Stories Francis Rosenfeld:VOICES

The green meadow was quiet. There was a large crowd present, but no one made a sound, standing on the grass in a circle, in the light of the torches, waiting.
You are standing in the middle, wearing the white dress with green ribbons, and you have fragrant white flowers and green ribbons in your hair, very thin ribbons which make it look like that of a non-human creature, like an undine or a selkie. 
Your mentor waits for you by the tallest stone, standing poised for the ceremony, and all your council is in attendance, dressed in festive attire and donning wild flower garlands.
Is this your wedding, Fiona? I can’t see the groom, they’re all women. Some rite of passage, maybe?
You walk across the circle of grass with slow ceremonial steps, as if in a trance, your eyes affixed on the top of the tallest stone, perfectly aligned with the moonrise of the solstice, and only then I realize it must be night, but it’s still daylight, and although the giant moon already rose above the stone, casting its long shadow towards you, the sun is shining too, casting your shadow towards it.
The two shadows met, and you walked inside their joint corridor of darkness, while young girls in white dresses threw flowers at your feet.
I always see your hair braided, Fiona, and I didn’t realize how long it was. It is let down now, and trails behind you like a train.
You walk alone, barefoot on the path of grass and flowers, while the moon rises quickly in the sky, and the sun finally goes to rest, and daylight dims to twilight, but not really darkness, because the moon is so huge and so close it bathes everything in its silver light.

I had promised Denise I’d come to all the rehearsals, not knowing how many they were going to have. Three hours in, watching the same performance fragments over and over, I was on the verge of losing my mind, and my bum was numb from sitting on stone.
“How much practice could you possibly need for an improv performance?”
“That shows how much you know about theater,” Denise commented, annoyed by the interruption, and turned around to face the cast. “Let’s take it from the beginning of the dance again.”
Oh, God, I don’t think I can take another repetition of this dance.
“I know what you’re thinking, Ethel.” My sister hissed at me through her labored breath. “If you have no appreciation for the arts, why don’t you prop up that boulder? It’s about to fall.”
‘Fall where?’ I thought, bewildered. We were in the middle of the street, and everything rested securely on its stone pavers.
My sister ignored me and started her dance again, a very agitated choreography set on absolute silence, which was supposed to engender the emotional waves of a Wagnerian opera, but with no sound at all. 

I couldn’t sleep, and neither could Denise. The sun woke us up when I had barely slept three hours. As for Denise, she had made up her sleep deficit during the day and now was sharp as a tack.
We drove to the stones of Stenness with the rosy glow of dawn behind us. The midnight sun bathed our shoulders and put haloes around our hair, and when we got out of the car in the middle of the wilderness, it compelled our silence.
We walked in silence for a while through this fantastic landscape, where the stones felt like a natural land feature, like they’ve been there forever, carved by the storms and the winds.
“Come on, Ethel! Not fun being old, eh?”
I was born two years before Denise, a detail she never forgets to highlight when she deems it relevant.
“See you in two years, Denise. I’ll remember to ask you then.”
“This is awesome!” My sister started running up the gentle slope, twirling and dancing like an ancient priestess entranced by her deity, charged by the monoliths. “I am the goddess of Stenness! I bid glad tidings to all the little people.”
She looked it too, a young goddess, one with the land, dancing with the grace of a willow branch.
“Dance, Betty Lou! Don’t be a stick in the mud! Dance with me!”

I wondered if there was any sort of protocol when talking to ghosts. Is one allowed to call on them? Or is that considered too forward and one should wait to be acknowledged first?
It seems rather rude to disturb the peace of an entity without the consent of the latter, especially when their home base is always overrun with people.
Denise adamantly disagreed, saying Mr. Sinclair obviously enjoyed the company of the living and he’d be really disappointed to find out we came to the cathedral and didn’t bother to call.
Unfortunately for my sister, our friendly guide seemed to be otherwise engaged; besides, the church was filled with the living, anyway.
I’d stopped keeping track of the calendar in Kirkwall, my independent research schedule didn’t seem to find any usefulness for it and didn’t realize we had come to the cathedral on a Sunday. 
The service was almost over when we arrived, and we slid into one of the pews as quietly as possible, careful not to disturb the ceremony.
The familiar chants lulled me into a soft reverie as my eyes wondered, taking in the austere details of the Romanesque architecture, and I was startled when the soft voice behind me, a voice rather recognizable now, whispered from very close by, “I told you, young lady: second pillar on the right.”

Upon returning from Birsay the following morning, I found Denise sleeping across the doorway.
“You forgot to leave a key,” she looked at me cross, but relieved I returned before it started raining.
“The landlady could have let you in. Why didn’t you ask her?”
“She’s out of town. How was your trip?”
“Uneventful,” I didn’t elaborate. How was I to tell her that, cliche as it sounds, my journey to Birsay had been more interesting than arriving at the destination? Once there, I couldn’t think of things to do, walked around for a couple of hours and headed back. “How was your day? Did you have fun with your friends?”
“And then some! Do you know people think your Fiona called out to you so you can find her bones and lay her to rest? They think you are a white lady who walks between worlds. Neil said that if you go to the Maeshowe cairn during solstice, she’ll talk to you then.”
I didn’t mention seeing Fiona when I visited Maeshowe, not to my sister, not to anyone else. Except the young man, the tour guide who dragged me out of there before I made a total fool of myself, nobody paid enough attention to notice anything unusual.

It wouldn’t have been Denise if she didn’t change our plans at the last minute, based on the schedules of her new friends. Two days she’d been in a foreign country where she didn’t know a soul and she already made friends, promised to help them set up the stage for their Avant-Garde play and left me flopping in the wind.
Strange how one can still get distressed over being excluded when one left home for a solitary pursuit and went far away from the familiar places and people in order to find oneself.
I put on my best face for Denise’s benefit, and picked a destination to give her, annoyed more by my own reaction than my sister’s predictably harebrained schedule and arbitrary choice of activities.
“Are you sure you’re not mad at me?” She gave me her loveliest smile, attached to a guilty cat's gaze. “Promise me you’re not mad at me, Louise! I hate the thought of leaving you here all by yourself.”
She only called me Louise when she wanted to get on my good side.
“Denise, you weren’t supposed to come here in the first place. I’ve been here alone for months now, remember? I have work. And plans.”
“Ok, if you say so.”
She headed for the door, then changed her mind.
“You know, you could still come with us! I’m sure everyone would love to meet you and they could use another pair of hands.”
“Thanks. Pass.”
“Ok. Just call if you change your mind.”
“Denise! Go!”