On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’ve also published several ebooks and compendium volumes of those stories so far.

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Here's story 187, of 240 so far.

Lost to Time

The sky was only clouds, but the old man could see for a hundred miles from the crag. The wind was not strong today, and when the small dark shape dropped below the grey and into view, he found himself smiling.

It had been a kind season. The fields had borne many crops, and for the most part, people were well enough fed, which meant that there was peace. Livestock were in good health, the weather had been mild, and it had been some time since illness had stolen away a child. Blessed times, to be cherished.

The year of our Lord six-hundred and thirty-eight will be remembered fondly by all, he thought.

He watched the shape in the sky, following it as it grew closer and then resolved into the recognisable form of a raven. The old man knew the bird well, and he also knew that it would carry a message tied to its leg. The bird had long since caught sight of him, and it approached with its strange grace, speeding through the air. As it neared, the bird slowed, beating its wings against its own momentum, until finally it dropped smoothly and set itself down upon the old man’s outstretched forearm.

“What a life it would be if I were a bird,” he said aloud, and the raven cocked its head, studying him carefully as if it were deciding on a response.

Instead, the bird tipped its beak toward its own left leg, indicating the tightly rolled strip of rough paper attached to the slender limb, and the old man nodded. He reached carefully for the message, mindful of the bird’s keen eyes and sharp beak, but the creature only watched him patiently. With the paper retrieved, the old man nodded courteously to the bird, and to his amazement, his gesture was returned before it unfurled its great black wings, lifted off in an instant, and was soon lost to his sight.

He unrolled the paper, and read the words inscribed laboriously upon it in an ink of a rich dark blue that he knew came from a sea mollusc which was plentiful in the warmer southern regions. The message was one of greetings from a long-time acquaintance who was a fellow scholar of the distant past, and an enthusiastic collector and dealer of trinkets from antiquity. It spoke of some interesting wares obtained, which he would value the old man’s opinion on. The dealer would be visiting a town a few miles away only two weeks hence, and could be met at the local inn at the dinner hour each day.

Excited by the prospect despite his age, the old man resolved to make the journey, and immediately turned to begin the slow walk back to his own village beyond the hill, to make his preparations.

When the appointed day came, the old man made the journey by horse and cart, driven by a friend who was attending a market in the same town anyway, so the trip was companionable and free of worry. The horse was allowed to go at a walk, and the road took only two hours to traverse. They arrived well before midday, so the old man spent the rest of the morning and a portion of the afternoon helping his friend to tend his stall and sell his produce. Then he sat in the sunlight for a time, dozing here and there, until the slight chill of early evening awakened him.

When he made it to the inn, he found his acquaintance already there with a fulsome meal in front of him, and he was welcomed with an embrace and an ale. The two dined together, and afterwards retreated to the room above, which the dealer had rented for the week. The modest space was strewn with packing crates and loose strands of straw, and the dealer took his time in finding the thing he had wished to show the old man.

“Ah, at last,” the younger man muttered to himself, throwing a bundle of straw carelessly to one side, which fell upon the wooden lid he had prised off moments earlier. He pulled out a small cloth-wrapped bundle, dusted it off as best he could, and brought it over to the little table and two chairs by the room’s single window. The old man was already seated there, and he leaned forward with interest when the dealer placed the bundle in front of him, gesturing at him to open it.

He did so, unwrapping the cloth to reveal a strange item, shaped much like a horseshoe in general appearance, but with bulbous ends. He pressed his finger to them and found that they were of soft fabric, like the finest pillows. The band connecting them had a section of the same fabric, and the entire object was of a striking deep blue, not unlike the ink used in the letter of a few weeks earlier.

“Interesting,” the old man said, and the dealer smiled and nodded. “What was its purpose? A decoration?”

The dealer tilted his head, in a gesture that conveyed uncertainty. “Our ancient ancestors had ways that would be strange to us,” he said. “It is difficult to say. But I have heard tell that this was worn upon the head, as a woman would fix her hair in place. Perhaps that was its function.”

The old man considered this. It did look like it would fit over the head, true enough. But for it to have survived all of these centuries, entombed below ground, without rotting of the fabric? It was an intriguing item indeed, and one which might invite fascinated discussion if he were to hang it upon his wall. A simple iron nail would suffice.

He turned it over in his hands, relishing the softness of the ends, and the strange firmness of the structure despite the lack of weight. It was always a source of wonder to him how sophisticated the people of long-gone eras were, even in their primitive times. It never failed to make him smile, and it was the source of his life-long fascination with the past.

The old man held the object up beside the window, seeing the last of the daylight sparkling upon some inlaid golden lettering across the outer side of one of the ends.

SONY, it said. And below that, on a small protrusion, Active Noise Cancelling.

“What does it mean?” he asked the dealer, but the man shrugged, already busy unpacking something else.

“That knowledge has been lost to time, my friend,” he replied.

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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