Naughty Bird

Tags

fantastical fiction, original folktale, talking animals

Hungary and Its People…With Illustrations (1892), p. 207 by Louis Felberman, British Library digitized image, flickr

Now Katinka was the most efficient housewife in the village. Before the sun had risen overhead, she had finished the laundering and had set the bread out to rise. Her kitchen and rooms sparkled, and the hearth cracked with a bright well fed fire. It was her habit to air her home in the spring as she worked. One day, in flew a brown striped bird with a pink beak and a white breast. The tiny lark perched upon the back of a dining chair.

He then said: “You will have to do something about that husband of yours, Stefan. Surely he is cheating on you with the great and beautiful Georgeta, and everyone knows it. They talk of her beauty and her youth and how tasty she must be and how your husband is enjoying the fruits of two trees.”

“He is not, you naughty bird!” said Katinka, grabbing a broom and chasing the bird around her little wooden house.

But the bird escaped her broom and landed on the threshold of the open door. He sat long enough to chirp about the various sexual feats of Katinka’s beloved.

When she finally managed to oust him, she sat on her chair beside the hearth and cried. She cried so much that she made a salty soup with her tears, which she then put in the garden for the deer.

That night, in their marital bed, Katinka asked her husband, “Have I ever given you cause to be unfaithful?”

“No, of course not, my love,” Stefan assured her. “There is none more beautiful in all of the world to me. You are the only one of my heart, now and forever. You should not trouble yourself with such things.”

The next day, Katinka was hanging out fresh laundry. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted a brown striped bird bounding from branch to branch. Finally, it landed in her basket.

“I hope those wet clothes soak you so that you are damp and miserable,” said Katinka.

The bird only cocked its head to one side as it looked at her.

“Do you not remember that you were the bearer of evil news regarding my husband?” she said. “It was a falsehood. Were I not a kind woman, I would crush you and bake you into a pie.”

“At this very minute,” said the bird, “the king has entered the palace, the rowing has commenced across the moat, the snake is crawling its way to its hiding home.”

“That’s it!” cried. She threw a blanket over the basket, trying to catch the nasty animal, but it spirited away to the forest.

This encounter left her breathless and visions of what the animal was alluding to drummed through her head. How could it be possible? She believed her husband in everything he said. She was a good wife to him and had never even burned a piece of toast. And she was still one of the most beautiful women of the village, no small thing for a woman of her age, only a year younger than Stefan himself.

She made him ciorba that night for dinner, his favorite. She took extra care with the ingredients, adding the kefir that brings the tartness to the dish and whets the appetite. She wore a frock that complimented her figure and brought out the rosiness of her complexion. She brushed her hair a hundred times and wore her best combs. When she served Stefan the ciorba, she took care to bend so that he saw the beauty of her bosom and would catch the sweet scent of her perfume.

“You are beautiful tonight, my queen, and you have prepared my favorite meal for me. Whatever is the occasion?”

Katinka only smiled and sliced a generous piece of lipie for his plate. She watched him consume his dinner and then he took her to bed. They were happy as a man and wife and she could not be more satisfied that all was as perfect as the day they wed. “Nasty old bird,” she thought. “Tomorrow he will be bird pie, bird stew, bird bread. What is the meaning of all of his chatter?”

The next day she had to go to market. She was out of milk and butter and flour and she wanted to buy a string for his little bird neck. She would catch him and feed him to her husband who would be none the wiser. That would teach him.

On passing through the market she chanced upon the lovely Georgeta who was buying a wheel of cheese. She had the chance to observe the lass who seemed sweet and innocent enough, not at all the picture of debauchery painted by the filthy bird. It was just birds like this, thought Katinka, who created so much misery in the world. How many tears have I cried over his lies? I tell you, one teaspoonful is too much.

She built the bird a snare and to lure him, a mound of seeds. The next day, she found him in her trap, proving he can only be the bird brain she thought him to be.

When she pointed this out, he said, “But I have done nothing against my nature, Katinka. I have sung what is in my heart to sing. I have eaten the seed that my stomach craves. Mark my words: By next moon, you will be out in the cold and a new bird will fluff her feathers in your nest.”

And with that, Katinka wrung his little neck and put him into a pie and baked him in the oven, so displeased was she with the little thing. “I just hope the taste is not as bad as his words,” she thought. But the taste was as succulent a pie as she had ever made and her husband praised her and stuffed his face. He was passionate in bed with her that night, more passionate than he had ever been and she was pleased as a wife and could not help but smile at the memory of it the next day.

She found she missed the creature, however, oddly enough, missed the way his accusatory remarks had stirred her. Her life felt flat, somehow, plain. When her husband came home she was as dull as a worn pan. “What has happened to you?” he said and for many days thereafter he inquired after her missing beauty, charms, youthful demeanor. “Where is my fair bride?” he said one day and it struck her that he saw only the surface for he did not ask: “How is the heart of my beloved?”

And so doubt struck her for the first time since Stefan had declared himself her faithful husband. The bird had sung one note which now reverberated louder in her mind since taking the little creature’s life for their dinner. Stefan seemed to sing several notes which clashed: One a denial of his trysts, another his claim of an exclusive love for her, and yet a third his concern with appearances only and not the depths of her heart. This made it impossible for her to see him with a singular heart. What had happened to her dear, loving husband?

That night she collected tears silently by the bowlful and put them in the garden and the bowls outnumbered the deer necessary to take away her pain.

Food, Memory, Culture, Love

Tags

fantastical stories, food memory, research in fiction writing

Image from page 395 of “The standard domestic science cook book” by Jennie Adrienne Hansey and illus by William H. Lee (1908), flickr

I don’t know if there is a food memory I am not quite remembering but for some reason since the onset of fall, I am finding myself drawn to Hungarian dishes. Maybe my mom used paprika in a dish I enjoyed. I also remember when I was losing weight on Atkins, the one especially enjoyable dish was a version of Hungarian Chicken Paprikash so maybe this is also what has inspired me.

I am trying different recipes for Chicken Paprikash in my cast iron pan and am finding, thankfully, it is fairly cheap because of its use of cheaper cuts of the chicken, such as thighs and drumsticks. I don’t usually like the darker cuts but am finding the cooking of it in this recipe with the use of a sweet onion, sour cream, and paprika mellows out the gamier flavor. The chicken turns out tender and can even withstand slight overcooking if I make a mistake, such as I did in my second trial run last night. I have also discovered stew meat I stashed in my freezer with the news of the pandemic, hence: goulash. I ordered some caraway yesterday to complete my spices so I may try my next Hungarian classic.

The smoky, sweet, sometimes spicy flavor of paprika seems a very good way to celebrate fall. And celebrations are small and private this season. I cannot invest yet in super authentic Hungarian paprika. Spending on luxuries are at a premium. My dog is experiencing some health complications. I am behind on my own health check ups. I take her everywhere with me in our bright yellow car when I get out to do errands and she socializes with dog friends and people friends at my apartment complex. But to get by, we are keeping life as simple as possible and praying for the best.

I did create a story several years ago which I set in a fantastical village incorporating some of the dishes from Eastern Europe. I think at the time I was thinking roughly of Hungary for my protagonist was named “Katinka,” a name possibly originating there. A dish she cooks for her husband is ciorba. Though this was a classic Romanian dish, it was passed to Hungary through a shared border, especially in the region of Transylvania. There are versions of this soup all over the world. Maybe something similar, like a sour ciorba, was inspiring me: A pickle soup I once enjoyed at a Polish restaurant in town. Maybe I was thinking something as refreshingly sour as this delight. Actually, I’m not a big pickle fan unless it’s spicy, but this Polish soup was so amazing and creamy. The bread I chose for my protagonist to make was lipie, apparently a Romanian classic, but I was banking on that same food fusion idea of shared borders, though maybe I should have gone with something like kalach, a sweet bread.

One thing I enjoy trying is to set stories in locations or with cultures unknown to me. Cultural appropriation can be pernicious in such attempts and I have been guilty of that, but am finding it somewhat more manageable if I can give the story a fantastic element, an element of imaginative play, instead of having it represent an attempt to be more authoritative. I often use something otherworldly in the story or fantastical or dystopian. Or sometimes I don’t name a region just make one up based on some research.

A few years ago, I gathered ideas and began a longer story set in Artic Sweden based loosely on the Ice Hotel. A part of me felt I must really try to travel there, but economic and health realities can be a sort of a buzzkill in certain projects. However, one can read stories and accounts, watch videos. I purchased a book on ice sculpting as well as an early explorer narrative among other resources, including a book discussing the native peoples of Lapland, reindeer, music, Laestadianism – a form of Luthernism in Nordic countries originating in the 19th century. I found a yearly ice sculpting competition in my area. And of course, I believe food and drink came into my research.

Research for stories becomes an obsession. I spent a year researching a story involving Chinese immigrants for my graduate Master’s thesis. Other projects based on research: haunted lighthouses of Florida, early Florida history, Three Gorges Damn of China, the Killing Fields of Texas. There may be more but these come to mind. I don’t really write much without research, even when it involves my area. And the good thing about writing fiction is you can kind of bend facts to a certain extent.

Some of the things I love about research is that it brings me closer to my world. I develop an affinity for more people, albeit in a more invisible, removed, microscopic sense. I start to become more curious about places, not to mention the recipes I can glean, lol. This past weekend, I began watching a series called “Artic Circle” on Amazon Prime through the channel Topic. Immediately, I recalled my research of Arctic Sweden and Lapland and the characters I started to develop . I compared and contrasted former beliefs and ideas with what I found illustrated through the show, though of course this show is set in Finland, unlike my story which is set in Arctic Sweden, but the Arctic circle region is close enough for the moment and couldn’t be any more foreign to central Florida.

I am really enjoying “Arctic Circle.” The story takes place in a Finnish border town close to Russia. A warning to you that it involves the horror of a fictitious virus, so if you are already feeling some burnout on this topic, it may not be for you. But it is slow burning, not gory, at least at the beginning, and is an interesting glimpse of a region and some of its real issues and not just a fictional one. Besides, there is indeed a current concern regarding viruses released via unfreezing of organic matter in Arctic regions.

Well, I started out this journey discussing a couple of dishes of Eastern Europe and a flash fiction story I created set in a fictitious, fantastical village. One of the main characters is a bird who talks, which is only possible in the realm of the fantastical. I published it in an online journal called One Thousand and One Stories but it appears to have collapsed. It burned brightly for a while. Originally my title was “nasty bird.” I think to keep it a bit more on the side of a PG rating I will rename it “naughty bird.” My bird is fond of “adult” circumlocutions, eh hem. But they serve the story.

I am posting “Naughty Bird” separately. Enjoy your Monday.

decay

Tags

ecofiction, fantastical forest, microfiction

Porcini by Nikita, flickr

Jacinda and her tiny people lived in the mushrooms of Muir Woods. It was very dry. Her house was decaying prematurely. When she came home from foraging she tried to slam the door to show her frustration but the dehydrated stalk meant the nice arched door no longer fit.

Laughy Taffy Daffy God and Country

Tags

empath, Memorial Day, PTSD

What Lies Above by Kinga Britschgi, deviant art

It was Memories of Laughy Taffy Daffy God and Country Day and Mrs. Seidelbraun had a major issue: She could not manage to extricate herself from the bed. Soon Taffy Day participants would be flooding the streets, floating good spirits balloons, spewing fireworks from their mouths, doing midair acrobatics with the aid of their combat-sadness-anti-gravity-boots.

On days like this, the air turned butter it was so smooth, the sun was a creamy smear in the sky, neighbors greeted each other with kindly salutations, even those who on non Taffy Days dreamed secretly of administering unnoticeable but painful papercuts over slights, grudges, micro aggressions. People baked for their neighborhoods, the smells of sugar and pastries filled the air. There was hugging and laughing and handing out candy. And of course there was taffy pulling, greased pole climbing, pig calling. Years ago, there had been a brief memorial for The Town of Daffy Day residents who had given their lives so that everyone could be Happy, but really, that part of the day started to become both boring and super triggering. And so they made do with laying flowers on the one memorial in the town: A water feature of an upright gun holding a helmet.

Every year had become worse and worse for Mrs. Seidelbraun. The first year she recognized painful gravitations on Memories of Laughy Taffy Daffy God and Country Days, she managed to make it down the elevator of her high rise apartment, down to the street of festivals, parades, and bacchanalian frivolities. She didn’t laugh exactly but she didn’t exactly frown either. She played it off and no one was none the wiser, including Flora who managed to be offended at every affront to festivity. They had decorated a float together, full of paper flowers and young girls from a local ballet company pirouetting on tippy toe as the truck pulled them through a street raining with confetti. She even managed to eat a Happy Hot Dog beside which Mr. Happy was administering his annual contest of Happy Hot Dog Stuff Yourself Silly. She put mustard and ketchup and relish on it, a sign to Mr. Happy she was still A OK. A Good Girl though she was 40.

That was a couple of years ago. Last year, she made significantly less progress. She pushed herself up to standing in her studio apartment and slid her feet into her dilapidated old slippers and shuffled over to the window overlooking the street. Sshh shh sshh went her feet, the only noise in the apartment though the marching bands down below were beginning to warm up and people wearing the combat-sadness-anti-gravity-boots were whirring by, practicing their maneuvers in the air. Prayers were being sent up to heaven on balloons with strings of flowers attached. Prayers that said “Only happiness,” “only peace,” “no triggers,” “trigger warnings please.” “please be happy always and keep us all happy.” She knew what the slips of prayers said. She helped copy them from the Community Suggestion Book for Wellbeing. Flora would be upset with her for staying inside. She hadn’t pulled it off, getting to the street. And she was right, Flora had called the next day, upset and angry.

In a way she had been glad she wasn’t even going to have to face Flora this year, at least not on the day of the event. She would simply have to admit the truth: Her bed held her fast as mud in a deep bog. It would not release her, it had sucked her energy, her strength. When she closed her eyes she saw terrible things, she heard terrible and agonizing cries and explosions and pops. She tasted blood, dirt, gun powder, fear. And yet, she couldn’t open her eyes for long, she kept falling asleep again, or falling into visions, into nightmares or waking nightmares. She saw friends she knew bloodied and missing half of their faces, their eyes and limbs torn away, children running in the streets crying and naked. The sky was exploding and there was fire, as if this place were a very deep hell. Buildings had crumbled and were splitting, tumbling like large giants laid low, groaning in agony. She cried out but no one heard her. She had not discovered a way out. All day, she had dreamed of the past, or maybe some distant time in the future, maybe sometime soon.

 

 

Mother’s Day in the Land of Operant Practices

Tags

attachment styles, Mother's Day, narcissism

St Nicholas [serial], 1873, flickr

Within the Kingdom there is a land. It is called the Land of Operant Practices. More than a hidden away place, it is actually quite out in the open. There are telltale signs of the citizenry, knowing exchanges, tacit agreements. This isn’t witchcraft nor is it a kind of backdoor eugenics. It has more to do with the nurture and training of a certain set aside people, a bootcamp of sorts, a training of a race of super people which begins at birth.

There is compensation of families by the state if a participating family can show need but mostly, the program is billed as a patriotic duty. And only a few are selected, those with a certain predisposition and personal history. After all, a country of 100 percent super people would be chaos as no one would serve the super people, no one would nurture them and subvert their own needs to support their tender egos. They are super but the downside is they demand a kind of manic loyalty.

The operant practices are as follows: Embrace parenthood, but know one’s work is never done until the dross is burned away, until the wheat is separated from the chaff and a Super Person emerges. And as this is accomplished and the parents move through the ranks of the program with a growing child, there are greater and greater accolades to recognize success, parties given, trips booked away with other Super Child Families, discounts at designer clothing stores, free nights at gourmet restaurants, exclusive country club membership, free luxury cars, spa vacations.

There is a kind of need that all babies in the kingdom have and that is the need for unconditional love, to gaze into a parent’s eyes and have the gaze returned, to be rocked by a parent late at night to soothe crying or to be allowed the space to calm down alone when too much touch overstimulates. It is that perfect attunement that babies need so much, crave, must have to feel safe. While the ability to provide this exists to a certain degree in almost all mothers save a few, the mothers of the Super People are actually more attuned to how they themselves feel rather than the child. A crying baby all night deep in the night most nights is uncomfortable for everyone but especially to the mother who succeeds at the extreme level of Operant Practices. It is an affront.

Most mothers in the program make it because they themselves have had ambivalent mothers, or mothers who for whatever reason felt ill equipped though they want so desperately what others have: To be a good mother, to have a family. It is hard for some mothers to deal with messy feelings, and so, their eyes slide away when their infant seeks to make eye contact, or they hold and touch their baby less though you would have to be a program scientist to detect these subtle cues, at least at the infant stages.

As the child grows there are such things as temper tantrums in the grocery store, jealousy over brothers and sisters, acting out behaviors at school – performing below one’s ability, causing trouble. Of course there are many more examples, all of which point to being a typical child. When it comes to Super Child Families, there is a policy of zero tolerance for these undesirable, typical behaviors. To be honest, there is some flexibility. After all, this is a program designed by humans so absolute zero will hardly ever be achievable.  When the program is working at maximum capacity to effect the greatest societal benefit, there is more emphasis on Desired Behaviors. The child receives the message that to receive the most attention, it is beneficial to focus on Super Child behaviors. This is the level of Beneficial Practices.

Parents who succeed at this level of the program tend to be those who sometimes literally freak out if their child is less than Perfection because their child is a reflection of who they are. The outcomes in a situation like this are Young Adults who become leaders, who start businesses or rise quickly in corporate structures, politics, religion, nonprofits. They are charismatic, self promoting, influential. Though sometimes there is a lack of conscious awareness why they are doing what they are doing. And sometimes there is a sense of lack, deep down, but they are not aware of it. Therefore, at times deep in the night or at critical times like midlife there is suffering. Their relationships are often shallow and they can create confusion and heartbreak among those who expect the normal flow of reciprocal work relationships, friendships, romantic bonds.

For Super People, there is a vampiric need for a kind of fuel Adult Typicals received in their growing up years. It is more of a psychic fuel, fuel only produced in Citizens under conditions of unconditional love and acceptance. In these Adult Typical families there is a high tolerance for a variety of behaviors albeit conditioning through the natural give and take of learned consequences. There is attention given not only to Desired Behaviors but Undesired Behaviors. These children are seen, attended to. In the case of Super People, there is often a cold, hard ignoring of a child suffering through whatever their lower nature is commanding them to do, therefore training them to be superficially compliant but also less self aware. When Super Children become adults they want the psychic fuel Adult Typicals have received.

For society to benefit maximally, Super People naturally couple with Adult Typicals to have their needs met. Such pairings are almost always cause for celebration for the support of Super People. This pairing means a benefit to society because of the blossoming and enabled function of those among us who are Super. Unfortunately, those to whom they are married are drained of their psychic fuel, sometimes they get sick and die. But there is always another source of fuel and another and another, a never ending line ready and waiting to serve.

And we have to think of the larger vision.

Thank you, Mothers, who play their part in supporting the Kingdom. Your efforts are recognized and appreciated and will be especially rewarded in the next life of Good Martyrs.

Dirty Bird

Tags

European village, fantastical fiction, folktale

Sorrowful Tree’s Soul by Natalia Drepina, Deviant Art

Now Katinka was the most efficient housewife in the village. Before the sun had risen overhead, she had finished the laundering and had set the bread out to rise. Her kitchen and rooms sparkled, and the hearth cracked with a bright well fed fire. It was her habit to air her home in the spring as she worked. One day, in flew a brown striped bird with a pink beak and a white breast. The tiny lark perched upon the back of a dining chair.

He then said: “You will have to do something about that husband of yours, Stefan, surely is cheating on you with the great and beautiful Georgeta, and everyone knows it. They talk of her beauty and her youth and how tasty she must be and how your husband is enjoying the fruits of two trees.”

“He is not, you naughty bird!” said Katinka, grabbing a broom and chasing the bird around her little wooden house.

But the bird escaped her broom; he perched himself out and landed long enough to chirp about the various sexual feats of Katinka’s beloved.

When she finally managed to oust him, she sat on her chair beside the hearth and cried. She cried so much that she made a salty soup with her tears, which she then put in the garden for the deer.

That night, in their marital bed, Katinka asked her husband, “Have I ever given you cause to be unfaithful?”

“No, of course not, my love,” Stefan assured her. “There is none more beautiful in all of the world to me. You are the only one of my heart, now and forever. You should not trouble yourself with such things.”

The next day, Katinka was hanging out fresh laundry. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted a brown striped bird bounding from branch to branch. Finally, it landed in her basket.

“I hope those wet clothes soak you so that you are damp and miserable,” said Katinka.

The bird only cocked its head to one side as it looked at her.

“Do you not remember that you were the bearer of evil news regarding my husband?” she said. “It was a falsehood. Were I not a kind woman, I would crush you and bake you into a pie.”

“At this very minute,” said the bird, “the king has entered the palace, the rowing has commenced across the moat, the snake is crawling its way to its hiding home.”

“That’s it!” cried. She threw a blanket over the basket, trying to catch the nasty animal, but it spirited away to the forest.

This encounter left her breathless and visions of what the animal was alluding to drummed through her head. How could it be possible? She believed her husband in everything he said. She was a good wife to him and had never even burned a piece of toast. And she was still one of the most beautiful women of the village, no small thing for a woman of her age, only a year younger than Stefan himself.

She made him ciorba that night for dinner, his favorite. She took extra care with the ingredients, adding the kefir that brings the tartness to the dish and whets the appetite. She wore a frock that complimented her figure and brought out the rosiness of her complexion. She brushed her hair a hundred times and wore her best combs. When she served Stefan the ciorba, she took care to bend so that he saw the beauty of her bosom and would catch the sweet scent of her perfume.

“You are beautiful tonight, my queen, and you have prepared my favorite meal for me. Whatever is the occasion?”

Katinka only smiled and sliced a generous piece of lipie for his plate. She watched him consume his dinner and then he took her to bed. They were happy as a man and wife and she could not be more satisfied that all was as perfect as the day they wed. “Nasty old bird,” she thought. “Tomorrow he will be bird pie, bird stew, bird bread. What is the meaning of all of his chatter?”

The next day she had to go to market. She was out of milk and butter and flour and she wanted to buy a string for his little bird neck. She would catch him and feed him to her husband who would be none the wiser. That would teach him.

On passing through the market she chanced upon the lovely Georgeta who was buying a wheel of cheese. She had the chance to observe the lass who seemed sweet and innocent enough, not at all the picture of debauchery painted by the filthy bird. It was just birds like this, thought Katinka, who created so much misery in the world. How many tears have I cried over his lies? I tell you, one teaspoonful is too much.

She built the bird a snare and to lure him, a mound of seeds. The next day, she found him in her trap, proving he can only be the bird brain she thought him to be.

When she pointed this out, he said, “But I have done nothing against my nature, Katinka. I have sung what is in my heart to sing. I have eaten the seed that my stomach craves. Mark my words: By next moon, you will be out in the cold and a new bird will fluff her feathers in your nest.”

And with that, Katinka wrung his little neck and put him into a pie and baked him in the oven, so displeased was she with the little thing. “I just hope the taste is not as bad as his words,” she thought. But the taste was as succulent a pie as she had ever made and her husband praised her and stuffed his face. He was passionate in bed with her that night, more passionate than he had ever been and she was pleased as a wife and could not help but smile at the memory of it the next day.

She found she missed the creature, however, oddly enough, missed the way his accusatory remarks had stirred her. Her life felt flat, somehow, plain. When her husband came home she was as dull as a worn pan. “What has happened to you?” he said and for many days thereafter he inquired after her missing beauty, charms, youthful demeanor. “Where is my fair bride?” he said one day and it struck her that he saw only the surface for he did not ask: “How is the heart of my beloved?”

And so doubt struck her for the first time since Stefan had declared himself her faithful husband. The bird had sung one note which now reverberated louder in her mind since taking the little creature’s life for their dinner. Stefan seemed to sing several notes which clashed: One a denial of his trysts, another his claim of an exclusive love for her, and yet a third his concern with appearances only and not the depths of her heart. This made it impossible for her to see him with a singular heart. What had happened to her dear, loving husband?

That night she collected tears silently by the bowlful and put them in the garden and the bowls outnumbered the deer necessary to take away her pain.

First published in One Thousand and One Stories

Ms. Myska Rebel Mouse

Tags

fantastical, mouse woman, postwar village

Kittens and Cats, a Book of Tales (1911), flickr

It was a problem Nula Myska was unable to drift to sleep in the normal way. I say this because in her village, no one went to sleep without the others sleeping too. If someone was hungry, they all went hungry. If someone was laid off from their work, they all stayed home in protest. Imagine during times of war in the bombed out city when all wanted to die in solidarity with the innocent who had fallen. It took someone outside the city to convince them otherwise, someone as it turns out, who was able to use them for cheap labor and conscriptions into armies not their own. They were gullible, yes, and yet compassionate almost to the detriment of sense.

Ms. Myska was a spinster who lived in a tiny hovel at the edge of the city square. “Myska” seems the perfect name for her for it was a word meaning mouse. In fact, no one could remember if she had always been Ms. Myska or if the town had invented the name, her features and mannerisms were in alignment with said creature for she scurried a bit, scurried around the market. She nibbled, nibbled on what the cheese maker or baker featured among his wares, her little spinsterish whiskers quivering. When she was offered cider or wine, she held the cup in her tiny paws while she seemed to lap the sweet liquid.

She was too old for anyone to have remembered her family. That was before the war, when bombs decimated stately old homes and government buildings. Ms. Myska’s family must have died then, her mother and father and brothers and sisters, though she never spoke of them. In point of fact she never spoke of much at all. In most villages she would seem as inconsequential as a crumb or a tiny pebble, the kind that gets caught in the ridges of your shoe and which you pry out with a rusty old knife.

But when her sleepless nights began, no one could see the moon or stars. A veil fell over the world. It was unknown at first the cause of the night’s deep impenetrable ink. Lanterns were commandeered for the purpose of checking on residents. It was thought perhaps this was a kind of plague though the only deprivation was a lack of natural light. The town leaders found almost everyone asleep except for Ms. Myska, who was, in fact, at the moment of their discovery, foraging in the forest for mushrooms and nuts. What are you doing? they said. Why aren’t you asleep? How can you even see? But she went on picking through the undergrowth, putting things in the pockets of her apron as if their questions were none of her concern.

It became apparent as the leaders drew aside to discuss her, that there was something deeply disturbing to the disorder of a villager acting apart from her village and that this was having ramifications on the larger universe. Ms. Myska had indeed gone off the rails a bit. Perhaps she should not have been named for her animal likeness or once the likeness was realized, her name should have been changed to an animal that went to bed every night, a dove maybe, that coos from the eaves.

Also: Why had they let her stay in a little hovel, the kind a rodent might build for itself from scraps and bits of fabric and paper? It wasn’t healthy. They would move her immediately to one of the wealthier residencies where she would be fed sufficiently and given a warmer bed as well as have the chance to enjoy some semblance of fellow feeling, of humanity. Perhaps, sitting by a proper kitchen hearth, she would begin to speak of her life and the dark oppression of black nights would lift and Ms. Myska would receive her proper due.

Yet it was not that easy. Even after receiving a fresh frock, a bath, a full meal, Ms. Myska found it impossible to close her eyes. In fact, the intensity of her wakefulness increased so that it almost seemed as if Ms. Myska were reacting to the intensity of their sudden and inexplicable attentions. Maybe there had been something about the privacy of her wakefulness and the secrecy of her unnatural habits that had soothed her or felt somehow to be leading her to the natural disintegration of her mind, the steps necessary before her release into the void, the chaos of death. The village was too young to understand the steps leading into that final release. She was unconcerned about the skies. They were always looking for rational explanations. And why would this be her concern. In a month, a year, two years, she would take herself out beyond them and fall asleep on the earth.

And yet, she noticed their frantic concern. She resolved quietly to pretend and then perhaps they may leave her alone.

They had decided to host what they called soothing ceremonies. And so they made offerings to the sky to bring about once again the cycles of the moon and rotation of the stars and so they sent up to heaven in hot air balloons their prayers for one another and for the world so that a predictable peace would rule them. Many of the balloons caught on fire from the candle that gave the parachuted balloons loft and the glittery fabric that was supposed to inspire the stars to shine came falling down like ash and yet no light penetrated the thick black down that wrapped round them when the sun sank below the horizon.

Ms. Myska was treated like a queen. Preserving her modesty, they bathed her in milk while she wore her white gown, they bathed her under the wisteria trellis. They added hyssop and lavender to their ministrations as well as the sound of gentle percussion instruments simulating rain. They laid warm towels over her eyes and wrapped her head in a cotton wrap infused with rose oil. They gently massaged her hands and feet.

Ms. Myska, buried under fabric, soaking in warm milk, wanted to bring her little paw hands to her mouth to nibble on a nonexistent crumb she often kept in her pockets but now no longer had. They believed she wanted fatty lamb and huge boiled potatoes, pies and pastries, sweets they crafted on slabs of marble with precious sugar and chocolate. She wanted to bring her hand to her mouth out of habit. She at least wanted to stroke her whiskers but they had plucked them so there was nothing remaining. Her descent into the animal realm and then beyond that to the subanimal realm of dirt and water and remains and then yet further still to the underworld, her destiny, had been met with protest, resistance. You will feel more human, they said, let us help you. She felt just the opposite.

Every night, Ms. Myska feigned sleep, although, in actuality, that is where the problems really began because what happened is that the skies unleashed a torrent, which as it turn out was worse than complete blackness for the water could not be kept back but seeped into their homes under door frames until at last it had risen to the level of their windows and their furniture and cows started floating away. Houses and buildings were becoming unmoored. What had happened? They wondered one night, sitting on a roof top, the falsely sleeping Ms. Myska sleeping on the pallet they had brought with them.

Because of the extreme compassion of the village, they began to realize they may have brought this onto themselves some of this natural disaster. Why hadn’t they just accepted Ms. Myska for who she is? Why had they sought in her so quickly an instant scapegoat? And so they let Ms. Myska go. They gave her a boat to be free and do as she wished and as soon as she returned to her hovel, the water had receded though her little spot had never been effected. It was dry as a bone, just as an old lady’s hovel should be. At last the young ones let her do which they all will some day must. Inside she did not feel them crowding around her anymore but blessedly at a distance, their benign tolerance sufficient.

At last, she fell asleep. She slept for days. And the stars returned.