The Wager

Flash Fiction

NOTE: This story is a piece of flash fiction, written in a limited time with a limited wordcount.

Greetings, all!

I went fishing for some quick fiction today and a couple of characters I’ve been mulling over decided to step forward and have a moment all to themselves! I won’t say too much on the front-end, but let you draw your own conclusions.

I hope you enjoy!

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Photo by Serina Bird on Unsplash

Polly Welkin blinked in the strange sun, dappled into vivid patchwork by the towering green-leaved poplars on either side of the long, long road. 

Ahead of her, the dark-haired man hadn’t put too much distance between them, but he was walking with purpose and did not slow. Aware of the time, Polly hurried to catch him, her own leather boots strangely quiet in the dust. 

“Hoy there,” she said, when she drew up beside him. 

He glanced down, mildly surprised. 

“Hullo,” he said. He had a soft voice and a kind face, hair the color of a riverbed, deep muted brown. He looked up at the trees, leaves whispering with gentle applause. “Fine day.”

“It is.” She peered down the long corridor of poplars, miles long. “Where are you headed?”

“That way,” he said, pointing forward, walking on.  

“What’s there, for you?”

“Something new, I guess.” He tipped his head a little, like he was going to look over his shoulder at the place he had come from, but seemed to think better of it. “Nothing for me back there.”

“You sure?” 

He shrugged. “If there was something I wanted back there, I’d be going that way. Don’t you figure?”

“Sure.” 

They walked on in silence for a minute or two. Polly started to feel the threat of the wind as a shiver in her skin, despite the sunshine. The poplar-leaf applause heaved, rose, and then receded with the dying breeze. The strange colors of the place swelled. It was a warning. 

You can only go so far. You don’t have much time.  

“I’m Polly,” she said. 

At first, she thought he wouldn’t reply, but he said, quietly, “Nolan.”

“Pleased to meet you, Nolan.” Up ahead, the first gap in the trees was visible, on the left. It was too soon, too soon! Polly felt her throat go dry. She had never gone this far down the road before. 

“Do you remember what it was like back there?” she asked. 

He sighed and stopped, looking down at her. “What business is it of yours which way I’m headed?”

“I think you’re making a mistake,” she said. “And I think you know it, too.”

He turned to look at the road they had already traveled, back toward the start. “It’s cold, back there. I can feel it from here.”

“Sure, but it warms up. You don’t remember?”

“No.” His voice was firm, but his eyes were uncertain.

“All I’m saying,” she said, “is that you reach a point on this road that you can’t turn back from. And right now you’ve still got a choice. I just want you to be sure.”

He peered down at her. “What are you to me?”

“Heart of God, just a stranger,” she said, holding up her hand to swear. “The kind of stranger you hear about in story books and never meet. But you got lucky, Nolan. Just this once.”

“Why me, then?”

“I saw you leave,” she said. “And it seemed like you weren’t ready. That’s all.”

The uncertainty traveled from his eyes to his lips. They twitched with something like fear. “Is it…bad? What I’m heading to? At the end of this road?”

Polly shrugged. “Bad ain’t quite the word. Depends on which gap you’re drawn through, which path you snake off into. It’s always about choices, even here.”

The wind rose again, the leaves of the poplars shaking with portent, loud enough to drown out any words Polly meant to say next. She waited while the wind died away. She knew, somehow, that the warnings would stop eventually. That she was losing time. Her heartbeat was a ticking clock. 

There’s still so much you don’t know. You’re playing with fire, Polly Welkin. 

Nolan looked back to the start of the road, again. 

“I remember pain,” he said.  

Polly nodded. “Pain is part of it. But only for a time. Never lasts quite as long as you think, and always looks different from the backside.”

He blinked. He seemed to weigh this out, holding the potential for pain in one hand and Polly’s certainty in the other. Polly waited, trying to be patient, feeling every moment like an increasing weight. 

“You sure it’s worth it?” Nolan asked, finally. 

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think so,” she replied. 

He met her eyes. Looked for truth there, and seemed to find it. 

Polly held out her hand, and—after a brief hesitation—he took it. It was still warm. She found this a marvel, somehow, despite it all. Despite everything she had seen. 

She turned with him and walked back toward the start, to the wall of mist she had emerged from. She didn’t want to walk too fast, didn’t want to spook him, but she could feel the road rising up through her feet, the colors pulsing; she could feel the poplars leaning in, watching them, trying to sing and soothe Nolan back to his original course. 

“They’re whispering to me,” he said, looking up at the trees. 

She found a voice that wasn’t her own, full of authority she had learned from somewhere else. “Stop your ears against it, my boy, and walk,” she said.  

She squeezed his hand and the wind rose again, a chaos, a caution. 

It isn’t natural. It isn’t right. We’ve marked you, Polly Welkin. We see you. 

She sped up, and he matched her. Their footfalls made little sound, eerie and impossible. Faster and faster they ran, and it felt like time stood still, and it felt like the road was never getting any shorter, that the wall of mist at the start never drew any nearer— 

But then, somehow, it was over. 

The bright sun vanished. The cold drew in around her. A gentle rain was falling, as it had been when she left. 

Polly reached up with shaking fingers and pulled the old cotton veil from her face, mussing her hair and knocking her round-lensed spectacles askew. Nearby, her father—eyes steely over his white beard—leaned against the trusty covered wagon, canvas stained with time and travel, old painted words fading: WELKIN & WELKIN, MARVELS WROUGHT and FORTUNES TOLD. The twin spotted mares fretted against their yokes, restless. 

They were just passing through. Around them—alongside the abandoned highway between Portland and Seattle—the skirmish site stretched, days old. Mute testament to a simmering war. It had long since been emptied of its survivors and its value by pickers, and only the dead remained to be prayed over by carrion birds. 

Except for one. They had missed one, somehow. 

Polly’s father huffed a laugh in the stillness, checked his long-chained gold watch, eyes twinkling with something like pride.

“Thought I was gonna have to come in after you,” he said. But he reached into the pocket of his woollen waistcoat and drew out a dollar coin, flicked it to her. She caught it, silver cold in her palm. A small victory, maybe, but a sweet one.

The ghostly applause of the poplar road still echoed in her ears, whistling like the rush of her own blood, her eyes still stinging with the strange sun and unnatural colors. 

At her feet, the dark-haired corpse drew a shuddering breath.

Thank you for reading!

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