For this week’s fantasy flash fiction we’re going into the woods. Content warning: there will be no teddy bears and no teddy bear picnics there today!
Enjoy!
I could hear her thoughts, so she could hear mine. Thoughts of what we’d bake each other to sweeten the long forest winter swirled around us to fill our cottage.
Darker thoughts which hinted at Him were quickly covered with the thin pastry of apple tarts and covered with cream, weighed down with the ballast of porter cake sodden with beer, or stuffed with turkeys full of sage and pepper breadcrumbs.
Seven of us sisters had lived here before the curse dropped at our door.
He would come once more. Taking one of us, leaving the last alone.
When I thought about it, it seemed to me—as it did to my sister—that being taken was the kinder death. It would be quick, whereas being left alone would mean death would take an entire lifetime.
We tended the common grave of the five sisters who had already succumbed, but we tended it separately. It gave us time to think unguarded.
My thoughts were always the same: “Let Him take her.”
Now that idea had been let loose in the cottage, but whether it came from her or from me, was impossible to say. With practice, it is possible to dull thoughts so they have no personality or flavour.
He knocked on the door that night. Rain clouds covered the moon, so neither of us could see him. Nor could he see us to choose.
He chose by our thoughts and in the morning there were no more sisters, just a woman living alone.
Without her to distract me, I heard His thoughts: the wild, bellowing calm of the forest.
If you’re around this evening, make sure you check out the launch party for Mark Stay’s third Witches of Woodville book, The Ghost of Ivy Barn, which is being live-streamed right here!
Perfect for fans of the Alumière Sisters! Here’s a cool trailer video to get you in the mood!
If you’re more a People Skins person and in the mood for something a little darker and stranger, check out the new trailer for Danger Slater’s Moonfellows here!
