Permanence & Choice

By Laura Cowan

A young girl chases down clues in a dream maze, shrunk to a tiny size and running for her life from burning dollhouses and flying projectiles at night, while evading the mob’s watchful eye by day. Some most unexpected family friends help her and her mother finally make a break for freedom. Short, sweet, and unbelievably imaginative, The Scent of Yellow Flowers is a story for anyone who has ever been lost and needed to be found.

In the animal fable The Day The Cows Came Home, the farmer’s wife has died, the farmer sells the farm, and the world falls into war. At the abandoned farmhouse, deep in the Finnish wintertime when nothing ever seems to change, the animals are on a quest to understand if time is at an end and they with it–only to discover time itself is not what they assumed.

The Man in the Moon holds on while the grumpy moon tries to shake him off. His friends the stars urge him to jump, but something holds The Man in the Moon in the Twilight in the Firmament. But soon, the universe begins to change, and The Man in the Moon is off on a fabulous adventure to discover the beauty of the existence around him, and how his choices and those of other beings shape space and time.

Permanence & Choice is a collection of contemplative fantasy stories all about what it is to be lost and found again, and how our own choices shape the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Laura Cowan
• Release date: Jun 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310897634

Laura Cowan

Laura K. Cowan writes imaginative stories that explore the connections between the spiritual and natural worlds. Her work has been compared to that of acclaimed fantasy and sci-fi authors Ursula K. Le Guin and Ray Bradbury, but her stark and lovely stories retain a distinctly spiritual flavor. Laura’s debut novel The Little Seer was a top 5 Kindle Bestseller for free titles in Christian Suspense and Occult/Supernatural, and was hailed by reviewers and readers as “riveting,” “moving and lyrical.” Her second novel, a redemptive ghost story titled Music of Sacred Lakes, and her first short story collection, The Thin Places: Supernatural Tales of the Unseen, received rave reviews. Laura’s short stories also appear in a number of anthologies, including the charity anthology Shades of Fear, and the upcoming historical horror anthology Sins of the Past, the rather ridiculous soon-to-come PANTS! anthology, and the completely absurd upcoming Faery Tale Therapy. Before writing fiction, Laura worked for years as an accomplished writer and editor in genres such as green tech, green parenting, and automotive media, and was called one of the best copy editors in the business by multiple colleagues, including late mentor David E. Davis, Jr., whom TIME Magazine called “the Dean of Automotive Journalism.” She was the founder of popular green parenting blog 29 Diapers, author of Ecofrugal Baby: How To Save 70% Off Baby’s First Year, and still serves as Road Test Editor for Inhabitat, the web’s largest green design blog. Laura’s work has appeared in Automobile Quarterly as well as on numerous parenting sites including BabyCenter, EcoMom, and Inhabitots. You can find her on Facebook and Twitter, or connect with her at laurakcowan[at]gmail.com or on her website LauraKCowan.com.

Book preview

Permanence

&

Choice

Laura K. Cowan

Copyright © 2014 Laura K. Cowan

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9781310897634

For the lost one.

May you find your way home.

CONTENTS

The Scent Of Yellow Flowers

***

The Day The Cows Came Home

***

Twilight In The Firmament

The Scent

Of

Yellow Flowers

1

"Rally, rally around her now. Pick her up. Steady. Carry her down here.

That’s it. Open it just a bit for her. She can find her way from here.

Clarinda felt fingers like feathers, gently pulsing down her back, easing her down onto a rug. Then the whispers faded, out into a bright light. She was left to sleep.

Clarinda opened her eyes. She found herself lying in a wood foyer, finally outside the endless blind corridors of the great Victorian house. The front door was above her, left half open. Outside, bright sunshine bleached the garden to near invisibility. The scent of flowers blew through the door on a light breeze. Clarinda rolled over and sat up. She picked up the stub of her candle, the wick burned down to nothing.

She gasped. She was still inside the maze, but this was it, the way out.

Clarinda took little time to look behind her. She grasped the doorknob and hauled herself to her feet. Outside, before the maze could shift again.

She was running with her candle, across the bright grass, through the sunshine. The wind was in her hair. Then, it was the yellow flowers that made her pause.

***

Clarinda woke in her bed. The frost had crept up the window during the night. The longest winter she could remember. The wind came in off Lake Michigan and just roared through the streets, blown like the breath of a giant bellows between the high rises. Clarinda huddled down under her blankets. The windows rattled in their old frames as a gust pushed up the street and off the identical row house opposite.

The candle on her bedside table had burned down to a nub in the night and was now smoking in the darkness.

Living like we’re in a fairy tale, her mother had griped to Uncle Lem the night before, after Clarinda was sent to bed.

It’s the only way to keep the electric bill down, he insisted. But you shouldn’t be living like this. Come stay at my place. I’ve got plenty to take care of both of you.

Clarinda hadn’t heard her mother’s response. Maybe she hadn’t replied. But she had seen through the crack in her door into the dim hallway, lit from the stairwell. Her uncle had stepped forward and taken her mother up into a hug. And she had stiffened.

You are my husband’s brother, not my husband, she had whispered. I don’t care what you give us, Lem. Never forget that.

Uncle Lem had stepped back. Linda, he said. I didn’t mean anything.

Go home, Lem.

Clarinda’s stomach finally convinced her to leave the uneven warmth of her ragged quilt. She stuffed her feet into her stretched out slippers and grabbed another sweatshirt from the peg on the wall. She avoided touching the chilled walls of the stairs as she descended to the living room. The paint on the walls was chipping anyway, and cut her when she ran her hands along the wainscoting in the old house.

Good morning, Clarinda, my lovely, her uncle said when she walked into the kitchen. He stood over the stove, stirring a pot of oatmeal.

Clarinda paused. Do we have sugar? she asked him.

He shook his head and frowned. I’ll bring some, he said. But I think we have some raisins left. Would you like those in your oatmeal this morning?

She nodded and sat down at the old kitchen table.

Oh, it’s freezing in here. Clarinda’s mother came into the kitchen with a blanket wrapped around her thin frame. Clarinda, did you hear yet? The middle school called. It’s a snow day for you. She tousled her daughter’s hair. I bet you’ll be happy to get out there and go sledding finally.

Actually, Clarinda said as her uncle handed her a plain bowl of oatmeal, I want to take a nap.

You’ve been taking a lot of naps lately, her mother said. Are you feeling all right? Yes, Clarinda said, blushing. Just tired.

Her mother frowned and turned to Uncle Lem, but he was shaking his head at Clarinda, holding the raisin container that only had two raisins left.

The lines around her mother’s mouth deepened.

Clarinda saved herself from having to say more by accepting the raisin container from her uncle. She took out the raisins and put them in her palm, then tucked into the bland mush. It was piping hot, at least. It nearly burned her throat on the way down to steaming her insides.

How could she explain that her dreams were now more interesting, more tolerable, than her waking life? She didn’t like being stuck in the maze, but she did feel like she had a purpose there, that she was looking for something, and that she might find it.

As soon as she finished her bowl, Clarinda put it in the sink and excused herself, hurrying back up the cold stairs. She dropped the raisins on the stairs as she went. The mice would find two raisins to be a feast. Her mother started talking to Uncle Lem in a hushed voice as soon as she left the room.

… sleeping too much, she heard her mother say.

… groceries, said her uncle. She’s not eating enough.

***

Back in the maze. The parchment-colored walls covered in printed vines, the gas lamps lit to half. Clarinda spotted a doorbell line, this time, and followed it around the corner to the next paneled door. On opening the door, she found that the doorbell line crossed above her head and continued on the other side of the hallway. Clarinda followed it around a corner, past some paintings of a vague seaside with gulls, and to a door on her left. It was locked.

Clarinda looked around for a tool. The walls were papered smooth with the old wallpaper. But the rough oak floor beneath her was covered in a thick, decaying carpet, and out of that carpet were springing old carpet nails. She pried one out and wiggled it into the lock.

The lock clicked. Clarinda pushed open the creaking door, over a swollen carpet.

Inside the room, the lamps glowed more brightly. That was always a good sign, she had found. In the center of the room, a low table was set with a shimmering cloth, dulled by dust. On it sat dozens of picture frames. And behind that, a trio of three dark windows. She already knew what happened when she opened windows. Nothing at all. The night was so black outside, she couldn’t see a thing. It was like standing on a dune over Lake Michigan on a starless night. She had no way to gauge where she was, how far up. She couldn’t jump. She wasn’t that desperate to get out. Yet.

Clarinda began to pick up the picture frames, one by one, and inspect the faces looking out at her from black and white photographs. Everyone smiled, held each other. Grouped close together. She put them down and sighed. They looked so happy together.

The largest frame stood in the center, behind all the others. Clarinda picked up the photograph in front of it, then stared. Her father’s face was looking out at her from the large photo. It was in color, like a painting. His eyes seemed sunken back into the picture, his smile weak.

Clarinda grabbed the photo and held it to herself. She could hear the sound of the courtroom again, the roar of the crowds six years before, when she had been just six years old.

Daddy, she said. That’s what I was looking for. It was you. Where did you go after the trial, Daddy? Where are you?

He didn’t answer.

It’s cold, she told her father. We don’t have enough money to eat well anymore. Mom has been getting sick a lot. She has a cough.

He said nothing in return. Clarinda put the photo back on the table and looked around. Where was she, really? What was this strange and intricate house with the shifting hallways? Now she couldn’t even remember when these dreams had started, or when she had become aware that she was sleeping.

At least now she knew why she was here. Of course. Her father.

Clarinda exited the room and followed the doorbell line back to where she had started. She carried her candle with her, which she held up to follow the flow of the breeze toward any exit or open window. But soon she found herself at a dead end again, where she doubled back and turned right, and right again, only to return to where she had started.

It’s not a fair maze! she said aloud. Let me out!

A gust of wind responded by blowing out her candle.

***

The candle blew out just as Clarinda woke in her room. It had been a gust from the loose window, she was sure of it. Still, seeing the candle stump smoldering gave her shivers. She grabbed her robe and slippers and crept to the top of the stairs, where she heard an argument in the living room below.

Thirty days, Uncle Lem said. You must move in with me.

Clarinda gasped and covered her mouth. Thirty days? Were they in that much trouble? Were they being kicked out of their house? That would explain the food shortages and her mother scrimping on heat, but she had had no idea it was this bad.

Her mother was silent again. Clarinda crept down the stairs a bit to hear more.

Linda, enough is enough, he said. "Think of Clarinda. You can’t let her live like this, not in the winter. I saw