Julith Jedamus
The Girl with No Hands
Fire, the Adamant
Flour for Snow
All that winter the woodcutter laboured in the snow, cursing the weather and his blue fingers. Bitterness had warped him, like boards poorly cured: his wife had died young, and his sons had left him. He cursed the drifts that slowed his footsteps and hindered his sledge. “If only the snow would turn to flour,” he muttered.
Near evening, he leaned exhausted against a tree. When he opened his eyes, a fine dust was falling. He brushed some off his sleeve and tasted it. It was just like the flour that his mother used to knead into bread.
How could he profit from his luck? He could shovel the flour into sacks and sell it in the market. Or he could pay a girl to make cakes and peddle them from door to door. No longer would he have to spend his winters chopping down trees and splitting kindling.
Yet as the days grew longer with the new year, his wish proved a curse. When it rained, the flour turned to paste that clogged his shoes and cartwheels. Damp flour shovelled into sacks turned mouldy. Mice and rats feasted on the unsold flour that piled up in his granary.
The forest suffered too. The woods turned brown. Wildflowers and healing herbs grew scarce. Deer fed on sedge and bracken; the hunter’s horn sounded rarely.
Only in high summer, when thunderstorms turned the meadows green, did the forest recover its beauty. But winter caused the woodcutter more trouble than he could bear.
In desperation, he prayed by the Virgin Spring, where a young girl had been murdered years before. It was said that the spring, warmed by subterranean fires, flowed every day of the year.
As the woodcutter knelt by the clear green water, he heard a voice speaking from its depths. “Make three cakes from the cursed flour and blood drawn from your veins. Offer them to a wolf, a mountain lion, and a bear – each one must eat the cake from your hand. Only then will the flour turn back into snow.”
The woodcutter left the spring in despair. The task seemed insurmountable. If only he had the help of the sons who had abandoned him! Each of them had been brave and cunning.
That night, as he slept on his pallet near the inglenook, where ash stirred by a draft settled on his face, he dreamt of his youngest son. His eyes were green and his skin was brown as walnuts. “Father,” he said, “if you want to trick a wolf you must walk upwind from him. Make sure that the first thing he smells is the blood-cake on the palm of your right hand.”
When the woodcutter woke in the morning, his son’s advice seemed useless. Even if he managed to approach a wolf, it was as likely to devour his hand as the blood-cake! The dream made him bitter and sad – for despite his son’s foolish advice, he realised that he missed him as he hadn’t done for years.
The next night, when he returned to his pallet by the inglenook, the woodcutter dreamt of his middle son. His eyes were blue and his skin was marked by the pox that had ravaged him when he was a child. “Father,” he said, “if you want to trick a mountain lion, you must wear the skin of a bear, the only creature a lion fears. Make a mitten of the bear’s paw, and place the blood-cake on it.”
When the woodcutter awoke, he was indignant. The advice was absurd. Where would he find a bearskin – and how could he track the lion to its lair? Bitterness stung his throat – but even so he remembered how fearful he had been when his son nearly died of the pox, and how he rejoiced once he recovered.
On the third night, the woodcutter dreamt of his eldest son. His hair was black like his mother’s, and his eyes were hazel ringed with green. “Father,” he said, “if you want to trick a bear, make a stew of fermented mulberries and honey and leave it by his den. Once the bear has drunk it, he won’t be inclined to maul you when he takes the blood-cake from your hand.”
Never had the woodcutter heard such ridiculous advice. Yet he remembered when his eldest son had dressed up like a wolf to scare his brothers, and how they had run from the room, screaming and laughing. The memory made him weep. As tears rolled down his cheeks, all the rancour he had felt during his long years of solitude left him.
All that night the woodcutter sat near the inglenook, stirring the fire and watching the sparks fly up the chimney. Near dawn, a knock at the door startled him. When the door swung open, he saw his three sons standing on the doorstep. Snow was falling on their broad shoulders, and on every fir and pine. When he stepped outside to embrace them, snow fell on him too. Myles Zavelo
WINTER HEAT
Yuxin Zhao
towards a science of haunting
T.C. Hell
Ritual poses
Colton Karpman (Founding Editor)
Editor’s Note
Dilara Koz (Art Director)
Em Bauer (Illustrator)
Isaac Zamet (Poetry Editor)
William McGuire (Prose Editor)