My Rubbish: Windfell Heath

Here are parts of my contemporary romance/drama novel Windfell Heath. They’re just my favorite parts of the story and thought I could share. And just so you have an idea of the characters:

Anne-Marie MacKeats  (Nan) is a homeschooled/unschooled girl whose mother died in a terrorist attack. She is abused by her alcoholic father and makes friends with the small town's beggar boy - Andro.

Andro Tehrani is an orphan surviving on his own. Most of Windfell Heath hates him because he is Arab and they are still recovering from the anger they experienced after the death of Nan's mother.

And as one might expect, they become friends, almost like siblings, and end up falling in love. Of course! :)

The quotes below are taken from the first part of the book, Nan. Which is (surprise!) narrated by Nan. I’ll be posting other snippets from the second part of the book Lorry which is narrated by the antagonist! (AKA villain of the story!)

But for now, here’re the snippets of Windfell Heath.

Oh, and please (please!) feel free to comment and tell me what you do/don’t like most. I’m an amateur writer, so I need all the help I can get!

~ Fiona

Now as I look back, I realize that I must have made him feel really uncomfortable. He’d never seen a girl cry before and the experience must have been disturbing. He probably felt like he should comfort me, but … what could he say? Instead, he just sat on the floor beside me and wrapped an arm around my shoulder. But this action spoke all the words of love I hadn’t heard in years. And it was all spoken silently.

***

I withdrew my hand from his to run along the pebbles.

“Watcha doing?” he called out after me and followed behind.

I bent to pick up a seashell, the type you can hold to your ear and listen to the echo of the waves. I held it to my lips instead and eyed my friend with a smile. “Hello?” I whispered. “Tell my friend Digger a secret.”

He grinned and played along, picking up a seashell for himself. He pressed it to his ear to listen.

Like a telephone, I spoke the message through the shell: “I’m going to be your best friend.”

Digger blushed and whispered into his shell. “I’ll be yours too.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

***

You know how you can just feel someone staring at you? Well, I got that feeling that Sunday and glanced towards the church window. There they were – the big blue eyes and mass of dark curls peeping over the edge of the window. I twisted a rising smile – it’s a good feeling when the other part of your soul decides to show up. And although I couldn’t see his mouth, I knew he was smiling too.

***

The following nine years were a blur of colors and happiness. And Time, being the mean thing that he is, stole those days from under our feet way too soon. He and his friend Fate seem to have a nasty habit of cutting short anything beautiful and peaceful. Kind of like a two-year-old who laughs as he greedily tears apart a rose and finds pleasure in destroying something so delicate.

            Those days were passed in all the sweet and fun pastimes you could think of. From playing hide-in-seek in the grocery store to borrowing – *ahem* stealing *ahem* - the neighbor’s sailboat to even writing anonymous love-letters to Isobel as a joke.

            But we also had an intellectual and calm side to complement our wild adventures.

            We read and read and read. We read late into the night until our eyes burned and gave out with the strain. What did we read? – Oh, all sorts of things. Poetry by Angelou, Dickenson, Frost, Milton, and Shakespeare. And novels like Les Miserables, The Great Gatsby, Robinson Crusoe, Dracula, and Wuthering Heights. We would even read theological stuff – the Bible, Koran, and Jewish lore. And philosophy? – Ha, like you wouldn’t know! We created a world around ourselves, especially as we grew older. It was a web woven of the entire world – or at least all the things we loved about the world.

            Maybe that’s why we came to a tragic end. We entered the real world and just couldn’t handle it.

            Or maybe the world couldn’t handle us.

***

We laid on our backs laughing so vehemently that our stomachs trembled and cramped with our joyous noise. It was that kind of laughter that comes without the prompt of something funny. It’s the kind of laughter that you create when you’re with the person you love most just because you’re so deliriously happy.

***

I slipped my hand into Andro’s and smiled up to his face. In the past nine years I’d known him, he’d transformed from a scrawny little boy to a tall sinewy man. Long, tangled black hair fell to his wide shoulders which were thick with the mark of hard labor. His jaw was defined almost as if shaped perfectly with a ruler. And out of the darkness of the skin of his face, his blue-green eyes shone like small oceans in a sandy desert. He probably sounds like a stunning guy. But if you actually saw him, you probably wouldn’t be impressed. Because, you see, I didn’t notice the oily face, the prickly scruff, the torn jeans, and the stained T-shirt. Nor did I notice his terrible smell or yellowish teeth.

Maybe that’s why I loved him – I couldn’t see anything but the good in him.

***

Our proximity and silence became too dangerous. Throughout the years, silence and proximity became a road paved with enchantments we were too afraid to admit. The air that was dead about us when we were children now tingled in space and burned our skin. It was all so confusing and yet so desirable. We had read about this in novels and laughed at it. “Corny romance,” we’d say.

But it wasn’t at all corny. It was real. And petrifying.

***

We drew close to the edge of the cliff. The entire world seemed laid at our feet: the rushing sea, the dancing grass, the soaring gulls. I felt heady as I stared down at the daring plunge of the cliff into the sea. Mist surrounded us in curtains of white, shedding rainbows in the air.

“Lay down,” said Andro, pulling me down to the ground with him.

I lay on my back, my eyes gazing into the dome of the sapphire sky.

“Close your eyes, but open your heart … and let your soul fly to heaven.”

A sudden feeling rushed through me. It was as if I were soaring and falling at the same time. In that moment, I could feel every breath of the wind, every heartbeat of the earth. Joy poured into me like a burning liquor being poured silkily into a glass. Gone was the world and its cares, gone was Mom and Dad and Winter. All was empty and clear space – and peace.

I gazed into Andro’s inquisitive eyes which hovered over me. Tears slid down my cheeks and the smile on my lips trembled. “I feel free.”

Andro smiled. “That’s God.”

***

“Too bad you’re stuck with an out-cast. I still don’t understand why you don’t just break-up with him. If you clean yourself up, you can find someone way better than”-

I felt my face burn as I cried, “Andro is an outcast because of ignorant, hateful people like you. And I won’t stand by and watch someone being treated like that alone.”

“So you have no problem with being friends with the kind of people who murdered your mother?”

“Funny you’d ask that when no one has a problem with Germans even after they murdered six million Jews.”

That seemed to shut her up.

***

I was sitting on the washing machine with my eyes closed. But my mind was open wide.

I thought about how perfect the world would be if people didn’t see people for what they are but who there are – if people wouldn’t see Andro as a threat but as a friend, if people wouldn’t see me as a freak but as a person… if only, if only.

You’d think that people in the twenty-first century would realize this world was a weird place filled with weird people – and learn that weird is a norm. But no. Maybe the twenty-second century will be different.

***

My cheeks were flaming and my eyes burned with a light that wasn’t there before. I was constantly filled with this feeling somewhere between agony and joy. Everything had changed. And yet everything was in its place. It felt like the world had been dipped in liquid sunshine and now everything burned and glowed with the power of the sun.

***

A calm silence settled before Andro whispered, “Do you hear that?”

“What?”

“God’s voice.”

“You must hear better than me,” I said quietly, nestling my head into his shoulder.

“He says that our souls are so alike, He can’t tell us apart.”

I giggled. “Is that a bad thing?”

“Not if we stay like this – together, like this.” He buried his face in my hair.

Tears misted my eyes and I whispered, “What if we separate?”

“We can’t.”

“Then what’ll we do?”

“We’ll just have to stay like this, grow old like this, and die like this.”

“It sounds so simple.”

“It is simple.”

I held his hand and gazed far into the depths of the starry sky. “Everything seems so clear now, like the world is a picture.”

I turned in his arms to raise my face up to his. The entire world seemed to be a delicate floating disk, and the air seemed so tenuous, it could shatter at any moment. I leaned my cheek to his and whispered, “Andro. I love you.”

“Then that’s it.”

***

“You talk about Nan having a choice, but I know your kind!” Cynthia stepped forward daringly with glittering eyes of fury. “You sick, controlling men that think you own the world.”

“If anyone is sick and controlling, it’s you!” he cried.

She rushed to me and took my hands with wild eyes. “Nan, listen to me. Did you just see his reaction? That’s a controlling man. There’s this thing called Feminism that rose in the Seventies which means you now can be whatever you want to be! You don’t have be imprisoned to a life in a cottage with a controlling husband and a bunch of kids!”

“Aunt, you’re being ridiculous!” I cried furiously, pushing her away. “If Feminism is supposed to liberate women, why aren’t I free to make the choice to marry?”

“Because this is wrong, sweetheart,” she cried, grabbing me by the shoulders. “Very, very wrong! I will not let you make the same mistake my sister did! I can’t!”

            “I am not my mother!” I shouted. I wriggled out of my aunt’s hands and ran out of the house.

***

“No, Nan. Look. We have nothing to worry or cry about.” He touched his forehead to mine and whispered, “Don’t look back. There’s no reason to. As long as I am me and you are you, we have no hope of ever escaping each other.”

“I’ll always look back,” I said. “I’m so scared, Andro. I’m so scared.”

 He smiled a wavering smile and lifted my face to his. “Come on, Nan. The world can’t spin until you smile.”

            I gave a tear-drowned chuckle and mustered a trembling smile. “There.”

***

I can’t say anymore now. Because... Well, I just don’t have to. What I’ve told is really all that matters. My life in California, my separation from Andro, the accident, the baby, my death… None of that really matters. All that matters is that Andro and I lived and loved more than anyone could understand. We were dangerous together – like dynamite and lighter-fluid. When a spark happened, it all went up in flames and smoke.

            But that’s okay. I’m spending my Eternity waiting patiently. He’s coming soon. I just know it. And I’ll be ready to meet him here when he arrives in our land beyond the sun.