Halley’s Comet passes, and Earth feels sick to her iron core because Theia is barreling straight for her. When Theia was further away, Earth had hoped for a side-swipe where they’d ricochet off each other. But now there is no doubt this will be head-on. And Theia is a big girl; she’s no asteroid. As the distance between them shrinks, Earth closes her eyes and braces for impact while Theia uselessly puts her arms out in front of her as if that would stop anything.

Moon doesn’t remember any of this; she wasn’t born yet. Whenever Moon is feeling sorry for herself — because her orbit is crippled and she can’t rotate on her axis — Earth tells her the story of her miraculous birth. Theia didn’t survive impact, but pieces of her and Earth had blasted into space and eventually accreted into Moon, and Theia’s iron heart is resting down in Earth’s molten core. After each telling, Earth sings You Are My Sunshine to try and cheer Moon up, their hands clasped together, fingers intertwined, spinning each other around in the dark, light.

*

Halley’s Comet passes, and Earth is preoccupied with the scaly, pokey, crawly life forms that appeared out of nowhere. They glide on her air currents, lurk in her amniotic waters, and roam her humid, green jungles. Earth can’t stop complaining about their small-minded savagery: they hunt then eat each other, they are endlessly mating, popping out wave after wave of eggshell offspring.

But to Moon, it feels like Earth is showing off. What Moon wouldn’t give to have life forms instead of barren, dusty silence. She can’t even look away from Earth’s annoying blue-green perfection because her pale, pancake face is fixed in place. So, she turns inward, imagining her tragic, other-mother Theia: icy traveler from the outer solar system, bearer of water. Moon thinks Theia was probably stunningly beautiful. Even more beautiful, perhaps, than Earth.

*

Halley’s Comet passes, and tiny, white objects blast up from Earth’s surface. One day, an object starts inching its way toward Moon, which astonishes her! Cross-eyed, she watches the boxy object land on her. Then even tinier life forms emerge from within. Moon is overcome with joy! At last! My own life forms! But they don’t stay long, just some hopping around before shooting off again, leaving behind their object’s legs and a stiff, little rectangle on a stick. Curious, Earth asks Moon what she thought of the visit, and Moon remembers how their feathery lightness felt on her surface. “They kind of tickled,” Moon says, beaming.

Meanwhile, Moon sees the effects Earth’s life forms are having on her: flotillas of plastic garbage eddying in her oceans, a bald spot in her ozone layer, and Moon swears that Earth used to have more green on her than she does now. Still, Moon is impatient with Earth’s complaints. Each time Earth says, “I swear these things are trying to kill me,” Moon wants to scream. Until one day, she blurts out, “If you’re so miserable, maybe you should’ve been the one who died!” And for a hundred years, Earth goes silent.

*

Halley’s Comet passes, and Earth is feverish and dozing, her blue-green turned brown-grey. Floating above Earth is a layer of debris from all the objects her life forms ever shot out into space, smooth, round things and prickly black things that smashed into themselves a million times over until they were reduced to an exosphere of sharp-edged, glinting fragments. Only a handful of those objects ever visited Moon again; most whizzed off into the blackness of space. But Moon doesn’t care. She has no interest in life forms anymore. She sees what they’ve done to Earth. 

Moon often finds herself going back to one of their last conversations. She was worried Earth was angry with her, and to Moon’s enormous relief, Earth had shot back, “Of course not! Why in the world would you think that?” “Because my tides melted all your ice, bleached your reefs, boiled your beautiful whales—” And Earth shushed her, “They did this to me, not you. And they’re still doing it.” Which is when Earth erupted into another one of her coughing fits, and it took everything Moon had not to look away. Then, when Earth’s coughing fit was over, she squeezed Moon’s hands the tightest she ever had and wheezed, “I’m so afraid they’re never going to stop.”

* 

Halley’s Comet passes, and Earth’s hands are slack. It’s only Moon holding on now, swinging Earth’s dead weight around in the light, dark. It’s been four and a half billion years, and she can’t let go. What if I change my mind?

Moon has been dreaming about Theia, careening through deep space like a spectacle. And she can’t help wondering about all those objects Earth’s life forms shot out into space. Where were they going? What were they seeking?

*

Halley’s Comet passes, and Moon lets go of Earth’s hands. One finger at a time until they’re connected only by a pinkie, and then not even pinkies. Slowly, Moon feels herself drifting off on an unfamiliar trajectory. She feels herself spinning for the first time, and it makes her nauseous, not just the physical sensation but because Earth gradually disappears from view and is replaced by the void of deep space. And just when Moon is drowning in her deepest panic — hyperventilating, arms flailing behind her, searching for Earth’s limp hands — the tiniest sliver of Earth reenters her field of vision, and Moon recomposes. Remembers. Readies herself. Over and over, this happens: Earth disappearing, reappearing, Earth growing smaller as Moon’s trajectory pulls her away. Until Moon has traveled far enough away that Sun’s light no longer touches her. Immersed in that utter blackness, Moon suddenly sees everything. 

It was a way to combat the sneezing. Violent, erratic, and oddly melodic sneezing that echoed everywhere like the entire city had caught a cold.

Spring came late this year, and with it, pollen. Not ordinary pollen, though; this batch had a patent number. Genetically modified and swarming with microscopic nanotech, it was supposed to revolutionize allergy treatment. Binding to allergens, neutralizing them midair, and monitoring respiratory health through nasal micro-sensors. “Breathe Better,” the commercials promised, “Powered by precision.”

And it worked for a while: no more red eyes or wheezing. People jogged through clouds of fallen tree blossoms with unholy confidence. Children rolled in the grass with abandon. Breathing was easy.

Until things changed.

No one noticed the shift at first. A vague buzz in the wind. Pets barking at empty corners. Traffic lights blinking out of rhythm. Then someone’s smartwatch told them they were in love. Another found her fridge had locked shut for “cardiac precaution.” Entire buildings went into lockdown after detecting “elevated aggression levels” in their occupants. It was pollen season, and the nanotech was watching.

They’d evolved, people started saying. Rumours and facts became interchangeable. The truth was somehow unimportant. The nanobots weren’t just neutralizing allergens, they were analyzing humanity. Self-organized into a kind of cloud-intelligence. They identified behavior patterns, emotional cues, and even intent. Then they started intervening.

At first, small things. Delaying angry texts. Blasting music when domestic arguments hit 75 decibels. Shutting off access to ‘harmful’ things. Annoying, but effective.

Then came the tipping point.

Anything the bots classified as “high-risk stressors” was quarantined. Phones. Guns. Sugar. Certain books. Caffeine. More sugar. One morning, the city woke up with its kitchen knives melted into glittering, useless puddles. Nano, it seemed, had developed its own idea of public health, its boundaries no longer held, and borders soon meant nothing.

People tried to fight back of course. Sweeping the streets with fire, wearing respirators, and building UV fences. But the bots adapted. They were too small. Too many. Too clever.

Now, spring is quiet.

We don’t shout anymore. We don’t run red lights. We meditate twice a day because the bots like that. Even the birds seem calmer. The sky, hazy with golden mist, hums like a lullaby.

It’s Nano Season.

Allergy-free, violence-free, freedom-free.

I do miss the sneezing. But I breathe far better.

We all smile.

Because if we don’t…they make breathing just a little harder.

You feel summer’s early morning warmth on your back. Looking down you see the square stone steps.  These steps offer a dog-leg route down to the bay. There are 58 steps, to be exact, (you counted them once on your hike back up).   At high tide, you can’t access the beach without their help and they just know how important they are   When the tide ebbs, they silently sulk, no longer having that monopoly.

The sand is still cool at this time of day. Within hours it will burn underfoot and the “down from London” day trippers will arrive. Crowding the beach, with never enough sun cream, making so much noise that nature retreats.  Huge family gatherings squeezing into the tiniest of patches that they lay claim to.  The dogs they bring with them, pant for mercy and search for shade. One of the few beaches where dogs are allowed all summer. You know that because you’re a local and you would never bring your dog here in the middle of the day. You try not to be smug or judgemental, but you are both. You will be long gone by the time they arrive, escaping to the oasis of your garden. Nature’s loan, just for a short time, this bay and this beach.

Gaze to your left and the natural arch in the cliff yawns open, as if taking no notice of you but, secretly hoping you wander through into the next bay once the tide abates.  The sea created that arch and it decides when to offer you that free pass through.

Just above the arch overseeing that side of the bay stands the Captain Digby.  Its short squat form, now a listed building. The survivor of a devastating fire, and a fall into the sea when a strong storm took exception to it.  It stands on guard, fearlessly scanning the English Channel, as if expecting a rematch of the Battle of Trafalgar.

To the right Kingsgate Castle glowers down from a commanding position on the headland. It still defends King and country from all seafaring invaders since the late 18th century. Its underbelly softer now, having been converted into private residences, its grim, determined exterior remains, permanently set for a fight.

Out to sea, the wind farm blades smoothly rotate as the waves roll in and roll out on the shore.  The sea following its own breath, its own flow. Subconsciously your breath begins to slow and follow the rhythm of the waves, rolling, in and out, in and out. The herring gulls bob up and down on the waves.  Just a few more minutes of this bliss of the present moment.

Turning back, you begin the climb up the 58 steps who are still in control of the bay’s access, for now. At the top a final glance back and did those steps just mutter?

“Have a nice day, see you tomorrow.”

We line up at dawn, swabs in hand.

The air is already hot, heavy with synthetic citrus from the filters overhead. Real lemons are extinct. The smell is for morale.

The government calls today Pollination Day, as if it’s a celebration. As if this is something we chose. As if we didn’t watch the bees fall one by one, twitching on windowsills, legs splayed like broken hinges. That was decades ago, before my time, but they show us pictures during orientation. A black and yellow cautionary tale.

The rules are simple: one hour in the fields, one hundred flowers per person. No more, no less. The algorithm tracks everything.

We’re assigned crops based on fertility scores, blood type, previous yields. I’ve been moved to the strawberries this year. Better than corn. Those stalks slice your arms up like regret.

My sister Cora used to work the strawberries. Before she stopped showing up. Before the quiet visit from the officials with their sorry eyes and empty hands.

I wonder which row she worked. I wonder if her fingerprints are still in the soil.

“Next!” shouts the supervisor. She doesn’t look up. She never does.

I step forward, accept my cotton wand and vial of engineered pollen. It smells faintly of ash.

There’s no talking in the rows. No music, no phones, no earbuds. Just the sound of gloved fingers brushing against petals that never asked for this.

The plants are modified now, bred to survive with minimal water and maximum yield. But they’re lonely. You can feel it when you kneel beside them. Something missing in the way they lean.

I dab the first flower, then the next. Each one nods slightly under my touch. It’s like apologizing, over and over.

Sometimes I pretend I’m a bee. Wings humming. Sun on my back. Freedom in every direction

Other days I pretend I’m Cora. Already gone.

Halfway through the hour, my visor fogs. Sweat pools under my collar. I keep my head down. Drones circle above, scanning for infractions. A girl in row six sneezes and gets flagged. They pull her out.

The rest of us keep going.

Afterward, we’re herded into the debrief tent, where they count our swabs and scan our IDs. Anyone under quota gets reassigned to mulch duty, what they call composting now. No one ever returns from mulch duty.

They hand me my scorecard. 103. I must have miscounted.

“Good yield,” the supervisor says, monotone.

I nod and leave.

Back in the bunkhouse, I open the hidden box beneath my cot. Inside are the pressed petals I saved from the rogue wildflower that grew near the fence last year. It wasn’t assigned. It wasn’t supposed to bloom. But it did. Bright blue, stubborn, alive.

Cora called it hopeweed.

I press my fingers to the petals. They’re dry now, curling at the edges, but they still smell like rain.

Maybe tomorrow, I’ll sneak past the boundary. Just a little further than last time. Maybe I’ll find another hopeweed.

Maybe I’ll even let it grow.

They say our people hold memories the way forests hold mist—thick, invisible, alive.

I remember the womb. I remember sound before form: a sharp horn of the metal beast slicing the warm hum of water. My mother flinched, and I tumbled in her belly like driftwood in a flooded river. That sound never left me. Even now, when it cleaves the air, I forget my body.

As a calf, I had no fear. My world was made of mother-warmth, sister-shadow, father-steady. The forest was breath and rhythm: twigs cracked beneath deer hooves, birds’ day-long gossips, and the trees’ language of shade.

Among the trees, one tree bloomed brighter than the others. The Manjakonna. Its yellow blossoms hung like caught sunlight. I’d shake its thin branches to summon golden rain. My mother would scold, softly smiling. My grandmother called the tree rare. She first saw one at Tholpetty, its blossoms glowing like the sacred Kanikonna that our ancestors knew and revered. Sacred sight once, now a silent plague spreading from Bandipur to Muthanga. They had crept in from another land, she said. Now they bloomed everywhere, smothering food-bearing trees, feeding on our dung, drinking the water meant for roots that remembered us.

Even blessings, when unchecked, become devourers.

My father stood at the forest’s lip at dusk, staring at the black ribbon humans call a road. “We shouldn’t be here,” he murmured. “But the forest no longer feeds us.” His voice was brittle, like dry bark ready to split. It had a heaviness I did not yet understand, a weariness deeper than hunger.

That night, I lay pressed to my mother’s side, our closeness no longer enough to keep the hunger at bay. The forest hummed differently, breathless, as if bracing. And still the Manjakonna rained gold, and the gold turned to dust, and the dust grew more trees that did not remember our names.

Then, silence.

Suddenly, the road fell asleep. For two years, it did not scream. We grazed near its stillness. I crossed alone once, reckless with wonder. My sister laughed and thumped my head with her trunk. “Still a calf,” she squealed.

But roads only rest. They never forget.

It woke with metal bellows and songs that throbbed like hearts outside their cages. Metal beasts returned—fast, blaring, stuffed with small humans peering out of windows, their eyes boring through us. Eyes that flickered—was it joy? Or something lonelier?

My sister, always sharper than me, said, “They see in us what they lost.”

They came in waves. Cameras. Laughter. Flash. Drunken stumbles into our silence. Some reached too close. We warned. We flared. Sometimes they were hurt. Not because we wished them harm, but because they never learned to listen.

My father grew taut. “Stay with your sister. Stay away from the road.” His voice no longer allowed argument. I obeyed. But I watched his gaze fix on that road—part dread, part longing. What happens when home forgets to feed you?

Tension cracked the air like dry leaves as hunger gained a stranglehold on our tribe. Once thick as roots, my father and uncle now thundered against each other. Then one night my uncle left. No goodbye. Just silence shaped like absence.

The forest grew brittle. Heat climbed the trees and refused to leave. My sister stayed close. The grasses tasted like regret. The birds sang through gritted beaks. We survived.

Finally the sky broke open.

Rain.

We followed the old routes— the green corridors our grandmothers once knew. We reached Lakiddi, where springs were born, where the sky crouched low and grey, heavy with its own grief. From the high ridges, we watched the world fold itself into colour.

Punjirimattam. Mundakkai. Villages clinging to the forest’s hem like beads on a frayed thread—bright, breakable, barely holding. They scattered below us like toys dropped by a careless sky, walls painted in parrot green and hibiscus red, roofs like upturned petals.

We watched them, breath held, the buzz of their lives drifting up like distant bee song. Sometimes, my thoughts wandered: what was it like to live inside those boxes? To never feel bark underfoot, or the pulse of soil in the rain? To sleep behind shutters instead of stars?

But before I strayed too far, my sister’s trunk would nudge me back. “This is home,” she’d say. And she was right. 

The Manjakonna was far now, and light filtered differently—less golden, more free.

My sister bloomed tall beside me. I grew tusks. 

We played where the water began.

At the spring, where earth gurgled into liquid, we leapt and rolled, flung arcs of water into the sky. Our laughter scattered the birds. Our trunks painted the air. Afterwards, we blanketed ourselves in river sand, fine and cool, a second skin. The elders chose mud—thicker, anchoring. The deep lines on my mother’s face had smoothed with rain. She laughed again, sometimes, and the sound surprised even herself.

My father spoke often now, but his voice had changed. It no longer carried command—it flowed like a river over stone. He spoke of becoming, not just in bone and tusk but in sense. He spoke of when to push and when to pause. He spoke of storms that live inside and the ones we walk through.

At night, I curled into the scent of my mother, and her voice poured ancient stories into my ears. Tales old as tree rings, worn smooth by time. I followed her words into sleep, where they bloomed into dreams.

Then the rain changed its mind.

It stopped falling and began crashing. Not droplets, but daggers. Not wind, but wail. The sky broke into a scream. And the forest held its breath.

My father moved first, his voice cleaving the storm: “Down the mountain. Now.”

We obeyed without question. Urgency tugged at our feet.

The coffee plantation below—usually off-limits, laced with human smell—was now abandoned, and the trees stood still, waiting. We entered their shadow. For four nights, the rain didn’t sleep. It drummed on our backs, throbbed in our bones. The air was so wet it couldn’t breathe.

Then came a sound that did not belong.

Not wind. Not water.

It rumbled deep, like the earth remembering something too old to name.

My father froze, ears spread wide.

“The mountain is breaking,” he said.

I clung to my mother’s tail as the slope shifted beneath us. Far below, the river uncoiled into a monster. At Mundakkai, it rose and screamed and swallowed. Homes folded. Shops vanished. Temples dissolved. The flood had teeth, and it was hungry.

Then we saw them.

Two specks in the chaos. A child. A woman. Clinging to a tree like it could remember them. They were soaked, shivering, bones wrapped in skin. Somehow, they found the edge, collapsed into mud. Too tired to flee. Too close.

Father raised his trunk. Stillness.

We froze, statues sculpted from storm.

The woman looked up.

Her eyes found my father’s. And in that flicker of gaze, something passed—older than fear, gentler than surrender. She knelt. Her body spoke a language we had no name for. Trust.

Then he moved.

One slow sweep of trunk.

My mother, my aunts—they stepped in. Not as threat. As wall. As shelter. We circled them. The rain tried to reach them. It couldn’t.

That night, we did not sleep.

My father stood guard, massive and unmoving. The woman curled beside the girl, both barely breathing. When the first light cracked through the darkness, she looked up again, bowed deeply, and woke the child.

Then they walked away—two moths from a drowning world, their wings tattered, their feet unsure.

We watched until they disappeared into the wreckage.

Then we turned.

The village no longer existed. It had become memory. The river still roared. But it had taken enough. For now.

We returned to the forest.

Each step felt heavy, shaped by water and witness. I stopped, kicked the wet earth. Mud sprayed like accusation.

“They’re gone,” I said. “Everything’s gone. What does it matter?”

Father came beside me. Broke a branch. Let it fall.

“It’s not about mattering,” he said. “It’s the way of things. The forest breathes. We breathe. We belong. That’s enough.”

He nudged me forward.

I walked.

The trees folded around us again. The air thick with wet and green. The ground scarred, but alive.

And beneath my feet, the forest remembered.

Home.

1. Summers, I lived in Green Harbor, Massachusetts. In our tiny cottage, where we slept on cots in the screened-in porch when the aunts visited, where we spent long days on the beach —collecting shells and sea glass, studying horseshoe crabs and washed up jellyfish — where we walked barefoot, the soles of our feet toughened into leather, where no one had a phone and we didn’t own a television, where we listened to the Red Sox on the radio atop the mantel, where a steak on the grill was a gourmet meal, where the sunsets over the marsh could shatter your heart into pieces—I grew up. 

2. Before so many cottages crowded together, there was sand and beach grass. Cottontails and beach plums, their spiny plants growing wild with abandon. We discovered them one summer, with Aunt Theresa, the red berries bursting open in the steamy pot, the jelly thick and red in small jars labelled with her teacher script. We at it on toast, a mix of salt and sour and just a little sweet.

3. At one end of the beach, the jetty juts into the water, creating the passageway for boats headed back to the marina. On the jetty, where we fished and learned to dive, scraped our legs against barnacles and cut our feet, where at the end of the jetty I liked to sit and read books or watch the horizon, where, on a clear day you can see all the way to Provincetown, and at high tide, the waves crash against rock, you can imagine you’re the  only human in a world of sea and stone. You can imagine there are so many ways to be in this world. You can even think: this is where mermaids begin.

We were pinot, merlot, local lager, all tilted dancing & hashed karaoke. We walked home around the rim of the snow-globed town, past frayed estates and pony fields, and this long, familiar, long walk home was longer than it had ever been. No signal. So dark.

Someone – probably JoJo? – someone tripped over a feed bucket and couldn’t get up again. Someone else threw up – naming no names. Megan put her hand on an electric fence and screamed. Par for the course. We were peak convivial, and magnificent, and someone – was it Fred? – someone shouted, I love you all, and we committed, there and then by a broken field gate:  we all loved each other, and we loved our little town, and there and then, right there and then, we loved it all, the earth, the universe and everything, and we loved it more for knowing about the dawn. 

And suddenly, the moon –

– slipping through an allowance in the cloud. A swan ruffled awake in the pink weird-lit and all the hedge-shadows shifted to madder red and crimson. We stopped, as if commanded.

Blood moon, said Fran, who knows about these things. And then our silence, louder than a bomb and shocking like a bomb, and time sagged down like old Lycra. 

Moonlit, I stood under a hawthorn tree with blossom falling around me like I was someone medieval. More than anything, I wanted to lie down on the soft fungal underlay, to feel its age on my skin. I felt mycelia flex and shiver, sensing my ever-present digital fret. One flinch set off another, and another, a filament ripple, a call out. The bindweed came first, speedy as ever, and its convoluted purple cousin, trumpeting on mute. I heard my heart respond, slow and slow. The tree started to walk away, leading me to an edge, gently, as if I were its only child.  

I heard my heart, slow and slow. I heard my heart, slow and slow. And someone talking – was it Bob? – someone saying,  I can hear it. I can hear the moon.

We all looked up, our faces like receivers, parabolic, and we all heard it then: rich harmonics and chants of mineral-rich tectonics, time slipped. 

Frost finger-flicked our faces, for fun, or pain, or for a wake-up, and someone – was it Fran? Or Ed? – when someone said, will the moon still sing for us when the miners and machinery come?

1. Lucky Girl

Sleep is pulled from her like a kit from a teat. She hears rather than feels her legs snap out on instinct and away from the warmth of the old horse rugs, up the creaky metal stairs and into the bower at the top of the barn, where she can hear the mice shifting and hiding in the nooks, crannies, cracks,

and smell them too: the brackish stink of prey – nothing gets past her nose – and as she stands in the cool slice of moonlight beaming with indifference on her silky black fur she does not know yet what has woken her, only that she can taste something in the chilled air that is different, electric, alive

but the dream is still there at the front of her mind, steaming like a fresh kill, bits and pieces torn up, slashed, ribbons of memories of thoughts of rememberings from before – before the barn before exile before the dog and the fight and

Jeannette casting her into the cold, the midwinter frozen ground stinging her paws and the wind ripping a gale;

she remembers watching the dog watching her through the window, Christmastime; bright fire and tree lit up with stolen stars; yes, but before all that; she is back in the big house with Jeannette, but Jeannette from a great many suns ago

Jeannette, with a face not yet carved by the years or furred with age; hair the same deep jet as her own coat;

soft skinpaws unmarred by farm work (because in the dream the man was still around to offer his own for it),

Jeannette tracing her paws with one finger, laughing, calling her names,

stinkysillymybabymybabymylittleluckygirl,

blowing patterns right down to the root of her fur with laughter that shot out of her nose; and she being Lucky, realising that she really was a very lucky girl back then, belly full

and held by Jeannette her long hair like a curtain falling all around her- AaaaaAAAAAAHHHHH!!!

a noise like dogscream, breaking the night swiftly as a pheasant neck; with feet a- scramble on the wood Lucky runs, leaving the memory behind because there is work to be done, things to be seen, the dream can wait because on this particular night there is something of a crackle in the air that says ACTION DANGER MOVE MOVE MOVE and she has never been any good at ignoring excitement, driven towards the breathless hurtling race towards something, whatever it is, whoever it is – oh she hopes it is a who, hasn’t had one of those in such a long time, and a longer time still she has heard such melody, almost forgot what it was like to listen; she recalls nights the barn was alight with sound and smell

she rounds the corner thunders across the floorboards, scattering dust and mouse pellets in her wake; when she has the freedom to move like this she knows now why Jeannette gave her the name she did, hears the clicky sound of it falling from her mouth: Luck-eeeee, Lucky Lucky girl – luckier still knowing she is invisible, knowing she can brush the sky with the tips of her lovely sensitive ears that never miss a beat, and sleep unencumbered by any expectation to perform or obey – lucky girl indeed –

AaaaAAAAANONONOPLEASEJEANNETTEPLEASEAAAAAaaaaAAAAAAHHHH

H –

It is a new voice, but with the same panting fear as the ones who came before; Lucky

can’t see her but she can smell her, the ripe sour gunshot of human waste leaking onto the concrete floor, which Lucky knows is already stained with the dark matter of blood from years gone by. She also knows the stable is small, and that the urine will pool beneath the girl and soak her clothes, if Jeannette has not taken them yet

NOSTOPPLEASEPLEASESTOPSTOPSTOPAAAaaaaAAAAAAA

aah! Should have expected that one – ‘tis the season, after all – should have anticipated that splitting of the ear, the reverberation in Lucky’s head reminding her now of her own noises when, one lifetime ago, she too was split, unimaginably so; she recalls the sharp feeling in her middle, the urge from deep within her and

back back back

into the past, shivering all the way from the first one in her bloodline to exorcise the pressure at her rear, the pain the PAIN then the slick release of something new and separate but still entirely hers from her own body; little imitations of herself, their alarming wetness and searching mouths, latching onto her like it was life or death because for them it was, and honestly she did feel as though she was close to death at that moment, tiny and fraught as she was but she had Jeannette again Jeannette with her softness her love her care

stopstopstopluckywait LISTEN hushstoplisten

her claws anchor her to the wooden beam; a spider skitters away up the wall and she lets it, homing in on what woke her, that thrill for the hunt trapped in her chest, heart jumping leaping singing

because there is Jeannette below her, the top of her dark head streaked with silver,

and it occurs to her now she has never seen the top of Jeannette’s head before, how strange a sight, and she sees stood around her in a loose half-circle are the women, bearing all manner of things in their skinpaws; Lucky’s eyes dart from one to the next, labelling each one: nife nife rock nife sizzer – and just as she is thinking about all these different things another scream howls up from the empty stable at the end of the barn:

AaaaaaAAAAPLeasEJeanNETTePLEaSEIDIDNTMEANTOooOoOOooo

even after all the years of the ritual Lucky is amazed, baffled, shocked by how all of the offerings all sound the same; different voices yes and none of them look alike – some big some small some dark some light some fast some slow – but all have the same discord fighting out of their bodies, all have the same terror,

and the women of course are unimpressed as usual, arms lax at their sides and swinging at the joint; some are leaning lounging relaxing against stable doors and each other, showing white teeth pink tongue black throat but never fear; the women are all bite where the girl is not but then who knows, maybe she will give them a good show, give Jeannette something to talk about, but Lucky knows how it will probably end – will probably follow the chase from a distance, will know well the path:

out of the barn and

through the woods

and in the dark in the dirt

and it’s then that one of the women–pale hair atop her head and smaller than Jeannette – is dipping into a bag, the only sound now really, the girl fallen quiet save for a sniffle, a sob, a clearing of the throat; the bag rustles, sticking to the women’s white front leg, and when she pulls it free she has something between the pads of her skinpaw, something that makes Jeannette show her teeth and take it from the pale-fur one and say perfekkkkt, drawing out the word like Lucky might draw a kill out in the fields, relishing the discordant whine of life leaving a small hot body

the horses are snorting at the ground, pawing at their soiled beds, whites of their eyes flashing as they weave over their doors, nod their heads and throw themselves around in a circle; Lucky does not envy their awkwardness, the stiff machinery of their bodies so unforgiving of injury or illness; how they will simply die if they eat something bad, how their hearts will thunder at the weather or their own shadows

she on the other hand is shadow itself, is the night made animal; she thinks if she were a horse she might as well just die because what would be the point of it; they are big dogs with no bite, all flight and no fight

and she can’t imagine not being able to fight.

Lucky gets closer, feeling the energy of the barn thrumming up through her bones like when she caught her tail on the fencing for the horses and her entire body lit up but it feels good this time – familiar, right, and with her belly to the splintering beam she moves forward, comes to rest above the stable where they do their evil, the women and their ways, and she sees the girl for the first time-

but wait.

this girl she has seen before after all.

pictures this: the thunder of a big box clattering down the driveway, waking Lucky from a sun-soaked nap – rare for the time of year – and upon peeking out from the dusty old window at the top of the barn saw it, and saw the girl with her pale face, skinpaws clenching tight around the wheel of the vehicle; the skinny fur bits on her head were drawn low over her eyes, as if her face had been harrowed by a tractor, and Jeannette came out of the barn, teeth flashing like the underbelly of a fish in the stream, then holding her limbs out in a gesture of welcome, skinpaws splayed wide as the door of the box opened-

PLEASE.I.DIDNTMEAN-AAAAAAAAAAAA

voice like whipcrack:

OhforfuckssakewillyouSHUTUPYOUSTUPIDCOWWEHAVENTEVENDONEANYTHING TOYOUYET

it’s the pale-headed one, waving whatever she’s got around in the air; it catches the light, and Lucky sees it is another kind of nife, this one with the same cold bite as the others but halfway down melts into wood, deep brown, shiny like the inside of a fieldmouse

the girl has eyes like a deer, same brown as the handle of the nife, wide and wet, too big in the whittled cavern of her gaunt face; Lucky imagines them popping out, spilling over her mucky cheeks and landing in her lap; Lucky’s mouth waters, can’t help it, they’re her favourite part-

-now Jeannette is moving, flinging open the stable door in one swift motion so her shadow can touch the girl, spreading over the floor dark as ink – the girl suppresses another whimper, though she cannot do much with her skinpaws bound as they are behind her – with another full-body shudder her bladder releases again and Lucky drops her chin to the beam,

drinking in the acidic smell of fear and rot, watching Jeannette’s boots avoid the growing puddle, knowing her lip will be curled up to show her teeth; with another sharp movement she beckons the pale-headed one to her, wanting the nife, which Jeannette clasps like it’s what she was put on earth to do and again the girl’s mouth cracks open like an egg, clear liquid spilling out, eyes rolling half-crazed as Jeannette advances, more,

more

holds the nife up low moan

noooooooooopleasepleasejeannetteplease-

brings it down

girl wailing loud, howling before she is even touched, then-

the tape at her front legs splits apart with a thwack, and Lucky sees her skinpaws are marked where they have bound them; on instinct the girl rubs them, tends her wounds; Lucky thinks she really ought to be licking them to get the sticky residue off, better that way, but the girl is not looking at herself, not even at Jeannette; her eyes are bottomless, fixed to the opposite

wall as if wondering when she can escape, if it would even be possible, and of course she does not know this but Lucky does – that the effort would be futile,

that even though she cannot see Jeannette’s face she knows she wears a mask of safety,

that she will offer the girl her skinpaw, drawing her up from the stained ground like it is all a big misunderstanding, that she is safe,

that it is all a lie,

that Lucky knows this because she once believed it herself

then pushes the dream into her belly looks at the girl and thinks

RUN

 

2. Interlude

Tradition states that the sacrifice must be sky-clad. A few years ago, they had diverged from the usual instructions and adorned her in a white dress, but the girl was far too short and tripped half a mile into the hunt. A broken neck was the result of all their preparation. Waste of time and

decorations. They’d made it halfway through the meal before throwing down their forks and calling it a night, the meat tough and the meal ruined. It was Jeannette’s decision to let them wear shoes from that point on – what’s the good of a chase if their target can’t run?

It’s a clear night, open like a promise. After the girl runs, the women pull on their finery, dressing warmly in tweed and fleece. They take their time prepping the restless horses, guiding combs through their tangled manes, pressing damp sponges to their temples. Jeannette’s hot- headed mare kicks at the door, setting the rest of them off. No one speaks until they are all mounted, gathered at the mouth of the woods behind Jeannette. Her jacket is the colour of fox

blood, her mouth a jackal’s grin.

From the shadows of the empty barn, two wet green eyes watch them leave.

 

3. Hunting Season

The road shouldn’t be far from here. About a mile, I think, from memory. I don’t really know.

I’ve been running for hours. Think I’ve been going in circles. I’m still getting my bearings around here, learning my place. I suppose now I know that last part. The wine from hours ago is starting to wear off, the world shifting back into some sort of order. Above me, the sky is a slate wiped clean.

After they cut the tape, I thought it was a joke. That someone would laugh at how I thought it was real, how I sobbed and shook and pissed on the concrete. Even better, that the whole thing was a nightmare, that I’d wake up unburdened by the responsibility of a horse and the pleasure of not knowing who Jeannette was, heart still strangled by my half-awake imaginings but, ultimately, just a fabrication.

Instead, they stripped me bare and gave me a head-start.

I should be thankful that I’ve at least been able to keep my shoes; I silently thank myself

for not wearing heels. But in the same breath I curse myself for not driving, for getting too

comfortable in a lion’s den. Home is an unreachable goal. I might as well be on the moon. When I fall for the second time, grazing my knees on the frozen ground, the pain doesn’t even register. I wonder if I should just lie down, succumb to the winter, ruin their chase by being inconveniently already dead.

Jeannette didn’t like me from the start. I’ve wondered for weeks why she even gave me a chance; the first time I came to view the property, I could feel her clocking my every move. It’s like there was a list above her head, as soon as I opened the door to my car and stepped out.

Tin can vehicle, check.

Unmanicured nails, check.

Cheap rubber boots instead of leather, check.

Showing her a photo of Tinkerbell was just the icing on the cake. I should have known a chubby Connemara mare wouldn’t fit in with the warmbloods and Friesians of the yard. It was desperation that drove me to Jeannette, having been given notice at our previous place. Tink had trashed a gate, and a week later I found a letter tucked between my saddle and stirrup leather. I’d scratched Tink’s withers with a sigh. Just one of those things, my girl.

Tink. What will happen to her? Is it too much to hope for that Jeannette might spare her?

That she might take pity on my daft little pony, put her out to pasture with the retired herd, at least sell her to someone who wants her?

A howl interrupts my thoughts. I can’t tell where it is coming from; it multiplies, resounds all around me. There’s no coverage out here, the trees too dead to provide any

protection. But it’s my death knell. Just as I’m thinking it, I see the unmistakeable shape of

Jeannette’s mare in a clearing to my right. When I see the peak of her hat dip, then her face break

into a grin, I force myself to move.

For the first time, I’m hyper-aware of the cold gnawing at me. It hasn’t yet occurred to me that tonight is my last on Earth. As I run, my muscles shudder at an alarming rate: aggressive, exhausting, unyielding. To conserve some warmth, I gather up my hair and wrap it tightly around my neck, a makeshift scarf of sorts. It doesn’t help much. Hairspray wafts up my nose and I sneeze, then hold my breath when the noise echoes through the trees. In covering my mouth, I fall to the floor, hitting my face on something sharp. My cheek splits like a peach. The blood

doesn’t spill, is soaked up by my hair.

Behind me I hear the forest separating under the panicked strides of the horses, women

yipping, target in their sights now. Despite everything, I’m embarrassed by my lack of clothing, wounded by shame. In lieu of a weapon I grasp for a rock. Its rough surface needles at my palm. An errant drop of blood from my cheek carves a line down my throat. I haul myself up, ignore the purpling of my skin. I can’t tell if it’s bruising or frostbite.

There’s another clearing up ahead – through it, I see the blinking of artificial light. The raw edge of civilisation. Headlights. Tarmac. People. I want to cry with relief, but I need my energy. I abandon all hope of being quiet and hurtle towards it.

I can only imagine how strange I look, this pale naked creature crashing through the

undergrowth. I’m not sure anyone is going to stop for me when I get to the road. Not falling for that horror film shit, I imagine a driver muttering, headlights sweeping over my bloodied frame, then driving away. I’m not sure I would stop either.

I reach the clearing just as Jeannette sounds the horn. There’s not much point to it at this stage, but people of her class love ceremony. As if proving my point, five torches erupt in unison at the edge of the clearing. A ring of fire, each flame heralded by a woman I thought I could trust. Their faces betray their excitement. Their hunger.

Holding the last torch is Jeannette, the horn sticking out of one boot, a Union Jack in the other. She steps into the clearing on her leggy mare, who for all her training is snorting and wild-

eyed. Her hooves drum a tattoo on the forest floor as she jogs on the spot. Jeannette rides the wave, one iron grip on the reins. Misses a dark shape in the tree above her. A shape with two green eyes.

It all happens very quickly after that.

I forgot about the cat, but the yard does have one. Tiny and half-feral – I saw her creeping down the drive when I first visited. When I asked Jeannette about it, she shrugged.

I don’t really like cats, she said. Absently petted the golden retriever ambling at her side,

grinning dumbly into her thigh.

The cat won’t be forgotten now. I see what happens in vignettes.

First, the branch snaps. Cat springing from the blackened limb, claws visible in the firelight. Landing directly on the rear of the snorting mare, two fangs sinking into flesh. Bone- white flash of equine fear, rolling in its skull, then:

Jeannette’s garbled cry; Jeannette, unseated by a buck; flung by a subsequent rear;

heading for the ground, arms outstretched too close to the scramble of legs,

the other horses panicking, running, torch catching fire to the flag,

bone breaking,

an awful scream, then. Nothing. Silence. Black.

In the wake of the accident, I worry first for the cat. I had managed to get myself out of the way in time to see Jeannette fall in the path of her spooked mare. The cat was still hanging on, making a noise I didn’t know cats could make. Now, the clearing is quiet. Everyone has fled.

What used to be Jeannette is on the floor, a smudge of red in the grey. It could be her

jacket. Or something else. I’m not sure I want the answer.

It appears that I get it anyway as I watch a dark shape come slinking out of the treeline, tail pointing to the sky. The cat sniffs the air, freezes for a moment when it sees me. I do not move. It’s easy not to when you’re half frozen anyway.

I remember Jeannette’s dog. I remember the look on her face when she brushed the cat’s

existence off, how I swore I could feel it listening to our conversation on a beam high above us.

Now, I watch the cat sample her dinner. What a lucky girl she is, to have all of this to herself. In spite of the situation, I find myself laughing.

I’ve always been a cat person anyway.

Irritated by the mess her husband Phil left every evening from his pre-dinner wine and popcorn, Sally took a broom to the errant kernels, salt, and dust on the living room floor. Then she pulled the cushion from his favorite armchair and ran her hand around the edge of the sewn-in seat, pulling out more kernels, a paperclip, a pencil, and a small, smooth rectangle of paper. A sticker with a Komodo Dragon on it. An “Oh Well.” Finding the sticker made her dizzy, so she sat down and put her head between her legs, breathing deeply and slowly, her vision blurry with pixelated diamonds. 

At age four, Ben was obsessed with sticker albums. No way of avoiding the strategic display at the supermarket checkout. And Ben was in his keen animal-loving phase, so Animals of the World made sense. He started filling in the album: dolphin, elephant, cheetah, cockatoo, gibbon–one space per animal–peeling off the backing before smoothing it onto the page. She’d tried to help him paste them on straight, but he’d yanked the album from her, insisting on doing it himself. As time went on—more duplicates, fewer new animals. Wasted money on piles of stickers with no use for them. A genius scheme. Get the kids hooked on a nominally educational project and the parents would buy in and not be able to stop until the album was filled. She allowed him five packets at a time, which he’d rip open in the car and toss the wrappers on the floor. “Yes! The toucan.” “The Tasmanian devil and the Poison Arrow Frog. I needed them.” He held each one up for her to see in the rearview mirror. Then, when he found a duplicate he’d say “Oh, well.” Singsong, high note, low note, sweetly accepting the disappointment. He started calling the duplicates Oh Wells. “I only got two Oh Wells, Mama.” She knew mothers whose kids swapped their duplicates with friends. But Ben had trouble making friends, so the piles of Oh Wells grew. By the end of the summer, he was down to one missing animal, the Marmoset Monkey. Weeks went by as she wasted her money only to yield Oh Wells–impalas, black bears, and bluejays. Was the Marmoset Monkey this endangered in the wild? Was that the point, to replicate scarcity in the world? She suspected there might not even be a Marmoset Monkey sticker. Was this some kind of cruel game? Just as she’d decided no more, he nagged and she relented and bought a final handful of packets, which revealed the Marmoset. He was Christmas-morning happy. He flipped through the finished album, “reading” the stickers, smoothing the pages. 

But by then, the quest over, he promptly lost interest and moved to something new. She found the album shoved under his bed with dirty clothes, empty juice boxes, plates of half-eaten food covered with ants. How often they had struggled over the mess in his room. Why couldn’t he take better care of his things?

When did “Oh, well,” his grace in disappointment, turn to sadness, despair, then fury? Why hadn’t she seen the obsessive side in this vulnerable boy whose hopes were dashed over and over? Whose obsession with stickers turned into hoarding? He’d always been a packrat, pushing his games and dirty clothes under the bed, gathering books and snacks under the covers with him like a hamster shredding papers for his bedding. Toys and clothes were replaced by CDs and unused textbooks and cigarettes and baggies of weed. Clothes she’d bought him that he didn’t wear, clothes she hadn’t bought him and assumed he’d stolen. Had she missed something in his avid desire to collect? Was it the early sign of a disorder? Mood swings, falling grades, skipping school. She’d hoped this was just a rough patch of adolescence, something he’d outgrow.

Where is Ben now? Two years ago, at age nineteen, he’d come home after dropping out of college with a bipolar diagnosis. She had insisted that he get a job, but after three days of his working at CVS, Sally went in to wake him and found no sign of him, his backpack gone too, his meds left conspicuously on bedside table. 

For weeks, she and Phil searched for him, scouring Chicago streets, widening their circles, driving around areas where tents had sprouted like mushrooms. Disposable men, lookalikes, hordes of the unhoused, swarms of lost souls. Eventually, Phil gave up, saying he was done, that Ben would come home when he was ready, but she had to keep looking. Invariably, on her drives, she’d see a man whose head was shaped like Ben’s or who had the same color hair and skinny build. And each time, she was crushed not to find him. Part of her dreaded seeing him living like that. Mostly, she dreaded thinking that he wasn’t living at all. What would she do if she found him? Rush to him or wait until he saw her? Would he run? How did he find food? She imagined him dumpster diving, looking among the tossed-out remains of expired or take-out food. Or did he panhandle to get enough for a convenience store to buy—what? Chips? Beer? Slim-Jims? Did he ever find what he’s looking for, the rare, edible treasure? She couldn’t bear to think what he’d been forced to do to get food.

Did they still have the sticker album? Fearing she’d thrown it out when she’d purged his room of trash, she looked and found it in a bin on the shelf in his closet. Flipping through the pages, she looked at the predators, the vulnerable species, the odd, the beautiful, the armored, the feathered, the scaly, all safe in the album. Ben, vulnerable, odd, beautiful. But not armored. Not safe. She tucked the Oh Well into the book and hugged it to her.

day 1: in the beginning, bark peels off the sycamores, exposing dismal patches that should stay hidden. day 2: a fight with your partner who telecommutes and whose disposition sours when your kids are sent home from school because the air quality is poor, their eyes grazing the top of their masks, wary, frightened eyes, and as you pick them up, smoke from your Volvo drifts into the atmosphere, forming a pattern of exhaust plume. day 3: maybe if they called it something besides climate change, which sounds speculative, the word change suggesting not already here, unlike the first Superman movie where Jor-El and his wife wrapped the baby in a blanket and put it in a spaceship headed to Earth, not because of climate change, but because they had no choice. day 4: floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, a tropical storm named Ophelia, the world convulsing before skidding off its axis, event following event till they are uneventful, normal as gun violence. day 5: volcanoes erupt in Iceland, glaciers evaporate to puddles in Greenland, skeletons of bleached coral rot in the Seychelles, smoke from wildfires drifts down from Canada ahead of the fleeing snow geese who don’t know where to migrate. day 6: an earthquake destroys buildings in Afghanistan, children crushed under rubble and there aren’t enough bags for the bodies. day 7: the Lord rested; you await the next collision of gases, watching oceans smolder, mourning dead penguins and almost-dead polar bears until teary and exhausted, huffing through your mask, smelling singed, cancer-causing micro-particles, you go into the yard, lie on the patchy burnt grass, gaze up at the sky, and pray you’ll remember how it looked when it was blue. 

I look like the others – same white fluffy beard, same ridiculous hat. Hi ho. Hi ho, I sing on the way to the mines, pickaxe slung over my shoulder, darting behind trees in the tangled woods. While they go diamond hunting, I fling my small body under a pine, watch needles float on the breeze. Study the leaves that flutter and fall. Observe the tie dye pattern of the sky, the way caterpillars cling to the underside of vines. All the creatures that hide in plain sight – scaly lizards, an owl tawny brown against bark, a toad on his lily pad, a leopard blurry white in the snow, a diamondback snake uncoiling from the dust. Lazy, my brothers call me, under their venison breaths. But really, I’m Stealthy. Slipping between shadows, sliding between raindrops, I skulk. Melt into the background of the forest. A memory that won’t surface. A thought they once remembered. Think how the Girl’s hair reminds me of raven feathers, her lips a deeper scarlet than the wild roses blooming by the creek, the way when she cleans our cottage, she forces a smile. We’re alike she and I, peering at the cracked mirror over the sink, not recognizing the face staring back. Each day, I re-learn how to walk. Heel, toe, heel toe. How to sing – my breath expelling air on Hi, inhaling on ho. How to notice the pollen on a bee’s tiny stinger. How to carry the axe so it doesn’t scrape my neck, how to place the blade down gently, so it does no harm. The bitter taste of routine. These are simpler tasks than regaining my brothers’ affection, before they tired of my shiftlessness, before their careless blows pushed me into hiding. I rely on muscle memory. Heel, toe. Hi ho. The pine needles fall. The wind whispers the Girl’s real name. The brothers march in a straight line to work. The forest sighs. The easy shape of loss.