Grace

Colly’​​​​​​s story, his huge eyes all earnest, the story of a family so hard up they put the knife to the youngest. Or was it the eldest? she thinks.

She says to Colly, nobody walks the road in this weather but the dead, and even then, I haven’​​​​​​t seen or heard a single ghoul.

Into view comes a work yard that sits in crumpled silence. She sees slag heaps beginning to whiten, work huts that could provide shelter, perhaps a fire. She looks for signs of smoke.

The open country is hasped under hulking clouds that harry snow upon it. A company of cabins off-road and she knocks at every door but only one door opens to a closed face.

She walks with a hand nursing the hurt in her head, watching the sleet become snow. Finally, Colly says something but it is only a whisper. She says, what did you say? He says, I said, so this is what the end of the world looks like —​​​​​​ I always wondered.

story. Perhaps this is what growing up is like.

She laughs because she no longer knows what is real and what not real.

But what comes instead is laughter rich and thick and easy as breathing and Colly can’​​​​​​t help but laugh with her. They walk along the road, roaring with laughter under a starling sky, the birds vibrating in their single shape with darkness and light. She thinks, laughter itself is a riddle. The way it hurts your chest yet brings such pleasure. It leaves you as hollow as a drum and yet feeling full.

It is then she sees the farmhouse has disappeared. Gone as if it has fallen into the nothing she has just woken out of. This place different. Gone is the low hill that rose away from that narrow farm. Just flat tillage fields and not a single hill in the far-off and she cannot understand why she is covered in mud and leaves.

Quiet as a mouse during the day, for the farm belongs to some rough man. When he steps into the outhouse she stands in the corner holding her breath. Watches him send away stranger after stranger from his door, spalpeens or whatever, asking for work or a bite to eat. Watches him sitting on a stool in the corner of the yard tending a harness, his fingers steady and patient but quick and rough with the necks of his children, pushing and pulling at them, shouting at them like dogs. How she would love to go to his door but you cannot ask anything from such a bruiser so she pockets loose parts of a plough to sell later in a town, plans to leave in the morning.