You’ve seen how leaves swirl in the wind. They dance, flip, rustle, turn over each other, leap high, form brief shapes, fall apart, sweep on. From the corner of your eye, when you’re not expecting it, an illusion, just for a moment—a hand reaching up, a dog snuffling along the ground, a child skipping in autumn colors. But no, just leaves, swirled in the wind.

Then again, oh so briefly, gone by the time you see it, you glimpse a man or a woman, hat shading the eyes, a brooding shape. Your heart skips, your head whips around, the leaves dance away and you laugh, fooled for a breath...and yet you wonder.

Now add a lonely heart, a bit of moss, some twigs, and strong need like wine gone to the head, and you can guess my sin.

Hand in hand we walk. The wind drags icy fingers across our cheeks but the sun is warm. “This is wrong,” she says, and I shrug. “Self-indulgent,” she says, and I shake my head. “Ephemeral,” she says, and I laugh.

“What is, is,” I say. “The sky is blue, the sun is yellow, the world turns.”

“Someday it won’t.”

“Today it does.”

She tugs me to a halt, all serious now. “That’s not enough.”

I study her eyes, reach with my free hand to warm her cheek. I consider her complaint, the root of the desire that drives her discontent. I give the only answer that makes sense to me.

“Your nose is lovely,” I say. She tries to be angry, stamps her heel in the grass, pulls her head away and turns for a moment so that the wind blows her hair over her eyes. Then she lifts her chin and turns toward me again, and I see her smile.

“You’re impossible.”

“That’s the plan. Walk with me.”

“Where? Where are we going?”

I shrug, her hand warm in mine, and we move again, our feet pushing through the grass and leaves. “Over there.” I point with my chin; she looks and gasps.

“It’s beautiful! The trees, the hill, the stream! Was that there before?”

“Before, after, now, then, soon, late. Who knows? Time is a mystery. Come with me.” I pull gently on our joined hands, and our stroll becomes a walk, becomes a run, becomes a race. The wind drags at our clothes, our hair flies, we leap over the hills shouting our laughter, and we are become giants for a moment.

She stumbles, twists, grabs at my shoulders. Arms wrapped around each other we roll over and over, down the hillside, breathless, giggling. By the stream we come to a stop, I on my elbows above her. Her breath is cool and sweet against my lips, and the good red blood pulses hot beneath her cheeks. I bury my nose in her hair and smell the wildness and the freedom and the abandon.

“Are you happy?” I ask, letting the question ease out of my lungs in a whisper, brush against her ear like a kiss. Perhaps it is a kiss. Perhaps I never speak. Certainly the susurration of the stream beside us is louder.

Suddenly she knows the dark man is watching us. She feels it, a bone-deep coldness in the air that goes far beyond the chill of autumn. We sit up and turn, her fingers clutching mine in fright. Under the trees, his face made of shadow, he watches us. He steps forward, and I see his feet are made from withered grass. No, the grass has withered where he stands, a circle of death spreading out where his feet touch the ground.

“Aaiih,” she says, and shrinks against me, and then she’s standing, pulling, wanting to run.

“No!” I cry as our fingertips start to pull apart. Desperately I hang on. “Don’t let go!”

She holds my wrist now and helps me to my feet. Together we turn to face the dark man with his feet of dying grass, but he is gone. An old hoary tree stands there, its dead roots grasping at the ground like a spider’s legs, but gnarled and twisted, dry, sucked clean of life long ago. It leans toward us, and the heart of the tree is hollow and dark.

I turn her away from it, my hand closing on her fingers with a panicked strength. She looks at me searchingly, looks at our clasped hands, looks away for a long moment. She understands now, knows the limits, knows what she is, suspects what I am. Her eyes are tired when she faces me again, but her grip is firmer. “I won’t let go,” she says.

She shivers, half reaction, half cold. “I feel so small,” she says.

This I can change for her. “Size is a mystery,” I say. “Come with me.” I turn and draw her with me, and when we finish turning we sit on the moon, resting our feet on the Earth. The sun shines brightly, but it is cold, cold, and beautiful.

“I can hold Venus in my hand,” she says, and Venus is a hard little marble she holds before our gaze. I breathe out, a mist of crystal ice that wraps around the marble and melts, becomes an atmosphere. We dive into it, winged now, and glide among the clouds, only fingertips touching at arm’s length, and she has forgotten the dark man, forgotten the cold, forgotten everything but wonder.

Pivoting on one toe, I whirl her back to Earth, spinning to the ground amidst the leaves and the clean brown limbs of the arching trees. In my arms she looks up, her eyes still full of stars, and I kiss her under the oaks while the leaves, amber and crimson and gold, tumble around us like rain.

She buries her face in my shoulder and I hold her close, all the while looking beyond her, into the shadows beneath the far trees, where the dark man waits watching, if only she knew to look for him there. “Walk with me,” I say to her, and lead her away, down the hill, away from the trees. We follow the stream into a meadow, step on stones across the cold rushing water, come to a house on a small rise, and always, always, she holds my hand as we walk.

“Can we go in?” she asks, looking at the house with longing.

“In, out, on, around, above. Place is a mystery. Come with me.”

The sun grows large and touches the horizon as we enter. The wind picks up and whistles, but the fire in the hearth is warm at our feet, and we sit side by side, touching at shoulder and hip. She sighs and snuggles against me. She turns, touches my face, lies down with me on the rug. Her breasts are firm and cool in my hands, her lips are light against mine. The fire settles, crackling, murmuring. My voice asking, “Are you happy?” might be the voice of the fire itself.

She stiffens suddenly, and I know she has seen what I have known all along—the dark man has come into the house with us. She sees him standing in the corner beside the door, his hand of shadows still on the doorknob. The doorframe is crumbling, the walls turning to dust. Bricks teeter atop one another, and the wind rises to knock them down. He leans forward as the house collapses around us. His breath is the cold cold wind of winter. We run into the night, stumbling blindly, holding onto one another for support, thinking of nothing but the need to escape.

Freezing cold water about our ankles, up to mid-calf. We lurch across the stream, unable to find the stepping stones in the dark. Across the meadow, up the hill, back into the trees, racing, panting, the first flakes of snow falling about us as we run. We stop finally and stand trembling, chests heaving, her hands like icicles in mine.

“Is he coming?” she gasps.

I cannot protect her anymore. “Yes,” I say.

“Can we get away?”

“No.”

Her teeth chatter. Fear or cold? “What does he want from us?” she asks.

“You know.”

And she does know. In the glimmer of the moonlight I can see the first half of the truth in her eyes. “Because of me,” she says woodenly. “Because of what we’ve done.”

I lift her hands, blow on them, rub them between mine. “I love you,” I say.

She looks at our hands, where we are joined, have been joined all afternoon, never once letting go. She knows why. And now she suspects the rest. Her eyes travel slowly up, meet mine. Yes. Yes, she knows.

“You…” she says.

“I,” I say; and again I say, “I.”

“You are the dark man.”

“What is, is,” I say, and the wind picks up, fingers my hair, plucks at my clothes.

“Let go of me!” she cries.

“I am not holding you,” I say, and it is true. She is clutching me. Her grip loosens a bit, and the wind grows colder, stronger. My hair whips about my face, my shirt flaps and tears free.

She pulls me close, hugs me fiercely, then slowly opens her arms. My form frays at the edges. A blur of leaves and twigs form a small whirlwind in her empty arms. A clump of moss falls to the forest floor. The smell of oak is strong.

You’ve seen how leaves swirl in the wind. They dance, flip, rustle, turn over each other, leap high, form brief shapes, fall apart, sweep on. And then the wind picks up, shuffles them down, away from you, and they are gone.

Make of them what you will.

Story Notes

Okay, I admit it—I sometimes write mushy romance stories using a female pseudonym. This is the only story written by "Sarah Boss," so you're on your own if you want to find any of the others. I'm not saying. I make the pseudonyms up and throw them away after use (they get dirty).

We all know temptation, and most of us reject it with varying levels of angst depending on the nature of the temptation. One day I realized it was a pretty raw deal for temptation—no one ever talks about how wonderful temptation is, only about rejecting it.

Poor temptation, always being rejected. This story is about a tempting daydream, told from temptation's point of view.

Speaking of rejection, I submitted this story to the usual suspects, and while every editor returned it reluctantly, every editor returned it nonetheless. Comments included, "Such a beautiful story! What's it about?" and "This is the best-written thing I've seen in years, but I can't use it," and "I think most readers will be confused. Pity, because it's a great story."

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fuggheads. This is art I tell you—high art. But alas, unpublishable art (unless you count its appearance on this web page).