Trickster

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Skin Walker. Shape Shifter. Changeling.

Metaphor. Trope.

Trickster.

Strange, alien, hideous, a pink red-raw hairless newt-thing, legs twisted, long dangly arms, taloned fist, sharp and clinched. Only his eyes, a glittering gold flaked amber, are beautiful. A changeling, a child stolen from its crib by trolls and replaced with a twisted creature of their own?

His mother will have none of it. She loves him.

Rumours. Sex with demons, Saturnalian orgies whisper through the village like a winter gale. Cold daggers in his father’s heart. He loves his wife, believes her faithful but can’t endure the hurtful slurs. When snow spirals through the sky like desperation and wind blows icy shards like fear, his father, the woodcutter, slips from their bed, bundles him in rags, makes for the forest of the night. Wolves howl, owls screech, restless paws pitter patter on frozen earth, wind whistles through snow laden firs. A last glimpse at his glittering eyes, hot with accusation before he abandons it to a snowy crib, meat for the beast of night.

Shivering, he slips in beside his wife, an icy touch straight to her heart.

The door opens. A rush of winter wind. She vanishes into snowy night. Lost to him forever.

* * *

Steam rises from hot breath, a warm tongue thaws his freezing face. She-wolf, sharp toothed, jaws, crusher of bones, grips him in a caress softer than falling snow, carries him to a secret den.

* * *

He is there beside the path, leaning against a giant yew tree as I pass. His yellow eyes sparkling with mischief. A thing wild. Runs with wolves. Child of the forest. Handsome devil, he tempts my heart with want. He changes shape. A raven now, diving, swooping, tormenting me on my way to Granny’s. He plucks strands of flaxen hair. It hurts. I pull my hood over my head and swing my basket at him when I see his approaching shadow. Granny’s goodies tumble from the overturned basket. He snatches a biscuit in his sharp beak. Ragged throated laughter. Flies away.

I knock at the cottage. He greets me. He’s morphed into Granny. I know it’s him. His eyes define him. I ask if he’s eaten Granny. He says he hasn’t. Granny’s too skinny and ugly to be appetising.

Granny’s nodding by the hearth, pale and frail. I run to the window and scream for help. Quick as a rat with stolen cheese, the woodcutter comes crashing through the door shouting wolf. Panic and Frenzy. He swings his axe, knocks over granny’s tea set. I duck, and narrowly escape losing my head in his panicked madness. He opens up Granny with his axe. It’s messy. Granny is finicky about keeping things neat and tidy. It doesn’t matter much now seeing as she’s bloody and dead.

Why? I ask the woodcutter.

I thought she was the wolf, he cries.

The raven cackles with laughter swoops through the open door. Disappears.

* * *

Yews are sacred trees to some. Today, this yew, large, gnarled and majestic, on the edge of our village, serves as gallows. The spectacle finished. The audience gone. A harsh justice meted out. The woodcutter swings gently from the rope around his neck, a black bag covering his head, hiding bloated tongue, bulging eyes, tortured face, black and blue. I loved my granny but can’t help but feel some sadness for the woodcutter. A simple man bordering on stupid, he didn’t mean to do it.

The sun is dropping behind the tree line. A wake of ravens have gathered, flittering among the gnarled limbs of the yew, their golden eyes aglitter. Excited. They will strip the woodcutter’s flesh to the bone. Soft blue-grey shadows lengthen along the path. I watch the gentle rhythm of the corpse twist and sway in the breeze as if dancing in air.

Dark wings float down from the yew. I feel him morph beside me like a rush of air from a doorway opened in storm. I look into that handsome face, eyes glittering gold, clever and knowing.

Why? I ask.

Why not? He says.

Why? I ask again.

He shrugs his shoulders.

Sorry about your Granny. She didn’t have long. She was dying. The forest is precious. Sinless. The forest is home. The woodcutter chopped down a lot of trees, some of them sacred, he says.

He was a simple man, I say.

He was a silly man, a greedy man, a selfish man.

He runs his long graceful fingers along the rough rutted bark of the yew tree, reverent and loving.

It was time for the forest to get even, he says.

–

ALPHEUS WILLIAMS, curmudgeon, pantheist, lives and writes in a small coastal village in Australia with his wife and their border collie. His works have appeared in The Molotov Cocktail, Barren Magazine, Storgy, The Write Launch, The Fabulist Magazine, Shotgun Honey, Bristol Noir, Bath Flash Fiction, Ellipses Zine, Danse Macabre, Mystery Tribune, Bull, et al. Push Cart x 2 nominee 2021.

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