Sometimes stories begin out of nowhere, as if they are happening somewhere, somewhen.

Hidden within a copse of slender white birch, Belial gazed at the pale trunks, skeletal and still against the lowering sky. As the ancient reverend she straddled gasped and strained beneath her, grinding his cassock and its thirty-three buttons into the dirt, she raised her eyes as if in prayer.

Overhead, the remaining clusters of bright yellow leaves autumn had yet to strip from their branches suddenly fluttered. How like candles they were, she thought, glowing bright even as the chilling twilight gathered, though they produced no warmth at all.

The reverend was finally close to dispensing what Belial needed, what she had lured him here for. She could tell by the quick panting breaths, the rough guttural grunts and the way he reached desperately toward her apron. But even as she rode him, her revulsion would not permit the laying of his gnarled and knobby hands upon her breasts and briskly swatted his ugly claws away. She also glanced briefly down at his grimacing, grizzled face where smoke-like puffs issued from his open mouth full of bared, rotting teeth, then quickly looked away as his coated tongue, stiff and shiny, poked out at her. She was grateful for the sudden rush of frigid air that swept down along the valley to drop the bright leaves and cold flames all around her. At least she could smell nothing but the bitter, damp chill.

Having hoped for a tantivy, Belial began to grow frustrated and angry over the reverend’s sluggishness and thought to urge him on—“Come on old man, you can do it!” but she refused to speak, to give him the pleasure or stimulation her high-pitched and frantic fifteen-year-old voice might provide. She had little left of her pride but refused to squander the remainder of it on this, on him.

And then, without warning, the writhing body of the holy man seized, bucking up with surprising avidity for his fifty-plus years, his face contorted, his rheumy eyes rolled back in his head, his frail legs drawn up and shining even whiter than the birch. She bore down with single-mindedness of purpose until she was sure she had wrung every last drop from him. Exhausted and relieved, she rolled off the used and motionless form failing to notice the reverend no longer drew breath.

Flat on her back and tucking her skirts and cloak around her legs, she raised her feet to rest against one of the papery trunks and waited, her thoughts invoking a soft and welcoming womb where the faintest spark of life could take hold. Even as the wind she felt might freeze her solid grew in strength, she continued to wait, knowing she must be open and patient.

To distract herself from the brutal and insistent cold, she moved on from the idea of heatless flames to imagine the falling leaves with their jagged edges as gold coins raining generously down. With them she would find a way out of the village, away from the starvation that would surely follow this third year of failed crops, diseased livestock and a river so poisoned only the most desperate pulled sustenance from it.

Like the environment, the enforcement of cruel laws that had been written hundreds of years ago to prevent total calamity and presently upheld by men like the foul reverend to supposedly give the most viable a fighting chance of survival, were also firmly against her, as she was neither the youngest in her family, nor the strongest. But this was a chance at changing her position, a chance at saving herself.

Though the reverend had already begun the process of decomposition within the slimy dark recesses of his dead body, Belial felt only hope and a minute twinge of life within hers.

The Bray Harp Of Dyerbroooke