The day was so cold , the morning having dragged with it a reluctant grey sky and watery sun . It was weather that did nothing to revitalise the gaunt faces of the dying lain on the dusty paths . I had but cleared the threshold of my home when the young lady who lived several doors away stumbled towards me , a wailing bundle clutched against her angular chest .
‘ Take him ! Take him ! I can ’ t feed him . I ’ ll take anything for him – anything ! – I-I ’ ll give you him for free ! Please .’
My stomach turned . And I was a coward to turn away from her , my only offering a sympathetic smile , but our helplessness was shared . Her wailing quietened as I walked on , weaving through the town towards the treeline rising from the empty fields that bordered us – a constant reminder of our inability to sow and harvest .
Basket hooked in the crook of my arm , neck severed by my new scarf , I walked . Decaying houses soon gave way to high hedges . All but one , a residence I spied rising from the field . It was a large house , whose chimney continuously puffed out flurries of rich smoke , shattering the resilience of the hungry with warm , well-fed fingers . I hurried past the large gates of the house – gates which remained chained shut against the hordes of starving townspeople . They groaned through the bars , desperate to be heard by the home whose stock was always abundant . Provided for by generational wealth that showed no signs of dwindling , the plump couple who lived there were dutiful in ignoring the bodies that piled up on their grounds . The talk of the town , when there was energy spared for spiteful gossip .
I walked by , trying not to stare at the unmoving elder slumped against the gate , his fingers clawed and rapidly stiffening . His body would be stripped in a matter of hours , his clothes taken in desperation to the market ; I could only hope that his body would be carried to the fields to be laid with the others and left to rest in one piece . The palpable hunger wailing from the gates dispelled my faith . Soon enough , the first of the woodland remnants began to rise about my feet in jagged stumps like broken , skinned femurs . Here , the woods used to rise in all their glory . But a greed capable only of mankind had reduced the first ring of trees to a graveyard ; when we had the energy to take up the axe and swing . I imagined the whetted stumps surging upwards , impaling me and stretching out wooden tongues to lap up the gore that rained from my martyred body ; consuming as it had been mercilessly consumed .
I was glad to enter the shelter of the woodland , as anorexic as the leafless oaks were . Even in the sanctuary of the trees , the cold was lancinating . The kind that slips between your ribs to the muscles beneath and squeezes . A carpet of frosted mosses and brittle ferns crunched underfoot . Shafts of silvered light fell upon the icebound ground , metallic fingers tugging
Ella Millar 69