New short story: Mose and Ella

(this is the accompanying story to my ukulele / toy keyboard recording of Moon River. listen here )

Ella could feel it. The hot air around them swelling like a slow breath. 

“We’ve never been down this trail before!”

“I have!” shouted Mose, over her shoulder. “I’ve been everywhere!”

“Well then where are we going?”

“Not sure! Never am!” 

Ella gritted her teeth. Mose was always like this. Reckless.

Her friend charging ahead, Ella adjusted her ponytail, gauged their situation. 

It was almost dark, darker for the canopy of trees looming overhead. They’d been out all afternoon and now it was evening and the shadows were stretching out to lay down for the night. Mom and dad would be mad. Or worried. Both.

Ella’s hands were sticky. That was bad enough but for some reason Mose had asked her to bring the ukulele. When she asked why Mose said you’ll see which was a typically Mose answer. Evasive, noncommittal. Meanwhile Ella kept switching the instrument from one sweaty hand to the other. Twice she’d bonked it on a too-close tree. 

“Why’d you make me bring this anyway?”

“Bring what?” said Mose.

“The ukulele, dummy.”

“Because I like the way you play!”

Ella rolled her eyes. “You could like the way I play at home.”

“Poo,” Mose waved her arm dismissively. “It’s better out here. More mysterious.”

So the girls kept walking. Mose whistled, Ella worried, and at length the cicadas started in on their screamsinging. Ella tried to push down the growing scary feeling but it poked right back up the moment she stopped pushing. 

By daylight the forest was a friendly thing. Dappled light and birdsong. Not now. Now it was a half seen world, more dark than not. Ella thought about everything she couldn’t see and the thought was an alarm clock getting louder and louder.

“We should probably turned around,” she said finally.

“What!? We’re almost there!” chirped Mose.

It took a lot to make Ella mad, but she was very nearly there. Yes. 

For one, she’d never been down this path before. That was bad enough. Ella didn’t like going places she hadn’t already been. 

Plus, the path was clunky, strewn as it was with overgrown roots and big rocks that someone seemed to have put right where you wanted to step. And all the while Mose chattering along about nothing at all: her favorite flavor of popsicle, a K-pop song she heard on the radio, the correct number of chocolate chips in a chocolate chip cookie. 

But the most annoying thing was that Mose was always sticking in words that she obviously made up. 

“Watch out for this branch, Pamplemousse!” she said, as if on cue. Then, instead of ducking under it like a normal person, she bent backwards, limbo style. 

“How low can you go?” She sang to the trees. “How low can you go?!”

One of Mose’s talents was she could make her body move like it had no bones. As she stepped forward underneath the branch, her head got lower and lower, until she’d leaned back so far that the little backpack she carried lay dragging on the ground. 

Now Mose faced Ella. Only upside down. Her straw blonde hair hung down from her head like a broom. 

Ella stopped walking and looked at her friend. 

“You’re being ridiculous.”

Mose went crosseyed and smiled a mouthful of crooked teeth. She let out a belly laugh. And farted. 

“Come on Ella! We’re having an adventure.”

Ella pushed the branch out of the way with her free hand. 

“We’ve been having an adventure for the better part of the day now. I’m hungry. And it’s basically dark. Do you even know which direction it is back to the house?”

Mose suddenly stopped dead in the middle of the path, rose up to her full height, and shot a finger out in the direction from whence they’d come.

“It’s that way!”

Ella couldn’t help but look the way the finger was pointing.

“Yes. I mean, I know. But we’ll never find it.”

“Why?” blinked Mose.

“Are you blind?!” Ella was out of patience. “Because the dark!”

Mose thought for a moment. Ella noticed again the shirt her friend wore was too big and the sleeves were always spilling over her hands, like they were doing now. Mose was so sloppy.

“No problemo.” Mose pushed up the other sleeve, which immediately fell. "There are two surprises on this adventure. But I have consulted the committee on Friendship and Communication and we have agreed to tell you one of them.”

“Does the surprise involve my ukulele?”

“No,” said Mose. “Well, yes. I mean no. Final answer.”

“Then why did you ask me to bring it?”

Mose held up a single finger. 

“Guess what tonight is?”

“The night I get grounded for coming home late?”

“No silly!” Mose thought again. “Well, maybe. But guess again!”

“Just tell me” said Ella, narrowing her eyes.

“Well…”

Mose moved toward Ella. Closer, closer, until she was right in front of Ella’s face. 

She cupped her hands like she was making a snowball.

For a moment Mose peeked in her hands like she was checking to make sure the thing was still there. Her eyes shot back to Ella, wide as nickels.

“It’s,” she whispered, “a full…MOON!” 

And with that she exploded into circus of motion, first making an O with her arms raised high overhead. This she presented to Ella and then she was off, running everywhere, in circles, around stumps and trees and mosses and rocks and creatures hidden in their holes but coming out soon.

“The moooon is coming! It’s the fooool mooooon!” She sang, swinging her boneless body around and pounding the ground with her hands and shrieking like a mad monkey and picking up a stick and waving it in the air like conductor’s baton. 

“The bee-yu-tee-ful moooon!” Mose ended with a flourish, planting her feet on the path and throwing the stick far into the woods.

Ella frowned.

“But Mose, the trees. The moonlight won’t make it through the trees.”

Mose looked up at the canopy of leaves and branches as though seeing them for the first time. 

“Oh those,” she said, tugging a sleeve. “Well then we’ll just have to go a different way.”

“What way?” insisted Ella. 

Suddenly she thought she detected a look of uncertainty in her friend’s face. 

“Do you even know where we are?”

“Almost there," said Mose.

“Almost where?”

“Come on!”

Suddenly Mose spun around and started running down the trail as fast as she could.

“Mose! Wait!” 

Ella started running after her, but by now the shadows from the trees made seeing the path all but impossible. Where were the rocks? Where were the roots? She only made it a few feet before she stumbled over she didn’t know what. 

The ukulele smacked a rock with a sound like a gunshot. Horrified, Ella brought it close to her face. She couldn’t see anything but she ran her fingers along the neck and body, feeling for cracks in the wood.

Right then Ella made a decision. Whatever happened, she, Ella Pollard, was not going to risk everything she cared about just because her dumb friend Mose couldn’t plan a decent adventure.

Ella stopped walking. 

She stood still.

And listened.

At first she thought she was imagining it. But no. The cicadas had stopped their screamsinging. For a few moments a handful of frog ribbits could be heard, but as Ella listened there were just three, then two, then one, and finally the last ribbit from a last lonely frog.

The whole forest was holding its breath. 

She held her ukulele tight.

Somewhere in the darkness ahead an owl hooted once and was quiet.

Ella felt very alone.

There was a long moment when nothing happened.

“Mose?” she called out softly. 

Silence. 

Then:

“I’m here, buddy.” Mose’s voice.

“Where? I can’t see you.”

“It’s just the dark. Here. Take my hand. I’ll lead you.”

Somehow it had grown so dark Ella couldn’t see anything. Mose. The ukulele. Not even her hand when she waved it in front of her face. But she reached out the hand and felt another take it in its grip.

I’ve got you.

Ella was completely blind. 

“Are you sure?” 

Yes. Now come on. The other surprise is right up here.

She felt a gentle tug.

“But I’m afraid.” 

Just one step.

Ella stepped. Somehow she did not fall. 

She held her unseen friend’s hand the more tightly. Took another step. And another. 

The darkness had swallowed her whole, but she held the hand that held her and each time her foot came down firm and true.

In time Ella came to the edge of the forest. 

It was like a heavy curtain parting on an enormous stage. 

She was standing at the edge of a wide river, one Ella had never known. Night lay on the surface of the water like an oil slick. But above and around, everywhere filling the world with a blue silver light, was the biggest moon Ella had ever seen.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” 

Ella blinked. It was Mose. Standing there beside her on the silvery pebbles of their little beach.

Ella looked across the water. It seemed to go on forever, wavering like a mirage. The reflection of the moon was a river of milk. Tiny lights flickered on the far shore. 

“What’s there? On the other side?” She asked, pointing. 

Mose shrugged. “Don’t know. Never been.”

“Is this the surprise?”

“Oh!” said Mose, remembering. “No.”

Suddenly she was bashful. 

Ella waited, curious.

“I thought, well… I wonder if you could play that song I like. You know the one. You do it so pretty…when you play it’s like—” Mose wrinkled her nose, searching for the words. “— it’s like forever and right now are the same thing.”

A fish, leaping, splashed. Both girls turned and watched the ripples.

“But,” Mose continued. “That’s not the surprise either. Of course not. The surprise is, well it’s dumb, but I want to play it with you.”

Ella was surprised. 

“On what?”

Mose swung her backpack off her shoulders and onto the ground. She undid the flap, reached inside and pulled something out.

At first Ella was confused, because it wasn’t wood or metal or like any instrument she’d ever seen. It was a piece of plastic. Bright red plastic. A tiny toy keyboard, no bigger than a man’s shoe.

“I found this in the closet in my dad’s apartment. I know it’s not serious and looks like a piece of shit —“

“Mose!”

“— but I remember one time you said that if I wanted to play music I should find the instrument that sounds most like me.”

Mose held it up to her friend.

“This sounds like me.”

She pressed a key. From a tiny speaker hidden somewhere in the plastic there came a sound like an an old video game. Like an old lady’s nose. It was a sound as far from where they were — the warm night and the cool river — as anything Ella had ever heard.

“It’s not pretty,” said Mose, “But to me it sounds like, I don’t know. A journey to the moon.”

Ella suddenly had a feeling she couldn’t describe. It was like love, but it hurt.

“Anyway,” said Mose, “I learned it. Your song. I was thinking we could play it. Together.”

Ella didn’t know what to say. So she said yes.

“I mean, you saved me after all.”

“You saved yourself, silly,” Mose said, and winked.

Ella took up her ukulele in her hands. She checked the tuning. The E string was out. She twisted it into place and gave it a little strum. 

The chord rang out over the water and seemed to gather in volume as it moved across the sky.

She sat down on the shore, holding her instrument. Mose sat down beside, holding hers.

Ella began to play. She played with a practiced motion from the hours of lessons and effort and her inborn talent and the encouragement of family and well wishers and the luxury of leisure time and the innocent hope born of youth and the music rose up like a breeze and the air vibrated with the sound and the mystery. And when it came around again Mose carefully poked the keyboard with a single pointer finger, one note at a time. 

But the notes were right, carefully placed, and true as a held hand.

The lights on the far shore flickered in time. A fish flew from water to air and back again. The cicadas came in on the second verse.

It wasn’t perfect music. It was better than that. 

It was the sound of rocks in the path. The music of crooked teeth and straight. Of polished wood and scratched plastic. It was the mystery of a time played out in the always now in a place that never was and is there still. 

The music, shared, of friends. Moon River.