked at him with fear and incredulity. “What’d she say, Hop?”

“She remembered that time you two were in McCauley field.” Hop could see the time and place wash over Bitty’s face as it flickered in the cloud-swept light of the moon. “She said there was tall grass and wild flowers, and the two of you lied there listening to a cricket on your chest.”

Then Bitty believed. “Yeah, I remember that day. Then what’d she say?”

“Then I kissed her.”

“Holy fuck!” Bitty’s face lit up, with the moon and a smile. He slapped Hop’s back in that good-job style men use. “Your first kiss was with a ghost! Was it good?”

“Yeah.” Hop smiled.

“C’mon, Hop, before the heavens open up!” Then Bitty leapt off the bluff.

“Hahhh-per! Hahhh-per!” As Bitty hit the lake, her boat spilt, her form curled up like a droplet of mist and lifted into the big, white moon, and then the vault doors shut before it. Thunder. Hop plugged his nose and jumped.

The End

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Hopper

Chapter 2

by Ruth Apolonia Zamoyta

Clouds moved in and the night stayed warm. Hopper looked up in vain for the moon as Chuck trucked toward Tupper. He looked down at the only thing he could see—the pavement in the glow of the taillights—as a breeze ran up his neck and through his crew. Then a girl flew onto his lap.

“Y’mind, Hop?” shouted Marley McGee in the wind. “I’m tired of squatting.”

Hop dropped his cavernous jaw which she took as acquiescence.

“This rusty truck’ll make my dress all messy,” Marley confessed.

Hopper gaped at the fluff of white crepe on his lap, studded with embroidered strawberries. Though it was dark, he knew they were strawberries ’cause he was always staring at Marley whenever she was within view, and tonight, in the gym, was no exception. He sat back and enjoyed the weight of her limbs, and the shimmering trim of her slim bodice, and her bare arms holding her hair in place, and the sound of crepe draped in the wind like a hundred egrets’ wings.

Huck cut the lights. The engine stuttered, coughed, and died, and the truck floated into the dirt elbow with a bump and an “Umph!” from Marley. Huck and Ohm jumped from the cab and pushed the truck forward by the doors as Bitty steered up a muddy slope and through a tight arcade of Scotch Pine. Hop felt the needles comb his crew and smelled the pitch with one nostril, Marley McGee with the other. She sunk her head into Hop’s chest so the fine pine teeth wouldn’t drip sap in her hair. She lay in his lap, looked up and smiled—as far as he could see in the red glow of the police lights at the checkpoint a chest-pass away.

The young men slowly and quietly heaved the truck through the mud and leaves, slopping through mosquito hatcheries, whipped by branches flung back by the windshield, shimmying not stepping, so their shoes wouldn’t suck the mud. Ten minutes later the red lights faded and the truck hit pavement. Huck and Ohm slid into the cab and floored it down the highway to St. Jude.

Huck turned into the dirt road to the lake and parked in the sandy shoulder out of sight of the highway, like a dozen other cars before him. As soon as the engine cut, Marley leapt over the side and disappeared in the woods like a frightened swan. Huck, Bitty, and Ohm slid out of the cab. Hopper lugged his legs over the side of the bed and followed them into the grove of white pine, with its carpet of soft needs and random roots masked by the moonless sky. Without a flashlight or cigarette lighter, the young men walked with their arms stretched out in front, so as not to bump into a trunk, towards the faint music of The Dead:

She’s got everything delightful
She’s got everything I need
A breeze in the pines and the sun and bright moonlight
Crazy in the sunlight, yes, indeed.

St. Jude, freckled with fires, vibed to the music and the shiver of a June night. Beer balls bounced from clique to clique and pup tents wagged, flashlights spiraling within. June Marie, the Homecoming Queen, Carnival Queen, Student Council President, and Most Likely to Succeed, was crowning Ohm with the dome of a beer bong, and two naked figures raced from shore, screeched, joined, and splashed under.

Hop thought he saw Marley, shoeless, flutter away from the flame like a moth. He started to follow but was stopped by Huck’s eerie smile, the fire in his eyes, and the clutch of his outstretched arm.

“Hey, Hop, this is what your ol’ lady warned you ’bout,” and drew a bottle of Wild Turkey from the neck of his best flannel button-down.

“Lemme pee first.” Hop broke from his grasp and turned towards the woods.

“No, Hop. Ya pee after!” Huck thrust the bottle into Hop’s hand, clutched his shoulders, spun him round, and led him to the fire.

“Hop-per! Hop-per! Hop-per!” Everyone chanted but Marley who was nowhere to be seen.

“Hop! I see you made it past lean, mean Betty Jean. That’s a swell lookin’ liter of old Jim Beam.” Poo-tang popped an Ol’ Swills and knocked it back. Hop saw the warm brew sizzle in the crook of his lips. “Go on! Take a drink! Let your ol’ woman know what you think.”

“Drink! Drink! Drink!” the graduates circled round, drew closer, chanting. Hop looked for Tuck, who was peeing on a dead trunk with Bitty and Ohm. Hop held the bottle to the fire. In the hot flames behind the liquid gold he saw his mother’s eyes, heard her voice echoing through the valley at dinnertime: “Hahhhhhpper! Hahhhhhpper!”

He opened the bottle and took a swig. When he lowered it, she was still there. “Hahhhhhpper! Hahhhhhpper!”

Hopper dropped the bottle and ran in the light of the stars, down the beach, hopped the cold, slim inlet, till the sand narrowed and he saw in the brush a pup tent. His head was spinning and he wasn’t thinking straight, if he ever could. He thought the tent would be a good hiding place, and didn’t once wonder would he fit. But in he dove anyway, right in the lap of Marley McGee.

~ ~ ~

Is Hop’s mother busting the party? Will she find him in a tent with Marley McGee? Or are these figments of his imagination? Tune in Thursday for Chapter 3!

Read Chapter 3

Hopper

Chapter 1

by Ruth Apolonia Zamoyta

Hopper’s marshmallow bubbled up to a crust. He pulled it from the fire and slid it from the whittled twig with his teeth. Inside his mouth, so big he could fit his fist, his glands sucked the crust from the cream, so hot it numbed the roof. He scooped water from a tin bucket with a leaky cup of fingers and dunked it in his mouth. The crust flaked off and the water carried it down his throat like a dead woman’s dress, along with the white-hot lava of marshmallow. Hopper gasped as it burned its way down. He smacked his lips in the sticky residue and smeared stray droplets of water into his chin bristles.

“Hey, Hop!” Chuck chucked the second bottle of Beam into Hopper’s lap. He pinched his knees together in time to catch it, dug his skewer in the scalp of St. Jude, and lifted the whiskey to read its label. He knew what it said, but didn’t want to drink ’cause the sting that would cling to the burning roof of his mouth.

“What’s up, Hop?” Chuck derided from the other side of the fire. “See the old lady peerin’ and squirmin’ inside, like a worm in the bottle?”

Bitty and Ohm leaned back, snickered, and swigged.

“Is she naggin’ ya? ‘Hahhhh-per! Hahhhh-per!’” Chuck mimed how Hop’s mom used to croon his name from their porch at dinnertime when they were young and playing on the tracks. Then he changed his tone and shrieked, “‘Hopper! Hopper! Hopper!’” squawking like a crow that’s been shot in the wing. “‘Whiskey’s the dick of the devil! Don’t you go suckin’ on that bottle, boy!’”

Chuck hunched over Hop, pointed at his face, joined his brows in a frown, and kept squawking: “‘Hopper! Hopper! Hopper!’” Hop dropped his enormous jaw, squinted his eyes, and loosed from his mouth (the shape of a plow and as deep as a grave) a low, uncertain wheeze. “Haw!” Another “Haw!” followed, and soon the shrieks were smothered by the buzz of three mocking macaws and a happy giant.

Chuck tucked himself into his sleeping bag and plunged his hands down his jeans in search of his dip. “Go on, Hop. Seriously. A bit o’ Beam won’t hurt. You don’t need to listen to your mother anymore.” Chuck found his dip, twisted the tin, and tucked a pinch in the pouch behind his lip.

“Gotta break them chains,” said Bitty. Ohm sat quiet, his lip dripping wet brown dip onto St. Jude.

Bitty pitched the first bottle of Beam—now empty—into the fire and arose and sauntered down St. Jude bow-legged to the water’s edge. The Lake slept still while bats fluttered in and out of brush along its banks, catching flies. Bitty stripped, eased into the chill, leaned back, and breathed-in the sky. The moon lay white, her waters spread open, a silver membrane of clouds smoothing her over, shimmering her skin. The stars pulsed slow and brilliant, and Venus seemed bridled, about to bloom.

It had been Hopper’s first day pumping at Mobil, so the guys decided to take him for a fire and sour mash out on St. Jude. They were born in the same and only hospital in the same year, went through the same school together, graduated somehow, but Bitty, Chuck and Ohm had, over the years, moved up from the pumps to carburetors, while Hop was just starting up.

“Remember Malone, Hop?” Ohm asked.

“Open the bottle, Hop,” Chuck kept on.

“High scorer,” said Ohm.

“You owe it to yourself, Hop,” Chuck said. “Drink up.”

Awkward in his unnatural frame, Hop was more or less forced by Coach to play basketball in high school ’cause of his height, though he couldn’t get past the chest pass and instead of dashing at breakaways, he would clomp down the court in giant strides, making it quake. Coach taught him lay-ups for two weeks straight during lunch, till he couldn’t miss. Indeed, he only needed to lift six inches for his fingers to tip the rim.

Hop would head home after practice without showering, so the rest would get undressed, turn the water on, stomp around the communal shower and “haw!” and try to stuff their fists in their mouths like Hopper would do when goaded. Meanwhile, Hop would be clopping snow off his boots on his porch, refilling the wood stove, spraying his crotch and pits with the Right Guard he bought behind his mother’s back, and scanning the sports pictures in the Enterprise before his mom got home from St. Lucy’s Swap Shop. She didn’t even know he was playing basketball.

With Hop, the team won their first game in five years. But it was a late game in Malone, forty miles from home. Russ the bus driver left him off first at his driveway, but everyone knew it was too late. As Hop stomped in, he could already smell the stew and see his mother with her long dress and thin gray hair curled in a bun, hands on her hips, brow crossed, asking where he’d been and railing on him something fierce, saying sports led to sinful mischief, and they move your heart farther from God. Sure enough, next day Hop’s mom accompanied him to school and sat in the main office with her white pocketbook in her lap, kids passing left and right looking at her between the bells. When Coach showed up, she took him into the vice principal’s, scolded him, and took Hopper off the team. The team was crushed. On the bus home with Hopper the day they beat Malone, they laughed and smoked and ate cake and chanted “Hop-per! Hop-per!” and cursed and wrestled all in fun, but now they just sighed in the red bus glow, bit their lips, spit dip or ate chips, or just slept because they lost again.

Four boring high-school years disappeared at graduation, like they were never meant to be. Hopper evaded his mother who remained standing in the stands while five hundred sweating relatives followed the recession into the gym lobby. Amidst tears, hugs, camera flashes, and the unzipping of gowns, returning them to the bin for next year, whispers traveled from lips to ears of the seniors that there was a party at St. Jude and that there was an elbow of a dirt road blazed sixty years ago by bootleggers along an Indian trail that circumvented the drivers’ checkpoint.

“Old lady lettin’ you go to the lake, Hop?” Chuck whispered as he tucked his robe into a baggy.

“I won’t ever ask her.”

“Aw, c’mon, Hop. You’re the man of the house, ain’t ya?”

Hop thought about it, then said, “What they hay? Haw! Haw!”

“There’s room in my truck. I’ll meet you there.”

Hopper tingled with guilt. His cheeks grew pale and prickled with heat as he wove through the crowd in the lobby. He squinted so he couldn’t see to his right, where the bleachers were, inside the gym, supporting the weight of one old, small, frowning woman. Hopper, his jaw hung low, as though with the weight of a dead fist, finally reached the exit, descended the stairs, walked through the cigarette screen to the parking lot, his ears tuned to the oinking behind, “Hopper! Hopper! Hopper!” Chuck’s truck was chugging before him. Hop jumped in the back and grasped its steel handles as it hopped over the speed bumps and sped away.

Clouds moved in and the night stayed warm. Hopper looked up in vain for the moon as Chuck trucked toward Tupper. He looked down at the only thing he could see—the pavement in the glow of the taillights—as a breeze ran up his neck and through his crew. Then a girl flew onto his lap.

~ ~ ~

Who’s the girl? What will happen at St. Jude? And will Hopper’s mom find out? Make sure you free-subscribe, and check your email on Monday for Chapter 2!

Litwin and the Swan

by Ruth Apolonia Zamoyta

Edith Litwin lived in Tamarack Junction just before the tracks. She was 5’2”, had mousy-brown hair like a torn head of lettuce, and eyes the color of Listermint. She’d been gibed all her life, perhaps because of the Coke-bottle glasses that made her eyes look owlish, or the way the bristles on her crown were pulled against their cowlick by that paperboy cap she wore, or perhaps because of the nickname she told everyone to call her: Lit the Clit.

Russ the bus driver assigned particular seats to each kid the day after the macaroni fight, but Litwin was the only one who sat in hers. It was the second seat on the right. Todd Drake, the trapper with wind-burnt skin, wore those jeans with the hole in the crotch to school one day, and since his girlfriend was out with the pox, everyone knew Edith would attack. Plunged her finger deep in the hole, she did, and licked her teeth and cackled. “Just the right size, there, eh Lit?” Drake said. “I’ll get you back, you vixen!”

Then there was the time Litwin shot at ol’ Rascal with her 12-gauge when he was tied to the clothes line. The barrel was crooked, so Rascal sustained no injuries, but Drake, his owner, locked Litwin in the shack and fed her Gaines-burger. So, Litwin shot a bunch of red squirrels and left them in the back of Drake’s pick-up. So, he threw her three-speed Western Flyer off the trestle, into the lake. So, she went around to all his traps down the old railroad bed and sprung them. She waited to see what he’d do next.

One night after the Library Club read-a-thon Lit rode the late bus home. Russ left her off last by the side of the road and she tramped down the gravel toward the house set back in the fir.

A sudden blow: two beating wings tripped her to the dirt and held her hopeless breast. He caught her nape, caressed her thighs; she staggered beneath the white rush. How could she wedge her palms between his snowy down and her checkered blouse? She loosened her thighs as a shudder engendered a passion for this strange, indifferent heart.

Edith consented to be the basketball team’s mascot so she could ride the late bus home each night to her white-hooded lover in the firs. They met and they reveled and they danced and dipped. They nibbled on earlobes, nipples, navels. She would laugh until he flew away, then walk home to a smokey nook in her attic bedroom. She forgot the times the seniors buried her to the neck in an upright position, or when she found a toad in her French onion soup in the cafeteria, or when the girls in the locker-room peed in her plastic soap dish.

In school she’d muse, alone, on the sill. Between classes and at lunch she’d study the birds outside the window, ruminate, write something. Scott Lafray still stole her glasses and flung them in the snow, and Michelle Devere still served volleyballs into her head in gym, but Lit would merely shrug, walk away, and dream of the pillow breast and onyx eyes that would envelop her body and soul that night.

That night of the solstice Lit left Russ the bus driver with a smile and tramped down the ice toward the house in the firs. But no lover met her. She called and stood and numbed. She curled her toes inside her sneakers, blinked away a tear, and entered the woods. She searched for her lover, watched for tracks in the fluff, walked through the hemlock grove, slithered over the petrified marsh, crossed the railroad bed towards the powerline. By the crusty blueberry bushes she saw a stagnant sack of white flesh. Lit drew closer, noticed a swan caught by the bill in a fox trap, and cried for her feathered glory.

THE END

Check your email on Thursday for the next story of the uncanny.

Where the Spirit Moves Her

Chapter 8

by Ruth Apolonia Zamoyta

Toni let go Diarmuid’s hand. Neither of them was happy. And he rode away on his bicycle towards the path of moonlight on the bay.

~ ~ ~

It was driving rain the next morning, as Toni stood in front of Yeats’s grave in the cemetery at Drumcliffe Church, reading the famous epitaph:

Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by

She was the only one there. Her car was parked on the side of the road, still running to fill it with heat. It would be useless trying to paint in this weather, and anyway, she had to go straight to the airport. Her flight was in five hours and it was a three-hour drive, but anything could happen—especially in Ireland. Her belly was full of Theresa’s breakfast, and her memory full of the woman’s lingering hug. Theresa had packed her a loaf of home-made brown bread to bring back with her as a souvenir.

Toni heaved with tears. For Yeats? For Diarmuid? For herself? For the no-one awaiting her in America? She wasn’t sure. When the heaves subsided, she ran back to the car in her soaking espadrilles and the cheap, thin vinyl raincoat Theresa had given her. The Aran sweater kept her warm underneath.

She put the car in gear and continued north. She had to make one, short detour, which Diarmuid had told her about last night: a drive-by of a flat-topped mountain called Benbulben.

Before she knew it, there was the steep mountain in the distance—unmistakable. Even if she had never heard the funny word “Benbulben,” she would have picked that name for the trapezoidal mountain in front of her, with its majestic, stout, and suddenly green appearance, as the clouds parted above it and a rainbow appeared on its side. There was a break in the rock walls that lined the road, so she pulled over and gazed at it for a minute or two from inside the car, remembering the story Diarmuid told her of a love triangle between the great ancient warrior Fionn mac Cumhaill, the confident princess Gráinne, and her crush, Diarmuid. Fionn wanted to wed Gráinne but he was very old and she fancied young Diarmuid, one of his soldiers, much better. They fled from Fionn and had many adventures, until Diarmuid was killed by a boar, Gráinne died in grief, and the two were buried in a cave in Benbulben.

Toni remembered Diarmuid’s eyes as he told the tale, looking as though he really believed it. She smiled and started on her journey back home.

~ ~ ~

By the time she reached the airport, it was pouring again, and the thoughts of what she must do when she got back came down as thick as the rain: change her money back into dollars, pay the girl who was watching her cat, check her credit card statement, ask ConEd if she could postpone the month’s utility payment. Maybe ask her sister for money. Again. She wished she could stay here. Maybe make a living selling her paintings? That would be dumb, she quickly decided.

She gave back her rental car, which ended up to be 50 pounds more than she expected. She had two hours before her flight, so decided to argue about the excess. The man behind the counter readily yielded, surprisingly, so she felt she could splurge a few pounds on a book and an Irish Coffee before going through customs. She chose a novel, Firefly Summer, from the sundries shop, then sat at the bar and parked her suitcase beside her.

She had just finished the second chapter, checked her watch, decided it was time, and taken her last sip, feeling the hot coffee and whiskey warm her body as it ran down her throat, when Diarmuid pulled up a stool. She threw her arms around him and he squeezed her.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, hoping he would reply, “Coming with you.”

“I have something for you.” He pulled the Yeats book out of his old canvas newsboy bag.

“Where did you find it?!”

“My curragh. Last night when you couldn’t find it, I went and checked before heading home. Thanks be to god I found it before the rain started.”

“And you drove all the way down here?!”

“Well, you left as soon as the sun was up. I went to Theresa’s at half six but she said you’d already left.”

“I hate being late.”

“Yeah, and lucky for me. It gave me time to get down here before you’re lifted up to the friendly skies.”

She gave the book back to him. “I told you I wanted you to have it.”

“And I told you I have a hundred of them back home.” He pushed it back.

“Well, alright. I guess it’s a better souvenir than Theresa’s brown bread.”

They stood staring at each other. Eventually there was an announcement her flight would be boarding soon.

“I better go,” Toni said. “I still haven’t gone through customs.”

“It was nice to be able to see you again.”

“A very nice surprise. Thanks for coming all the way down.”

“You’ll write?” The pain in his eyes pierced her heart.

“I said I would.”

“You sure you don’t want to stay?” His eyes glistened.

She smiled. “That’s a crazy idea, you know that.”

“What do you have going for you over there, in America?”

She thought for a second. “A job. My apartment. My cat. …”

“You don’t have me.”

She squeezed his arm. “I told you I’d write, so … who knows what’ll happen?”

“I started to save for a trip to America.”

“That would be nice. I could show you Flushing.”

“I gather it’ll be a couple of months before I have enough.”

“I will wait.”

“Will you?”

“Yes, I will.”

They kissed sweetly. She felt loved. It was a nice feeling. She walked away from him without another word and without looking back. She had to, or she might lose that nice feeling.

~ ~ ~

On the plane she opened the Yeats book and ran down the table of contents. She saw “Under Benbulben,” turned to the page, and read the poem. It was more difficult to understand than the others she had been reading, and she made a mental note to go to the library next weekend to do some research. What was clear were the simple townsfolk, the reassurances of reincarnation, the meddling Irish spirits, and the artists creating all these things from their imaginations. She thought of her paintings, in particular the one of Diarmuid. It was in her suitcase, safely under the belly of the plane. The plane was taxiing to the runway as she neared the end:

Under bare Ben Bulben’s head
In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid,
An ancestor was rector there
Long years ago; a church stands near,
By the road an ancient Cross.
No marble, no conventional phrase,
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:

Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!

Toni felt the plane surge forward and its wheels lift off the earth. She was headed home.

THE END

Check your email next week for a single-episode story of a girl who meets something—or someone—in the woods at midnight.

Where the Spirit Moves Her

Chapter 7

by Ruth Apolonia Zamoyta

Toni stood on the shore and waved as Diarmuid left in his boat. She sat down, dipped her paper in the water of Lough Gill, felt the surge, and began a painting of Diarmuid in his curragh, rowing toward Innisfree.

~ ~ ~

She could hear the music and stomping and gabbing from a half mile away. Theresa had told her the Irish School was a short walk from the B&B, but Toni now realized “short walk” was a subjective term. She was glad to have chosen her espadrilles and not her Candies. Indeed, whenever she looked inside her suitcase and saw the white patent-leather 3-inch pumps, she thought, what a waste of luggage space. At last, she saw the school. Adults were milling about outside and children were playing tag. She felt a little nervous.

As soon as she stepped foot inside, she saw a trio of fiddlers on a platform fiercely sawing their bows across the strings, a few dozen people dancing a reel in the center, and as many wall flowers, men on the left, women on the right. And there was Diarmuid, as though he had trained his eyes on the door, waiting for her. He approached. He made her feel special.

“You found the place alright?” he asked.

“I’m here, ain’t I?”

“You want to dance?”

“You don’t waste any time, do you?” Diarmuid blushed, but she continued, “I don’t know how to do whatever it is they’re doing.” She pointed at the dancers in the center.

“Oh, don’t let that worry you. All you need is a good partner to show you what to do.”

Toni knew instantly she was in good hands. She let Diarmuid push and pull her gently through the formation of strangers. When it was time to change partners, he let her go, and she wove in and out of the boxes and lines, touching so many hands, spinning around to find herself face-to-face with a strange woman or a strange man, always smiling and laughing, and somehow ending up face-to-face with Diarmuid at the end of the song. And when the next dance started, and the next, which was more of a two-step, he held her close and moved her around the room in circles, in flow with the tide of dancers. She averted her face, but glanced at his eyes once or twice. He was like a machine moving her around the room; it was like this was his job and he applied himself to it. His arm felt strong and sure on her back. The song ended and he twirled her around. She told him she needed to rest, but the music started up again and he said, “Oh, just one more.” She couldn’t resist.

When the band started packing their fiddles and the townsfolk stepped into the night air, taking refuge from the stifling heat they had created inside, Toni and Diarmuid left the hall, hand-in-hand.

“What’ll we do next?” Diarmuid asked her eagerly but innocently. “Would you like to go to Connolly’s down the road there?”

“I really need a beer.”

“Did you drive here?” he asked.

“No, walked. And I don’t know if I can walk anywhere right now. My legs are shot.”

“I’ll give you a lift. Here we are.” He picked a bicycle off the ground and helped her onto the handlebars. She rested her feet on the front fender and they bumped along the cobblestones to Thomas Connolly’s.

~ ~ ~

“I’ve been afraid to ask,” Diarmuid said when he brought back a pint and a glass of Guinness to the table they had claimed upon entering. “When do you head back to the States?”

She still had to shout because the same fiddlers had come to the pub and seemed to be playing even louder. “Tomorrow.”

He was instantly deflated, like a heart balloon shot by an arrow. “That’s why I was afraid to ask.” Then he looked up and said, “Oh, Jaysus!” as three men approached and joined their table.

“Don’t you fellas have somewhere else you can sit?” said Diarmuid.

The obvious leader of the pack looked at Toni and said, “You’re a pretty one.” The other two snickered.

“Wish I could say the same.” Toni’s defenses were up.

“Look, Dana, either you and your boys leave, or we will,” ordered Diarmuid.

Dana remained fixed on Toni. “Now you know my name, even though the good Diarmuid here has failed to properly introduce us. What do you call yourself, now?”

“I wouldn’t waste any of your remaining brain cells by giving you new information.” Toni wasn’t going to play nice. The other two men said, “Oooo!” surprised by her comeback.

Diarmuid stood up with his drink. “C’mon, Toni. There’s room at the bar.”

“Toni!” said Dana. “Ain’t that a bloke’s name?”

“And where I come from, Dana’s a girl’s name.” Toni stayed put.

“I like you, Toni. You got a lot of sass for a lass. With a little liposuction in your ass you’d be a ten.”

Diarmuid pushed Dana over in his chair. He hit the floor. “Shut your dirty mouth and leave her alone!”

Everyone on that side of the pub stopped talking and looked at them, but the music kept playing on the other side—it even seemed to accelerate. Dana got up and immediately lunged at Diarmuid. The two grappled for a few seconds, but other men in the pub pulled them apart with warnings like “Hold your horses,” “Not in front of the lady,” and “Take it outside, will ye?” Dana’s thugs, essentially cowards, stood looking at their leader with their hands in their pockets. Toni was laughing. The thick black stout had gone to her head.

“Sit down, Diarmuid,” she called. “They started it, so they can get their fat asses outta here!”

The brawny man who was holding Dana obliged, and pushed him towards the door. His useless thugs followed him out.

“You ok Diarmuid?” a woman asked in passing.

“I’m fine, but Dana’d better be watching his back from now on.” The talking resumed and Diarmuid sat down.

“Thanks for defending my honor,” Toni joked.

“Sorry you had to encounter the town eejits. But what he said was true: you are a beautiful woman. Just the way you are. And it’s a pity you’re leaving tomorrow, but I guess that’s how things go.”

“Yes, that’s how they go.”

“Will you write me if I gave you my address?”

“If you write me back.”

“You bet I will. And I’ll write you the loveliest letters. You won’t want to put them down.”

She put her hand on his leg under the table and he held it with his. They stared at each other quietly a moment, and then Toni couldn’t help but yawn.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, but I’m just totally wrecked.”

“It’s late,” Diarmuid said. “And you have a long trip back to Shannon tomorrow. Can I give you a ride to the B&B?”

~ ~ ~

It was a full moon and a clear sky littered with stars. As she bumped along the road on the bicycle handlebars, Toni looked out at the dark bay, with a path of moonlight stretching endlessly to the west. They rode straight towards the path of moonlight, stopping when they arrived at the B&B.

“Well, here you are,” Diarmuid said as he steadied the bike and offered Toni his hand to help her down.

“Thank you, Diarmuid. This really was a grand finale. Pub brawl and all!”

“I’m really glad I met you, Toni, if only for a day.” He kissed her like a young boy might. She smiled.

“I have something for you,” Toni said. She went into the back seat of her car and retrieved the watercolor she had painted of him at Lough Gill. “I want you to have it.”

“You told me about your paintings but you didn’t tell me how gorgeous they are. Is that me in the curragh?”

“Yeah, that’s you.”

“Then I can’t accept it.” He handed it back. “Because then you’ll have nothing to remember me by.”

“Well, then, here.” She went back in the car and gave him the painting of Coole Park with the swans.

“Wild swans at Coole,” Diarmuid said.

“You know it.”

“Why do you think you found me at Innisfree? I’m about the biggest fan of W.B. there is in Sligo.”

“Hold on a sec,” she said and ran to the front door of the house. “I’ll be right back. Don’t move.”

“I won’t.”

Theresa was up, watching television.

“Did you have a nice time at the céili?”

“Hold on, Theresa. I gotta get something and I’ll be right back to tell you about it.”

Toni ran up the stairs to her room. She looked everywhere, but couldn’t find the Yeats book. She came back down and asked Theresa if she had seen it, but no. She went back outside, where Diarmuid was looking at all her paintings by the dome light of her car.

“These really are brilliant, you know.”

Toni looked in the front of the car, the back, the trunk, but couldn’t find the book.

“I’m sorry, I was going to give you that Yeats book but I can’t find it.”

“No worries. I have just about everything he wrote back at home.”

“But this one was special.”

“Why’s that now?”

“Because it led me to you.”

There was a tear in her eye. He kissed her again, more like a man. After a few moments, Toni stepped back. He handed her a slip of paper.

“My address. You’ll write, like you promised?”

“I will indeed.”

She let go his hand. Neither of them was happy. And he rode away on his bicycle towards the path of moonlight on the bay.

~ ~ ~

One last day for Toni in Ireland. Check your email Tuesday—St. Patrick’s Day—to see how her adventure ends!

Read the Next Chapter

Where the Spirit Moves Her

Chapter 6

by Ruth Apolonia Zamoyta

“Next stop Innisfree, whatever that is,” Toni said, and started down Knocknarea leaving Queen Maeve’s grave behind.

~ ~ ~

The next two days were marked by steady rain. On the advice of her hostess, Theresa, who claimed to know the weather patterns better than any meteorologist, Toni delayed her trip to see the island of Innisfree on Lough Gill. Instead, she donned “wellies and a mac” borrowed from Theresa and visited the megalithic tombs at Carrowmoor, then Lissadell House, former home of two sisters who were friends of Yeats. He had visited the house frequently and had written about it and them.

There was a fee to take a tour of Lissadell and they didn’t take credit cards. Fortunately, the bank in Sligo worked with Toni to get her New York bank to wire money, and then they gave her three hundred dollars’ worth of cash. It left a lump in her throat, because little would be left when she returned to New York, but she just swallowed the lump and forgot about it.

It was worth the two pounds admission. After taking the tour of Lissadell and learning about how the two sisters, Eva Gore-Booth and Constance Markievicz, entertained Yeats and other cultural elites there, and how these vestiges of Anglo-Irish gentry were soon brought down to the planet by the bloody Easter Rising of 1916, the tour guide caught sight of Toni’s book.

“That’s a rare one,” she said. “I haven’t seen this one before. Mind if I take a look?”

“No, go for it,” Toni replied.

“It has no publication history. I’ve never seen anything like it. Where’d you find this treasure?” the guide asked as she thumbed through the pages.

“A púca gave it to me.”

“Then it’s a fine fair púca you have yourself. And a literary one, too. You ought to hang onto him. Listen to this.” She read from the book:

“The light of evening, Lissadell,
Great windows open to the south,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.

“Yeats was talking about the view out that window, there.”

The tour guide nodded at a large southern-facing window that looked out at the bay. It was rainy and the view was obscured, but Toni guessed this was how it usually looked to the occupants and guests, and how it was meant to be seen: misty and mysterious.

“Which one was the gazelle?” Toni asked.

“That’d be Constance. She was quite a looker.”

“The artist? Who did the sketch in the ante room?”

“That’s your woman. And the one who you saw with the pistol in the uprising.”

“Did she do any watercolors?”

“In fact, she did. Why do you ask? You paint, yourself?”

“I’m trying my hand at it.”

The other tourists had left, so the guide opened a cabinet with an old key, slid out a small, unframed watercolor wrapped lightly in tissue, and set it on a table.

“It’s the only watercolor of Constance’s we possess. The rest are gone to auction.”

It was undoubtedly a picture of Knocknarea, with four scrawny trees in the foreground, their trunks twisting in human-like movement. As had happened so often on this trip, Toni rued the fact she didn’t own a camera. But she did have her paint set.

“Could I paint a copy of this?” she asked boldly.

“Oh dear,” said the guide. She checked her watch. “The next tour’s in four hours—”

“That’s loads of time. I’ll be quick. It’s just so that I remember it. I swear I won’t make a mess.”

“I suppose we could set you up in the kitchen. We use that as an office, you could say.”

“Thank you. I really appreciate it.” Toni reached in her bag and pulled out her box of paper. She took one sheet out and looked out the window towards the bay. The rain was coming down steadily. “I’ll be right back. I gotta get my paper wet, first. In the rain.”

~ ~ ~

On her third day in Sligo, Toni woke to warm, glorious sunshine hitting her in the face. She packed her bag, ate her full Irish breakfast—with kidneys this time, but she had to eat what she could get—and set out on her way to Lough Gill.

It was about a half-hour drive to the point on the shore where she could get a view of the small, uninhabited island of Innisfree. She was able to drive right up to the point. It was still early in the morning and there was no one around. She sat down on a rock where she was sure thousands of others had sat, and proceeded to do what she was sure thousands of others had done: read aloud “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.”

“I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.”

She looked up, expecting to find a púca. Nope. She looked out at the island: a lump of green bushes. “No one’s growing beans there,” she said to herself. But she knew it was a metaphor for wherever Yeats thought he’d go when he died and didn’t have to witness war and human cruelty. Then she saw a boat emerge from behind the island, about the distance of two football fields from shore. As the boat approached, she saw the man rowing it, sitting with his back to her as he stroked.

“A curragh,” she said to herself, remembering the name of the style of boat from the inflight promo video. She watched until he came to about 10 feet from where she was sitting. Then he turned around, hopped out of the boat in his rubber boots that went up half his thigh, and said, “Hello there.”

He was about her age, she thought, and pretty handsome with salt-and-pepper hair that flipped upward from under his cap, and a perpetual smile complete with dimples. He tied up the boat on a sapling and approached her. He was carrying a bucket of fish that were still alive, flopping around in their little bit of water.

“I’d try to sell you these salmon but you don’t look like you have access to knives and a cooker.” He extended his hand. “Diarmuid’s my name. Pleased to meet you.”

She took his hand. “Could you say that again?”

“You can just say Dermot if it’s easier. And you are?”

“Toni.”

“You from the States?”

“Queens. Are you a púca?”

“No. I’m a man.”

~ ~ ~

Diarmuid also had salad sandwiches and a thermos of tea. He shared them with Toni and they talked for over an hour, mostly him asking her questions, as he lay on his side in the grass.

“Want a ride in the boat? I could show you the island up close and personal.”

“Sure, but, um, my pants’ll get wet if I—”

“Easily fixed.” He scooped her up and carried her to the boat, setting her on a seat in the bow. Then he went back to get his fish and her bag, untie the boat, and they were off.

Diarmuid was silent as he rowed. She watched his muscular arms flex as he pulled the oars toward him. When they were nearly touching the island, he stowed the oars and they drifted.

“Don’t know what your man Yeats was thinking when he thought he could keep bees here.”

“I’m pretty sure it was a metaphor for heaven,” Toni responded. “His idea of ultimate peace or whatever.”

“Being trapped on a brambly rock with a thousand bees? Sounds like ultimate hell to me.”

“What’s your idea of heaven?”

“Oh, when I think of that, I picture an old cottage with a peat fire and a pipe and a cat, and me and a woman who loves me just rocking in our rockers reading old books. How about yourself?”

“Blue water, hot sand, a palm tree, and bottomless piña coladas.”

“The two aren’t incompatible, you know. I might get bored from time to time in my cottage reading books. You heard of the céili tonight?

“What’s a kay-lee?”

“Oh, it’s just a dance at the Irish school in Sligo. Would you like to go?”

She looked into his eyes and saw something there. “That ‘woman who loves me,’” Toni asked. “Is she a thing or what?”

“Afraid I haven’t found that part of heaven yet.”

Toni tingled up and down. “Sure. I’ll arise and go.”

They both laughed and he started rowing her back to the rock with more fervor. “Then I better get back so I can take my monthly shower. You don’t want to dance with someone smelling like a fish.”

~ ~ ~

Toni stood on the shore and waved as he left in his curragh. She sat down, dipped her paper in the water of Lough Gill, felt the surge, and began a painting of Diarmuid in the curragh, facing her, getting smaller and smaller, as he rowed towards Innisfree.

~ ~ ~

Tune in Thursday to see what happens at the céili.

Read the Next Chapter

Where the Spirit Moves Her

Chapter 5

by Ruth Apolonia Zamoyta

The boy took Toni’s hand, then peeled away on his bike, followed by the dog with the rag on its tail. Toni jumped into her car and slammed the door. The skies opened and the rain came down.

~ ~ ~

When she arrived in Sligo, an old inn with a “B&B” sign caught her eye, so she pulled into the driveway and booked a room. The inn was positioned on a hill, which was nice, because her window looked onto a rolling valley. In the distance she saw a geological formation. She couldn’t tell if it was a mountain or a hill. It looked like there was a building or something on top of it.

“That’s Knocknarea,” said her hostess, who had snuck in through the open door and was looking over her shoulder. “It’s a mountain, not a hill. You should visit while the there’s a break in the rain.”

“Do you drive up it?”

“You have to walk, I’m afraid, but it’s a gentle climb.”

“What’s that thing on top? Is it a monument or something?”

“It’s called a cairn. It’s Queen Maeve’s grave.”

“Who’s Queen Maeve?”

“Queen of Connaught, about 3,000 years ago.”

~ ~ ~

After finishing her block of cheese from the night before, Toni set out for Knocknarea. She parked at the foot of it, where she determined it was definitely a hill, not a mountain. It was completely devoid of trees—just the ubiquitous grass, grazing sheep, and miles of stone. There were three other cars in the lot, and she saw a few people in the distance, making their way up or down.

It was an easy climb, but it made her white sneakers brown with mud. When she got to the top, she found herself alone. She walked the circumference of the cairn, a 40-foot pile of stones, and thought of stealing one, in defiance of the warning sign.

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” she heard as she bent down and opened her hand to grab a stone. It was a young man about 30, very tall and clean shaven, his hands in the pockets of a trench coat. His thin brown hair, like a tuft of long, soft grass on the top of his head, tossed in the wind. Of course, he extended his hand.

Toni smiled and took his hand. “Hello,” she said, as though they were conspirators.

“Hundreds of Americans have trafficked rocks from Queen Maeve’s grave to America, you know, and they all died hideous deaths.”

“How do you know?”

“Don’t tempt fate. If you happen to remove that one critical rock, her spirit will escape and god knows what will become of the world. You hungry?”

“Why do you keep asking?”

He used his pocketed hand to slowly open the right side of his trench coat, revealing a blue cellophane package in the breast pocket. He took it out and showed her the label: “Hobnobs.”

“Have you tried these yet?” he whispered and looked around furtively, as though they were stolen Rolexes.

“No. What are they?”

“The most delicious bickie you’ve never tried. Help yourself.”

Toni took a cookie from the open sleeve. It looked like oatmeal. She took a bite.

“Mmm. You’re right,” she said with her mouth full, and started to hand him back the package.

“They’re yours. I have plenty myself.” He opened the left side of his trench coat and there were six pockets full of Hobnobs packages.

“Thanks.” She started on her second, not realizing how hungry she was.

“So, have you found yourself yet?”

“I don’t know why you guys keep saying that.”

“Did you read about old Queen Maeve in your book, there?”

She took her book out.

“Page 42.”

“The Old Age of Queen Maeve.” She started reading quietly. It was a story-poem that started off with the aging queen pacing in her home at night when everyone’s sleeping.

“Read that part aloud,” said her púca.

“Though now in her old age, in her young age
She had been beautiful in that old way
That’s all but gone; for the proud heart is gone,
And the fool heart of the counting-house fears all
But soft beauty and indolent desire.

She could have called over the rim of the world
Whatever woman’s lover had hit her fancy,
And yet had been great bodied and great limbed,
Fashioned to be the mother of strong children;
And she’d had lucky eyes and a high heart,
And wisdom that caught fire like the dried flax,
At need, and made her beautiful and fierce,
Sudden and laughing.”

When Toni looked up, of course he was gone. He hadn’t told her where to go next. She sat down on the ground and held her knees, and looked out from the top of the hill over miles and miles of rolling fields until they met the sea and disappeared. She touched her face. She was once beautiful, but not fierce. Laughing, yeah, but she didn’t know what Yeats meant by sudden.

She read the rest of the poem. Maeve looks down at her husband and remembers him when he was younger, and remembers her lover, too. “I guess that’s what we old people do,” Toni thought, “Remember lovers; not have them.”

Then a god, Aengus, came to Maeve, speaking through her sleeping husband’s mouth, and asked her to help him steal a girl he fell in love with. She readily agreed and seemed to have fun doing Queen stuff again.

At one point Yeats addresses someone but she didn’t know who he was talking to. She felt left out of that part, but not the part about an old queen who lost her beauty but not her power, her talent, or her pride.

She turned the page to the next poem: “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.”

“Next stop Innisfree, whatever that is,” she said, and started down.

Tune in Monday to see who Toni meets at Innisfree and where he invites her.

Read the Next Chapter

Where the Spirit Moves Her

Chapter 4

by Ruth Apolonia Zamoyta

She had to paint. She pulled her watercolor set from her bag and dipped a paper in the puddle. Again, a surge of energy. Toni looked up at the sky with its vermillion and gold, and painted till the sun was so low she could barely see. Then she washed her brush in the puddle, closed her set, and started into town to find a cheap block of cheese for dinner.

~ ~ ~

What shall I do with this absurdity—
O heart, O troubled heart—this caricature,
Decrepit age that has been tied to me
As to a dog’s tail?

Toni had gone to bed early after biting off the better part of a block of cheap but delicious cheddar cheese she got at the Spar market, feeling very full and economical. She had risen with the sun and headed out after an enormous breakfast which she’d have paid ten pounds for, alone.

Now she was sitting on a stone wall of a ruined cottage a few strides away from Thoor Ballylee, where the Burren púca had directed her to go. She had already met the docent inside the tower, who, in a monotone voice, had recited her script. It was an ancient Norman defensive tower, part of the former estate of Lady Gregory, Yeats’s financial patron, friend, and fellow mystic. He had restored the tower and lived in it during the summers. Frank would never have come here in a million years—he’d be on a tour bus or something doing a pub crawl.

What shall I do with this absurdity—
O heart, O troubled heart—this caricature,
Decrepit age that has been tied to me
As to a dog’s tail?

She read the opening lines of “The Tower” again and they finally made sense. She read the rest of the poem, which seemed to ramble a lot. Then she looked up and there he was—not Yeats, but her púca, in the shape of a young boy rounding the corner of the old cottage on his bike, followed by a Jack Russell Terrier with a strip of ragged cloth tied to its tail.

The boy dropped his bike and stared at her while the dog sniffed around.

“Uh, hi,” Toni broke the silence.

“D’ya have somethin’ to eat?”

The little ruffian was about eight or nine and had coarse black hair, clothes too small for him, shoes too big for him, dirty legs, and two skinned knees.

“What is this? Penn Station or something?” Toni said with a laugh, knowing the kid wouldn’t get it. She dug in her purse and found a box of Tic Tacs. She took one and gave him the rest. He opened the container, sniffed it, chugged all the Tic Tacs, and chewed them on one side of his mouth. They crackled like he was chewing rocks.

“That all you got, ma’am?”

“Are you hungry or something?”

“Just checkin’ to see if you are. What do you think o’ the poem?”

“Sounds like Yeats is getting old and thinking of all the people he’s met, or maybe invented in his poems, and he’s had a pretty decent life but he’s still sad. I mean, doesn’t everyone think that way when they get old?”

“I don’t know. I’m eight.”

“Yeah right,” she said ironically. “You’re probably ten thousand and eight.”

“What’s tied to your tail?” He asked her. She thought of Frank. “What’s the kettle at your heel?” Frank. “Does the imagination dwell the most/Upon a woman won or a woman lost?”

“You know poems pretty good for a kid.”

“If you’re lost, it’s you, yourself that’s lost. In other words, you lost yourself, because you said you’re lost, not that you lost something.”

“I did lose something.”

“A lover?”

The silent affirmative.

“It’s always a lover,” he continued. It sounded strange coming from a little child’s mouth. “And it’s always a good thin’, ’cause then you’ll find yourself again and you won’t be lost.”

She wasn’t following him, but had the feeling he was right. “So, how do I so-called ‘find myself?’”

“Count to ten and say, ‘Ready or not here I come.’” With that, the child rocketed over the wall, bounded across a stream, and disappeared into the woods. She assumed this was his way of vanishing, so didn’t count to ten, didn’t say ‘Ready or not,’ didn’t pursue him in the woods.

Instead, she followed a brown butterfly along a path lined with buttercups, Queen Anne’s Lace, and fragrant white and purple clover toward the stream. She heard a raven croak, looked up, and saw fast-moving, whispy clouds and silent seagulls. When she arrived at the stream, a lone heron took flight. The stream was dark green with flashes of foam and particles of light blinking on the surface. She was sure Yeats had seen them too, maybe even drank them. Elms just beyond the stream applauded in the wind, escalating to a roar every few minutes.

She dipped a paper in the stream and felt that familiar surge, then set it lightly on the grass to dry while she dotted her paints with water and stirred them with her brush.

She looked back at the ruined cottage and painted the old stone walls and the ivy spilling out of the chimney where smoke used to rise, groping at the cracks between the rocks. She painted the twisting vines reaching over the top of the farthest wall, where a roof had once been. She painted the ash trees in the distance and the grass in the foreground, looking up at the subject and down at her paper, up and down, up—

“Now shall I make my soul,
Compelling it to study
In a learned school
Till the wreck of body,
Slow decay of blood,
Testy delirium
Or dull decrepitude,
Or what worse evil come—
The death of friends, or death
Of every brilliant eye
That made a catch in the breath—
Seem but the clouds of the sky
When the horizon fades,
Or a bird’s sleepy cry
Among the deepening shades.”

This also sounded so strange, coming from a nine-year-old’s mouth. The words were beyond his years, but the idea and sentiment, too.

Plop!

She looked back down. The sky had dropped water on her painting. The sky was suddenly dark gray. She had to get to her car.

“Go to Sligo!”

“Where?”

“Sligo!”

“What’s that?”

“Where Yeats is buried!”

The boy took her hand, the peeled away on his bike, followed by the dog with the rag on its tail. Toni jumped into her car and slammed the door. The skies opened and the rain came down.

Toni is getting closer to Yeats, closer to life, and closer to finding herself. Check your inbox Thursday to see who she meets in Sligo and what he shows her.

Read the Next Chapter

Where the Spirit Moves Her

Chapter 3

by Ruth Apolonia Zamoyta

Toni screamed. A young man with a long red beard looked around the edge of the dolmen and reached inside.

She realized he just wanted to shake hands, so she did.

“Are you a púca?” she asked.

“Now, why would you say a thing like that?”

“A leprechaun?”

“Never believed in ’em.”

“A fairy?”

“I beg your pardon, ma’am, my inclinations I keep to myself.”

“Sorry. I didn’t see you. You seemed to come out of nowhere.”

“Mind if I join you?”

She made room inside the little dolmen. He was skinny and small and wore hiking boots and a backpack. Probably a student.

“Do you know what that poem’s about, now?” He pointed at her Yeats book, which she was just reading aloud.

“Um, these fairies are trying to lead a little kid away to somewhere, like the Pied Piper or something?”

“It’s basically about an infant death, trying to make sense of it.”

“Oh. Geesh.” She felt comfortable with this guy, whatever he was.

“But the thing you have to note is these are water fairies, they are. You see, they get their power from the lakes and streams and sea and even puddles, like that one, there (he pointed outside the dolmen) and even tears.”

“I thought I felt something, you know, when I dipped my watercolor paper in the lake at Coole.”

“You paint, do you?”

“Yeah, my girlfriend gave me a paint set.”

“Now, why’d she go and do a thing like that?”

“To help me get over a breakup.”

“I think she was onto something, there. Hey, it’s been nice talking to you. Make sure you visit Thoor Ballylee next.”

“What’s that?”

“Page 124.”

She turned the pages and found “The Tower.” She started reading aloud:

What shall I do with this absurdity—
O heart, O troubled heart—this caricature,
Decrepit age that has been tied to me
As to a dog’s tail?

“Well, that ain’t too encouraging—” Toni looked up, but he was gone. She crawled out of the dolmen and looked around. It must have been a mile visibility in every direction, with nothing but rocks, some manipulated into formations thousands of years ago. The sun was getting lower and flaring up the sky in bright red and orange, but no púca anywhere to be seen.

She had to paint. She pulled her watercolor set from her bag and dipped a paper in the puddle. Again, a surge of uncanny energy. She looked up at the sky with its vermillion and gold, and painted till the sun was so low she could barely see. Then she washed her brush in the puddle, closed up her set, and started into town to find a cheap block of cheese for dinner.

Read the Next Chapter

Where the Spirit Moves Her

Chapter 2

by Ruth Apolonia Zamoyta

Toni bent down and dunked the small, thick, white cotton sheet into the waters of Coole Lough. The swans instantly took flight, and she felt a sensation coming from the water through the paper, like someone reaching out their hand. She knew she must go where the spirit moved her.

~ ~ ~

Not bad, she thought, as she held her finished painting up against the actual scene she had just captured. She gathered her raincoat and walked back to the car, gently resting the wet painting on the back seat to dry before heading out. She was famished.

Once again, as she drove through the gothic arches of cypress, suddenly an opposing car appeared, and she pulled her car to the right instead of the left. This time, after she stuck her head out the window and apologized, she added, “And are there any, like, delis around here or something where I can get a sandwich?”

“You want to be headed to Gort,” the driver—an old man with sideburns and a tweed flat cap—told her with a twinkling smile. “Any pub will do, but I tend to favor Dicey Riley’s. At the end of this road just follow the signs.”

Toni thanked him and pulled back onto the road.

~ ~ ~

When she got to the crossroads in the center of Gort, there were three pubs encircling a large statue of St. Patrick in a manicured wedge of grass. Dicey Riley’s looked dicey indeed. It was ominously small on the outside, with only a door and two windows which were colored glass so she couldn’t see in. She settled on a larger pub with plenty of windows: Johnny Walsh’s.

It didn’t look unlike the “real” Irish pubs in Queens, but everyone had an accent, not just the wait staff. There were two women with babies at the bar, and a boy was doing what looked like tap dancing to fiddle music piped in over the speakers. A few older men egged him on. A teenage girl with blonde braids and copious freckles indicated a bench and table near the window, handed Toni a sparse menu, and asked what she’d be drinking.

Toni looked towards the bar and saw a Guinness poster with a toucan. “Guinness is good for you.” She remembered that Frank had said he wanted to drink “real Guinness.”

“What kind of whiskey you got?” she asked. She was more of a cosmo drinker, or pinot grigio, but wasn’t sure the girl would know what those things were.

“Oh, the usual,” the girl replied and stood there waiting for an answer.

“What do you recommend?” Toni asked.

“Black Bush. There’s no better.”

“Then I will have a Black Bush and … hold on a second …” she quickly scanned the menu, deciding she would order the cheapest thing. “And the roast beef sandwich.”

Toni waited for the girl to ask what she wanted on it. Toni was dreaming of provolone, lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise on a hard roll. But the girl spun and walked away. Toni thought that was odd but figured she could lose a few pounds anyway. She reached into her handbag, pulled out the Yeats book, and flipped through the pages, reading the titles.

The waitress came back with a rocks glass half full of the golden liquid—no rocks—and one slice of roast beef between two slices of buttered bread.

“This sandwich was ten pounds?!” Toni thought to herself. Then she said to the waitress: “Is there an American Express office anywhere around here?”

“Ohhhh, I don’t think so,” the girl replied like it was the worse news she ever had to deliver. “You’d have to go to Dublin for that.”

“Do you take credit cards?”

“Sure, we do. Would you like the bill now?”

“Yeah, sure, wait—here, put it on this.” Toni handed her a Mastercard.

“That’s a gorgeous old book you got there,” the waitress said, seeing the Yeats and running her fingers over the gilded words on the cover.

“Some guy at Coole Park gave it to me, then disappeared. He had black curly hair, kinda chubby, about 50, thick glasses? Ring a bell?”

“Can’t say I know anyone like that. Did you kick a mushroom?”

Toni looked at her quizzically. “A mushroom?! I guess I could have—”

“You might have yourself a púca.”

“What’s a pooka?”

“They’re spirits that live in mushrooms and take different shapes and offer guidance to the lost. Would you say you’re lost?”

Toni considered that. She was lost, but it didn’t seem to bother her. “Fact is, I have no clue where I’m going, really. I just flew in this morning from New York and figured I’d make it up as I went along.”

“I’d say go along with his advice—could be great fun. But you’ve got to watch him. He might be up to no good.”

The girl was serious. Toni decided to wrap up the conversation. She hadn’t eaten since last night on the plane: pretty terrible sausages and beans.

“Well, if you happen to see Mr. Púca, tell him, hey sorry, I tried to look for him to give him his book back, but it’s mine now.” She winked and picked up her sandwich.

~ ~ ~

When Toni downed the last bit of whiskey, jet lag descended on her like a slab of limestone. A new waitress appeared with her receipt: a middle-aged woman with a blond bob and a condescending eye.

“Excuse me, I need to find a bed and breakfast. Do you know of any around?” When Toni and Frank had been planning the vacation and looking at brochures, Toni had thought the idea of a B-and-B sounded fun, but Frank had said, “No way I’m staying in a house of someone I don’t know.”

“That’s why I came over,” said the waitress. “Looks like you could use a nap.” She handed Toni a slip of paper with handwritten directions on it. “Here’s the best one around, and reasonable too, just ten pounds.”

Hmph—her sandwich was the price of a hotel room. Toni stood up, grabbed her bag, and looked at the slip. “So, I head out that way?” She pointed out the window.

“That’s right. And make sure you visit the Burren after your nap. It’s close by. Should be a beautiful sunset.”

“What’s the Burren?”

“You’ll see.”

The woman looked into Toni’s eyes and extended her hand. Toni thought that was weird, but took her hand, said thanks.

“You’re welcome.”

Toni nodded, then headed out.

~ ~ ~

She woke up in a single bed with a wrought iron headboard and a white duvet with printed lilacs. It was an attic room, with a slanted wall out of which was cut a dormer window. Toni got out of bed and checked the time on her watch: 8:00. She didn’t know if it was a.m. or p.m. She looked out the window and saw a jagged bay with small fishing boats, cottages, and docks; and beyond them the vast Atlantic with a sun getting very near the horizon. She thought, “Atlantic. West. Sun is setting, not rising. Must be 8 p.m.”

She opened her suitcase and pulled out the warmest clothes she had: a long-sleeve T, jeans, white peds, aerobics sneakers, and her sweater—or, rather, jumper. She grabbed her bag and her book, walked downstairs, got directions to the Burren from her hostess—a young mother feeding twin infants at the table—and set out.

~ ~ ~

“Is this it? A field of rocks?” she thought to herself. She seemed to be the only one at the national park. Indeed, it was getting late. It was already after 8:00. People were probably just going to sleep, not just waking up. There were no trees, so the place looked like a scene out of Star Wars: an endless, eerie desert of limestone. The sun lit up the stratus clouds in pinks, yellows, and oranges against the blue sky. She braced herself against the wind and followed an arrow on a sign toward a dolmen. She had learned from the in-flight promo video that dolmens were ancient altars or tombs or something that were made of rock and looked like pi symbols. After walking a hundred yards or so, she saw it: a flat slab of limestone about 12 feet square propped on top of two other narrow slabs standing on their ends, like a house of cards.

“How did anyone lift this thing 6,000 years ago?!” she said aloud as she approached. She walked around it and decided to go inside. She sat on the cold stone and wondered how many dead bodies had been placed there thousands of years ago. She wondered if it was actually a tomb for one person, like the pyramids in Egypt, and if she was sitting in the final resting place of a king or queen. The wind made a spooky whistling noise through its cracks, but she felt oddly comfortable. She took out her Yeats book and opened to a random page and read aloud:

“Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.”

“’The Stolen Child.’”

Toni screamed. A young man with a long red beard looked around the edge of the dolmen and reached inside.

Who is this? Another púca? Where will this one lead our love-forsaken traveler? Make sure you free-subscribe and check your inbox Thursday to find out!

Read the Nest Chapter

Where the Spirit Moves Her

Chapter 1

by Ruth Apolonia Zamoyta

Toni bent down and dunked the small, thick, white cotton sheet into the waters of Coole Lough. The swans instantly took flight, and she felt a sensation coming from the water through the paper, like someone reaching out their hand. Was she lost or was she free? All she knew was that she must go where the spirit moved her.

~ ~ ~

Not bad, she thought, as she held her finished painting up against the actual scene she had just captured. She gathered her raincoat and walked back to the car, gently resting the wet painting on the back seat to dry before heading out. She was hungry.

Once again, as she drove through the gothic arches of cypress, suddenly an opposing car appeared, and she pulled her car to the right instead of the left. This time, after she stuck her head out the window and apologized, she added, “And are there any, like, delis around here or something where I can get a sandwich?”

“You want to be headed to Gort,” the driver—an old man with sideburns and a tweed flat cap—told her with a twinkling smile. “Any pub will do, but I tend to favor Dicey Riley’s. At the end of this road, just follow the signs.”

Toni thanked him and pulled back onto the road.

~ ~ ~

When she got to the crossroads in the center of Gort, there were three pubs encircling a large statue of St. Patrick in a manicured wedge of grass. Dicey Riley’s looked dicey indeed. It was ominously small on the outside, with only a door and two windows which were colored glass so she couldn’t see in. She opted for a larger pub with plenty of windows: Johnny Walsh’s.

It looked like the Irish pubs in Queens, but everyone had an accent, not just the wait staff. There were two women with babies at the bar, and a boy was doing what looked like tap dancing to fiddle music piped in over the speakers. A few older men egged him on. A teenage girl with blond braids and ear-to-ear freckles indicated a bench and table near the window, handed Toni a menu with practically nothing on it, and asked what she’d be drinking.

Toni looked towards the bar and saw a Guinness poster with a toucan: “Guinness is good for you.” She remembered that Frank had said he wanted to drink “real Guinness.”

“What kind of whiskey you got?” she asked. She was more of a cosmo drinker, or pinot grigio, but thought the girl might now know what those were.

“Oh, the usual,” the girl replied and stood there waiting for an answer.

“What do you recommend?” Toni asked.

“Black Bush. There’s no better.”

“Then I’ll take a Black Bush and … hold on a sec …” she quickly scanned the menu, deciding she would order the cheapest thing, no matter what it was. “And the roast beef sandwich.”

Toni waited for the girl to ask what she wanted on it. She was thinking of provolone, lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise on a hard roll. But the girl spun and walked away. Toni thought that was odd but figured she could lose a few pounds anyway. She reached into her handbag, pulled out the Yeats book, and flipped through the pages, reading the titles.

The waitress came back with a rocks glass half full of the golden liquid—no rocks—and one slice of roast beef between two slices of buttered bread.

“This sandwich was ten pounds?!” Toni thought to herself. Then she said to the waitress: “Is there an American Express office anywhere around here?”

“Ohhhh, I don’t think so,” the girl replied like it was the worse news she ever had to deliver. “You’d have to go to Dublin for that.”

“Do you take credit cards?”

“Sure, we do. Would you like the bill now?”

“Yeah, sure, wait—here, put it on this.” Toni handed her a Mastercard.

“That’s a gorgeous old book you got there,” the waitress said, seeing the Yeats and running her finger along its gilded lettering.

“Some guy at Coole Park gave it to me, then disappeared. He had black curly hair, kinda chubby, about 50, thick glasses—ring a bell?”

“Can’t say I know anyone like that. Did you kick a mushroom?”

Toni looked at her quizzically. “A mushroom?! I guess I could have—”

“You might have yourself a púca.”

“What’s a pooka?”

“They’re spirits that live in mushrooms and take different shapes and offer guidance to the lost. Would you say you’re lost?”

Toni considered that. She wasn’t exactly lost because she had nowhere to go. “Fact is, I have no clue where I’m going, really. I just flew in this morning from New York and figured I’d make it up as I went along.”

“I’d say he gave you that book for a reason. You’ve got to watch him. He might be up to no good.”

The girl was serious about the fairy. Toni decided to wrap up the conversation. She hadn’t eaten since last night on the plane: pretty terrible sausages and beans.

“Well, if you happen to see Mr. Púca, tell him, hey sorry, I tried to give him his book back, but it’s mine now.” She winked and picked up her very thin sandwich.

~ ~ ~

When Toni downed the last bit of whiskey, jet lag descended on her like a slab of limestone. A new waitress appeared with her receipt: a middle-aged woman with a blond bob and condescending eye.

“Excuse me, I need to find a bed and breakfast. Do you know of any around?” When Toni and Frank had been planning the vacation and looking at brochures, Toni had thought the idea of a B-and-B sounded fun, but Frank had said, “No way I’m staying in a house of someone I don’t know.”

“That’s why I came over,” said the waitress. “Looks like you could use a nap.” She handed Toni a slip of paper with handwritten directions. “Here’s the best one around, and reasonable too, just ten pounds.”

“Jesus, my sandwich was the price of a hotel room,” Toni thought. She stood up, grabbed her bag, and looked at the slip.

“So, I head out that way?” She pointed out the window.

“That’s right. And make sure you visit the Burren after your nap. It’s close by. Should be a beautiful sunset.”

“What’s the Burren?”

“You’ll see.”

The woman looked into Toni’s eyes and extended her hand. Toni thought that was weird, but took her hand and said thanks.

“You’re welcome.”

Toni nodded, then headed out.

~ ~ ~

She woke in a single bed with a wrought iron headboard and a white duvet with printed lilacs. It was an attic room, with a slanted wall out of which was cut a dormer window. Toni got out of bed and checked the time on her watch: 8:00. She didn’t know if it was a.m. or p.m. She looked out the window and saw a jagged bay with small fishing boats, cottages, and docks; and beyond them the vast Atlantic with a sun getting very near the horizon. She thought, “Atlantic. West. Sun is setting, not rising. Must be 8 p.m.”

She opened her suitcase and pulled out the warmest clothes she had: a long-sleeve T, jeans, white peds, aerobics sneakers, and her sweater—or, rather, jumper. She grabbed her bag and her book, walked downstairs, got directions to the Burren from her hostess—a young mother feeding twin infants at the table—and set out.

~ ~ ~

“Is this it? A field of rocks?” she thought to herself. She seemed to be the only one at the national park. Indeed, it was getting late. People were probably just going to sleep, not just waking up. There were no trees, so the place looked like a scene out of Star Wars: an endless, eerie desert of limestone. The sun lit up the stratus clouds in pinks, yellows, and oranges against the blue sky. She braced herself against the wind and followed an arrow on a sign toward a dolmen. She had learned from the in-flight promo video that dolmens were ancient altars or tombs or something that were made of rock and looked like pi symbols. After walking a hundred yards or so, she saw it: a flat slab of limestone about 12 feet square propped on top of two other narrow slabs standing on their ends, like a house of cards.

“How did anyone lift this thing 6,000 years ago?!” she said aloud as she approached. She walked around it and decided to go inside. She sat on the cold stone and wondered how many dead bodies had been placed there thousands of years ago. She wondered if it was actually a tomb for one person, like the pyramids in Egypt but a lot less classy, and if she was sitting in the final resting place of a king or queen. The wind made a spooky whistling noise through its cracks, but she felt oddly comfortable. She took out her Yeats book and opened to a random page and read aloud:

“Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.”

“’The Stolen Child.’”

Toni screamed. A young man with a long red beard looked around the edge of the dolmen and reached inside.

Where will Toni’s next stop be? And who will guide her there?

Read the Next Chapter

If It’s the Last Thing I Do

Chapter 2

by Ruth Apolonia Zamoyta

Bruce reached around the back of his chair and yanked the electrical cord out of the wall.

Off!

The book fell into his lap, opened to the center page, where there was a photo of the two of them the day of Jerome’s Confirmation. Jerome was 14. Bruce was smiling, Jerome was not. Lois had taken the photo. After the photo, Jerome had refused to get in the car and he punched his son for the first time, in the face.

Bruce slammed the book shut.

~ ~ ~

People stopped visiting, calling—or rather, he stopped answering calls. He stopped going to church. Once the pastor called and he picked it up. Just checking in—he hadn’t seen him in church. Bruce blamed his arthritis and said he was watching Mass on TV. The pastor asked if he wanted the eucharist brought to him. He said no: he should be back in church soon, after the flareup subsides.

He stopped going to the supermarket. After consuming all the prepared meals in aluminum trays that Lois had left him, Bruce discovered remnants of things in the refrigerator and pantry that got him by for a few days. He drank the remaining can of beer, cut off the moldy part of the cream cheese and put the rest on the gluten-free crackers left behind after the funeral. He scraped every bit of peanut butter from the jar with a spoon, and then all that was left were inedible things like flour, baking soda, vinegar, and mustard. So, he stopped eating.

~ ~ ~

On!

He knew by now that whenever he looked at the lamp, it would go on. One night, he turned it off, as usual, but instead of watching baseball or an old movie, he went to bed before the sun had even set.

In the middle of the night, Bruce had a nightmare about the war. He was firing an automatic rifle into a trench. When he did it for real, so many years ago, he saw the men, with their Asian faces, and told himself they were animals. It was the lie he had to tell himself in order to kill. But in his dream, the men were Jerome.

He woke up with a start. He was weary and cold, shivering. He got up, walked to the living room, and looked at the lamp.

On!

The light shone down on the book, again open to the page with the photograph. He sat in his chair. The leather felt cold against his damp undershirt and boxers. He opened the book to the first page and started to read.

~ ~ ~

I had an ordinary childhood, which is very sad—not that I had one, but that such childhoods are ordinary.

Before reading further, Bruce stopped to remember the few isolated happy moments that stuck in his memory vividly. He remembered cradling Jerome as an infant at his baptism party, while smoking a cigar and drinking Manhattans with his friends. He remembered holding the two-year-old’s hand as they walked along the beach in Narragansett. He remembered walking Jerome down the street when Lois was at the hospital having her miscarriage. When they got to the dead end, he made up a song about a sassafras tree. He remembered Jerome’s First Communion party in an Italian restaurant, Jerome’s grand slam and his teammates tackling him to the ground in glee, and Jerome sitting on the couch all day, tying knots to earn a Boy Scout badge.

He wasn’t surprised Jerome did not write about those moments. Perhaps he didn’t remember them. Instead, he wrote about Bruce taking away the dolls he came home with after playing at the next-door neighbor’s house, where there were both boys and girls. He related the feeling of trying to carefully peel off the tape Bruce had put on his mouth after he had said the word “fuck” in first grade. He didn’t even know what it meant. Bruce came by and ripped it off with one swift pull, taking some skin with it.

He numbered the times he was sent to his room when Bruce was drunk and couldn’t get out of his chair. He related the feeling of getting spanked with a belt through his jeans and the day he gave up trying to resist it. He described the humiliation he felt when Bruce, in front of his colleagues in the firehouse, made fun of his squeaking voice when it changed. He conveyed the terror he felt when Bruce threw him off a bluff into the water 20 feet below when he was too afraid to jump. Terror not of hurting himself when he hit the water, but of not having a protector, like a father was supposed to be. He recounted the time his father dragged him underneath the enormous whale effigy hanging from the museum ceiling when he was terrified it would fall on top of him. Bruce had constrained him with his arms, laughing, while Lois walked away in embarrassment.

Bruce felt a dull, intense pain spread across his chest, into his left arm. He looked at his flip phone, over on the buffet table. Then he looked up at the light and turned back to the book. He had gotten to the center spread. The childhood photos on the left were of Bruce and Jerome posing together at an amusement park, at a beach, and before Confirmation. Bruce was always smiling; Jerome never was. Bruce wondered if Lois had secretly given them to Jerome when he was writing the book.

On the opposing page were three photos: one of Jerome with “Chris,” the caption said, on vacation soon after Jerome dropped out of college; one of Jerome in what looked like group therapy at a facility; and one of Jerome hugging Chris, who was in a hospital bed. Bruce had 80 pages to go.

He turned the page to the next chapter: “Coming Out.”

The second and last time Bruce punched his son in the face was when they all got home from a visit with the high-school principal. Jerome recounted it vividly, making Bruce relive getting the call from the principal, his deathly shock at hearing about Jerome’s infraction, the blow in the living room (right over there), the guilt he felt seeing Jerome just stand there and not fight back, and the speed with which his hardened heart quashed his guilt.

Bruce looked up at the lamp sorrowfully. The pain was growing in his chest. He looked at his phone, then turned back to the book and turned the page. “Chris,” the next chapter read. The rest would be what he didn’t know about his son.

~ ~ ~

Chris, it ends up, was the boy he was caught with in the bathroom by the principal. Bruce had been too disgusted to inquire. Although Bruce made Jerome go to a staunchly Catholic college the following year, Chris would visit Jerome there frequently. When Jerome couldn’t take any more of the anti-gay sentiment, he dropped out, moved to the city with Chris, and Bruce never heard from him again. He had to learn from the college that Jerome was gone.

The next few chapters were about Jerome’s struggles with drug addiction over the next two years and losing Chris and many friends to AIDS. Nearly every paragraph alluded to how his childhood trauma prevented him from ever feeling happiness.

Finally, he turned the page to the last chapter: “Mother.” It was only then that Bruce noticed Lois had hardly been mentioned so far.

My father vilely abused me, and although some might say the war trauma was no excuse, I think it was a partial excuse. My father abused my body and spirit, but my mother betrayed my heart. And she had no war to blame.

Jerome went on to write about how he had written to Lois on the first day of every month for the two years he was gone: long letters recounting his challenges and achievements, sometimes containing photos. At first, he had asked her to write to him back or call him. After a few months passed with no response, he stopped asking anything of her but still sent his updates. He said his last letter to her was this chapter.

Bruce recalled it was Lois who always fetched the mail, even before Jerome left for college. Jerome knew it would be safe to write; Bruce would not see the letters. He was stunned that Lois never said anything to him about getting letters, and that he never saw any evidence, even during that painful week after the funeral when he sorted through all her belongings and gave them to the thrift store.

Then he continued to the last page.

When Chris lay dying, sweating, shivering, before he lapsed into unconsciousness, he begged me to call my mother. He knew how much she meant to me and how only she could comfort me. I picked up the phone next to his hospital bed and dialed. She picked up the phone on her end. She couldn’t have known it would be me.

“Mother.”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“Chris is dying.”

“I don’t know who Chris is and I don’t want to.”

“Have you read my letters?

“No. You should stop sending them.”

“Why won’t you talk to me?”

“What you’re doing is a sin.”

“It’s who I am.”

“It’s not who God made you to be.”

“Can you put that aside for a moment and just …love me?”

“…Not until you end this life you’re leading.”

And with that she hung up. And Chris’s skin-and-bones frame started shaking violently. His incessant coughs turned to gasps. His eyes went blank before he took his last raspy breath and I was left staring into the black, lifeless circle of his mouth, O.

Bruce closed the book. The pain in his chest seized him. He looked into the light and said, “I’m sorry.” Then he clutched his chest, spasmed, slid down the chair, and died. The bulb of the floor lamp blew. Poof.

The End

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