Sandra Siegienski

The first week in my house, Hermann ate my bookshelf.

Overgrowing his ceramic pot, his green leaves and tentacly vines encroached on the shelves, one by one, covering my books with ivy-like foliage.

Hermann is a plant. At least, I thought he was. Now, I’m not so sure.

He was an odd find at a yard sale eight weeks ago, and I couldn’t leave such a lonely, over-pruned plant sitting in the cold rain. The sight hurt my heart, as if someone had given the Queen’s roses a buzz cut during full bloom.

It needed a loving home. So, I brought it to my house and named it Hermann.

Today, he sits as if plant-purring at me, draped between my bookshelf and curio cabinet, resting the way plants might, if planning. I wonder what he’s thinking. Maybe he’s preening in the cabinet mirror, or trying to figure out how hinges work so he can make his viny way through the door. I have a feeling he might get there someday.

I haven’t tried to rein him in. Maybe I should—but I’m a strong advocate for freedom of all living things. That includes plants, doesn’t it? Maybe I should be more careful, but I like letting Hermann wander around the house. I think he deserves a chance.

Now, Hermann’s vines cover the entire bookshelf and he’s headed for the sofa and end table. Tiny leaves curl around my bookmarks. I imagine his little humming plant thoughts working away at titles, choosing this one or that one—I can almost hear them. Do plants read? Hermann didn’t seem interested in books at first, at least not three weeks ago. Then, I noticed a slight disarray on the shelves, as if small fingers were tipping out volumes and then pushing them back. A week later, Hermann managed to knock selected works off the shelves in alphabetical order. I think he’s getting smarter.

I think he’s trying to tell me something.

Last week, he went for Shakespeare.

Maybe he’s hungry for knowledge.

Three days ago, I started reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn out loud to him. I thought he might like it. He didn’t rustle for hours afterward, but he’d consumed the end table by morning. I’d also left my copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel on it.

This morning, his fallen leaves spelled out my name on the floor. I’m touched, but I’m getting a little nervous. When I come home from work today, I think I’ll talk with him.

I climb the last steps to my front door, thinking about Hermann, as I have all day. As I place my key in the lock and turn it, leaves curl out from under the door, arranging themselves into the word “Bienvenue” on my doormat. A tiny vine threads through the crack in the door and winds around my key. As I apprehensively push open the door, a tendril drops from above, sliding over my shoulder. It coils around my wrist and I’m tugged inside my house, into evening darkness, hearing a distinct rustle of approaching familiar leaves.

A lamp turns on. I look up to find Hermann towering above me—he’s grown! I must have left plant fertilizer in an unlocked cabinet. But the foliage bends aside and the tendril tugs me over to the sofa. There, I find a hot cup of tea awaiting and Les Miserables sitting open on the coffee table.

A page is marked.

I look at Hermann. He rustles a little, as if waiting expectantly. “Thank you,” I say. I sit on the sofa and pick up the book, the fragrance of lemon tea wafting around me. As I read aloud about prisons and escapes and freedom, Hermann’s tendrils creep past me, rustling over to the window. Framing it with his vines and leaves, he seems to peer wistfully outside.

I close the book in sudden realization.

“I understand, Hermann.”

Rustle.

I go search for a shovel. Some living things simply aren’t meant to be contained. I’m so glad he told me. I know a perfect spot he’d like in the back garden, where he’ll never be enclosed again: in the sun, and at the edge of the forest, if he chooses to explore farther. I’d like him to have a choice. I’m sure he’ll tell me when he’s ready to move on. And, in the meantime, I have some lovely books about the outdoors that I think he’ll enjoy.

Sandra Siegienski is a speech pathologist in the Pacific Northwest. Her fiction has appeared in The Colored Lens and The Timberline Review, and has placed in multiple contests, including the Mike Resnick Memorial Award and the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest. An enthusiastic student of languages, culture, dance, and history, Sandra is currently writing a variety of sci-fi/ fantasy and young adult novels as well as short stories.

I sharpened my hook against my whetstone and cast my line into the inky blackness.

Three tries later, I hooked a star.

I was a novice sky-caster and those slippery points of light liked eluding me. We seemed to have developed a relationship, though; if I practiced with good-natured patience, eventually the stars allowed me to catch them. Then I set them free.

The stars were drawing other casters, as well. Holding a slender casting pole, a boy the age of my young grandson approached me. “You’re not very good at that,” he said, with the innocent bluntness of youth.

His observation didn’t bother me. It was accurate, after all! “I’m sure I’ll get better, in time.” I reeled in my line, accidentally tangling it again. The little star broke free from my hook and sailed back up into the sky. A pang went through my heart—I would have enjoyed admiring its glimmer up close for a moment. How easily some things slipped away from us when we weren’t ready to let them go.

“It got away!” A girl a little older than the boy joined us, holding a banged-up tackle box and gripping another pole. Her eyes seemed hungrier for the stars than the boy’s. Some of us casters needed more wishes and dreams than others. I wondered what dreams she needed, and why.

But I only said, “I’m learning from the experience. I’ll eventually figure it out.” I finished untangling my line and cast again. Glorious stars lay strewn across tonight’s meteor-filled sky, creating a double glory—a sky begging for admiration.

“How can you be learning if you’re doing it wrong?” the girl asked.

“I untangled the line, didn’t I?”

Silence.

“Aren’t you awfully old to just be learning now?” The girl set down her tackle box next to me, opened it, and chose a hook. The boy rummaged through the box’s contents and selected a hook, too.

They were brother and sister, I guessed. They had the same soulful eyes. I considered my answer to her question, since I was the oldest woman I’d seen casting, so far. “I don’t think it’s a matter of age. It’s about caring about what you’re doing.”

The girl studied her pole as if she hoped it would capture things far bigger and even finer than stars.

A minute later, I caught another star, a tiny, graceful one that perched on the tip of my hook like a finely crafted diamond. “Beautiful.” I gently pulled it in—no tangles this time—and let it rest on my palm so my new companions could see it. We all admired its sparkle, and then I nudged it free of the hook. It flew back up into the sky with a brilliant arc of light, the kind that sends hope into your soul and makes you smile after a dark day.

“You let it go already!” the boy cried in dismay.

“I couldn’t keep it,” I said, my curiosity rising about their method of sky-casting. But I didn’t want to spoil our new friendship with too many questions. “Look how brightly it shines up there. It wouldn’t be content down here with me. In fact, it’s light might go out.”

“But it’s gone….” the boy murmured. “Not everyone can see them when they’re so far away—”

The girl nudged him, and he stopped talking.

“It’s all right,” I said. “We all see differently.”

The girl and boy looked at each other, as if swiftly judging me. Then, she said to me in a low voice, “Mama can’t see the stars anymore. She says she’s going blind. The stars used to make her so happy. Now, she can only see them when they’re up real close. When she can hold them. So, we like bringing them home to her. Then she’s happy…for a little while.”

“I think I understand.” A longtime friend of mine had also lost his sight, and he’d loved the joy of the sky. “That’s a very loving thing for you to do for her.”

The girl glanced down at her tackle box. “Does their light really go out?”

“I’ve never kept a star for that long, but yes, I’m told so.”

“Do you always let them go?”

“Well, I’ve often wanted to keep them,” I admitted, sensing the need to be a co-conspirator. “It’s very tempting, but they’d be lost without their sky. And if everyone took one….” I didn’t need to finish.

“That’s what mama says sometimes.” The boy quietly wiped an eye, then gripped his pole. He tugged at his line, staring up at the sky’s brilliant display. A meteor shot past us. A smile flickered over his face, like a ghost.

Know Thy Roommate

Sky-Caster