cherry

The sound crept across his ears like a mouse in stilettos, a constant tic-tac. This unusual disturbance see-sawed from left to right and back again in tidal patterns caused by a rather bitter moon. No matter how the old man turned his head, how he covered his ears with those soft, silk pillows, the noise remained. Still, he looked out across the whipping waves as duty demanded.

Every night for a month, he floundered. At first, the old man had told himself not to worry, that the sounds would pass. Such things always did, did they not? But the tic-tac only increased to a constant pitter-patter, as of heavy rain on a tin roof, and he drowned in his discomfort even more.

There were nights easier than the rest. Sometimes, when the rain beyond the window glass hammered, and the storms that wracked his island home blew the letterbox so hard it yapped and flapped like a barking dog, his always other dissipated. He smiled, then. The old man enjoyed such weather. After all, it was for this wild nature that he'd moved there, to the lighthouse at the end of the world. If only he'd thought to tell someone, though.

He was on his own. There was no point in bitching and complaining. No one was going to hear him, not there. His closest neighbours were a four-hour boat ride away through seas to ruin a sailor's dreams and shatter a family's future. He knew this better than most. As for true humanity, he'd forgotten where they worked, slept, laughed, so far away they seemed. He'd been alone for so long. So very long.

The change came when the first snowflakes fell. The noises stopped. There was no fading. There was no dissipation of mental acuity. The old man was as sharp as ever. The tic-tac, the pitter-patter, the clashing and grinding that both had developed into, left. An old fool, as he called himself, remembered joy.

This jubilation, however, was short-lived. The old man found himself deposited in a world turned white and silent. Even the clashing waves appeared as rolling, snowy blankets, so heavily did they weigh upon the torrid waters. The scene undulated like a giant, albino serpent with coils caught amidst the most terrible indigestion. It turned his stomach, and the old man was made of stern stuff.

He took to listening, then. He actively sought that which had departed. Ears strained. A mind and body strove not for food, water, life, but sound. It failed on all accounts, and an old man grew weary.

The winter was hard for the one who kept others safe. His light never dimmed despite his own torments. He was good that way, stoic. He had to make it through those endless days and nights for those desperate others. All those sailors depended on him. The ragged, jagged rocks wouldn't wait for the spring.

The old man had planted the cherry tree with no expectations of it growing. He didn't tend to it, nor did he look for it. He never had. So, when the first buds of gentle pink burst upon branches he had seen as cracks in the rock, he almost fell down the stairs.

He put on his hat, gloves, and heavy overcoat, one that bent him double and reminded him of just how old he was, and then set out across the island.

His porthole window had focused on the new tree as though looking through a telescope. The old man shared its pinpoint focus and found the tree with ease despite the turbulent, rock-strewn scene. There the tree nestled in the only place that held soil; his reason for planting the seed there. He discarded his hat and sat beside the pretty thing, intrigued by what he saw. That was when the noises came again. That was when she returned.

His wife was as beautiful as a rose-petal dawn. Her skin was close to milk, eyes to honey. Her name? Well, of course, it was Cherry.

He sat there listening to the opening of hundreds of buds, and the clacking as of broken bones. Her bones, to be exact.

She had tried to moor the boat whilst he returned to the mainland for supplies. Had held the rope the men tossed her, and not let go even when the towering waves had driven the boat right into her. She'd saved many lives that day but destroyed another. Their cargo was seeds.

The old man reached out a gnarled finger and stroked the bloom as though wiping tears from a loved one's cheeks, which he was, in his way. The tic-tac increased as bloom after bloom burst forth. It was an unnatural occurrence, but one he knew the sound of well: life.

His replacements had almost arrived. He had nothing more to wait for. No duties to upheld. No one else to steer from destruction. Nothing left but to join her. And though many might have said it madness, he held the cherry tree close like a lover. Now fully grown and blooming, the tree bent over and hugged him back. He sighed. Unless it was the wind whispering through the cherry blossoms?

They found his hat close to the waterline, but nothing else. 

"Must have gone crazy," said one of the two sent to take over. "It happens. People just step into the water to escape the loneliness."

The old man's wife nodded as she slipped a solitary pink blossom deep into her pocket.

***

Richard M. Ankers is a native of the beautiful county of Yorkshire, England. When Richard isn’t writing, he can be found running and keeping fit, or drinking coffee with his friends. If he could write in full view of the mountains with a stream running past his garden, he’d probably never resurface. He has four published novels to his name: The Eternals, Hunter Hunted, Into Eternity, (all part of The Eternals Series) and Britannia Unleashed, as well as being co-writer to The Poetry of Pronouns: She. He. They. Richard was a Gold Medal winner on Authonomy.com by HarperCollins with his novel, The Snow Lily. He has appeared in many anthologies, including The Clockwork Chronicles, Love Letters To Poe: Volume 1, Once Upon A Broken Dream and Clockwork Christmas. Richard has featured in magazines worldwide such as DailyScienceFiction, Bunbury Magazine, Expanded Field Journal, Spillwords, and always feels privileged to do so. When people ask why does he write, he simply replies: ‘Because I have to’. Find him at: richardankers.com