A ghost story for October

TWO SHORT STORIES A MONTH

     After almost a year of posting nothing on my blog, I decided to switch its purpose.  I won't write any more essays or journal entries.  Instead, I will offer two short stories every month.  We all need stories!
     Sometimes the stories will be for grown-ups, and sometimes they'll be for children.
Children who are good readers can get a kick out of the grown-up stories, and grown-ups can jump into the children's stories, just as if they were still six or eight or ten years old.
     After writing for a very long time, I put my stories and poems on Kindle.  But many people don't know how to access Kindle, so I decided to publish them in a blog as well.  Anybody with a computer can access a blog!
     Here's the first story, chosen because it includes a ghost (not a scary ghost, just an invisible little girl).  The other character is a wind -- a young boy who likes to blow around as far and fast as he can.  That's only natural, of course, since he comes from one of the windiest families at the North Pole. Even his married sister is a wind!


                                 

GUSTY SEES A GHOST

 

By Lynn Schiffhorst

 

       A little wind named Gusty was chasing along behind his teenage brother.  “Bluster, wait for me!” he shouted.

     “Sorry, Squirt,” Bluster shouted back.  “I’m gonna roar over the ocean.  You can’t keep up.  Bye, Squirt,” called Bluster, as he picked up speed.  He was out of sight before Gusty could ask, “Can I hop on your back?”

     Gusty liked to play over the ocean too, but Mama wouldn’t let him go alone.  Why wouldn’t Bluster take him?  It wasn’t fair.

     Gusty got a bright idea.  “Maybe one of my cousins will take me,” he said to himself.  Gusty looked in all the ice caves where his cousins liked to play with their friends.  But the caves were empty.

     Disappointed, Gusty raced off to find Billow, his married sister.  He had just reached her igloo when Billow shot out the door.  A big sack was flapping over her shoulder.  “I can’t stop, Gusty,” panted Billow. “I’m after my twins.”

     Billow’s five-year-old twins, Howler and Growler, wouldn’t come when she called them.  Billow had to chase them.  When she found them, she tossed them into the sack.  If the twins were very bad, she used two sacks and bagged them up separately.  Howler and Growler hated that.

     Gusty watched Billow dash off.  He hoped she would find the twins before the twins found him.  He didn’t like Howler and Growler.  Most of the other winds didn’t like them either.  They called the twins “those two pests.”

     But Gusty was out of luck.  He had just reached the edge of the ice, when a little wind whizzed straight over his head while another little wind whizzed just beneath him.  Then they changed places with each other and whizzed over him and under him again.  And again.  It was a game Howler and Growler had invented called “buzzing.” 

     Gusty hated being buzzed.  He shouted, “Quit it!  Quit it!” 

     A polar bear was crossing the ice with her cubs.  With a loud roar, she raised herself up and waved a massive white paw at the twins.  She was telling them, “Stop bothering Gusty.”

     Paying no attention, Howler called out to his brother, “Let’s play hide and seek.” When he tore off, Growler followed.  Hide and seek was Gusty’s favorite game, but he wasn’t going to play it with those two pests.  

     Who could he play with?  Suddenly, he saw his twelve-year-old sister, Breezie.  “Breezie, take me somewhere.  Please take me somewhere.”

     “OK,” said Breezie.  She was in the mood to roar down a mountainside.

     Gusty hopped on her back, and off they went to the mountains. 

     When they got there, Gusty liked the look of the mountains.  They weren’t the highest ones with snow on top.  These were smaller.  They had dark green trees and bright green meadows growing along their sides. 

     On a rock close to the top of one of the mountains was something odd.  It looked like a sheet.  Gusty hopped off Breezie, so he could go and investigate.    

     When Gusty got a little lower, he saw that the sheet was moving on its own.  It was swinging its feet in the air.

     As he looked down, the Sheet looked up at him.  It had a face as well as feet, and the face was smiling.  The Sheet was a little girl. 

     “Hi,” shouted Gusty. 

     “Hi,” she shouted back.

     “I’m Gusty,” he called to her. 

     “I’m Giggle,” she called back.

     “I could blow you down there,” Gusty offered.  He meant into the valley between the mountains.  There was a village in the valley.  A river flowed through it, and in the center was a pretty stone church with a bell tower next to it. 

     “OK,” said Giggle.  She jumped up, stood at the edge of the rock and stretched out her arms.  “I’m ready!”

     Gusty got behind her and whooshed.  Up Giggle shot!  And off she flew!

     Bent double from laughing, she spun around and around like a wheel.  The air was filled with chuckles. 

     When she began to drift down toward the little village, she called up to Gusty,  “Do that again.”

     Gusty zoomed down and gave her a second, stronger whoosh.  At a dizzying speed, Giggle rocketed up, flopped over and zigzagged down through the soft air, past the trees and the meadows, into the streets of the village.

     “Bet you can’t find me,” she shouted to Gusty before she landed.  “Close your eyes and count to ten before you look.”

     Gusty closed his eyes and counted.  Then he opened them.  He breezed around the streets, looking for Giggle.  As he flew over the river that flowed beside the longest street, a girl's voice called after him, “Cold!  You’re getting cold!”

     Not sure where the voice was coming from, Gusty went on a short distance.

     “Now you’re freezing!” chuckled the voice.

     Gusty made a U-turn.  He whooshed himself up the other side of the river.  When he reached the school, he saw a patch of whiteness sticking out from the doorway.  “Gotcha!” he called.

     When Giggle heard him, she darted away from the school and sped along the sidewalk to the bridge.  Just as she put one little foot on the bridge, Gusty whooshed again.  Up she went, flying into the sunny air.

     Tickled at playing such a great game, Gusty crossed over the bridge to puff at her from the opposite direction.  But she was quicker floating down than he thought she would be.  He lost her!

     “You-can’t-find-me,” chanted a voice.  “Bet-you-can’t-find-me.”

     Gusty spun around.  Beneath him was a park with a grove of cherry trees in the middle.  The trees were masses of white bloom.  How could he find a white sheet in all those flowers?

     “Give up?” teased the little voice.

     “No!” shouted Gusty.  But after he circled the trees until he was dizzy, he had to ask, “Giggle, where are you?”

     Giggle dropped down from a tree in the center of the grove.  Just as she ran to the edge and cried, “Here I am,” the bell in the church tower began to swing. 

Bong, bong, bong.  It was three o’clock.

     “I have to go home now,” she said.  “Can you blow me up to my room?  I live there.”  She pointed to a window in the tower.

     “Sure,” said Gusty.  He puffed her up a short distance and huffed her sideways right through the window.   As she waved goodbye, Gusty called out, “Giggle, why are you wearing a sheet?”

     She said, “This isn’t a sheet.  It’s me.  I’m a ghost.”

     Two tall sheets popped up behind her.  They waved at Gusty too.  “Goodbye, Gusty,” they called.  “You can play with our daughter anytime.  You are very well-behaved.”

     As Gusty flew off to find Breezie, he shouted over his shoulder, “See you tomorrow, Giggle.”

      “You’ll have to catch me first,” she shouted back.

    

THE END (for now)!
There'll be another ghost story before Halloween.

 

             

                            

Walking on the page

     Last month, when I was up in Rhode Island, I was working on one of my stories by trying to ground it so that the unusual elements would be seen as a natural part of our world.  It should have been easy, since I was describing natural beauty and there I was -- surrounded by the sunlit waters of Narragansett Bay in one direction and by the dazzling trees of Newport in the other direction.  But it wasn't easy.
     It takes constant work for me to walk a story along, not put it in a car and drive it.  By that, I mean "take the time to feel and see and hear everything that's present in the episode."  Many of those details will be eliminated in the end, but they still underlie the story.  Eliminating them doesn't reduce their role to a blank.  They alter descriptions that I do leave in.  They warm up the tone I take to the characters.  
     And now that I've taken the time to say how I pull my hair out over this challenge, I'd better go back to pulling out my hair.   And probably nobody will understand this post except another writer.

So They Will Know and They Will Care

     A few days ago, having put two new stories on Kindle, I thought how different they were in length and plot, and yet in spirit or atmosphere, they weren't that far apart.  In one very short story, Gusty's Christmas, the main character is a little wind who gets carried by his older sister to a place where the trees (even those trees made into houses or boats) sing Christmas carols.  For the first time in his life, the active little wind (about six or seven years old, although his age is never stated) calms down enough to enjoy listening to music, begins to day-dream and from that mood slips easily into sleep.  Very appropriate for a bedtime story.
    In the other, much longer tale, How Hans Christian Andersen Got Famous, one of the characters is also a wind, but he's overshadowed by his playmate, a young boy who meets Mr. Andersen and decides to tell him every odd story he hears about in the hopes that the story-teller will make a fairy tale out of it.  As I was finishing up, I realized that in many ways that young boy is very much like me when I was his age (also never stated but about 10 or 12).  I never knew any authors, but I lived in the library where all the novels and biographies came dazzlingly alive for me.  The children's room was up a long, long staircase, which always seemed like the path to a wonderland.  I never put it in those words, of course, but I was aware of a deep excitement every time I climbed it, an eagerness to get to a magic kingdom.
     When I wasn't in the library and was visiting friends, I used to try to get my friends' mothers to talk to me about their lives.  I wanted the stories of their childhoods, and if they came from another country, I would feel the aura of that foreign land around them.  I wanted my grandmother and my great-uncle to tell me about their lives growing up and especially, more than anything, exactly where in Europe their parents came from.  They never knew!  They never cared!  I could hardly believe it. 
     I had fallen in love with Europe.  I had also fallen in love with the past.  And I'm sure all that came from the books I read, the church I went to, which was designed after a medieval French church, and the nearby Cloisters, that was a world in itself of beauty and antiquity. 
     One of the historical novels I loved the most as a child -- and still love -- was Mary Mapes Dodge's Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates.  She put so much of Holland into it that reading it was like being there.  I didn't know until a few years ago that she had never been there, that she had gotten the information from her neighbors.  Reading it was a total immersion into another culture that was friendly and completely different at the same time.
     About ten years ago, I came across Ouida's A Dog of Flanders and The Nuremberg Stove, both of which had me completely enchanted from the opening sentence.  All I have to do is open a page in either story and I'm engulfed by the poetry and pathos of her world. 
     In the stories I've written about Denmark I would like the same thing to happen to my readers, that they'll be drawn into an atmosphere that has a lot of tenderness in it, that they'll feel a close connection to the characters and their families, that they'll learn a little something about a different country, and that they'll end the story feeling they've had not only a good read but a good time.             

The Hours

    As I woke up from my nap about twenty minutes ago, I looked at the clock, saw the time (3:20), and felt an immediate response to the late afternoon.  It's the kind that I've had before without talking about it.  Today, I'd like to say something, however, because the hours, like the seasons, have always had a meaning for me.  "Meaning" isn't exactly the right word; at lease not if that has to imply "rational meaning."  "Emotional significance" is closer to the truth.
     The time between two and four has a relaxing quality.  It's not only relaxing but familiar and homey.  It's a comfortable chair to sit down in and watch the afternoon clouds drift through the afternoon sky.  It doesn't summon me to do anything.  It holds me in its arms so I can take a long, comfortable nap.  And the longer, the better.  
     Five o'clock, on the other hand, is very different.  It's mildly disturbing.  In fact, I don't even like to see that time represented in paintings. (I'm thinking of a particular painting by Corot, whose work I otherwise like very much.)  The time when the sun seems to be losing strength -- and its light has a little gray, a little fatigue mixed with it -- drains something out of me.  But as six o'clock turns into seven, I become calm and optimistic again.
     Seven o'clock in the morning, by contrast, is a very tender time.  I remember once thinking of it as a Benedictine time, as though a monastic bell were ringing through it.  I love to walk with a seven o'clock sky over my head.  The divine presence is very close, and it's all sufficient.  I don't have to do anything.  I'm perfect just as I am. 
     Eight a.m. is cheerful but it opens a doorway into chores.  I'm happy to do them and to see them getting done.  Nine o'clock is neither here nor there, and ten is just nine's older sister.  Eleven is a bit of a trough that I slip down into, but twelve is hopping along with its promise of lunch.  One p.m. has a child's freshness and brightness, and then there's two, which is where I started today, so I'll stop here.

The silent singing of trees

     This morning when I took my walk, I was aware, as I almost always am, of the natural world that lives around and above the houses in my neighborhood.  After last night's rain, the first good, soaking rain we've had in several weeks, I could hear the silent singing in the grasses and the bushes and the trees.  Like a kind of needle-less acupuncture, it touches a center in my spirit that makes me very happy.
     The cats and dogs I meet on my walk always make me happy and the squirrels make me laugh, but the singing in the trees takes me into a larger, more ancient world that's going to be here long after I am gone.  I'm privileged now to be part of it, to be protected and uplifted by it, to be delighted by its body -- the giant trunks of the oaks, the branches that stretch across the street to the opposite sidewalk, all the shades of green which have been freshened by the rain -- that allows its voice to sing out so strongly.
     The singing of the trees goes all the way up to the sky, which has its own singing that I can not hear because it transcends any ability I have.  But even its silence, which is perhaps the root of its sound, takes me out of myself.  The sky is not as dramatic at nine in the morning as it will be when the sun goes down, yet it can still make a dramatic impression on my heart.  It engulfs me as I walk along.
    If I can get away with a little more imagery, I would say that the sky is the church in which the chorus of the trees, bushes and grasses sing. And the root of their song is the earth, which for the most part is so buried under concrete and tarmac it's inaccessible.  But where the trees, bushes and grasses are, the earth is allowed to be. 
     Poor earth!  The developers have rented it the little breathing space it has because no one would buy houses in their development without some vegetation.  But this morning I don't want to think along those lines.  I'm just grateful for what remains -- for what exists -- and I rejoice that no one can pave over the sky or make portions of it into private property.         

Characters who are a mystery even to the author

     About two weeks ago, when I was putting some of my early readers (intended for children 6 or 7) on Kindle, I was stuck for a cover.  Usually I prefer photographs to clip art, but how could I get a photograph of a wind?  A little wind called Gusty is the main character, and he's about the same age as the intended reader.  To complicate matters, the stories involve ghosts and a mermaid, a baby mermaid.  Would anyone be willing to share with me his/her photographs of ghosts or mermaids?  No, I thought not.
     A bigger question, of course, is -- why are those my characters?  Well, in a way, the appeal of a ghost is easier to explain than a wind.  Eleven years ago, when I wrote my first Giggle story, she was just a character in a Gusty story ("Gusty Sees A Ghost").  But she soon branched out on her own, and now I have three times as many Giggle stories as Gusty stories, although hers are categorized as middle-grade rather than early readers. 
     Giggle is very much a nine-year-old girl.  She has parents, she lives in the tower of a church, and she goes to school, where she's in third grade. But most people can't see her.  That gives her a certain advantage, but it's not an advantage she takes advantage of (if you know what I mean).  She has friends who can see her, and she loves being a ghost, although she explains to her human friend Rusty that she's not a 'dead person walking around.'  She's a spirit, with human feelings and behaviors.
     What's not to like?
     I can't remember when Gusty showed up, but I grew very fond of him very fast.  I like blowing around with him, and I love his family almost as much as Giggle's.  He never does any schoolwork, because he lives outside the school system, and he always wants to play.  He plays fair (for the most part), and when he can't get his way, he gets mad.  But he gets over being mad by making a new friend.
     Again, what's not to like?
     Perhaps one of the best aspects of writing about children this young is that I can make the world right for them.  It goes out of whack temporarily or there wouldn't be a plot, but it's basically an upbeat world, where adults do what they're supposed to do and give children plenty of space to have a good time, tackle challenges and enjoy each other's company.
     I have an inner conviction that there will be many more Giggle and Gusty stories.      

Animal Nations

     About a week ago, when I was putting on Kindle my short story for children called The Cat and the Queen, I chose a cover and then decided the cover would look better if I added a subtitle.  It isn't often that the right words occur immediately, but the phrase "an animal family story" came to me almost instantly, and I wrote it down before I forgot it.  Even though I was the one who thought of it, I didn't understand it at first.  And then I did.
     The family in question in that story is a cat family, but the expression was broader than that, because the bonds in the story were broader than cat to cat.  The people and the cats were an extended family.  And I realized that this was true in many, many stories I've written. 
     When I was sending out my first novel for children, Cats, Dogs and Miracles, I got a "bite" from an editor at Dutton.  She liked several things about the first chapters, but she couldn't figure out why an old lady in the story was giving a birthday party for her cat.  (The story was set in a fishing village in Denmark in the 1930s, and everybody in the village was coming -- in relays -- to the party.)
     I had absolutely no idea how to tell her that the ties between the villagers and their cats and dogs were so close that there really wasn't much distinction between two-leggeds and four-leggeds.  Of course, I did tell her, just as I have written it here, but there was no way to convince her.  It was outside her realm of experience.
     That interaction with the editor taught me more clearly than anything else how much I have changed since I was a child.  I didn't know any animals growing up.  I was always friendly toward them, but I didn't sense any connection, and now I do -- all the time.  When I take my morning walk, I usually meet a small number of dogs and cats, and as soon as I do, they fill my vision.  A wide emotional space opens up, and they walk right in, straight into my heart.
     They are, almost automatically, my favorite family members.  I cherish them, pray for them, and just simply enjoy their presence.
     Years ago, in a catalogue I can't remember, I came across a reference to animals (probably on a tee-shirt) as "other nations."  I thought that was the perfect way to regard them, because it grants them the respect they deserve.
I'm grateful for being allowed to intermarry with the members of these nations who have brought such joy into my life, such warmth, and -- when I think of the cat café we have in our driveway -- such opportunities for service.