S H O R T
S T O R I E S

The Shovel and the Pearl

Helen Bella Belinda was an adventurous child, and she lived in the magical kingdom of Popp, which you have never heard of and neither have I, but there it was.  She had no Mama and she had no Papa.  She lived by her wits when she could find them.

So now it happened that she had offended the great Empe-roarer (that mean old horror), and he sent the skirted soldiers with their big, bare, sandaled feet and spears and they threw her on the floor before him and he yelled and sputtered and then paced and muttered, and at last he condemned her to maintain his zoo. And once he had decided that's what he would do, there was no getting through.  That was it.

So here she was, day in and day out.  She flung food to the terrible tigrrrs and leos and cleaned up the stinkies of the huge elefinkies with a shovel and a pail of sawdust. And then the next day it was the same.  And the day after that.  And there were no Sundays and there were no fun days, and it just kept going.  She sobbed at night in her grubby cell and her wits were no help.  None at all.

The birds in their cages would fly into rages and scream at her as she hunched on her stool eating tears and gruel.  She had to feed them first.  Through slitted eyes the terrible tigrrrs and leos lay and watched her as she did, with their trap-hard, fringed fur jaws drooped heavily on big, wide paws with hidden claws.  They stretched and got up when she approached, and she flung their food as fast and as far as ever she could, clanging the cage door shut and shooting the lock with a bang that did not frighten them.  And the huge elefinkies kept making more stinkies.  They all did, after all.  And with shovel and pail, she went in and cleaned up.  And it went on and on and on.

It went on forever.  And then one day as she bungled through the jungle with her stinky wheelbarrow to reach the beach where she could wade into the water and wash it out, she thought she heard singing.

That's right.  Singing.  Now who could be singing?  There was no one about.  There never was.  She bumped the barrow out of the dappled jungle darkness into the open sunlight of the beach and looked out over the cool lagoon where quick, rippling flashes of sun made the water appear to be laughing, and there she saw...

… some otters eating oysters.  Sleek and wet, floating on their backs and smacking the shells on their chests with the occasional rock. Some were being boisterous, and some were eating oysters, and some had their heads back and were singing pleasant and silly songs with lyrics that were half the time only syllables. What otters were doing here she could not fathom, because it was not a place where otters should be in a million years.

But there they were.

She waded into the thin waves with her stinky barrow and some of the otters turned their heads with cheerful interest.  One dived and then came up.  One might have waved or perhaps just shaken out a sandy shell.

“What are you doing here?” she said out loud.  “Otters don't belong...I mean...”  And then “Ouch!”  Because one of the number—she did not see which--had tossed away an oyster shell with a gesture of easy abandon, and it had lightly clunked her on the head.

She looked down, because you do tend to look down at something that has just clunked you on the head.  The shell had plopped into the water and was floating like a tiny boat, rocking on a wave that sloshed towards the sand.

Nestled inside against the shimmery nacre that lined it was a clean, pure, large, round, smooth, pinkly opalescent pearl.

She picked the wet pearl out carefully with two fingers and examined it.  It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.  She made a sound of wonder and delight.

“It's pretty, ain't it?” said a cheery voice very near.

“What?” she said and looked up.  She could scarcely believe it was one of the otters that had spoken, regarding her with friendly interest, paddling nonchalantly nearby with its sparkling whiskers dripping and its strong tail steadying it against the waves.

“Not just any pearl, sweetheart.  It's the Pearl of Perception.”

The otter dived and was gone, reappearing further out as the whole romp took off out to sea as capriciously as they had come.

Now Helen Bella Belinda did not trust a thing this precious to her skimpy pocket and so she took off her shoe and pushed the Pearl between her big toe and the next one.  She put her shoe back on, and it was not uncomfortable as she finished sloshing out the wheelbarrow and hurried bumpily back to the zoo, the barrow bouncing and banging down the jungle-tangled path.

So now, what to do? 

“Eat!  Eat!” screamed the birds.  She was startled.  Were those words?

“Eat!  Eat!” yet again.

So she did as she always did, in the screaming din pouring seed from the heavy bag into the feeding tin, while the harsh birds fluttered and flew.  Yeah, you're hungry, she thought.  Just a thought.  She kept going.

On to the terrible tigrrrs and leos as always, with the barrow now loaded with blood-smelly raw meat.  She flung in all the chunks and she clanged the door shut.

When they'd sated themselves, and padded off to be sleepy, she could shovel the stinkies, she thought.  Slosh off the smelly.  Back away.

One leo looked up, its jaws red from eating, turned and peered at her straight with its long, narrow eyes, growling softly.  It was odd, but she heard—or as if it had said: “Rather do it where it belongs.”

She was thinking, then, as she pulled out branch masses for the great elefinkies, Well, yes.  In the jungle, it would all be just dirt. And the plants would grow, and the rain would wash, and the jungle would feed as needed.

Oh, why me? she thought.  To slave like this day after day? I should turn them all free.  Let the jungle do this.  Not me.

But that mean old horror, the Empe-roarer, would send his skirted soldiers with their big, bare, sandaled feet.  They would hurt me.  They would kill me.  I would die.

I hate elefinkies, their stumps and their stinkies. big lumbering bladders, old houses with hoses, deep drinkers up their noses, meat-boulders with shoulders, filth sprinkled, thick-wrinkled, thud-trudging, wall nudging, ear-flapping, fly-slapping....

No.  But wait....

And then she remembered that she had between her toes the most beautiful Pearl that had ever been seen.  If she offered it to the Empe-roarer, would he release her? No, wait—she should swallow the Pearl. Aha! He'd never find it then. She should promise in three days she'd bring him the Pearl but he had to release her first.

So then would he take it and just kill her from spite?  Take it, then send her right back to this?

And so she was thinking and pondering and worrying as she came to the enclosure of the elefinkies and gathered up a great armful of leafy branches to pitch inside.

This was the moment when she was quite sure she heard someone say—quite distinctly, you must know, and in a high, clear, trumpet voice, but gentle in an unexpected way: “Now now, little person girl. And you with the Pearl of Perception.”

Quite startled, she looked into the enclosure where the ponderous elefinkies had gathered to tear off greens with their trunks and delicately stuff their mouths.

It was the very largest one that tilted its massive head and regarded her, pausing in its meal to speak:

“All properly Pearled and yet you don't see, don't perceive.”

Helen Bella Belinda could barely believe....  She shut her gaped-open mouth, and with hardly a voice to speak, softly managed to reply: “See what?”

The great elefinkie pulled out a bunch of green and, curling it trunkfully towards her mouth, paused to hold it suspended while she said: “All properly Pearled, and yet you don't see.  You are sad, you feel bad.  But perceive, little person girl, yours are not the only sorrows in this world.” She pushed the leafy tuft neatly into her mouth and ate it deliberately.

Helen Bella Belinda sat down.  She could scarcely stand at that moment.  The harsh birds in their cages were calling, “Out! Out!”  And the terrible tigrrrs and leos made low groans in the backs of their throats, moaning clearly, “We'd weep if we could.”  And Helen Bella perceived at last what she must do.

So, pulling off her shoe, she removed the Pearl from between her toes, and wiped it off.  Then she got up and opened first the cages of the birds, that burst out and up into the branches of the trees and into the sky; and then the enclosure of the elefinkies, who exited single file most ponderously and with dignity, and lastly, not without trepidation, though the great elefinkies were now standing protectively all around and beside her--she released the terrible tigrrrs and leos.

The big cats sprang forward—who knew they could move so fast?--and bounded straight into the shadow-tangled shelter of the jungle.  But one paused at the edge and turned.  It looked at Helen Bella Belinda and, narrowing its long, golden eyes, nodded once.

When Helen Bella Belinda came to the palace of the Empe-roarer (that mean old horror), she went straight in, as well she might when she was riding a great elefinkie and others were around her in quite a mighty entourage.  And so she came right up to the place where the Empe-roarer sat frozen in shock upon his throne.

The great elefinkie reached up with its trunk and eased Helen Bella Belinda down to the floor, and she walked up to the throne and then held out her hand.

“I have a gift for you,” she said.

T H E  E N D

Three Wishes

A sky of deep, many-layered darkness, the moon white and circular, ghostly glowing, spilling radiance.  A girl of fairy thinness stood between black trees, in garments light, not meant for journeying, without a cloak, and she herself as pale as the moonlight about her, careless of the tresses (as black as the night itself) that had come loose and tumbled, unruly, about her shoulders. A baying of dogs in the distance receded and then was silent.

She could go no further, and sank down where she stood. And in a trice, she was asleep, and deeply so, one slim hand beneath her cheek, her gown half slipped from her shoulder.  And so she remained for a long time unmoving and un-dreaming, while the moon proceeded in its silent slow pavan. An owl on soundless wings alit on a branch above her.  It swiveled its head and peered into the dark woods through which she had run, fleeing, stumbling.

At length, as the maiden slept and the owl kept vigil above her, there was a small rustle and movement in the nearby shadows, and out of the forest darkness there hopped, very cautiously, a brown rabbit, followed close at its heels by a very large toad of uncommon ugliness.

“Are they following, godmother?” the rabbit inquired anxiously, looking up into the tree.

“They've turned back for the night, it seems,” the owl replied.  “I can see the torches retreating into the castle.  But come sunrise, he'll have the dogs up and hunting again, you can be sure of it.”

“We should wake her,” the toad croaked.  “She's not safe out here in the open.”

“Let her sleep, poor child,” said the owl.  “At least until you have thought of a plan to protect her.”

“Us!” both the rabbit and the toad exclaimed together.

“But you are her godmother,” insisted the rabbit petulantly.

“And what can we do in these forms that you've given us?” the toad added angrily.  “Were I a man again, I could carry her in my arms.  I could stand and defend her.

“I could, too,” the rabbit chimed in, though perhaps with less confidence.

The owl turned her head from side to side with a low sigh that sounded like hoo, and answered: “It was not I that chose these forms, but Melsolinda herself.  For I told her she could have what suitors she liked, and it was she who said, you should be a rabbit, Timon, because you were so timid in approaching, and you a toad, Mardoc, because she found your looks not to her liking.  But when she had barely laid eyes upon Lord Farr, she laughed and declared she wished he would scoop her onto his horse and carry her off, and so he did, much to her sorrow.  I cannot change these things, alas.  That power is not mine.”

“Then we are helpless,” squeaked the rabbit.  “In the morning the dogs will track her down, and we cannot defend either Melsolinda or ourselves, for they will surely kill us if we cross their paths.”

The toad squeezed his eyes in thought before replying with hoarse determination: “Then we must enlist the help of friends,”  He turned and hopped away a few yards.  “If we can make a small raft and lift her on it, there is a stream not far from here that can carry her swiftly home.”

“What friends?” scoffed the rabbit.  “Who is there about who would be able, let alone willing, to build such a thing as a raft, and lift a sleeping lady onto it, and drag her to the stream, and....”

“See,” the toad insisted, hopping eagerly forward.  “Over there through the trees is a pond where I saw a beaver lodge as we came by.”   Without waiting to argue or persuade, he hurried on until he came to the shore, the rabbit reluctantly following only because he could think of no alternative.  High up on her branch, the owl said nothing, only swiveled her head about as the exhausted maiden in her sleep sighed and stirred the slightest bit, lifting her slender arm and drawing a leaf over her bare shoulder as if she dreamed it was a coverlet, having become aware in her sleep that, no longer warmed by exertion, she was cold.

Meanwhile, the beavers, curled snugly in their half-built lodge, as made perfect sense after a hard day's work that anticipated another, were sleeping pretty soundly, too, and not a little put out to find themselves wakened by loud thumping and croaking overhead in the middle of the night.  They grumbled and rolled over and bid whoever it was to stop it and go away, and put their paws over their ears.

But in the end Mardoc prevailed by calling out insistently and begging for their help until they all realized they should get no further rest at all until they heard him out.  And so a grumpy emissary was sent out through the underwater doorway, scratching his wet belly as he emerged onto his roof and peering into the dark to make out the unwelcome visitors.  He shook his dripping head and demanded that they explain what all the rumpus was about and not take too long about it.

Softly, out of the water, the rest of the family emerged, too curious after all to just wait inside.

Mardoc explained as succinctly as he could, assisted by beseeching interjections from Timon.

The chief beaver snorted when they were through.  “That is a very sad story,” he said with some annoyance.  “But you are asking us to leave our work undone and build for you while you uselessly loll about.  We have construction to finish before the winter, or our story will be sadder still.”

“What is it you thought to offer us in return for our labor and skill and resources?” inquired his mate, who had sidled up alongside him.

“We have nothing...,” Timon began plaintively, but Mardoc interrupted him.

“I am small,” he responded fiercely.  “But I can work hard.  I will scoop mud from the bank and I will plaster all the small places.  I will work for you until your task is completed if you will help us in this.”

“Stay here?” whispered Timon.  “Surely we must go with Melsolinda, guide the raft down the stream and guard her.”

“You will do that,” Mardoc replied.  “Guide her home and keep her safe while I pay our debt to these good creatures.”

And so it was decided, and so it was done.  By moonlight the raft was quickly built, and lashed together with vines by the toad and the rabbit.  The sleeping Melsolinda was carefully rolled onto it, and with the strength of all together it was dragged to the streamside and pulled in onto the glimmering water.  The raft was ingeniously constructed with a little rudder that Timon might with his small paws manipulate, and as soon as the current caught it, it began to move away.  Good-byes were brief and whispered, and in a twinkling the maiden and her long-eared helmsman were off, heading downstream just as the day was breaking and at the castle the dogs were loosed once more to sniff out in vain the scent of the desperate fugitive's trail through the tangled woods that became strong and then confused before ending outright at the water's edge.

No words can express the joy with which Melsolinda was received again into the arms of her family, for her heart-broken parents had despaired of ever seeing her again, having no idea where she had gone or under what circumstances.

And as for the maiden herself, it was no less wondrous to her to awaken and find herself on a raft ready to disembark at home, as if all that had transpired had been nothing more than a dreadful dream.

Still, Timon was able to relate—with only the smallest editing—the events of her rescue, which recalled very clearly how real and how perilous it all had been.

Relate he must and did, of course, many times over to enraptured audiences, not the least of which was Melsolinda herself.

Timon found to his extreme gratification that people hung on his words and stroked him and praised him for his valor, and in general made more of him than had ever been made before.  And with only a twinge of embarrassment, he understandably found that he liked that very much.  After all, he reminded himself, he had most steadfastly steered the raft as it made its way downstream, steeled to respond to any contingency and protect the helpless beloved consigned to his care.

A feast was swiftly prepared, and great celebration, and garlands were hung everywhere as lavish as if for a wedding.

Melsolinda herself had much to think about as she was so lovingly welcomed, daintily fed, bathed and dressed and cosseted, ribbons twined in her long night-black hair.  She knew, after all, that all the ill that had befallen her was the result of her own flippant choices, and nothing she herself had done deserved any praise or commendation whatsoever.

“Oh, Timon,” she said, when she was able in an informal moment to get the rabbit alone in the moonlit garden, after sundown, when the feasting was done and the strains of music for dancing wafted from the torchlit hall.  “I am so grateful to you, and so sorry for what I did to you.  You have been more of a man as a rabbit than I ever gave you credit for when you were a man.”

Truth be told, she had always found him vaguely insipid.  But impulsively she wrapped her arms around him, gave him a quick but sincere embrace and patted his furry head.

Timon averted his face and shook his ears, and if rabbits had the ability to blush, he surely would have.

Unseen in a tree nearby, the owl observed them.

“Oh, Timon,” Melsolinda said again, as her eyes filled up with tears of contrition.  “Three wishes she gave me, and I carelessly paid no mind.  How I wish that my godmother might relent and grant me but one more.  Or, perhaps, oh, godmother, could you but see that my third wish was not really a magic one.  It was only my folly and a man's wickedness and nothing more than that. How needlessly you have suffered, Timon, from my thoughtlessness. How I wish—and this now is a true wish—that I could give you the reward that you deserve.  How I wish you had your man's form again.”

No sooner had she spoken the words than there a dazzling light surrounding the rabbit in the shadowed garden, as if the direct sun had suddenly shafted through a thick cover of lowering clouds.  Melsolinda was forced to blink, and when she opened her eyes again, Timon stood before her in his man's form once again, whole and complete, dressed all in green and very handsome.

That being the case, Melsolinda did not feel there was much she could do except agree to be his bride when he earnestly requested it.

It was not that Timon felt no twinge of conscience about the whole business, but after all what could he do? Beholding Melsolinda's loveliness (and she was indeed very lovely), his heart melted, and feeling manhood again filled him with renewed desire.  Moreover, all that he had experienced as a rabbit, including the indignity and the humiliating sense of weakness, and then the rise of his determination to bring his beloved to safety that had steeled him during the long journey down the stream, hewing to a noble purpose rabbit weakness or no, all that novel experience had changed him.  He was resolved now to be a man as a man should be, never to be again the timid and uncertain fellow he once had been.

The nuptials were set for the time of harvest home.

Meanwhile, Mardoc toiled the summer away, scraping mud from the bank of the stream and piling it onto little sleds of bark, which he then hauled onto the dam that the beavers were constructing, there to pack it into place wherever it was needed.   He worked hard, paid his debt, and kept his word, and these were things the beavers respected. Thus little by little he found himself with friends. He slept under a rock and ate bugs, learned to accept his lot, and learned what's more to appreciate the simple nobility of the lives humble creatures live.

So the summer passed.   For her part, Melsolinda with equal parts contrition and delight welcomed the company of the altered Timon, and many were the happy afternoons they spent together.   If she thought at all about Mardoc, it was to thrust the thought away, as one of those sins of her past which no remorse could wipe away. She would look to her future, appreciate that she had been given a second chance she had never deserved, and ever after try to do better.

The day of her wedding came. The sun shown golden on cropped fields and the storerooms swelled with good harvest.

Timon stood in his doorway on that exceptionally beautiful day, taking in the smell of new mown hay and feeling he must certainly be the most fortunate man on earth.  But as he stood there, lingering in the pleasure of the morning and the anticipation of what was to come, a small movement on the ground caught his eye. Looking down he saw a large brown toad sitting by the dooryard.  He peered at it with shock.

Although he quickly recognized that it was not Mardoc, and it shortly hopped away into the grass and disappeared, yet the wave of memory and shame came over Timon then, and all that he had put away from thinking about he thought about again.  He went inside and sat at the table and put his face in his hands.  What should he do?  What should he do? All that he enjoyed, all that he was to enjoy, was based upon...well, it was not based upon nothing, but it was, at least in part, based upon taking a disproportionate amount of credit. Surely part of that credit belonged to unfortunate Mardoc, for whom no magic wishes were left.

Did the honor of a man demand that he tell Melsolinda?  But how wretched it would make her.  How much pain the memory of her foolish wishes gave her.  And for this one there was no recourse.  What good would be done by burdening her with the knowledge that she owed an unpayable debt to a toad?

Heavily it was that Timon rose from his chair on that, his wedding day, knowing that forever after he must carry the guilt, and the burden of his secret...alone.  For her sake he must do it. And for her sake he was resolved he would.

“Oh, how lovely you look!” exclaimed her friends as they braided the last of the autumn flowers and leaves into Melsolinda's long, night-black hair, and the mirror said the same.  But regarding the reflection of her own luminous beauty in her wedding dress, suddenly a shadow passed over her heart.  She remembered how much she had mocked another's ill-favored looks, how she had said she wished he were a toad, for then such a face would not be amiss. Oh, Mardoc was a kind man, and a wise man, and she had taken too little note of that.

For himself, Mardoc was a large toad who had been a man.  And it was a long journey to hop, one hop at a time, down along the streamside, and over the stones, and the roots, and the obstacles, because there was no road nearby that went this way.  When he arrived at last on a familiar lane above the town on a bright sunny day at harvest time he was quite weary and covered with dust, although still mindful that he must look out for dogs and rolling vehicles, and even by chance a farmer with a hoe who might be in a mood to be hostile.

Mardoc was not sure what had brought him back.  Well, he had heard word that she was to be married. Oh yes, the word had got round, and why wouldn't it?  Three magic wishes, and with her last she had turned her devoted rabbit suitor back into a man, and now they were to be wed.  That was certainly a story to be told and told again.

He heard the shout.  And the calls of the children, and heard the fiddles merrily strike up.  With enormous effort, he clambered up onto a rock from which he could see the door of the church, just as the happy bride and bridegroom emerged amid the glad greetings of their friends, and he saw her—more lovely than she had ever been before, amid the pennants and the ribbons and the bright garlands of the season arrayed about, on Timon's arm, and Timon as a man.  There would be feasting; there would be merry-making; there would be dancing; night would fall.

He turned away, and sought the shade side of the rock for a place he might rest and settle in before darkness fell.

He wished them joy.  Yes, in his heart, he foreswore rancor and hoped they might truly live happily together and prosper.  Melsolinda was lovely indeed, the fairest maid, perhaps, that he had ever seen.  But not the wisest, truth be told.  No, and perhaps not altogether the very best.  He had thought about this a great deal as he labored out his debt over the long summer days.

He settled into a cool cranny and fell asleep.  It was dark when he heard the soft Hoo of the owl somewhere above him.

“Are you awake, Mardoc?” a familiar voice said.

He would have smiled, if a toad could smile, but instead he stretched himself and emerged to see the owl perched on the rock above him.

“Good evening to you, godmother,” he said courteously.  Did you come to see the wedding?”

“In part,” she replied.  “And in part to see you.”

“Me,” he replied, surprised.  “And why is that?”

“Because I have three wishes that are in my power yet to grant, and I wondered if you would like two of them.”

Mardoc's heart lept within him.  “You would grant my wish?” he asked, almost unable to believe such good fortune.  And then..., “Not to be rude, I assure you, but only because it is so curious, why do you offer me two and not the usual three?”

“Why, because I must save one for myself,” she answered sensibly.

“Yes, of course.” He would have laughed if a toad could laugh.  “And that is altogether proper and right.  Then you know my first wish, good godmother. You must.”

“But you must say it aloud.”

“So I shall then, with all my heart,” he replied hoarsely and earnestly.  “Oh, godmother, I have learned to be a toad, and I have learned much from it, but this I beg you: I wish to be a man again.”

No sooner had the words escaped his mouth than there was a dazzling light surrounding him in the shadowed lane, as if a direct sun had suddenly shafted through the thick cover of the night.  He blinked, and when he opened his eyes again, he stood there as a man, dressed simply as he had been when first he had been enchanted.

Tears welled in his eyes as he examined his hands and with them covered his old, familiar face.

“Thank you,” he whispered, quite overcome with joy and gratitude.  “Thank you.”

“And for your second wish?” the owl inquired.

Mardoc paused a moment before responding. Then: “Let me save it, if I may,” he answered thoughtfully.  “Let me savor this one and be grateful. There may come a time when I am truly in need of another, for myself or someone else.  But for now surely this is enough.”  He smiled and nodded, quite certain of his decision.  “But you.  May I now presume to ask what your wish is?”

The owl closed her eyes for what seemed a long time, and when she opened them again, she dropped to the ground beside him and spoke softly: “I wish what I have wished for a long, long time, Mardoc.  I wish that you might see me as I am.”

And again there was the dazzling light, and again, Mardoc could not refrain from blinking.  When he then opened his eyes he saw standing on the ground beside him not a feathered owl, but a bespectacled maiden with long brown hair, who was more beautiful than any woman he had ever seen before in his life.

“You!” he exclaimed.  “Melsolinda's godmother is an enchantress! How did I not see it?”

She smiled.  “You were bewitched, after all,” she said.  “There is more than one kind of enchantment.”

He took her hand then, and they went together down the dark, quiet lane into the village and also into a long and happy life together, having saved one wish for when they should need it, because according to the rules, you don't get many, and it is foolish—and sometimes even wicked--to waste them.

T H E   E N D

The Woman in the Wall

She could see her body lying just there on the landing at the head of the stairs, on the bare floor in front of the hall bench, the bottoms of her shoes, and her skirt rumpled so that the hem on this side was flapped back, and her stocking and a bit of petticoat exposed.  She could not reach for the hem and pull it down more modestly.

Why was she unable to reach for it?  Why did she see the soles of her shoes?  The light coming through the windows and across the cushion of the window seat made the white edge of petticoat slightly brilliant, even though the light was not strong.  Not bright, that is, but it seemed to her that the exposed bit of eyelet was delicately burning, and by almost imperceptible degrees with a whiteness that was becoming gradually more unkind.

And then there was an oozing stain slowly darkening on the bodice of her blue dress that recalled the red roses of the wallpaper of the entry hall. And this flooded her mind with horror so that her thoughts drowned and went out.

Retreating into the wall, where it was dusty and closed—dark—clamped into shock she became still, and thought nothing.

The staircase that led up from the outside door terminated at this small landing, and square against wall at the head of the landing there was a bench stuffed with boots, and over that a tall, clouded mirror with coat hooks in the frame on either side.  A window seat with a faded cushion was on the right hand as you came up, and on the left the landing extended into a blunt hall with the curious feel of a small, oddly shaped room full of doors, one of them atop a tiny balcony on the left.

Then there were two more doors.  One led to the second floor flat, and next to that door, on its left, angled in a papered wall, another door lead to another room in the same flat.  And to the left of that was the wooden cage that supported the tiny balcony.  Four steps led up to it, and behind the balcony door was a short internal staircase that led to the third floor flat.

The old wallpaper of the stairwell, the landing, and this odd hall was squirrel brown with tan patterned stripes, overlaid at regular intervals with clusters of crimson roses and dull green leaves.

If time is a continuum of incidents, moving from past to future, since she experienced no incidents, there was no time.

In the wall, dark and still, a consistent anguish, even, unrelenting and perfect, with her thoughts clanged shut, her mind deafened and sealed. No sound entered from outside.

Her will became dry, and memory, like sawdust, seemed inert.  She clutched only stillness and desired no more, let nothing in, turned away.  Nothing happened in her mind.

Nothing happened.  Drift of bewilderment now and again.  Perhaps.  She didn't remember.  Only shock.

How long?

Out of nothing then, out of insensate blackness and not suddenly, a tiny spider was unseen in the dark, and yet she found herself aware of it, there, above and very, very near.  Exquisite the pain of an awareness she did not want.  It was descending—so slowly and so carefully, secreting as it went, little by little, little by little, a thin, fine filament that could not glisten where there was no light.  She was aware of its tiny, purposeful waving legs, its particulate movements pushing itself down along the thread it made little by little.

Little by little, a tiny event, and, therefore, she became aware that there was time.

Spider, web, tiny insect, snare, death, eating.  In her mind a drowned thought was lifted languidly by the spider's movement.  Horror.  Ah!  Turn away.

She did not remember him at all.  Only like a lightning flash the shock of the knife going into her.  And she never saw or heard him cry out as he stumbled drunkenly backward, banged backward down the stairs, and broke his neck at the bottom, so that his existence winked out.  She knew nothing of the police or the newspapers, or the stories that kept on being told because what had happened was so horrible, stories people told about this bare landing under the clouded mirror, about violence and even haunting.  Stories told in other places.  She never heard them.

Restless for no reason, pulled outside her space, back into the hall that was full of cool moonlight, not burning like the light of day.  There was something tidal and aching within her as she moved back and forth across the long landing, with its doors, its balcony, the staircase, the squirrel-brown wallpaper patterned with dull stripes and with bunches of deep crimson roses evenly distributed.

But where was it?  It was gone.  It.  Her shoes, the white petticoat and the hem of the blue dress flapped back and exposing her stocking.  What was gone?  Whose blue dress?

The real, disheveled hair that she knew as actually as she could know anything, her hair, yes, loosened, hanging off the step because her head, face turned away, hung backward off the edge of the landing, her arms sprawled out, one of them loose-handed, partly cantilevered in the air.  Where was it?  When had her body been taken away? Nothing. Only the bare, uncarpeted landing, the hall bench, the clouded mirror reflecting nothing. A small stain there on the floor. Ahhhhhhh!

She cried out with an alien sound, because she remembered the stain on the bodice of her dress.  A cry of anguish that could not be contained.

*   *   *

Ahhhhhhhhh!  The train whistle!

The train that went by in the night was a normal sound, a sound so normal that she didn't hear it.  But now.  She heard it now, as if forever, because there was no time.

The house itself was on a beautiful parkway, but the tracks went by about a block behind, angled, so they crossed the trestle over East Delavan. But in her mind she saw the train rushing through the blackness, towards her and then onward, lit in the cabin of the engine but black behind, an iron choir of banging and rattling, a great, segmented lash in a landscape of nothing.

And the whistle, haunting in the night.  Haunting.

She was in the hall, looking at the cool moonlight that fell across the thin cushion of the window seat and onto the bare floor in front of the hall bench just at the top of the stairs.  Again.  Or always.

The floor creaked in the place where it always creaked when someone walked across it, and she was looking down the staircase, down, down the long stairwell to where the front door with its oval glass led out to the porch.  But there was only blackness in the oval glass.

The train, the mournful rattling train, rushing away in the night, no longer loud but quieter and quieter until it was gone entirely and she was looking down into the shadowed stairwell in utter soundlessness lit by a cool, pale gray moonlight she could feel around her. Coolness almost cold.

Where was it?

Where was what?

Now she was looking into the little hall with its three closed doors—the door, the angled door, and the curious door in the balcony.  They were so odd, those doors.  Always, always odd.  She could not be here.

She retreated again into the wall, suddenly seized with nameless fear and bafflement.

*   *   *

It was raining now, long, long now after all the nothing.  Oh, it was more than raining; it was raining ferociously, pelting the house, the windows, the wind howling and rushing, garish sudden lightning and shocks of thunder, as if the world cracked open, snapped back, but next time might be cracked apart forever, broken open raw and hot, beyond re-sealing ever in all eternity.

She was in the hall as if exploded out.  For the first time?  The thousandth time?  And the storm was her mind, a pelting rain of tears and anguish.  Where?  Where?  She had lost it!  She must find it!  Lost it forever!  Blue cloth flapped back.  Unseemly and unclean.  A red....  The roses dripped from the wallpaper.  Ahhhhh!

Clawing the wall, she struggled herself inside.  Where it was dark and dusty.  Dry.  Still.   The storm's noise dulled.  The storm's noise faded.  Nothing.

*   *   *

And when the cold moon pulled her, it was itself a round, iced-over window hanging just outside the landing's window, and it was always now, and she stood in the hall with its three doors, and the floor creaked as she moved towards the head of the stairs, in front of the hall bench with the clouded mirror that reflected nothing, and peered down the shadowy staircase at the far door with the oval glass that was black.  And she twisted in agony of spirit because it was not there.  What?

She heard a cry, a startling actual sound, and it was as if she turned.  There standing in front of the door to the second floor flat was a man, his face chalk white as if he had seen a ghost, his mouth opened, staring.   He wore an odd necktie.

He turned and grabbed at the doorknob, pushing the door open to squeeze himself back into the dark flat.  He was gone.   And there was only the landing hall with its three doors and the bench with the cloudy mirror, and the window seat with its thin cushion.  Empty.

She was gone.  Into the wall.  Back into the silence, lulled.   Unfeeling and unthinking.

Time.

Time.

No time.  It does not exist.

*   *   *

In the deep of winter there isn't much day in the city that is called Buffalo, and what there is is dingy.  Night falls in the afternoon, and the rapid ching-ching-ching-ching of snow chains on tires accompanies the muted whoosh of cars along Humboldt Parkway.  There are street lights and there is a full moon.  Along the edges of the road there are sculpted walls of plowed up snow, white and glistening at first and then dirtier as it stays winter and they do not melt, crudely shoveled out at street corners so pedestrians can clamber over, climb up into a bus.

The traffic thinned. There was no one on the street or marching with carefully plunging steps across the deep snow of the parkway meridian with its long, wonderful allees of tall trees.  The spire of Romanesque St. Francis de Sales church cast barely a shadow.   Lights were out in the windows of houses.

She stood in the hall that was barely lit at all by what little cold moonlight managed through the glass and across the cushion of the window seat, but she knew there on the floor at the head of the stairs there was nothing.

Only a sprinkling...and on the stairs...scattered pine needles, as if someone had dragged a tree.

The floor creaked.  And her mind ached.  It ached and ached.  In the wall the aching would be numb again, and she would not feel a cry ripping for the first time, for the thousandth time out of her will and tearing hot rags of pain from her memory.  Stillness.  Nothing.  Rest, uneasy spirit.

*   *   *

How long?  How long?  Not long but forever, because she did not feel time. 

Again.  No, for the fist time.  Shock.  She stood on the landing....

*   *   *

She did not hear the chainsaws, or any of it.  Not the heavy footsteps and the big furniture being carted out, now and again something knocking against a door frame or a wall.  At some point there would be blasting.  She did not hear the machines roll up in front.  She heard nothing until the impact when the house was smashed and the roof opened up.

The wall split around her and everything fell, the world exploded, and the terror of openness and burning sunlight struck her, unprotected, the growling destruction of the machines, backing up, moving forward.  With violence a scream thrust up from inside her, huge.  But she could not make a sound.   The smothering sunlight packed down the scream that without her will kept forcing upward, forcing upward with no sound at all.

Everywhere there was dust and debris.  She felt herself fly upward.  There was nothing to hold her.   She burst outward as if she were an unsubstantial thing.

Where?  Where?  The beautiful green parkway that had been outside the house, always, was now hopelessly laid waste, the glorious elms that had been struggling against sickness, but also all the wide, cool, leafy maples, all felled and fallen and gone.

A terrifying open sky.  In the wide meridian which had been two miles of long, green space connecting parks at either end, with its pleasant riding path down the center, all down the meridian the glorious trees had been sawed to stumps, four rows of them, as far as forever went in both directions.

No more the well-mannered vehicles going this way on this side and that way on that side, but low-roaring steam shovels and wrecking engines crawling over the curbs and carving deep tracks into the torn grass.

No walls to hide in from the screaming inside her that could not release.  Time had happened and people in their lives had moved and decided and acted with the agency of the living.  Things had changed and were being changed.  Her terror shattered into flying shards.  Terror of endless time.  Terror of endless space.  Terror of endless pain.

But then.  On the other side of the parkway where widowed houses in a row were shrunken, unfamiliar, and dirty, and across Northland, where no traffic now went through, she became aware that there still stood the spire of old Romanesque St. Francis de Sales church, unkempt and vandalized, shabby with the dust of the destruction around it, a helpless castle, but there, still there, a place she knew.  Walls.

As if she herself were fierce but without substance, like a blast of shapeless wind, she felt herself rush to its heavy, limestone-clad walls, fleeing past the houses, no longer fresh and new, those sad, still standing, one-, two-, and three-story modestly-built frame houses, stunned in witness, widow's veils of dirt fallen over their old faces. She rushed desperately into the crypt-cold stone, there to clutch a wall's insides rigidly, no longer numb and unaware, but horribly aware and helpless.

She felt each moment tick, the sounds of outside, the machines growling, grinding on her tender mind that was un-anesthetized now and stiffly aghast, until the sounds, one and then another, all ceased for the day and she could feel the darkness coolly descend.  If she could have sobbed, she would have sobbed, if she could have cried out....

But she was inside the stone and could make no sound.

Listening for the returning attack of the machines, remembering the shelter smashing around her.  Again and again the agony of the openness.  She did not know how long she remained in the cold wall.  Rigid, aware, longing for numbness.  On and on.  Rigid, aware.

But then the tidal pull drew her out.  It was time.  Time?

She was there now in a huge, cavernous space, the dome so high it disappeared in darkness.

The old church like the parkway had been ravished.  The pews were gone, the altar.  The door to the vestry was ajar and there were cloths on the floor just inside, faintly pale among the shadows.  Through the sword-shaped hole from which a low stained glass window had been removed, the moon was shining.  But that was not the source of the strongest light.

No, it came from inside the church, a small bright glow, very white and steady.

In the wall, on the landing, she had had no thought of where she was.  She was only there.  But now her mind was assaulted by the air itself, that was big and cold, loosened, ambient, and uneasy as air is in an open space.  It smelled unlike and new.  A wisp of incense?  No.  The stone floor as she passed over it was familiar, dirtier than she remembered it, but familiar.  And yet her mind and everything were jumbled, as if her mind and everything were in a snow globe, inverted quickly and then set back down, their particles now softly falling, fantastic, unreal, distracting her from pain with an eerie wrongness, that she must grasp, somehow.  On the landing.... What?

She could not remember what wasn't there, and it was like falling from a great height.  That something essential suddenly wasn't there.  She needed to find it! But she had forgotten what it was!

And yet there was nothing more strange or more unreal than what she saw when she passed around the corner of the wall and observed the source of the light, set on the floor of one of the side bays.

It was a lantern. With no flame in it, only a round, glowing glass bulb.  Its light opened all around and upward.  And half reclining on a mattress covered with an old quilt, propped on some sort of bolster, were two young people, a boy and a girl.  There was a guitar lying on the floor near his side of the mattress, a kind of concertina near hers, and they were gazing, apparently, at the ceiling, pointing, talking softly and giggling.  The two of them were lying so that she saw the soles of their shoes, and she felt suddenly, again, as if she had been unexpectedly inverted and set back down.

But then distracted.  Because the youth, dressed for the most part like a laborer, in dungarees and a dark shirt, had long biblical hair and beard, and his bare feet wore sandals!  And the girl, although full grown (a whore?), with loose, wrinkly red hair to her waist, was dressed like a baby!  Her calico frock had long puffed sleeves, but it was cropped short with neither waist nor petticoat, and under it she seemed to be wearing black tights like a circus performer and black shoes with straps and buckles.

Everything about them was unseemly, wrong, and yet no reason why that should matter came readily to mind.  What came to mind was that they were so vivid.  Living people.  It shocked her to see them and hear them.  Shocked her and riveted her where she was.

The youth was smoking a little stump of fragrant cigarette.  He sucked in the smoke and held it, trying not to laugh, but then burst out, unable to control his giggles, and passed the butt over to the girl, still laughing, and protested breathlessly, “But you can't even see it!”

And the girl then also took a deep sucking breath of the cigarette and retorted tightly, as she held in her breath but reached her hand up expansively, “I see it with my soul!”

The two of them then fetched such a fit of giggles, they pulled their knees up and bumped their heads together and patted each other with their hands.

And it was in the midst of this, as they were rocking and laughing, that the youth caught sight of the woman and, startled, sat up, staring with his mouth agape.

“Holy shit!” he gasped.  That is what he said quite clearly.

The girl sat up also.  “What?” she said.   And then, looking in the same direction, softly, “Oh, my God.

“You see it, too?”

“Yes.  Yes, I see her.”

“Holy shit.”  Again.

The woman waited for them to turn and flee as the man at the door to the second floor flat had done.

But the girl scrambled onto her knees at the foot of the bed, her face, with its wonder-widened blue eyes, kindly smiling.

The man grabbed his companion's arm quickly if a little clumsily, “Don't, babe! Holy shit, look at her. That...on her front....” He made a horrified face and patted his own front expressively.

What?  What did they see?

But the girl distracted her.  Extending her hand as if in benediction, she said carefully, “We come in peace and love, sorrowful friend.  My name is Jeanette.  And this is my friend, Scorchy.”

Scorchy gave a small, cautious wave.  Very cautious.

“I don't think ghosts talk, babe,” he whispered.

Ghosts?  Sorrowful?

The woman retreated.

“Wait!”  She heard Jeanette's voice.

The woman fled for no reason except that she could not bear it.  Back out of their sight and into the wall.  But huddled there she could still hear them slightly, the cadence of their voices if not their excited words.  And she found her mind reciting everything each of them had said that she had heard, starting with “Holy shit.”

What had happened?  What had happened?

A sorrowful ghost.

She felt herself sob.

What had happened?

A little kindness.

That was all.

A human kindness.

She heard their voices begin to sing, and she could hear the pleasant instruments and their voices rising and falling with that calling quality singing voices have, as if they reached to contact her again.

But they could not hear her sobbing, even as they continued to sing off in a place that was close by but walled away from her.

A kind of weeping washed her mind.  It flowed like a river through and onward, through a sludge of old, old, blackened thoughts that were pulled up from the bottom and dragged along by the current, and taken off and away.

She felt then opened and oddly cleaned, washed down to the simplicity of a soul that was softened where it had been desiccated, healed where it had been fiery raw, and she felt exhausted, so very weary and depleted, as if she had been struggling, sleepless for countless hundreds of a hundred years.  Holy and shit.  A ghost.

And then she knew that she was dead.  And her pain, with her existence, winked away.

NOTE:

The murder of the Woman in the Wall is fictitious.  The violence against Buffalo's Humboldt Parkway, unfortunately, was actually committed.

The tree-graced parkway, created by Frederick Law Olmsted as part of his vision of a city of interconnected green spaces, was raized in the 1960's for the construction of an expressway.  St Francis de Sales church, gutted but designated a historic landmark, still stands at the edge of that open gash.