Story for Fran

The sea at Claresham beach was flat and grey, laced with the white froth of waves that skidded across its surface, chased by seagulls and terns that wheeled and dived; lifted by the wind, soaring through the air. The coastline in that area was windswept and barren; the trees stunted by years of exposure to the elements.

The young girl stood on a rock and looked out at the solemn silent water, her black hair whipping around her face, her white dress flapping. She was allowed out on the beach only as long as she kept within sight of the square white-washed house several hundred metres away, as there was no-one else around.

There was something about that place, solitary though it was, that drew her to it. She had been wandering around there for hours, moving from one end of the beach to the other, jumping between the boulders and searching for crabs and the small fish that were caught in pools of water on the rocks.

There are people who believe children can perceive things that adults cannot; and maybe it was for this reason that the girl discovered the shell on that clear chilly day. She would tell you that the waves had whispered to her as they broke along the shore, leading her to where it lay among the pebbles and the small streams of water that ran through the sand.

It was small and white, although in certain lights its surface seemed to dance with all the colours of the rainbow. The girl bit her lip and hesitated for a moment, then knelt down impulsively and picked it up, stowing it in the pocket of her dress, and continued her meandering progress along the beach; each rock pool filled with the potential for adventure and fantasy.

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Before long the shell was forgotten, and it wasn't until later, when the air had become colder still, the sky had begun to darken with grey clouds, and the little girl heard her name being called by a woman standing at the entrance to the house (wearing a shawl that flapped in the wind), that she reached into her pocket again to find it there.

Inside she showed it to the middle-aged man with the kind face and the woman (his wife; genial and protective) as the table was set with bread and salad and meat and cheese. The man examined it carefully and remarked what a pretty thing it was and told the girl about the conches that you sometimes found on the seafront, in which, if you held them to your ear, you could hear the sounds of waves breaking on some mysterious shore.

The girl held the shell to her ear, hoping to hear the water rushing back and forth, but there was nothing.

But that night, when the house was dark and the wind buffeted its walls, the girl found herself awoken by a strange feeling, as if the air were charged with static. Suddenly she realised that the darkness was not quite complete. Shifting around in the sheets she saw that the shell lying on the table next to her bed was glowing; light emanating from its opening, and as she held it cupped in her hands the light seemed to grow stronger, as though a door had been opened into a bright room.

The light illuminated the girl's face, shining in her wide eyes and short nose. How long she sat like that she did not know, but eventually she realised that she had been holding her breath for some time and the trance was broken.

Some instinct made her raise the shell to her ear, and as she did so, she could hear the sound of voices, muffled but sweet, that rose and fell in rhythm with one another, like a song formed from people speaking at the same time. (And each person was telling a story; and each story was linked with the others, as if they were part of one whole that could not be broken.)

And suddenly there was one voice, clear and clean as ice-cold water that rang through the girl's head like the ringing of bells, but which soothed and refreshed her, as though the entire Universe had just been renewed. It told her to sleep again, but to go back to the beach the next day and find the shell there, where she had discovered it first.

And then the darkness of sleep washed over her once again and she knew no more.

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The girl woke to bright sunshine streaming in the windows. The shell had gone from the table by her bed. She tore out of the house after rushing her breakfast; her coat half-unbuttoned, clutching her woollen scarf in one hand so that it fluttered behind her. The woman called after her, telling her to make sure she wrapped up warm and to stay within sight of the house, but the girl hardly heard.

She found the shell in the same place that she had picked it up yesterday, just as the voice had said it would be. For a moment the girl hesitated and looked around, as if she expected there to be someone with her on the beach, but there was no-one. She crouched down, sitting back on her haunches and scooped up the shell, holding it to her ear.

And there was the voice, clear and vibrant...

It told her many amazing things that day - of green and blue worlds beneath the sea, where the water faeries lived; of how they sang to one another in voices that could only be understood when heard under the water's surface (and even then only by those who knew how to interpret the words), but which sounded on land like the crashing of waves on rocky shores.

It told her of the cities of the faeries, like gnarled and colourful rock formations rising through cloudy water, dappled with great columns of light from the ocean surface; of the colourful fish that swam there and how some were really spirits of the oceans that could change their appearance at will.

It told her of wars and of the rise and fall of kingdoms known only beneath the waves, forgotten by the land.

And it told her of one faerie - a Prince among the faeries he might have been (though at the end of the day the girl wasn't quite sure whether or not it was her that had made this part up) - who lost the one he loved. She had fallen from their city into the depths of the oceans, sinking lower and lower, down to where the waters were cold and black as the night. The faerie Prince had followed her, diving deeper and deeper to try to get her back, but she had slipped away from his grasp and disappeared from sight.

But the Prince did not give up and searched for his love without rest or food or drink, until one day he was too weak to search any more, and he too was taken by the icy waters. And his body was consumed by the spirits of the deep waters (hunched forms, like ink or smoke), but they could not touch his heart, for there was stored a love pure enough to repulse their hatred. So they encased the Prince's heart in a shell and allowed the currents of the oceans to lift the shell from their realm, back to the surface, where it was taken to many different places all over the world.

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When the voice had finished telling the girl all this, it told her to return again the next day.

So she went away and ate her food and went to bed (though she could not sleep for a long time), and in the morning came back down to the beach and found the shell in the same place as before.

Once more, when she held the shell against her ear, the voice was there. For hours it told her once more of the underworld kingdom: of the Grimmel - wraiths that flowed near-invisible with the currents of the oceans, waiting to ensnare the faeries if they were not seen in time; of caves studded with precious rocks which, when lit, shone like the stars of the night-sky, and of the dreamers who would venture close to the surface of the water and spend their time gazing at the hot Sun and the sea-side towns, imagining that one day they might be human.

Eventually the voice paused for a moment and there was only the sound of the wind and the birds' keening calls and the breaking of the water against the shoreline. Then the voice spoke again, and it asked the girl to tell it a story of her own.

And because the girl couldn't think of anything else to say, she told it about herself and about the War.

She told it about how she had lived in a built-up town far away from here, where the houses were built of red brick and slate, until one day the planes had started flying overhead and the bombs had begun to fall. She told it how she had been moved away from her home (even though her Mama and Papa had had to stay); about the parting at the train station, and how her parents were quickly lost among the crowds of other families jostling on the platform to catch a last glimpse of their children as the train creaked and groaned and shunted away amidst clouds of steam.

She told the voice how she had been moved to this house by the sea; and had been looked after by the kindly middle-aged man and his wife; how she liked it here but missed her parents and friends so desperately and didn't know when she would see them again.

As the pale Sun moved through the sky and the shadows lengthened and the girl's story came to an end, the voice told her once again to return the next day, and she placed the shell down among the rocks and the pebbles and stood up.

She remained looking down at it for a moment, then turned her gaze out to sea.

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On the third day when the girl came down to the shore, the shell was not there. In panic the girl searched the beach, slipping over rocks and scraping her knee. Eventually she found it close to the water's edge. It had been carried there by one of the streams of water that ran through the sand, which gurgled and swirled around before running into the sea. The girl knelt down quickly to grab the shell before it could float away, soaking the lower portion of her dress.

But she had the shell, and she pressed its wet surface against her cheek then to her ear, and after a moment the voice spoke to her as on the previous days.

And this is what it told her.

On a beach in a country far away, where the rocks were dark (it was said they had been thrown out from within the craggy mountains that rose swiftly beyond the edge of the shoreline) and where the beach edge was lined with green trees with peculiar ribbed trunks and large angular leaves, there lived a young boy - the son of a fisherman. The place where they lived was poor, but the boy's Papa said they were better off without money (for he had heard tales of money and its influence upon other towns in the locality); he said that money only brought unrest and greed and jealousy.

Each day the boy would go to the shoreline and look out to sea, watching the sun lift itself lazily above the clouds that sat on the horizon; waiting for the heat to suffuse the damp air.

The boy had a friend - a girl a few weeks older than him who lived in a hut close to his. They would meet in the mornings and spend their days together, running into the woodlands and exploring the coastline. The older folk of the village would watch them play and laugh and wink at one another in a knowing fashion and make sordid comments about what would happen when they grew up to be a man and a woman.

Sometimes they heard what the older people said, but they would ignore them and think them silly, and the girl would take his hand and they would run away to where no-one would disturb their play. Because adults had forgotten what it meant to be friends – part of one body and one soul, without the need for all those other things (though sometimes the girl would feel her cheeks grow hot if she saw the boy washing in a river, and he would grow embarrassed and run away if she leant over and kissed him on the cheek).

One day while they were deep in the forest, the girl told the boy that her parents wanted to leave the village, and she would have to go with them. The boy was quiet for a moment, then, because he didn't know how to deal with this news, continued to tell the girl of the strange green and blue and gold frog he had caught earlier.

But in the evening when he sat on the hard gravel of the shoreline, watching the sky darken (for the Sun had sunk below the horizon some time ago and the air was getting colder), the boy felt that some part of him had broken - that there was a hole in his chest that could never again be filled.

It was in that evening that the boy asked his parents about the witch. He had heard of her from the other boys, and, in passing, from the conversations of the adults. It was said she could do things that others could not. Papa told him that she lived in a hut at the edge of the village – shunned by those who feared her but who were too fearful to try to drive her away - and warned the boy never to go there.

But the very next day, when mist still hung in ghostly sheets that twisted between the trees like wandering souls seeking their resting places, and while the adults still slumbered in their beds, the boy rose early and went to the edge of the village where, sure enough, he found a hut built a little away from the others. And it was in that hut that he met the witch.

The boy hung around the door to the hut for some time, the birds chattering in the trees around him. Eventually he plucked up the courage to enter the hut, but when he saw her vague form in the gloom his courage almost left him; and it was only when she called to him telling him to enter that he was drawn in.

The witch was not what he had expected. She looked barely an adult - her tattered clothes covering smooth pale skin - but when she spoke the boy felt as though she could see right through him. She asked of his dreams and his fears, and of all the things he wanted to do when he was older, and then she asked why he had come to her.

So the boy told the witch of his friend, and how she was supposed to be going away from the village soon, and about the hollow feeling in his chest that the news had brought, and how he wondered if there was some way in which she could help ensure that his friend was not taken away from him.

Then the witch smiled, and the boy could not work out whether the smile was sad or bitter or mocking, but before he could work it out she leaned towards him, reached out and put something in his hand, closing his fingers quickly around it. She sat back, and the boy looked in his hand and found two necklaces with pendants shaped as small silver spiders; their legs drawn underneath them.

The witch showed him how to open the backs of the pendants to reveal a small hollow space, and she told him to give one chain to the girl to wear and keep one for himself; and to place in each a strand of hair from the other person. And she promised that if they should do so, they would never be parted.

So when the boy ran from that place, he found a dark corner among the rocks, moss and lichen and plucked a hair from his own head, placing it in one of the pendants.

In the morning, he found the girl, and made her do likewise - plucking a long strand of hair from her crown and placing it in the second pendant. She took the chain and pendant that contained his hair and smiled at him once, then hung it round her neck. And he did the same with the pendant that contained her hair. Then they linked hands and ran away to play.

That night, the boy found it hard to sleep. Eventually, he drifted into a fitful slumber, and he dreamed of the pendant.

(And in the dream, the spider on the pendant came alive. It unwound its legs and made a few sharp bites in the air with its fangs, then seemed to consider the boy for a moment. But the boy realised he had his eyes closed even though he could see all that was taking place, and he made no movement. Then, in a sudden movement, the silver spider bit into the boy’s chest. Bright shards of light burst across his vision, there was a sharp pain in the middle of his chest followed by a long-lasting burn, and soon the boy found he was incapable of moving.

And when the spider’s hard fangs bit again into the flesh of his chest the pain was less, and the third time the boy felt nothing at all. The spider bit and bit, until it had made a small hole in the boy’s chest, and blood trickled down his skin onto the sheets. Then the spider started forcing its body into his chest - tail and abdomen first...)The boy woke. Sweat (or was it blood?) drenched the sheets of his bed (then he saw that the sheets were still white, so it could not have been blood). He lay still for a moment then leaped up on his mattress and searched around his possessions (laid neatly by the bed), but he could not find the pendant – it had gone. He stared at the flesh of his chest and ran his fingers over the skin, but it was clean and unbroken.That morning, the boy ran out to meet his friend, but she was not there. Nor was she there the day after; or the day after that. The boy sat on the seafront, and tears glistened in his eyes as he watched the Sun casting bands of colour over the horizon. He knew she had been taken from him, and the pain seemed to be too great to bear. His heart felt like it would explode.But one day when he was standing by the water and thinking of the girl, he felt a tug in his chest, like something pulling at a hook in his breastbone connected to a point just below his skin. He looked out to sea, and suddenly he could make out a length of line, like a single strand of spider’s web, that glistened in the Sun as it passed through the mists of fine water that were thrown into the air by the crashing waves.

He reached out to try to feel the line, but even when it seemed he was touching it, he could feel nothing. It started in that region of his chest where the spider had entered his body in the dream, and stretched out to the sea-front, out onto the water and far away.

And even as the boy began to make out these things he felt another tug on the string, and in an instant he knew that it was the girl, wherever she was, pulling on the other end. He also knew that she was aware that the line was joined to him.

And for the first time in many days, he smiled and knew that he was still connected to his friend, despite the distance and regardless of what lay between them.

He had not forgotten; and she would not forget him.

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Then the voice stopped and spoke no more, and after some time the girl placed the shell back on the sand of the beach and returned to the house; to the kindly man and his gentle wife; to hot food and the clean, crisp linen sheets of her bed.

The next morning she returned to the spot where she had left the shell, but it was not there, and though she searched the entire length of the beach she could not find it.

She had not expected it to be there; she had somehow sensed that it would have gone, so she was not sad. When she came to think of it, however, she wasn’t sure if she would have been sad anyway.

And when she had finally given up her search, she sat on the cold rocks staring out at the waves, thinking of her parents; and for the first time in a long while she noticed how the sunlight played and glittered on the peaks and filled in the troughs, and made the surface of the water dance and shine.

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Siren songs

The tree was dark and twisted; its
branches hanging like rags; its bark
like strips of flesh hanging from a
corpse. He had thought it was dead,
but now it seemed as though there
might be life there yet: green growth
in its heart, waiting to blossom. It
had felt its roots stir in response to
her song, and now he knew there was
hope. There is always hope.

Black Branches

The bus is packed,
Smells of cabbages and wet,
Sunshine glints off the wet road surface,
A falling leaf; a shard of gold drifting through the air,
The Sun is bright,
The sky a deep blue.
He always has his head down when he walks into work,
Pondering,
Then looks up as he passes the tree,
Stripped of its leaves,
Black branches and narrow twigs.