First Sight - Part 2

First Sight - Part 2

Meri stared at the words while the ink dried on the parchment.

I’m the last story your grandmother never finished.

For a long moment she just sat there, spellbound, listening to the soft ticking of the typewriter gears and the faint hiss of steam curling from beneath the brass carriage. Beside her, Beau stood with his ears pricked forward as though he, too, understood that something magical had occurred in this room.

Meri pressed the keys. What’s your name?

The carriage gave a small shiver. She never gave me one.

Then, after a slight pause: Perhaps you could correct that.

A smile came despite herself. That seems like a lot of responsibility for someone I just met.

The reply appeared almost immediately. You’re the one with the typewriter.

Meri laughed softly and glanced at Beau. “He’s cheeky.”

Beau’s tail thumped as she turned back to the page. How long did you and Nana know each other?

This answer came more slowly. Long enough to know when she was worried by the way she struck the keys.

Meri read the sentence twice. How well had they known each other, she wondered. How long was that?

It’s been six winters since she first wrote of the sea.

Something inside Meri shifted. She looked at his response again, then at the stack of blank parchment beside the machine. Six winters. How many pages had it taken for him to know Nana so well? 

She had known about this man and never told Meri about any of it. She’d known about this impossible world where six winters had passed beneath a sky she herself had apparently written into existence. The hurt rose hot and sudden. “You could have told me, Nana.”

Beau came and rested his chin against her knee. Meri buried her fingers in the thick fur behind his ears, blinking hard as Nana’s rocking chair blurred across the room behind a veil of tears.

“I would have believed you.”

Maybe that was what hurt most. Nana had trusted her with riddles, with strange gifts and impossible sayings, why hadn’t she told her about this?

She wiped her cheek and looked back at the page in the typewriter. If this was an unfinished story, where was the beginning?

Her gaze moved slowly around the room, settling on the old desk with the music box and the compass. At the vase of wilted lilacs, and, finally, at the brass key Nana had given her on her eighth birthday.

You’ll know what it opens when you’re ready.

Meri picked it up.  The key felt warm against her palm. Beau sniffed the key in her hand, gave a low whuff, and settled back to see what Meri would do.  “I’ve tried you in every lock in this room.”

She turned the key in her fingers, then looked at the typewriter and the parchment with its impossible words. Light caught briefly beneath the brass carriage, and when she leaned closer, she saw the keyhole hidden within the copper filigree beside the heart-lever.

Her pulse stumbled. “Oh, Nana.”

Of course the key fit. She inserted it, then twisted until an audible click sounded.

Immediately, the typewriter stopped ticking, the gears fell silent, and the jewels embedded in the casing dimmed until only a faint pulse remained beneath the brass. Then the parchment changed. The words sank into the fibers of the paper, while the creamy page turned milky white, then opaque. As she watched, the whiteness slowly thinned, like fog retreating from a window. Gray sky appeared first, then black rock, and finally the sea.

Cold wind breathed through the machine, bringing with it the smell of salt and rain and wet grass. The parchment had become a window, and beyond it stretched the storm-dark coastline, waves breaking in long white bursts against jagged rocks while tall grasses bent beneath the wind. 

And there he was, down by the water, dark hair whipping against his face while rain silvered his coat. 

For one suspended moment, they simply stared at one another. His mouth curved into a faint, crooked smile. He was younger than she had imagined, more real. He had a rugged masculinity that appealed to her.

“Meredith,” his voice came through the machine, distant yet unmistakable. 

Beau’s ears perked at the sound of the voice and the dog lunged forward to press his nose against the parchment.

The man’s expression changed to one of wonder, “Beau?”

The dog strained forward, golden tail wagging wildly. 

 

“You know him?” She asked, but the man didn’t reply. 

 

It was then she saw the blood on his coat, the way he held his hand pressed tightly against his side.

 

“You’re hurt,” she said, a wash of empathy sweeping over her at the pain she read in his handsome face. Again, he didn’t respond, and she began to understood that he couldn’t hear her.

 

Of course, Meri realized; he must only be able to hear her through the typewriter. She sat again, and began typing, but the moment she did, the brass key clicked off and the gray coastline faded abruptly beneath the typed words on the creamy parchment. 

 

Beau’s soft whine mirrored Meri’s dismay at losing sight of the man.

 

You’re wounded, she typed.

 

I’ve been better, he responded.

 

I’m going to turn the key again, so I can get a better look. Come closer, okay?

 

I can’t.

Why? Because you’re hurt?

No. I can’t leave the shoreline.

Meri stared at the words.

Why?

The typewriter remained silent for several heartbeats.

I don’t know. Your grandmother never showed me what she wrote. I only know what she made true.

Meri’s gaze drifted around Nana’s room, to the empty rocking chair, the music box, the compass, and finally the brass key still resting in the typewriter.

Six winters. An unnamed man. A shoreline he could not leave. Nana had written all of it, which meant there had to be other pages. And somewhere, Meri realized, Nana had left them for her to find.