Fiction: The Moss Beneath Her Door by Hashim Quraishi

Photo Source: Martin Vorel via Libreshot

Part I: The Quiet Season

That year the thaw was slow to arrive. Snow hung around in the spots where the ground was low, like a forgotten thought, and the river, that had been hard frozen, now began to say--low in the mouth, doubtful, as though one were learning a lullaby once more. The moss is moving under the canopy of bare-limbed birches. All winter it had waited there, huddled tight against the rock and the root, and now it was moving, green and velvet, and was taking possession of the side of the road.

Mira looked through her window at it, the clay cup in her hands rising in steam. Mint and nettle she had made this morning, the last of the dried-up leaves of her fall crop. The odour was crisp, dirty, and home-grown. It brought back the memory of the festival days, when people of the village came to her cottage with baskets of herbs and gossip, and laughter streaming like sunshine down the trees.

However, the festivals were over. Voice by voice the voices had died away--some had migrated, others buried, some had simply died away. Mira had not left. She had remained, as had the moss remained, as the cottage remained. A stone house, thatched roof and a crooked chimney, crammed into the shoulder of the forest like a secret. This was a wood door, battered and dry at the corners and the moss had started to grow under the door, curling up like it was a part of the door.

She liked that. The moss had not sought permission.

Outside, the wind shifted. Mira dropped her cup and threw a shawl over her shoulders and went out into the morning. It was wet and thawing. By the side of the road she knelt, brushing moss with her fingers. Cold, and blood, coldness that cannot be bitten in winter. She smiled, just a little.

Then she saw it.

Just above the moss there was a bundle. Alas wrapped in linen tied with twine. No footprints in the mud. No sound in the trees. Mira hesitated and then picked it up. The fabric was wet and dirty, the knot was well secured. The interior: a sprig of rosemary, some small carved token--wood, worn smooth by age--and a scrap of paper folded.

She unfolded it with care. The hand was not recognizable. Slanted, delicate. Just one line:

"For what you've kept alive."

Mira hesitated a long time. The forest did not speak. The river whispered. A thrush some-whither called, swift and sharp and startled.

She stared at the bundle once more. It was not rosemary in her garden. The token was spiral--simply, old. She rolled it in her palm, and ran the grooves.

It had been months before anybody came to her door. Not since the frost. Since the last letter of the village council, expressing their thanks, and recommending her to retire.

She had not replied.

Someone had now brought her a present. Not a request. Not a demand. Just a gesture.

Mira withdrew into the house, carrying the bundle. She put it on the table with the herbs and the tea. Then she sat and looked through the moss under her door, and asked herself who had thought of her name.

Part II: The Bundle and the Silence

Three days passed with the bundle lying on the table of Mira.

She did not again unwrap the token. Nor did she burn the rosemary, but she thought of it. Rather, she put it in a shallow bowl next to a window where it could be touched by the sun. The scrap she folded and slipped in the corner of her herb journal, between pressed calendula and a drawing of a moth which she had one day discovered lying asleep in her tea basket.

She waited.

Not for footsteps. Not for a knock. Just for something to shift.

It happened that on the fourth morning she got up early. Thick was the mist, which twisted round the trees, like breath. Mira went outside with a little pouch in her hand--linen, sewn up in a spiral to fit the token. Within: dry mint, a scrap of beeswax, and one feather which she had discovered by the river, whitish and smoother than milk.

She laid it down on the moss, just over the threshold. Then she returned to the house, and did not repeat the observation till dusk.

It was gone.

No sound. No sign. Nothing but the moss, that was still, and a certain smell of rosemary that hung in the air.

So began the exchange.

Every morning Mira brought something tiny: a sprig of thyme, a piece of song-lyrics folded up, a hand-carved button. Every night something new would be produced: a pressed flower, a stone carved with an image, a scroll of birch bark on which a poem was written in charcoal.

It was a consistent hand, always--oblique, dainty, as a person writing with caution rather than with exactness. The poems were short. Sometimes they rhymed. Sometimes they didn't. One simply read:

The moss holds every footstep in memory. Even the ones that never came."

Mira read that one twice. Then she took it and stretched it into the gap on her journal, next to the note.

She did not speak aloud. She did not write back. But her gifts became more personal: a bit of her mother's shawl, a recipe of nettle soup, a sketch of the cottage as seen through the hill above. She started humming once more as she worked, songs which she had not sung in years. The forest seemed to listen.

One morning she discovered a spool of thread dyed with elderberry. The shade was dark, nearly violent, and the thread was reeled very delicately. Beneath it, a note:

"For mending what's frayed."

She held it in her palm. Then she pulled out her spindle and started spinning once more.

Days went in this way--silent, sluggish, heavy with moss and fog and reminiscence. Mira did not ask questions. She did not seek the stranger. But she started to think: who brought these presents? Why her? And how long were they observing?

She remembered the village, mote-hill, and the letter of the council. She remembered the boy who had brought her wildflowers, and the woman who had demanded of her that she make herself lonely. His silence had crept round her like ivy, she said to herself.

And she thought of the moss.

It now had made its way still farther round the blocks of the road, and was wrapped round the sides of the door. She did not sweep it away. She let it grow.

One night before the sun went down behind the trees, Mira went out with a bowl of soup--carrot and barley with wild garlic. She put it on the moss, next to a folded napkin of cloth and a wooden spoon.

It was not to be expected of her.

In the morning however the bowl was empty. The spoon was clean. And near it grew one violet, squeezed between two leaves, and a note:

"I remember your voice."

Mira stood a long time on the step, with the violet in her hand, with the moss under her feet. The forest was quiet. The river whispered. and someway down in the woods a thrush had started.

Part III: The Stranger in the Mist

The forest had begun to green.

Not in spurts, but undertones--buds on the older branches, shoots on the damp earth, moss on the moss. Every morning Mira now walked the fringe of the clearing, basket on her arm, gleaning nettle and wild garlic, and listening with bated breath. The thrush had returned. So had the warbler. The river ran louder.

She had not seen anyone. Not truly.

But she had felt it.

Somewhere, outside the trees. A shift in the air. The manner in which the moss appeared to be bending, so slightly, to the eastward.

On the twelfth morning of the exchange Mira dropped in a little package: a piece of cloth, embroidered with stars, a sprig of lavender, and a note. Her first.

"You are welcome here."

She laid it there on the moss, and went back into the house.

She got a response that evening.

The cloth was gone. Instead: one acorn which has been rubbed down and made smooth, and a piece of birch-bark, with a note on it.

"I have been here before."

Mira read it three times. Then she lit a candle and sat by the window and watched the forest breathe.

She did not sleep that night.

On the following morning she got up earlier than the sun. There was more mist now, and it was curling low over the ground. Mira threw on her shawl and went out, her feet cushioned in the moss. She crossed the doorway, the walk, into the woods.

The forest was quiet. Not silent--just listening.

And she followed no trail, but slowly moved along, using her instinct to direct her. Here the moss was thicker, as it had been climbing the trunks, and softening the stones. A squirrel darted past. One crow called, and made a pause.

Then she saw him.

A form, sitting upon a broken log, half-covered with fog. In brown, with a drawn-down hood. He had something in his hand--bark, a stick of charcoal. He was writing.

Mira stopped.

The figure looked up.

His countenance was youthful, but blistered. Eyes dark, thoughtful. There was a white, ancient scar along his jaw. He did not speak. He merely stared at her, as one stares at a deer in the edge of a clearing--with admiration, and apprehension.

Mira stepped forward. Slowly. She did not speak either.

Stephen laid aside the bark and put it into his satchel. He drew out the cloth which she had embroidered--the stars still gleaming against the indigo--and handed it to her.

She took it.

Then he spoke.

I lived in the village, he said. His phony voice was low and gruff. "Before the fire."

Mira nodded. She remembered the fire. It had stolen three houses, one barn and one boy laughing.

"I wandered," he said. "North, then east. I learned to carve. To write. To listen."

Then he stared at her with a steady gaze.

"I remembered your door."

Mira could feel something move within her. Like thaw. Like spring.

She sat beside him on the log. The moss was spongy under them. The fog surrounded their feet.

I thought I had been forgotten, she said.

He shook his head. It was only you--you remained.

There was much silence. The forest did not interrupt.

Then Mira took a loaf of barley bread, wrapped up in cloth, out of her basket. She handed it to him.

He smiled. Just a little.

And they shared a meal, eating slowly without speaking. The bread was hot, and the mist cold, and the moss was alive under them.

When they finished, he stood.

"I'll come again," he said.

Mira nodded.

He swung round, moving into the trees, his mantle rubbing over the moss. Then he paused.

"I remember your voice," he said. "From the festival. You sang."

Mira looked at him, and the candlelight of memory came to play behind her eyes.

"I still do," she said.

Then he was gone.

Part IV: The Thread Between Them

The next morning, he returned.

No knock. No voice. Simple the sound of feet on sponge and the smell of elderberry thread in the air. Mira was cultivating her herb garden--whatever was left after the frost--and looked and saw him standing at the edge of the clearing with his cloak wet with dew and his eyes steady.

She nodded once. He stepped forward.

They did not speak much. Words were too dense, too rocky to the plenitude between them. Instead, they worked. Mira helped him learn how to steep nettle to gain strength, how to dry calendula to apply on the skin. He cut a spoon out of drifting timber, and left it on her sill. She stitched up a pouch of stars and put a sprig of lavender in it.

The forest watched.

Every day they exchanged something little. Herbs were collected singing. An account given by bits--of how his sister had laughed, of how the moss had increased in thickness year by year, and of the shawl belonging to her mother. They did not ask for details. They did not press. They simply offered.

One afternoon Mira took out her spindle.

The thread which he had presented her--stained with elderberry, deep and bruised--was soft and hard. She turned it round in that regular, assured way of hers. He stood still looking, and then put his hand into his satchel and drew out a piece of parchment.

To which a sketch has been applied: a cottage, moss round the door, stars embroidered in the roof.

Mira smiled. "You remember well."

"I draw what stays," he said.

The spindle was humming, the sketch lay between them, and they were seated under the birch tree. A river was singing in the distance. A fox sprang on through the bushes, which could not be seen, but were felt.

That evening, he did not leave.

Mira made soup--barley and wild garlic, and a little mint. They both ate silently and the candle was flickering between them. He gazed at the fire and then upon her.

I guess I had forgotten how to be quiet, he said.

"You remembered," she replied.

When the meal was over he rose and walked to the door. Now the moss was heavy, snugging up in the crevices, mossy green soft. He sank to his knees and put something there, a small stone, cut with a spiral.

"For your threshold," he said.

Mira took it and held it in her hand. It was hot, and seemed long.

She took it, and put it on the sill of the window, between the violet and the spoon.

That night, she sang.

Not loudly. Not for him. Simply in honor of the cottage, in honor of the moss, in honor of the recollection of spring. So low in voice, so well smoothed by the passage of time, and yet it had a carrying. Up the trees, across the river, up to the stars.

He stood and listened on the step with his eyes shut and his hands clasped.

The next morning, he was gone.

But the moss remained. And the stone. and not so quiet any more.

Part V: What the Forest Keeps

The days grew longer.

The moss was still bathed in sunlight, which softened it into an even deeper green. The leaves on the birch tremulously opened, and shook in the breeze like bashful thoughts. Mira was getting up earlier, and her hands were reaching toward the spindle before the kettle. She moved differently now--not in a hurry, but with intent. The way some atom in her had started to heal.

He comes often now. Not very often, but sufficiently so as to make the periods between visits seem breathing instead of being. He would bring her things: a song cut into a piece of bark, a pouch of wild flower seeds, a drawing of the river with a fox sitting by the edge of it. She brought him tea and bread and bits of stories.

One morning he came with a bundle wrapped up in cloth. Mira opened it slowly.

Interior: a flute, made out of bone. Pallid, glossy, cut with scrolls. It was in her hands and it was not heavy.

"It was my sister's," he said. It was played at the festival. Before the fire."

Mira looked at him. There was steadiness in his eyes, but trembling in his voice.

"I kept it," he said. "But I never played it. I thought it would break me."

She touched her fingers along the edge of the flute. The circles were the same--as those he had cut into stones, traced into sketches. She took it to her lips and struck one note.

It was soft. Clear. Like water over stone.

He closed his eyes.

They were seated under the birch-tree, and the flute lay down between them. Mira did not ask questions. She did not offer comfort. She just played--slow, wandering notes which drifted away into the forest like memory.

When she finished, he spoke.

"She died in the fire. I tried to save her. I couldn't."

Mira stretched out and put her hand over his.

My mother died of fever, she said. "She taught me to sing. I stopped for years."

He nodded.

I expect to be safe and quiet, I said to myself.

Only hides the ache, replied she.

For a long time they sat thus, with the moss under their bodies warm and living. The forest did not interrupt. The river sang.

They sowed the wildflower seeds together later--they scattered them out on the edge of the clearing, and carefully pressed them into the soil. Mira whispered a blessing. He chirped a melody she did not know.

The moss huddled round their feet.

That night Mira set the flute on the sill of the window, next to the stone and the spoon. She made a candle and sang--not to the dead, but to the living. For the moss. For the thread between them.

The flame flickered. The stars blinked awake.

And the forest listened.

Part VI: What Grows in the Quiet

Spring settled in like a sigh.

Wildflowers grew on the sides of the clearing--violet, calendula, yarrow. The moss was growing very thick and green, and wrapping around the stones, making the way soft. Mira woke up to new life in her garden and the river sang louder now, as though she were remembering her own name.

He came less often.

Fraud that he had disappeared, but that something had changed. There was no more waiting in the silence between them. It was a tune--as respiration, as seasons. Mira did not count the days. She simply listened.

One morning she discovered a bundle on the moss. Stitched with stars wrapped in indigo cloth. Inside: a journal bound in bark and thread. There were drawings on the pages--her cottage, the birch tree, the river, the moss. And her.

Not as she had been. As she was now.

Here, under the last drawing, a note:

"You kept the forest alive. And me."

The journal was in her lap, and the moss beneath her feet, as Mira sat a long time on the step. The forest was quiet. The thrush sang. A puff of wind shook the birch leaves.

She did not cry. She did not speak. She simply breathed.

That night she lit a candle and put the journal on the windowsill, next the flute, the spoon, the stone. She sang--not that they might remember, not that they might lose, but that they might sing to moss. To the silent things that blossom as no-one notices.

The following morning she went out with a bunch of hers. An envelope of herbs, a wrought button, a note sewed in a piece of cloth.

"You are welcome. Always."

She put it down on the moss and went into the woods.

The trees opened around her. The path was soft. The river whispered.

She did not look back.

Hashim Quraishi is a writer from Kashmir whose work explores memory and power through a reflective lens.