fairyland
Emma Foster
Three in the morning, thunder merely at a purr. Frightened, the boy hurried down the hall of his grandfather’s Queen Anne house. Windowpanes were swatches of velvety black, staring at him with their own unseen eyes. The boy rounded the corner into his grandfather’s study to see the girl’s ghost in her cashmere melody. She held a copy of Viri Romae, the frayed green edges lined in gauzy white where her fingertips gripped. She had a thick luster in her eyes, a deep lilt in her voice when she spoke.
Will you let your grandfather know I must borrow this book?
The boy noticed the buoyancy of her hair, how it floated in the wind that wasn’t. She kept a mist along her naked feet. Shoulders saturated in a glimmering constellation.
Where did you come from?
The girl’s ghost held out an arm, set the book in the sea foam folds of her robes. The boy watched it disappear into serene nothing. She turned to the withering globe the boy’s grandfather kept underneath the window.
I lived about here. I need to borrow a book for the trip home.
She dropped a cotton finger along the latitude lines that never were, where explorers always speculated fairyland would be. A light brush of the finger against the aging wood, and the boy opened his eyes.
Like the ticking of time, the dreams left one by one. Years and years rolled by in waves, washing away the glittering fantasies. The boy became a man and inherited his grandfather’s house. One night he heard the thunder echoing along the hills, and when he came to his grandfather’s study, he found the girl’s ghost in the window, her form resting on the same old globe.
How did you find the book?
The girl turned from the starry night, crystal tears in her eyes.
I’m afraid I lost it, dear.
Emma Foster is a fiction writer and poet preparing for a Master's in Fine Arts. Her work can be found in the Cedarville Review, Voices of the Valley, Ariel Chart, and she is forthcoming in Sledgehammer Lit and Nailpolish Stories.