Our terrier bared his teeth and his tail went taut. He snarled and howled at the curtained window with every scrap of ferocity his twelve pounds could summon.

“Jellybean is barking again!” I announced. “Which means tonight we play…”

Luna dropped her crayon to her plastic table and clapped. She shouted, “Spook! Or! Squirrel!”

“What do you both think?”

Kristy lay reading on our couch, the sunken one we had stretched at least three years past its useful life. “Squirrel,” she said. When Luna turned to her, she smiled. “Squirrel for sure.”

Jellybean reared back for another volley of barks, so I raised my voice. “Mommy says squirrel. What do you think, Luna? Is she right?”

“Yessss.”

“You always say squirrel.”

Luna giggled. Jellybean’s growl rumbled in his white belly, which I knelt to rub. He was a good boy.

“Anya!” Luna whined. “You have to say, too!”

“Well—” The growl snapped into a snarl, and I stood. “You both said squirrel. So I’ll say… spook.”

Luna’s pigtails flew as she shook her head. “Nooo… You’re wrong, Anya!”

Jellybean howled and barked at the window. Kristy held her novel but had not gone back to reading. “Hanna, are you going to look?”

“Of course!” I answered. “That’s how we play the game!”

“Mommy and I will win!” Luna announced.

“I’ll go see.”

I walked from our living room to the darkened kitchen. Though it had been a stifling summer day, we kept the window overlooking our driveway latched. The night air would be cool and calm. I missed it.

“Anya! Which is it?”

“Hold your horses, little pigtails.”

Jellybean had not let up. I leaned over the sink’s faucet and peered outside. No squirrel hopped along our fence. As my mouth opened to say nothing, I saw a piece of it. The white shadow began to turn as it glided past the edge of my vision. I glimpsed its eye, unholy and red, and then could see no more.

Kristy called from the couch. “What do you see, Hanna?”

“A squirrel,” I said.

“I have wondered if thee will marry,” his father said.

Elnathan looked up from his rabbit stew.

“It is a part of life,” Samuel Holm said, and he ate another bite.

They had built this house together. They had mortared the stones for the foundation, hewn the floor joists, notched the logs they stacked and chinked with rocks and straw and clay. They shared one bed. Through all of it, they had never spoken of marriage, love, or any future beyond tasks to perform. They had left their first farm five years ago, and in that time, Elnathan had heard six directives from his father for every word of conversation.

He studied the older man in the fading dusk, debating whether his father meant to test him. “The Friend says men should live in the Spirit, not in the flesh,” Elnathan said.

Samuel Holm lifted his bowl to his lips. Elnathan noticed his father’s hands trembling again, as they had since his illness the preceding year; Samuel Holm had spent less time carving or whittling since. He wiped his arm across his graying beard to erase the tell-tale drops of broth. He folded his hands on the table and watched them, as though guarding their stillness. “Thee is nineteen. If thee did not shave it, thy beard would be full by this time.”

“Men shave their beards. Thee is the only man I see to wear one.”

“Thee would think of little else beside marriage, if thee lived in any other place,” Samuel Holm continued. He lifted his eyes. “There are things important to a young man.”

Elnathan laughed. “Thee think me a young boy indeed, if thee think to explain such things.”

Samuel Holm returned his eyes to his hands. One of their cows lowed nearby.

“Thee was not so old when my mother left time,” Elnathan said, “and thee never thought to remarry.”

“That I did not discuss the matter with my son does not mean I did not of think it.”

Elnathan watched his father, awaiting further words, some sign. Samuel Holm sat quietly with hands folded on the table he had made.

Across the lake the

hillside blurs: houses,

the vineyard, ten thousand

trees grow gray and

indistinct beneath

dark gray.

The chair, the novel, the

drying trunks I shelter before

returning to the dock to

extend my arms and

feel it come. It will mist

me with the wind, or it will

batter and punish my skin, or

some hundred or thousand

droplets among the septillion

will fall upon my arms and slide,

gently, along follicles and

fissures too small for me to know

so that then I can feel what I am.

A gull cries. I wait for God, for

the sky.

Once upon Ye Olde English heath, as the door to her cottage swung open, Hildegard smelled burning. Her husband’s boot had crossed the threshold, he would expect dinner, and he would not want it to be burned.

Hildegard rushed to the hearth. She grabbed the dangling pot of stew and instantly, agonizingly, the metal seared her palms.

“Zounds!” she cried.

“Woman!” her husband remonstrated.

“Zounds, it hurts!”

“Hold thy foul tongue!” her husband roared. “Thou wilt not blaspheme in my house!” (For zounds, dear reader, derived from God’s wounds, a reference to the crucifixion of Christ, and to employ the torture of one’s Lord and Savior as an epithet was as shocking to a pious old Englishman as the lyrics of NWA would prove to his descendants' erstwhile colonists 400 years after.)

“But it hurts!” Hildegard cried. “Thy stew burneth, and the metal hath proved too hot for my tender hands!”

“Stow thy pitiful excuses!” her husband retorted. “Find thyself a godlier path, or never again look me in the face!”

Hildegard departed. She wept even after she treated her second degree burns at the home of a crone who practiced homeopathic medicine, for Hildegard loved her husband, for some reason, or at least loved having a roof over her head to escape the goddamned English rain. To keep her husband roof husband, she needed aid, so Hildegard set out to a person who could set her on a godly path.

“Woman, why dost thou weep?” the Archbishop of Canterbury asked.

“Forgive me bishop,” Hildegard answered. “I hath displeased my husband.”

“How?”

“With an ill word.”

“What ill word did thee speakest?”

Hildegard hesitated. “I said, Zounds, your bishopness.”

“Jesus,” said the Archbishop of Canterbury, “that’s fucking awful word. Why wouldst thou say such a thing?”

“I burned my hands, your bishopness. On a pot. Heaven help me, if I don’t find a safer way to hold a pot, I might blaspheme again, and my husband will disown me. Is there any hope for such a disgraced wench as me?”

“Let us pray.”

And Hildegard and the Archbishop knelt and prayed, and, i dunno, burned frankincense or something, and lo, the Holy Ghost sent them down a dove, which carried in its beak a thickly woven fabric, and they gave thanks to the Lord.

“Almighty God,” asked the Archbishop of Canterbury, “what wouldst You, in Your Infinite Wisdom, have us call this thickly woven fabric with which to hold pots?”

The candles flared, the stones of the cathedral shook, the Archbishop wet himself, and a voice from the heavens boomed, “A potholder.”

And so Hildegard carried the potholder home, and gave knowledge of it unto other women, and prepared many delicious stews without burning her hands, which meant she never again said the unforgiveable zounds, which meant her husband loved her, five times a week whether she were in the mood or not, and she bore many children and had a roof over her head to protect her from the goddamned English rain, and they all lived happilyish ever after until the plague destroyed their bodies and minds.

The End.

Listen,

the muse sings to the

pulling of weeds, to the

piling of bricks, to the

scrubbing of plates.

The muse sings to the

earthbound, to the occupied,

to souls in revolt against

menial days. Silent cries

beckon loudest, prayers and

invocations be damned:

the muse will not be summoned

and scorns intention. She

cares nothing for your plans,

laughs at your blank page,

pisses on your offerings.

She will not bless self-anointed

poets who ransack corpses

for metaphors.

So move forward. Live.

Be about your business, turn

the grindstone, then breathe.

Breathe. Listen.

The muse sings to those

hungriest for song.

Answer number one: it was beautiful, and then it was dust, and then it was both.

I remember seeing the rover for the first time. I almost didn’t want to touch it, like it was holy, a bone from a saint. Then I stepped back and saw my bootprint next to it, and I knew, fully, where we were.

The four of us had studied Mars exhaustively for years and viewed every image, still or moving, dozens or hundreds of times. We had felt the sand that first sample-return drone recovered: a box of precious nothingness, 10 centimeters square, every grain analyzed and formulated by celebrated scientists. They learned so little from it. But what we felt, we chosen four who immersed tentative fingers within it, let it rest in the grooves of our fingerprints...

Full story newly published by NewMyths here: https://sites.google.com/newmyths.com/newmyths-com-issue-66/issue-66-stories/brushing-sand

Years ago, the early draft of this story appeared for a brief time on Prose. The response was favorable, and also included some criticism that helped me realize the story could be better. After a great deal of reworking, I am very proud to share the final, published version with my Prose friends. Thanks to all who commented on that early draft, but especially to TheWolfeDen, whose challenge inspired the story, and JD4, whose criticism was sharpest and therefore the most helpful.

“I suppose I did

love her,” Braelyn said.

A log crackled, spit

glowing flecks against

the dark. She might have

had more to say, but

not to us.

I sat with Ashley in

tree-broken moonlight

watching her sister,

drinking. Ashley leaned

close, shared my jacket

while the fire fell. We

cooked nothing and told

no stories. We sat with

Braelyn, watching embers

fade to ash.

March 11, 2024