Blue
“What is your name?”
“I am a girl,” brightly proud. “And I like to eat fish soup. What are you?”
“I’m lost by the sea,” lolling lightly with the buoyant saltiness between the thick fractures of frozen marine. Disappearing, down, leaving nothing but an outward progression, a rolling of gravitational rings. Then reappearing once more, as if never gone. Lolling lightly.
Shifting for comfort and stomping her feet, the soles of her knee-high skin boots crunching and reshaping the crust of white crystals, leaving imprints. Maarit stared at the odd beast.
“Do you know any songs?”
But the crack and split thunder of breaking ice interrupted the query and widened their eyes. And now she was alert to the vibration. The force of heavy plates and saucers smacking the scarred surface of a scots pine table. A hole punched through her reverie revealing a radiant warmth.
“Soon she’ll be calling, it’s ready, it’s time, I don’t want you to go.” The smooth skin of her brow furrowed replacing the smile she had shared with her friend, and her eyes strayed to search for the footprints she had left behind in the snow, not wanting to go back.
“Go there, it is time, and I will come back to you soon.” With that, the strange creature slipped from the surface and back into the below. Leaving behind a deep blue silence in a cold blue sea.
*****
“Maarit, please come down, dinner is warm and it’s now on the table.”
“I don’t want you to go,” replied Maarit. She always answered the questions that she heard in her head, but this time her reply found its way outside.
“Maarit?”
The savory sensation of rye and rice from the Karjalan pies met Maarit’s nose as she appeared from her bedroom rubbing her eyes, adjusting to the light, and descending a stair. Thoughts and visions of her friend by her side.
Her mother gathered Maarit’s tiny fingers in the palm of her hand. Leading her to the large wooden table, the warmth of burning birchwood filled the room.
“Oh, little girl, your hands are like ice, how is that?” Maarit helped herself up onto the hard cushions of a high-back kitchen chair.
“My new friend, he is waiting for me, and he can’t find his home.”
“Your friend must be blue?” Spoken with a mother’s smile in the corner of her eyes.
“Yes, well I think so, no, I don’t know,” looking thoughtfully now at the thick creamy potato and fish swirls in her bowl.
“Does your friend have a name?” Dropping her gaze to meet Maarit eye to eye.
“He is a fish and maybe from space.”
“Well, that’s very nice, will you take him some lörtsy after we finish the dishes?”
*****
With the dishes done and bedtime upon her, Maarit climbed the stair, fingers crossed as she returned to her room. The door stood open, what remained of the sunset painting a shadow of window frames on the wall.
“Oh no, you are gone.” Her sigh whispered disappointment as she placed a plate with a slice of half-moon-shaped pie on her nightstand. She looked out from her window as the day slipped below the horizon and below the sea. The wall a blank slate now.
Having the orange and blue bands of the warm woolen raanu tucked up under her chin, she lay staring at the ceiling, wondering what worlds lay beyond the sea and within the stars and not knowing his name.
“I will call you Nuuk.” And that made her smile.
*****
This time she wore big-fat red woolen mittens so her mother would not know. From the edge of the hole that had formed in the ice, she observed him approaching displacing the slush. Rolling over onto his left side showing grey spots and a black eye as deep and astral as her dreams.
“It’s time for me to leave the Lapland and return to my home.”
Maarit, closed her eyes tight, sealing a little girl’s wish beyond any doubt, “Oh please take me with you, I’m going, me too.”
To be continued…
Graham Cleary Writes 