The Unquiet Clay by Bryn Colvin

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Silence uncoils around the fire. My company processes from behind me to surround them. As firelight reveals them, I see horror and disbelief etched on living flesh. I see a grim reflection of what we have become.

Who do we take? A young one, who does not yet understand? An old one, ripe with fear? Or a mother and child huddled against the cold? I understand the urge for taking now. All becomes clear. The need. The hunger. A gap in our ranks of an exact size and shape.

It hits me then, that I am part of the outer circle with the horrors. Not one of the terrified living but something instead, dead and undying which feeds. I hear their bells. My bells. "Choose." And I know the decision is mine to make. The luminous eyes of the mother and child meet mine, and widen in recognition. A different kind of hunger. I should feel something now. I should remember. There is a hole where my heart used to be and I wonder if a heart, still living might fill the void. I imagine the taste of blood and life. The colours of it more vivid than the scene before me.

I reach between my ribs and produce a bundle of twigs and bones, the feather of an owl. Echoes of what was and might have been. An ache, mourning my lost capacity for tears. I press the fragile bundle to my dry lips, and offer them to the child. His small hands open in acceptance. I avoid direct contact. The warmth of his living would undo me. I place the bundle in his hands, careful not to touch, or too closely examine my own extremities. I could choose to sate this emptiness with blood. But I feel the cost too keenly. There would be no peace and those luminous child eyes would haunt me for all time. It is too poor a bargain.

I feel the dust stir and shift within my chest. The weight of borrowed antlers on my head. I have no sense of where the other path leads. I do know that it tastes of soil, of bones mixed with clay. I find it oddly comforting. I turn my back on the firelight, the human faces and the wakeful dead, and walk, trailing dust and dry leaves. As the night swallows me, there are no bells at my back and an old song before me, the oldest song. Wordless. I seek the oblivion of an earthen embrace where my memories will dissolve and join with those that have gone before me.