This fragment was written in 45 minutes on Sunday November 8th 2020 for a competition run annually by Fortnum & Mason for their chocolate library range. It didn’t win, so I get to publish it on my site in a petty act of revenge. Written to title and brief, mention of chocolate mandatory. I like writing to order almost as much as I like writing off the top of my cavernous, screaming brane.
As a child, Ruby had often woken from nightmares to find her father’s reassuring bulk appearing like magic at her bedroom door. He’d sit by her side, calming her, rummaging in his pocket to find - with a twinkling startle every time as though astonished, what’s this? - a packet containing chunks of chocolate the colour of her mother’s lips.
Memories of the chocolate came to her lips as she climbed, the taste of cocoa, berries and cream, a single square melting on her tongue enough to chase away the bad dreams. She missed it, missed her mother’s smile.
Ruby climbed high into the red sky, the ladder swaying precariously beneath her, and searched the night for treasure.
Her mother had been the night-shepherd before her. It was a profession that waxed and waned with the month, for only on certain evenings would the ruby moon rise and paint the sky scarlet, and then it was time for her mother to work. She’d spend her off-time carefully weaving sky nets from spider-silk, murmuring the charms that would hold them together, while her father built the moon ladders in his workshop behind the house, cheerfully crafting impossible things behind closed doors.
Then when the ruby moon rose, the black of night seeming to blur into a reddish glow, her mother would take the sacks full of moon ladders and tie them to her belt, throw a handful of sky nets over her shoulder and, her father steadying the ladder, begin her climb.
Ruby would watch, hand shading her eyes against the glow, as her mother climbed the ladder to the top, then reached into a sack and pulled out another thirty, forty foot ladder, affixing it to the top rung before her and resuming her climb.
When, impossible ladder upon impossible ladder later, her mother was far out of sight, Ruby would wait, wrapped in a blanket for her return. She’d always return, nets full of rubies from the hidden clouds far above. It was the moon’s light reflecting from the jewels that turned the sky red, her father would tell her, every time as though imparting a secret known only to a few.
One night, Ruby’s mother did not return. Her father waited all night, holding onto the moon ladder he’d made, waited until the sunrise turned the sky an ordinary blue once more: then sighed and let go, and together they watched the ladder rise from the ground and slowly fly toward the vanishing moon.
Ruby had become the night-shepherd then, and on a red night would climb impossible ladders into the skies searching for treasure, as all the women in her family did. But, filling her nets full of the stones she’d been named for, her eyes roved further. Pockets full of chocolate the colour of her mother’s lips, she dreamed of the day she’d find, with a twinkling startle - what’s this? - the cloud her mother lay stranded upon, find her and bring her home.
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