I had no idea where she came from. She was simply there, seated beneath the great oak that ruled our garden. She seemed caught between childhood and adulthood, perhaps fourteen at most. Her face was soft and round, her eyes a shifting green‑blue, alert and trembling like those of a startled animal.
When I spoke, she flinched. Her hands flew up to shield her face, then slowly lowered again.
“Hey,” I asked gently, “what are you doing here? Did you lose your way?”
She looked at me once more — and the shock ran through me like lightning: it was me. She looked uncannily like me.
She rose to her feet, barely reaching my chest.
“You can see me?” she asked, her voice clear, deliberate.
I nodded.
“Wonderful.” She smiled, sighed softly, and whispered, “At last.”
Then she took my hand and led me down the slope. I let myself be pulled along. She moved with ease, stepping over branches and blackberry thickets, across the gap where our fence would soo
n stand. I struggled to follow, ducking my head beneath the low‑hanging limbs.
We emerged onto a path carpeted with leaves. She gazed across the stubble fields toward scattered trees on the horizon. A train cut through the landscape like a steel ruler measuring the diagonal of the earth, and her eyes followed its passage.
We stood still, looking together. Strange — I knew this place so well, yet now I saw it anew, through the child’s eyes beside me: the sun rising, pushing a pale sky upward; mist lingering in the hollows; a woodpecker landing nearby; swans calling faintly in the distance. The church bell in the neighboring village tolled, deep and resonant, in harmony with my own heart.
“I love it here,” she whispered, her small hand still in mine.
“I do too. I love it here,” I said aloud.
When I looked down again, I could scarcely believe it: I was holding a dog’s leash. And there, beside me, sat our Aris. He looked up at me, tongue lolling, and in the curve of his open mouth I thought I saw a smile.
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