The Winter the Sky Turned Green

This is part of something I wrote during the long nights when I’d been reading a bit too much Penelope Farmer. I’ve set it aside for now, but I thought maybe I could set a bit of it free somewhere.

The Winter the Sky Turned Green

The old house where Anabel lived was at the end of Silverslip Lane. In the summer the house stayed shadowed by the thick tree canopy, and now, in the late fall, the branches stretched bare and dark like ink against the house. Sometimes they would scratch against Anabel’s bedroom window and make a terrible sound like an out-of-tune fiddle.

Anabel was sad to see the summer was over. The house would only grow more quiet in the winter months. Her father had been sick for a long time now, and a couple of years before, when Anabel was nine, a nurse had come to live in the house and take care of him.

The nurse-lady was nice, Miss Shelly was her name. Sometimes Anabel felt bad for not liking her more, especially when she made birthday cakes and special breakfasts and packed lunches and asked Anabel if she needed any help with her schoolwork. But she couldn’t help it. Sometimes Miss Shelly made Anabel miss her mother. Sometimes she got angry with herself for not remembering more about her, though she had passed away when Anabel was only six.

It was too late in the season for the familiar buzz of cicadas to fill the air. There would be no more June bugs, either. Those were Anabel’s favorites. She held the memory of them in her mind like a jewel, their glowing green backs like mirror-ball Christmas ornaments. She could imagine the feeling of their cool carapaces on her fingers, which always felt to her like the candy shell of an M&M.

Anabel sat down in the overgrown garden that was now colored in shades of pale-yellow gold and hushed greens. Though sometimes in the garden, the light would slant a certain way, or a lone bird would skim over the hedgerow, and Anabel would fill with a strange sadness that she didn’t have the words to describe.

There were little sparkling silver pinwheels stuck into the grass here and there. They seemed to spin on their own, even when no breeze was passing through. Anabel’s father had brought them home to her two summers ago and she had found great joy in choosing where to put them. She loved watching their iridescence catch the stray rays of sunlight and reflect glittering shades of blue and green back to her. She had placed them mostly in the spots that butterflies liked to spend their time. She loved to sneak up on them as they lounged upon flowers and leaves, and admire their kaleidoscope wings.

There were no butterflies this time of year, though, and the sparkling pinwheels just looked strange against the foggy gray day. Anabel thought she could hear the other children from the street, laughing and carrying on on their bicycles. She had tried to make friends with them before, but they never sat still and Anabel found that when she had tried to open up to them, she had always ended up feeling more misunderstood. She didn’t know why, as she was quite sure she had spoken clearly. She only knew she felt much lonelier with the other children than she ever had by herself.