In celebration of spooky season, Twinkle, part 1.
When we immerse ourselves in our pain or trauma, when we embrace it and hold it dear to our hearts, like a best friend, we create ourselves and the world in which we live. We begin to reside inside our pain. We become fashioned by our suffering. Stella had become comfortable in her discomfort because it had grown familiar. In the darkness that she lived within, she could sometimes see tiny pinpricks of light dappling the blackness of the night. Mostly though, there was only darkness, shadows on shadows. And mostly she had stopped looking for the light.
If Stella had seen how close to her cottage the bears came each night as they wandered the outskirts of the village, she would not have been frightened. Stella knew the mother and her cubs sought food and moved on, leaving footprints and scat and harming nothing.
Stella also wasn’t afraid that an ember from the hearth might flicker and spark, setting fire to the curtains, burning down her small home. Every evening she expertly banked the fire, pushing the hot coals towards the back of the hearth and covering them with ash. And she knew she had locked the front door. With both latches.
Nothing bad could happen, when the worst had already happened.
But that night, Stella lie awake in bed, wrapped in the midnight blue quilt her mother had made especially for her, gently touching one of the white satin-stitched embroidered bits, which were in the shape of stars, like Stella’s name. And she wondered how long it takes for a person to become merely bones beneath the earth. You see, Stella’s mother had departed quite abruptly the previous spring. She had cried out, “Oh no!” Then with her hand clutched to her heart and an astonished look on her face, she was gone, and the next day buried.
It had been only Stella and her mother for so long, living their quiet life on the outskirts of a quiet village, nestled high in the quiet mountains. After her mother’s passing the villagers checked in on Stella. But she had put on a brave face and assured them she was quite fine.
She wanted for no food, as the kitchen garden she tended with care continued to supply her with its bounty. On Tuesdays the butcher left her a chicken or a cut of beef. She’d find butter and pats of soft cheese at the door, sometimes dusted with herbs, sometimes dotted with bits of garlic and chives, from the woman whose goats gave the sweetest milk. And the baker’s daughter knocked on the door every Friday to deliver a beautifully braided sweet bread with which to celebrate the sabbath.
Stella’s finger traced one of the embroidered stars on the quilt again, and she almost fell asleep. Then she heard a noise. It sounded like a squeaking floorboard, as if someone or something were creeping through the cottage. But nobody could be there, for she knew with certainty that she’d locked the door. She thought she had, anyway.
Nobody could get in. Probably.
Winter nights can feel endlessly long and unbearably cold and this night was no different. Stella huddled under the covers, shivering. She hoped to see the sun rise outside the window of the cottage in a few hours. But, since her mother died, the days had gotten darker and darker, until one day Stella looked around and realized it had been some time since the sun had come up on a new day. It had finally turned into one endless night.
The sweet little bunny who usually plagued Stella, stealing their breakfast from the kitchen garden every morning, had stayed sleeping in its burrow. The creatures of the night though, had quickened the pace of their hunting, sharp teeth and claws and beaks glinting in the dark, as they looked for things to kill in the woods surrounding Stella’s small cottage.
She shivered again, trying to pull the cover closer and gain some warmth. She heard the screech of what might have been an owl, followed by the screaming of its prey. Then the sound stopped suddenly, and she knew death had arrived. Death could be like that, taking one by surprise, unforeseen, startling, abrupt, and oh-so-very final. That’s how it had visited her cottage in the woods, sneaking up and whisking her mother away, with only an, “Oh no!”
No time for, “I love you.” No time for, “Good bye.”
The warmth and comfort of her quilt was disappearing. Stella felt blanketed instead by the inescapability of death. She closed her eyes. She was bone tired, but grief doesn’t rest, and just before falling asleep, her breath caught in her throat, startling her awake. With a sigh, she resigned herself to sleeplessness.
She gathered the covers around herself and slipped out of bed, her stockinged feet padding softly on the wooden floor, and peered out the window. Again she sighed. She tried to search the night sky, looking for a twinkle above, or something to give herself hope. When Stella had been born her mother had looked at her, saw her bright spirit and twinkly eyes, and decided to name her Stella. As much as Stella searched now though, she couldn’t find even a tiny glimmer in the velvet of the night sky.
It takes something to acknowledge pain and trauma and not clasp it too close. Stella had begun clutching her pain firmly; so much so that eventually there wasn’t room for anyone or anything else. She only accepted help when she absolutely needed it, and never a bit more. When the baker’s daughter had suggested Stella might come into the village on market day to visit with the townsfolk, Stella declined.
The following week, from behind the closed door she had asked the girl to just leave the braided loaf of bread on the step, declaring herself too unwell to come out. It wasn’t entirely a lie, but it also wasn’t quite true. And the more Stella withdrew, the darker it got.
Until dark was all there was.
As she began to turn away from the window Stella caught her reflection in the glass, and then, behind that, she thought she saw another face, thin and white and shadowed. She spun around. Of course there was nobody there. Stella knew she had locked the door. She had made sure that nobody could get in.
When she gazed back at the window though, she saw two glittery eyes peering in from the dark, so sparkly and silvery grey they almost shone white. Her heart began to pound in her chest. A face came into focus, pale and luminescent as the moon, with dark shadows for cheeks, and a nose that was uncannily too narrow.
The face leaned closer to the window, peeping in. Stella took a step back, holding her breath. Her mouth went dry with fear. Thin grayish lips, on the face peering in the window, slowly parted and very gradually began to smile at her.
But the smile kept going wider. And wider.
It smiled wider than a normal mouth could smile. And in the gaping darkness between the thin lips Stella saw a row of small snow-white teeth. There were too many of them. And a tiny diamond glinted in one of the front teeth. Stella couldn’t move.
A long thin finger emerged from the darkness and sharply pecked at the window, making a scratchy tapping sound on the glass. The face moved closer. Stella was holding her breath, frozen in place. Who was this? What was this? The lips on the face were moving, saying something. She could just hear it, like the soft rustle of fallen leaves or the slither of a snake. It might have been inside her head or maybe even inside the house, she couldn’t tell. In a whispery singsong it said,
“When the blazing sun was gone, when it nothing shined upon, then you showed your little light, you twinkle, twinkled, all the night.”
Stella felt frozen to the spot, unable to look away from the face in the window. Her bare feet felt numb with cold, and even though she was wrapped in the quilt, she was shivering, although that was probably from fright. Was she dreaming? Was this really happening? Stella blinked and the face wavered and faded a little. She could see her own reflection and now the scary face looked like a reflection, too. Then from behind herself, she heard a whispery voice say,
“I’m a traveler in the dark. I thank you for your tiny spark. I could not see which way to go, if you had not twinkled so.”
She closed her eyes tightly. This is not real she told herself. This can’t really be happening. But then she most definitely felt a cold bony hand touch her shoulder, and gently turn her around.
Come back next week to read the rest of the story!
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Oh! I'm scared, Linda! 👻
I enjoyed this, Linda. Looking forward to reading the next part.