Stepping Stones

Life is a series of stepping stones, jumping from one to another.

STEPPING STONES

 

Fedra turned restlessly in her sleep. She could feel the cold water from the river that passed near the cottage where she had been brought up. The worst things of all for her were the stepping stones. Although she had not been anywhere near her birthplace since she had left home, every so often Fedra dreamt of the stepping stones. Dreaming of them and then waking up with the images still fresh in her mind, gave Fedra the idea that something dreadful was on the point of taking place. Apart from the stones, there was also the memory of wetness and slushy land. The sky was never a strong blue but a pale eggshell tone. Warmth had no place in the area of the countryside where the stepping stones were. The cottages didn’t form a village, but were separated from each other by small pieces of land that were taken up by a couple of ponies or a vegetable garden. In some cases there were a couple of pigs, chickens, and ducks. It was a hard life and one that wasn’t really rewarding. There were two ways of crossing the river that ran across the land a short way off from the cottages. One way was a normal bridge which was used for pedestrians, vehicles, and horses. The other way, which was far more primitive, was a set of large stones that had become fixed in the riverbed some time in history. Nobody knew their origin, but there were stories to suit all kinds of imaginations. Fedra knew one thing for sure - that they frightened the life out of her.

As she grew older, her mother, Adele, expected her daughters to accompany her across the stones. When Fedra asked her mother, “Why don’t we go by the proper bridge?”

Her mother told her, “Why don’t you just try not to always come out with the same old song about the stones and the proper bridge?”

“We never go to the bridge, only when we go by car. You’re too lazy to walk up to the bridge. That’s what you are!” declared a young Fedra.

Adele clenched her fists to stop herself her from lashing out at her impudent daughter. What the mother didn’t understand was that for Fedra the river, the stones, and the bare landscape were horrifying to her, even though she knew that it was much quicker to jump from stone to stone or stretch your legs, in order to do so.

Once, when her daughters were very small, Adele needed to go into town, and grabbing a daughter under each arm went jumping from stone to stone. Both girls were frightened but, whereas Klara kept her mouth shut and her fears to herself, Fedra screamed out loud. Adele got to the other side and gave Fedra a dressing down for frightening her sister. Fedra never forgot the incident.

 

In winter and spring the river rose and almost covered the stones. Adele, being a country woman, took it all in her stride, and made the crossing over the stones wearing Wellingtons and a weather-proof coat. She never walked up to the bridge, even in the worst weather. Fedra and Klara went to school on a school bus, which stopped behind the houses and out of sight of the stones. Fedra liked going in the school bus, as inside it was lovely and warm and she chatted with her friends. Adele eventually had to walk to the bridge when the river rose too high, even for her, to cross the stones on foot.

 

One day Adele said to her daughters, “Who’s coming shopping with me in the village?”

Klara said, “I’ll come, Mummy.”

Fedra asked, “How are you going? The water in the river is still too high, so are you going by the proper bridge?”

Adele responded, “How dare you tell me what to do! What are you trying to insinuate?”

“I’m not insinuating anything, but the teacher said the stones are still too dangerous to cross yet. It’s necessary to wait till the water has gone down before crossing over the stones.”

Klara had put on her plastic raincoat and Wellingtons, and said to Adele, “Are we going shopping or not? I have more homework to do.”

Adele said, “We’re going in spite of what your sister says. See you later. If your father returns and we’re not back, tell him we’re in the village.”

“All right, Mummy. But I’d rather you didn’t go over the stones. Klara, you don’t have to go. Stay here with me and do your homework.”

“I’ve been going over the stones all my life, so don’t tell me what to do.” Adele and Klara left the cottage, shutting the door behind them.

Fedra sat by the fire with a school book in her hands but her mind was all over the place. She wondered why her mother never took any notice of what she said. Fedra felt very bad, and thought she would try and get her father to get a job in another place, far away from the river and the stepping stones.

Colin Graham, the girls’ father and husband to Adele, arrived home expecting his dinner to be ready. As he opened the front door, there was no welcoming smell of meat and vegetables cooking. “Where’re your mother and your sister?”

“Mummy and Klara have gone to the village over the stepping stones. I pleaded with Mummy not to cross over the stones, but she was angry with me for suggesting not to go.”

“Never mind about that. How long ago did they leave?”

“They’ve been gone about an hour,” Fedra told her father.

 Colin strode over to the window to look outside, and saw nothing but darkness. He made a call on his mobile and told the voice at the other end, that his wife and younger daughter had gone over the stepping stones some time earlier, and weren’t back yet. Colin switched off his mobile and put the kettle on. Meanwhile, he waited for a call from the police and the rescuers. Fedra and Colin sat in silence with their mugs of hot tea and biscuits.

The ringing tone of the mobile brought with it the possibility of good news or bad.

“Colin, we’ve got Klara. She was found floating down the river near the bank. She’s alive, and we’re taking her to hospital. I suggest you don’t try and go to see her tonight as the weather is far too wet and windy. Wait till tomorrow at first light. By then, we’ll probably have got your wife too.”

“Thanks, Tate, I’ll do as you say. What’s wrong with Klara exactly?”

“She’s suffering from cold and shock. A day in the hospital should do the trick and get her back on track. See you tomorrow, and in the meantime we’ll do our best to find your wife.”

“Klara’s all right but they haven’t found Mummy yet. What do you fancy for dinner?” Colin asked Fedra, who was sitting gazing into the fire, feeling that she’d never see her mother alive ever again. Those morbid thoughts she kept to herself.

Whatever thoughts passed through Colin’s head that night and the rest of his life whenever he remembered it, he shared with nobody, not even his daughters.

Fedra went with Colin to see Klara in the hospital, and saw her sister sitting up in bed looking a little pale, but none the worse for her wet experience. A policeman and a policewoman were sitting by Klara’s bed. They were asking questions in reference to why Adele had decided to cross over the stones in such bad weather. Klara and Fedra said, she always did. The police were satisfied with the girls’ answers, and when Colin reiterated their words.

Colin took it as certain that Adele had drowned. There had been no sightings of a body in the river.

On their way back to the cottage, Colin and Fedra noticed how swollen the river was and how fast it was flowing.

Two days later and further downstream, Adele’s body was found, face down, in the water. Her body had been caught up in the base of a bridge, even further along the river than the bridge she refused to walk over. Colin thought to himself that it was poetic justice for not crossing where she should have.

 

Colin found himself a decent job far away from the cottage, the river, and the stepping stones. He told everyone around them in the country that he owed it to his daughters to move, in order to give them another chance in life, with the hope that in time they would forget their mother’s death by drowning.

The widowed father with his two daughters settled in their new neighbourhood very well. Colin was a handsome man all through his life, and never lacked women’s attentions. He met a lady called Lavender, a divorcee, with a daughter, whose name was Saffron. Fedra and Klara were puzzled by their names, but after a shaky start they accepted both women into their lives. Saffron was happy to have two sisters, after living alone with her mother. The child felt secure with Fedra and Klara after being left outside things at school for so long.

 

It had to happen that Lavender had a baby boy with Colin, and the day he was taken home for the first time from the hospital, the three girls stood around while he was being changed. They gazed in wonderment that he was indeed a boy. Lavender said, “You three can choose his names. Have you got any ideas?”

Fedra said at once, “We had a think and have decided to give him names that begin with the first letter of our names. I want to call him after me Frederick for his first name, if that’s all right with everyone else.”

Lavender stared at Fedra, “I thought your name was Fedra.”

“My full name is Fredericka. If I’d been born a boy, I would have been Frederick.”

“I’ve no arguments with that, as long as it’s OK with Saffron and Klara. What would you like for his other names?”

Saffron and Klara had a hurried whisper, and Klara said, “We’ve decided on Sebastian and Kenelm. Lavender laughed and said, “Such a tiny baby for three long names. He’ll certainly not go unnoticed in life. Thank you, girls.”

Colin was highly amused when he heard what his son had been named. Baby Frederick, who was soon to be known as Freddy, took ages to learn what his names were, and even more time to be able to write them properly.

 

During her life, Fedra dreamt many times of the rushing river and the wet stepping stones. Adele, her mother never appeared in those dreams. The only important image was the muddy land and the slippery stones. On those nights she tossed and turned in her bed, grunting and groaning. There were nights when she spoke in her sleep.

Nobody in the family made any mention of those happenings, and so, Fedra passed from childhood into womanhood. She was like a magnet to Freddy, he never left her alone. She liked him a lot, and was more patient with him than either Saffron or Klara.

Fedra wanted to go away to study the restoration of paintings. Colin was aghast and quite amazed that anyone would choose such a strange profession. Fedra wanted something of her own and not related to anyone or anything in her family. Colin eventually understood and let her leave the family home. Freddy was angry with Fedra for leaving him, and refused to kiss her goodbye. Saffron and Klara were sad to see her go, and each wondered who would be the next to leave.

 

The day Fedra left home she was nineteen years old, and was never to return. That she knew when she said goodbye. The years she was studying and learning what restoration was about, Fedra put her work first in her life. The last thing she wanted was to be shackled to a man and have children. Freddy’s clinging character had shown her that she really wasn’t cut out for all that domestic stuff.

 

Saffron and Klara went their separate ways a few years later, and so Colin and Lavender were left with Freddy to cope with on their own.

 

Fedra used any means she could to climb the ladder of success. She went from strength to strength, and eventually got the job she wanted. Fedra went to live abroad in a warmer country where she could live well on the salary the painting experts paid her for restoring paintings to their original colourful glory.

 

One night after many years, Fedra dreamt of the stepping stones and woke up with a sense of foreboding. Later that day when she was in her studio, she heard her brother’s name mentioned on the radio, with an accusation of possession of drugs and trafficking. Once again the dream had a terrible portent. Fedra shouted to her dead mother, “This is entirely your fault! If you hadn’t died trying to cross the stones when you shouldn’t have, we wouldn’t have lost our mother, we wouldn’t have moved house, Father wouldn’t have remarried, Freddy wouldn’t have been born, and none of this would have taken place.”

Fedra rang up her sisters, “Have you heard about Freddy? What a pity! Will you be able to see him?”

Neither Saffron nor Klara were happy with the phone calls. They considered that Fedra had abandoned the family to pursue her chosen career without consulting anyone. They chatted to each other about what they could do for Colin and Lavender to help them with Freddy. They came to the conclusion that by showing a minimum of interest would probably be enough.

Colin and Lavender were heartbroken that their only son had turned out so bad. Freddy said that he was trafficking to make money to become more independent and buy his own things. His parents had never denied him anything, and couldn’t accept that he needed more money.

 

Fedra, who had adored Freddy from the moment that Lavender had brought him home from the hospital, wrote him a letter, in which she said, “There are no short cuts in life, the journey is long and painful to get anywhere at all. You are like my mother, Adele, who put taking a short cut before her safety, thus robbing her daughters of their mother. If she hadn’t been so selfish, nothing of this would have happened. A short cut can turn out to be a longer way round in the end. I left home young for myself, and for you. I thought that you would smarten up and be less clinging. I was mistaken, but you really are on your own, the family won’t want to have much to do with you.”

 

Fedra had a terrible dream where the stones seemed bigger and wetter, and the water was covering the land. A letter came from Saffron telling her that Freddy had been put into solitary confinement in prison, where he was serving a sentence of ten years, after causing a fight in the dining-room. Fedra ranted and raved to her dead mother once again about its having been her fault.

 

 A few days later, Fedra was found dead in her studio, having fallen from a ladder whilst working. Although she had never stepped on the stones, she had used the rungs of the ladder to find fame and fortune.

 

And her death.

Reviews

[Anthony C.]

I did enjoy this story, however, I think it has more potential. As I was reading, I felt as though you did not put as much time into this piece as maybe could have. There were a few grammatical errors that I noticed but one in particular made me have to Reread the sentence. You say "with the hope that in time they would forget their mother’s death by drowning." I would consider deleting the "by drowning" portion of this sentence. The way you used it, it implies that the father hopes his daughters will forget their mothers death by drowning themselves. I do not think you need it.

I also had a few questions. How did the father feel about Adele? When you write that the father thought Adele's death was poetic justice, it makes it sound like he almost resented her. Is this what you were trying to convey? Also, how did fedra feel about Freddy? At first you make it sound like they adore each other, then you say Fedra doesn't want kids because of how clingy Freddy was, and then you talk about how she loved freedy. I was a little confused at these two parts.

Feel free to use or ignore my suggestions based on what you see fit. I think you could improve the story. But regardless, I loved the message of the story and I liked how you ended it. The introductory description was vivid and well worded. Besides the few grammar mistakes and the two confusing parts I mentioned above, I enjoyed reading this story. Well done.