A very short story
All my posts this season are “inspired by” a letter of the alphabet!

But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.

He sighs. Yonder is a stupid word, he thinks. It’s neither here nor there. He chuckles at his poor joke. The teacher raises an eyebrow in his direction. He puts his head down and tries to look studious. He isn’t a fan of Shakespeare, from what he’s read of Romeo and Juliet so far. Why they have to study a 400-or-so-year-dead poet is beyond him. Oh, he thinks, beyond, that sounds a bit like yonder. He supposes yonder means kind of far away, just out of reach, but maybe you can see the thing or the place, or imagine it’s just around the corner, or just beyond the hill that you can see. A-ha!

The A-ha comes out as a noise which causes his teacher to whip her head around to glare at him. Tentatively, he puts up his hand. Yes? she asks, waspish.

Is… is yonder like beyond? Some of his classmates titter, and receive the teacher’s tilt of the head and this time a double eyebrow-raise. When there is silence, she redirects her gaze to him. Well, yes, I suppose they are connected. That’s a clever observation. They’re both related to being over there, far, further, aren’t they? And when Romeo says… He’s not sure if he’s allowed to smile, it might look smug, so his face chooses to blush instead. She gives him an almost imperceptible nod, and the class continues.

In the playground at break, he receives no end of goading… Hey, see that girl. Which one? That one yonder… or I bet you can’t land this bottle in yonder dustbin… or Where do you live? In yonder block of flats?

He shrugs it off, but it starts to get tiresome. So he wanders off to a quieter corner of the playground, out of reach of the jibes. Out of reach, yonder, beyond the cat-calling. He is no stranger to being bullied. Most of the time he can ignore it, and this is one of those times. Those kids are just a bit stupid, he assumes. Having transferred to the school mid-year, he barely knows anyone well and due to the fact that he has two Mums and no Dad, combined with the one time he called a teacher Mum, his below average abilities in virtually all subjects except Art, and his inability to pronounce the letter R, his peers have material to last a lifetime. Or what feels like a lifetime, just to get to the end of the school year. He doesn’t feel bad about himself, yet. But they’re wearing him down.

So from time to time, he wishes he could escape. But yonder is too far away, you can’t touch it. It’s not within his grasp. And would it even be any better? He looks up at the clouds scudding across the sky and wishes he could fly.

So, he gets a foothold towards the bottom of the fence surrounding the playground and begins to climb. He wants to be closer to the sky. He can’t see his classmates now, but hears laughing as he loses his footing a number of times before he reaches the top of the fence. He can perch awkwardly on a type of square pillar which makes the corner of the fencing. Next to it is a beech tree, outside the boundary of the school, and eminently climbable. He looks back and makes his decision. He reaches towards a sturdy branch, and gripping it, he steps off the pillar, his right foot finding a limb and from there on out it is plain sailing. He manages to climb a couple of metres and stops for a breather, wedging himself between the branches. He feels them supporting him, cradling him. He feels the breeze which makes the leaves rustle comfortingly. Looking up through the branches, he can make out the clouds and flashes of sunlight and he breathes. As he turns his head, he notices that the school building, yonder, appears small, insignificant; his classmates now staring up at him, like so many mice, running around and squeaking with excitement and disbelief. Somehow all of that is muted as he looks back up to the sky with a new perspective. He feels becalmed. Smiling, he settles, his back to the tree trunk and realises that they can’t touch him. He is yonder, far from their reach. There is another way to experience life. And in the unpleasant moments that are bound to come, that’s all he needs to remember.

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Y is For…

A note on the podcast. I mention that the Spanish word yerna does not exist. It actually does, but is used in Latin American countries, not in Spain, to mean nuera (daughter-in-law). Apologies.