Issue 155 August 2026

—and they said

oh god they said I would be forgiven

and I said I would try to forgive myself but all I can see when I close my eyes are those translucent hooves and the fragile green shoots that sprang up in their wake and then I blink and there is the pelt like shaggy moonlight, the long spiral horn like blown glass and I cannot let go of how it looked at me because that is what lingers in my dreams

those blackberry eyes and the absolute trust they placed in me

and I was so angry, I admit that now, hands shaking, the holly garland biting at my hands with its green milkteeth; I did not ask to be left in this clearing on a cool midsummer’s dawn in my best gown with lilies woven into my hair, I did not ask to be kept unrumpled and pristine like a christening gown for this moment, I did not ask, I did not ask, but there it was and there I was and we were both playing our parts like fools but it should have known better than I, who was not nearly so ageless and lithe and free

so I touched my trembling sore fingertips to my lips and bade it come closer

Come closer, a gift for you

and when it was within reach it bowed its magnificent head and I wound my garland round its neck and horn, its breath a spring breeze on my cheek, and it did not flinch even as the cut on my palm smeared its neck with a slash of bright red and then my father emerged from the firs and the dogs and the men and the falcons followed and its own blood was red

dark red, like pomegranate juice

like the pomegranate tree that grew from the ground where it spilled

whose fruit I have never dared to eat but my brother says it’s bitter, so bitter, he cracked one open and ate the pulp and seeds and he couldn’t stop crying for days

but you see, I was promised, we were promised, that if we buried its bones beneath the oldest tree in our gardens, it would revive; that ancient beings such as these are beyond such mortal things as flesh or death

and Mother was sick, so sick

so I ground the horn into crystalline powder for her broth and the bones went under the black oak that has been on the land since my ancestors first built our home and summer rolled in stifling green and was pushed away by the gentle golden touch of autumn and then winter slunk past on cold white paws and Mother was able to walk again but still the garden remained undisturbed

and finally my brother who has never been patient at the best of times said enough, he’d tasted that fruit and it was never coming back, and Father boxed his ears but he was near a man now, big enough to hit back, and he hit Father in the mouth and dropped him like a gunnysack and then it was my turn to chase him out to the garden and beg him to leave it alone because I could feel the wrongness of it all in the air like a gathering storm, but he tore into the snow and frozen earth with his bare hands like a dog

and the bones weren’t there anymore

but Mother wanders the manse at night now, restless with the cold, and in the dark echoing halls her footsteps sound like hooves

 and her eyes, once chestnut brown, are tinted purple-black like berry wine

and I am praying that I’m wrong, that I’m being driven mad by the drudgery of winter, but last night I dreamt that I found my father crucified on the branches of a pomegranate tree, a spiraling glass horn like a sword through his heart and we are all still alive but

everywhere I look, there are hoof tracks in the snow, the endless gleaming expanse of snow that blankets the world in all directions

and we are alone

and there are still so many days until spring.

* * *

Ⓒ G.M. Mitchell