A slipping thought

The house sighed.

It towered at the edge of the village. From where the girl stood, its shadow must have enveloped the entire village, but the moment she turned around, she momentarily forgot about its existence. It didn’t disappear, for the house couldn’t possibly do something like that, but it slipped her memory and blended with the background.

She was determined to enter it.

The wind billowed her skirt and played in her finely braided hair, but it went right by the house; nothing within it creaked, or whined, like the houses in the village had under the weather. It was made of dark oak wood, and it had windows but none of them faced the village. She only knew that the house had windows because every house had to have had windows, and this one couldn’t be any different.

If she stayed very silent in the tree line just in front of it, she could hear doors lock and windows slam shut. Sometimes they would open again but more often than not, she heard them close. Now, there were no sounds coming from the house but it had a presence, not unlike her own. She stared at it as it looked down on her, willing it to give way and let her in.

The wood of the house betrayed a gradient of colour the longer she looked at it. The lower level, where a small basement must have been, was pitch black as if burned and rained over and left in the snow to rot. The first floor was lighter, and the wood there seemed the strongest. She wasn’t any good at building but she knew what a tree looked like in its full bloom, and that’s what the first floor was made of. Above it, the colour of the second floor reminded her of a very young aspen tree. It definitely wasn’t ripe enough to have been cut down and used for a house of this sort but it held up under the wind and glistened in the sun if she looked at it just right. And blending with the clouds, the attic. The attic was so pale that some said the house didn’t have one at all but she knew the attic was there.

It seemed ethereal and it made her eyes hurt to look at it for long, so she looked down to find the door opened. It didn’t make a sound nor did it actually open: It stood open as if it has always been like that.

The girl smiled and walked in.

Behind her, the door stayed open. Upon further investigation, she found that there was no handle on it to properly lock the door; it could only be pushed from the inside out. She could see the village from where she was standing, bathed in the bright daylight, but none of it penetrated the walls of the house.

Within, it was quiet and dark, and perfectly warm. It was just one room. There must have been a door somewhere that led to another room or at least a staircase to the next floor, and she went along the wall, dragging her hand about it, to find it.

As she moved, she noticed windows, adorning each of the walls. Through one of them, she could barely see because of the blinding white light. She had to turn away from the next one, for the wind blew through it with a ferocity that made her eyes water. There was a window that she could see the forest from, and she recognized the wall as that at the back of the house, and then there was the last window that opened a view at an apple blossom.

She smiled and sucked in the sweet air with her mouth, but none came; the air stayed still, and she moved to approach the window.

As she crossed the room, she saw something flicker across the tree. In anticipation of a bird, or a gust of wind, she squinted, and someone else squinted back.

The sight from all the windows blinded her to the inside of the house, and she gasped when she noticed the furniture strewn along the walls, shadows falling in just the way to conceal all of it from an unexpecting eye.

Then she noticed the owner, she hurriedly took a step back and stilled.

“Hello,” she whispered, “I didn’t mean to trespass.”

It was a wonder how she didn’t see the woman until now. She wasn’t wearing dark enough clothing to blend with the walls, nor was she motionless or deadly quiet, and she was so pale that the girl would have expected her to take over the darkness, and yet she didn’t.

The woman sighed.

The girl rushed to correct herself, “Well, I did. I did mean to trespass, but I didn’t mean to… upset you.” She looked up. “Did I upset you?”

The woman’s hair ran over her shoulders in a way that would seem disorderly on the girl but looked divine on her. The girl noticed her bare feet, laid out across the couch in a somewhat unnatural position but the moment she looked away, the vision completely slipped her mind.

“Hello,” the woman echoed. “You did not upset me. What is your name?”

She hesitated. The woman was looking at her, and the girl couldn’t look away, entranced and transfixed, but she didn’t know her and she did know that giving a name to strangers was unsafe.

“I shouldn’t…” 

“Sure,” the woman said. “Then it is fair that I don’t introduce myself either.”

When she spoke, the silence of the house rippled and melted away, and when she quieted, the girl was made to feel the oppressing, yet not unwelcoming, stillness rush in to swallow her whole.

She hurried to speak. “You must live here. How come I never see you in the village?”

“My legs don’t work.”

“Someone must go in here then, and I know that they don’t.”

“You think that they don’t,” the woman corrected her, “because you don’t see them come in.”

The girl hesitated.

“I watch this house.”

“And yet the moment you turn around…”

“It disappears! You saw it, too?”

The woman smiled, a small gesture. It reminded the girl of the lightning through the window, or the first snow when it fell before harvest, or a two-headed calf running along the cow chased by a father and a son.

“Do you ever lose track of thought?”

The girl frowned. “Of course, all the time, why?”

“I am thought.” She paused, considering. “Or heart that you lose to chasing a person you like. Or shadow, when the view blinds your eyes, or light, when your eyes can’t focus.”

The girl nodded.

“You’ll disappear too, then? If I turn around?”

“If the shadows don’t hide at the end of the village, they envelop the world.”

“I understand,” the girl said, “You protect the world. What do I do?”

“If I’m any good at my job, I hope you do whatever you want to.” She nodded towards the back window. “It’s a bright day outside.”

The girl’s head spun to follow her eyes, and the next thing she knew, she was walking towards the door.