We met in a witch’s nightmare. I brought him ale, fed the pigs, waited. Later, his chainmail glittered on the floor. He had to leave, he said, while the moon was up. ‘It’s that wound’, he said, ‘makes me wander from place to place’. ‘Show me’. It was black with sores around it like wilting petals. ‘The pain isn’t the worst’, he said. I looked deeper: little villages, houses, tiny millers, tax-collectors, washerwomen, all cursed. He groaned and fell asleep. And I fell, into the wound, to a market square, to fool-search for a fast cure, into my whole life.
---
First published in TSS.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
FlashFlood 2021 is now open for submissions until midnight on 8 May!
FlashFlood is OPEN and ready for your submissions! We will open for submissions from 00:01 BST on 2 May to 23:59 BST on 8 May. Over the nex...
-
We'd like to mark the end of 2020 with a little celebration of this year's FlashFlood writers. Congratulations to the following wri...
-
A shaft of sunlight fell across the worn herringbone floor, drawing his gaze upwards to the flawless blue sky beyond the row of windows, ...
-
How’d you do it, girl? Waitressing part-time at Steak ‘n’ Shake since the day after your sixteenth birthday, working weekends through high s...
Love this! So magical and whimsical. My favourite line is 'his chainmail glittered on the floor'
ReplyDelete