By Jan Stinchcomb
Verushka was always different. Her mother, Elena, hoped her daughter would be just like her, a born midwife, but she was forced to accept that Verushka was another kind of being entirely. Gifted. Cursed. Destined to lead a life Elena could only imagine.
Before Verushka could walk, when she could stand and speak no more than a few words, she saw her first ghost, a mother who died before she could see the infant Elena held in her hands. The mother dwelled for a moment, long enough to reach for her baby, and then she floated up through the roof of the hut. There were others, souls who clung to the river or the marsh, men who stood near the trees, old women who appeared at holiday tables. A single bride. An endless line of women who had died giving life. None of them spoke. All of them were distant. Verushka could see the dead, which Elena explained was unusual, a gift. She warned her daughter to keep it a secret. Even more remarkable was that Verushka could see sprites, but this she did not confess to her mother. Unlike the dead, the sprites spoke to her.
They appeared in the forest from time to time, like rare birds or stags, never staying for long. Verushka was five the first time a sprite spoke to her. She came upon what she thought was a wooden statue of a little girl, but then it moved, and all at once Verushka understood how ancient the world was. She felt the size of the forest, the depth of the roots, the distance the trees would spread if unchecked by men.
“Give me what you have in your pouch.” The sprite spoke in the voice of an old woman.
Verushka was frightened. She took the bread her mother had given her and set it on the ground before the wood sprite, who then froze and became as motionless as a statue. Was she only wood after all? Did she not have fingers? Could she not bend at the waist? Verushka panicked and put the bread on the twigs that had just a second before resembled a hand.
Nothing. The statue, the sprite, began to look more and more like a tree.
“Come back,” Verushka whispered. “Come back.”
Jan Stinchcomb is the author of Verushka (JournalStone), The Kelping (Unnerving), The Blood Trail (Red Bird Chapbooks) and Find the Girl (Main Street Rag). Her stories have appeared in Bourbon Penn, The Horror Is Us (Mason Jar Press) and Menacing Hedge, among other places. A Pushcart nominee, she is featured in Best Microfiction 2020 and The Best Small Fictions 2018 & 2021. She lives in Southern California with her family and is an associate fiction editor for Atticus Review. Find her at janstinchcomb.com or on Twitter @janstinchcomb
