The Nightingale

By Madalyn Meyers

*Published by Bewildering Stories, issue 910

I can still hear the soft drum of rain as the drops bounced atop the metal rooftop. That night, I first saw Shay, hidden under the cover of dark as she twirled around my lawn, winking at the ceramic garden gnomes as she practiced pirouettes in front of her captive audience. I had been sitting along my windowsill, the place which typically provided me sanctuary as I read from my book of fairytales.

I would spend hours curled up in my nook, falling into the pages of Hansel and Gretel, skipping along the path beside Little Red Riding Hood, and combing my golden hair as it spread like velvet carpet along the floorboards of my tower.

I had been sitting with my eyes closed, hoping the rain would flood my mind with the passages along the pages that were now destroyed. The book sat waterlogged beside my pillow, its pages fanned out like an overstuffed suitcase as I sorted through the memory of watching in horror as my little brother stroked dirty bristles of creek water across the pages.

“I’m making a picture book!” he exclaimed as he saw me running towards him. But I shoved his face in the mud and ripped the storybook from his hands before he could inflict more damage.

My stomach snarled in protest, demanding the dinner I had been sentenced to my room without. I lay my head against the window, allowing the coolness of the contact to consume my body and feeling the subtle vibrations of the droplets as they tapped against the glass.

Without my stories I was nobody’s princess. I was one child of seven — fourth to be exact — buried in the middle where the eye tends to overlook. But that night when I first saw Shay, and my eyes caught the flash of damp auburn hair as it reflected the moonlight, she saw me too. She smirked up at my window, feet dancing over slick blades of grass the entire time. She waved me down to join her, an invitation I simply couldn’t resist as I tiptoed across fussy floorboards.

A pair of delicate hands were there to pull me across the entryway, spinning me in circles under a clouded skyline. As if we had known each other our whole lives, no pleasantries were needed. She drifted along to the music of rain and wind while I clumsily jumped in murky puddles. She cartwheeled across the grass as I fought to keep her in my sight. My feet slid out from under me, causing an explosion of water in all directions as she opened her mouth to the sky in a fit of delight.

We ran around our rainy paradise, showered in laughter and joy, until an orange hue glowed subtly through the trees and shattered my illusion of serendipity. Her shamrock eyes twinkled above rounded, blushing cheeks and she slid a bar of chocolate in my open palm as she pushed me back into the house. She skipped into the woods, disappearing from my sight as I realized I never asked her for her name.

I devoured the candy as I slid under the covers, tossing aside the corpse of my book and wrapping myself in warmth and comfort. As the sunlight turned the outside puddles to rising fog, I dreamt of fairy gardens and pixie towns full of red-haired ballerinas. I was awoken by the stern voice of my father, pointing to the muddy footprints that led from the front door to my bed. The chocolate smeared across my cheeks was an incriminating aspect of a mischievous night not spent in one’s room as ordered.

After that, I kept watch for the girl for diligent weeks on end. To see her again was my most important mission; more pressing than sleep was to be the fairy of my own tale once more. Every night I sat hopeful by my window, anticipating her figure as it floated into view. But the thing about Shay, the thing I would soon learn, was that she only showed up when you least expected her to.

The day my sister threw gum into my hair, I sat outside, facing the house as my mother gave me a haircut. She serrated long strands to just above my chin, salvaging as much as she could as tears streamed down my face in tendrils. Eyes blurry with frustration, I saw her face peek above the windowsill. Green eyes pierced through the glass, a single finger raised against her lips as she ordered me to secrecy.

I tapped my foot, picking my right thumb cuticle as I waited for the moment I could dash into the house and find her. Not a moment was wasted when I was given permission to leave my seat. I skipped steps as my legs propelled me up to my room, finding her halfway out the window, straddling the open ledge. She smiled back in my direction, held her hand out as I stumbled across the floor to grab hold of it.

“I’m Shay, by the way,” she said with a smirk.

“Jordan,” I replied.

She leapt to the ground, silently rolling like a trained acrobat at the same second I heard the curdling scream of my little sister from down the hall. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Shay as she dashed across the lawn, jumping over a holly bush and disappearing behind the wall of trees.

When I was sure she was gone, I swiveled to my sister stumbling out of her room, eyes still puffy from rest as she clutched the jagged remnants of her ponytail which had hung thick and golden only a few hours before. She spotted me standing there and clasped her hand over her mouth as she pointed towards the scissors on my floor. They lay haphazardly next to a pile of yellow curls.

That was the way of Shay. She was my friend, that I’m truly certain, but she didn’t understand the rules of my world. For as much as I wanted to cut off that golden ponytail, I would have never done such a thing. It would have been truly unacceptable.

She always arrived suddenly and disappeared silently, like a shadow ebbing with the changing sun. In the summer of my 16th birthday, I sat on the porch swing with a casted leg, the result of a clumsy fall down the stairs. She swung beside me, keeping me company as my able-legged siblings were off at camp. She performed a magic show, making butterflies appear in her cupped palm as I cracked a smile for the first time in days. The years went by with her inconsistent companionship, never there for long but always when I most needed her.

She followed me into the world once I could drive myself. I once heard her giggle float through the shelves of the local bookstore. I had been brushing the leather spine of The Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales, admiring the glittering golden edges of the pages.

When I arrived back home, the book fell out of my bag. A scarlet ribbon marked the story of Jorinda and Joringel, the one where a girl was cursed, transformed into a nightingale, and kept in confinement until her rescuer delivered the antidote in the form of an enchanted blood-red flower. That book filled the empty spaces that were left by Shay’s absence, allowing me to live in a fantasy where I befriended rabbits, mice, cats and foxes.

Shay did not grow up beside me, but rather watched as I grew up in front of her, her childlike features cemented in time. As this divide between us grew more prominent, she grew more distant, and I fell deeper and deeper into the stories of my leather-cased Grimm tales. The stories inside were nothing like those of my girlhood storybook. They haunted me after I read them, and yet a sense of gravity always pulled me back to the pages.

The more time I spent in the world of Grimm, the more I questioned if Shay had actually existed. I would hear her laugh in near-empty rooms and question if there was anywhere she could be hiding. I would walk quickly by a mirror, catching a flash of glowing green eyes where mine should be... but then quickly blinking and seeing the caramel reflection of my own.

I had wanted to dance in the rain all those years ago. I had envisioned my sister being the one to have her braid sawed off. I had longed for company on that warm summer afternoon. I had desperately wanted that book of fairy tales for myself, the one out of my price point, the one that reminded me that no matter how old I grew, I still dreamt of lands far away.

Even now, when the moon is haloed in orange and it storms at just the right intensity, I remember that night when I danced in the rain and can feel the water as it washed away layers of inhibition. That memory remains branded inside my thoughts, a scar which I treasure above all else. Tonight, as the rain drums against my bedroom window, I stare at the dark expanse of woods.

I no longer wait for Shay. It has been years since the last time I saw her, since she lost interest in me, or perhaps I lost a need for her, or maybe some combination of the two. The warmth from my body has left fog clinging to the glass, obscuring my vision of the yard, and I fight the urge to wipe it away. There’s nothing out there for me anymore. Still, I listen to the sound of rain, and watch as beads of water roll down the window. I breathe in the scent of wet earth, relishing in it as if it’s the last time I may ever smell it. I lean my head back against the wall, absorbed in the storm.

A flash of lightning snaps my thoughts back into my body and I jolt upright with a startle. Like a camera flash, my room is illuminated for a brief moment in time. I see stars, then sit puzzled as I register something sitting on my desk, something I surely didn’t place there myself. I creep across the room, squinting through the darkness to see a single flower, its paper thin petals lie gently along the desk’s surface. I grab hold of it, lifting it close to my face to try and see it in the dark, when a second flash of lightning shows me its crimson display: a blood-red sea surrounding an island of ivory at its core. A few moments pass before the house fills with rolling thunder.