A. A. Azariah-Kribbs is a part-time cryptozoologist and fairy-watcher with her associates the spotted frog, Fuffle, and Wallie the Imp. She has been published in several venues, including the YA magazine Cicada, The Bards and Sages Quarterly and Fēlan. Her fiction is pending publication inBoston Accent Lit and Ghostlight. Her blog, “Wallie’s Wentletrap,” features original speculative art and fiction and follows the adventures of Wallie the Imp.
(&More, July/August 2016)
Second Place Winner,
2016 Bethlehem Writers Roundtable Short Story Award competition
Asha Azariah-Kribbs
It was not a very nice tree. It was tall but rough , with strange pits and crevices in the bark that spiders liked to huddle in, or the busy ants use for thoroughfares. It should have been scolded for poor posture. Its lowest branches dragged to the brush, and it preferred growing sideways rather than up, as a lazy dreamer might, heavy with thinking and memory.
Lara did not know how old it was, but it was far older than she could guess and so, a very old tree indeed. Lara Bell was eleven. Her family lived in an apartment, second floor, Lloyd St., on the left corner. She did not have any friends. Talking made her feel stiff and shy, and she was shy enough without words making it worse.
But the tree was just off the sidewalk on the walk home from school, and it would seem a little sulky not to give it a nod and say at least, “Hello.” Lara read to it and showed it pictures from her books on mathematics and geography. She talked about shapes and formulas, and mountain ranges and great lakes. The tree didn’t seem terribly interested and kept drawing strange patterns of its own in shadow and light across each new page. Lara said it really ought to behave if it was going to get anywhere.
One particular day, a Thursday, she didn’t feel like talking. She was thinking about study partners and sleepovers and telephone calls, and how robins never answer you and dragonflies and worms can never see the sense in homework, and so are no help at all, not even to complain to. She sat down on the tree’s long arm and began to pull leaves.
“What are you doing, little girl?” Lara turned.
In the shadow of the tree stood a stranger. He didn’t look like anyone Lara had ever seen. A cloak of rich green was clasped at his throat, and his feet were bare. His arms were twined to the wrist in creeping vine and on his head he wore a beautiful wreath of the very leaves she pulled. His hair was long and fine, and his eyes were dark and deep and bright.
“I’m not little,” said Lara.
The stranger laughed. It was a peculiar laugh with a creak in it not quite like the groan in a door, but not wholly dissimilar, either. It wasn’t musical, but genuine, and Lara felt that she had heard it before and often.
“The leaves are mine,” he said at last. “They are as much a part of me as your hair is to your head.”
“But you’ve taken some,” said Lara, looking at his wreath.
“It isn’t quite the same,” said the stranger. “I have lived at this tree’s heart for a long time.”
A smarter child might have thought facts and sense, and decided that the stranger was a little left of center. Lara wasn’t all that good at smart things . “Are you sure it’s this tree you live in,” she asked, “and not that one?” She pointed to a stately oak some few feet away.
“No indeed,” the stranger replied. “And I would not envy that tree for all the sun on its boughs. There is more to see here than there ever is so high. The oak would be hard pressed to tell you where the squirrel has buried her nuts or the fox has made his den, or what the birds are all a-chatter about these days—for they are almost always on about something.”
“Can you tell me?” asked Lara.
“Yes,” said the tree-man (for it was a tree-sprite, or elf, once common on any wild shore or place and now more careful than Lara at her shyest, for the world is very loud now and wasn’t always).
“If you are quiet and listen,” he said, “and promise never to go tearing leaves for no reason at all—and to never read me anything of variables and dividends again—I will tell you.”
Lara promised. It was one of those promises that are made in a moment, tested, and soon reversed. This was not the last time the tree-man was to hear of x’s, y’s, and z’s. However, Lara did not tear a single leaf again and only crushed a few by mistake when she climbed, which was different from pulling them on purpose.
He told her of the habits of creeping things. He told of four legs, six, and some, and how conceited are the centipedes for having a hundred, while the millipedes are altogether too occupied with their thousand to have any thought for themselves as selves, and so are the better tempered of the two. He told of a respectable family of squirrels who loved to steal chestnuts, walnuts, and acorns, but were so eager that they more often forgot than remembered where they put their store, and planted for spring in gathering for autumn.
Lara listened. She was silent and still as a cat on a fence and only went home when it was close to dinner. When she could, she tried to draw the likenesses of the creatures the tree-man described, the tree-man himself, and the tree. Her parents were charmed and Ms. Bailey, the art teacher, impressed. Lara felt they didn’t come out quite right.
She visited the tree often. The tree-man wasn’t always there to amuse her, but she had gotten good at it herself. She copied his stories in her notebook or else was very quiet so the animals forgot she was there. Then she could write down her own ideas about why one wild purple violet leaned just so while the others turned this way, or why the black squirrels threw nuts at the grey and the grey chattered their teeth at the black, without resolving anything.
“I think they really must like each other,” Lara said. “After all, what squirrel would mind having nuts thrown at it?”
Lara’s parents wondered at her. They liked the stories the tree-man told her (she always said they were his though they never believed her), and when she risked her own they liked those even better. Seeing how happy she was, her parents put off telling as long as they could. Mr. Bell had applied for a new position. In a matter of months they would be on a new street in a new house, near a new school. Lara was badly upset. She went to the tree, sat down on her favorite branch, and cried.
“What’s this? Why are you salting my roots?” Lara looked up. Her eyes were red and wet.
“I won’t ever see you again,” she said.
The tree-man knelt. “Well now,” he said. “Why do you say that?”
She told him.
“Is that all?” the tree-man asked. “A bridge, a road, and a bend or two? But there are trees the wide world over, and birds enough to sing in them. The grass will still grow and the sun will shine, and if you are willing to listen and watch, you will learn things I could never tell. You have already done that. Now close your eyes, little girl, and I will tell you another story.”
Lara shut her eyes. This time, the tree-man spoke of rare and wonderful things. She imagined the running brook that dashed and burbled over rocks and underground, and the mist gathering around high mountain tops like a thin fine wrap around a lady’s shoulders. She gazed across an ocean still as shining glass, and smelled the rain on a warm summer road. So many wondrous sights, Lara couldn’t help opening her eyes to see if they were really there, and found herself alone.
Lara never forgot the old tree. When she told her stories or practiced them out loud for others to hear and wonder at, she fancied she could hear the tree-man’s laugh again. Anyone else might have said it was the wind blowing, just so, straining branches and rustling leaves.
Lara, who never was very smart, knew better.
(&More, Nov/Dec 2016)
This story won Honorable Mention in the 2016 Bethlehem Writers Roundtable Short Story Award
Asha Azariah-Kribbs
He has no name. He is the “Rider in Black.” Where he came from no one knows, but they know one thing. They know he is a part of that great dusty region, the open spaces, wide fields, and wild mountains of the West.
The saw him first at the edge of a town in Colorado. It was hard to catch a glimpse of him but they all heard that long low whistle. It was nothing at first. As the Rider neared, the whistle grew impossible to ignore. No one could put a mouth to it until they saw him some distance up the road, the Rider in Black.
His horse had stopped and he was not watering her or resting, but whistling low and clear. Even from a distance the horse was big, a solid, powerful mass. It was harder to tell anything about the Rider. The sun was high and the skyline was shimmering with heat.
In the evening the sky turned red, a bad red. People were scared and without knowing why, blamed the Rider in Black.
They mounted a party to meet him. It was then they realized his whistling was fainter. The Rider had turned his horse and was leaving. They tried to follow him but he was gone. Nothing was left of him but that long low whistle.
That was the week before draught set in. It was a time of hardship and ruin. Some thought the Rider in Black had been a warning. Others thought that he had cursed them. There were some who believed he was a spirit drawn to strife with no will or way of his own.
The Rider in Black was seen in other places, too. He was always heard first. Whenever people caught his long low whistle, they knew it was hard times or danger. Sometimes they only heard the whistle and never saw the man or his horse. Sometimes, always from a distance, the horse was seen alone or the man was standing by her or sitting. That was a good sign. The danger was only if you heard him whistle.
Olive Dunn saw him. She had been playing outside and forgotten the time until the sun was very low. The field she liked to run in was turning dark and blue and she could no longer see the lizard she had been trying to catch. When she looked up, the early moon was shining. Olive climbed a tree to see it better.
She was in the tree when she heard. It was a faint, clear sound—a long low whistle. Something in it scared her and she stayed where she was, quiet and still as she could be. The whistle grew even clearer. It seemed to come from everywhere. The moon shone fierce as a yellow cat’s eye, and by its light Olive saw the Rider in Black.
His horse was standing not far from the tree. She was a giant bald mare. Her coat was dun and her tail and mane were tangled and wild. She had an ugly gaunt face like a mask and eyes so black and deep the stars were lost in them. She wore a leather bridle and saddle, and on her back sat the Rider in Black.
The Rider was tall. He sat easily, his shoulders slumped and the reigns loose in his long thin hands. His clothes were black and ragged. Olive could not see his face because he was wearing a hat, but she could see the purse of his lips when he whistled and the way his breath misted on the air as if it were cold. It was cool, not cold outside, but it made Oliver shiver to hear and see him. His hands looked yellow under the moon.
All at once his whistling stopped. The Rider’s horse lifted her head and snorted. Olive could see the light of torches from the town. She heard her parents’ voices and realized they and their neighbors had come looking for her. The Rider in Black turned his horse and rode across the field into the shadows.
Olive was scolded for playing so late. She told her parents about the Rider in Black. No one believed her, but the next day they went to the field to see if there was any sign of him. Over a low hill they were surprised by signs of an abandoned camp. There were horses’ prints and spread blankets, and a pot of something boiled dry over the spent fire.
Later in town, Olive heard that a band of murderers had been captured that morning. These men had planned to raid the town, but the night of the raid they turned suddenly back and galloped like wild men straight into the hands of the sheriff’s posse. The sheriff had never seen anything like it. The raiders were almost insane with fright.
The townspeople thought of Olive’s story. That night, her mother gave her an extra piece of pie and told her if she wasn’t home every day by four o’ clock she would never have pie again. If Olive had seen the Rider in Black and heard him whistle, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the robbers had seen and heard him, too. And though they were still afraid of him, they were also just a little proud (and more than a little grateful) that this time at least, the Rider in Black had not whistled for them.