by Tania Hershman

Where the first dot would go she didn't know. The first dot determined the second, and so on. If the first was promptly in the middle of the white page, a small point of sharp black ink, that would create a reference point. The next dot could be east or west, north or south of her (the first dot was always female). The second dot could also be heavier, if she pressed pen to paper, or less substantial if she only lightly touched the nib to the page. When there were two, there would be comparison; the excitement of that sent fire to her toes.

I must start, she told herself, and raised up the pen. She brought her hand down slowly, and she found her fingers descending to the right hand corner of the page - and it was there that the clean white was sullied, deflowered. Sarah grinned; beginnings made her dizzy with possibility.

The dot sat there, in the right hand corner of the page, neither dark nor light. Yet. Just herself, alone, with no-one to point at her and say "You're too…". Once she had a companion, the twittering would begin. Sarah decided to give her a helpmate. She raised the pen up again and brought it down where she thought the second dot would be but her hand swerved under another's influence and the ink landed over the other side of this universe, the bottom left hand corner.

This dot, a male, was handsome, slightly better defined, shinier. Taken together, the first dot was coy, shyly appearing out of the corner of the page, but not asserting herself; the second dot was saying "Look at me, I'm here!" A bold pair, Sarah thought, and well into her stride now, she raised her arm again to provide them with families.

By lunchtime, the paper was covered. Sarah awoke from the stupor that blanketed her during her work, laid her pen in its holder, pushed her chair back and stood up. At first, all she saw on the page from that height was a swirling mass of tiny jumping black pinpricks. But as she stared, forcing her eyelids open, their tangoing slowed, they settled, and she saw. She saw the tree, large and ancient, its trunk thick and twisted reaching down through the bottom of the page. She saw the wooden planks that formed the floor, hidden amongst the branches. She saw the walls, the door, the small window, and then the whole tree house. And although it wasn't on the page, she saw herself sitting inside it, sitting quietly with her dolls, amid the bird cries, her Mother's singing coming through the kitchen window, and the faint sound of far away traffic.

 

 

Tania Hershman, a former science journalist, grew up in London and now lives in Jerusalem, Israel. Her stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio and published  in Cafe Irreal, the Hiss Quarterly, Front&Centre, Vestal Review, Steel City Review,  Entelechy Review, Riptide, Transmission, and others, and forthcoming in "Riffing on Strings", an anthology of fiction inspired by String Theory, Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Southword and the Ranfurly Review. Tania is founder and editor of The Short Review  a site dedicated to reviewing short story collections and anthologies. Her own story collection, The White Road and Other Stories, will be published by Salt in June 2008.