fiction – Page 14 – Joan Spilman

This Textured Darkness, #26

He was being branded; the air smelled as it did when they marked the wild horses in the spring.

“My source tells me the bark is odd. Flesh colored with specks of red. The shoots spring up, only to die.”

“What if the child is already dead?”
“He is alive. Else why would Jah demand that he be rescued?”

For years and years, Iris was the wife of the town’s only mortician. She’s popped in, treating me like a source of income, unannounced and unafraid.

He knew nothing about her, save that she was young and clothed in what appeared to be an old-fashioned night rail.

“Wolves from the Nevers,” the boy broke his silence. “Father told me to run.”

The scepter was held by a dying man.

“As well as any knocking against the void. He suffers. He yearns.”

The King’s corpse lay in the open until nightfall when it was gathered with the rest.

The white rock was now gray, splashes of Tianne’s tears in stark relief.