The Little Black Book

Elise’s head knocked against the compartment window.

The train lights flickered, brakes screeched. Blinking herself awake, she realised she was the only passenger left, that she had slept through her stop, and the train had pulled into a station she didn’t recognise. The lights were off and twilight smudged the station, with only streetlights stretching along the path to guide the way.

On the seat across the aisle was a little black book, forgotten. She shuffled across and picked it up. The compartment lights went out, the carriage door hissed upon. Stowing the little black book in her coat pocket, she rose and hurried off the train, stepping into the quiet night air of the platform. There, she was alone. There was no movement from the other carriages, nor the station-house. Elise glanced east and west of the platform. There was a man standing at the edge of the path beyond the streetlights, silhouetted against the forest looming at his back.

She inhaled steadily, released, and began to walk towards the silhouette, descending the platform steps. Pausing beneath the final streetlamp, she clutched the Moleskin within her pocket, hesitated.

“What are you waiting for?” he said, voice sinuous: silk and moonlight. “Open the book.” He waded to the fringe of the light, where Elise could make out the tails of his coat wavering in a breeze. He raised his arm into the light, the cuff of his jacket drawn back to reveal the elegant curves of a pale wrist, the slender fingers, and the fountain pen that he offered. The body fine, smooth, deepest onyx; the trim and nib golden. “Take it,” he said.

She did, reaching to open the book to a clean page. The man held his hand up.

“Wait,” he said. “First, open the front cover.”

Elise ran a hand gently over the cover, opened it. Inside, names were scrawled in the left-hand margin. All had a pen stroke through them except the last.

Matthias Cavel.

“Cross it out,” the man said. “It is yours now.”

She drew a single line through the previous owners name, penned her own in elegant cursive.

Elise Belle.

Looking up, she caught the shadow of his smirk. He leaned away from the light.

“Now, write, sketch. As is your wont.” He strode ahead of her, tucking his hands into the pockets of his trousers, dress shoes clacking faintly on the pavement.

“Your name…” Elise said. “What is your name?”

The silhouette paused. His form was slender, tapered, lithe.

“Matthias Cavel.”

She furrowed her brow, looked down at the little black book in her hands. Pages had been torn out, frayed edges marking their epitaphs. Only one remained written on. The ink was smudged, drops splashed across the page, but she could still read it.

$20,000

She turned to a clean sheet, pressing the nib to the paper. Dark ink pooled and spread. The night drew closer, thicker, drinking at the edges of light, snuffing the warm glow of street lamps. She lifted the pen from the paper. Her hand trembled.

Matthias stopped and pivoted in the distance, turning to face her again. “Are you afraid?” he asked. Squinting, Elise could make out the aquiline nose, his pale, sharp chin – that, and the eerie lustre of oval eyes beneath the brim of his top-hat. His cheeks, his jawline, were all contoured and hatched in shadow.

“Turn the page,” he advised.

She turned the page and the street lamps winked on, banishing the darkness beyond a golden haze. Matthias had approached the streetlight again. Elise stared at the blank page, eyes wide, pen inches above the paper. And then she wrote a single word…

Fireflies.

In the forest eaves she saw little globes spark to life, flitting around evening-blue leaves. They lit the night like a canvas of stars.

“Pretty little things,” Matthias Cavel admitted, reaching a hand towards a tiny golden beacon. A firefly alighted there, crossing the dark bridge of his finger. He smiled, shook his hand. The light extinguished. “Hm,” he simpered. Other fireflies were drawn to him, crawling up the black sleeves of his coat to decorate it in constellations.

In the new light, Elise could see the curve of ashen-blonde hair falling over his shoulder, resting against the top of his breast.

She turned the page again, and the fireflies blinked away into darkness. Matthias slowly withdrew his outstretched hand, a sadness seeming to dim the brightness of his eyes, etching itself in the frown of his lips. Elise felt a hollow grief clutch at her, and so again, she wrote…

It began to snow…

Snowflakes started falling.

They caught in her auburn hair: diamonds shimmering in the light of the street lamp, woven through bronze threads. Matthias turned his face up to the white mist and held a palm open to the snowfall. Crystals of ice fell into his hand, melting there, leaving only a silver dew. Elise stepped closer to him. Matthias didn’t shrink away, he stood, oblivious, watching the snow curl through the air. Eventually, he looked at her, the pale bow of his lips remaining parted. Her lips unfurled a delicate smile.

“Have I surprised you, Matthias Cavel?”

He looked down to his damp hand, dried it against the leg of his trousers.

“I was not expecting…” he shook his head. “Come. You must choose.”

“It’s magic,” she whispered.

“It is art.”

He turned and strode into the darkness, towards the tall forest curtain. Elise fell into step beside him, matching the rhythm of his stride. She began to scrawl in the Moleskin once more as she walked. Matthias sniffed, once, twice.

“Geraniums,” he said.

“My favourite.”

Flowers sprang alongside the pathway as they walked.

They were quiet for a moment as they drew nearer the forest. Elise could see purple and violet and blue veins in the leaves; the gnarled, knotted and twisting trunks of tall and short trees. Matthias paused on the path, just before it crossed beneath the arch of the boughs. He turned to Elise, close enough now that she saw all of him. His breath fogged in the air. She swallowed, waited.

“You know the question, yes?” He said.

She nodded.

“So will you take it, the money? It is yours if you should want it.” That same grief crept into his voice. “Tear the page from the little black book, if you do. Else, strike it out.”

“That is what the others did,” she said.

“Yes.”

“And you? What did you choose?”

“Everything.” And she saw the truth of it in the glint of his eyes, the way his face relaxed and the lines fell away. She heard it in the whispered rustling of the forest.

“I won’t.”

“I will not cheat you. The choice is but yours,” he said, his mouth marking a stern line.

Elise scribbled a line through the $20,000, closed the little black book, and clutched it to her chest. “This…This is far more precious.”

He shrugged, amusement etched in the dimples of his sea-shell cheeks. “Perhaps.”

He held out his hand. She took it, and he led her into the forest.