This story was written four years ago as part of a writing workshop, off the prompt to write something about an object: in this case, a marble. It was the first time I tried to write off that kind of prompt, and it changed my life. The story was good, but then I put it through the Discord Writing Workshop, and this week it placed third in a writing contest. Enjoy.
Here's Part One. Part Two continues below.
Someone lay in the grass a little way from me, whimpering sobbing, the kind of weeping your little sister does, where she can’t get breath because she’s crying so hard? Like that.
It was a girl, but no girl I had seen before. She had long red hair held up in ringlets around her head, a pink dress with a bright red sash at the waist. The dress was lacy and frilly, the kind I’d seen in the movies. A ragged tear stretched from the waist to the hem. It was streaked with dirt.
“Hey,” I said. “Why did you hit me?”
She screamed. That really wasn’t what I was expecting.
She stared at me, eyes wild, and crab-crawled backward, scooting on her bum away from me.
“Stay back,” she said. “Don’t come any closer.”
At least I think that’s what she said, because she had some sort of weird accent. “Stay” was more like “steh” and “don’t” sounded like “doont”.
I didn’t have time to figure out what her deal was. I was lying in a field with a bloody lip, and I was supposed to be in a schoolyard coming back into class after lunch. I had to find that marble. I stood up and started scanning the ground.
“Ye’re not one of them,” she said, wonder in her voice.
“One of who?” I said, hoping the sunlight would glint off the glassie and show me where it was. But the grass was long and thick, and I began to feel the first hint of worry. I couldn’t see it.
She crawled forward and grabbed my pant leg, looking around wildly. “Ye’ve got to get down,” she said. “Down!”
“I’m not getting ‘doon’,” I said. “I have to find my marble.”
“Yer marble? Ye’ve lost yer marbles indeed. Ye’ve got to get down!” she said, and tackled me.
“What is wrong with you?!” I said, kicking out to get my legs loose. She was a wild thing, grappling and wrestling. All at once she stopped and jerked her head up like she heard something.
I crawled away from the crazy girl and kept digging through the grass, hoping for a miracle. But now that it was quiet, I did hear something-- a sort of thudding, like thunder a long way away. Except I could feel it in the ground. Over one of the hills there was a tall plume of thick black smoke. Something big was burning over there.
“I’m not staying here. If ye want to get killed, that’s yer business.” She scrambled to all fours and scooted away, keeping low like she was trying not to be seen.
What if she wasn’t crazy? What if I should listen to her? And then I heard something that decided it for me in a hurry--a crack and an echo rumbling off the hills. I’ve been out shooting with my dad often enough to know a gunshot when I hear one, and this was a big, heavy gun. It might be better to scram and come back for that marble later.
I ran after her, crouching lower and lower to match her. I caught a whiff of gunpowder. More gunshots rattled through the valley and the rumble separated itself into horses’ hooves. A little way ahead of me, she reached some low bushes and threw herself behind them, flat on the ground. I hustled over and crouched, just an arm’s length from her.
She lay under the branches, scooting as close to the trunk as she could, eyes fixed behind us, back up the hill. I followed her gaze. A hat ran fast along the line of the hill. Someone was riding along just below the ridge. I ducked my head.
“Who are those guys?” I said in a low whisper. She glared up at the rise and tried to bury herself in the dirt, whimpering like a cringing dog.
Her dress had once been quite fancy, and the frilly thing underneath was very white, so that maybe it had been fancy until this morning. Her black shoes bore shiny gold buckles, but the shoes were caked in mud as if she’d been running through a creek.
“What happened?” I whispered again. She shot me a furious glance and put her finger to her lips. I looked back for the hat, but it was gone. Whoever was out there had decided not to come this way.
“Look, I need to know what’s going on here.”
“What’s going on here? Who are ye? What are ye doing on our farm?” She stared at my jeans. “What kind of clothes are those?” She looked me up and down, as if my normal school clothes were as odd to her as hers were to me.
“My name’s Paul. I go to Robert E. Lee Elementary School. I was just at lunch recess and then I…lost my marble when you…ran into me…” Look, even I could hear how impossible that sounded. There wasn’t anything here but fields, and a creek, and some guys someplace close riding horses and shooting guns. And this girl, scared out of her mind.
She spat on my shoes. “Robert Lee. The traitor.”
“What are you talking about?”
Her face grew red. “Who do you think those men are, that burned me house …oh!” She buried her head in her hands and her shoulders shook. She kept enough sense to not make a sound, though. A quick glance up the hill and there was still nobody there.
I felt queasy, seeing her cry. But what could I do? “I…look, I don’t understand any of this. I just need to find my marble and go back home.”
“You go out there,” she said, drawing a ragged breath, “and you’re never going back home or anywhere else.”
“Who are those guys?” I felt like maybe I should crouch a bit lower, just in case.
She looked through the branches before answering. “I dunno. Richmond Hussars, from Georgia, but I canna think they’re regulars. One of them, Wilkes, I think, he tried to stop them, but they’re wild. They shot Mum and Dad…” She broke off. “They shot…Mum and Dad…then they set fire to the house…”
So that was the smoke over the hill behind us. This girl had run from…I still didn’t know who she was talking about. Georgia? Richmond?
More gunshots. The cap reappeared along the top of the hill, and now it came with a head and a body as the man rode to the top and looked down into our valley. He was in uniform, grey, with a long sword on his hip and a short rifle in his left hand. He reined in the horse. I flattened myself on the ground, and wished for my marble.
The soldier began walking his horse down the hill into the valley. The girl sucked in her breath and clutched at me.
He came down along the only path, and stopped exactly where I’d first appeared, where she’d crashed into me. He scanned the ground as if he were looking at something. Had he seen my marble? After a second, he raised his head and looked over the valley. Once he even looked right at us. We held our breath.
But he didn’t see anything. After another second or two he hauled on the reins and took the horse over to the creek to get a drink. He was maybe fifty yards off.
Some things started to make sense. I realized where I’d seen a fellow like that before. “He’s a Confederate soldier,” I whispered.
Her eyes were wide and white. She nodded. “Cavalry. Cobb’s Legion, mos’ like.”
This was totally impossible, but one of the great things about fourth grade is the impossible seems a lot easier to believe in. “It’s the Civil War,” I said.
She looked over my clothes again. “You’re a Yankee,” she said, casting a quick glance back over to the cavalryman. He sat under a tree, his cap over his eyes and his stringy black hair draped on his shoulders. His horse slurped at the river a few yards off, making quite a racket.
“I’m from Virginia,” I said, and she reacted like I had said, “I’m a cobra,” jerking her hand back from me and scooting closer to the bush with her lip curled in a snarl.
“You’re a reb! Ye’re one of them!” she said, a bit louder, slapping at me.
“No, I’m not,” I said, wondering how I could possibly explain something I didn’t understand myself. “I’m…I’m a fourth-grader. I’m not part of the war.” She didn’t look like she believed me, or even knew what I was talking about. “I don’t even know what I’m doing here. Where is this place?”
Her forehead wrinkled like she smelled something rotten. “What are ye on about? It’s Virginia here. Spotsylvanie. Ye got here somehow.”
“I got here by marble,” I said, but didn’t expect her to understand or even believe me. I wasn’t sure I believed it myself. “But wait,” I said, “You’re a Virginian too, then. You’re a Reb! Why would the Confederates be after you?”
She bared her teeth. “I’m Irish,” she said. “Dad and Mum moved to Spotsylvanie five years on, when I were eight. We have no side in the war, but the war found a side fer us.” That explained the weird accent. It sure wasn’t Virginian.
“When is this?” I said.
She looked at me with no understanding. I said, “I mean, what year?”
“It’s 1864, as ye very well know.”
“I’m from 2017.”
She shook her head like she was talking to a madman, which maybe she was. But she relaxed just a bit and looked back at the cavalryman. Ragged snores roared out from under his cap. His horse munched grass. I needed my marble, and now was as good a time as any to go get it.
I carefully stood, keeping the bush between me and him, and said, “I’m going out to look for my marble.”
Her eyes showed white, and she clutched at me again. “Ye can’t. We’ll both be caught. They’ll kill us.”
It did make a fellow hesitate. I crouched back down to think about it some more.
Good thing, too, because just as I did another rider crested the hill and looked down into the valley. He saw the sleeping man and leveled his rifle. There was a crack, and some birds exploded from the soldier’s tree. He jumped to his feet, cap flying, and reached for his belt, looking around wildly. The man at the top of the hill guffawed and slapped his gray cap to his horse, which came galloping down.
The sleeper, now all awake, slammed his cap to the ground and swore. He yelled out, “Early! You’re a Yank!” This made the other man laugh all the harder.
“You’re sleeping on watch. You’re supposed to be looking for the girl.”
The girl was right in front of me. She gasped.
“Right pretty piece, I’d say she was,” Early said, “if a bit green.”
“She’ll run to the Yanks, no mistake.” The newcomer gazed about the valley, scanning right over us, but he didn’t see anything about our bush that attracted his interest, either. We were as still as if we’d been whittled out of wood.
“Wilkes is gonna make trouble for sure,” the new man said. “We’ll be heading back to Cobb’s at the Courthouse before long. That horse’s dung pile Grant’s somewhere about. We’ll be meeting him soon, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“All the more reason for us to get ours and get out. He’s not going to chase a company of cavalry, and we can outride anyone he sends after us.”
The new man appeared to consider that. “Let’s find the girl,” he said, grinning in a way that made goose pimples on my arm, “and see how the day goes.”
“She was here,” the first man said, pointing back up the hill a bit. “Or someone was. There’s odd prints there and some bent grass. She couldn’t have got far.”
They grabbed their reins and led their horses back up the hill toward the place the girl and I had met. She whimpered under her breath. “They’ll catch us.” Her breath rasped and her hands dug pointlessly in the dirt, as if trying vainly to dig her deeper.
If they had any skill, they would have to find us. The ground was soft and I was wearing my new Nikes with a lot of tread on them. That was a track they sure didn’t have a hundred and fifty years ago. How could they miss?
To be continued...