New Short Story!

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The Jar



It was in the house when we bought it.

It was an old place, though the windows were new. Mostly this was an exercise in futility. There wasn’t a draft by the panes, but the winter breeze cut through the cracks in the floorboards like they were chasms. Nanny said that just meant we had to wear slippers. Mine were thin on the bottom though, because my feet had stopped growing right after I got them so I hadn't had a new pair in a while, and I was always cold.

It was the sort of house where cold was expected. It seeped up from the floors and in around the corners. The coldest rooms in the house were the attic, which wasn’t a proper room at all in my mind - more of an empty space where several rooms ought to be - and the root cellar. The attic was full; old newspapers and heavy chests full of dishes we only used on holidays and all the things Nanny wanted to keep with her when she moved in with us. The root cellar was empty.

Well, nearly.

I played there a lot, by myself because my brother was afraid of small spaces. It was dark and cold, and I pretended that the root cellar was the last bastion of defence, the last shelter against the oncoming hordes. I wasn’t exactly sure what the horde was, mind you, but I was reasonably sure they were coming. I lay in stores.

I kept extra buttons there, because Nanny always said that a lost button was, under certain circumstances, the end of the world. I kept thread and needles too, though Nanny hadn’t mentioned them, because without those, I thought the buttons might turn out to be kind of useless. I kept apples, at first, but they rotted and filled the cellar with a terrible smell. I started snitching cans out of the pantry after that, and put them on the old shelves at the back of the root cellar.

That’s how I found the jar.

It was old, old as the house, I thought, and glass. There were strange designs etched on to the filmy white sides, and the brass top had no label. I shone my flashlight on it to be sure that the label hadn’t just faded, but it was gone, or had never been there. I pressed one finger against the seal, and it didn’t push back. Whatever was inside was still preserved.

The shelves couldn’t hold much weight, on account of their age and the rot, so I lined up my stores one jar deep, right against the stone wall for maximum stability. I could see every piece on the shelf. I could see the jar, taller than the cans and jars I’d got from the pantry, taller than things you could buy in a grocery store. But I couldn’t see what was inside.

I grew up, and the hordes never came.

++

When Nanny died, I came back to the house.

I didn’t live there anymore, but it hadn’t changed very much since I had. Nanny had put down rugs on the floorboards to stop the draft when it got to be too much for her slippers, but it didn’t make that much of a difference. Her button box was open on the dining room table, just in case, and I shut the lid.

I went into the root cellar before the lawyer arrived with the will. It was dark and damp and drafty, just like it had been when I’d used it as my hiding place. I knew better than to waste food, even though I’d never been hungry a day in my life. Nanny always made sure we had enough. I’d put everything away when I was done with playing games.

It wasn’t entirely empty, of course.

The wood sagged in the middle even more than it used to, and the smell of rotting wood was so strong I put my hand over my mouth without thinking about it until I got used to the air. There was a jar on the top shelf, close to the end where the bracket made the shelf the most stable. It hadn’t moved since the last day I came down the stairs.

I heard a car in the lane, the lawyer, come to tell me the fate of the property, and I picked the jar off the shelf. I had to stretch, once, to reach it. Now it was at my eye level. My feet had grown again, and the rest of me followed.

I took the jar out into the light.

It sat on the dining room table, next to the button box, while the lawyer told me that the house was mine to sell if I wanted to. My brother never loved it here, and left the moment he could. I didn’t think I had either, but I’d lingered all the same, part of me loving the cold house with the creaking stairs and the strange drafts and the root cellar with the jar on the shelf.

In the sunlight, the jar looked no less mysterious. It was still brass capped and filmy white. I couldn’t tell what was inside. I could open it, I supposed, and find out. I looked down at the will, at my Nanny’s bequests and wishes, and at the button box she kept on hand for emergencies.

I didn’t sell the house.

++

It was in the house when I inherited it.

I knew it before I signed the papers that made it mine. That old glass jar, old enough to match the house that stood over the root cellar it was stored in. There was nothing down there with it, except for some old apple cores and dreams I hadn’t had in a decade and could barely remember. Something about a bastion and a horde.

The button box is on the table, just in case, and I keep thread and a needle tucked inside it too, though Nanny never did, because I think it makes more sense. I don’t go into the root cellar. I can keep all the food I need in the pantry. And it’s dark down there, and smaller, now that I’ve grown.

But it isn’t empty.

+++

This is entirely the fault of nataliesee. :)

Comments

[nataliesee.livejournal.com]

Lovely, lovely, lovely! And all from a discussion about an old jar.

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

I had a prof who, in a lecture about something entirely different, once went off on a HUGE tangent about how canning changed the course of history and somehow it ended with "You want ratatouille in a hurry? No problem!" and her being all upset that none of us really understood what went on in a quality batch of ratatouille.

(We had a surprisingly large number of lectures that ended in a similar manner, actually.)

Anyway! Jars! I like them. :)

[sholio]

Ooh, that was really cool. I liked it a lot. :D

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I really kind of love the house!

(Yes, I would be the writer who can describe the architecture in painstaking detail, but not know what her characters look like after 85,000 words with them...(

[colej55.livejournal.com]

This is wonderful! It made me think of the rows of canned vegetables lined up in the basement of our house when I was a kid. I helped can them from the time I could sit up. I still collect antique canning jars! Oh... and I still collect buttons "just in case". :)

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

Hee!

I want my mother's button box when she dies. That and her carpet bag. :)

And yes: the photo is gorgeous. I found it online.

[colej55.livejournal.com]

Also, I LOVE the photot!

[colej55.livejournal.com]

Photot? I think not. Still trying to get used to the new computer. It's been at the factory for eons getting fixed and I immediately fell back in love with the old one. I've washed my hands and I can't do a thing with them!

[bookwormprinces.livejournal.com]

Interesting! But, argh, the curious cat in me wants to know what was in the jar, dammit!

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

Ratatouille.

(The REAL question is what made the glass filmy white...)

[samjohnsson.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I like this!

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[bnharrison.livejournal.com]

very moody and fun!

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

I was aiming for "halloweenish", so I'll take "moody". :)

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

Oooh, mysterious! I like it.

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

Thanks!