Just a bit of writing I did for fun. I feel like I hit my best stride when writing fiction for children, even though I've never pursued that avenue farther than "just for fun." I've been pecking away at this the past few days as the mood strikes me and I figured I would share it with you to help you, in turn, pass the time. Happy Monday, darlings!
An Untitled Story (With Birds)
by Rachel Heffington
“The world, my
dear, is very full of things you shouldn't touch.” Miss Crust's
voice curled back on itself, purring. She pulled her crotchety old
fingers through Maribelle's hair.
“Ow!” Maribelle
yowled. She didn't think Miss Crust pulled her hair on purpose, but
she certainly didn't not pull it on purpose. That was the
point on which Maribelle took issue with her nurse.
“Is it my fault
if you got half a jar of molasses stuck in it? Your hair's more
tangled than a weaver-bird's nest.”
Maribelle wouldn't
know. Weaver birds weren't her area of expertise, though they were
her father's and Miss Crust's. Her father and Miss Crust were very
well-known ornithologists – bird people. They were the sort of
important people other important people came to if they had questions
about puffin migration (“Do puffins migrate?”) or parrot-speech
(“Just how many words can the average parrot learn in its
lifetime?”) or the habits of displaced bluebirds. How Miss Crust
went from studying birds to untangling Maribelle's hair, Maribelle
didn't know. She wasn't quite sure where her father had picked up
Miss Crust. Miss Crust just had always been. Maribelle couldn't
remember a time when Miss Crust hadn't been part of life at 34
Bleaking Street. In her earliest memories there was sunlight, plenty
of dust-motes swirling glitter-like through the beams, and Miss
Crust. Funny enough, there was never a memory of a mother. Just Miss
Crust, Assisting. She was very good at Assistance – Assisting
Father with bird-work and Maribelle with tangled hair and
grammar-work and stains on the fronts of her dresses. Sometimes
Maribelle thought she might like to do with a bit less Assistance.
Maybe only on Tuesdays, because Tuesdays generally weren't the best
day of the week. Miss Crust could be on-call the rest of the time and
only Assist when Maribelle really wanted her.
“What happened to
my mother?” Maribelle asked suddenly. Miss Crust's finger twitched
through Maribelle's hair, not in a surprised way but in a “Dear
heavens, this again?” way.
“Died,” Miss
Crust answered.
“From what?” Of
course she knew – galloping consumption – but it was needful to
hear it again, just to remind her that there had been a mother
once upon a time. It bothered Maribelle sometimes, how often she
nearly forgot most kids had two parents.
Here it came -
“Galloping
consumption,” Miss Crust said.
There it was.
“Now you,” she
pulled Maribelle upright off the stool and smacked her bottom, “get
downstairs. Your father wants to speak with you before he leaves.”
Glad to be free of
the dreadful hairbrush, Maribelle skibbled out the nursery door and
wandered down their great big staircase, pausing on her favorite
steps as she went. Her favorite steps were as follows:
twentieth,
sixteenth,
eighth.
The reasons why
were these:
The twentieth was
the step at the landing with a peculiar, round window looking out
onto a bit of scrappy yard and a trashcan that always had a cat of
some color turned upside down, fishing for something inside it.
The sixteenth step
was exactly halfway which, as anyone can tell you, is a special
place.
And the eighth step
was the step whereupon Maribelle's front teeth had been knocked out
when she tripped on it two years ago. There had been no other six
year old girls missing both their front teeth that year so
though it had given her a bit of lisp, Maribelle thought the
distinction quite worth the trouble of pronouncing “stork,”
“sausage,” and other like words.
Maribelle tromped
into Father's study without knocking. She never knocked, on
principle. People seemed to stop doing interesting things when you
knocked first. It was much more gratifying to throw open a door and
see someone look like they'd seen a ghost. Maybe you'd see where they
hid those scrumptious chocolates, or maybe you'd hear things they
wouldn't otherwise have told a little girl. And Maribelle did very
much like to know. Knowing was probably the thing she liked most in
the world, besides maybe chocolate ice cream and splashing in puddles
barefoot when she ought to have worn boots.
Father sat at his
desk, balding head between his bird-claw hands. He looked up as she
came in. Pale gray daylight flashed at her off the little round
lenses of his glasses.
“Hi,” Maribelle
offered.
“Oh. Hello,
Maribelle.”
“Miss Crust said
you wanted me?”
Father perked up a
little and ran his fingers through his hair. Two grayish-black puffs
of it stuck out on either side of his head and made him look like a
ruffled owl. The top of his head was utterly bald. “Just so, my
dearling.”
When he put out his
hand, she walked to him and settled her little palm in his bigger
one. Hot. Dry. Shaky. That was Father's hand. Not liking to keep hers
there very long, Maribelle gave Father a quick smile and put her hand
in her pocket where he wouldn't think to ask for it again.
“Been studyin'
birds?” she inquired.
“Oh, hrm. Birds,
birds. Is there anything like birds in the world?” Father's lenses
flashed again and his smile was a little less hampered than usual. He
did so like birds.
Maribelle wanted to
help him in any way she could to not seem so picked-over and trembly.
“Well, Miss Crust says there was a sort of dinosaur way back in the
dinosaur-days that flew like a bird.” It mightn't help much
but Father might find it interesting, and that would at least
distract him from whatever it was he worried over.
“Oh, ha!”
Father chortled. “Ha! Ha!”
Like a jay,
Maribelle thought. Crisp and short and unaccustomed. She liked to
think of Father as all sorts of birds. He laughed like a jay and
looked like an owl. He walked like a heron and spoke like a wren in
terse, tentative chirps. She liked to watch him and he liked to watch
birds. It helped to pass the time in the few months of the year when they weren't bopping around the Congo or Peru or someplace.
Posts
