Live Encounters Poetry & Writing 16th Anniversary Volume Three
November- December 2025
The Envoys, story by Margaret Kiernan.
The Envoys
“Bad- luck came in threes,” thought Brianna. She had got news of a third project not accepting her work. Rightly cheesed off, she grabs her coat, stuffs the letter into a pocket, takes her dog’s lead and whistles for him to follow her, as she heads out the door.
She drives her battered car towards the mountain, she parks up near a hill path, beside the abandoned miner’s cottage. Getting out, she clips the lead on Sam, zips up her coat and starts walking. She gazes at the cottage as she goes by, she could almost swear that the curtains had changed.
It was one of those quirky things about her, she noticed random things.
Two weeks ago, as she walked Sam along this mountain road, she had stopped in her tracks to look at the vacant house, with its red tin roof. She had photographed it then, as she did many times before, in different light.
Now she pulls out her phone, scrolls through the photo gallery to check something. The phone is too low in charge; she will have to wait. Tying her boot laces tighter, she heads away up the path.
Later when she returns down, she watches for signs of life around the cottage. There are none, only a rubble-filled gulley in a garden, which had long lost its boundaries.
She sped away in a hurry to get home, to charge her phone and check her own memory out.
Brianna sits at the kitchen table, pushes aside the lunch things, the single soup bowl, the side plate with an uneaten apple – quarter. She pulls up the photo gallery on her phone. She swipes away until she comes to her last photo taken of the cottage. Right there, the evidence she seeks. Yikes, the curtains were drawn that day.
She checks the clock on the wall. Soon it will be dark, too late to head up the mountain again today. She decides she will go up to the cottage next day, with a torch and Sam her trusty German Shepherd.
Next day, when Brianna steps out of her car, she does not clip the lead on Sam. He bounds away over the heather, yelping and carefree.
She takes her time, walks, and watches. In her jacket pocket is her powerful mini-lite torch. Brianna switches on her camera and lets the video app. run on. The front door of the house is firmly closed, she walks around the back, avoiding the puddles. The back door is closed, she turns the doorknob, it is not locked. Brianna pushes the door in and stops in her tracks. She whistles for Sam; he bounds in, brushing his damp hairs on her jeans.
He noses at a sandwich wrapper lying on the floor. Brianna steps over it into the room. She quickly checks to see if the place is empty, as she checks her phone; the camera video is still running. She twirls her nose at the strong sooty smell in the room. The place is dry but dusty. A box of sepia-coloured photos spills out on a table.
Sam noses his way around. Brianna follows him into a front room. A single bed is covered in baby clothes. Yellow ribboned shawls and dinky knitted jackets and bootees. Light from outside spills in, this is the window that caught Brianna’s attention yesterday. Pale tartan curtains hang limply.
Brianna is overcome with sadness at the sight of the baby clothes. She takes deep breaths to steady herself.
Suddenly, the penny drops for her, someone has recently been here. She goes to pick up the sandwich wrapper in the other room, she looks closely and sees that the eat-before-date on it has passed only days previously. It was from an outlet in a city miles away.
The clues begin to add up that someone has been to visit the cottage recently. Are those photos on the table connected to the visitor, Brianna wonders.
The last family that lived here had emigrated overseas, long ago.
She picked up photographs from the pile, gazed at people she did not recognise, there were formal dress poses and others were of children in an orchard wearing white pinafores. It is surprising photos were left behind; Brianna puzzles to herself.
Realising she is now a trespasser, and in someone else’s story, in their house, she leaves quickly. Closing the back door, she carefully inserts a piece of paper between the door and the jamb.
Sam follows her back to the car. She vows to herself to keep an eye on the house; she will walk this way again soon. It was one day later when she did.
He saw her before she saw him, or at least that is how they told the story afterwards. She drove into the usual parking space, near the cottage. Getting out, she was about to let Sam out, when she heard a voice call out, “Hello there.”
She saw a man sitting on the juniper- covered earth ditch. He was open faced and smiling. He looked her age, mid-thirties, brown haired.
Sam, still inside the car, began to bark loudly.
“Hi,” Brianna shouted back, “I am going to let my dog out. He is not cross; he will not bother you, are you new here,” she asked the stranger.
“I am, and in other ways I’m ancient here,” he replied, in a clipped New York accent. “My name is Andrew Knox. My people emigrated from here many years ago. I am pleased to meet someone hereabouts. I was here last week on my way to Galway.”
Brianna stepped closer, said her name, and put out her hand, he took it, and he said in an awkward voice, “I am glad I came back today.”
Two hours later, they said goodbye. He wrote his phone number on a piece of paper; it was the paper she previously had inserted into the door jamb.
© Margaret Kiernan
Born in Mexico, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal lives in California and works in Los Angeles. He is the author of Raw Materials (Pygmy Forest Press), Make the Water Laugh (Rogue Wolf Press), and Peering into the Sun (Poet’s Democracy). His recent poetry has been featured in Blue Collar Review, Live Encounters, Mad Swirl, Oddball Magazine, and Unlikely Stories.
A delightful read leaving me wanting more. The details in this story allowed me to see and feel the cottage and surrounding area. Does Brianna meet up with this lad in the future? I hope he is dog lover too.