Born Out of the Common Cold

Who has not heard the saying, "Misery loves company?" Furthermore, who has not found it to be quite true? Last week, Elisabeth Foley gave me her cold over Twitter. It started when I innocently inquired after her health and she responded with equal innocence...

@Rachelswhimsy Gradually improving! I'm mainly just dealing with a nasty cough now. So sweet of you to ask. :)

— Elisabeth G. Foley (@ElisabethGFoley) February 27, 2015

....which soon grew more sinister:

@Rachelswhimsy Oh bother, did I give you my cold over Twitter? :) (You see I've been haunting Instagram invisibly.)

— Elisabeth G. Foley (@ElisabethGFoley) February 28, 2015

Yes, I caught her cold over Twitter. Since this was obviously her fault, I challenged the little lady to a battle of words. Length? Under 1500 words. Subject matter? The common cold. We designed a hashtag (#secondinkpen), rolled up our sleeves, and got to work. We documented this work on Twitter...and it began to attract attention:

@ElisabethGFoley and @Rachelswhimsy are def the Most Amusing People on Twitter today. Hope you are feeling better soon :) #secondinkpen

— Suzannah Rowntree (@suzannahtweets) March 2, 2015

And because my battle-piece ended up amusing and worked as an antidote to my cold by allowing me to laugh and forget my misery, I thought I would share it with all of you today. Thoroughly cured of my cold (and wishing all the best to Elisabeth), I give to you

The Sneeze-Piece.

“My dear Edwin, you cannot possibly attend the opera looking like...”

Edwin resented the bit of sentence Gwyneth left off. Did she not think him man enough to stand it? “Looking like what, exactly?”

Her eyes crinkled at him. “Like a particularly bland cat who has just been dragged through a particularly colorful alleyway.”

“I am berfectly fine,” he beeped through congestion stacked tighter than the Great Wall.

“But you aren’t, darling. You’re quite ill, really.”

“I won’t let you go by yourself.” Avoiding all “m’s” and “p’s,” Edwin found, restored his dignity. “What’ll beople think?”

Oh dear. That was short-lived.

He shifted a bit to see his beloved’s face. “Us only buried three bonths and barely hobe from the honeyboon...”

“If you mean that we’ve been married only three months and barely home from our honeymoon you ought to say so. I fear you’ll give Society the idea that we’ve died and are rotting away someplace six feet under.” Gwyneth came to him. Her violet evening dress was quite becoming as a lap blanket.

“I love you quite as much as ever, though,” she murmured.

“Even if my dose is swollen?”

Gwyneth considered that engorged appendage with her head to one side. Edwin studied the dimple in her chin and thought about kissing it. That would require lifting his head off the pillows and, quite frankly, wasn’t worth the bother.

“Your nose looks perfectly normal, darling,” she pronounced.

“It’s hideously swollen.”

“No.” Gwyneth straightened. “Quite normal.”

“Dash it all, woban! Do you bean to tell be that my dose is always this...elephantine?”

“What a bear you are when you’re ill! I do wish your mother had told me. She might at least have warned me what happens to my husband when set upon by the common cold.”

There was nothing common, Edwin felt, about this cold. Gwyneth was a delightful bride. Most delightful bride in all of New York with the profile of a Gibson Girl beside. But she hadn’t an idea about how he suffered under stodged-up nasal passages and scratchy throats. She laughed at him when all he required was a little consideration. And she wouldn’t kiss him.

“Won’t you kiss me?” he mewled, rather kitten-like.

Gwyneth peeped to the hall. “Did you hear something? I thought perhaps Nellie Grace had left fishheads on the doorstep again. Stray cats make the most terrible noises.”

Low. That’s what that was. Edwin did not want the notice of someone who was determined to make him look unreasonable. No kisses. No sympathy. What a bride. What domestic fol-de-rol this was, lying on their rented settee with his aching head on a wondrously stiff pillow that only allowed the throbbing to throb harder.

Edwin watched Gwyneth put her pretty white arms into the silken sleeves of her wrap. “And I subbose you’ll go and have a ball at the obera without me?”

One glove on, then the other. “You wouldn’t rather I stay here and be miserable too?”

Well, if he had to put paint to it, that was exactly what he’d rather. Edwin moaned and threw his right arm over his eyes. “Just go. If you cobe hobe and I’ve caught pneumonia, you’ll be sorry you ever left my side.”

Gwyneth smiled and pecked his cheek. “You can’t catch pneumonia, baby-dearest. It develops.”

If he had it to do over again, Edwin thought he oughtn’t to have married a nurse. Horrific, being ill and having the weaker sex lord her intellect over you. Like little Tin-Can Harry sending a left-hook into the heavy-weight champ after a bigger fighter had already knocked the champ down. A fellow would never do it. But he wouldn’t expect Gwyneth to know it. She was natively American after all, and a femme.

Gwyneth, who had taken up a crow’s nest position at the window-seat, brightened. “Sal’s here. I’m off.”

“Goodbye!” he fog-horned at her retreating (and very good) silhouette.

Gwyneth didn’t say goodbye. Not even out the door and she’d already forgot him. Blind the germs. Colds were obnoxious beyond compare. Some chap ought to write Congress a letter. Wasn’t that the way in this sneeze-ridden colony? Couldn’t President Wilson make a law announcing colds as acts of treason? Edwin kicked the far arm of the settee with his heels and brewed a fresh pot of mischief to drink.

* * * *

“Dellie! Dellie!”

Far from deaf--in fact, quite as sharp-eared as any New York domestic--it took Nellie Grace several moments of the frightening bellows to realize the sounds were being made by Mr. Edwin and intended to convey the idea of her name. She scuttled into the front parlor.

“Yes, Mr. Edwin?”

“To which of New York’s under-rate theatres did my wife intend to bake her way?”

“Wallack’s Theatre, I believe, Mr. Edwin.”

“An obera?”

“Yes, Mr. Edwin.”

Her employer groaned with the rattle of an underground rail system. “It could dot have been a cobedy, could it, Dellie? Obera. It had to be obera. And she sbeaks of alley-cats.”

Unsure how to respond, Nellie employed the respectful bob-and-nod drilled into her head by her mother, who had also been a servant among New York’s elite:

“When in doubt, Nellie, keep your mouth closed.”

“Dellie?”

“Yes, Mr. Edwin?”

“Fetch me my hat and greatcoat.”

“I hope I brushed them well enough last time, Mr. Edwin.”

“What the dev--oh, I’m dot here to insbect your work, Dellie. I am going out.”

“Aren’t you ill, Mr. Edwin?”

“A woban with a cold...why she looks bositively beastly. Sobething about their doses...” Mr. Edwin gestured to his beaconing nose thoughtfully. “Bakes theb look ridiculous. Dark circles under their eyes...gravel in their voices. Hideous. But the benfolk, Dellie. They have better constitutions than that. We rebain...attractive in all states ob health.”

Nellie bit her lip and tried to reconcile Mr. Edwin’s haggard appearance with his speech. Bob-and-nod. “I’ll get the hat and coat, Mr. Edwin.”

* * * *

When one does not know Italian and has dropped one’s translation somewhere beneath the seat of the sizeable woman in the row next, an opera soon grows dull.

Gwyneth beat upon her knee with the stem of her opera-glass. Wouldn’t Edwin roast her if she admitted her unspeakable boredom? Their seats were cheap and so far away that only the fat soprano showed up to any effect against the Far-Eastern backdrops. The lead male was quite swallowed up and of no more notice than a stage-curtain tassel. If Edwin were here they could whisper behind his translation. He would never do something as unforgivable as dropping his booklet.

“Sal,” she whispered, hoping for a clandestine answer such as, “Oh gracious, how dull. Let’s bail and get ices instead.” But Sal had disappeared on one of her frequent trips to the powder room to perfect her gauzy reflection.

Gwyneth sank a little deeper into her chair. It would have been kinder to stay back for Edwin’s sake. She hadn’t been married so long that the needs of her husband were topmost in her mind. On nights like this it was shockingly easy to forget that she was married to a man who yowled over trifling colds and wanted petting for it. She tried to forget it’d been her cold first.

“Poor Ed.”

Someone down the row made a faint disturbance which crawled up the dark length of seats until Gwyneth made out a man clad in evening dress. He cast about for a moment, clamped eyes on Sal’s seat, and beelined it.

Gwyneth might have bothered to warn him the seat was in use but if Sal wanted to play Jack-in-the-box she could jolly well afford to lose her seat. Besides--the new man must be amusing if he thought himself free to uproot an entire row mid-opera. She’d hazard her chances.

The fat soprano rent the theatre with a note not unlike that of a canary with a cat’s claw upon its trachea. Gwyneth winced. She recalled the translation mentioning “The Death of Ariadne.” Was this it? Sounded deadly enough

The newcomer shuffled his feet, sniffed twice, took out a rumpled pocket-square and applied it to his nose.

There was some fumbling onstage. The soprano staggered forward. Her curtain-tassel opposite dutifully stumbled after her. Someone (a lump whom Gwyneth had formerly taken for a sort of chair) held up a sultan’s knife. Following this touching display of familial drama and a last semi-musical shriek, the house fell silent.

So ridiculous silent as if they’d all been struck to the heart.

Gwyneth wondered if she had got by accident into a comic opera and turned to Sal to say so before realizing her companion was not Sal at all but that gentleman who had not stopped making garrulous noises in his throat and nose since his admission.

“Bless me, what a row,” the man croaked. And in the darkness that was no longer silent, he gave a petulant sneeze undeniably Edwin’s.

“Got a translation?” Edwin asked when his arm had got comfortably around both Gwendolyn’s astonishment and her waist.

She nestled into his rackety-sounding chest. “Dropped it.”

“Crikey,” he remarked. “Rather have ices?”

Hope that gave you a laugh, my readers, and may you soon recover from this (admittedly helpful) daylight-saving drama. I think I managed all right, though a full day out in the sun soaking up loads of Vitamin D certainly helped the matter. Here's to Spring arriving. I am ready for its full embrace.

Shig Cobb or The Fairy Mumbler

January (thus far) has not been my biggest word-count month. Most spare hours (and there haven't been many) have been spent writing and rewriting my Cottleston Pie paraphernalia like synposes and query letters. Not the most delightful of tasks. I have written absolutely nothing in the next Vivi & Farnham mystery but as soon as I get back in town after my mini vacation to a married friend's, I intend to dig back in. I do, however seem to have a genius for bothering in other stories that I really ought not to be looking at. First there was Darley Coom, the story that begins on a train out of London. I feathered about in that a little more this month...and now I can't find what came of it. This probably means that I wrote it by hand on an obscure piece of paper and will never find it again. *huff* The other night I felt like writing but not writing in Scotch'd the Snakes because I hadn't worked back up to it. What came out of this mood was "Shig Cobb" or "The Fairy Mumbler," and I am unreasonably attached to the one-thousand words that make up its opening scene. Sometime I will finish it...

I even dedicated the first painting with my new watercolors to this scrap.

Few people—if any—believed in fairies those days. The fairies themselves, perhaps, hardly believed, which merely shows how far ignorance can go, left to bite its own hindquarters.

When milk curdled in the cool-sweating dairy, Goody Lindsay invoked curses on heat and drought. When the largest hay-crop went moldy all in one night—and that not even a damp one—Farmer Faggot shook his fist and bemoaned the heavy dew. No one, of course, suggested fairy-mischief, because fairies didn't exist. Hadn't for years. Never had, mayhap.

There was, however, one person quite concerned with the existence-or-not of fairies. His name was Shig and he was a small thing with hands like corncobs and a crumpled left shoulder, and shoes too big for his feet so that wherever he went, he shuffled.

“Daft Shig,” the villagers called him.

“Cobble-fist,” others spat.

“Run along, Cobb.”

“Cob-hand.”

“Shig-Corn.”

So early on in age—perhaps five years, perhaps seven—Shig received a surname: the first gift of his life, beyond that gift of life to begin with. Shig Cobb: fairy-mumbler. The fairy-mumbler part had not come into his story yet. Not officially. It was there, at any rate, but not recognized and appointed as it would be later on, for Shig Cobb, along with his other misfortunes, was mute. Mumbling to anyone, fairies or people, seemed out of the question.

“Won't you speak, Shig?” the baker, whom he worked for, had used to ask him.

He would ask this question every day while pounding out the dough, fat and white like himself, but Shig never spoke. Perhaps he would not. Perhaps he could not. It was difficult to say in the case of such a quiet fellow as him, and so the baker aired the invitation daily.

“Your hands, Shig...what happened to them?” the baker ventured to ask one cloying, hot afternoon in late August. He was not an ill-natured fellow, this baker, just rather nosy, and it irked him to no end to employ and care for a boy with lumpety-crumpety hands and not have the satisfaction of at least knowing what had caused it.

Shig fiercened and narrowed his shoulder upward till they looked like a peregrine's wings, baiting for flight.

“Mind me not, boy.” The baker flumped the white, white dough over again in a floury, cumulus cloud. “Here's me thinking that if you could, you'd tell me to mind my own apron strings, and here's me thinking you'd be right.”

Ever so slightly, Shig's body slid down into its constant shrug: right shoulder lower than the hitched-up left, eyebrows arranged likewise.

“Will you be kind enough to slide these rolls into the oven and mind them while I pass a mead-y hour at the public house?”

Of course there came no answer—silly of him to look for one—but the baker watched Shig slide off his flour barrel, take the stone tray in his stumpy, bumpy hands, and ease it into the oven as gently as could be wished.

“They'll rest easy, won't they, under your care?” He eyed Shig and a beetling fondness for the creature pricked behind his eyes. “I wonder, boy, do you sing to them that they rise so high? Do you save all your sweet songs and pretty words to coax my bread along? For God in Heaven knows bread never tasted better nor lasted longer than Shig's bread.”

The boy was silent. The baker was pensive. But a leathern jug of good, golden mead awaited him at the Red-Shank and before long, all thoughts of Shig and his bread were swept away in a sip of the honey-lipped mug.

As soon as the baker had gone, Shig Cobb dragged his flour barrel to the side of the oven and climbed up to watch the progress of his bread. Shig belonged to no one as far as he could tell, and probably never had. Well, if he had, he could certainly not remember any part of it, so what good was that? But as long as he made sure the dough rose and the coals marked the loaves' cheeks with kisses summer-brown, he belonged. To the bakery. To the bread. Bread did not last long, unlike clay pots or wooden chairs or many another thing. Shig was glad, in his wordless way, that he'd chosen bread. Bread must be made fresh every day. Every day, Shig belonged.

You couldn't say that about many trades.

“...do you sing to them that they rise so high?” The baker's fond question wrestled between Shig's ears and bothered him. He did not sing but he wanted to sing, and it was only just the other night that he had dreamed of singing the only song he knew—a short Latin hymn—for an audience of nodding poppies. He had sung louder and more graciously than anyone he'd ever heard—even the miller's heart-faced daughter—and the baker had called him “son,” and then he'd awakened and realized the singing was not him, but was the miller's heart-faced daughter after all on her passage river-way with the miller's dusty cow.

He had been frustrated. He'd cried.

For it was a true thing that Shig Cobb could not talk. If he stuck his tongue out and crossed his eyes and thought incredibly hard, Shig sometimes thought he could remember having been able to speak. But he had been too scared to say anything when he'd come to this village three years back, and had been too shy to say anything for a long time after that, and had finally stopped trying to say anything at all. No one wanted to talk to him, for one thing. Shig Cobb was the brunt of many jokes, but never invited to speak with the jokesters. Even the baker, lazy soul, did not expect or want answers to his clumsy questions.

So Shig did not speak and he certainly did not sing. Not ever. Not that afternoon. Instead, he perched on the flour barrel and rested his bruised knees against the warm flanks of the oven, and told himself fairy stories with the silent voice in his head that could make words and was fond of it.

There y'are. It's a small thing but a sweet one, and I wouldn't mind finishing it out, though I've no idea where it ought to go from here. This is always a delightful and slightly-frightening stage of a project. Some of my best work recently has come from not knowing what is coming up but loving the characters...think John Out-the-Window. Perhaps this unclarity will bode well for me when I rip back into Scotch'd the Snakes. Because I'm still hung up over a certain little detail of plot. I have been re-reading Anon, Sir, Anon, though, and getting back in the mood, so here's to getting back in town and buckling down to work. :)

The Rain-People

In Romania, we spent a happy hour in the top floor of Betel Biserica Baptista, watching people in the rain ...

   Sitting up there, it seemed we were demigods. The people below--the old woman with a black kerchief tied under her chin, the Orthodox priest, the teenagers--were unaware of the onlookers as the rain began.
   We opened the screenless windows and stretched our hands into the play of the rain. Rain, we knew. Rain was neither American, nor Romanian, nor Russian nor Chinese. Rain was home, whomever you were. The rich scent of it pressed into our faces as we leaned out the fifth-story window and laughed at the bits of humanity, small and significant under our outstretched palms.
   Most of the crowd shifted from one foot to the next and seemed to ignore the rain; one or two people looked up and shrugged. Looked up,but not up enough to notice us and we were glad. Anonymity suited our mood because we were not ready to meet more people whom we would have to bid goodbye. No one thought that clearly, however; we all just wanted a show and a silent seat in an opera box.

   A tram scooped half the crowd into its shovel-mouth and shuttled off to another street, another stop, another priest hearing thunder and crossing himself for safekeeping.
   A boy opened a green tin gate and a pair of breedless terrier-things pelted after an old man with a white beard who had passed that way. The boy gave chase. His mother pursued.
    The rain, by now, was tremendous.

   Another tram: hiss, scoop, shuttle-shiver and the street was empty. An incoming deposit of tram-riders was received to the drumming of a million raindrops. A million was not too many. Two, three million, and still there were drops uncounted.
    Shirtless, a muscular young man darted from the tram into a doorstep crowded with damp humans. He laughed, shook rain from his bare shoulders, and pulled a dry shirt over his head. We laughed high above the street.
   This group dispersed in pairs and singles like damp ads peeling from a wet cement wall and the bare-chested man jogged down the street beside a stranger or a friend--it little mattered; a thorough soaking is as good a bond as any for forming quick attachments.

   By and by, hail mixed in with the rain and the thunder grew ravenous as a blood-hungry lioness. We leaned further into the glory and caught the hail. Some of us ate it and were happy to have known what sky-ice tastes of beyond the Atlantic. Ferocious now, wind thrashed our street with a whip of braided rain. Lightning and thunder kept precarious time and we marveled at the unconcern of the little old lady with her great big purse and a drenched trio crossing over our way.
   Gleefully, we watched as they missed a shallow crossing and plunged ankle depth into a rushing run-off. It was funny to us and stayed so because the trio laughed among themselves and did not seem to mind.

   If ever a wild rain had rained, this was the occasion, for it seemed the drops were contesting in girth and speed to see who might claim superiority.

  The soaked, cloth-plastered woman on our corner crossed to the other and took refuge in a window-ledge where she stayed with a cur-dog for company. Unmoved by their mutual plight, the dog slunk away to play road-kill in the afternoon traffic. A moment, and the woman made a dash for the green tin gate, only to meet water to her calves. She dragged out of the river one shoe at a time and adopted a soggy course town-ward, defeated in the art of staying remotely dry.
   From below us, an old man with a sock fitted over one hand walked away and we wondered why he obscured his fist from everyone's sight.

   Traffic dwindled, rain slackened, and another old gentleman--patient, slow--toddled down the cobbles. His umbrella had played games with the wind and bent like a cup, filling itself from the downpour. Nothing is more frustrating than an umbrella that does the opposite of keeping one dry, but this old man took a philosophical view of the misfortune: one spine at a time, he turned his umbrella right-side out and a gentle, satisfied smile sat on his face.
 
 Then off he went--patient, slow--and we watched him behind our curtain of rain.

Cottleston Pie: a piece of whimsy

“My name is Sylvi.” 

“Your name isn’t Cottontail?" 

“No.” 

Simpian was silent for a moment. Her name ought to be Cottontail, because Cottontail sounded very good when matched up with Cottleston Pie, and if his plan was to work at all, it must sound right. But Sylvi was not such a bad name after he thought about it for a moment or two. “Sylvi, do you like Presenti-mints?” 

“I’ve never had one. Are they good to eat?”

-Cottleston Pie

Mad, vain creature that I am, I have a bit of a secret project that I want to share with someone. I ought not to even write this post, as it is only a post of how I shouldn't be telling you what I'm telling you. But my vanity wins over, and when I have written something I like, I want you to like it too. I suppose that is the downfall of any good writer. Or is it the inspiration of any good writer? Who knows--I certainly don't, and my stars! I'm going to tell you so I might as well get it over with. I am trying my hand at a new story--a nonsense story--that follows no particular plot, and is whimsical, lovable, and positively dotty. It is meant either for very young children who live their lives by whimsy and for whoever is reading it to them. :) It is a direct nod to Winnie-the-Pooh, and takes it's name from that lovely nonsense rhyme by A.A.  Milne:

Cottleston Pie

I had not meant to come up with a new story, but it hit me over the head while I was playing with my five year old sister and our cousin who is the same age. I said something to Rebekah about "he's simply in such-and-such" and she misheard me, looked at me with her head cocked on one side, and said, "Who's Simpian?" and just like that an Idea was born.

      Simpian lived in a house perched in a tree, simply because that is the best place to live. (As anyone who has tried it ought to agree.) He lived by himself as far as anyone could tell. He had no father or mother or sisters or brothers and certainly no uncles or aunts. That is, until tea-time. Then you might find Simpian rummaged out of his tree house by the sound of the great brass bell and if you followed him across Waterloo and through The Field (and once or thrice around and through and behind the blueberry bushes) you might hear quite a lot of people calling him “Allister!”—or more often than not—“Come Allister!” and he might look less and less like a pirate and more and more like a grubby-little-chap-in-need-of-washing whose relatives were looking for him.

-Cottleston Pie

The boy who used to be Only Allister is now Simpian Grenadine: Master of Cottleston Pie. And that came to be in this way:

      Allister flipped onto his back in the grass and looked up into the branches of his tree. The sun shone yellow through the green leaves and blue behind that, and Allister whispered his rhyme to himself in a sing-song voice: “Cottleston, cottleston, cottleston pie….” And just like that—without even trying—the words had attached themselves to the tree and the house and Allister sat up, a deal surprised, and half expecting to see a Notice written up and tacked to the tree:      

     “Notice:            

           Formerly known as Tree-House Belonging To Allister, now known as Cottleston Pie: Home of Simpian Grenadine.”    

   The last bit surprised Allister more than finding that his house had named itself. What sort of a name was Simpian Grenadine? A good one, he thought. But where had it come from? Nowhere, he supposed. And because Allister was clever enough to know that the best thing always come from Nowhere, he didn’t bother to ask any further questions and only said to himself once or twice as if trying on a new jacket: “Simpian Grenadine…master of Cottleston Pie.”

-Cottleston Pie

If you must know, Cottleston Pie is the name of Allister's tree-house and Property. It's a private sort of place and one is never quite sure while he is there if what happens is true or make believe. But it doesn't really matter because everything that does happen is beautiful and entirely fabulous. I thought I had better Advise you as to the species of story Cottleston Pie is, because it may show up in my Snippets of Story posts and then if I didn't tell you, you'd be left hanging out to dry. I am planning on making little pen-and-ink drawings to illustrate it and if it turns out to be good at all I am going to give it to some of my Little Friends come Christmas time.
What do you think of Cottleston Pie? If you don't like Winnie-the-Pooh and wonderful nonsense in general do not read further. You'll hate it. But if there is a little bit of whimsy hanging about in your heart, I think you might enjoy this newest child of mine. :)

      “Well, are you or aren’t you?” he asked.    

          Sylvi stared at him out of one round boot-button eye, then swiveled her head so she looked at him out of the other. “I am’nt.”    

        “You whatn’t?”        

         “I amn’t.”      

         “Ah. That’s what I thought you said.”        

         Sylvi narrowed her eye. “That means I am not.”    

        “I knew that,” Simpian hastened to say. “Only I wanted to be sure you knew what it meant.”      

        “Oh, I know.” And Sylvi began to groom her tawny fur again. She paused mid-brush and looked up at him. “You are a perfect basket of red-herrings, aren’t you?”

-Cottleston Pie  

the three racketeers

Hello! To reintroduce myself to your dear people, [and to prove I do still write, though it's been a month] I thought I'd give you a scene from a random little bit I started to write last night. :) Here it is, and I hope you enjoy it. Oh yes--and one note: it's a modern piece, which is a new thing for me entirely.

"An excerpt from: The Three Racketeers"

By Rachel Heffington

“For the love of Pete!” Blaine eyed me, vicious, and dropped into the wicker porch-chair. “These kids are brainless.”

I refrained from correcting her on that point—our cousins had to have brains because they could move, and anyone knows that in order to move, you have to have a brain.

“Stop thinking the obvious, Hallie.”

“How’d you know—?”

Blaine scraped mint-green polish off her thumbnail. “Because you’ve got your Debater-look on. But apart from the physical motion, you have to admit our cousins are…well…dumb.”

“I bow to your superior knowledge.” I scanned the yard, hoping the Three Racketeers weren’t lurking nearby. That’s what we’d christened our cousins the first day of the summer vacation when they’d managed to pick our pockets and nab our flip-flops in one fell swoop. “Blaine?”

“Hmmm?” Her eyes were still sparking green.

“They don’t read.” I was whining. I knew I was whining.

“Nope. They don’t.”

Her reply lay on the heavy, rain-scented air, sultry, oppressive. “How can anyone stand life without books?” I asked.

“Without Dickens…” Blaine spread her hands wide, dramatic as usual.

“Without Tolkien,” I added.

“Or Lewis, or Chesterton, or Austen.”

“Especially Austen.” I gathered my knees into my arms and squelched the desire to have a panic attack. A whole summer without books; without our darling stories…and it was all our mother’s fault. Mama was perfect except for one thing: she was a practical person:

“The boys will have loads of books, I’m sure, and there’s not a stitch of room left in the trunks for your books.” Blaine and I swore we’d rather ditch the clothes and wear nothing than leave our books behind. Unfortunately for us Mama was not only practical—she was Southern bred--and didn’t like the idea.

So here we were in hundred-degree weather: only three days into our exile with a trunk full of camphor-scented sweaters in case it was cold, and a serious case of the doldrums. I wailed and bled and ached inside and wished that the low clouds scudding past the telephone poles would get on with it and drop their liquid cargo. I hated waiting for things—especially rain. That, and sneezes. Sneezes and rain and yawns—awful when they hung just out of reach.

“Hallie?”

“Yeah?”

“Stop doing that.”

I turned to Blaine, a little surprised. “Doing what?”

“Fretting.”

Uncanny, my sister. “Who said I was fretting? I wasn’t fretting.”

“Bet you were.”

“Bet I wasn’t.”

“You’re wearing your Sydney Carton face.”

She shouldn’t insult my favorite martyr. I felt like pushing Blaine’s chair over with her inside it, but I didn’t have the energy. I glared at her instead. She met my look with her eyelids at half-mast and her lips pursed.

Temper Flares

This is just a little nothing I wrote this evening when I couldn't stand not writing any longer. I am Arianna in many respects, but Beckett is entirely fictional. The piece cannot possibly stand alone, and it really has no meaning, and now (of course) you'll wonder why I wrote it, and I will say "I don't know. But it popped out on its own accord." and that's all the explanation you'll receive, I'm afraid. :)

"Temper Flares"

By Rachel Heffington

“I would like a great many things,” she said in her queenliest voice, so that he might know the limits of her imagination were nonexistent, “but what I’d like right now would be to slip out of these horrid, sweaty clothes, and to slip into a cool white frock. I would like one of these velvety lawns, and nothing better to do with my time than lay in hammock reading, or to traipse across the green grass and look lovely.” That was exactly what she wanted—all these secluded, cool, wide lawns wandering up to white porches and arched windows filled her heart with a dusty, musty ache that kept pace with her increasingly drab appearance. Yes—she longed with all the passionate longing of a weary soul to have the luxury of traipsing.

“You want to….traipse?” her companion asked, evidently bewildered.

“Traipse. We are always walking or going or running or trotting off to do this, that, and the other—I’d like to take a wander and have no one bother me about politics or religion or a thousand-and-one other things People tend to like to bother an innocent young lady with.”

“Ah.”

She nodded; pleased with the way he’d taken his defeat. An “ah” meant he had resigned his verbal sword and would behave himself. It was a great relief that he had not said “aha” instead, which had much more of a challenge about it, and meant that she would be required to defend her point further. “Oh—and there’s one more thing, Beckett,” she said.

Beckett winced, and shook himself. “What is it, Arianna?”

“I have a headache, Beckett.”

“Well? Can I do anything about it?” Sarcasm, Arianna noted with contempt. Becket t always resorted to sarcasm first thing and wasted a situation in which wit ought to have played a decent part. He fought with a claymore of a tongue—she preferred a rapier; sharp, cutting, infinitely polite.

Arianna pressed her temples with her fingertips and tried not to think about how weary she was. “As a matter of fact, you can do something about it, Beckett,” she said at length. “You can take yourself off and leave me alone, and perhaps a massive portion of my headache would depart with you.”

“You’re a cruel woman, Arianna Maddox,” Beckett growled. But he lumbered off dutifully, and Arianna watched him with nothing greater than mild annoyance—he behaved exactly as a devoted lover ought: going away when bidden, and coming around when needed. He was just the sort of fellow Arianna liked, for though she was a woman and would faint before betraying her sex, she had never been overly companionable with any young ladies.

Beckett wandered off down the cool stone drive, and once Arianna was certain he would not come dawdling back, Arianna smoothed her shirt, fluffed her bangs, and re-folded the cuff of her capris. Dashing about campaigning through neighborhoods was all very well and good when the temperature was a balmy sixty-degrees, but the full summer heat had been beating upon them all day, and Arianna’s mood was souring. Beckett had done nothing but chatter all afternoon, and the hotter the day grew the faster his tongue wagged. It was almost as if Beckett had been a lumbering, bumbling, handsome sort of cicada intent on keeping pace with the advancing of the temperatures. “Which,” she thought to herself, “is exactly what he is.”

Wisps of violet in between.

I keep scraps of paper stuffed everywhere with my writing all over them. Incidentals I've captured on paper, folded up, (half ashamed of some of them) and forgotten about. Honestly, some authors have a writing notebook in which they neatly file every little sentence they write. (Or such is my impression) I could call myself artistic, but I suspicion I am merely a tidge scatter-brained.
All the same, I do have to admit to feeling rather brilliant when I open a book and a scrap of paper tumbles out into my lap. Or onto my head. Or at my feet. Whichever way the cookie crumbles.

What's this?

I unfold it. Written sloppily on the paper I generally find a few sentences describing an interaction, a moment, some elusive emotion, a humorous or witty exchange of banter... And you know what? They are generally not too bad at all. Much better than I might have hoped. I wonder if perhaps these obscure scribbles gain genius from their close embrace with the pages of finer books...?
I think I have a condition. I think I have OWD. (Obsessive writer's disorder.) I am constantly having a conversation within myself that goes something like this:

Normal Rachel: "I wish you could take everything that woman tells you as truth, but you know she has alzheimers and is making most of it up."
Inner Rachel: "Who cares? It's hilarious."
Writing Rachel: "Not to mention the fact that this whole conversation would fit perfectly in a book about a writer. Totally gotta capture this moment on paper. Who knows when I might use it in the future?"
Normal Rachel: "Guys...guys..we're taking this too far."
Writing Rachel: "Excuse me? Where's a pencil? Where's paper? Let me through!"
Inner Rachel: "Yeah! What time is it? We need to get home so she can write."
Normal Rachel: "Really? You are so pitifully entranced by words. Go away."

Ahem. What? Why are you looking at me out of the corners of your eyes like that? You mean to say you don't hold lengthy conversations with yourself? You don't know what you're missing.

All the same, I do think it's a good idea to write anything and everything down. If it occurs to you to capture the moment in words, do so. Please. You never know when you might need to lighten a scene of your plot-heavy novel with a good laugh. You never know if that gorgeous sunset you saw yesterday evening will figure significantly in a book you've yet to write. I think it's this that drives me to hoard away little caches of writing. And actually, I have used several scraps in my novels. Because sometimes you just need that boost of antiqued, burnished inspiration. Stuff that has sat around cheek-to-cheek with the plot of Oliver Twist on your bookshelf might just give your current project a certain eclat.

So keep on with your obscure twists of paper and index cards and backs of receipts and anything else you vent your word-obsession on. I promise you'll thank yourself one day!

The Downfall of Miss Ladislaw: a humorous tale

I wrote this short story as an entry for Miss Elizabeth Rose's Writing Contest. It was scribbled down in a very short frame of time and not edited, so I am not responsible for any nonsense that escaped. I fancy it has the flavor Dickens and Alcott all at once...a queer mash but it is quite me. Enjoy reading. :)

“The Downfall of Miss Ladislaw: a humorous tale”

By Rachel Heffington

“You are a very dense person—quite porridgy, really.” Lona shifted from one foot to the other and crossed her arms. How would Miss Ladislaw take that? “You are so porridgy I wish I had a glass of milk to tip over your head.” There was a vase of water hard by but that would not serve her purpose as well as milk—it would not look so grand trickling bridge of Miss Ladislaw’s fine nose. “You are so so dense, I think your brains are made of fluff.” Lona glared at Miss Ladislaw and drummed her fingers against her arms with dull impatience. But Miss Ladislaw said nothing, for she could not speak. Miss Ladislaw was, you see, a painted figure that sulked in a heavy gilt frame on Lona’s faded wall.

Lona gave up glaring at Miss Ladislaw and her lace ruffles and her long nose and her insinuating eyes. She wished Miss Ladislaw could speak, for her own mind felt full of cotton and awash with too many cups of tepid coffee. Should she, or shouldn’t she? That was the question, but Lona had always been a bad hand at answering her inquisitive self. Miss Ladislaw would, if she could, disprove the plan, Lona decided—there was something about the woman’s mouth that did not like her. But Lona herself thought it a fine idea. To spend the bonus she’d got from Mr. Gilbert on a quiet dinner party seemed just the thing to cheer up this quiet stretch of the year when winter is feeble and gouty and spring is not “out.”

It was decided then—Lona wondered by she had not thought of it before; this deciding what Miss Ladislaw thought and doing just the opposite. Feeling monstrously guilty and underhand, Lona took the long way out of the room and back into it through another door that she might not have to let Miss Ladislaw see her fetching her hat. She stuck the hat-pin fiercely through her moth-eaten beaver and pulled her coat on. They would have prawns, she decided, and oranges and cakes dusted with pink sugar and Mr. Shambles would—oh mercy—the invitations! One couldn’t have a dinner-party without guests.

Lona cast a despairing glance at her quiet writing desk littered about with advertisements and apple cores. Somewhere there was a packet of blank pink cards, left by a previous tenant—they smelled strongly of Evening in Paris, Lona recalled, and she had always thought the scent rather daring and adventurous; they would be perfect for her dinner-party. Only…and Lona wished she did not have to cross the room to get to the desk, then sit in the wrought iron chair and write her invitations—she was sure Miss Ladislaw would stare her out of countenance and then her pen would shiver and ink would fly across the pretty pink cards and they’d be ruined. Dash it all. Lona girded up her strength, made a dash for the cards and her pencil-case, then shut the door of the room quickly. She would write her invitations here in the hall, perched on the roots of the hat-tree. Accordingly, Lona huddled in the corner of the drafty hall and wrote her notes in her queer, cramped little hand:

“Miss Leonora Trellavine… [that’s me, Lona]” she added, in case they did not comprehend the grand thrust of the name that was not truly hers. “…wishes the company of Mrs. Dorking (and Messrs. Shambles, Featherpip, and Plutarch) at a dinner party this night at 39 Tubwash Lane.”

It was not very grand after all with that horrid “Tubwash Lane” at the end, but Lona signed her cards, sealed them up, and snuck out of the house without a backward glance. At the post-office she paid some of her precious bonus for stamps with the queen’s head on them—they cost more, but they were a proper antidote for “Tubwash Lane,” she thought. Miss Ladislaw, she remembered with a cold finger tickling her spine, would not condone the buying of pretty stamps.

Lona hurried down the cobbly streets until she came to the store at the corner. “Fairfax and Cloves,” it said in bold, green letters. Warm golden light spilled from the picture window onto the faded snow on the ground and Lona stretched out her hands to it, almost believing for a moment that it felt as warm as it looked. But winter was nowise over yet and Lona owned no gloves, so she shoved her hands in her pockets once more and hopped onto the stoop.

As she stepped through the door a little bell rang and announced her arrival to a very fat, very red, very kind-looking gentleman. He seemed to be struggling with a bit of string and a parcel of paper, and no sooner did his sausage-like fingers loop one end of the string, then the other end straggled out as lanky as ever.

“Here, let me help you, sir,” Lona said. She took the package from the man and tied it up with deft fingers—she was used to trying up the packages of laundry for mum before she got the job as a stenographer.

The man beamed at her and his heavy jowls and drooping eyebrows gave him the look of an old hound dog who would be more at home at a fireside than stuffed into a pair of leather britches with his shirtsleeves rolled up. “Thanky miss, you’re very kind,” he said in a fat voice.

Lona nodded and for the first time since entering the shop she looked about her. It seemed to her then—for she had never frequented this sort of shop—that she had stepped into a fairytale. A gleaming pyramid of oranges occupied one corner of the window and around that were arranged dozens of pink-sugar cakes. There were sausages and cheeses, cocoa and candies and even—as Lona saw when she looked up at the ceiling—great heaps of nuts bulging out of blue-velvet nets and hung up like pine garlands. The sight made her quite breathless—so breathless that she had to unbutton her coat and be faint for a moment or two. But being faint was no way to go about shopping for a dinner party. Her vision cleared and she found the fat man smiling at her in a quizzical way.

“I’ve come shopping, sir,” Lona said, seeing that he was Wondering. Then it struck her that it was a very stupid thing to say when you are standing inside a shop—people don’t come into places like Fairfax and Cloves just to get warm, or listen to a concert, or discuss politics. She felt herself blushing, and turned away from the man.

She heard a faint creaking and he suddenly stood beside her like a great, lumbering bear. “And what are you shopping for, little Birdy?”

Lona turned redder than ever—or at least, she thought she was turning red. She felt hot anyway, at the name. She didn’t like being little—she’d much rather be tall, like Miss Ladislaw, or buxom like Mrs. Dorking. “I’m…I’m having a dinner party, sir.” And it was said so like a dismal confession and not a merry occasion that the shopkeeper laughed. She drew herself up to her full four feet and tucked her brown hair behind her ears. “It’s a good party, sir. I am to have Company.”

The man laughed again. “Oho. So the little Bird is having Company. And what will she feed her little friends? Would you like some millet, or thistle-seed? Or we’ve got some first-rate suet if you’d rather.”

“I’d…I’d like prawns sir, if you please.” Lona wished she were taller. She should have worn a feather in her hat—it always made her feel more like her eighteen years.

He laughed a bear’s laugh. “What? Does the little Robin-bird socialize with pelicans?”

“Please sir, I don’t understand you.” Lona felt miserable. Hang her party. Hang her bonus. Miss Ladislaw was right. A dinner-party was not a good idea. She was so disappointed that she began to cry—it was a childish thing, but she felt like a child at present—a child because she had never been shopping and never given a party and she didn’t know how to go about it without blundering at every corner.

“Now now, little miss. I won’t tease you anymore. Here, have a peppermint.” He dropped a grimy pink one into her damp palm and patted her on the head. Lona didn’t want to eat it—she wasn’t hungry anymore—but she thought she’d better, out of Politeness. It was a little fuzzy and tasted of sealing wax, but she dared not spit it out.

“Now, Miss Birdy, what can I do for you, eh? You said you wanted prawns?”

“Yeth pleath,” Lona said around the peppermint. She chewed it up quickly and swallowed the chalky paste it made.

Mr. Fairfax-and-Cloves—or so she thought of him—stepped to the icebox behind the counter and fished out a dozen fat shrimps. Lona was dismayed to find they looked more like slugs, and were grey and had antennae and legs. “Do…do you have any pink ones?” she faltered.

Mr. Fairfax-and-Cloves burst into a loud guffaw. “They’ll turn pink, Miss Birdy, soon’s you put ‘em in boiling water.”

“Oh.” Lona felt very stupid after that. Miss Ladislaw would know all about prawns, of course.

“And what else would you like?”

“Oranges please—five of them—and pink sugar-cakes.”

The immense man shuffled to the window and dropped six sugar-cakes into a paper bag. It was a beautiful bag, striped red and pink, and Lona decided she would like a parlor papered just like it when she grew up. The cakes were followed by the five oranges—Lona wondered if they would crush her cakes, but she didn’t like to be a bother.

“What are you drinking at this party, Miss Birdy?”

“Coffee, I ‘spect…or tea?”

“No wine? No champagne?”

“No sir.” That was the one point on which she and Miss Ladislaw saw eye-to-eye.

“Will you be having any cheese?”

“Is it customary?”

“No dinner part complete without it.”

“Then…then I’d better have some. And a chicken too, and some hot-cross-buns, and a half-pound of tea.” Lona hoped that was right—she never drank tea herself and she didn’t know how much one used in a pot. Mr. Fairfax-and-Cloves ambled about the store gathering her purchases. They made quite a heap on the wooden counter now, and Lona began to fear that her half-pound note would not purchase it all, despite the enormous boon it seemed to her meager salary.

“Anything else, Miss Birdy?”

“Nothing sir. And how much will it cost?”

“One pound, thruppence.”

Lona was miserable all at once. She didn’t like to admit that she hadn’t the money when this fellow had been so obliging and bustled around. She bet he wouldn’t like to hear her admit it either—it meant he wouldn’t be making his money. “I’m sorry, sir, I only have a half-pound.”

The man eyed her up and down, and there was a queer look on her face. “You’re sure about that?”

“Yessir.”

“Then, Little Birdy, you’d better go home.” He looked grave now and he eyed the door suggestively. His jowls hung heavy and his eyebrows lowered like rumply thunderclouds on the plane of his forehead.

“Yessir.” Lona backed out of the shop door and the bell jangled a disconsolate farewell. It had grown colder, and Old Winter was sharpening his claws on the stones of the street. The dark cold seeped through her shoes and through her coat and through her heart. Miss Ladislaw was right. Miss Ladislaw was always right.  Why had she even thought herself capable of planning a dinner-party? People like her—tiny girls who were barely old enough to wear their hair up—never should trifle with such grandiose plans.

 Lona walked home, dreading the “I told you so” that Miss Ladislaw would doubtless stare her down with. She wished he hadn’t sent out the invitations—Mrs. Dorking would cry, and Mr. Shambles would clear his throat and smile at her Supportively, and Mr. Featherpip would stand about on one leg and nod at Mr. Plutarch who would swirl his hands and make speeches in his faded purple coat.  She wished that she had not used the daring pink invitations for nothing. There was to be no dinner-party, after all, and she had much rather have used them for a successful occasion.

The door to 39 Tubwash Street stood ajar, and a faint, weepy puddle of candlight poured through it and sobbed on the cobbles around the doorstep. So her guests were already there. Lona hugged herself tightly for extra courage, then stepped into the hall and hung her hat and coat on the tree. She had left her pencil-case next to the brass roots she had so happily crouched near an hour ago.

Mrs. Dorking’s plump, cordial voice flooded out through the door of her rooms and folded Lona in a warm embrace. Mrs. Dorking spoke of the weather and made a mention of Kate—Kate was her daughter, and whenever she spoke of Kate she was happy—it was a good sign, Lona knew. She pushed the door open quietly and slipped into the room. Everyone quietened at her arrival, and Mr. Plutarch bowed.

“It is with great felicity that we gather together, my dear Lona,” he said. Mr. Featherpip stood on one leg and nodded.

“And ain’t it the grandest and kindest and best thing in the world, Lona-luv, you givin’ us this party an’ all?” Mrs. Dorking beamed and nodded from the ruffles of her cotton-cap. Mr. Shambles looked up from his newspaper and nodded at her.

“Why, Lona,” Mrs. Dorking said, bustling over and folding her in her soft, fat arms. “What’s the matter, pet?”

“I…I’m poor and little and we can’t have a dinner party!” she sobbed.

“Can’t have a dinner party? Tell me about it, luv.”

So Lona told them about Fairfax and Cloves and the bonus she had worked so hard for, and of all her expectations for the evening, and Miss Ladislaw simpered down upon the distressed girl from her gilt frame.

“And I’m so sorry about it all!” she finished. Mr. Shambles cleared his throat and smiled Supportively, and handed her his soot-smirched handkerchief. She pressed it to her eyes and huddled on the footstool at his benevolent and muddy feet. The others stood around in the awkward silence that always follows a profound disappointment. Miss Ladislaw, Lona noticed, looked singularly pleased in her stiff, cold way.

Mr. Plutarch flicked his purple coattails backward and swirled his hands. “Is not the most important component to a dinner party the company one keeps? And is it not more than food? We can drink coffee and eat buttered toast here as well as in our own homes.”

Mr. Featherpip stood on one leg and nodded, but Lona felt her tears starting again. “But..but I haven’t any butter!”

There would have been another to-do, I’m positive, were the friends not interrupted in this most interesting trial by a sharp knock on the door. Mr. Featherpip found his second leg and tripped over the Lona’s overshoes while Mr. Plutarch dashed to the door. He backed into the room a moment later pursued by a young boy with a pug nose. “Ain’t this 39 Tubwash Lane?” he bellowed.

“Yes it is, young lad. And what’s it to you?” Mrs. Dorking asked, holding forth the fire-poker and brandishing it wildly.

“I’ve come wit’ a dee-livery.”

“A delivery?” they all said, then looked at Lona. She shrugged—what did it matter if Mr. Gilbert was sending round more mending for her? She had long been employed as both stenographer and seamstress for the good man.

“She needs t’sign fer it,” the boy said, tossing a tablet into the room. Lona looked at the tablet and looked at her friends, looked at Miss Ladislaw, then looked at the boy. There was nothing for it, she supposed. She took up the tablet and her eyes grew round.

“For the little Birdy…from the Ornathologist.” It didn’t matter to Lona what “ornithologist” meant—someone had sent her a real package. Someone cared for her! She signed her name in her cramped hand, then gasped as the errand-boy whistled to someone in the passage and a parade of good things to eat entered the room. There was everything she had chosen and more. And tied with a red, red bow at the very top of the basket holding the oranges was a pair of red velvet gloves. Lona picked them up, with a very reverent feeling in her heart, and suddenly it dawned on her what the Ornathologist was. Who he was rather; for it rushed on her, as happy truths will, that it was all from Mr. Fairfax-and-Cloves!

Mrs. Dorking cried, the errand-boy bellowed goodbye, Mr. Shambles smiled Supportively and even Jollily, Mr. Featherpip stood on one leg, and Mr. Plutarch swirled his hands. And over it all, over the whole mad, glorious, merry mess Miss Ladislaw peered down from her portrait and looked—as Lona happily thought—rather disappointed.