Two Chairs

[Estimated reading time: 4 minutes]

   The night had shrunk. The crackling snaps of the fire were all there was to break the smothering void, and the world around had vanished beyond the reach of the flickering light. Even the constant chirp of crickets had died back. For all she knew, the very earth itself had crumbled behind her. In an uncomfortable way, it felt almost safe. Nothing else existed. Nothing else but them.

   "The two of us, again," she said quietly, without peeling her stare from the flames.

   "Is that a problem?" The other asked, easily.

   She shook her head. Poking at the fire, a fresh wave of heat prickled her skin. The smoke, at least, had the decency to rise, but the lack of wind made the camp feel even smaller. Even more displaced.

   She lowered the stick to her side and continued gazing into the chaotic orange dance. "It's always going to be like this, isn't it." It wasn't a question. And she received no answer.

   Finally, she dragged herself from the hypnosis and on instead to the cloaked figure sitting on the other side. "Why did you show yourself to me?"

   "I didn't," he replied from within his hood, any movement hidden beneath his dark, cascading robes. "You looked at me."

   She knew he was right.

   The need to disconnect herself from that fact put the poker back in her hand. Silence wove through the crackles. Still the man didn't move.

   "Loosen it."

   She relaxed her jaw at the gentle command. "So, you were always there?" She already knew the answer.

   "Yes," he replied anyway, just as easily as before.

   A nod. "...And now..."

   "I always will be."

   Her nod turned to a bitter shake, her lip curled caustically, and her voice suddenly thickened in her throat. "You have changed...everything."

   No remark came. She continued.

   "I see your shadow everywhere. The sun is shining, yours is the longest. I read a book, it falls over the pages. I paint, you darken the palette. I walk in the woods, your shadow moves between the trees. I lie in bed, and your shadow persists even in the dark, blacker than night. Even sitting in good company, your shadow still falls over a chair! In a crowd of people, at a crossroads, in a list of options..." her lip curled further, "there you are."

   Again, no remark.

   "And now," she continued acridly, "while I am alone, with the world shut out, even in peace, you sit there in front of me, staring me in the face."

   "I am not staring."

   She shook her head again. His lack of emotion or shame or anything felt like a hot knife peeling her chest open. "You have changed everything."

   And his lack of response to that boiled her blood hotter.

   Her fists clenched on her knees before she pulled her arms about herself. Closing her eyes, she could pretend for a moment that not even he was there, if she tried hard enough.

   Then his hollow voice spoke up, shattering any attempt. "Time," he offered, "also changes everything."

   "What does that mean?" She asked from behind her arms.

   "Those forests you walk in, they weren't always there. The night used to be darker. Books never used to exist."

   "Mhm. And what are you saying?"

   "That you will learn to stop looking for me."

   "Looking for you?!"

   "Looking for me. Then," his voice almost seemed to rise, but she conceded that she probably imagined the tone, "once again, things will change. On a scale far smaller than the rest, but one that matters far, far more."

   She peered over her arms. "...And until then?"

   He didn't move. It seemed it was his hood that was speaking. "Until then, you try. You acknowledge that I exist and make peace with it, rather than fight against yourself. The first step to change is realising the root of the problem. And I," the hood tilted slightly, "am not that root."

   Then he moved. It startled her, but she didn't react, even as his long, bony finger moved smoothly through the flames. "Remember: you invited me to your fire."

   "I did no such thing," she spat, then black, hollow eye-sockets turned up at her from beneath the hood.

   "There are two chairs."

 

This story is not to be copied or reproduced without my written permission. Copyright © 2025 Kim Wedlock

Poison

[Estimated reading time: 6 minutes]

   Grey. There wasn't much else to see; shadows and shapes tangled in amongst themselves without depth or rationality. A fog hung, perhaps – real or insinuated – and the smell of rot clung to the dirt walls. Insects skittered, chittering cold through the sick air, but not even they thrived. Only the thick, knotted roots of an ancient tree seemed to survive the unnatural miasma.
   The sharp, weak whine of an agonised wolf cut white through the darkness in testament. But the cold-skinned crone ignored it.
   Red eyes stared from beneath a carapace hood, and no expression creased her face as she forced the smoking poison into the wolf's mouth. Only the marks on her skin glowed blacker. From one beast to another she moved, unnoticed by the pack even as she gripped their muzzles in her claws, until the whining faded to a suffering whimper.
   Then she rose, turned, and left the tainted den without a backward glance.
   But though the sun blinded her exit, setting a harsh cast through the forest, it wasn't the light that held her steps. It was the stare of the thriving tree, boring into her back. Now, at this, she turned.
   Silver leaves waved in a breeze that didn't touch her skin, and the branches seemed to move, reaching towards her in anger. Imposing. Condemning. It watched her, absorbed and marked her presence and intention as much as she did, it.
   Then, coldly, the crone turned her back and walked away.
   The forest didn't move for her, and no animal crossed her path. No bird sang nearby, and no tree swayed. But her eyes didn't see the woods as they did, and her split ears didn't hear the wind; other sounds and lights guided her, leading her gliding footsteps through the mottled shadows, roots, fungus, until she reached at last her tidy, secreted garden.
   Stepping over the low stone boundaries, she moved through the pockets of displaced plants with spots, spines and dusty coloured leaves, eyeing them critically with belt knife in hand. A select few she harvested while the forest turned a blind eye; orange thistle leaves, oleander stems, datura root and morble, while ignoring the corpse of a greedy rabbit which would go on to nurture her toxic garden.
   Again, the forest shied from her as she ventured on with her cuttings, until a crooked old pigeon tower emerged from the trees.
   The door didn't whine as she stepped inside, and neither did the floorboards creak. But the cauldron she hung immediately over the fireplace began its hiss and bubble before the flames were truly alive, hungrily eating away all the silence. And so it continued for three sleepless days and nights while the crone steamed, smoked, crushed and bled the herbs, distilling and concentrating the brew until it changed from black to red to purple, and coughed its smoky haze that even the soaked cloth over her sharp-toothed mouth could barely filter out.
   And after those three days, when the poison had settled, out into the forest she trekked again.
   She felt the cave before she saw it, and between those two moments, the silver tree's stare. It found her quickly, as though it had been waiting, and its animosity, if not its strength, had intensified.
   The crone didn't spare it or its protective aura a look. She stooped again into the familiar shadows below, and grey, tangled shapes rose around her once more. But, this time, silence. Not a whine or whimper stained the dark.
   Relief seeped into her blood and slowed her heart, and her grip on the newest batch of poison loosened. 'It's done,' her long tongue clicked as a sigh eased through her nose. There was no need to dose the wolves again. It was over. She had won.
   She turned and stalked back to the bright mouth of the forest, heart beating a little slower, to wander again and see where else the colours and lights would guide her hand.
   Then a sudden lash snatched itself around her throat.
   Cold rushed through her veins as her hand thrust down to her belt knife before thought could install itself. The root tightened just as fast while her fingers fumbled for the handle, their tips stabbing at her skin in search of the heat coursing beneath it. Too many clumsy hacks it took while the grey became pierced by flashing pinpricks before she freed herself of its leeching grip.
   Then the ground rushed towards her.
   She hacked again at the tightening grip on her ankle, breath barely returning to her lungs as she kicked and pulled herself backwards, more reaching towards her, snaking around her wrists and waist. The knife was jerked hard from her hand, black blood streaming from her lashed fingers.
   She found the poison instead.
   The roots fought against her, but only helped to unstopper the glass. The purple fluid spilled over both her hand and the tendrils, black smoke darkening the haze around them. Her flesh burned, but the roots blanched. A crackling scream filled the den, woody skin flaking from the rapidly retreating roots as they shook and flailed like warring snakes.
   The crone stole her chance, stumbling and clawing her way out of the cave.
   The screaming waned as the forest blinded her, and the flood of fresh air forced her panic to a stop. With a heaving breath, she leaned wearily against the mouth of the cave and sank down to the moss. The tree, she felt, heard, tasted, as she rubbed her burned hand, was dying. And as she witnessed the last of its force flee, fatigue and relief overcame her.

   She woke only at the tug on her hood and warm, heavy breath on her face. Red eyes winced open until a sudden wet lash across her face forced them shut. Then another. Then the sound of soft, affectionate whining eased the muscles in her face.
   The wolves sniffed around her, nudging her shoulder, licking the blood from her hands, the sweat from her face, and she saw, as she looked again, the changes to their bodies. Some now had bony ridges protruding along their spines; others grew what looked like antlers from the tops and sides of their heads, and another peered at her along a line of thorns and spikes rising evenly down its nose and muzzle. Tumours, their shapes and natures transformed into something benign. A sickness turned to strength.
   Her lips curled into a sharp-toothed smile and she ruffled their fur with her claws, until drifting, silver leaves drew all eyes back up to the tree.
   The evil had fled. But, she knew all too well, it would invade something else soon enough. Darkness like that wasn't destroyed in one strike. It grew. It thought. It planned. With every infection defeated, its power fell weaker, but it was not finished yet. Still it survived. In time, yes, it would be captured and banished...
   A sharp tooth pierced her lip.
   Assuming, of course, she could find its new host again...

 

This story is not to be copied or reproduced without my written permission. Copyright © 2025 Kim Wedlock

Balance

   There is an ache. A loss of something I'd never even noticed was there.

   Only one foot is left on the ground; the other can find no purchase; no rock, no water, no cloud. I look down to find something, anything, to steady myself upon, but though the imbalance is enough to throw me hard into the darkest gravity, my attention instead is pulled away by something else. Something new. Something silent.

   Like the smoke of a candle, the steam of a cup of tea, light is trailing away from me. My chest is torn open.

   And yet, even as I feel the wind growing, whipping, roaring around me, a beast of so many teeth, claws and thunder...I feel calm.

   Light flows freely, softly, slowly, untouched by the storm, and though a piece of me is flowing away with it, there is some kind of stillness. Some kind of knowing, some kind of assurance. And the pain of what is being pulled away seems cooled and soothed by its very passing.

   And then, I find, I am balanced on one leg.

Rest in peace, Mum.

 

This story is not to be copied or reproduced without my written permission. Copyright © 2024 Kim Wedlock

Ghost

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes

Once upon a blue moon,

In the creeping, dawning light,

Listen through the washing ocean,

The breeze and birds in flight.

Hide behind the steady grass,

The growth along the strand,

And peer out through the early mist,

And whipping of the sand.

If your heart is steady,

And intentions pure and free,

You may just yet spot her,

Gliding by the sea.

But should you be so lucky,

Brace both breath and shield,

For never will her haunting eyes

Once grip your soul then yield.

And never will her mysteries

To any be revealed.

    The shore was lost in a cloud of mist. Dunes were vague shapes against the bleak, pink sky, and gannets stirring from their floating rest to preen and squabble were little more than bleak shapes in the murk. Only the light of the fading moon reflected in the endless, grey water gave any measure of their presence. The stillness was unbreakable; the waves themselves, stroking the shore, were insignificant against the vastness of the dawn. No crab, no tern, no glitter in the water could disturb it. Nor even the figure that ghosted through amongst them.

    She paused in the wash. Storm-coloured eyes narrowed, fixated on a single pebble between her feet. Slowly, she crouched and gazed at it, head cocked critically; from above, from the side, shielding away the diffused light with a painted hand. Then, her lips twisted.

    Too blue.

    Her interest passed.

    Pebble forgotten, the phantom rose again, brushing back a mane of sunbleached gold, and resumed her careful stride through the waves, attention fixed to the sand. Stone after shell after pebble she studied - too yellow, too green, too pink - and not once did the world react to her. Birds didn't stir, didn't squawk, didn't dive; hermit crabs didn't scuttle, fish didn't scatter. The fog didn't lift. The sea didn't cease its waves. She was barely there, yet completely present.

    Eerie, people called her, forever wandering the coasts and forests like a ghost. She belonged everywhere some said, others, nowhere, but any brave attempt to understand her, almost always beginning with a comment on her soft steps, never left their tongue once her gaze drifted onto them. Steel, silver, grey, storm; they had become as much folklore as she had herself. There was a sadness in them, some said, a 'kindness laced with hurt', with or by hard-earned wisdom, and tightly vaulted. Her thoughts, always, were deep and veiled. That mystery left many uncomfortable - though far less so than her silent power.

    But she never wasted any thought on those opinions. Peaceful solitude and motion were her greatest companions, and her mind ran far deeper than the trivial questions and rumours of strangers.

    A meagre gust of breeze parted the mist only briefly, and again, she stopped and stooped. And, again, the moment of consideration she granted the pearlescent shell resulted in the same dissatisfied twist of her lips.

    Too purple.

    And on she waded.

     The shore was soon broken and lost among spears of rock, and though she climbed and leapt between them, ignored by the birds surveying from their peaks, they quickly became impassable. Water swirled treacherously in eddies between them, and the colours of sand and shell vanished beneath the foam.

    A hint of defeat touched her heart, but she paid it no heed. She would simply have to turn.

    Her path diverted inland, and her ceaseless attention turned now to the tussocks of tall, pale grass that gripped the sand in the young dunes ahead. But their blades, she could see already, were each too yellow.

    The defeat returned, and a sudden weariness crashed over her like a tidal wave, forcing her to a stop once sand lay beneath her feet again. Heavily, she loosened her pack from her shoulders, jingling with strings of carved pebbles, crystalline stones and wooden rings as it dropped, and retrieved a waterskin from its folds. The water was cool and welcome on her lips, but only now she paused did she feel the ache in her legs. Her tired eyes turned across to the rising sun. How long had she been walking? Three hours? Five? Any normal day she'd have sat and enjoyed the waves, calmed herself and attuned to their sounds. But this time, her pursuit was dire.

    'Dire,' she thought bitterly, 'or frustrating?'

    Her eyes passed back over the vast coast as she drank, its distant end lost though the mist was fading, then back towards the land sprawling ahead of her. Even in the low dawn light, the forest sank her heart. Beautiful, green, lush in spite of the salt spray, and even less likely to gift what she sought. Colours grew more vibrant inland, more varied, more beautiful. A rich palette, endless and wonderful. Too rich.

    A deep sigh passed her lips as she lowered the waterskin with a heavy hand. But on she would go.

    The skin returned to her pack, the pack to her painted shoulders, and her feet trudged on, keeping close to the grasses where the roots trapped the sand. Dunes soon gave way to compact ground, compact ground softened with grass, and grass thinned out as trees rose around her. The light dropped, the sound of the sea faded, and birdsong changed from coastal chirps to treetop warbles until she found herself ghosting through a new world. Her heart steadily lifted again as the muffled forest's beauty seeped into her bones, and the absence of a horizon leant new adventure.

    Mist still hung, trapped by the shadows, and wouldn't burn off until the day grew older and the sun peaked higher through the leaves. It was a different kind of cool, one rich with new scents and texture, and the morning seemed to regain its youth. So too did her enthusiasm. There were colours everywhere: shades of green overhead, some rich with yellow, others blue, some even with tones of red; barks of grey, silver and brown, speckled with spots both lighter and darker; lost feathers of grey or iridescent black, flower buds of pink and light blue. Had the year been later, snowdrops would have littered the wider openings, but instead there were only the last purple signs of helleborine and neottia.

    Not for the first time, she kicked herself. But there was nothing she could do about the season, nor her previous winter's sickness, no matter how avidly she assured herself now that there had been. Instead, her pursuit reimposed itself and her attention fixated now onto patches of lichen covering the trees, both standing and fallen, live and rotting, and she began her battle with the light. Every patch that peaked her hopes revealed itself after far too long a moment of consideration to be too green, or too red, or, in one especially frustrating case, too purple.

    Curses fell from her lips. A trick of the light. Natural contrast. Forest-induced colour-blindness. And, again, she kicked herself.

    An hour had passed before she shrugged her pack from her shoulders again, and she sat heavily against a tree. Exhaustion and hunger settled over her like a mudslide, and it took a long while before she actually found the thought to eat. She devoured the apple so quickly she barely tasted it, nor the raisin bread that followed, and watched time pass by itself before her eyelids slid heavily closed.

    It was perhaps hours more or merely minutes before she roused again, awakened by a sense rather than completion. But, despite the grumble of a bear far to the east, a howl of a wolf ahead to the west, and a larger bird squawking nearby with no distinct direction, it was not alarm that flashed her eyes open, but curiosity.

    A curiosity, she felt, that was returned.

    She leaned forwards slowly, eyes roving the shadows. The air was warmer, but though the mist had evaporated, it was no clearer to see. A haze, she realised, of sleep, for when she finally located a set of eyes peering back at her from behind a knot of roots, she blinked it into focus.

    Golden eyes below pointed, golden ears. Silently, it stepped out of the shadow, watching her cautiously, and a smile tugged at her lips. A cat, sleek and shin-high, small for the forest; wild or feral, she couldn't tell. But it approached, carefully at first, then trotted, and brushed its small face against her knee. She startled only briefly when a light thud sounded close by, and a second golden cat, smaller and bluer in tone, approached and circled around her with tail held high.

    She reached out and cupped the first's head in her hand, which it gladly pushed itself into, and ruffled its ears while the second sniffed at the stones on her pack. A moment later, the first climbed up into her lap, stood with slender paws on her shoulders, and sniffed at the paint on her face. She chuckled, surprised, but didn't push him away. There was no danger from them. She knew that. And they knew no danger from her. They were kindred, in some way, both belonging and not belonging in the wild, and all three carried that comfortable understanding without need to complicate it.

    She reached out again and stroked the first's whiskers, but when the second gave a small chirp from the pack, they both turned sharply back to the trees and fled.

    Disappointment warred with warmth at the encounter, over far too soon, but as she rose to her feet, deciding it was also best to move on, she found them both still watching her over their backs from the shaded tree roots.

    They took a few steps, then stopped and looked back again.

    A shallow frown marred her pale face, but she stepped towards them, sensing a beckon, and watched them repeat the action.

    She soon found herself following the cats through the forest by harder routes: low-hanging branches, knotted bushes, the run of narrow streams, all the while surrounded by the vibrant sounds and smells of the ever-deepening wilds. She searched the colours by habit as she went, but the cats never ventured too far without her, and when she stopped here and there to analyse a particular pale petal or a nub of grey fungus, they returned, brushed against her leg as if to remind her that she was getting sidetracked, and led her deeper into the woods.

    Then, prompted by nothing at all, they stopped.

    She frowned and stopped beside them.

    "What is it?" She asked, peering around through the mosaic of light and shadow, and though only part of her expected an answer, she received one.

    The larger of the two cats moved purposefully towards another knot of beech roots, the second following more lazily, and after a sniff and bat at something in the ground, it meowed at her. She approached, half expecting to find a den of some sort, and hopeful behind that for a glimpse of kittens. But instead, all she found was grass, a rotting log, and more misleading mushrooms.

    And yet, she stopped. Frozen. Her wondering ceased.

    The cats circled as she found the mind to move again, crouching in the damp grass and peering closer at the moss-riddled log.

    Her eyes turned sharply to the sky. It was bright. The canopy was open. There was light. Clear light.

    Her gaze snapped back to the mushrooms.

    But...they weren't mushrooms. Or, barely. They didn't have a bulbous umbrella or a net or a fuzz; they were long, white and slender, but where they should have had a cap, they bowed over instead, and where the stalk should have been ridged, it had short, white leaves.

    Carefully, she nudged the non-mushroom with the back of her fingers, gently lifting its drooping, trumpet-shaped head. It was dense. Sturdy. A plant masquerading as a flower with stalk and leaves, all completely bleached of colour but for a few tiny black spots.

    Her gaze pulled back to the cats. The smaller had wandered off and began cleaning itself carelessly, but the larger remained close, watching her. When she failed to move quickly enough to satisfy him, he lowered its head, plucked at the plant, tore it and its single neighbour free, jumped onto her shoulder and dropped them pointedly onto her pack.

    She could feel how high her eyebrows had risen and forced them back down. Reaching behind her, she looked again at the plant, turning it over in her hand while the cat retrieved the second as it fell and returned it to where he had put it.

    Pure white. Pure white. Purer than snowdrop petals, than chalk, than treated iron...

    Quickly, she glanced around again, not at the cats but at another fallen log a short distance away, and after a quick, graceless crawl, found three more stalks growing from the rot.

    A laugh, delirious with fatigue, tumbled from her lips. The cats watched and yawned as she gathered these, slung down her pack, withdrew her stone and pestle, and began her heart's greatest work as the cats curled up satisfied on the log beside her. White released, combined with fats and water, she created there the purest, smoothest, most brilliant white paint any had ever seen.

     From then onwards, the legend changed, and the phantom of the wilds, with her ghostly footsteps, was accompanied by cats of gold, spirits of fortune or curse woven of her own golden hair, and woe befell any who tried to part them.

 

This story is not to be copied or reproduced without my written permission. Copyright © 2024 Kim Wedlock

Accursed Weststead Manor

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

    There's no time to get help. I can't let her follow me, she has to be kept away from town. So, to whomever finds this, here written is the account of the events leading to the death of my wife, Isabelle, and, almost as certainly, myself.

    It started with strange noises in the night. Isabelle began to gargle in her sleep. I thought nothing more of it than the flu, so I rolled her onto her side and it seemed to fix the problem.

    This was my first mistake.

    Six nights this went on, though she showed no signs of illness through the day. But the gargling soon worsened, and then came the night fits. I soothed her as best I could, I hid it from the children, and I quickly called the doctor. The "Change", he'd said. He'd given me an elixir and she drank it every night. We expected it to subdue the symptoms, give her better rest, but the fits only became more violent. She began waking up bruised. Before long, Doctor Yves recommended strapping her to the bed for her own safety. I did this, despite her growing terror. But I...I couldn't bear it. I slept in the guest chamber.

    That was my second mistake.

    On the thirteenth night, after too much ale, the shaking stopped, then I heard a thump in her room. I hurried in and found what I thought was her sitting upon the bed, spine bent backwards, a smoking black hand reaching out from her gaping mouth.

    Too much ale. A fever dream I hadn't fully withdrawn from; my worries manifested with too much fuel. I went back to bed with a headache.

    The hounds On the nineteenth morning, the hounds didn't howl with the roosters. They didn't howl with the bells. They didn't come when the children called, nor when they cried at a game gone wrong. My dear Isabelle, growing pale and drawn, suggested they were ill, but I was too busy to check on them until their feeding. That evening, I found them in pieces in the kennels, limbs and innards thrown around, their heads bitten through as if their skulls were butter. What creature could have done it? I might have wondered, but how could I have known? How could anyone?

    From that moment on, we didn't feel safe. This manor is far from town, and the forest surrounding it is thick. Anything could have been lurking. Truly anything, if the old stories had any truth to them.

    So I put signs up in town, looking for a hunter or someone who could help identify and kill it. A few came; some said wargs, others basilisks. But none would go into the woods to search. We increased the payment, but still, no one.

    So we locked the doors and barred the windows. The children were terrified. So was Isabelle, whose fits had finally ceased, though she had returned to scratching at her shoulders, opening up old scars. A sign of anxiety, but nothing more. Though still pale, her health was improving and my concern passing, so I was better able to swallow my own fear and put on a brave face. Such is the job of husband and father, after all.

    From that night on, though, I barely slept. I kept watch, moving from window to window with my crossbow, staring into the dark while my family rested uneasily. I saw nothing. I heard nothing. For a week I maintained vigil and, slowly, I began to ease. We all did. There was nothing out there anymore.

    I have made mistakes. I let things slip by, brushed them off as my imagination, a bad dream.

    There was nothing out there, because it was already inside with us. Everything that happened since the massacre of the hounds is my fault.

    I didn't hear anything at night, but I felt – felt often, I now realise - something moving around. A shifting presence through the bedroom. But I was never awake enough to take notice. I let it pass, another figment of my imagination. But I did hear Isabelle's occasional mutter to herself in her sleep about a scratching sound. And, with that, I'd listened more intently, wondering if she had located something that I hadn't...but strain as I might, there was no scratching. Nothing. Yet every night, every night, she would mutter. Then the muttering rose to speaking. Then to screaming.

    But still, there was nothing but her voice.

    I called the doctor back in. It went beyond the women's Change. "Touched," he concluded, although he didn't seem too convinced of it himself. A worst-case scenario, but one that, if handled immediately, may never have come to pass. So I did as he told me, keeping her in the sun all day, and the bedroom as black as possible at night. But her screaming continued.

    I know now. Not everything - not even enough - but I know this is something beyond the reach of medicine. A priest would be better suited, but after the unholy massacre at Rolinghan, there are none to spare. They are all either dead or dying.

    There is something in her. A madness manifested, a creature, a beast - something living inside her. And I have now, to my shame and horror, witnessed it come out.

    I doubt I'm making much sense, and I realise I've spent too long on this already.

    The day of the hounds, she had scratches around her arms. Old scars on her shoulders had opened up and bled. I presume there was blood elsewhere but I hadn't noticed it at the time.

    The night the windows shattered in our bedroom, she had been covered in blood and scratches. I hadn't pieced together how she could have gotten them unless she had been standing beside the window when it broke - and how it had broken, I hadn't worked out either. It made no sense unless she had done it herself, but she barely had the strength to stand.

    The same with the damage to the walls. The damage to the fireplace that she had somehow extinguished with her bare hands. Things of which I had witnessed nothing except the final result.

    The hunters dead in the yard, those few who had come back with a second thought over the reward. The doctor, who never made it to our last appointment, nor further than twelve paces through the gate.

    And the children...the children...

    I buried them this morning, what parts I could find. But I spared no words. There was no time. I would be tormented by that for the rest of my life if I thought I would survive more than two more days. But I am being hunted. Not by Isabelle - this isn't my Isabelle. I don't recognise her anymore, and I don't believe she recognises me either. Whatever little of her remains shows no sign. Only the beast breathes now, sees through her eyes, smells through her nose, hears through her ears. And as long as I am out of sight and tread lightly, it doesn't seem to know where I am.

    So I steal time, and I prepare.

    These deaths are my fault. I didn't trust the signs; I shrugged them off as dreams, but whether they come truly from a demon, a curse, a malignance of one kind or another...that, I will never know.

    I have to make things right. I have to correct my negligence. For her. For the children. For my family.

    Should I fail and the beast walks still, then to whomever finds this account, take heed: she it has an aversion to willow and recoils at the scent of the oil, and its wood and iron both leave ferocious burns on her its skin. There may be other weaknesses, but I haven't had the chance to find out, and if I delay any longer then she it will come for me.

    It cannot be allowed to escape. I mustn't lead it away, nor give it any reason to leave. And, I admit, I cling to very small hope that the demon or curse will be destroyed wit

The rest of the vellum is bare, unspoiled; no spilled ink nor blood, no rips or crumples. It sits, silent and unfinished, beside a dried out inkwell. The quill itself is missing. The rest of the house, too, lies still. Deafeningly still.

 

This story is not to be copied or reproduced without my written permission. Copyright © 2023 Kim Wedlock

Song of Scratches

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

I can feel them closing in. The walls. Big black things. You can see them too, can't you? Shutting out all light, rotting the air... They're inching closer. Have been for months now, scraping along the ground on all sides. I could ignore them at first, they were far enough away...but now...now they're right there. Right behind me. Beside me. Inside my shadow. I-I swear, I can feel them inside me.

*I'm sweating. I'm always sweating. Always slick and short of breath, always scratching at my shoulders, panic ripping small holes into my skin. I know my eyes are wild.*

Every time I hear the sound...words, a melody, a droning wind, a noise in so many forms yet all telling me the exact same thing... Every time I hear it, the walls rush in closer. They abandon their scraping creep while I'm distracted, like a game of Grandmother's Footsteps. A cheating game of Grandmother's Footsteps, because they never truly stop. And what little stale room remains in here with me is being filled by a growing cloud of bitterness, one that swells even as the walls surge, and just as fast. Every single time I hear it...

The breathing space is shrinking. Rapidly. I know I'm going to choke.

*I'm fighting for breath. I'm scratching my shoulders again, flicking wild glances around me*

...I'm afraid of what I might do before then. I'm afraid of what I might say. I'm afraid I could - afraid I will - ruin what little good I have left, what little there is to get up for in the morning, frighten that little light away...but...but if I keep biting my tongue...

I tell myself to wait. Leave it alone, enjoy the light for now. Give it time. I have other things to think about, other things to face, other things to escape from. Leave it alone. Enjoy it. For now. For now. I deserve it. Let Future Me deal with the walls.

...But every time...every, single, time I hear it...e-every...every damned time...

*A bitter chuckle shudders from my closing throat, and I clutch myself tighter in the darkness.*

I catch myself in the middle of this sometimes, disconnected, wondering if this is what it feels like to go insane...

I can go days sometimes, hiding from the thoughts, ignoring the slow scratch scratch scratch of the walls. I even imagine that they've stopped, convince myself of it, that it's become such gentle white noise as to be completely inaudible. Completely absent.

That's when they speed up. Always then, when I start to feel comfortable, even, dare I say it, hopeful, hah...heh...that's--that's when I hear it.

The sound finds me.

Then the scratches.

The walls...how can no one else see them? Feel them?! They're there! I mean, they're right there, and everyone is just...going on with their lives like I'm not about to implode... How is that possible?! How?!

*Blood runs down my arm*

...What's going to happen? When they get here? Will they destroy me? I feel like they're going to destroy me - I mean, you can't see them, apparently, no one can, but they're there and they're going to kill me. I know it. They're going to crush all the light out of me...all of it...all of it...

...And yet I know it's a choice...

Fuck. How could that be a choice?!

*My flickering stare lands on the door*

The door... Yes, there is a door. It's there, it's big, it's unlocked. I can fit through it. And it's getting closer just like the walls. It's within reach...

...But it...it's...

If I go through that door...

*The blood is trickling through my fingers. Still I scratch my shoulder, my head spinning enough to unscrew where I'm huddled*

If I go through that door, now, it will be my end. The end of everything. Absolutely everything. I'm not ready. I will never be ready...

*And now my voice, my thoughts, my soul withers even further*

...This is where the choice is, isn't it? It's go through that door, or be crushed by the walls. But I'll be crushed on the other side of that door too, because it's all the same, on all sides, fucking everywhere...there is only one outcome, so it's really only a question of how many bones I want to get broken in the process.

Except it's not the bones I'm worried about...

Haha...ugh...heh...ohhh I can't talk about this. I'm...I'm trapped. I can't talk about it, but I'm stuck. I want to scream for help, I want to act, I want to get out.

*But now my head is shaking*

No, no I don't, I want to stay, I really want to stay, the light, that's the twisted part of all of this, I just want the light and for these walls to stop I want the walls to stop...

Stop, stop, stop, stop...

...Stop...

...Please, stop...

...But...but that bitterness...that...bitterness...it's evolving into something. I can see it, jumping around across the walls right now, casting shadows wherever I look. It's touching the walls, how can it do that? It knows they're there and it's treating them like they're...like they're nothing...

It has teeth. It has teeth, it never used to have teeth. Or eyes. Or such a toxic fucking aura... It's like it's choking me, it's these moments when I just can't breathe or see or think or survive...

...Please...please just stop!

...p l e a s e...

...Oh, God...

*A flicker catches my eye. For a moment, my heart stops, and the viciously wonderful teeth sink back in*

...W...w-wait...wait, there...look. Look, see it? Do you see it?! There, that glimmer! It just appeared out of the dark! That little light...heh...ohh...yesss...yes, see, it's that light that does it...I know it's that light that does it, that little flicker, that little flash...it's so bright, so beautiful... It does so much. Too much. That's what keeps me here. And that's what made the walls start moving in the first place. And I'm not imagining it. That little glow...the glow...the joy it brings me, the lightness, the feeling of worth, it's real. It's honest to God real. And it's the onl--

Wait...wait, no, d-don't go, don't--n-no...ohh no...no, no, fuck, no it's happened again! It's happened again! It's happened again happened again happ--

 

This story is not to be copied or reproduced without my written permission. Copyright © 2023 Kim Wedlock

Uruz, Verða

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

     A lethargic silence blanketed the world.

    Winter's graceful grip had frozen even sound, and cast the mute forest into a stark lullaby of blue and gold. Trees, tall and tightly packed, were silvered with the year's age, their branches glittering in the low midday sun, tousled by a whispered breeze.

    Amongst those giants, a run-down shack stood almost indistinguishable from the fallen trees, so old and forgotten that the forest had reclaimed the rotten, hollow wood, and young trees grew, winter-kissed, through the broken roof in their hunt for light.

    Burrows closed off by a tangle of frozen spiderwebs were filled with hibernating life beneath trees and walls, but even those active went almost unseen, small birds sitting fluffed on the broken fence, absorbing the weak warmth while they closed their little eyes lazily against the blinding light.

    The world was asleep, at peace beneath the alluring claws of winter. Blind and deaf to the thump-thump-thump of hooves approaching rapidly from behind.

*

    Birds fled in a flurry of ice and startled peeps as the aurochs crashed through the hollow wall. But she barely noticed them. She ran in a different world, a blissful silver blur and deafening thunder of heart and hoof. She stormed on through the rain of splinters as if the shack hadn't been there at all.

    The fence flattened just as easily beneath her hooves.

    While the wilds alighted again upon the settling wood behind her, her pace grew only faster. Debris fell from her broad and polished horns, misshapen with a hint of elk tine; defined muscles tensed and shifted beneath her painted, vibrant skin as she ran, fast and powerful, and clouds huffed steadily through a fierce grin.

    The forest itself yielded. Bowing back, branches tinkled in her wake, loosening frost to her lustrous golden brown mane and glittering among the first hints of grey. And through that chiming, the drum of her pace and the melodic chirp of distant birds, her heart sang.

    Frozen air prickled her skin and rosed her cheeks. Frost gathered on her eyelashes. Her fists were numb. Her lungs and muscles burned.

    Yet she laughed.

    It had taken years for her heart to become so light - not through passive time, but conscious practice, and defeat after defeat after defeat. And now, her demons had been both tamed and destroyed.

    Worries were gone, lost to the moment. Inferiority forgotten; she was incomparable. Time was no longer bottled and stagnant in the present. Armour no longer weighted her bones every moment. Her heart was open, thoughts were spoken, grudges released; hate became pity, and pity became forgotten.

   She could barely feel the ache around her wrists any more from years spent in shackles.

    Her grin only broadened.

    A silver branch reached across the aurochs' path, and she seized it without a thought, swinging herself up into the boughs, loosening clouds of frost beneath her hooves. The slippery and impossible steps were executed with equal grace and lunacy.

    Up here, the world was a disorganised tangle, yet she navigated it just as easily. Forward remained ahead of her, Backwards remained behind; Up was still above, Down was still below. The sun still hung in the sky, and it still set every night and rose every morning. These were all the directions she needed. The rest came from within.

    Her hooves slipped again and again on the frost, and weak branches gave way beneath her, but she didn't stop running. Birds fled in startled panics, weasels leapt playfully along behind her, a snow fox ran through the frost below. Wind whistled past her ears, and an imagined scent of hot berries played around her numb nose. Imagined or not, it was pleasant, and she accepted it as part of the moment.

    She dropped down into a clearing when the branches became too distant, and stampeded on, storming through frozen puddles. Her grinning reflection multiplied in the shards, and the life in her hazel eyes challenged the hold of Winter itself.

    The landscape had grown steeper now, and the trees thinner. Frost turned to pockets of snow, pockets became sweeps, until the ground turned fully from silver to a blinding white, flooded by the sun.

    Then, the forest stopped.

    The aurochs skidded to a stop at the edge of the cliff and stared, panting, over the snow-blanketed valleys and frozen rivers beyond. The view was immense. Frightening. And freeing.

    Clouds huffed from her numb, chapped lips, and as she caught it, she breathed deeper of the crisp air, again, and again, and again.

    Her skin, too, burned in the snow, but she stood firm, naked and self-reclaimed. The scrolling runes painted on her skin flashed the only colour in the landscape. Her scars shone in the sun. Lumps from the healing of splintered shins were all that marred her with a hideous shadow. But that shadow was hers. Her strength had been lost for a decade, but now it was wrapped tighter around her bones than ever before.

    Another hungry breath. And another. Wild ran restless inside her. Her heart raced, adrenaline pulsed, muscles twitched and tensed. Her head tilted from one side to the other, feeling the weight and power of her horns, cut now with new carvings for a new life.

    Her grin was primal.

    Power burst from her throat, a lump of energy uncontainable, and she roared, a huge mist that hid the landscape from her eyes like the smoke of a dragon.

    And the world roared back. Bear, swan, warhorn, wolf, fox, elk. The wind, the earth, the mountains themselves.

    She stamped her hoof, a savage thump as the reverberation filled her, and bellowed again.

    Her shadow stomped beside her. Her echo roared around her.

    Territory. Sanctuary. Freedom.

    There were more like her out there. The Free. She could hear them, she could smell them; wanderers with no destination in mind. Going and doing as they pleased.

    And she, at last, was one of them.

    Untameable.

    Her grin widened. Then, she charged on.

*

    A thick, glittering cloud erupted from the edge of the cliff as hooves carved their way down through earth and ice. Sun shone on, turning the cloud to gold. Birds fluttered across it. A weasel leapt to catch it. And another bellow of freedom shook the sky from the forest below.

 

This story is not to be copied or reproduced without my written permission. Copyright © 2022 Kim Wedlock

Inguz

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

'You have no control. You need no control. Surrender it. Find out who you are.'

    The aurochs fought again to relax the tension in her face. It just moved deeper into her shoulders instead.
    The high, mossy platform should have been a point of calm, a place to breathe, rest and recollect herself, a small, private island above the forest overlooking the shelter she'd claimed beneath it. But a familiar thread of doubt ran through her spine, as always, and one she was sure had become entwined with her nervous system.
    Feeling that itch down her back, she straightened herself in determination rather than comfort, and sat a little taller beneath the single, gnarled rowan tree. It seemed just as uncomfortable and out of place here as she was, growing out from a rocky cleft on the side of the cramped platform, and had too lost its identity in the faded runes in its bark. The dulled carvings of her own horns rolled through her mind, but she didn't raise her hand to them. She didn't need to check again how shallow they were. She knew. She knew.
    Once more, she failed to relax her muscles.
    The dying light of dusk leaked in between the encircling standing stones. Amethyst bled into the sky. The cold air didn't move. Crickets chirped below, an owl hooted. Twilight was descending.
    A deep and forced breath lightened her body, thick with juniper smoke and the scent of recent rain. But in spite of it, the thread of conflict burrowed deeper into her system.
    The need to run was overwhelming. Adrenaline surged, pure power, enough to flee this place and its purpose and return to hiding down below where everything was safe, and the strange, new world was shut away.
    But her rational mind was still there; escape had brought it back to the surface, and as it slowly broke through, it reminded her that her familiar little shelter held nothing for her but stagnation and exhaustion. She didn't want this towering isolation, but she needed it. This was how she would truly reclaim herself, how she would shed her perpetual defence and become One again. Another deep breath. The smoke began at last to soften her mind, and finally, her shoulders loosened.
    'Give up control.' She'd been surviving for so long, an endless state of fight or flight. But now, finally, she could ease. Finally, she could drop her armour. No more wasted energy. No more stifled breath.
    Again, she forced the tension in her face away.
    Smoke swam in her head. She fought the panic of lost control and concentrated. 'Look inwards without turning.' Don't move. Don't slip. Just look.
    She closed her eyes. Her fingers dug into the moss, grounding herself to her surroundings. 'Stay in the Now.' Reflect, don't revert.
    The soft grunt of the sleeping bear down below acted as a gentle anchor, and the flap of swan wings on the reedy lake. Allies the both of them, and the knights passing in the distance, but none of them could help her now. This, she had to do alone. And each of them knew that; not one tried to intrude.
    'Breathe.'
    Smoke filled her.
    And darkness rose to her surface.
    Terror snaked around her throat, but she continued taking breath after careful breath, separating herself from it and letting those wretched shadows rise. Higher and higher they came, and with them the growing suffocation, moving deeper from throat to chest.
    The aurochs steeled herself. She remained grounded, eyes closed. The darkness had to come out. She couldn't rid herself of it until she faced it, and merge with what genuine light remained.

"Horn of Uruz,

Hold of Algiz,

Infuse me, force and flame,

As darkness seethes

And devils rise,

Weave blood and bone with steel.

Bring heart and soul to heel."

    Her voice trailed off. She finished the third iteration before the suffocation became crushing, and barely controlled her panic as her eyes tore open.
    Darkness spilled before her.
    Her already thundering heart almost burst.
    Oily black smoke hung between the standing stones. Long, grey, gnarled fingers clawed out towards her from the clouds, turning the moss black where they touched like the creeping stroke of death. Once-effeminate silhouettes hunched and lurched where the darkness thinned, bodies too long and heavy for their limbs, and huge, white, glowing eyes stared back when the moonlight caught them, like ghastly pools of nightmare. Nightmare.
    Countless mara crept into the circle beneath their cloak of shadow, their blind sights fixed on her. She could hear them wheezing, smell the nightshade, taste their malice. She fought to keep calm and let them approach, in spite of every fibre of her being screaming to get up and run.
    But she'd survived so much. What was one more struggle?
    Getting air into her lungs had become a challenge of its own, but still she sat, tall and determined, watching each demon's slow advance. She didn't flinch even as one of them screamed a guttural hiss and leapt onto her chest, nor let alarm get the better of her as the cold, heavy paralysis set in. But she was not unarmed. The stones, the smoke, the rowan tree, all worked against the mara, and the mara themselves were desperate. The night hadn't yet set in; they were not at full power. This time, the aurochs would face them on her own terms.
    In a single, smooth movement, she reached out and seized its bony wrist, and with that tight clutch, another scream, air-rending and ear-piercing, ripped from the mara's throat. The demon immediately disintegrated into a pile of twigs.
    Then the next came, as if blind to witness, and suffered the same fate.
    The third was quick to learn and changed its attack, climbing upon her shoulders instead, and another followed on the other side. Neither made it. One she speared calmly with her splintered horns, and the other she grasped just as smoothly by the throat.
    Her solid touch eradicated every mara as they came, and her mind stayed as steady as she could make it despite the constant battle for breath until the smoke and suffocation finally dissipated, and the foetid mara were no more.
    It took a long moment before her hands ceased to shake and the race of her heart began to slow. But that battle, brief as it was, was only the beginning. The worst was still to come, and that knowledge hitched a snarl in her lip.
    Again the aurochs steadied herself, even as she gasped for breath - not even the dust of her demons would get the satisfaction - and her eyes sank to the shadowy twigs scattered around her.
    Hesitation pinned her hands to her knees for only a moment before she reached out and gathered them. Some, she threw into the juniper fire; others, she clutched in her hands. She hesitated again as the noxious smell of darkness, a strange odour now not of nightshade but of too much aniseed, twisted her face.
    She closed her eyes as sour tears filled them, sat straight again, and sang.

"Bone, shadow,

And echo shorn.

Discard the dead to Ing,

Reforge the ashes,

Rise through flame.

Through sacrifice I soar.

Through seed I restore."

    She raised the two handfuls of twigs to her mouth, clamped them between her teeth with resignation, and bit down, hard. The pieces scattered. Much stayed on her tongue. She didn't spit them out. Instead, she reached out for the flask set on a stone before her, unstoppered it, held her breath, and drank. It took all of her strength not to heave it all back up. The flask suffered instead.
    Shards of glass dropped from her hand as her muscles loosened, and she gave herself over to the magic.
    'Let it go. Surrender to it.' Everything she'd held onto so tightly, every black and white thing she'd held for so long, was released in that single draught.
    Pain set in quickly. Her throat burned, her stomach, her fingertips, her eyes. She hadn't expected it to be this strong.
    Then panic flashed in, or something more potent, wiping her mind clear while alarm ripped her eyes open. All she could think of was escape. But it was too late. She knew it was too late. It was too late the moment she'd sat down beneath the rowan's shadow. By coming here at all, she had committed.
    She stifled a cough in an attempt to regain control, but it tore its way out anyway. Flecks of blood spattered her lips and the heat in her chest redoubled.
    'You have no control.'
    The words swam in her mind, and she fought back another cough and the maddening spin of her head. She had committed. Committed, knowing there were only two ways this could go.
    'You need no control.'
    She slipped off of her knees and fell to her palms, bloody saliva streaming from her lips, stomach churning with the threat of purge. She barely felt the small hand resting on her shoulder, or registered through burning, teary eyes the shadow of elk antlers on the ground before her.
    'Surrender it.'
    But it was enough. She seized the wrist for comfort just as her stifled, desperate cough became a choke.
    'Find out who you are.'
    Thick blood splattered over the moss. She lost the hand, lost her balance, tipped head-first to the ground. Her broad horns speared the moss, sparing her a face full of dirt as she suffocated in shallow, bubbling breaths.
     Her skull hurt. Something was trying to break out of it.
     Her skin tingled. Something was trying to rip free.
    Her head rose from the ground, pushed higher as her horns began to grow. And in that moment, between broken breath and a screaming agony she couldn't express, she felt relief.
    It was happening.
    Haze set in.
    The roar of the bear, the honk of the swan, the horns of the knights, all of it played distantly against her eardrums.
    And she convulsed.
    'Surrender.'
    She let the change happen.
    It was the only way she could be One again.  

 

This story is not to be copied or reproduced without my written permission. Copyright © 2022 Kim Wedlock

Laguz

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine. - William Shakespeare

    Hazel eyes wandered out over the water. Stars glittered and danced across the boundless surface, like diamonds unobtainable. It was a night preserved, a night in glass; a timelost thing of silence.

     Alone beneath that smothering magnitude, there was nothing at all to ground her.

     Unbidden, her heavy gaze returned to her reflection. And again it stared back, not haloed or graced by the mirror of stars, but threatened instead by crystalline shards of ice hanging suspended at its back. And though she recognised herself, the face was unfamiliar. There was something in it she hadn't seen before: lines, a wild darkness in the eyes, a rounding of the shoulders that still somehow stood as tight as her own.

     Rogue wind lashed hair across her face. The reflection, too, was whipped by its own. But it didn't blink. It stared back at her. It saw. It watched.

     It was unreasonable. Irrational. Impossible. But the twist of something in her mind under that debilitating glare closed her throat, and the smell of saltless water became almost toxic.

     As the freezing touch of panic skittered up her spine, she tried desperately to turn and run back to solid, opaque ground. But all she could manage to do was avert her gaze. And when it inevitably pulled back just a heartbeat later, the naive hope that the face that Should Be would be there instead was crushed. And her heartbeat went with it.

     The broken, haunted, silent girl stared on.

     No reflection belonged to the water. Only to those who viewed it. What she saw was no trick of the night, and that fact throbbed painfully beneath shuddering ribs. And now, she couldn't even turn her eyes away.

     The reflection rose, growing closer, coming for her, the water itself rising behind it.

     Still, she couldn't move. Only her eyelids obeyed, and even that came too late.

     They shut tight as the water crashed over her shoulders, enveloping her in a deathly cold, shocking her mind empty until the roaring surge plunged suddenly into a dull, thrumming silence pounding numb against her eardrums. And when she dared at last to open them again, heart thundering in her throat, hair drifting around her head like kelp, she found the stars still hanging beneath her feet upon the water surface. But now, she discovered in horror, she stood on the other side. The world had inverted.

     Her head snapped back up, but rather than stare on through the water, she found herself just inches from the face of her reflection. It flickered with darkness, as if the whole being was suddenly enrobed in shadow, and this time, she stood in front of her, the same way up, feet fixed to the underside of the water just as her own were.

     The two stood alone in the same dark, suffocating realm.

     Panic's claws gripped her throat, but the overwhelming need to run, to close her eyes, to refuse what stood in front of her was denied. Something inside her made her stare on.

     No. No, not inside her. The reflection itself. The shadow. Those tormented eyes had seized her with the grip of the grave.

     Paralysed, she stared back and fell victim to silent declarations, deafened already by the muffled gurgle of water in her ears, simultaneously aware and unaware of everything spoken inside the lock of those eyes. Destruction. Accusation. Fury. Those hurting eyes screamed the desire to rip her to shreds.

     But this time, she didn't look away. She didn't even think to. Watching the figure, she suddenly felt her own pain, her own alarm, the darkness that came to her in the night, in moments of isolation, in certainties that the world itself had betrayed her... And all of this, she could see on the reflection's shoulders too. It carried those same burdens, cast the same shadow - it wore that shadow. It felt the same, identical, all but for one crucial, crushing difference: it had also been betrayed by her.

     She had been betrayed by her.

     No reflection belonged to the water. Only to those who viewed it.

     But while a reflection could be avoided, the shadow would always follow.

     A deep, cold, shuddering breath filled her lungs. Water moved alive around her. Her eyes closed calmly.

     She felt the motion before it reached her. But even as the shadow threw itself violently against her, she opened her arms and embraced it.

     Those stiff, rounded shoulders immediately began to shudder. And she hushed it. She stroked her shadow's hair as it sobbed, rubbed its back as it trembled, and felt her own darkness rise to the surface. And there, that immense and neglected darkness settled.

     But it didn't overwhelm her. Not this time. It didn't try to crush her. It didn't try to rip her apart. It just sat quietly beside everything else, intertwining, existing as a fact rather than a burden.

     Time passed, seconds or minutes. Her eyes opened. Her arms were empty. The shadow was gone.

     Then a gasp leapt from her throat.

     The stars hung all around her, glittering throughout the water; diamonds, ice, all mingling together, as dangerous and as beautiful as each other.

     She breathed, barely aware that she hadn't yet drowned, but though that breath still came ragged, the weight on her chest was less. And she looked around, marvelling at the drowned realm. Her realm. Her gaze didn't drop to discover what surface she stood upon, nor did she try to walk; she didn't fret falling, or drowning, or sinking, even as her mind slowly began to work again. Instead, it all drifted away, and she sat herself silently down on the underside of the water, staring up and around at the stars.

     Her shadow was beside her, somewhere. Where it had always been; unnoticed, but ever there. And though she knew it would continue to weave its trials and present her with hurdles by its very nature, she also knew it was better to have a co-operative weight than a resistant one. And the co-operation would come.

     Lying back, she would leave this place when she was ready. And she would cross the next hurdle as close to whole as she could be.

In myths, the hero is the one who conquers the dragon, not the one who is devoured by it. And yet both must deal with the same dragon. And he is no hero who never met the dragon, or who, if once he saw it, declared afterwards that he saw nothing.

- Carl Jung

 

This story is not to be copied or reproduced without my written permission. Copyright © 2022 Kim Wedlock