The Changing Season
Flash-fiction - by Lane Robins
Sasha’s first customer of the day wanted a refund. The tourist showed Sasha that the pack of postcards had illustrations on both sides—cheery seascapes on the front and detailed pen and ink drawings of Great Blue Herons on the backs.
“I can’t write on them like that, can I?”
Sasha shrugged. “Picture’s worth a thousand words. Can’t fit a thousand words on a postcard.”
The tourist folded her hand around the $5 bill and miscellaneous change, and headed to the coffee counter, where Sasha’s bored part-time clerk, Royal, waited. At least the tourist’s money was staying in store, Sasha thought.
Sasha set the unwanted postcards in the “Heron” pile of returned objects—magazines, newspapers, postcards, books.
The tourist collected her coffee and took Vasily’s armchair, reaching out for one of the expensive travel magazines Sasha stocked. Maybe she’d make a sale yet.
Then, Vasily arrived, crashing through the front door like the proverbial bull, lumbering toward his chosen seat, while muttering. The tourist found somewhere else she needed to be and vacated the store, leaving the magazine splayed on the windowsill.
“Stop scaring away my customers, Vasily,” Sasha said.
“Bah, she bought nothing.”
“She bought coffee.”
“You do not sell coffee. You sell expensive mudwater.”
“You don’t like our coffee and you don’t read. But you’ve come here every day for a month.”
“Bah,” he said, and collapsed into the faded, red velvet chair near the window. Royal tiptoed over and left an espresso on the sill.
“No answer?” Sasha asked. “I’ll buy your next coffee for you….”
“It’s bad coffee,” he said.
“It will be free.”
Vasily sighed gustily, put upon. “I am waiting for the end of the season. This place is good for waiting.” He took out his worn blue moleskine, and began to make tiny, angry sketches.
Waiting was all this place was good for. Waiting for it to fall apart.
Sasha had thought she’d gotten a deal when she bought the bookshop from the previous, bankrupt owner. Sasha had blamed his bankruptcy on his gambling, not the hard-learned fact that tourists didn’t buy books while on vacation.
So Sasha sold postcards, town-branded t-shirts, and cups of indifferent coffee. And that was in the summer season when the waters weren’t frigid, and the tourists could eat lobster outside without wearing parkas and earmuffs. In the winter, the town slumbered beneath leaden skies and ice-crust, its residents snarling at each other like half-starved wolves.
Her bookshop had survived two winters, but she didn’t think it would make it through a third. She wasn’t certain she would.
“You are sad today, Ms. Sturtevant,” Vasily said, a rare sign of concern from the curmudgeon.
“It’s fine,” she told him. “Enjoy your coffee.”
When Vasily first showed up in his shapeless old coat, hair and beard long and tangled by the sea air, Sasha had thought he was homeless. Later, she learned that he had been a famous political cartoonist. She had made the mistake of asking about his career. “I showed the truth, yet few acted. The world is populated by dullards and cowards who will sit and whine but not try for better. Thus, I retreat.”
Sasha, conscious that all she had ever done with political cartoons was retweet them without comment, had done her own retreating.
Today, as she went to tidy the travel magazine before Vasily could use it as a coaster, she peered over his shoulder. He grunted and shut the notebook. “Always so nosy, Ms. Sturtevant.”
Royal whispered, “What did you see?” when she returned to the other side of the bookstore.
“Herons on the southern coasts,” Sasha said. “Guess he’s not looking forward to winter, either.”
“Oh,” Royal said, deflating.
The shop door jangled the entry bells in a passing gust of wind; the latch hadn’t caught after the tourist left.
As she left the register, Sasha spotted a new heron. This one stretched, life-sized, across the ceiling. “Stop drawing herons on my bookstore, Vasily.”
“I do not,” he said.
Sasha knew he did. She just couldn’t figure out how he managed it or why he bothered. He came; he sat; he slurped at coffee that made him angry; and he sketched in his notebook. He never moved from that seat, yet his herons found their way to every possible place: on the light switch, across the pages of books, on the shelves, on the newspapers, even the carpet in the back section of the store.
She supposed she could ban Vasily, but his herons had grown on her, with their wild, somber expressions, long beaks, and slender sweep of neck feathers.
She shivered as the door blew shut before she could reach it. That burst of air carried the kiss of snowflakes. Soon her sweater wouldn’t be enough. Soon, she’d need snow chains for her tires. Soon, she’d be waking in the dark and sitting in the silent store all winter long and wondering if she would do enough business online to keep the heat on in her apartment.
Sometimes she understood why trapped wild animals chewed off their own legs.
Sasha shivered again, and went to mark the “Heron” pile to half-price.
When she was done, she told Royal, “Taking a break. Watch the register?”
“We don’t have any customers,” he reminded her.
“Ouch, Royal, ouch,” she said. He made her a cup of her favorite coffee—double shot espresso with a jolt of cinnamon and splash of cream—as an apology. She settled down in the only other chair in the coffee area.
Vasily looked like he was dozing, but roused enough to grump at Royal when he traded Vasily’s half-drunk cup for a fresh one.
“This one is free, Vasily,” Sasha reminded him.
“Hmph,” the artist said, but wrapped his big, arthritic fingers around the tiny cup. He took a careful sip. “Yes, better.”
Sasha picked up the travel magazine and began perusing southern states: more tourism, and they wouldn’t buy books either but she might be able to do something different….
The door slammed open again, this time on a fierce swirl of cold, damp wind, which brought with it the faint wails of distant geese.
“Ah!” Vasily said. “I wait no more!”
He surged to his feet, his coat flapping, his sketchbook falling to his booted feet, and all around them, the pen and ink herons stretched and peeled away from the books, and walls, and carpets and ceilings. They bloomed with delicate color—grey-blue and white and black and orange—and filled out. Feathers fluffed and trembled, eyes flashed, beaks clacked. One heron strode out from behind the coffee counter, making Royal squeak and clamber onto the counter. They clacked their beaks and made hoarse, deep bird calls, and the sound of their clawed feet on the thin carpet was like a thousand mice all gnawing at once. The air smelled of feather dust.
Sasha gasped, feeling feathers pulling away from the back of her sweater, the rough, unsettled flap of wings buffeting her hair and neck, before the heron stepped free. Its yellow eye stared at her, unblinking.
When there was no more room to stand without being jostled by several herons at once, when Royal’s panicked squeaks had faded to silence, then Vasily raised his arms. The open door gaped, and the herons clustered around him, sweeping him out the door and up into the chill, cloudy sky.
Sasha held her breath, watching, yearning, and Vasily called down to her, “Complaining or acting, Ms. Sturtevant? Decide!”
She thought of sunny beaches, warm all the year round, and a magical start to a new life. She raised her arms wide and felt rough wings bearing her away.