“Please, do go on. How exactly did the kettle begin it?”
“Weelll… it just sat there so… so… sitty!”
“I see. It was ‘sitty.’ And the problem with that is what, exactly?”
“Sitting is just so boring! How could it just not do anything?”
“So, you decided to make it do something.”
“Everything needs a little nudge now and then. All I did was fill it up with water.”
“Mm-hmm. And the kettle appreciated that, did it? Got up and danced a jig, I’m sure.”
“No! It just sat there drooling out its spout! Disgusting! I turned the stove on to dry it out.”
“- – -“
“What?! It started grumbling at me, and it just kept getting louder and louder. I told it to calm down but then it started screaming at me and smoke came out of the spout!”
“Imagine that. So you thought…”
“Obviously it needed some private time to adjust its attitude so I covered it with a towel.”
“Naturally it reacted well.”
“I guess it was dryer than I thought. You do always say where there’s smoke there’s fire.”
“I wish I could deny that.”
“Well, obviously I couldn’t let the kettle burn the house down, so I blew on it as hard as I could. Candles have much better attitudes, by the way.”
“I see. And that’s when you finally called me?”
“Yeah! That kettle needs to go to jail for arson! That’ll teach it what happens when it’s boring and stubborn.”
She trailed her fingers along the wooden bannister, stepping carefully to avoid tripping over the litter of decay. The air smelled faintly musty, but the open front door lit up the foyer with clear sunlight. She turned and grinned at her companions.
Chuck groaned. “I know that look,” he told the real estate agent with a dramatic droop. “Honey, did you have to pick the dump?”
“Don’t call it a dump!” she pleaded, laughing. “Look at the lines; it’s a beautiful old house!” She gestured to the agent standing just inside the door. “Tell him how special it is.”
“A historical gem, really,” the woman agreed in a tone just a little too bright. “A bit closed off for modern tastes, of course, but a few walls could easily be removed.” She stepped gingerly over scattered glass from a broken window, forgetting to hide a grimace.
Honey followed her, peering into the dim interior of the front room. “Look, Chuck, there’s a fireplace! Oh, let’s go upstairs; I bet every room has one!”
He sighed but let her take his hand and pull him up the creaking steps. “Central heating was invented for a reason, Honey. Do you intend to have a fire in the baby’s room? And it’s gonna take a fortune to fix everything wrong with this place!”
She squealed with delight from two steps above him. “Look at the wood floors, babe! Can’t you just see them all polished up?”
He looked back at the agent once again waiting at the front door. “Are you sure there are no ghosts in this old place?” he asked with a rye grin.
She clicked her pen and opened a notebook, standing a little straighter than she already was. “Shall we start the paperwork now?”
The Grand Experiment, the village council called it. Marigold sniffed; Mayor Belfast always did tend toward the dramatic. Bunch of nonsense, in her opinion. What folk were thinking electing that bunch of nincompoops she would never know.
Six months they had wasted building the stupid things. A whole row of cottages made entirely of turf. Except the hare-brained idiots hadn’t been able to figure out how to hold up a roof made of dirt, so modern eaves of wood painted black stuck out like a sore thumb. Glass windows had been the next logical step, but only in the wooden sections. That looked well! She rolled her eyes.
The entire town had come out for the unveiling; the result had been underwhelming. Marigold really didn’t know what that sorry excuse for a mayor had expected, trying to talk up walls and floors made of dirt like they were the golden streets themselves. The tour had been a disaster from start to finish. The only person remotely interested in living in one of those fake caves was crazy old Miss Hartskell. The council had finally been forced to accept her application to recoup the cost to the town.
Since then that batty old witch had taken over the row with strays, plants, and incomprehensible handicrafts. No one bothered to argue; it wasn’t like the cottages were in demand. And even Marigold had to admit that from the main road they looked like pretty green hills nestled in an old Grove. Too bad she had to pass it on her way to work at the town hall every day.
“Rain before noon, Marigold!” Marj Hartskell waved delighted lyrics as she delivered her forecast through a cascade of tumbled curls. “Morning, Marj,” Marigold called back through the open car window. Potty old hag. “See you at tea time as usual. For goodness sake, don’t bring any wildlife!”
“Connor!” Emily leaned over the rail, her voice hushed but quivering with laughter. “What do you think you’re doing? They’ll kick us out!”
“Not if the bridge troll eats them first!” Connor growled, then coughed as his vocal cords protested. He ducked out from under the boards and hopped up to sit on the warm stone beside the bridge.
Emily propped on the rail, elbows stiff, and tried to glare at him, but he leaned over and planted a kiss on her lips. She laughed softly and fisted the front of his shirt, shaking him slightly. “What if I was the big Billy goat gruff?”
“That would be disappointing,” he said, shifting his weight and grabbing her hand as if to keep himself from falling. “Because this wouldn’t fit a gruff old goat.” He held her hand tightly, running his thumb over her fingers with quieter expression, then with a sudden strangled throat clearing shoved the ring over her knuckle. “It looks pretty good on you, though.” He gave a nervous chuckle and glanced sideways with an almost pleading grin.
Her breath hissed inward and she stared at her hand for an eternal fifteen seconds. Then a blush suffused her cheeks and she touched the tiny sparkle resting on her finger with tender awe. Agreement came in a whisper as her forehead met his, but the quick rise and fall of his shoulders registered full comprehension.
“Come along, we’ll see the bridge later,” a passerby urged her child with a knowing smile. “Those two might be there for a little while. We’ll give them their privacy. “
Two weeks ago we embarked on a new adventure by adding six chicks to our flock of three. I grew up with chickens; I thought I was prepared. From day one these birds set out to prove me wrong.
To begin with, I didn’t realize how small four week old pullets were under all those brand new feathers. We left the house for two hours the first evening, and when we came back after dark all six had blissfully jumped through the dog wire of their run and bedded down two feet outside of the fence. I managed to pick them up three at a time and snuggle them in my shirt tail back into their appropriate sleeping area.
After adding chicken wire to the entire perimeter the next morning (while continually chasing escaped chicks), I heaved a sigh of relief. It was taken as a challenge by those overly curious toddler birds. I had built their run attached to the existing run for socialization, but separated by mesh that I could easily cut out later. By afternoon they had found a way through a gap in the mesh barrier and delightedly raided kitchen scraps under the indignant beaks of their elders. I managed to chase them back through their convenient hole and close it up before bedding them down for the night.
Problem not solved. Not a day went by for the next week that didn’t find me chasing houdini pullets and closing up microscopic escape routes. In the meantime, like all toddlers, they emptied their (supposedly chick-friendly) feeder all over the ground, turned over their water dispensers repeatedly when they weren’t kicking grass and bedding into them, and made a mess of their sleeping quarters.
It wasn’t all bad; the amount of time I spent corraling those birds meant they got used to me. By the end of a week they would call back to me when I talked to them, and when I let them out in the morning they would squabble and flutter so close to me that their wings hit me. When I brought food they would rush the gate so I had to be careful not to step on them. For a day or two they seemed to have settled in.
Then they discovered how to breach the blocked holes. Peck until the thing moves, then scratch it out of the way. Fly higher and find the hidden gap at the top. Dig a new hole! Me and those pullets spent a whole lot more quality time together. They started to argue with me and throw themselves at the door to their little coop when I didn’t open it fast enough to suit them. They started trying to eat my shoes and investigating my clothes.
We settled again for a day or two into a routine; all the escape routes seemed to be managed, and I started thinking about raking the big run in preparation for joining. I didn’t reckon on just how devious my little friends were, and I set myself up for what had to be the funniest chicken story ever.
I headed out to bed them down, but I knew as soon as I rounded the corner of the house something was amiss. I could hear them from much farther than usual, and couldn’t see them in their run. Yep, you guessed it. All six pullets were in the big run, merrily exploring in and out of the big coop. It might have been a boring story if they had stayed there.
They heard me coming. All six rushed to the gate, chirping madly in greeting. Their elders were already asleep, having the sense to know it was nearly dark, but not them! Did I mention the gate to the big run is dog wire? By the time I could get it open, those overly excited birds had pushed through and were running circles around the pen, cackling wildly. I called for reinforcements: extra hands and food.
The food was a dismal failure; they weren’t the least bit hungry. They were, however, delighted to stay up late and intended to keep that illicit privilege in spite of me. My eight year old son covered himself in glory by catching three by himself; my husband caught one. The others came to see what all the fuss was about and that was one battle won.
The next was to get them in the coop; they were gonna sleep with their elders because I wasn’t even trying to get them back through whatever new hole they discovered. I carried the food inside followed by chicks. By now they had already pecked up my shoes and tried to burrow under my shirt tail while I squatted trying to keep them contained as we caught them. They had finally realized it was bedtime, had decided I was mom, and as far as they were concerned I wasn’t leaving. Three surrounded my foot and snuggled up, one fluttered up the roost and perched on my wrist, and two curled up on my back as I bent over trying to reach things. They weren’t moving.
Once again my son came to the rescue. He closed the door so they couldn’t get spooked and escape, then moved them off me one at a time. While they were flapping around complaining about it, we ducked out and locked them in. By then it was completely dark and I wasn’t sure what gifts had been left on my shirt. In case the solar-powered but temperamental door decided to actually open at sunrise the way it’s supposed to, we hung a blanket over the gate until I can add chicken wire. What would you like to bet I find those chickens in the yard tomorrow morning anyway?
Everyone knew Locker 410 was odd. Not even the maintenance man, who had been with the school since it’s founding, remembered it being assigned to anyone. He got a funny look whenever someone asked about it, mumbled about something needing to be cleaned, and shuffled away as fast as his aging feet would carry him.
For a long time most people just pretended not to notice. A weird sensation if a hand brushed the door, a cold chill in the spine of anyone standing near… those were easy enough to ignore. They might, after all, be figments of an overactive imagination. When all the lockers were repainted ten years ago, ignoring number 410 became a little more problematic.
In a wall of orange, 410 stuck out like a sore thumb in lemon yellow. According to rumors, the painters had tried. After one suffered a seizure, another watched every stroke disappear through the metal, and yet another reported there being no locker there when confronted about his failure, the company firmly refused to try again.
Still, an ugly yellow locker surrounded by spooky rumors did little more than provide seniors with fodder for hazing freshmen. Until last night, that is. An unidentified, dessicated body turning up directly in front of it while the opened lock smoked and hissed tended to be considered significant even by the most hardened skeptics. In the shock, no one thought to look for the mumbling, vague janitor.
“Saul, wait!” Lily laughed breathlessly as her bare feet slung sand behind her. “I lost my sandals and the sand is on fire!”
“Not as hot as the boardwalk,” her brother yelped, dancing on his toes from sand to board and back again. “Hurry up, it’s too hot to be out of the water!”
“Well, you’re the one who just had to come all the way down here,” Lily grumbled. “We could have just swum in the pool, you know.”
“Yeah, but who wants to do that when the whole big ocean is waiting?” Saul reached the shade of the dock and jumped to swing from the beams. “Just look at it! Have you ever seen color like that?”
“Yeah, yesterday, when we came for swim.” Lily sniffed and attempted to imitate a flamingo while examining the soles of her feet. “Now that we’re here at the ‘whole big ocean’, are you getting in or not?”
“Come on, Lily, I thought girls were supposed to be romantic.” He dropped to the weathered boards and perched on the railing beside the steps she was about to descend. “It glows on its own, don’t you think? There’s magic in it! Maybe it’ll turn us into denizens of the deep, doomed to ride the waves for all eternity.” He struck a dramatic pose.
Lily rolled her eyes. “Waves aren’t in the deep, idiot.” She shoved him so that his balance on the railing failed and darted down the steps into the brilliant water. “Catch me if you can, you big sea monster!”
It was a strange place for a school, high in the Alps where the crags rose so steeply that the chateau stuck out of the mountainside like a hitchhiker’s thumb. Telian was sure the founders had been goats; no one else would have thought all these stairs would be a good idea. And, on the inside at least, one could have imagined it to be any of the wealthiest valley palaces. The icy winds of the peaks whistled by unmarked by those under the great glass dome of the courtyard.
Telian had been destined for the school since before he was born. Every firstborn of the Harkner line had come to manhood climbing those accursed stairs. He found the whole thing boring in the extreme; this was the twenty-first century, not the thirteenth. Why anyone would still want their sons to be educated in this backward, isolated fashion was beyond his comprehension.
The ancient bells rang from the turret at the highest pinnacle, producing echoes that even impressed Telian. He followed his fellow students as they pouted from their classrooms into the dusk of the sanctum, groaning inwardly. Lit only by the flickering of recessed candles, and smelling of crowded bodies, the room was his least favorite. Still, there was no avoiding meditation. Resigned, he gazed into the swirling pattern in the center stone as he had been taught.
This time, the swirl held his gaze, and instead of wandering into memories of video games and girls, he watched the swirl move and twist before his eyes. The room along with its occupants faded into darkness, and a voice reverberated with the sound of the bells. “Telian Harkner, heir of the Tenth Realm, it is time. Come and be counted among your forefathers.”
The hot glue gun sat cooling beside his hand. A quick inspection of the board, a wiggle here or tap there, showed nothing loose or out of place. It was finally finished. How long had it taken him to figure out the right materials for those mossy roofs? He couldn’t even remember. It hadn’t mattered, really; the model had to be perfect.
He wasn’t sure why, exactly. He had woken one morning with an overwhelming need to build it. A town he had never seen, but he knew every detail. He’d looked it up one day, trying to convince himself it was just imagination and didn’t have to be so precise. There it was, a tiny town somewhere in the mountains clear across the world. How it could even be recorded on the internet he didn’t understand. After that he gave up fighting the urge; he never repeated his search or dug any deeper either. He had been too afraid of the reasons to want to know them.
Now, as he stood over his work, tiny lights flickered in the windows. He blinked, but they didn’t vanish. Music drifted faintly from the treeline on the far side of the model, and the tops of brightly-colored trees around the houses quivered as if a gentle breeze tickled them. The laughter of children rose from the house nearest him. He didn’t wait for more but stumbled to the door on legs that felt like jello. In his terrified hurry he forgot to shut the door.
Louise tossed her glasses down on the table and massaged her aching head with tense fingers. How long had she been sitting here, trying to make the words come? Long enough for the tea she had made to be cold and bitter, at least. The rain made watching the passage of the sun impossible, and she had left her phone in her bedroom.
Coming up here to her grandmother’s farmhouse was supposed to solve everything. No distractions, plenty of open spaces and quiet, the perfect place to let the creative springs flow. Except they weren’t. She sighed. Maybe she should just face it; she was a one-hit-wonder. Writers could have hits, too, right? Maybe that one idea was a fluke, and she’d never have another.
She passed her hands over her face and glared at the notebook through splayed fingers. Wait, that key hadn’t been there before. She glanced around suspiciously, and hurriedly rose to check both corners of the porch for intruders. No one was there, and she laughed at herself. No one could have been on the porch without making the old boards creak just like they were doing under her own feet. But that key. Where could it have come from?
She sank back down onto the woven seat of the old straight backed chair. Slowly she picked up the old-fashioned bit of iron and twirled it between thumb and forefinger. An idea trickled into her mind, the barest beginning of something, but it was a beginning. She dropped the key to reach for her pen, then paused in consternation. What was it again? Of course, the one idea she’d had was gone just that fast. She picked up the key again, and her mind flooded with story. She stared with open mouth for a moment, then shoved the key into her other hand and snatched up her pen again. This was going to be a good one.
The Word Worker 