Whirlwind 10th Anniversary Edition: Longfellow's Literary Magazine for 2019-2020

Whirlwind
Beyond The Sky
(Writing From an Image)
By Natalia C.
I continue to retreat backward, but they still follow me.
Jack and his bully buddies just will not stop until they get me.
My feet stumble backward, and I fall to the ground. I brace
myself for impact, but it doesn’t come. Instead, I fall onto a
cloth, and it stops me from falling.
I turn around, and the sky is quivering. My hand seems to
reach out all on its own and touches what used to be the
thing my village knows as the sky. I slide my hand across it.
The texture is rough, almost like sandpaper, yet it moves so
elegantly.
The clouds are still moving somehow, and so are Jack and his
gang, but he is the least of my worries now. My hand moves
downward until I feel the bottom of the sky cloth. I grasp it
with a shaking hand and lift.
A lone tree stands in the distance. White clouds hover around
it in the surrounding sky, but something’s just not right. The
leaves …they’re the wrong shade. And the sky is bright and
alarming. It is none of the black and white shades my little
village knows as our world.
It is light and brilliant, shimmering with something I couldn’t
describe for the life of me. The green is more muted, and yet still
beaming with light next to the completely grey grass.
The whole scene is exploding with, with, oh, I can’t describe it. It
needs a word. A nonsense word that doesn’t have to be a nonsense
word anymore.
I think, and then, “Color!” I exclaim. Yes, color. It sounds
insane, but that’s what makes it perfect. The tree and the sky are
exploding with color.
“What do you mean, color, fool.”
I freeze. Jack and his boys have finally made it up the hill to me. I
drop the drab (in comparison) sky cloth out of pure surprise.
“Well? You gonna answer me, Iris?” Jack says, “Cause if you don’t,
we’re gonna have a real problem on our hands.”
“Color,” I begin, “Is this.” I lift the sky cloth for the little
scoundrels to see. Their jaws drop in awe of what they’re
witnessing. They don’t understand, and neither do I.
“It’s beautiful,” says one of Jack’s sidekicks, I think his name is Joel.
“For once in your sorry lives, you’re right, it is, and we don’t have
any of it here,” I reply.
“And the color is different on both. So I need two names. One for
the tree and one for the sky.” Micheal has a stutter, so when he
said his word, it ended up sounding like green.
“Perfect. The tree is green. The sky is…..blue. A calm name for a
calm looking color.”
The trouble makers all nod in agreement.
Seeing the colors isn’t enough. I want to feel it, the colors. The
green and the blue. The no-longer-nonsense words that describe
this electric sky and lively leaves.
I lift the sky cloth over my head and step out into a new world, a
new universe.
70
Image Courtesy Of The New York Times “A Year of Picture Prompts”
The heat hits me immediately. I look up, and there is a shining
ball of pure heat staring back down at me. I wince and turn away,
blinking the spots out of my eyes. But I am amazed. This thing
with heat and light is shocking to me. Another word is needed.
Sun.
It’s beautiful. I look at this new sky around me, and I feel tiny in
comparison. I look back at the world I left behind--all shades of
white and black. Those were the only shades we ever learned in
school.
The village is boring. It is nothing next to this excellence that
is color. I ook back toward that tree. I want to touch the green,
feel it. I run, fast as I can towards the colors, and as I run, I look
around.
There are little flowers everywhere, and they have some sort of
color as well. They are not green or blue; these can be purple,
yellow, orange, red, indigo. One looks like the sun in the sky, and
I decide to call it yellow.
All these different colors surround me as I head for the tree—
thousands of different shades. I decide I am not particularly a fan
of orange, but I really do like the purples and blues.
I am in a new world. I am surrounded by change. I love it more
than words can describe. My life can never be the same again.
I reach the tree. The leaves are everything like the leaves in the
village, but they are bursting with color. Very light red colored
flowers are sprinkled about. They don’t really look like red too
much, so they will be pink.
The trunk of the tree is much much darker than the rest of the
colors, but not quite black. Brown. I climb up the limbs, carefully
placing each foot and pulling myself up. I make it to the top. My
head sticks out the top of the tree. I stretch my arms out and
embrace this new life, ablaze with life and excitement.
A light breeze hits me, and I breathe it in. I feel a joy I’ve never felt
in my entire life. The world stretched out below me, speckled with
light and brilliance. I am happy. I am ecstatic.
I am free.