Innocence

“Innocence,” was the first story I ever published. Thanks to the wonderful editor Kenneth James Crist, who read the story and rejected it quickly but with notes on how to improve the writing. He offered me a chance to make changes and resubmit, which I did and he’s responsible for publishing my first piece of fiction. As is wont to happen, life then got in the way of my plans. (Choose your cliche: A) Man plans, God laughs; B) Life is what happens while you plan; C) No battle plan survives contact with the enemy)

If you chose option C, I’m a little worried about your focus on conflict, but nevertheless, here is “Innocence,” as it was published back in 2004.Black Petals was a print mag back then and has since moved to an ezine format, but my story didn’t make the archive so I wanted to keep it available for folks who visit here.

Semi-interesting post script before the story (pre-script?) - My next acceptance for a piece came from Yellow Mama (edited by the amazing Cindy Rosmus) 19 short years later. It turns out that Yellow Mama is the sibling ezine to Black Petals, but I had no idea at the time I submitted. Anyway, I did say semi-interesting. Here’s the tale.

Innocence

Her hair brushes by her forehead as a breeze kicks up.  In the silence of the field she can hear the tall grass rustling around her.  It is easy to imagine small field mice and rabbits out in the field enjoying the day. But this girl, she is too involved to think about such things right now.

     She sits, the sun shining down on her, lighting her blond hair to an auburn shade like fire.  A few clouds are floating above, and the sun still sits on the horizon just above the line of trees.  They look as though the burning orb in the sky should light them afire.  The morning is crisp but not cold.  Dew still sits on the blades of grass, which rise above the girl’s knees.  The dew has lightly wetted the lower lace of her dress on her way to this spot.  Anyone could track the girl’s progress through the field, her steps left a trail of slightly leaning foliage.  The sun glints off the diamonds of dew lying over the field like a blanket, with the exception of a long straight path that leads back to a wooded area.

     Behind the wooded area, so thick we must call it a forest, sits an unseen cottage.  Within, James and Karen Johnson are busy preparing the morning’s breakfast.  James is setting the coffee to brew, while his wife fries thin strips of bacon.  They will be having pancakes today, but she doesn’t want to begin until Samantha returns from her walk.  The Johnson’s own the land around their home, a full thirty acres.  Since the summer began, their daughter has picked up the habit of spending her mornings in the field.

     The parents of this lovely girl are not worried.  The field is protected on all sides by the forest that also protects their home.  There are no neighbors, no one to bother them, unless they wish it to be so.  Crime is unheard of in this part of the world, which is partially why they live here now.  The Johnson’s wanted to protect their daughter from the corruption of the city.

     James is the person who started the girl’s habit of taking daily treks to the field within the forest.  He had taken to walking Samantha along a path through the woods, showing her the joys of nature.  They would look for different birds, James teaching his daughter the names of each that they might see.  The girl had fallen in love with the forest at once.  Although thick, the woods were not imposing; the branches seemed to open above them, allowing the sun to shine through.  Her love of the forest, however, was quickly overshadowed when she saw the field for the first time.

     The woods encompass the field on all sides.  From above it looks like a giant’s crop circle, created from a forest rather than corn or wheat.  It is easy to imagine that in years to come the forest may eat the field, but for now it is still here for the girl to enjoy.

 For now she hardly seems to notice the field at all.  Her rocking chair is still and she sits, almost unmoving, staring at her hands.  She is holding something; her delicate grasp proves that it must be of great value.  It’s precious.

     Moving closer, you can hear the girl humming softly to herself, the sound blending with the rustle of the field and the buzz of unseen bees, creating a music that rivals the greatest of orchestras.  Her sandaled feet sway slowly back and forth as she continues to stare at her prize.  Closer now, it is easily identifiable as a flower.  A daisy.     It is startling in it’s beauty.  It’s stem, the green you can only see in a dream and each yellow petal challenges the sun as the brightest object in the small world of this girl.

     Her parents have taught her to love nature, but this flower seems so much more than just natural.  Samantha knows that her parents would love this amazing, no, extraordinary flower.  She hopes they will come out to get her when breakfast is ready, so she may have an opportunity to show them the prize.  Sam does not wish to remove the daisy from the field.

     She runs her fingers lightly over the petals, her left hand lightly gripping the shaft of the flower.  Where did she find such an item?  There are no other daisies in the field.  There are many dandelions - some taller than the grass.  Children love dandelions, blowing each small parachute off the head, unknowingly creating more dandelions to play with in the future.  But no, for this child the other flowers provide no interest.  She is enthralled, enchanted and utterly captivated, by the beauty in her hands.

     Yes, she wants to show her parents this flower, but she refuses to take it from the field.  To remove it would be to remove the field’s protection.  She does not know how long the field has sat within the forest, but she believes the flower has been here just as long.  Samantha feels that it is a guardian, though she cannot articulate exactly what it guards.  Her head is completely filled with thoughts of the daisy, her attention focused like a beam of light only on the flower.  She is so rapt in the study of her prize that she has not noticed that the bees no longer join in her musical masterpiece.

     Something has replaced the lazy buzz of the insects. A low hum has crept up like a thief.  The sound is quiet, but has an unsettling quality like the thrum of power lines.  Our little girl doesn’t think of this, at an age that can’t be any older than four, thoughts of power lines or other 20th Century miracles are still far in her future.  The sounds of the shifting grass in the field have taken on a rough edge.  They no longer add a nice back harmony to the girls humming.  The sound is now that of a pissed off sea just before a hurricane hits shore.

     Still the girl does not notice that her lovely rhythms of sound no longer match the sounds around her.  Nor does she notice the clouds above are now moving at roughly the speed of sound, and their white colorless bodies are now filled with a dreary gray.  They are no longer singular entities that we could turn into farm animals or fantasy creatures in our mind.  No, now they seem to be hiding the gates of hell behind their dead black color.  The sun is not just covered by these dead clouds it is blotted out and swallowed by them.  All light has gone out of the day, except for the daisy that our little girl is holding.  While the temperature drops in the field, the girl is bathed in a warm light that seems to be flowing from her flower.

     James, and Karen are still hard at work on breakfast.  A rectangle of light shows on the floor from the sunlight coming from the window above the sink.  In the shaft of light, small particles of dust are floating.  The particles dance with the sounds of whistling from James and humming from Karen.  We can see where Samantha gets her love of music.  All is peaceful within the woodland cottage.  Some say that ignorance is bliss, we must wonder if these two people would agree, for they do not know of the darkness closing in around the field, and their daughter.

     Samantha does not know either, all of her attention still focused on her flower.  Her head is now moving from side to side in time with her humming, she doesn’t hear the snapping sound that is now coming from the forest in front of her.  The hard staccato of things not being broken but ripped apart and shredded, these are the new sounds that have replaced the orchestral quality of the little girl.  There is now a cacophony of noise, not musical at all.  No this is not music; these are the sounds of war, pain and agony.

     The horizon, made by the heads of the trees, is now destroyed; the gray of the sky now flows down into the forest.  But these can’t be the same clouds that are roiling above.  If the clouds above are gray, then what is in the forest is darker than the blackest night. 

     There is more happening.  Leaves are flying up in front of this wall of evil.  Intermingled with the leaves are brown shards that can only be the splintered trunks of trees that have stood in this forest since time out of mind.  The sounds of tearing and ripping are now so loud, the earth is rumbling.  The forest seems to scream in agony as the boiling wall of black – which can only be the minister of hell itself – now pushes through the final battalion of trees.  Blowing the tall defenders of the field out like so much dust in the wind.

     Finally, Samantha looks up.  The light from the flower now pouring down her hand and up her arm.  Her eyes are alight.  Not with fear, but with the happy innocence and love for all things that everyone loses around the same time they lose their childhood.  Her eyes are pools of blue, the light from the flower removing all shadow from her face.  She sits as the antithesis of this cloud.

     The blackness is now bearing down on her.  The grass of the field yellows and curls up in the pure cold of the cloud as it moves forward, not to be stopped by anything in its path.  As it reaches the little girl it pauses.  It seems to grow, to gain strength.  How this is possible considering that it runs all the way to the sky is unknown, but the sky seems to lift allowing this bearer of death and destruction to build power.

     She rises from her white chair.  The red and white polka-dotted dress rustles as she slides from her seat allowing both feet to touch the ground.  The very Earth itself trembles from the pure destructive power in front of the little girl.  Sam must steady herself while standing, as the world tries to shake itself apart.  The cloud of evil is towering over her; the surface is boiling, and almost seems to scream.  There are shadowy figures moving within the darkness.  We can see bodies writhing in agony, some trying to reach for the wall of the cloud but never making it.  Once within, there is no escape from this prison of hellish torture. 

She looks up, eyes to the sky, to the head of this beast.  For it must be, this is definitely not a summer storm.  But, she isn’t scared, in fact there is a smile on her face, lighting it more that even the flower could.  Her deep blue eyes, like a shattered sky, gleam with love as she holds out her prize, her precious flower.  In the greatest gesture of friendship a child can recognize, she offers the flower to this unknown minion.  Her smile broadens and tears stream from her eyes.

* * * * *

Breakfast is ready.  James and Karen are now working on their third cup of coffee.  The bacon is getting cold, and the pancakes are beginning to stiffen.  Samantha should have returned by now.  She has been known to lose track of time, but both her parents made it a point, when she began going to the field alone, to remind her to be punctual when coming back.  They both knew the field was close and safe, but it still worried them when Samantha was late.  Standard practice for good parents.

Through breaks in the branches, James can be seen following the path through the woods that leads to the field.  The sun is shining down through the trees, lighting his way.  He notices that the day has warmed up quite nicely and begins to whistle again while walking.  Although Sam is late, James has a feeling that some thing, a bird or possibly a playful rabbit must have distracted her.  He is positive that he’ll find her sitting in the grass playing, oblivious of the time.

He is smiling when he reaches the clearing.  Sitting just at the edge of the forest is his daughter’s red wagon.  James nods, realizing that Samantha must have carried her small chair to the field with her.  She never liked to roll the wagon into the field; she told her father it just didn’t feel right.

In the lonely field, the sun is bright and higher above the far line of trees now.  James scans the field with his hands covering his eyes, protecting them against the sun’s glare.  The field and the surrounding trees are all intact.  This does not strike the man as odd as he has not been privy to the recent events in the field.  But we know different. 

Is he looking at the wrong field?  Samantha’s path through the grass, the dew now dried from the heat of the sun, is gone.  The red wagon is still there, so yes, James knows that this is the right field, besides there are no other clearings that his daughter knows of.  Still James cannot see his daughter at all.  He begins to make his own path through the field, foliage again bending to allow his passage.

Ahead he sees what we already knew must be there.  The field looks scarred.  There is a gash, blackened as if by fire, running through its middle.  James begins to run, fearing for his daughter.  He reaches the blackened stretch of grass and follows its trail until he sees something that stops him cold.  A chill passes through his body, and he feels a scream building inside him.  There on the ground clashing with the burnt crust that was once green grass, he can see a few white splinters of wood and a single bloodstained flower.  A daisy.