Editor’s note: the following is an excerpt from Barbara Black’s new short and flash fiction collection, Little Fortified Stories, published by Caitlin Press.
A Thin White Humming
We curled together those long nights in satin sleep, listening
to each other’s music, notes landing upon us like pollen grains.
We were the original silent violin. Nobody else could hear our
songs. We were “shadows,” they said, but they were the ones who
couldn’t see in the dark. They didn’t know the possibilities. You
in your Gothic long coat, me in my organza batwing dress, our
nectared tongues licked stars from the ceiling and then, kisses
soft as guava flesh. All lives have a frequency and ours was high.
While those in the dark were dead asleep we were sipping from
moonflowers, evening primrose and phlox. Until you disappeared
one day in the light.
I flew over rooftops to track your scent. My searches for you
were echoless. Near the cathedral belfry a code hit my chest. A
thin white humming. I followed its call. I made an image of the
destination. I arrived with my Braille-ears on alert. You were
there in the grass, brittle in sunlight. Wide-eyed. Glass eyes.
There was no breath.
I brushed the pollen from your face. Seven men stood nearby
dressed in large-sleeved robes. When they saw me they knew that
for you, my love, the sleeping soul, the journey was done. Already,
you were flying back into the velvet black of your origins.
Nothing is something else. Love is neither like an ember nor a
flame, nor an echo or a void. But if I must answer, I’d say it’s like
a bat cave, dark and sequestered where, for a lifetime, we hang
upside down and see with our ears, our heartbeats lost amongst
the heartbeats of a hundred others.
Daughter of The North Wind
Was she alien or divine? They took her to Reverend Skutch. He
drew a hasty cross on his chest. Bathe her in milk and holy water
daily and keep her away from all winds. They balked at his fears.
With her difference, their daughter caused unease yet exuded
only love. Their little portent, their divine jester, a laugh like
high-stacked cumulus. What all along they’d been missing.
Bunnykins came to them in a blizzard. Frothy and white with
black patent shoes, frilled socks and a back full of fluffed
blue feathers. Blown in backwards with the north wind, arms
outstretched to the polar regions from where she came. She
landed in four feet of snow on the front lawn. They gathered her
up in a shawl and carried her to the fireplace to warm up. No! she
shouted. No fire! They took off the shawl and moved her away
to the armchair. Mamapapa I’m melting, she cried, while drops
poured into her patent shoes.
In spring they built her a refrigerated playhouse. That red hair of
hers was the only hot thing in there. A stream of playmates came
and went and, tired of blowing on their fingers to stay warm, they
disappeared like icicles in a slow melt, until there were none. One
day, boys came shouting and throwing torches. The playhouse
was reduced to coals.
Spring gave way to summer. All things wilted and melted.
Neighbourhood kids ran screeching in and out of sprinklers.
Lawns browned under a scorching sun. Their girl stood in front
of the window under the air conditioner, terrified of stepping
outside. Once they caught her running her fingers through the
gas burner flame. She asked if fire was the way to find friends.
After that too-hot summer, they moved to the north. Bunnykins
thrived in that climate, blue eyes sharp and cool as corundum,
exploring every undulation of the cool land, shouting,
Mamapapa, look! Not a lonely child, or an only child, but an
every child, casting her attention on every facet of her world:
finding bluebirds in the grasslands, wading barefoot in the creek,
searching mystery in the woods beyond the fields. Perhaps they
let her roam too far from home.
When it was too cold outside, Bunny put on her shiny black shoes
and danced for hours in the basement. Tappity-tap: the sound
of happiness. Her parents kept up with news from the outside
world, hiding their growing alarm at the state of things. Flash
floods, droughts, blizzards, heat waves, hurricanes. They still
felt safe in their far northern homestead and Bunny flourished.
But sometimes she stood for hours at the large paned window,
staring. One evening at the dinner table she asked, Mamapapa,
is this my real home? They looked wide-eyed at each other across
the table and said “Of course, of course!” then sat in perplexed
silence.
In July, a hot breath rose up from the earth. A sound like infinity
forced through a tunnel: hundreds of acres of forest burning
their way toward the homestead. The north wind tore across
the parched boreal devouring trees, blackening the air. They saw
Bunny at the end of the field and called her home. She stood
transfixed as the towering smoke column advanced. They rushed
out the door, heading down the hill, screaming for her to return.
Why was she running toward the fire?
Their red-haired girl vanished in a wall of flames. They found one
blackened patent shoe.
Sun rays angle through the window. They treasure the days when
fluffy clouds billow on the horizon and the snow glows an eerie
blue at dusk. Every Saturday night they put on their clickety-clackety
black patent shoes and crazy dance together until the
sun goes down and the house grows endearingly cold.
Barbara Black writes short and flash fiction, poetry and libretti. Black’s writing appears in The Cincinnati Review, Geist, The Hong Kong Review, Prairie Fire, and CV2, and in anthologies, including Bath Flash Fiction Award 2021 and Hologram: Homage to P.K. Page. Achievements include Fiction Finalist, 2020 National Magazine Awards and Winner, 2017 Writers’ Union of Canada Short Prose Competition. Black is a three-time Winner of the Federation of BC Writers Contests (Prose Poem and Flash Fiction) and was Shortlisted for the 2023 Edinburgh Flash Fiction Award. She is the author of the award-winning short story collection, Music from a Strange Planet (Caitlin Press, 2021). Her second book, Little Fortified Stories, recently won the 2024 Firebird Book Award in the Short Story and Weird Book Genre categories. She lives in Victoria, BC, where she gardens and rides her trusty Triumph motorcycle.