Byron - FREE short s tory

If you read my short story for March, you'll know that I fell in love with the character of Byron, a disabled veteran with a wanderlust, and his tentative friendship with a shy librarian.

You can read all my short stories for FREE on my website, and sign up on the Home page

www.janeharveyberrick.com

* * * * *

She wasn’t coming. I knew she wasn’t coming. Why would she come here? I was a fool to think that she would. We’d barely had a proper conversation over the three months I’d known her as the girl behind the desk at Kensington Central Library. Why would I think that someone I hardly knew would travel two thousand miles on a whim, because of an off-the-cuff comment I’d made in the first sunny days of Spring?

I was also a little hazy on whether ‘meet me in three months’ really mean yesterday or today … possibly even tomorrow. As it was, I’d already wasted a whole day sitting here in the shade of a dusty olive tree waiting for her.
The burning sun that had darkened my skin and lightened my hair had turned the dusty, rolling hills into a scorched and barren land. Any softness had been stripped away, leaving the carcass of dried bushes twisted into wind-blasted sculptures. But its rawness had a beauty of its own, too, the bones of this mythical land showing through the layers of later centuries.

For a thousand years before the Greek gods made Olympus their home and the miniature island became the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, Delos was a sanctuary.
Behind dark sunglasses, my eyes strain against the bleached earth and the violence of the harsh blue sky. The sea, the Aegean, is a softer, darker blue, promising cool currents in its quiet depths.

The Terrace of the Lions guard this ancient place, seven silent, snarling beasts glow in the sunlight, the brilliant white marble impossible to stare at for long.

The original guardians are long gone, tamed and caged in a museum, only the replicas remain.

I sit with my back to the pride, staring instead toward the slowly setting sun.

She didn’t come. I knew she wouldn’t. But learning has not taken place and I know that I will be here again tomorrow, waiting one more day. Waiting for a woman who won’t come.
As the sky fills with pink and peach-coloured clouds, I keep watch for a short, brown-haired woman with glasses – which describes most of the women I’ve met in Greece. But none of them have Mary’s bright blue eyes and her shy smile.

I don’t know why I’m here.

But somewhere, somehow, over the last three months as I slowly made my way from Thessaloniki to Peraia to Katerini, Lamia and Athens, she was no longer just ‘my little librarian’, she’d become ‘Mary, my friend’. The shift was subtle, intangible, but I thought about her more each day, wondering what she was doing, what books she was reading, the joy flickering on her face like a stuttering candle when she found another bookaholic, and on those nights I didn’t wake up screaming and sweating, seeing the accusing eyes of the dead, the friends I’d loved and lost; on the nights I thought of Mary’s quiet sense of calm, of knowing her worth in the world, on those nights, I slept with the innocence of a child.

I found myself looking forward to seeing her again, needing to see her again.

And finally, I yearned for her.

SUBSCRIBE TO MY NEWSLETTER to find out what happens next ...Jane Harvey-Berrick