​Wassily and the Birds, by Eleanor Keisman

Stormy Mood, by Wassily Kandinsky (Russia) 1903

​Wassily and the Birds
 
Wassily felt the clouds heavy on his face as he drove toward the woods and left Frieda for the last time. The staleness of the light made the horse calm and measured in his trot. Droplets of water clung together in the air, assembling for the oncoming storm. The rain would start soon, he knew, and he had said this to her as he’d loaded the cart, but her face was already damp. 

Wassily rubbed his eyes and took a sip of laudanum from a small bottle in his coat pocket. The path stretched out ahead, shadowless, and the obscene bitterness of the naked tincture made it difficult to judge the distance to the edge of the moody woods, which stood as an enormous, looming wall at the edge of the wheat field. Wassily held the reins constant and without changes in tension as the carriage rumbled over the earth, damp with the humidity. 

When the promise of bedtime was gradually replaced by an endless wait for sleep to come, he had made it a regular habit to pour a little laudanum in his nightly tea. And then he started taking some before dinner, in hopes that the relaxation would help drown out his incessant embitterment, but it only meant he needed more, later, when Frieda blew out the lamplights. 

Last night, he’d taken his usual dose and rolled on top of Frieda as she settled in bed. Unlike the undercooked potatoes she served him nightly, her body was warm and soft. The scent of the lavender in her pillow enticed him, and he used the full weight of his body to push himself inside her. After a few thrusts, he rolled off, and she turned toward the wall. It was all very tiresome. 

But this was their arrangement as man and woman, and indeed, every man was a husband and every woman, a wife. It wasn’t revolutionary. She made the tea he requested and then forgot it until it was cold; at the end of his day of work, he asked for soup, which she made in such haste that the potatoes and turnips were served underdone; she washed his underclothes well and then left them on the line in the rain – each domestic slight demanded a sliver of generosity from him in order to tolerate. And in return, Frieda had her wifely responsibility to him.

Indeed, there were men for whom no potato could ever taste as sweet as the one left slightly crunchy owing to the endearing inattentiveness of one’s beloved. But Wassily was not one of those men, and he’d stopped finding Frieda’s inattentiveness in any way endearing a long time ago, and probably she him as well, although he was never very concerned about that. 

An extra sip of laudanum the following morning helped alleviate his general state of ill humour from the previous night. Though the impact of the relief was more intoxicating than the duration, and he had begun almost to relish the arguments and moments of enmity with Frieda, as it made the abatement that much sweeter, he was overcome with the sense that he could take no more. This time, he would not come back, and as he thought this, the first few drops of rain fell, as if to mark the moment. 

The body of the woods was a fixed point in his future, and only the tree tops had any definition in the waning light. There was another village on the other side, he knew. And beyond that, another wood, and if one entered those thickets and stayed on course, there would be another village, and so on. Maybe there he could find the ease of life he imagined was meant for him. Something fresh and lively, a place he could release the heaviness in his chest and feel himself hollow, buoyant, and full of promise, just as he did when he was young. 

As the path his carriage was on narrowed toward the wood’s entrance, he looked up higher to the peaks that made up the crown of the forest, and saw a crow take flight into the last clearing of the sky, between the darkening clouds. 

He muttered to himself: 

Is a man not owed a level of peace in his own house? I give her everything, and she makes a complete mess of it. 

Tipping his head back to let the tincture seep into the flesh of his mouth and throat, he saw the crow again. It seemed to split off and become two birds, each shadowing the other, and flying in perfect synchronization. And though they flew higher and higher, they never appeared to come near the darkening storm clouds, and the farther away they flew, Wassily became aware of the terrifying vastness of the sky, and how, in life, one could go on for quite a long time and still never feel that one had arrived. 

He kept watching until he finally saw one bird fly off in a different direction from the other. He squinted in the raindrops and tried to remember if it had only been one bird when he first noticed it, or, in fact, two. The treetops were now almost directly overhead, and when his neck could no longer tolerate the weight of his puzzled, upturned head, he brought his gaze down and returned his attention to his horse and the approaching forest entrance. 

Once inside the woods, Wassily’s heart felt lighter. He pulled the horse’s reins and slowed his tired animal to a walk, both of them enjoying this buoyant, cool pocket of a darkening world. Each time he entered these woods, it was as though he could breathe again, truly and deeply, for the first time in years. His chest was a hollow and clear cave.

He continued talking to himself, partly in silence, partly aloud, as one does when one is alone in a forest.

Why do I always turn back?

The oppression of obligation. Puh. All for her. For what I’m supposed to do.

And what does she do? Lives an easy, lazy life. 

I’ll never be free of it, not unless I uproot myself.

I won’t go back this time. Once and for all, I won’t.

I’ll find a new village, a new name, a new wife. 

I’ll just disappear. 

A chattering bird-like noise drew Wassily’s attention up and into the thick of the canopy, and he looked for the crow he had seen before. A large tree stood at the edge of a clearing in the understory, and something of similar texture and colour seemed to move unnaturally within the bark.

His horse whinnied and bucked, and the cart tipped over, sending the contents and Wassily onto the root-laden forest floor. Rolling onto his back, he gazed at the slivers of light slicing through the canopy overhead. A vibration near the lower half of him drew his attention, and his eyes landed on two feet, hairy and so dirty that they seemed as embedded in the earth as the roots surrounding them. 

What, to do it all again? 

The voice that spoke was feminine, with the silvery shimmer of wind. Wassily looked up and saw two emerald-green eyes looking down at him. A creature stood over him. It had a thick mane of wavy leaf-green hair and a face that was brown, but not brown skin, or brown dirt. Rather, brown, like the colour of tree bark. Wassily held his hand up to block the slivers of light obscuring his view, and as his eyes regained their focus, he saw a wildling tree woman standing over him. 

As a boy, he’d heard the tales of wildling women. No two stories were alike. Babies who were abandoned and survived in the forest treetops, and the trees came alive and raised them. Or women thought to be witches, banished from their villages, cursed by their true nature to live forever as some strange human/plant hybrid. In these tales, the witches took all the young children they found and turned their skin into tree bark. He was forbidden from being in the forest after dark for this reason, and the stories scared him so much that it wasn’t hard to mind his mother’s rules.

Looking at the wildling woman before him, he remembered his mother. He didn’t only mind her rules because of the forest tales, or because it was what children were supposed to do, but for something else. When she was cross, she became a wild, furious tempest. He remembered even the wide-eyed shock in his father’s face when it would happen, and it was never discussed thereafter. Men were violent, women were not, and that’s the way it was.

She had green eyes with a fire-orange ring at the centre.

In the forest, there were very few shadows, and no time seemed to pass. Wassily didn’t know how long he sat there staring at her, and she at him. Finally, the windy voice came again:

To a new village. Will you go? And all again? Do it all again? 

Nah, come now, a better choice, no? There must be one? Tell me.

Wassily watched her walk – if he could call it walking – over to his horse. Roots seemed to hang off her and grip the earth as she moved, almost fluidly, like water. She reached out with her vine-like fingers and began to stroke the animal, who shifted uncomfortably in place. 

Choked with terror, he opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came. 

She seemed to notice him falter and spoke again, this time louder, like a torrent of furious wind directed only at him. 

NOW! TELL ME!

The horse, startled by the noise and rage, reared up, broke free of its traces, galloped away and kept going until the sound of its hooves hitting the earth had faded into the low, indistinct hum of the woods. 

I’m…unhappy…in my home. With Frieda. 

The wildling woman’s roots loped in his direction and she came closer. Her face began to widen. 
            
Happy? In your home?
            
Wassily started crawling backward. 
            
No, unhappy. She…I’m not happy. 
            
The tree woman continued approaching. Her hair rustled in a wind that encircled only her, and her corpus began to grow and deform in all directions. With widening eyes and a maniacal smile that creaked as it spread, just like a tree branch cracking in a strong wind, she seemed to reach for him.
            
Wassily dug his fingers into the damp earth and felt very small. 
            
Please…I just want to…to breathe. I can’t breathe there. When I leave her, my chest feels lighter again. Whatever fills it…is gone.
            
The wildling woman, more arbour-like in form now, continued to approach. 
            
Breathe? Oh yes. Light chest? 

The sound of cracking tree bark increased as her smile widened to take up her entire face. Her eyes were now enormous, glowing green bulbs, bursting out of her like ripe fruits.

Please! I’ll go. Just let me go. Can’t I have a fresh start? To begin anew? 

Wassily’s back was now against a large tree. The wildling tree woman was now a wall of leaves, vines, and branches, with a raving, wild-eyed face at the center, and there was no place to go.

I heard. You didn’t say fresh. You said: A hollow and clear cave. 

Wassily felt the edge of his memory shift, as though trying to quickly solve a riddle. He hadn’t said those words aloud. 

Or, did I?

He tried to stand up, but he couldn’t seem to get his footing. He tried to move his hands up the tree behind him, to brace to stand, but couldn’t get a grip. 

However you said it, I heard it. 

The wildling woman’s face and body surrounded him now. All was dark except for the glow of her green eyes, and this time, he could see a flicker of an orange flame, right at the center. He fumbled against the tree and pushed with his legs, but he felt stuck in some kind of thick mud. He looked down and realized that he couldn’t see his feet. They were swallowed by the wet earth, being absorbed. He tried to move his arms against the tree, and as he did, he heard the same creaking sound, only this time it seemed to match his own movements. He was growing into the tree.

He found that he could struggle no longer. The wind that had encircled only the wildling woman now surrounded him as well. The smell of wet earth infused his body, and the entirety of him became a tactile expression of the permanence of the woods. The rigid roughness of the bark grew into his brain, and it became difficult to think. 

He tried to breathe and could not, because his chest gradually sank into his form and became concave, a gaping, clear hollow in the tree. 

Time passed, though it was difficult to say how much, and he didn’t see the wildling woman again. Seasons were muted within the woods, and existence held constant and without change. From where he stood, he could see through a small gap in the woods, and so far away it appeared as a dollhouse, stood the home where Frieda lived. Sometimes he thought he could see a slight shimmer in colour and knew it must have been her, coming out to hang the washing or pick vegetables. From this distance, it was difficult to make out any forgetfulness for which to fault her.

​Wassily was now a fixed point, a hollow in the forest, forever empty and clear. He watched as two crows flew once again in perfect synchronization through a clearing in the treetops. and away into the sky. His eyes grew tired and strained, and he longed for a dash of the laudanum. He tried to blink, but he couldn’t, nor could he look away from the crows. They broke their synchronized flight pattern and landed on two opposite tree branches. One spread its wings wide and emitted a warning call, a shrill siren that filled the space. It alighted from the branch and seemed to briefly hover motionless in the air before it dove like a bird of prey on its nearby mate, plunging its beak into its black-feathered chest. The crow screeched and plummeted from its perch, a plume of feathers and blood swallowed by a bank of branches. Wassily waited for the expected weak yet final thud of the corpse, but it never hit the ground. 
 
Eleanor Keisman

Eleanor Keisman is an American writer and author living in Vienna, Austria. Her poetry, essays, and short stories have appeared in Tough Crime, The Bangalore Review, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, The Wild Umbrella, as well as adapted for podcast in The Other Stories. Her climate fiction novella, New Animal, won the Novella Award with Broken Tribe Press and was published in August 2025.