필사 모드: A Dystopian Short Story: The Quiet Town

One

The town where Saira was born was called Stillwater.

True to its name, the place was always still. Even when the wind blew, the leaves trembled without a sound, and the brook slipped between the stones without so much as a murmur. The people regarded this as the pride of their town. In Stillwater, no one ever raised their voice. When they laughed, only the corners of their mouths rose. When they wept, only their shoulders shook. A morning greeting was a slight tilt of the head, and a farewell was nothing more than an open palm held up in the air.

Saira grew up believing this was simply the way of things. From the time she was an infant, whenever she began to cry, her mother would gently but firmly cover her mouth. The covering hand was warm, but it never trembled. That hand was telling her something: that sound was dangerous, that if you made a sound, someone would hear, and that if someone heard, there was no telling what might happen.

The town had an old rule. It was carved into a grey stone that stood in the middle of the square. The letters had been worn half away by wind and rain, but the people knew them by heart.

"Sound breaks the peace. Silence keeps us safe. Whoever owns a voice must leave the town."

Whenever Saira passed before that stone, she slowed her steps. She wanted to trace the letters with her finger, but she never once did. It always felt as though someone was watching. In Stillwater, someone always was.

The town's days flowed by in stillness. People plowed their fields, wove their cloth, drew their water. And not one of them hummed a tune. Even the children ran soundlessly when they played tag. To call someone, they drew near and tapped a shoulder lightly. Anyone raised in Stillwater learned, without being taught, to walk while smothering even the sound of their own footsteps.

Saira often wondered. Were other towns like this? She had heard that people lived beyond the mountains, too. Were they this quiet as well? But she could not let such wonderings pass her lips. Even a question was a sound.

Two

The first time Saira heard a true sound was in the autumn of her twelfth year.

That day she had gone into the forest north of the town to gather mushrooms. The grown-ups told her to go no further than the edge of the trees. Go any deeper, they said, and you would lose your way. But Saira knew that the plumpest mushrooms always grew in the deeper places. So she decided to go just a little, only a very little, further in.

As the trees grew denser, the air itself changed. And then Saira stopped.

Somewhere, a sound was coming.

It was a kind of sound she had never heard in the town. High, clear, breaking off and resuming, rising up and then drifting gently down. At first Saira did not know what it was. Her chest beat strangely. It was less like fear than like something waking up inside her.

She followed the sound, and there at the tip of a branch sat a small bird. It was a plain little thing, grey and brown all mixed together. And yet from that tiny body flowed a sound so large and so beautiful.

The bird was singing.

Saira stood rooted to the spot for a long while. The song stopped and began again. The bird did not seem to care whether anyone was listening. It was not afraid. It simply drew out what was inside it and set it free in the open air.

Carefully, Saira took one step closer. Leaves rustled beneath her feet. At a sound that would have made her flinch in the town, the bird did not startle in the least. Instead it cocked its head toward her and sang once more at the top of its voice, as if inviting her to sing along.

Saira parted her lips slightly. But then she closed them again. Old habit, old fear, pressed her lips heavy. Holding the bird's song in her chest, Saira quietly turned back.

On the way home, Saira held a question for the first time. The bird makes its sound and is not sent away. Why, then, must a person leave? That small question echoed and echoed within her chest.

Three

That question fell like a small seed into the deepest part of Saira's heart.

She told no one about the bird. The moment the words left her lips, she felt, her mother's hand would cover her mouth again. Instead, whenever she was alone, Saira recalled that song. Merely recalling it warmed her chest.

At night, beneath her blanket, Saira would part her lips ever so slightly and breathe out slowly. She made no sound. She only imagined what it would feel like to make one. Like the bird, high and clear, breaking off and resuming.

One night, without meaning to, Saira made a very small sound. It was close to a hum, almost like breath itself. Startled, she shut her mouth. Her heart pounded. For a long time she listened in the dark. No one came. Nothing happened.

She made the sound once more. A little longer this time.

Still nothing happened.

That night Saira felt something inside her slowly come loose, like a knot that had been tied tight for years easing apart one strand at a time.

Four

Time passed, and Saira turned seventeen.

In those years she had nurtured a secret of her own. It was a song. A song she had never let anyone hear, sung only in the forest, in its deepest reaches, where only the birds could listen. Once a week, using mushrooms as her excuse, she went into the trees, and there she made her sound to her heart's content. At first her own voice felt strange to her. It cracked and quivered. But as time went on, the voice grew firm, grew soft, and carried far.

Saira came to understand this: a voice is not lost when it goes unused. It is only blocked from being used. Loosen what blocks it, and the voice returns whenever you call.

Then one day she met an old man in the forest.

He was sitting on a fallen tree, listening to Saira's song. When she saw him, she froze where she stood. She had been found out. Now the town would know. Now she would have to leave.

But the old man did not grow angry. Instead, deep wrinkles gathered at his eyes as he smiled. And slowly, very slowly, he opened his mouth.

"It has been a long time," he said, "since I heard a person sing."

It was the first human voice Saira had ever heard outside the town. Low, rough, rusted as though from long disuse. But unmistakably a human voice.

Five

The old man's name was Doan.

Long ago, Doan had been driven out of Stillwater. In his youth, he said, he had sung in the square. Only once. To celebrate a friend's wedding. For that single song, he had been made to leave.

"I thought to myself, back then," Doan said slowly. He had to pause after every sentence; a voice long unused tires quickly. "What great wrong had I done? Had the song harmed anyone? No one was hurt. The only thing was that the people were afraid."

Saira sat down beside him. "Afraid of what?"

"Of the power that sound holds," Doan said. "There is power in a voice. When one person makes a sound, another person wants to make one too. And when sounds gather like that, they become something no one can easily silence. Those who ruled the town were afraid of that. So from the very beginning, from the smallest sound, they shut it all away."

Saira turned the meaning of silence over in her mind for a long time. Silence was not peace. Silence was fear. They had all lived in dread of one another, covering one another's mouths.

Doan went on. "It may have begun with good intentions. Long ago, I heard, there was a great quarrel in this town. People shouted and fought one another until something terrible happened. And so someone must have said: let us all hold our tongues. Then there will be nothing to quarrel over. That is how the silence began."

"But that..." Saira let the words trail off.

"Yes. In trying to stop the quarreling, they stopped the sharing of hearts as well. In trying to hold back fear, they held back even the voices that share love. When the medicine is too strong, it becomes more fearsome than the sickness."

"But why did you not leave for good? You stayed here in this forest. You could have gone farther, to some place where it was allowed to make a sound."

For a long while Doan did not answer. Then, looking toward the town, he said quietly:

"Because someone had to wait. I believed that one day a child like you would come. A child who would not stop singing. A child who would return to the town and open the locked door from the inside. There are doors that will not open from knocking outside. Doors only the one within can open."

Saira felt the weight of those words in silence. Perhaps Doan had been waiting for her, here in this forest, through all those long years.

Six

That winter, a great sickness spread through Stillwater.

The illness struck the old and the young first. The people suffered in silence. They bit their lips to keep from so much as moaning. The healer handed out medicine, but medicine alone was not enough. Hardest of all to bear was not the sickness itself, but the fact that no one could offer anyone a word of comfort. Even beside the dying, families could only hold hands and let their shoulders shake.

Saira thought of Doan. A few days earlier, the last time she had gone to the forest, Doan had coughed badly. She was worried about him, but as the town's sickness deepened, she had no chance to go to the woods.

Saira's little brother fell ill as well. Night after night, he burned with fever and broke out in cold sweat. Saira held his hand and stayed awake through the dark. Watching his small chest rise and fall in labored breaths, her heart caved in. She longed to do something, anything, but there was nothing she could do. The rule of silence did not loosen, even at the sickbed.

Saira looked at her mother's face. Her mother, too, kept her lips pressed tight, letting only soundless tears fall. That silence, which could not offer even a single line of a lullaby while her child suffered, felt to Saira unbearably cruel.

Then one deep night, her brother's breathing grew faster and faster. Saira did not know what to do. And then she remembered the bird's song she had heard in the forest, the song she had sung with Doan.

She hesitated. If she sang, the town would know. She would have to leave. But her brother was in pain, here and now.

Saira made up her mind.

She opened her mouth. And very softly, soft enough to reach only her brother's ear, she began to sing. It was a lullaby. A song she had made herself in the forest, the only one of its kind in all the world.

To her astonishment, her brother's labored breathing slowly settled. The forehead damp with cold sweat eased little by little. Listening to the song, he fell asleep. A deep and peaceful sleep.

Seven

The next morning, her brother's fever had broken.

Saira did not insist that the song had saved him. Perhaps the medicine had only then taken hold. Perhaps it was merely good fortune. But one thing was certain. While the song was being sung, her brother was not alone. Saira was not alone. In the midst of fear, the two of them had reached each other for the first time.

Saira decided to tell her mother what had happened that night. She could hide it no longer. Her mother's hand might cover her mouth again. But Saira was no longer afraid of that hand.

"Mother," she said, making her voice heard before her mother for the first time, "I can sing."

Her mother went rigid where she stood. Her eyes widened, her lips trembled. For a long time she could not say a word. Then slowly, with a trembling hand, she cupped Saira's cheek. The hand that had once covered her mouth was now cradling her face.

"Your grandmother, too," her mother said, her voice very small but unmistakably making a sound, "your grandmother sang. When I was your age. And so she left. I... I only did not want to lose you..."

Her mother could not finish. But Saira understood. Her mother's silence had been love. A love expressed in the wrong way, but love all the same.

Eight

The rumor spread quietly.

The story that Saira had soothed her brother with a song passed from mouth to mouth, or rather from gesture to gesture. At first the people were afraid. A child who had broken the rule. A child who would put the town in danger. Some of them kept their distance from her.

But the sickness still would not leave the town, and the people grew weary. They were all worn out from suffering in silence, from sending their loved ones away in silence. Then, one night, in another house, a child fell gravely ill. The mother of that house came to find Saira. Without a word she took Saira's hand and led her into her home.

Saira sang at that child's side. A little louder this time. The mother of the house listened too. And when the song ended, tears were running down her cheeks. They were not silent tears. For the first time, she was weeping aloud.

That weeping was not sorrow. It was the sound of something long blocked finally bursting free.

After that night, something began to change. The next day, another house called for Saira; the day after, yet another. Saira sang beside those who suffered. The song did not cure every illness. But in the rooms where the song flowed, people were no longer alone. Even beside the dying, families could now offer a last farewell in trembling voices, instead of only holding hands.

And Saira knew. She was opening the locked door from the inside. The very door of which Doan had spoken.

Nine

When spring came, Stillwater was no longer the Stillwater of old.

The sickness slowly withdrew along with the spring. The town had sent away many, but those who survived had become different people than before. The people were still cautious. Raising one's voice did not come easily. But now, when a child cried, the parents patted its back instead of covering its mouth. When someone was sad, another would sing softly at their side. In the square, now and then, very now and then, a hum could be heard.

One evening, the people of the town gathered in the square and sang together. At first one or two, then many. It was a clumsy song, and the notes did not match. But within that song were hearts that had been locked away for far too long. As they sang, some laughed and some wept. Never before had so many sounds rung out at once in Stillwater.

Saira did not leave. No one told her to leave. The grey stone in the middle of the square still stood where it always had, but the people no longer knew its letters by heart. Someone even laid a small bunch of wildflowers upon it.

One day Saira went into the forest to find Doan. She wanted to tell him that the town had changed, that the door had opened. But on the fallen tree where he used to sit, no one was there. Beside the tree rose a small mound of earth. A tidy grave, made by hands she did not know. Saira stood before it for a long while. Had Doan left this world without ever seeing the town change? Or had he heard, even from afar, the sound of that singing?

By that grave sat a small bird, singing. A plain little thing of grey and brown, yet making a sound more beautiful than any other.

Saira sang quietly toward the bird. The bird sang back as though in answer. The forest filled with two voices.

Ten

That summer, Saira began taking the town's children into the forest.

At first some parents hesitated. But Saira taught the children to sing. How to imitate the songs of the birds, a lullaby to soothe the heart in sorrow, a light melody to sing in joy. The children's voices were small and trembling at first, but soon they filled the forest.

Saira told the children the story of Doan. A man who had once been made to leave the town for a single song. A man who, even so, never gave up singing, and waited in the forest for someone to come. The children listened with shining eyes.

"Now you do not have to leave," Saira said. "It is all right to sing. As much as you like, without fear."

One child asked timidly, "Really? We truly do not have to leave?"

Saira nodded with a smile. And first, and loudest, she began to sing. One by one the children joined in. Before long the forest was full of countless voices. It was the very sound Doan had waited for, all that time.

And Saira knew. Silence is never peace. True peace comes only when one can make a sound without fear, and when someone lends an ear to that sound.

The town was still called Stillwater. But now it was still and, at the same time, alive.

A Note from the Author

This story began from a single word: silence.

Silence can sometimes look like peace. There is no quarrel, no commotion. But a silence kept because everyone is afraid is not peace; it can be oppression. Conversely, a silence in which people pause to draw breath out of care for one another can be the warmest thing of all. The same stillness becomes something entirely different depending on what it holds within.

What I wanted to portray in Saira's story was not a grand hero. It was simply a child whose heart was moved by the song of a small bird, a single person who found her courage for the first time for the sake of her brother. Change so often begins just like that, in the smallest and most private of places.

To make a sound is not merely to produce noise. It is to tell one another that you are here, and that you know the other is there too. If this short story can ease loose a single small knot tied somewhere in your heart, I would be glad.