Riddle

We’re still in Berlin, but I’ve been thinking about a walk I took a couple of weeks ago while I was in Ireland. An odd thing happened.

Let me tell you about it in this week’s flash fiction.

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I did a double take when I walked through the rainbow. They’re always far away, aren’t they?

Turns out, they’re not, they’re just a lot smaller than everyone thinks.

This one was barely 6 foot high at its zenith, meaning my head passed through the violet and indigo bands.

Pretty amazing.

But rainbow or not, it was pissing rain, so I left my phone in my pocket, rather than risking a selfie and drowning the poor thing.

That must be why you don’t see pictures of small rainbows. It all makes sense when you think about it.

Things were different on the other side of it, though.

I didn’t notice at first because of all the rain everywhere, but I realised that someone—something—was following me in the field beside the road.

When I moved, it moved. When I stopped, it stopped. My first thought was leprechauns because I couldn’t see what it was, so it had to be small (and, you know, the rainbow).

I waited where I was for a while, then started walking again, keeping my eyes on where I had thought I’d seen something. The hair stood up on the back of my neck, because other than the rain twitching the grass, all I could see was spots of grass being flattened as if the invisible man were strolling through the field beside me.

The next thing was that I realised I wasn’t getting wet, despite the rain. I was freezing and getting colder with every step, but apparently untouched by the rain.

It had to have something to do with the rainbow, so I turned around to make sure it was still there and wasn’t also following me.

It was still where I’d passed through it, but there was something else, too.

On the ground, equally distant from it in the other direction, was a shadow.

I looked at my feet to confirm my suspicion. It was my shadow.

That’s when it made sense to me. I hadn’t passed into some other world where leprechauns were stalking me. There was no otherworldly nonsense. I’d been reflected and refracted, that was all. Split into my component parts and spat out again.

I felt cold because one part of me was gaining altitude as the rainbow reflected some of me upwards. I was dry because another part was travelling further down into the ground with every step I took.

There was no invisible man in the field. It was the weight of my own footsteps, which had been displaced from my actual body, which was flattening the grass.

The shadow was refracted to travel in the opposite direction. I just needed to go back through the rainbow to be whole again.

I started running towards it, hoping to crash into my shadow as it, in turn, raced towards me.

The rain was stopping, and the rainbow was getting small and fainter.

I ran faster, accompanied by the sound of my footsteps from the empty field.

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In other news this week, German punk-post-punks, Joseph Boys, have announced their new album will be out in August. The first single will be released tomorrow. Check it out!