Welcome to this week’s installment of many micro stories, ranging in length from 100 words to 500 words.
With each story we hope to deliver a little whimsy into the lives of our readers.
FIVE FOR SORROW
Winter winds set the bare trees writhing in a mad dance against the gray scudding clouded sky, the ravens perched in the branches clinging fast. In the bald spot within their ring, she stood clad in a plain black shift, heedless of the cold that bit through the cloth, within a circle carved into the ground laid bare by the frost. With the tip of a heated blade, she had cut five charred lines within the outer frame, intersecting to shape a star. Within each point of the pentagram, she had laid an offering, cut or taken from a worthy victim. Within the center, at her bare feet, she had laid a flat stone on which she had painted, in her own fresh blood, a branch with five tines.
“I bring you a stone from the depths of the sea. I bring you a maiden’s hair cut while she slept. I bring you charcoal from a burned cottage. I bring you river ice broken at midnight. I bring you a lamb’s heart,” she called to the cold sky above, the light fading as the day died into night. “I have slept but five hours for five nights. I have drunk only cold water for five days. I spoke only when spoken to for five days. I have washed with care from top to toe five times today. Out of the void, I call you name!”
Five times she spoke the name, harsh on human tongue and terrible in the ear, calling across void and veil, to heed her plea and accept her gifts, of offerings and devotion, to hear her and open for her the way. Five times between she paused to heed the silence, till she spoke the name no more.
The sky made no reply, the wind did not sink, nor did the clouds part. No voice spoke to her out of the trees or the earth. Chips of snow fell from the silent sky to wet her loose hair, now matted in the wind. The branches above writhed as if distraught by the names spoken in their midst. Cawing raucously, as if in disdain, the ravens spread wings and took flight, wheeled on the wind and flew off to the compass points.
Save one, which circled the clearing once on outstretched wings, flapped to slow its descent and landed by the offered heart. She reached out to drive it away, but it stooped to peck at the bit of flesh and raised its head, turning to gaze at her with three-lobed eyes.
R.C. Mulhare was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, growing up in a nearby town, in a hundred year old house near a cemetery. Her interest in the dark and mysterious started when she was quite young, when her mother read the Brothers’ faery tales Grimm and Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry to her, while her Irish storyteller father infused her with a fondness for strange characters and quirky situations. Between writing projects, she moonlights in grocery retail. A two-time Amazon best-selling author, and contributor to the Hugo Award Winning Archive of Our Own, she has over one hundred twenty stories in print through dozens of independent publishers, with more stories in the works. She shares her home with her family, a vintage music-loving budgie, about fifteen hundred books and an unknown number of eldritch things rattling in the walls when she’s writing late at night. She’s happy to have visitors through her page at: https://linktr.ee/rcmulhare.
If you enjoyed this story you can find it and more in the Hawthorn & Ash anthology.
Iron Faerie Publishing 