The crackle of the fire spilled into the stillness of the tavern, one of those quaint old historical places, a slice of time, the travel brochure describes them. Some-place to go and relax, to catch up on your roots, possibly meet your ancestors and have them be none the wiser. It seemed idyllic, they all do, the perfect place for Tyrell and Hannah, newly-weds, to go for their honeymoon, rubbing elbows with old people, young people, people who actually died. Unheard of, nowadays, with the human population expanding to cover all corners of the galaxy, new life had been met centuries ago.
"Nix, they called her, Nacht, Nox, Night, the Dark Mother." The wizened old man was starting up a story, evidently, one of the local folk-tales, and evidently a well worn one judging by the groans from his surrounding listeners.
"Oh give it a rest you old geezer, every body's heard the tale and no body believes it the way you say." One grumbles, throwing a hot potato chip in his general direction.
"Oh sure Lou! You young'uns always think you know the best ways of telling things, of the knowing, but you don't know nothing, I know, I were there. I met her. And she aint like the stories say."
Hannah turns to her new husband, a hushed squeal in her voice "This place is the best!! Folk lore, fairy tales, old geezers and drunken brawlers! It's so authentic!" Her hands grab onto his arm as the patrons turn to look at them, a frown on a few faces as though unaware of how, or when, the pair got through the door. "Shh honey, just sit and watch. You know the rules." They go over to an empty table, and order a drink.
"Give it a rest. Nix aint what you think she is you old geezer. She's a night terror that stalks the roads at night. Woe betide you if you stop to give her a lift, you aint ever going to see the sun again, forever riding down that one road, keepin' her company for the rest of your life." Lou continues with a bored tone of voice, another chip tossed at the elderly man "She aint sweet, she aint caring, and she most certainly don't ever let you go! Once you walk beside the Dark Mother, you aint walking nowhere else."
"You kin just sit down and hush yerself Lou, you aint got nothing but prejudice and hearsay to back up your story, I was there, I saw her. Now you gonna hush yerself up so that the new'uns can hear the tale?" The wizened, wrinkled old man, with white hair sticking out of his ears, turned and looked towards the newly-weds, while waiting for one of the crowd to pipe up and offer their opinion of the situation, or commentary about the quality of his story telling. "Didn't think so."
He coughs, and clears his throat, a swallow taken from the mug on the table infront of him, to clear out his throat. Even out the roughness of age and too much to drink, the singularly unique manner in which he speaks smooths out as the story rolls along, until the lilt of his hoarse words is simply the way the story is told, with dips and bends, of the corners and the hitches in the road, all there, embedded in the aged pit of his mouth and long suffering tongue.
I was a young'un of a sparse twenty three, I'd gotten through my teen years mostly unscathed, came out the other side with an apprenticeship and a career well on the way to making me a very rich and fine grandaddy for the kids that I'd yet to find the wife to make. I had the world on my shoulders and the head to know what to do with it, all pomp and class and ceremony and ego that you young'uns wouldn't recognise, but anyone who's seen more'n three score of years would know exactly what all I'm talking 'bout. I thought I was the all that, back then, the man of mans, a somebody, an important somebody goin' places. But I weren't. She knew that, and so's she told me, one night while I were driving through a crystal clear night along the old Birch Road – you know the one, the one what that's boarded up, with 'no through road' signs peppered across the entrance and exit, where the teens and kids dare each other to run up to, to touch a sign and run off else the witch'll getcha. Or some-such silly nonsense.
Back in the day, when no one knew of Nacht, it were a road free to travel, smooth as anything you see today, but it weren't done by the robots and the machines and everythin' done to quite close parameters, math telling each one how much to put where and how to shape it so that it fits, nope. This were a road that was made by man and with rolling pins with motors, flattening everything out. This were the road where Nacht lingered, where she walked and was first seen, not even a month after the last wheel rolled away and the first car touched rubber to surface. You aint never sure where she came from, or why she chose that one road to wander beside, stories abound, she were a bride, widowed before her marriage day, her husband comin' to a mishap on his way to the church, something to do with the buildin' of Birch. Others say she ran away from home, and Birch was the road she met her end at, hitch hikin', only to run afoul of some unsavory sorts. Another tale I heard tell, she weren't never anything, she was just a little girl who got orphaned from a crash, and she walks the road lookin' for help, or her parents, and you cain't ever leave till you've done one or the other.
It don't really matter where she came from, or why she's where she is now. All that matters is that her bonny brown eyes hold the very fires of hell to burn any who think of scorning her. It's why you don't ever leave, not walkin' beside her, and old Birch was the fastest way from town towards the living houses for the lads who had got themselves a bit more ineberated than would be purely safe for them to drive. Course, now you got to go back around the other end of town, takin' the long way. Old Birch is closed to traffic, even foot traffic, and any'un with a sane bone in their head'll know you don't walk down Birch, not with only the night as company. No sirree, that's one sure fire fast way to get yourself a widow of a wife.
Now, as I said, I weren't walkin' down Old Birch, I had better things to do with my time than walk along some road in the middle of a crystal clear night, I was goin' places, had things to do and was in a damn fine hurry to get there. And even then, with the road only a few years old, still as sparse and shiny as the day it were laid, there were rumours. Of folks walkin' home along its smooth edges after havin' a few too many and sent home without their car, never to be seen again, though folks thought that were drunken idiots not knowin' which way was north and lacking the damn fool sense to stay on the road rather'n wander off into the scrublands and get hisself stupid lost. So there weren't no way I was goin' to be walkin' down that fool road.
Not even halfway down did I see her, she were a damn fine beauty, skin the rich luxury of chocolate, a dress as white as snow, flutterin' in the slight breeze, long black curls of hair tangling behind her. She were a damn fine sight from the angle I saw her, it weren't the best of nights, crystal clear and as cold as the flute of a champagne glass, and she looked to be a wee bit cold, you'd be too, wearin' what she was. No shoes nor anythin' to keep the heat in, nothing at all. Against what woulda been sense if I had the mind to think it, I stopped beside her, just a little ways ahead, and opened up the passenger door of me car.
"Hey there Miss, you headed someplace?" I leant over to ask her, the door was open, blocking her way. She stopped and turned to look at me, and somewhere in the back of my head I started screamin', something was screamin' up a storm, but I weren't listening to that, I were looking at her. With the dark pools of her eyes, the slight parting of her dark lips and the flash of white, white teeth as she hesitated.
"No place special." She eventually replied, rubbing her arms as though still chilled, walkin' against the press of the wind on this crystal cold night.
"I figure that I'm heading someplace special, or even a little bit more ordinary than that, if you'd like to get a lift, so your no place is a little closer?" She was captivating, sweet and fascinating, I couldn't get enough of lookin' at her, and not in the way you'd all be thinkin', there weren't any leerin' involved, like the young lads are wont to do when facin' a pretty fine slice of lady. She were almost precious, I could no more refuse her a lift than I could refuse to breathe.
"Sure." She said to me, still hesitating, her hands stop the endless rubbing of her slender arms, to tuck her long skirt underneath her, to slip into my car and pull the door shut behind her. I admit I sat staring at her, damn fool that I was, mouth open, stunned and amazed beyond all ken or even thinkin' that she actually took up my offer. A pretty thing like her, no, more than pretty, perfect. Beautiful. Not in the way that the actors and models are, with the high cheekbones and slender bodies and rail thin frames, no, she were beautiful in a more earthy way, not an angel, not somethin' unknowable, in just a way where you could get to thinkin' mighty indecent things about her, all bundled up in a near nothin' bit of white cloth, thinkin' that maybe, if I played my cards right, I might get a little kiss at the end of the road, where I left her, and maybe a way to contact this beauty of the night. That ought to've warned me, a little, but course, I were ignoring such common sense things, like the screaming warnin' crawling up the nape of my neck.
I put the car in gear, finally managin' to stop staring at her, to drive down old Birch, which was just Birch then. "You come from somewhere? It's a bit of a cold night, for a girl like you to be walking down the road a ways on their own." Strikin' up conversation I was, just to get her talkin', distracted from bein' in a car with a stranger, and maybe she'd get distracted enough to relax, so I didn't feel like I had a damn jumpin' jack in the passenger seat, rather'n an ebony beauty of such lush perfection.
Again she looked at me, it were almost like she was lookin' into me, knowin' and hearing the screaming that I ignored, listenin' to each and every little part of me, to see who I was, who I thought I was, and just how safe she is to be in a car with me. "Some place a distance away. Just felt like walking." That's what she said to me, that's all she ever said regardin' where she came from, it weren't some story, it weren't some tragedy, she just took to the road one night, feeling like a walk, and here she is, going no where special, in no particular hurry, just walking along the road for the walk. Course, now I figure she aint limited to just walkin' old Birch, but all roads, all nights, have felt the press of the bare soles of her feet, but Birch is just one of many places, lucky or otherwise, where she could meet folks, get a bit of company along in her walk. Perhaps a ride to the nowhere, making the distance a little closer, just for that one night.
Now time had passed, and I were noticin', in amongst our talk about nothin' special, that Birch weren't ending. It was a short road, five minutes at most, end to end, and I should've come up onto the end of it by now, twice over in fact, yet from the land marks, I couldn't have gone more than thirty yards from the start of it. Just as I started noticin' this she started starin' at me, watchin' me like a hawk, or a predator about to take the silly little rabbit in its jaws and crack the life out. As though waitin' for me to make the connection, and demand that she get out again, and walk along the damn fool road on her own, to be so rude. I nearly did too, nearly made comment about it, but my fuel weren't goin' nowhere, and she weren't such unpleasant company that it were any bother to me.
By and by, with the road growing no shorter, and nothin' changing but my awareness of the passage of time, and her watching me so close like, as though almost impatient for... well, I'm sure you can figure it. Finally, I made a comment "I've noticed something odd here, no matter how far I take you, the road doesn't seem to be getting any shorter."
"Its the way things are, when you're going nowhere special." She replies, almost instantly, as though she had the answer prepared hours, days in advance, knowin' what I'd say.
"You in any particular rush to get there?" The passage of time felt as though it were days, hours, long enough for my wearisome lookin' forward to my home and warm bed, had turned into a burnin' ache behind my eyes, a headache in my head and a tremble findin' its way down my fingers. She shook her head, still watching me closely, her eyes widening as I slowed down, and pulled the car over to the side. "You have my apologies, but I fear I haven't gotten you any closer to where you were going, it's been a very, very long day. This road is endless and I'll be needing to get myself some sleep, though I would love to take you the distance, just for your company, I fear if I drive any longer, I'll forget where the road is."
She looked surprised at that. More surprised than you'd think, I made no move to get out of the car, nor to ask her to leave, just undid my seatbelt and laid my seat back, flattening it as far back as it could go. "I am mighty sorry, I can't keep my eyes open."
Silence, she was just watching me, staring, I could feel her eyes on me, watchin',starin'. It was a long, long night, for both of us I like to think. When I finally fell asleep, it were a sleep of angels, as though I were on the softest down, held in the warm, lovin' arms of the wife I'd yet to find, and she were the sweetest thing on this side of the moon. "Nacht." I heard whispered in my ear, a soft, warm palm stroking over my head, the sensations weaving through my dreams, sweetness and sound and it was so very warm. "You can call me Nacht."
The dream faded, as it is normal for them to do, and I found myself in my car, condensation on the windshield, and a still warm passenger seat as the sun rose and warmed the cold chill on the metal. I weren't on Birch road, I were a mere stones throw away from my house, parked out front of my drive way. It were three days after I picked up Nacht, on old Birch road, judgin' by the number of calls on my phone, missed messages of folks bein' worried about why I hadn't done my projects that were due, in danger of bein' fired, which were a great worry when you're young, not havin' a job and no way to pay things. But I couldn't find it in my heart to be worried about it, course, I was still flushed with the sweet memory of Nacht. So mayhap I weren't in my right mind, but I couldn't much care.
Used to be, before they closed the road, from folk's disappearin' far too often for it to be coincidence, nigh on one a week, I'd go drivin' down there. Sometimes I found myself a sweet dark thing to keep me company on the long dark road, till I had to sleep, sometimes I didn't. She seemed to remember me, time came about that when I stopped and opened the door, she'd run up to it, to me, and I'd get that sweet kiss I dreamt of on that long ago first trip. Sometime, a little bit more. Nights we didn't really go anywhere, just sit in that one little patch of road, talkin' till my eyes grew heavy and I couldn't keep them up no more. Yup, Natch, Nox, the Night Mistress, she's one sweet lady, warm and soft and willing and oh so very beautiful. Never seen her like before, nor have I since, do her a disservice, tryin' to express with my old words, just how lovely she were, though I gave it a fair try.
There was silence for a few minutes in the tavern in the space following a story before a loud laugh from Lou spoils the atmosphere "He tells that story once a week, at least. Old timer doesn't know it." Another laugh, and the usual tavern noise resumes, and the newly-weds stand to filter out, subdued, just a little, and excited. "Oh my god did you see his face?" A few hushed whispers, sweet love words whispered, before the husband hushes, and points. The old geezer is starting to walk down the road, leaving the tavern. A walking cane under one hand, limping, towards the Old Birch Road, a pat to one of the many signs barring entrance, warning against it.
A dark skinned beauty in a long white dress steps on the edge of the road, one hand extended towards the old, hobbling man. Though his words cannot be heard, hers travel clearly through the night. "You have come back to me."
A pause as he makes his reply, still limping towards the lush figure waiting for him.
"You forgot your car this time." The closer the geezer gets, the straighter he walks, until he is a young man with snow white hair, the cane hooked over his elbow, the ebony lady slipping her arm through his other "Walk with me?"
For the first time, as he nods, does his voice carry as easily through the night as hers. "Always and forever my dear Nacht." He lifts her hand and presses a kiss to the back of her hand, affection rich in the tone of his voice as they start to walk into the distance, fading from the vision of the newly weds, as though swallowed up, or a part of the night.
"Tell me a story. You always had such wonderful tales to tell..."
