FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

A lone soul watched me from beneath a sodium lamp, cupping his hand to block the wind from the embers of his cigarette. The Scottish Fold's wrinkles deepened under gray-tipped fur, eyes bouncing to the rhythm of the guitar case bound at my back.

“There's nothing out that way, Holly," he called, with a brittle sympathy we usually reserve for strangers.

My answer came in a glance, my business buried beneath a spurious stare—I know where I'm going.

He shrugged, flicking ashes down to the snow berm before puffing a cloud of smoke my way. This was his way of wishing me luck. He shouldn't have wasted it when there is so little left to be won here.

The road west of Sunnybrook could not carry me to golden cities, but it remained my sole respite from the careful knot of lanes that sheltered our homes from the weathers of time and fortune. No trucks had roared through this wilderness since my mum's time, nor carved so much as a rut to ease my wandering.

Snow crowned my boots with each crunching step, and I pressed on.

If this town could kill me, it would have done it well.

I halted to stop my feet from remembering the rhythm of our songs—and how I loved to hear my grandfather croon, with a whisper of honey and whiskey on his lips.

If this town could lift you up

She would've done you well

But she's a town for harder folk

Whose spirits never fell

Not to rubble, falling fast

Not to bankers, fleeing last

They took the iron, took our rafters,

Left us holes and left our laughter

So pour one out for Sunnybrook

While her tunnels slumber sweet

And the mice who stay

While their children play

out on her golden streets

Now these words fell as mockery, and my hearth was one that howled across the unlit country. Winter draped her shawl around my shoulders, and silver flecks beaded up against my fur. I mused to be a mirror of the stars, my black mouse pelt scattering little shimmers when I passed from beneath the street lights.

These little stars kept me company in the shadows as I turned, following my memory. Here, too, the ground was untouched. A pale gate, hanging like a slack jaw on its hinge, sighed in weary welcome as I pulled it aside.

Cast against the flurries, I looked up at the house that called me and felt its lure anew. The wooden sides slumped, the color of tired ash yearning to burrow into the earth for hibernation. Try though they may, the pylons beneath yielded no fresh earth and patient stone kept it upright on the hill. Two windows, having kept most of their glass, looked down the road and to the crouching lights in eternal vigil.

In the summer the house served as a sanctuary for the teenagers of Sunnybrook , huddling them in the shadow of its eaves while they chased spirits in puffs of smoke. They always left before dark and spoke in nervous tones about who might be waiting to grab them there.

The snow proved my loneliness, absent of footprints or any dashes of scattered powder on the doorstep.

“Anybody home?" I droned, pushing my fingers against the front door. The heavy pane sagged against its good hinge, leaving enough space between splintered wood and faded yellow tape to slip inside.

At once I found myself in the comforting dark, and the constant chatter of wind stilled itself from my ears. A soft silence rose up around me, and my footsteps echoed on in shallow waves. Sixteen desks sat arranged like pews, some grown with frosted moss, and others still split down the middle. A slope of snow flowed in from a gap in the roof on the northern side.

I rubbed my hands together, hastening the return of warmth now that I'd hidden from the wind. Then I unstrapped the case from my back and lay it out on one of the sturdier tables, flicking the latches to free my instrument. The snap of metal resounded upon the empty hall, a promising chamber for my playing.

The guitar sat across my lap, its old varnish still catching a little light from within the schoolhouse, and its strings held taut by brass pegs. They grew tight with the chill of the empty schoolhouse. I loosened them and warmed them with my fingertips.

The inspiration I'd hoped for did not take me, and the sweetness of the song dissolved on my tongue like the fair flakes that fell still in the night. I strummed just for the meandering sound, hoping to conjure a rhythm that matched my heart. My song did not pull me from Sunnybrook, no matter how many times I started it. The wound wire smelled of the same old metal that lingered in the streets.

I dropped the instrument and howled at the teachers in the shadow. “Maybe if you'd taught them better, we wouldn't be stuck here!"

As if they weren't giving their best to prepare my parents for another world–-one that would never come to be. The boards had gone up long before the mining company came. I searched the shadows of Sunnybrook for someone to blame for all that we'd become, but we could not even remember who signed the deeds.

When I came to my senses, the school was still filled with howling. The wind carried on in my stead, and the flurry outside turned into a blizzard. Snowflakes danced in violent whorls down from the broken roof, and though the storm had grown thick, I was startled to find the stained glass aglow as if the cold fire of the stars churned within. The eyes of Saint Bernard the Patient shone as blue as the sea, but it was not his vacant stare that entranced me.

At first, I feared it was a soul more wayward than mine, swinging about from the rafters. Then I spotted her bat wings, unfurled moonlight that thrashed about as if tossed by the full force of the blizzard. I crept closer to the lectern, leaning up, searching for a face and some facsimile of recognition.

Her eyes opened! Endless lapis drew me deeper than the illuminated glass and made my frozen heart shudder. I yearned to hear what the she spoke, but they were drowned by the incessant screaming of the wind. My muscles twisted, and I wanted to leap up the walls and fling myself up into her twisting dance.

The ferocity of her attention, unyielding, stirred an ancient terror in me. A part of me remembered life as prey. It threw my excitement and my wonder into the pit of fear. I longed for nothing more than to hurry myself deep beneath the earth. The storm slammed against the windows, and the schoolhouse creaked as if the next gust would knock it flat. I threw my guitar into its case, and sealed one latch with trembling hands, leaving the others to jangle as I fled.

* * *

My fur remained harrowed as I dragged myself, panting, back into my mother's house. The thump of my fallen boots echoed in the dark, answered only by the near-mute drone of the television set in the living room.

I crept, not through need but out of habit, for not even a great shaking of the earth could stir my mother from where she slept. The old mouse lay curled a reclining chair while static snowed inside the TV screen. Beneath the sear of pale white and scattered noise, a mouse in a green dress danced around a wheel filled with numbers and prizes. In this dream that lasted twenty-three minutes, she would earn enough to keep a family like ours going for years.

She hated these shows, and the way my grandfather always laughed and said that if she ever got in front of a camera, she would make the whole family rich.

Now the laughter was missing and she muttered while grasping feverishly at the upholstery. I pulled her patchwork quilt over her shoulders but could do no more.

Down the stairs I crept, into the heart of our home kept still in the grip of solid earth. At each stair I turned and bent, avoiding the hundred worn boards that would groan and echo through the basement halls. The digger's dark wrapped around me and the halls turned narrow so that with one turn of my fine whiskers I could find the boundaries without a single light.

I stopped at the stairway closet, little more than a cabinet, that folded out in a triangle shape. The charm of this unusual door had long since faded, and I couldn't fit my shoulders in the space beneath the steps, let alone my whole self. The void still served a purpose, though. I lifted one floorboard from its jam, and having pushed it just so, it sighed and let itself lift to reveal a gap between the house and foundation.

No one in the family had mentioned this space, but I suspected my grandfather knew. The first time I found it, it was scattered with scraps of postcards and foreign coins.

I pulled the case from my shoulder and slid my guitar into the gap. The worn leather corners kissed the edges of the compartment as if it were made for just this shape.

Then after a quick turn of the ear to make sure no one had witnessed the act, I replaced the boards and shut up the storage once more.

My secret once again sleeping beneath the house, I drew back to our bedroom. Beneath a hanging curtain at the end of the hall, an enclave for four young mice and their keeper opened up. No amount of room could ever be enough for a litter. Brothers and sisters always spread towards one another until they felt the familiar touch of their kin. The longer we aged, the less fickle our moods became, prone less to biting and yelling and more to conspiracy.

I, the last ally, came to the island of futons sprawled near the back wall. My siblings were none the wiser as I dropped among their sleeping bodies, except to turn in a somnambulistic state and grab onto my fur. For a moment I ached that they soon would have to rise and find their way through the barren roads of Sunnybrook, but the ache faded as I went into sleep.

* * *

A crackle and rumble shook the walls, breaking the night in two. I stirred from the cacophony but it was my siblings who wailed at the vibrations. The floor beneath us trembled. As I soothed the other mice, brushing their hair and cooing softly, I hazarded a guess as to the source of those wooden growls.

When the wind hit the surface of the house hard enough, the force would shake all the way down the foundation. In the walls, the iron worker's beams would hold our house upright, even if the whole of hell cracked open to swallow Sunnybrook. The flaw in its constructions, when shaken by fierce winds, made the walls sound as if they were about to collapse inward . Thump, thump..! The distant slam of panes above drummed as if beaten by a furious god.

I feared not for my mother, who said of herself, “If the rapture came before eight, I'd get up at ten, and tidy up what's left."

Her world, and mine, were so different than the first mouselet who shoved at my side, hoping to spur us from this place.

“Our room's coming apart," she cried, and made our siblings shiver. “Is the house going to fall down?"

“It won't fall down," I murmured. My reassurances only drew my younger kin further onto me, seeking succor in my words. “This house was built by the first Sunnybrook miners. It won't ever fall."

Their chatter turned into murmurs, and then to the faint whispers of slumber once. I envied how quick they found solace in my assurances. To them, the storm was a monster scratching at the gates of our home, and I was giant enough to drive it back.

Someday, they may have come to love the strength of the wind as I did–-its piercing chill and invisible hands, capable of casting grown men to their knees. None that would bother us would come or go through the whirling white, and we would be safe in the hollow as long as the storm blew.

Its protective spell had waned, though, for while I lay motionless between my siblings, I saw visions of the woman in the sky. I scorned my earlier panic, and despite the warmth returning to my fingers, I swore at myself. Should I ever chance to see her again, I would not flee, no matter god or devil tried to throw me from that place.

* * *

Silence came in the wake of the blizzard and flooded the hills of Sunnybrook. Not 'quiet', as one may find peaceful the aisles of a theater after the audience had departed–-but a stillness so thick it felt like angels had deafened your ears with their wings. After the storm left, an un sound rang from a wreath of blankets and made the insides of our homes feel like lost meteorites drifting alone through the depths of space .

For my siblings, the end of the gale marked a new courage. They hurled themselves into their winter clothes and bounced after our mother, whose sunken eyes lifted at the sound of them. I stirred last, hesitant to pull myself from the comfort of the blankets. Before long I was pacing the width of our room, and my thoughts turned to the lady in the schoolhouse.

It must have been some trick of the light , I thought, or else I dreamed it.

An old voice in my bones told me to reject her memory and send it to the same place as all dreams. I recoiled from the instinct, and pressed my forehead against the bedroom wall as if it could hold back such heretical thoughts. If the only thing that could brighten my heart was a dream, then what could I ever hope to find in waking?

What was crystal clear in the dark hours churned into confusion in my head. My body remembered the fear, but as lines of sunlight drew across the white, I knew that I would not be able to find peace until I'd proven what I had seen, one way or the other.

My mother caught me waiting over the toaster while she swept about the house. Her heels struck the floorboards with musical staccato, which turned on a beat before persevering onward. These days it felt as if momentum was all that carried her, and if she stopped for too long she would not be able to move again.

For a moment she hung beside me, like a pendulum before it swung the other way. “You've got a show on Friday?"

There was a glint of hope in her voice.

“Happy hour at The Mill."

“I'm sure they'll love you."

I hope they want to keep you , said her eyes, held wide open by stubbornness and coffee. I hope this is what you do now , said her fingers clasping my shoulder until her nails depressed my fur

The toaster snapped, and she drew her hand away. “Let's go, kids! We're going to be late."

“Be careful out there." I watched as she gathered the four little mice up. She pulled her handbag from the counter and stared back at me.

“I've been taking these roads since you were little more than a glimmer in my eye," she said. “You make sure you stay out of trouble."

I nodded.

I couldn't tell her that all the songs I knew suddenly felt hollow . Playing came easy alone in the dark, and it came simple enough when I'd proven to Charlie that I was in fact a local, and I did in fact own a guitar.

I could not tell her that in a night I'd all but forgotten about my promise to play, while the phantom woman lingered in my thoughts.

I waved my family out of the driveway and then sunk into the silence that rushed to fill their absence, pouring into the deepest crevices of our home.

* * *

The blizzard remained away that evening, wherever it had blown, to leave me alone on the country roads again. The remaining breeze refused to sweep away all the little footsteps, leaving evidence of my passage in the snow. My footprints joined the company of coyotes, and the wanderings of a large elk.

On the road to the school, I was alone once more . Behind the building, the moon grew round and bright, and in its glow the emptiness held strong.

Once, my grandfather would have brought us up here, bound in too many layers with sleds in tow. Sunnybrook's children played on other hills now, closer to the comfort of our walls, and in a season such as this, I remained the lone visitor. The door remained ajar, just as I had left it, and a fresh snowdrift streaked inside.

After giving a half-hearted kick to clean the tread of my boots, I threw myself once more into the empty halls.

The sound of my step s double-timed with the pounding of my heart. Blood rushed through my ears, and in absence of the wind, I could not stop hearing their echoes within myself.

The sound grew louder and louder still until my ears ached. I flung my case down with desperation and freed the guitar. No fear of being discovered could st op me from filling the void I found there.

I played down chords, somber and sweet, and as the vibrations began to echo around the schoolhouse the pain subsided. The darkness receded. My notes meandered, and I lost myself in the playing for a time before I was able to examine the room again.

The full moon now hung behind the stained glass. My gaze met the lonely saint, whose smile never broke.

I played and played until well after midnight. The cold was now biting at my fingers but I could not bring myself to abandon my quest.

She came.

She floated down like moonlight through the glass and I watched, not daring to blink, lest I lose sight of her. This was no trick of reflection. There was no shape of her to be found in the colored prisms in front of which she hung. I could see from afar that she regarded me with narrowed eyes.

The bat woman danced, and I lost myself in her movement. Her wings doubled the curves of her flowing dress, faded moonbeams that whirled around with the same excitement of the missing storm. Now I could hear her voice, as smooth as frozen glass, as she hummed a melody.

My fingers moved to match when her chorus came again. I dared not speak, not even think, as I followed along. One step out of tune and the moment would have shattered, and I may have lost my connection to her forever.

The bat moved with a grace that transcended fear and sorrow, wandering the air as effortlessly as an angel. My heart recognized the rhythm of her dance as familiar as its own beat. Each wingbeat a note, each glide a turn into melody. As I played louder her figure seemed clearer, the fair-furred woman having thrown herself entirely into the music. At that moment there was no mystery of her personage. Her spirit was the music and the music was her spirit.

After the third crescendo, the bat floated down from above. Her eyes were an empty blue, but her face remained serene. Her presence chilled me even deeper than the heart of winter, but I did not flinch away.

“Who are you?" I asked.

Her lips moved as if to speak, but only a soft hum of melody escaped them. The echo of the song continued in her being. She shook her head and then leaned down to place the tip of her wing over my hand.

I screamed at the bite of cold and threw myself away from her, nearly tumbling over the table. The tip of my ring finger had gone numb, and the faintest of black began to form around the nail.

The woman curled back her wing and drew away, her gaze downcast.

With trembling hands, I picked up my strings and played the chorus to her unnamed song. For just a moment I thought I saw her eyes open. Her expression and words remained unreadable, but she listened intently.

When the last note rang out from my freezing fingers, and my eyes could strain no more, I blinked and she was gone.

* * *

I returned home, knowing I would never see her again. Already her song echoed through my mind, and when I could not play my guitar I found myself humming it instead. When I couldn't hum, I scratched my claws against the wood or the pillow beneath my head.

My plucking became so restless that my siblings pushed me to the edge of our futon, banished for my fidgeting. I understood well their frustrations, but all I could think of was memorizing every note.

Days and hours I counted down, the melody living in me longing to be released. The chill remained upon my finger where the woman had touched me, and the skin before the nail remained as black as coal.

I kept it hidden, and when it had not healed as I hoped, I decided that I liked it. My fur was already black; why not the rest of the finger?

I painted my nails black the day before the show.

* * *

The Mill could have been built by the same folks who built the schoolhouse. The wooden flooring looked as if it'd been scuffed away for centuries, yet stood as solid as stone and roughly the same color. A two-chair table sat by the window, and then another crammed too close to it, watched over by old license plates and empty record covers.

What room the staff had behind the bar, was taken mostly by bottles and cardboard boxes that no amount of dusting could keep clean. I came into the usual crowd–-a pair of old cats arguing at the booth closest to the bathroom, and a few moles around my age. Their dress suggested they came from more money than us, and their subdued cheer told me that they were just passing through on holiday.

Even as slow as it was, The Mill felt too small with even a few people in it, as if its architects had thought its ideal state was to be entirely empty.

Charlie didn't see it that way, and as soon as the old goat caught me coming through the door he swept from behind the bar to give me a quick once-over.

“You actually came." He blinked twice, vertical pupils gleaming.

“After all the trouble you put me through, you think I'd no-show?"

He clasped his hoofs together and shook his head. “No, no, not at all. It's just been so long since anyone actually showed. Here, see, we even cleared out the stage for you."

A raised platform sat between two speakers that may well have been as old as the town itself. A squat stool stood near the back, its yellow surface worn and scratched from the fidget of countless claws. Despite being 'clean,' the outline left by stack of boxes shone a different color than the stage.

In front of it all, like a lonely altar, a single microphone waited to be lifted from its stand.

The goat clopped onto the stage, stooping down to check the cables. His hooves moved in such a way that told he'd been at this longer than I'd alive, and though few had come here and fewer played in recent days, there was a time when the stool was a coveted throne.

“Mic check… easy now." Charlie chuckled, wringing his hands and raising up the microphone. “It's my great pleasure to introduce Holly Long, one of Sunnybrook's own."

The patrons of The Mill looked up with detached interest. The old gaffs in the back gave a grunt of half-hearted approval and then continued their bickering. In the corner, though quiet, the television continued to chatter with blithe commentary on the Oiler's game.

I pulled out my guitar. Its strings shone, almost grateful to be drawn in a place of warmth, even one as dingy as this. Charlie gave me a thumbs up and strode off behind the bar to continue his work, and leave me to mine.

“My grandfather taught me this one," I said, speaking to the bar itself. If no one would listen, then perhaps the old spirits worn into the wood would appreciate what I offered. “Most of the ones you'll hear tonight, I heard from him first. Probably sung them right over there…"

As I tuned my guitar, my cheeks grew hot and my eyes wandered through the crowd of empty chairs. In my grandfather's stories, this place would be packed on the sleepiest of Tuesday nights. When someone stepped onto this stage, even if they'd never picked up a guitar or sung in their life, the whole room would join in. Glasses would clank and foam would froth, falling cold onto counters and into the mouths of reveling B rookers.

Now I could hardly get so much as a tapping foot from their glorious anthem. I played Sunnybrook , as promised, and then a few old favorites of mine–- Fiddler's Folly, The Maiden in Black, and Midnight Rail.

The tip jar beside me sat as empty as the seats around. I had been born to die with this town, playing to the ghosts in its drinking halls and whimpering the anthems of dreams as our livelihoods rotted around us. I picked joy from the songs like the last marrow from the bone.

Only one spark remained, and that was to play the bat's song. I choked on my words. How could I explain that I wanted to play a song I learned from a ghost or a dream, and that I did not know the words? That I had to play because if I didn't my stomach would turn to ice and my fingers would fail me, shaking and useless?

I twisted the pegs on my guitar, changing them to a more somber key, and played. It was not some rousing bar song meant to draw people in, nor a prideful eulogy, but all the same, I could feel the bittersweet sound filling our little corner of Sunnybrook.

From the corner of my eye, I spied a woman–-had she been there the whole time? Had she just walked in? My blood ran cold to see a bat standing there. Not a ghost and certainly not the same individual that haunted my dreams. She was too young, too full of life, and looked too intrigued when her thinly velveted ears turned towards the stage.

Her gaze was a question and I answered it by playing louder. She rose from where she sat by herself, her wings resting over her shoulders like a cloak, and stepped closer to the stage. I hit the chorus and she sang.

There's no way back on the road

And the road wanders ever on

Gather with me in sleeping shadow

Gather now and listen

There's no way back

Lonely wanderer, set free in the black

We know not where to go

So hold me by the fire's glow

Until the morning breaks

Someone might have clapped as the last note rang, and it may have been more than politeness.

But then, a mob could have sprung up from the floorboards to tear the bar t o pieces and they could not have torn my gaze from the stranger in front of me.

“Where did you learn that song?" she asked.

“You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

“Try me?" Despite her appearance as a diminutive storm cloud, the woman's voice was bright as any summer sun. She placed the tip of her wing, a thumb-like appendage against my chill-bitten hand and looked up.

“I heard it in an old school house," I told her, “from a woman that looked like you. I do not think she is in this world any longer…" I searched her eyes to see if she understood my meaning. “I think it might be your song?"

The bat shrugged her wings. “If it was given, then it is yours. There are songs that we—that my family knows. Some are secrets, and some are gifts to be given more freely. The Lonely Wanderer… well." She drew back and clicked her tongue, fangs bared with a hint of amusement. “If someone gave it to you, then it's yours."

I stared as she shifted and with the flourish of her wing dropped a strange coin into the jar beside me. It smelled like brass and had a faint divot in the middle, wreathed with the impression of honeysuckle.

“I know the song, but not the words," I confessed. “Would you be willing to teach me?"

The bat giggled. “Perhaps later," she said. “After the show, right?"

Her words broke over me like a spell and I jerked up, sitting straight on the stool. The travelers and the old regulars alike did not seem to mind the interruption. Charlie looked over from collecting glasses with a mild thrust of inquisition.

“After," I said, and nodded. My heart hoped it was a promise.

“Okay," she said.“I'm Tallulah, by the way."

Tallulah whispered some words to Charlie and returned to her seat with another mug of golden ale. How long had she lived here? How could I have missed her, wandering through the same world all this time?

I could not go back into my vision of shadows and decay. Maybe Sunnybrook was dying, but I no longer saw the empty seats. I no longer lost myself in the smell of old tobacco and wistful sighs. The ticking of the clock no longer shaved away one moment at a time, bringing souls from work shifts to tired hours, to hollow dates and weary nights.

That night I did not play to draw the town in like a siren, nor did I try to bring back its beating heart with its favorite rhymes.

My grandfather was gone, and all that sung with him, but now, at least, I could play for Tallulah .

* * *

I ended my set in another hour and stayed until Charlie closed up the shop, all but gently throwing us out the door. I stumbled home dizzy, despite not having a single drop to drink. My head would not stop telling me that Tallulah was a dream, even though I now knew her number and the street she lived on.

I paused on the sidewalk, scraped to a thin dusting of powder and frost , and basked in the night for a moment longer. A stranger ducked into their home. Pale headlights rattled along the road, leaving behind a rhythmic sputtering and a cloud of exhaust.

The dark felt less empty. There was at least one other to share the shadows of Sunnybrook, and even if the dawn never rose over our rooftops again, I took solace in knowing that she was there. I pondered the long lonesome roads to the rest of the world, and if their future was any different than ours.

For that moment , it did not matter. For that moment , I had found another lost soul and would hold onto her as long as I could.

I hurried home beneath the light of the waning moon to the same scene. My mother slept in front of the crackling static of the television set, and no doubt my siblings still squirmed below, waiting for my return.

My case felt lighter now, so much so that I flipped the lid open to confirm that the guitar was still there. Then I stood for a time, lingering at the bottom of the stairs, wondering whether to stow this piece of myself once more.

I turned away from the tomb beneath the house, holding my instrument tight as I came to our room at the end of the hall.