The Paper Girl and the Stilt-Walker

The Lilies of Cimetière Cyprès

Mina and Monk stood on Pervenche Avenue, outside a tall and broken building. She stared up at the big worn sign, "Boutique du Chocolat", hanging limply over one of the cracked windows. Her throat tightened when she saw the door, the glass panes, the window on the second floor...her window. Shaking, as if she would upset some spirit or awaken some shadow by doing so, she turned the doorknob and walked inside.

The bell tinkled like it did all those years ago. Dust was layered over the honey-colored floor, the white curtains hung limp and gray in the windows. In the front was the big glass display case, now empty. The flowers in their vases had wilted. The wallpaper was yellow and water-stained. Mina put her hand to her mouth, tears stinging her eyes. Carefully, she reached out and brushed her fingers along the gray curtains, remembering how soft and light they had been. She turned around and looked at the flowers, the ones she picked every morning for the shop when she was little. The tears ran down her face. "It's all still here," she said in a quavering voice, as if it were an amazing thing. She sniffed. "It hasn't changed one bit." Looking around some more, she spotted something that made her tears stop. It was the door to the apartment upstairs. Her breath caught in her throat, Mina went forward and pushed the door open. She walked upstairs just like she was thirteen again.

There was the sitting room. There was the low sofa, the big bay window that she used to read books in, the scarlet rug. To the right was her room. She opened that door too and the sight of it nearly made her sob.

Her bed...still small and childlike, with the ruffled skirt at the bottom and the baby blue comforter. There was the star-shaped lamp, the balls of yarn, the crochet hooks...the closet filled with clothes, the shelf filled with books. An old photograph of a red-haired woman, partly obscured by shadow. But the first thing Mina sought out was the little white box. She reached far under the bed and gasped; her hand had gone through a spider web. Yanking it out and brushing all the webs off, she reached in again and pulled it out; the white box, very small, ripped at the corners. She opened it with shivering fingers. Inside was the glass rose, cherry red and now so small in her hand...her magic charm.

Mina held the bauble to her chest and let the tears flow freely down her face. She felt more like a person now than she had for years. All of the good memories, the happy moments, all flowed like music back into her chest, a stream of warmth that had been long forgotten and long desired. It was such a blessing...her old house, her old bed, the soft rug, the cheerful light of the lamp...it was such a blessing. It almost felt like waking up after a long, long nightmare.

She almost forgot that Monk was still there.

"You should sleep," he told her. "You don't have to see the others. Not yet. But as long as you stay down here...you will see them eventually."

Mina turned around, trying to wipe away the tears. She nodded. Monk left the room, and she crawled into her old bed, which was very dusty but still soft and familiar, and fell asleep almost as soon as she pulled the covers over herself.

*

Morning came in that bleak and cold haze that greeted the city every day. The little bedroom was filled with blanched light, a crack in the window glowing like a bolt of lightning. Mina woke up. The stillness inside the room met her ears, the hazy light met her eyes. When she sat up, her short red hair was ruffled and her eyes were dry. She stood up, standing tall above the bed. When she looked at her nightstand, the little glass rose was sitting there, right beside the photograph of the red-haired woman. All of her memories rushed back into her head, the feel of the blue comforter, the smell of sweets. But when she looked around, and sleep drained out of her head, she caught up with the present again. The spider webs. The cracked window. The haze, filled with death and the crows. She sighed. But she couldn't stay long anyway; it was time to work the clock.