by J M Fraser
Oh hell, who needed Thomas Edison, anyway? Rebecca lit up the room with her smile.
“What are you waiting for?” She motioned to the plates on the table, the round loaf of homemade bread with its mouth-watering bakery aroma, the sliced cheese.
“Wow. Were you expecting company?”
“I have company.”
That didn’t come close to explaining the spread, but who cared? Eat first and ask questions later. He sat next to her on a bench at the table.
Rebecca poured cider from a clay pitcher. “A farmer made this from apples in his orchard.”
He peered out an old-fashioned casement window cranked open enough to allow a refreshing breeze into the kitchen, but nightfall hid every feature outside. “You mean, somebody actually found trees out there?”
“Or planted them,” she said. “He’s quite capable. I’m sure he can help with your car in the morning.”
In the morning? Music to his ears.
Nuh-uh. Big brother, big brother, big brother.
But she looked to be the same age.
Brian swiped the devil off his shoulder by focusing on the food. He devoured a cheddar-cheese sandwich and washed it down with cider tasting like liquid gold.
Rebecca ate quietly beside him. When she finished, she turned to him with an eye-twinkling grin.
“What?” He glanced down at his shirt for crumbs.
“Nothing. I just thought since we’ve finished eating, I might read to you in the parlor.”
“Read?” No way. Maybe the big-brother concept ruled out anything hot and heavy, but they didn’t need to go pilgrim, either. Plenty of better things to do. They could play games on his phone for as long as the battery lasted. He didn’t need reception for that. Or they could go outside, sit on the step catching fireflies and shooting the breeze. When they got bored, maybe they’d look for a creek to dip their toes into. “Yeah, you could read, or—”
“Don’t you want me to read to you?” Judging by the tremble in Rebecca’s voice and her suddenly downcast eyes, one might think he’d threatened to throw the last of the cheese on the floor and stomp on it.
What could he say? “Sweet. Let’s do it.”
“Sweet?” Rebecca furrowed her brows as if she’d strayed into the extra-credit section of an algebra test.
The girl needed an urban dictionary for sure. This had to be what living alone in Nebraska could do to a person. No sweat. He was happy to translate. So far, doing anything with her had been a kick-ass experience. “Reading sounds perfect.”
The storm clouds lifted. A bright smile returned to her face. She fished a pencil stub and tiny notebook from her dress pocket and scribbled something down. “Sweet. I strive to be modern.”
“Awesome.”
“That one I know.”
They finished eating and headed back into the living room.
Rebecca ran her fingertips across the spines of several books on a shelf—every one of them a girly romance.
Catching fireflies was looking better by the minute. Brian sank deep into the couch.
“Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Emma,” she said. “I know this sounds silly, but her stories flutter my heart.”
“Adult fairy tales are your thing, huh?”
“Nothing’s wrong with happy endings, Brian.” She turned toward a corner of the room where an old wooden broom leaned against the wall. “I hope to have somebody to sweep after, one day.” Her eyes moistened.
Uh-oh. Crying killed him. They’d already had one close call outside when they found that noose. “Well, if it’s a choice between maid duty and listening to a Jane Austen reading, I’m thinking where’s the mop?”
Rebecca shook her head. A slow smile chased the threat of tears away. She grabbed a leather-bound book from the shelf. “Okay, smarty, I’ll read some of my own work to you.”
That had to be better.
She came over with the book, but before she reached the couch, his shirt started puffing out, as if the seemingly innocent antique mirror a few feet away had gone into suction mode. He pressed the fabric back down with his hand. “Weird.”
She stopped. “What’s wrong?”
The suction slackened. “I don’t know.” He went over to the mirror and frisked it, touching the glass, running his hands down its oval wooden frame, tapping the stand with his foot. Seemed normal.
A cold gust ruffled his hair. He leapt back. And his shirt puffed toward the mirror again.
“Brian?”
“You’ve got gremlins, Rebecca.”
“Or imps.” She had a wary edge to her voice.
“It’s cool. Who wouldn’t want their very own poltergeists?” Not that he’d ever want to be alone with that mirror. But the two of them had strength in numbers. They could laugh it off. Or throw a blanket over the thing and then laugh it off.
He glanced around. She did have an old quilt on a chair.
Now he was being ridiculous. He looked at the mirror again. Faced it down. Wood and glass. Nothing more. And his reflection. And hers. And—he became a young boy again, wandering between two mirrors across from each other in the bathroom of a train. They created an endless series of reflections, one against the other, smaller and smaller until too tiny to make out.
The mirrors pulled him by the hair and arms, dragging him into their vortex.
He cried out.
“Black magic,” his mom said, coming to the rescue. She led him away.
“Brian?” Rebecca closed a hand around his wrist.
He shuddered.
Rebecca’s forehead was wrinkled. His random zombie fit must have done that to her.
But everything truly was okay. Wasn’t it? Strength in numbers, right?
His hands were trembling. Change the subject. Make some small talk. Anything. “Hey.” He motioned to their reflection. She stood shorter than him by a head, light-skinned, freckled. She wore an old-fashioned, neck-to-ankle dress. Their walk through the dry, windy hills had sprinkled both of them with dust and scattered their hair. “We look like pioneers.”
The worry wrinkles disappeared. She smiled. “Perhaps we are.”
“Fits pretty well here, log cabin and all.”
Rebecca giggled. “Poltergeists, too.”
But Wild West and horror didn’t mesh. He glanced at the mirror, suppressed another shudder. “Honestly, how can you stay here alone? One creaky floorboard and I’d be racing out the door.”
“No, you wouldn’t.” She brushed his face with the back of her hand. “I know a prophecy about someone named Brian. He’d never let a mere noise scare him.”
Her voice came to him from a thousand miles away, barely whispering over her dizzying touch.
She dropped her hand away.
“I, uh, I haven’t heard that one,” he said.
“The prophecy says he’ll be heading toward the challenge of his life.”
“Worse than letting you read to me?”
“Ha ha.”
He turned to the mirror again, made a face, smoothed his hair.
She touched his arm. “Brian, do you have a girlfriend?”
That came out of nowhere. And fit like a key in a lock. She’d had a hold on him from the minute they met. Hell, he’d been dreaming about her even before that. Beyond the intoxicating feel of her touch just now, or earlier when they walked together hand-in-hand, beyond the Irish brogue he’d been able to detect even when she hummed a ditty, beyond the way her dimples showed when she smiled and how wide that smile got when he devoured the simple meal she’d prepared…beyond all that, an undeniable sense of destiny had him ready to give the world a high five.
Step one on the road to herohood in every comic book he’d ever read was for the guy to find a girl who was special and who saw him in a special light. Superman had Lois Lane. Spiderman had Mary Jane. Both women were always in danger. Both needed to be rescued over and over again. Both inspired an ordinary guy to rise up and be something more than a
newspaper reporter or a photographer or an accountant with a briefcase and two-point-three kids.
Take Rebecca, for example. Hints of darkness closed in on her from all directions. Shirt-sucking mirrors. Nooses in trees. Even the eclipse earlier. And she seemed unaware, innocent, needing a—
“I shouldn’t have been so forward,” she said.
“No, it’s just you’re too good to be true.”
She broke eye contact and stared at her shoes. “That’s the test of your feelings. Will you miss me when we’re parted?”
He couldn’t answer. The reminder he’d be leaving the very next day choked him.
“We shouldn’t talk about farewells.” Rebecca pulled away and crossed to the couch.
Tomorrow is a million years away. Brian sat next to her, and the cushions slanted them shoulder to shoulder. She could have read a thousand Jane Austen novels to him for all he cared, as long as they stayed together like that.
“I’ve written a collection of short stories in verse,” she said.
“Poetry?” Okay, now that was a whole different thing.
“Don’t look so scared. I have a nice story in here about someone who can’t quite get where he wants to be. Sound familiar?” She cracked the book open.
Brian gaped at a page full of symbols. Poetry in code? He couldn’t get a fix on the alphabet she’d used. Greek? Hebrew? Arabic? Something else entirely. Handwritten vertical lines, diagonal hash marks, and other markings had been lined up row by row. Clumped together and spaced apart, they formed what must have been words and sentences.
A scene from The Shining popped into his head where the woman learned her husband had been writing the identical sentence over and over for hundreds of pages. The moment she realized he’d gone mad.
But this wasn’t craziness. Rebecca had created something amazing. And not just the meticulous hieroglyphics. She’d decorated the margins with tiny stars, flowers, and fairies in a clean-line style and colors that put Disney artwork to shame. “Did you do all of this?”
“Every bit.” Her eyes gleamed. “This is a language my mother taught me before I learned a single word of English. She was taught by my grandmother, my grandmother by my great-grandmother, and so on all the way back to my family tree’s earliest roots in Ireland.”
“And you can read it?”
“I wrote it, didn’t I?”
Chapter 5
Brian’s pocket vibrated. Hours earlier, his everyday life had faded into the background. Now, with a book of hieroglyphics about to be deciphered by a quirky, self-sufficient, amazing dream of a girl, now of all times…
“Wait a sec, Rebecca.” He pulled out the cell phone. One message, from home. And a bar of service. He could call a tow truck now if he wanted.
No way.
He called home. Got the machine. “Hey, it’s me. I found a place to spend the night. Talk to you tomorrow.” Best he could do. His battery light flashed orange in a cabin short on sockets.
Rebecca gaped at him as if he’d invented wireless.
“They do sell smartphones in Nebraska, right?” he said.
She touched the display with a fingertip, snatched her hand away as if she’d burned herself, giggled. “Who would possibly want such a thing?”
“Me.” He wriggled the phone at her.
She shrieked and shrank away.
Her crazy act cracked him up. So realistic he almost believed she’d never seen one before. “My parents worry over nothing. So that was me calling them.”
“You’re sweet, Brian.” She rubbed her shoulder against his.
“You asked whether I had a girlfriend,” he said.
“And?”
“I do now.”
“You do now what?”
“Have a girlfriend.” And who would have thought a single word rolling off his tongue might taste so good?
Rebecca beamed. “You know how being my boyfriend works, Brian?”
“Like maple syrup soaking into pancakes?”
“No, silly.” She flipped the pages of her book to a sketch of a scruffy man dressed in rags. “Like I read a story about gallantry, misdirection, and dreams, and you humor me by listening with rapt attention, whether you think it’s an adult fairy tale or not.”
“Got it.”
“I call this poem ‘The Vagrant.’” She looked down at the open page.
“Sunlight bathes his face from blue skies overhead.
He blinks
and sleep fades from his eyes.
Rising now amid the leaves which formed his bed,
he stands
as morning dew drops dry.”
Rebecca glanced up from the book. “All of my verses have the same meter as the opening stanza. Eleven beats, then two, six, eleven, two and six. The rhythm keeps the words in your head like a favorite song.”
Could be, but hieroglyphics in verse? He couldn’t get past that. She had to be pulling his leg.
Rebecca went for the Academy Award by wetting her finger against her tongue for ease in turning the page, but he refused to buy it. Most likely, she memorized the poem, and the rest was world-class pantomime.
Brian couldn’t resist pulling her chain at least a little bit. “Wait. Teach me how to read some of that.”
She pressed her lips together, shook her head.
“Top secret, huh? You’d have to kill me if you told me?”
She grinned. “Or turn you into a toad, Brian.”
“Nah. Toads eat flies. I’ll stick with bread and cheese.” And anyway, why not indulge in the cool fantasy that Rebecca could read and write a stick-figure language? He leaned his shoulder against hers and listened.
“Kneeling by a brook, he washes shaves and drinks.
Light beard,
blue eyes stare back at him.
Combing long blond hair, ‘adventure’ he now thinks.
‘A day
of magic is my whim.’
“As he walks through town a voice from shadows cries,
‘Go in,
your fortune she will tell.’
‘No.’ The vagrant laughs. ‘The future care not I!’
‘Go in!’
The voice a magic spell.
“Spreading beads apart through candlelight he peers
at her,
a gypsy beckoning.
Turquoise dress, green eyes, gold bracelets, auburn hair.
‘Sit down,
for we must speak of dreams.’”
Simon jumped up and wedged himself between them, purring like he’d eaten Tweety Bird after years of trying. Rebecca dragged her fingers through the cat’s sleek coat. “The fortune-teller sends the beggar away, promising he’ll meet a beautiful maiden.”
A simple tale with a Hollywood finish, but Brian needed more. He’d been pulled into the gypsy’s lair to the point he could smell the candles. “Don’t tell me we’re closing in on the happily ever after already.”
“Not quite yet, Brian. Oracles are vague about the future. The fortune-teller hasn’t told him how things will turn out when he meets this maiden.”
“Great. Bring it on.” Who would have thought a poetry recital could be awesome? A fig bar of a listening experience had magically transformed into two scoops of vanilla fudge in one of those oversized waffle cones with sprinkles melted into the chocolate coating. Whether Rebecca had been reading hieroglyphics—no way—or pretending to be, he was all over this concoction.
She took one of his hands. “First, let’s see what the future holds in store for you, Brian.”
Even better. Not that he wanted to know his future. How boring would life be if he knew the outcome in advance? Still, her hand in his was poetry in its own right, enhancing his sprinkle-cone metaphor by throwing alliteration into the mix—try saying extra ice-cream scoop fast—not to mention the wow factor.
She traced a fingertip along his palm. “This is your lifeline. It’s long, like mine.” She slid her finger sideways. “This other line says you’ll have a gre
at adventure and try to save the world. I hope you’re clever enough to succeed.”
“Me, too. Any suggestions?”
But she released his hand and returned to her story.
Before sending the vagrant away, the gypsy used her magic to tattoo his wrist with the likeness of a red-haired maiden. Thinking the marking would lead him to the love of his life, the vagrant headed off to find his promised one.
At nightfall, he stopped at an inn for shelter. The owner beckoned him inside, having interpreted the tattoo as a sign the vagrant had been chosen to fight a dragon. When the vagrant refused to go along with this ridiculous conclusion, the innkeeper and his cronies locked him in a basement dungeon.
Rebecca turned the page to a sketch on the left of renaissance partiers gathered around a feast. On the right, the vagrant cooled his heels behind bars. “Look at the poor man.”
“Yeah. Tell me more.”
The vagrant relented and agreed to slay the dragon. He soon battled the monster, barely escaped with his life, and ran for the hills. On the way back to town, he stumbled upon the woman of his dreams.
“Ready now to kiss her lips, her nose, her hair.
But no.
She fades with plaintive cries.
Sunlight bathes his face, he smells the morning air.
He blinks.
Away from him she flies.
“‘Has this dove of mine been just another dream?
Good lord,
a fantasy I loved!
Shannon was my moon and stars aflickering.’
Just then,
a beast flies past, above.”
Rebecca shut the book, startling Simon to the floor and pulling Brian out of the story before they’d reached the punch line.
“Hold on, Rebecca. I don’t get it. Did he dream everything, or what?”
“Who can say?” She got off the couch and stretched her arms. “People always think they’re awake, even when they’re sleeping.”
That idea had nothing but downside. Brian teetered at the edge of its slippery slope. “I’d hate to open my eyes and be back on the highway.”