Stillborn

A dark shape moved among the trees, nearly indistinguishable from ebony night. The wraith-figure stepped cautiously closer to the edge of the forest, glancing once up at the sky. The new moon teased the stars into shining but, despite their brightness, the could not remove the shadow that kept him hidden. He progressed with an almost sinuous grace, nauseating to watch, halting at last beneath the great pine near the house at the edge of the village. Searching each window with milky eyes, he found candlelight, the flame illuminating a young woman. He whispered her name, an exhalation of the longing of the universe. An agony of despair blazed within him. It nearly made him want to rip his heart out; but that would not cease the pain. Such things could kill him no longer. Immortality was not his, yet not a form any would envy.

What of his actions deserved this? Few memories remained of his transformation. The afternoon had been warm and summery as he strode through the forest towards her house. His hands had fiddled with the ring in his pocket; no one alive could have been as anxious as he.

Suddenly, there had come a shrieking cackle, the glimpse of a witch-hag’s face. Fire had blazed, leaving behind this wraith-body shivering on the ground. The witch had vanished, but her voice remained.

“Wish you to be human again? The curse will lift only if you kill she that you love. Unless you wish to live forever alone, for none will accept you now!”

The choice, however sickening, had seemed clear. Yet, now his heart screamed in denial. In stories, the hero could save himself and his love. Here, there was no such option.

A moan sounded, the embodiment of that one unanswerable question:

“Why?”

Dark storm-clouds reflected his despairing thoughts. A single flash rent a tall birch nearby. Lightning: that near-divine power, able to rip soul from body in defiance of immortality. The hairs at the back of his neck rose, warning of imminent proximity. He remained still.

“You say you love me,” his beloved had teased. “How will you prove it?”

She must never know.

Fox In The Snow

Long ago, a boy made a wish to be one of the quicksilver foxes he saw in the woods. He was one of the few who could see them, darting hither and thither between trees like spirits of the air and earth – which they were, the stormfoxes. However, when his wish was granted – for it was, for he had taken an offering to the Winter King – he found it was not as he’d expected: instead of becoming a sprite like them, he was stuck between worlds, both man and fox – a werefox. In winter, when the Winter King held sway, he was a fox, but in summer the power of the Winter King waned and he became human once more. And even while he was a fox, unless it was in the weeks around solstice when the King was at his peak, the boy was merely a fox – not a stormfox like the ones he’d seen.

Worse, the stormfoxes resented his change, and harassed him, abusing him, nipping, biting, bullying. Year after year he sought to be accepted, but all in vain, for never would they accept a human so brazen as to assume he could become one of them.

One year, they killed him. They’d driven him mercilessly for days, and it was the time between winter’s true start and solstice when the Winter King was strong enough to keep the boy in fox form, but not strong enough to make him a stormfox – so he was hungry, and weak, and after four days of being hunted without rest his body gave in. The stormfoxes caught up with him in a small clearing where his fur bristled red against the snow, and they killed him – not quickly, not gently, but mauled him to death with nips like needles, letting the life drain from him slowly, like oozing blood.

He died, and then the girl found him.

She was only eight, and her dog back home had just been put down, and her grandmother had died of cancer, and she couldn’t bear any more death. She’d been walking in the woods behind their house, her mother too grief-stricken to care, her father too bound up with caring for Mother to worry, when she saw him, blood already turning brown.

She lay down and curled herself around him, weeping tears that burned her face in the cold. The snow seeped its way into her clothes, her gloves, her hat and shoes, and she shivered with cold that was warmer than grief, and thought about how much she’d loved her grandmother, how much she’d loved her dog, how much she loved her mother and her father and how she never wanted anything to die again.

She was an ordinary girl, perfectly ordinary, but she had that rare and special talent instilled in some at birth: when she loved something, it grew. The fox shuddered beneath her arms, a rattled intake of breath like dead leaves across the road. He twisted, turned, and licked her face.

The girl lay stunned just long enough for the fox, the boy, the creature who’d been dead, to squirm out from her arms and away.

Later, she told herself it must have been her imagination. The fox must not really have been dead, only cold, and her body warmth had defrosted it enough for it to recover.  And she forgot that though she was ordinary, when she loved things, they grew.

Happily, Red

Occasionally, it is possible to have a happy ending. Not a happy beginning; those are frequent enough. And certainly not a happy middle, because middles are always either one of two things. Either you know you’re in the middle, and that makes you sad, because either you have such a long way to go until the end, or because you’re already halfway through and that means you’ll only ever have less; or you don’t know you’re in the middle, and you get occasional flashes of happiness.

Much, much harder to have a happy ending.

It is possible, though. It’s in the bees buzzing officiously around their daisies, the wild lace flowers strewing grass so lush it’s thigh-high and crisp, the fresh pinch of early morning air that pinks the cheeks while the glorious golden sunlight promises a warm day; and in the feel of your warm arms around mine.

This doesn’t have to be an ending of course, and depending on your perspective it’s also a beginning, also a middle; perspective is everything.

But that’s just the point; perspective. It would be just as easy to sit here and document the mud stains in the yard, the dead, dull branches on the trees infected with barkbug, the feel of the empty bed beside me when you’re gone for days at a time. It would be easy for my mother’s words to ring true, to fester in my heart until I was sorry I said yes, until I regretted your smiles and wiles, days spent hand in hand, picnics with scones and clotted cream and fresh-crushed raspberries with sugar.

No. I could never regret those things. Not even on the nights when it feels like you have been gone for a month and I fear you may never return. You know the woods well, and as you have saved me once I know that you will save yourself a hundred times – and one day, perhaps, I will save you, though you say I already have.

It is possible to get a happy ending. It’s in the melody you whistle as you cut across the yard, the gentle werking of the chickens as they bustle in search of grubs, and the flutter of life inside my belly.

I know they said it wouldn’t work. But some people don’t trust happiness.

It’s not that this is what I’d have chosen, though the early springtime air and the smell of baking apples isn’t far from heaven. Let’s face it: f I’d have chosen, I’d have chosen not to need rescuing in the first place. I’d have chosen… But no. There’s no way to replay things that doesn’t leave one of my family dead, me or grandmother, or maybe even you. And you couldn’t have saved Grandma the way you’ve saved me.

It’s lucky there was anything to save. That’s a happy ending of its own – and of course, that’s where the stories usually end. But happily ever after doesn’t begin just because the monster’s slain. Not when the monster leaves a special gift behind.

I still remember the look on Mother’s face the first time the moon rose full. To see what her beautiful, ringletted daughter had become… She’s not one who trusts in happiness. I think she’d always suspected something like this would happen, ever since she was tiny. She’s never trusted hope.

But you… As you pause in your labour to smile at me over the furry backs of goats that bleat like traffic at the markets, my heart flutters in time with the kicks in my stomach, and I know that you believe in hope, that you believe in happiness. That’s why I’m with you, in the end. Not because you saved me from the belly of the wolf, and not because you saved me from the curses of the moon that the wolf so lovingly bestowed, but because you believed that despite it all, I could be happy. That’s a power all its own, you know.

You’re coming towards the house now, my red cloak slung casually round your neck. It means nothing to you, that symbol of blood, of horror, of innocences lost. I love you for that.

The blood you bring me, still warm from the veins of the wolf it ran in, tastes good, sharp and iron-like. But I wouldn’t drink it if it wasn’t for the glimmer in your eyes that promises me laughter when I’m done, the love the outshines fear, the notable lack of tremor as you bid me drink up my tonic. If it wasn’t for that, I’d never drink; I’d gladly lose myself in fur and fangs and lack of thought. Mother’s ending wasn’t worth living for. Yours… A happy ending’s always possible. You just have to find the path. Thank you. Thank you for believing. For you, for hope, I’ll drink the wolf’s blood forever. Hope is the most powerful tonic of all, and who knows how long this happy ending will last.