Swamp Witch and Time Traveller

This is a short story I wrote as my Science Fiction & Fantasy Literature final project :0)

Swamp Witch and Time Traveller

I told him I knew all about being different; how the whole school called me "Swamp Witch", since I spent so much time out there and I string the stray feathers I find onto necklaces. I showed him the mud stains under my fingernails, and my collection of snail shells.

He said he's different where he comes from too. I think he'd be different anywhere, the way his eyes shine metallic gray and the long, smooth slenderness of his limbs. His face is perfectly symmetrical, and almost too beautiful to look at. I've never used the word "beautiful" to describe a boy before but no other word I can think of does that face any justice. My sketchbook is full of charcoal sketches of it now: his face in profile, laughing, smirking, singing, deep in thought.

He said where he's from they can go anywhere they want, but he always comes back here to when there was so much green and life. I asked him what he means when he says "back," and he told me that all this has happened already. He gestured around the swamp with a wave of his arm, and told me, "This, all this is gone where I come from. When I come from."

We can only meet at night, and only for a few hours, and only when the moon is in the right spot. He tried to explain it to me once but I just nodded and fiddled with his watch. That's how he gets here. He sets the dials and they send some sort of vibration waves and he shimmers in and out like a busted television set and then he's gone. I was sitting under my favorite willow tree the first time I saw him flicker into existence. I thought maybe I was dreaming, but then a fire ant bit me hard on the wrist and I knew it was real; he was real. He didn't see me right away, but I guess I made too much noise inching towards a closer look at him because his eyes snapped right onto mine.

He asked me the year, and what country we were in. I answered him in a whisper, even though no one else was around, "The year is 1998 and we are in the United States of America. This is Chickory Swamp, in Montgomery, Alabama." He nodded and pulled a blade of grass out of my hair.

Now I know what you're probably thinking; why would I spend my time hanging out in a stinky old swamp? And I'll be truthful there are times when it does smell, but normally the strongest smell out here is earth- rich, mossy, green, leafy earth. The sunlight weaves down through the canopy of tree branches overhead and gives the ground great big cheetah-spots. There are shades of green here you wouldn't think existed. Some greens are almost black, and some are so muted they could be mistaken for gray. I made him lie on his back, like me, and close his eyes so he could fill his lungs with the pure, peaty air. I made him thread his fingers through the soft, velvet soil until his nail beds looked like mine.

I told him about all 5 of my brothers and and he told me how he's only got one brother. Where he's from, two children are considered a lot. That made me laugh. He likes when I laugh; he said he missed that sound.

I asked him if that's why he looks so sad all the time? Because where he's from, they don't laugh much? He said, "Sort of."

He said everything is so rigid and sterile and colorless where he's from. One time he brought a guitar to keep out here, in a hollow log without too much moss, because his parents didn't think his music contributed to the good of society. They wanted him to sell it, because all it was good for was collecting dust.

I've heard him play that guitar, though, and I've never heard such beautiful sounds. I swirled and twirled while he played, the gypsy scarves I'd tied around my wrists carving colored streaks in the think, heavy air. When I finally stopped and sat down next to him, flushed and grinning, I told him I thought that must be what those extra-long limbs of his were made for. He snorted, an almost laugh, and said, "If only my father heard you say that." I said, "I don't mean any disrespect, but I don't think I'd like your father very much." He stopped playing and stared straight ahead at nothing. "That makes two of us."

He couldn't play that guitar for a while after one night he showed up and his knuckles were all bruised and bleeding. I ran as fast as I could to fetch the first aid kit out of the horse stable in my yard, and his breathing was coming out hard and fast even before I started to dress his wounds. I pretended I was tending to one of my little brothers; as I'd done countless times before, and even sang a little bit as I cleaned him up since it always helped the boys to stop fussing.

"Did you get in a fight?" I'd asked. My head wasn't as high up in the clouds as everyone thought it was. I knew what the aftermath of a hard right hook looked like. Small scraps broke out at my school all the time.

He flexed his knuckles gingerly. "You could say that. My father's desk didn't exactly fight back."

He told me how one of these times, he's gunna come here and not go back. I told him how I'm graduating in June and how he should come with me up north, where I got into design school on a scholarship. He was to thank for that, anyways. My teachers were very impressed with my senior project; fashion designs based on sleek, smooth lines and rich colors. Dark, supple fabrics with intricate patterns embroidered along the edges. All of the ideas I'd sketched were variations of things I'd seen him wear, or could picture him wearing. I told him as much, and for first time I saw him smile where the corners of his mouth actually tipped up towards his eyes.

Tonight, when he appeared at our spot, he took off his magic watch and threw it deep into the swamp waters. We stared down at the spot where it landed, the surface of the water rippling and then settling back down into stillness. If he was scared he didn't show it. If he regretted his decision the minute that thing left his fingers, I'll never know.

I reached out my hand to him, with my mud-caked nails, and he reached his own cold, steady one back. We walked like that, tethered together, all the way to the bus stop.

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