Market Day
The fire flickers, the flame is guttering and there is no heat left in it. The storm hasn’t passed like he said it would and even though we are in a crumbling cabin in a great forest, not as great as it once was as we have nibbled the edges like a child with a sweet biscuit but a great forest still, there is nothing left to burn except the wood of the cabin itself. Outside the weathered door the wind still blows, the snow still flies and the trees still lash themselves. We huddle for warmth wearing all our clothes, our skins, our blankets. All except him over there, he who brought us here and who now amazingly sleeps, alone and away from the failing fire, the snores rasping out of his mesmerising mouth audible over the storm’s loudest shrieks. I lie awake, shiver and shake waiting to die and yet he sleeps still as stone.
The quick way he said, shorter by a full half day he said, go through not around and reach the market town sooner. He said it as a rhyme so we sung it as a walking song, laughing at ourselves when passing travellers looked at us like we were mad. And it was true. It was quicker and we sold our wares for good prices and with pockets full, lingered at the common house and took turns with the only harlot that we could afford instead of looking at the sky. We were too drunk, too satyric, too busy puking in the gutter to see the signs of the storm and then, because we tarried too long, instead of going around the forest on the way home we chanced our hands again like fools, so we were hung over and half spent at the start when we left the road and took the track again into the great trees. Now five are three and I wonder how many more men we would have needed just to have had one sensible man to argue against him and his route. The funny thing is we have food aplenty, salted meat, bread and even more to go around with two of us still out there, stripped of their coats and buried under the white blankets beside the cart and my two dead ponies.
I whispered before, to my brother, my blue lips in his ear and my groin spooned in his rear. “Henry,” I said, “I want to kill him before we die, I have my cold blade to make his sleep endless. It will change nothing but I want to. I want it to be me, not the storm.” He did not reply so I poked Henry’s ribs and then felt his silent chest and cold cheeks before I took his blankets. I wait until the flame burns its last. With the last flickers I remember the heat between the harlot’s legs, lament our folly and with cold knife in hand begin to crawl to him. The fire goes out.
