A Gentle Autumn Story

Lenore left her parents' house through her bedroom window with an umbrella, a heavy scarf, and a desire to escape the adults in their alcohol-infused giggling and bad costumes. Lenore didn't like parties. She especially didn't like parties she'd been grounded from. She was supposed to be sitting in her room clad in her pajamas, nursing a sorely spanked bottom and bad attitude. Instead she was taking a walk. She was certain her parents and their guests wouldn't notice.

Several steps from the back door, where the party sounds were muted to bass rumblings, she paused to take in a breath and with it, the cool of an autumn afternoon; the dusty, dry leaves settling to the earth; the promise of rain just before falling. A steady breeze slid down the snow-capped mountains looming in the distance. Lenore shivered but liked how the breeze chilled her cheeks and her nose and the tips of her ears.

She walked across the flag-stone patio under a soft, silver sky, tapping the heads of pumpkin lanterns with her umbrella as she passed, giving silent thanks the patron saints of travelers, mischief-makers, and solitude-seekers with each tap. Those saints hadn't spared her a spanking this time, but the warm sting was oddly comforting as she strode across the close-trimmed lawn and into the woods bordering the property, autumn colors casting golden light. The trail was well-kept and easy to traverse; the trees kept the zephyrs at bay.

At the other edge of the wood, the rain fulfilled its promise. Lenore let a few drops strike her cheeks. Her tears were long gone but the rain revived their dusty tracks. Eventually she unfurled her umbrella and smiled at the patter of rain on nylon. She wondered whether she liked autumn because that was when it rained most often, or if she liked the rain because it came most often during autumn.

A vast, misty, grey lake stretched before her, nestled in wooded hills resplendent in autumnal red, yellow, and orange. A lonely pier stretched into the lake, lost in the shifting fog rising off the water. This was Lenore's favorite place to seek solitude. She came her often after a spanking, sometimes to forget, sometimes to reflect.

Just before the pier, she realized she wasn't alone. A boy stood in the fog. He was about her age with dark hair and dark skin and dark eyes. He held a trio of white, long-stemmed flowers. Lenore had never seen him before.

"Hello," said Lenore, though she desired solitude.

"Hello," said the boy. "Have you lost someone too?"

"It seems I've found someone."

The boy smiled. "I'm Allen."

"I'm Lenore. Would you like to share my umbrella?"

"Thank you."

They walked out onto the pier together, their footfalls hollow on the boards, muted by the damp of rain and fog. They walked close together under the umbrella as the raindrops grew fatter and plopped more insistently. When, eventually, they stood at the end of the pier, the fiery autumn colors of the surrounding hills were lost to the grey, and Lenore's arm was pressed close to Allen's. There was nothing in the world at that moment but for the fog, the pier end, and them.

"Are the flowers for someone you lost?" Lenore asked quietly, not wanting to break the spell of solitude.

Allen hunched his shoulders. "You know that mountain pass with all the switchbacks?"

Lenore nodded. Wicked Pass was infamous for fatal car accidents.

He gestured with the flowers. "Legend says, if you toss a lily in the lake for the people you've lost, it makes passing on a little easier. Like, maybe if they didn't want to go. The flower symbolizes a memory, I guess. A nice gesture. It's a promise that you won't forget them, so they don't have to hang on."

Lenore nodded again. She'd heard such stories from the old-timers in town. "Some say the lake is haunted."

Allen shrugged. "I've never believed in ghosts, but I thought..."

They stood for a while, staring into the fog. Lenore's mind began to wander. She remembered the times she had ridden with her family over Wicked Pass. The meadows and valleys, waterfalls and streams, copses and canyons were all well worth the drive, but her parents understood that bad weather could blow in at any time; they took the pass slowly, and on more than one occasion they'd stopped at an emergency shelter to wait out a storm. Last year they had stopped for a mid-autumn blizzard. Later they'd learned a family of three had been killed in that storm.

Lenore knew a shiver of realization. "Allen?"

She turned to the boy, but he was gone, the three white flowers lying on the pier where he'd stood.

Lenore was no longer interested in pouting away the afternoon after a spanking. She was no longer interested in dwelling on it at all.

Lenore took the flowers and tossed them into the lake"a memory, a promise, a gesture. The water rippled at the flowers' contact. The subtly shifting lake took the flowers away from the pier and into the dense fog. Lenore watched them go until they disappeared. She didn't know for how long she stood staring into the grey, listening to the rain, before the breeze shifted, the fog thinned, and beyond she could again see the bright autumn colors.

Reviews

[Abby Gold]

An evocative story with a nice pace and good depiction of atmosphere. Enjoyed reading it.