The Manor of Their Youth

Ryan was an old man awaiting decay when he came upon the manor months ago, its windows shattered, bricks imploded in several areas and burnt in others. He found it strange that it was left undiscovered for however long it was, and was somehow curious of what chaos befell this rustic estate. 

Most of all, it felt distantly familiar. 

The moment he opened the double doors, a pink face stood in the middle of the unlit vestibule, beaming beneath a floral ceiling. When asked what a young girl was doing in a crumbled manor, she replied with; 

“Waiting for the man of the house.”

Then she seemed to quickly reason with herself, that since he was there, they ought to play together instead. He refused, urged her to hurry home or she’d get lost, then asked if perhaps she was lost. She simply said,

“No, but you are.”

He was unwillingly swept into a game of hide and seek. Being a retired bachelor, with not a pence in his bank, the only sensible thing to do was to see this girl home. He checked every hiding place possible: beneath the debris of memories, among the hyacinths in the garden, and within secret passages in the walls. He followed her giggles, but eventually found himself on a tour, rather than a game. The girl seemed to deliberately take him to every chamber, where he stopped frequently to rub his back. In the ballroom, the ocean spanned across the glass walls breathlessly; an endless voyage that he once sought. One chamber had only a dilapidated crib, its mobile the appearance of an orrery. The planets were all in the wrong order, but he remembers that he once thought of them as such, before his parents left him with an infant. 

In another room curtained with vines, triangular windows illuminated a mosaic on the opposite wall. Here, he forgot the girl. He stared at the murals gravely, stood so close his wrinkly nose touched them. It looked awfully like the drawings he and his sister had made, when they pretended they were long lost royals. 

There was too much of the past in this place- too much. He choked in the humidity, clutched his chest when his heart convulsed inside of him. Bleeding of guilt, he left the manor.

Despite himself, curiosity got the best of him and he returned another day. Her familiar, sable eyes gazed upon him expectantly, a smile spread, hands eager behind her back. Though it somehow pained him to recall who she appeared to look like, he kept returning to play since. There was nothing left for him to do, anyway. He couldn’t seem to move on.

*

“Bye Waif,” she says, waving to a tangerine moggie that enters the hall. 

It purrs and follows her to the manor’s double doors.

“We’ve got to get on before high tide, Poppet.” Says Ryan, “Come on.”

He beckons for her and she prances over the rubble from a crater in the vestibule. She rams into his arms, dusting his jacket like blowing a forest of dandelions. 

They descend a weedy lawn that has been neglected for decades, left to the weather by someone’s grief. Ryan breaks from his thoughts when Poppet pulls him. Her little fingers were smushed in his, so whenever she swerved sideways to kick autumn leaves, she would abruptly tug him. He yawns when the shore appears as a thread. Past the ships ruined by a prior storm, they come before two poles of wood situated on the soft sand, like the remnants of a doorway. A water line runs halfway up the poles, leaving behind a salty trail of green wood; it guards a low crossing that paves across the ocean. 

Taking off their shoes, they continue beyond the sand to a relatively smooth footpath of pebbles and flattened rocks, slightly flooded with teal water. As they walk across the wide crossing, he watches her feet plopping against thin water, stepping on closed clams and underwater grass. Every step ripples the ocean that surrounds them. Their footsteps echo, crawling over little waves and trickling along the sky’s ceiling. Gulls cry faintly in the distance. Somehow, their playtimes have rendered him dull- no, placid. She has somehow nursed an anguish that had taken decades of his life, and filled the spaces with color; memories he would’ve had with his sister in another life. He glances fondly at the manor far behind him, wishing she could’ve seen it. It embodied all their dreams; the tales he would tell her while they shivered in rags, huddled beneath the stars. Their stomachs would growl and she’d cry in pain, but he would hold her hand and playfully promise a place where hunger didn’t reach. There would be tables of food, but no need to eat because they were already full. There would be beds so soft they’d think it were milk, but seldom used because it was always daylight. These were happy thoughts, but something lurked within.

In his mind he pictures the time he and his sister crossed the broken bridge, walking to her new home. A home he could never give her, despite all his promises. 

Poppet squats on the crossing, pulling him down. Her hand vanishes in the water, then resurfaces with a pouch of coins drenched in tears. 

Ryan releases her like she’s poison. He rises slowly, a flicker of pain contorting his smile. Ruefully, he remembers how he held this pouch in his hand, trembling as he returned across the broken bridge, alone. He still hears her screams, begging him to forget her hunger and simply stay together. 

Sudden rain dribbles down his cheeks. Squeezing his eyes, he imagines his sister, Poppet, attending boarding school with a fancy uniform, then later marrying a seafaring merchant and racing barefoot across every shore in the world, the wind tending to her hair. 

Then a thought occurs to him- or rather, reoccurs- for although he has always thought this, truly believing it is a different thing, he thinks that she would’ve wanted him to live on, unburdened by his leaving her. 

To live freely, just as she is.

He sniffs, drying himself. The dawn blooms in full, casting a warm glow over the crossing. A smile fixes itself on his face, watching Poppet lead him onward. When the manor looms before them again, Poppet flashes a frisky grin before jumping into the woods. He follows suit, determined to never lose her again- to never lose himself again. 

He sprints across the overgrowth in youthful legs, and when he holds out his hands they are no longer bony and veined, but plump with life. 

Parting through the tall grass, he trips over something bulky. His face falls into a bed of chrysanthemums. From afar, his head disappears beneath a wave of flowers, but from where he sits, lies a different forest beneath the tall weeds; a sort of serene earth shaded by a canopy of petals. 

He crawls to examine what he’s tripped over. Drawing nearer, he realizes it was not a mound of dirt, but the body of a decaying old man. He seemed like a bachelor with not a pence in his bank, and hunched from a burden since youth. The man had a smile on his face, having finally moved on, so Ryan doesn’t mourn for him. Poppet singsongs in the distance, and he jumps up to race after her.