The Calf’s Tail

If you happen to visit the town of Podunk, Alabama you might notice a very withered sign standing at the corner wedged between the Galley Variety store and the Birch’s place. 

 It reads, as follows: 

 ‘PODUNK, AL. POP: 94

HOME OF ANNETTE BUFORD

WOMAN WRITER.’

 The sign was erected as most signs are in small towns: with a ceremony. 

 “It is with great honor that I erect this sign for our little town, and for Miss. Buford, our first celebrity,” the mayor had said with visceral pride. The very small crowd that had formed clapped. “May her successes in New York City bring us honor back home.”

 The crowd continued to clap. 

 And as they did so, a few whistles here and there mixed in, a woman was putting the final touches on her newest reincarnation of The Snow Queen.

 The woman wouldn’t know it would be a massive success. Stripped of her warmth, her heart turned to ice, and then the story began, full of more whimsy and excitement than Annie Buford had seen in her entire life; and yet, because she had written it, it felt very real.

 Unbeknownst to her, the ceremony went off without a hitch. And yet, as night fell, and as Annie and the Podunk residents fell to sleep, something more incredible than whatever Annie had been reimagining lately occurred. 

 Time inside the town stopped. The sign aged as the years passed. Fashions changed and Annie’s stories grew in popularity. Political rivals butted heads. And one by one every person that had been alive at the time of the signs’ erection died. 

 Except for the 94 residents of Podunk, Alabama. 

 There was something a little fantastical about Podunk; nobody went in or out. It was widely regarded as a ghost town in topographer circles. And at the age of fifty-four, Annie Mae Buford realized she hadn’t returned home in thirty-seven years. Her skin showed the markings time had left, her hair but her eyes no less alight with excitement. She was more than ready to go back. 

 With her parents dead and friends probably all married and decidedly with grandchildren by now, there was little for her there. But it was the calling of home that drew her to the idea of returning. 

 So just at the edge of spring's reappearance a woman walked two miles from her apartment in Chicago to the closest train station. She approached the ticket booth with a smile. The ticket-collector, who had been quite short with her as he accepted her money, suddenly squinted. “Buford? Ann Buford?”

 Annie nodded. “Yes sir, in the flesh.”

 “Ticket’s to Mobile. You headin’ there?”

 “Podunk, sir. The ticket will take me to Mobile, but my home’s in Podunk. It’s a couple miles south.”

 “Podunk…the Ghost town?”

 Annie laughed. “Oh, no sir. I’d imagine it to be very much alive. I get a letter from my sister every month. Funny, though; it feels like nothin’s changed.”

 “And here I was thinking that place hasn’t been lived in for thirty-some years!”

 Annie laughed again, accepted her ticket, and waved goodbye. She boarded her train, then was thrust into a small, bare car save for a patched-up pair of seats. A young man of indiscernible age wearing a suit joined her a few minutes later; taking the opposite seat. His arms were loaded with battered suitcases. Nobody else joined them: Annie knew too well that few could afford a ticket these days. 

 Eventually the conductor opened the door to their car to punch their tickets. He recognized Annie but scoffed at the young man. When he walked in, Annie hummed thoughtfully.

 “That was odd.”

 “What was, ma’am?”

 “He didn’t seem to take after you,” she gestured behind them, where the conductor had retreated after eyeing the boy carefully.

 “Oh, I ride often. He doesn’t like me very much. Last time he caught me riding the rods.”

 “I heard that’s terribly dangerous,” said Annie, although she was actually quite amused. “How did you fare?”

 “Fairly well, till he found me out of course.”

 Annie decided not to ask how the young man had managed to make enough money to pay for his ticket. Maybe he had scrounged up enough, or gotten someone to pay for him…

 Her thoughts were soon interrupted by the young man’s eyes, which she noticed had not left her for some time. 

 “Yes?”

 “Where are you headed, ma’am?”

 “I’m stopping at Mobile, but I’m headed to Podunk. It’s a town I’m sure you’ve never heard of. It’s rather small, you see. And you?”

 “Benton, in Kentucky. My stop is near there, I think, when I looked at the map.” 

 “Ah.”

 Several hours passed. Annie read a new Agatha Christie novel and the young man fell asleep. Just as Poirot was about to explain where the nicotine poison had come from, she heard a loud bang coming from the boxcar behind them. This waking the young man, he looked around them, terrified. But it was not the noise that had frightened him. 

 “What time is it?”

 Annie frowned. “I don’t know...oh, Heaven, what is that noise?”

 The man grabbed onto a rusty handrail and stood; it was then that Annie realized just how poor he was. Holes accentuated frail limbs, the dingy fabric hanging loosely on a body that was noticeably unfit for a suit. 

 “It sounds like some hobos looking for a free ride,” he turned back and gave him a weak smile. “I’ve been there.”

 “I see.”

 The man looked out the window closest to him, his breath audibly catching in his throat. “We must be just outside of Benton! Did you hear them call for my stop?”

 Annie faltered. She really hadn’t been listening; the novel had been quite invigorating. 

 The man, taking this as his answer, groaned. “I’ll never get there now. Thanks a lot, lady.”

 “I do apologize,” said Annie crossly. “But it so happens that I am not to be the one to wake you and tell you to grab your things. I am most certainly not that kind of woman.”

 Before the man could respond, the back door separating the outside world and the boxcar from them opened; and in walked several visibly annoyed passengers. Annie’s mouth fell open a little. 

 “Ah! Finally,” one of the passengers said with a humph. “We’ve been trying forever to get in here.” 

 Annie looked at the man, who was not even slightly interested or seemingly aware of who was in front of him.

 “Aren’t you shocked as well?” She asked him, gesturing to the group in front of them. “That’s- those are fictional characters! Alive, in the flesh!”

 The first passenger to speak laughed. “We’re not made of flesh, darlings! How silly.” Annie could barely comprehend what was happening. The Ice Queen was right there, standing just two feet away, and here she was babbling to a man she didn’t even know. 

 “I can’t read,” the man explained sheepishly. He turned to the Ice Queen and straightened himself, then extended his hand. “Tom. And you are?”

 “Oh, she knows very well who I am,” the Ice Queen said, gesturing to Annie. “Why, I would have assumed you would have given me a grand introduction, my dear, but it seems you haven’t.”

 “I just don’t understand it,” Annie said, more shocked really at how nonplussed Tom could be, even if he had never read before. “You aren’t real - and - oh! The Emperor!”

 Tom quickly knelt before a broad-shouldered man standing before the Ice Queen; he kissed the dirty floor beneath him before slowly lifting his head when he realized that nobody else was doing the same. 

 “Er...he’s not a real emperor, is he?”

 Annie shook her head, too excited to explain. “And - is that you, the little match girl?”

 The last passenger, a young girl of about seven or eight stepped forward; both Annie and Tom saw how thin and frail she looked - like death had had an early hand in her development. 

 “You wrote that my matches were stolen! I was so lonely, out in the cold,” she said hoarsely. “Before, I could have met my grandmother. The matches are for visioning, not a way out for you.”

 “It wasn’t a way out - I - it’s what people wanted. It’s my job, you see, and it did sell very well.”

 “Silence!” The Ice Queen thundered. “Your words have been loved by many, for your retellings and your imagination. But have you never once thought about the people behind those words? We are not bound by the plane that you are bound by. We are made of words and ideas; you are the one made of flesh, and the only one that has the power to bring us back to our prior state.”

 “I just don’t quite understand. I must be mad - you are fictional characters! You-you aren’t supposed to speak to me. Oh, I really must be dreaming…”

 “You aren’t,” the emperor said, and for some reason his authoritative tone made her truly believe that she wasn’t. 

 Tom thrust his hand forward into the midsection of the emperor, more so out of fascination than malignant intent. The emperor gasped, and, as if he had been shot, grasped his middle and groaned a guttural type of noise. 

 Startled, Tom withdrew his hand. Instead of the expected mortal blood, words streamed out of the emperor like candy from a piñata. 

 Behind them, a clicking noise like that of a master key turning in a lock, sounded; Annie stepped in front of the vellum passengers and Tom nervously fritted about the car in anticipation. The sound of the key being withdrawn made it clear that the person behind the door was coming; it opened, and there stood a brakeman, holding a club. 

 “Alright, what’s the commotion in here?” He peered over Annie’s shoulder and frowned. 

 Annie laughed, then quickly held up her ticket. Tom did the same. “Oh, commotion? Sir, you must be confused with...another...car. See, we are just two passengers, hoping to get to our destination.”

 “Really?” Tom hissed. Annie shot him a desperate look. 

 “Damn boxcar tourists…” the brakeman muttered, and approached the two angrily. “Who are you hiding?”

 “Hiding?” Annie squeaked in a voice quite unlike her own. The brakeman pushed past them and peered into each corner of the car but saw nothing. 

 “Us!” The Ice Queen roared, and then two passengers appeared, the Queen holding the emperor and the match girl clutching onto her robes. 

 The brakeman, who at almost six years into the Depression, was quite used to handling bindle stiffs and rustling up bums, was not unfazed in the slightest (even at two beings that appeared out of nowhere) although he had not seen a mother and a daughter pair in quite some time.

 “Listen, you two, I can’t have you two riding without a ticket. Not my rule, just the system, and-”

 The Ice Queen snapped her fingers, and time stopped inside the train. 

 Annie and Tom looked around in amazement mixed with horror. “What...what just happened?” Annie asked, poking the now frozen brakeman.

 “A power bestowed onto me by you,” the Ice Queen said proudly. Annie gasped.

 “Time is something that cannot escape the Ice Queen, for her strength far extends that of the fiery cold she deals out to her enemies.” Annie nodded. “I remember.”

 “You see, Annie,” the Ice Queen said, her voice gentle now, “your words unleashed us. You believe in us, so we are real; but your words also have more power than you believe. We’ve changed, yet not for the better.”

 “I don’t quite follow.”

 “You have to write us back into our stories,” the match girl said. “Otherwise we’ll have to roam the mortal plane until you give in.”

 “What if she just stops believing?” Tom asked, who really didn’t follow. The match girl rolled her eyes. 

 “Then we’re dead, gone and buried.”

 “Gone and buried,” Annie repeated. “I see.”

 “But you cannot escape so easily,” the Ice Queen stood, her full height much more domineering than Annie recalled. “You will see when we arrive at your little town that everything is as it seemed all those years ago. If you do as we wish, then everything can return to normal. Otherwise…”

 “You-you froze Podunk!” Annie said, clutching her chest, hoping it would keep her heart from leaping out from the excitement. “But why would-is this my punishment? Oh, God!”

 “You remember, darling,” the Ice Queen said with an amused glance, “you wrote me this way. It’s up to you now.”

 “Up to me…” Annie flopped down on her seat like a rag doll, exhausted and tired of being toyed with. “Can you take us there, now?”

 “Oh, like she can do everything,” Tom muttered, but immediately took his words back when the Ice Queen cocked her head, her fingers raised. “Don’t tell me you gave her the power of teleportation!”

 She did. Fingers snapped and the train had arrived at Mobile. The other passengers were sent in the direction of their destination while Annie, Tom, and the characters found themselves on the outskirts of an overgrown path. 

 Annie glanced around them in awe. “We’re here.”

 “Yes, splendid, but I had to be in Benton an hour ago.”

 “Time is no matter now!” said the Queen, who used her hands to create a long shaft of ice. She raised it, and a transformation overcame her; the ice became a cane, her long, glimmering robes turned into a hags caftan. The emperor, who had been resting in her arms comfortably, shrunk into a withered old man and the match girl cried out as her body contorted into that of a tabby colored feline. “Now,” the Queen said happily, lifting a long branch from their view, revealing a small but familiar village, “we ride.”

 Just as the Queen promised, Podunk had been left exactly as it was since Annie departed. She ran past the old town sign that proudly displayed her name, into a bustling market square. 

 She and Tom watched in amazement as the oh-so recognizable people moved, how a sweven-like wrath of soft clouds hovered above the town, and the way in which the scenery of it was perfectly concinnated by mossy paths and hunky trees. 

 “It’s the same,” Annie whispered. “Just as she said…”

 Indeed it was. Even the fashions, and the exact way in which the townspeople styled their hair had not changed. 

 “If I may ask,” said Tom, who was following the Queen and the match-girl-turned-cat, “how exactly did you...why...well-”

 The hag turned to him, a menacing look in her eyes. “Speak, boy.”

 “How are you real? How did you find this place?”

 She turned to Annie. “Her words made us real. We were always here, always existing in your plane; but when she wrote us with such conviction, that is what made us real to you and the rest of them. Now,” she waved her arms as best a frail old woman could, tossing a clever grin Tom’s way. “Help! It’s my husband, he’s ill!”

 A crowd soon formed around them, and someone called for the doctor. As they reached for the emperor, the hag nodded at Annie, as if to say, ‘go.’ Annie grabbed Tom by the arm, who was still trying to process what was going on.

 “What’re we going to do now? What was that back there?”

 Annie looked behind them, then lunged into what was her childhood home. But if the town was in limbo, then that meant it hadn’t been sold yet. “That was a distraction,” she muttered, kicking open the door. “If they need to get back into their stories, then the only way is to write them back in.”

 “How are we going to do that? Hey, isn’t this someone’s house?”

 Annie grimaced. She hurried up the stairs as best as her legs could carry her, then, when Tom had caught up with her, she pushed him against the boards that barricaded the room. 

 “Ow!”

 “You may complain later,” Annie rushed inside and saw that, while a little dusty, her room hadn’t changed since she went to live with her grandparents after her father had caught cold. “Oh, heavens, I should have cleaned before I left…”

 “No time to complain, right?” prodded Tom. Annie nodded. She dug out a stack of parchment from a chest, then found a matchbox and pen buried in her old desk. 

 The Queen could never leave her throne; she was to be kept there until her icy heart melted, prolonged by her cruel attitude. Her only good feature was her beauty. Annie read it, then added: But most treacherous of all was her penchant for disguising herself to trick others. 

 “Have you written it?” Tom asked restlessly. 

 Annie nodded. “I have yet to rewrite the others-” she was cut short by heavy footsteps beneath them. “Oh no! Do you think we are in trouble?”

 “I don’t want to find out!” Tom said, shoving the pen back in her hand. “Write something, anything!”

 “But what if-”

 “Annie!” Tom grasped her shoulders. His eyes pleaded with her. “Please.”

 Annie nodded, and wrote: Like an emperor or a match girl, she would be trapped forever in a world of her own, a world that she created, a point of no return; and only on the day her heart melted would she be able to bring joy to her world with her spring, just as she was made to do. 

 For a moment, nothing seemed to happen. 

 Tom touched her arm. “You have to believe to make it real.”

 “I believe,” Annie said, standing up. “I believe it to be true!”

 The door, which was previously boarded, swung open with ease. The hag and her companions were gone, but so were the characters behind them. 

 All that was left was a crown made of ice, rattling on the floor.