Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-28266772-20171103170413

So, this was written for a prompt by Mmpratt! I'm mainly interested in their thoughts but anyone else interested can chip in too. Hope you like it Mmpratt. This is still a first draft, so be prepared to see stuff change over the future weeks. We lay my love and I beneath a weeping willow, but now alone I lie and weep beside the tree. Singing O Willow Waly by the tree that weeps with me, singing O Willow Waly 'til my lover returns to me. We lay my love and I beneath a weeping willow, but now alone I lie. Oh Willow I die, Oh willow I die

- Paul Dehn

Spring spray, chipped stone and lye – leather, teeth, Nails, chalk, and tar. From these my flesh was born. I cannot die.

''- Ancient Welsh poem titled “Mari Lwyd”, writ. circa 450 AD, printed in “Slate Poetry and Other Strange Finds from the Archaeological Site at Anghyfannedd: The Undiscovered Picts” (1925) ''

The pain of a twisted ankle followed James, pulsing like an imaginary phone vibrating in a pocket. The path he walked was old and its sun-baked depressions had made for awkward footing. He was not wearing the right shoes for this, but a loosely fitted cotton shirt helped him deal with the stifling heat. In the distance he spotted a blue pickup truck driving along a far-off trail and stopped to watch it wink in and out of sight as he caught his breath. High fields of wheat surrounded him, blocking most of the breeze, but enough of it swept through in dusty wafts that he could feel a sliver of cold along his brow.

He could just about see the hairy head of the willow tree from where he stood. It urged him to stand up straight and carry on, so he did. He knew the field was close now. A place hemmed in and off-limits to the public but which no one actually owned, or wanted to own. From above, one could see it as a patch of untended land hidden amidst the jigsaw pattern of hedgerows. It’s thick grass, tall as a man, was stamped with a strange path that ran through the field from the outside in, like a wriggling spiral. Its destination was a hill with the willow tree; together they stood above the undulating wheat like an island above water. James had hated the spidery head of the willow tree since his childhood. As he grew he realised the tree and the hill had been hated only because of their association with something else. The tree didn’t matter to anyone, it was what was under the tree that mattered.

The Mari Lwyd.

It was a lonely sight. Just a simple hobby-horse with a head made from jagged driftwood, and a handle of painted wood; course and coppery hair had been slid into the crown of the head. All of it had been covered with an intricate array of aquamarine runes that shimmered as the sun moved across the sky each day. Most people, however, did not see such details. It was easy, in fact, to find conflicting reports of the Mari Lwyd’s appearance because like a report of a mugger with a gun pointed to your head, there was only one detail that seemed to matter.

The eyes.

Grey eyes. Human eyes buried deep in those wooden sockets. Eyes that lived. Eyes that bore down on anyone who approached the hill. And while the horse itself never moved—it simply leaned at a lazy listing angle—those eyes did, and they rolled in their sockets with the sound of a stone axle grinding. They were living eyes, not glass eyes, and they would stare, framed by glistening slithers of pink flesh that sunk into the stony sockets. Just seeing them would make your own eyes burn in sympathy, for they were clearly in pain. They blinked often in the blinding sun, revealing pocked and grey necrotic lids. And yet those eyes never appeared lax, or tired, or passive. They had been wide open, bulging like a lizard’s eyes, absorbing the horizon and the hill and the distant fields and the occasional visitor for nearly five centuries.

The local farmers had not hemmed that hill in by accident; it was trapped and secluded for good reason. Those eyes were not some apparition, they were there every second of every day and they scared the living daylights out of the locals. Farmers only worked the neighbouring lots begrudgingly and in a manic hurry. No one could stand it for long; sweating and working in the heat, loading sacks or working a scythe or, in later times, a tractor while those eyes burned a hole in your back. Most could not bear the feeling; to look up and glimpse that hairy headed willow tree, and that lonely hill, knowing that something was staring back at you with an intensity usually only seen in murderers and rapists.

Those moist eyes, blinking wetly, were always there. Even as you lay miles away, asleep in your own bed, those eyes still witnessed a small slice of the world. James had often asked the obvious questions; whose eyes were they? What did they connect to? Why did the lids look so inhuman? Were those scales he had glimpsed as a child? What was the Mari Lwyd’s history?

James was now standing at the start of the pathway that cut into the field. He had carefully walked a route that hid him beneath the local crops though he doubted anyone would see him. This was the sort of place people drove past every single day but never turned their head towards. It was better that way. But still, James looked over his shoulder for anyone else. He could blag his way out of the walk so far but once he began to wind his own way along that wyrm people would think him dangerous. A local might be just as inclined to shoot him as to lie about some crime so that he could be locked up. They had done it before. This town, James’ town, had a secret motto.

You don’t bother the Mari Lwyd.

And yet now he stepped forward to do just that. The wyrm, the spiralling path that led to the Mari Lwyd, was not short. A monotonous corridor carved through tall grass, it meandered in the sort of way that made its length impossible to estimate. As James walked the tree moved just above the grass, occasionally dipping out of sight and reappearing on his right, and then his left and then back to his right again, like a planet in orbit. For a while this and the grass was the only thing he saw until he came across an old flip phone buried in the sand. Its edges had been worn down and bleached by the sun and its screen was cracked and faded. There were a few keys at the edge with their letters still visible but most had been rubbed away. James held the phone up with a sort of dark amusement before tossing it back to the ground.

Not everyone has been observing the town’s motto, he thought.

<p class="MsoNormal">About an hour later—after he passed a single flat shoe with a greasy insole buried in the sand—the hill dipped out of sight once more before the corridor’s walls finally faded away and James was left standing on the dusty shores of the Mari Lwyd’s hill. A part of him wanted to look up at the hobby horse right there and then but the sun was behind it, and it would only hurt. What if it stunned him? He decided to keep his gaze low and trudged his way up the hill’s crumbling slope, gripping the odd root along the way like a ladder’s rung, until he reached the top.

<p class="MsoNormal">Without the sun in his eyes he turned and looked.

<p class="MsoNormal">And it looked back. Its eyes glared at him with a sort of buzzing madness and while James felt a compulsion to run he stopped himself. Instead he took a breath and patiently put the backpack he’d carried so far down so that he might rummage through it. On the outside he appeared unconcerned but as he unpacked his things he felt those eyes seething contempt, and he fumbled with the zipper and some of the bag’s contents. But it wasn’t too long until he had a camping chair, a bottle of water, and a large hefty book all set up nicely. Believing that he would achieve nothing by dallying he turned to the Mari Lwyd and smiled.

<p class="MsoNormal">“I couldn’t sing the songs in the book,” he said, gesturing towards the large tome with a tepid smile. “What’s it matter, though, really?”

<p class="MsoNormal">The eyes seemed to twitch in the direction of the book. “I brought this,” he added as he took out a single Welsh to English dictionary. “Though I don’t know what good it’ll do.”

<p class="MsoNormal">He tried to stare back at it, to hold its own gaze if even for just a moment, but every time he tried he found himself looking at his feet.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Oh well,” he said. “We might as well begin. You won’t recognise this one but,” he gestured now to the tree, “I think you might like it anyway.”

<p class="MsoNormal">James took a breath and began to sing,

<p class="MsoNormal">“We lay my love and I, beneath a weeping willow—”

<p class="MsoNormal">The song was written for a movie, itself an adaptation of a play which itself was an adaptation of a novel (The Turning of the Screw, by Henry James). James had watched his sister, once, sing the song as part of a high-school theatre production. It had haunted him ever since.

<p class="MsoNormal">He loved that song, and now he performed it for the Mari Lwyd with his eyes fixed firmly on the horizon. His mouth shaping the words effortlessly while his more-than-capable voice lulled its way sleepily through the lurid tones. It wasn’t a long song and just as he’d let himself get lost in the notes he heard the final verse approach its end. His eyes dipped from the horizon and returned to the Mari lwyd.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Well,” he said. “What do you think?”

<p class="MsoNormal">James had been prepared for it since the day he’d read about the Mari Lwyd’s ancient history but still, when the Mari Lwyd actually spoke he felt a shiver in his bowels and came close to soiling himself. The voice it used came from below, below James’ very feet, and was lilting and lyrical but heavy like stone. It was an inhuman tone but not without emotion. It sounded tired, almost like a half-dead man kissed to death by the sun.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Roeddwn i'n ei hoffi,” it answered.

<p class="MsoNormal">James overcame the shock quickly enough and tried his best to exude confidence. He’d done this before. He’d faced overwhelming odds and talked his way out of it with that shit-eating-grin every time.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Come on,” he said with a desperate smile while briefly holding up the dictionary. “It’s going to be a long afternoon if I have to use this.”

<p class="MsoNormal">The eyes, for just second, moved away from him and to the book. There was no way those glassy bulging orbs could express any real emotion but James still shivered, feeling as though he’d drawn its ire.

<p class="MsoNormal">“As you please,” it wheezed.

<p class="MsoNormal">There was a long silence as James waited. He felt determined to hold his own against the thing. After a while it spoke again.

<p class="MsoNormal">“What do you want?” it asked. James was just about to answer when it blinked for the first time during James’ visit. The sound was louder than James remembered and he grimaced and turned away. His could feel his stomach rising but quickly put it down and tried to carry on like normal.

<p class="MsoNormal">“They have the strangest little tradition named after you in Wales,” he said.

<p class="MsoNormal">“You would be surprised what traditions carry my honour,” the Mari Lwyd answered in slow wet gulping tones. James smirked and let his eyes wander along the horse’s handle. He could see from here it was bound in a pink leathery material. He already knew what it was.

<p class="MsoNormal">“It’s quite benign, actually. I thought they’d be sacrificing children or something.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“I am not malevolant by design,” the Mari Lwyd answered.

<p class="MsoNormal">“They sing to keep you out of their houses, well not you but some fool parading a horse’s skull around. Still, there’s something about a horse’s skull with glassy eyes rammed into the sockets trying to force entry into one’s home strikes me as... well it doesn’t seem benign.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“They sing because it is polite to honour your guests and I was once a common guest in those parts. No one here has ever shown me such courtesy.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“You liked it, didn’t you?” James asked. “The song?”

<p class="MsoNormal">“I did,” the Mari Lwyd answered.

<p class="MsoNormal">“I found Anghyfannedd,” James said, quite suddenly. His breath felt light as he said the words and his head seemed to tighten but he carried on anyway. “It’s how I learned the truth. Can you believe it? Those pictures, the descriptions; it wasn’t the idea of a hobby horse that let me make the connection, it was the eyes! As soon as I read the translated verse I recognised it and thought to myself that there might be some kind of... that you were... that you were real, and that I had seen you! It felt like fate. I had written it off as childhood nightmares all along.”

<p class="MsoNormal">The Mari Lwyd did not respond to this. For a second James came close to spilling his whole excited mind, speaking to the hobby horse as though it were a friend! But instead he just licked his dry lips and smiled.

<p class="MsoNormal">“I am... I have been… I…” James stopped stuttering for a moment to simply accept the words he had to say. “I want something.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“Don’t we all,” replied the Mari Lwyd.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Huh,” James sniffed, “sarcasm.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“In some cultures I was the god of humour, not envy.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“God?” James lifted one eyebrow smartly. In his head he considered idea he’d had for months, and decided now was as good a time as any to act on it. “Let me, uh, let me check something.” He reached down and found a single pebble and—even as his heart sank and his stomach dropped—he threw it straight at the Mari Lwyd. It struck the head and bounced off with a single ‘tink’. “Aye,” James said. “For all the damned fear you’ve put into people’s hearts you’re still trapped. Plopped into the ground askew. I used to think you’d been planted in a hurry by some desperate pilgrim straight off the Mayflower but nothing about this was done in a hurry. No… you were planted at an angle for fun. Someone did it at your expense and you know what… it is kinda funny.”

<p class="MsoNormal">This time the Mari Lwyd spoke in a whisper and the sound came not from below but from the wheat itself.

<p class="MsoNormal">“I have roots,” it said. And James was surprised to hear a sudden sharp sound of metal folding and cloth tearing and he turned just in time to spot the camping chair disappear beneath the sand. “I am not these eyes bound in wood, I am the wood that has been cursed with eyes to see. But I have not been idle with my new fleshy growths. I have nurtured them and they have gratned me some measure of life whether I wanted it or not. There are parts of me that breathe and gasp and parts that drip and ooze and do all the grotesque things that living things do, James Llewellyn. That includes digestion.”

<p class="MsoNormal">That last word—digestion—had come from both the soil and the wind at once and was spoken with the clarity of a threat. But James was already quite far into a heady hubris. He had spent years thinking and planning and researching, and see it all work out exactly as he had imagined was like a rush he’d never felt before. He felt unspeakably confident.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Fair enough,” he responded with a light-hearted clap. “I read the poem! Lye, stone, chipped nails and broken hips and all the rest. I read the story. The soil was lonely so it made life. But… not long afterwards the first jealous ache was born. The soil, having watched life grow and die and be reborn once more, felt something deep down inside that brought shame. It too wanted to die and move on. It wanted to die and return to the bosom of creation just like living things do. And a little part of it, a little grain of it, hated all living things for having what it didn’t. But the soil, like any good mother, refused to tolerate its own hatred of its children since it loved all living things and always would. So it took that shame, took that part of itself that hated life out of jealousy, and made tore it out. It took those feelings and rolled them into a ball made of the hardest things available and then tossed it away.”

<p class="MsoNormal">For the first time during their conversation the gaze had been broken; as James recited the tale the Mari Lwyd’s eyes had been fixed on the horizon.

<p class="MsoNormal">“I read,” James added, “that later on the soil realised that one day the sun would die, and so would the Earth, and that it had no need to ever be jealous in the first place. How do you feel about that?” James asked. “Do you long to return to the soil? Or do you value your own identity?”

<p class="MsoNormal">The eyes returned to him.

<p class="MsoNormal">   “She hates you for what you did,” The Mari Lwyd said. The bristles of the willow tree vibrating angrily as it spoke. “Shuffling elbows and grunting hatred trapped between goosebump-covered skin in a tent somewhere in the rain. I see it, like I see all things that have ever happened. Did you think she anticipated you? Did you see her eyes and think she wanted you? She was looking over your shoulder the whole time!” The Mari Lwyd’s voice emitted something like a laughter, but it felt more like someone was hitting James’ feet with a sledgehammer.

<p class="MsoNormal">James tried to maintain some composure but his voice quivered a little when he replied,

<p class="MsoNormal">“I suppose we can all be hasty at times.”

<p class="MsoNormal">This time the Mari Lwyd’s laughter was so loud it shook loose the soil at the top of the hill.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Fine!” James cried. “I’m not stupid! I don’t expect you to rewrite minds. I know what she does and doesn’t want. I just… I need…” James took a breath and straightened his shirt out. “I need her gone. And anyone else she told about it.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“I’m not the god of wiping shitty arses. Face up to your own personal failings.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“I want him gone,” James mumbled.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Hmm?” asked the Mari Lwyd, though they both knew perfectly well that his words had been heard.

<p class="MsoNormal">“I want him gone!” he cried.

<p class="MsoNormal">James turned to face the tome he had brought. It now lay half buried in the sand, having been spared the fate of the camping chair. It was the first time he had fully turned his back to the Mari Lwyd.

<p class="MsoNormal">“A long road has led you here James.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“Yes,” James answered. “A lot of planning.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“The word is ‘scheming’.”

<p class="MsoNormal">James let out an exhausted sigh at the Mari Lwyd’s acerbic wit, ignored it, and proceeded to lay his request out in greater detail.

<p class="MsoNormal">-

<p class="MsoNormal">The train ride had been long and lonely. It was coming to the close of the day and the striated pattern of colours that ran past the window like rain in a storm changed from warm oranges and vibrant greens to dull blues and greys. She only really half-glimpsed these things as her eyes opened and closed, on the verge of sleep, but it was enough to give a sense of time’s passing. She wasn’t nervous considering she was returning to the dig site for the first time since she had been attacked. It had been a mad and confusing affair and she had been strangely calm throughout. She had insisted it hadn’t gotten to her; he hadn’t actually done anything, she’d told them, and she’d fought him off easily enough. Oh sure, the university went mad, it had hired a would-be rapist! And then put that would-be rapist in a secluded location with not one, two, or three, but four, female undergraduates as a dig-site supervisor.

<p class="MsoNormal">But Alice felt relatively okay. She felt a strange perverse satisfaction from watching him squirm. Strangely enough, and she’d never admit it to others, but she hadn’t enjoyed hurting him because of his pitiful attempt to rape her. What she had really enjoyed was the opportunity to hurt someone she had never really liked. In some ways, when she realised what he had been attempting to do, some part of her, deep down (way deep down), was happy to have justification to start causing him pain.

<p class="MsoNormal">She wondered if it still hurt for him to use it, just during day-to-day stuff.

<p class="MsoNormal">Probably, she thought.

<p class="MsoNormal">But in the dreams, she wasn’t clothed, nor was he strangely weak and pathetic. Nor was it him, really. It was some strange grey-fleshed monstrosity. Seven, maybe eight, feet tall with rippling muscles and a lithe hairless frame. It wore a loin cloth, a cattle-skull head-dress, and was covered in large blue tattoos and it came after her with legs like pistons. In her dreams she was running stark-naked through the rainy streets of Dewellyn (a hamlet near to the dig-site and as far as roads took you to Anghyfannedd; a place the students had often stayed when the site flooded and they could not stay in their tents) and it followed her. Its footfalls, heavy wet thumps with rhythmic certainty, followed close behind her as she weaved between the close-walled, thatch roofed houses. As she ran she would stop occasionally to try an ancient door but the knobs were stuck and none would open. Sometimes she would bang with both fists, screaming hysterically, but the people within only recited the oddest poetry to her in response. She would awaken from these dreams, heart thundering away, and would roar in anger at the possibility that James’ attack had wounded her psychologically.

<p class="MsoNormal">The notion offended her greatly.

<p class="MsoNormal">The train she was on came to a screeching halt. She had only been on it four hours and was still far from her destination but the strange way the lights flickered and the feeling of anxiety she felt made her think she was closer to Anghyfannedd than she possibly could have been. She sat up and looked down the corridor and noticed only one other person. As of yet there were no members of staff she could ask after. Normally, in this sort of situation a machine somewhere would go, ‘bing bong’ before some sultry attendant told you about the train having a flat tyre.

<p class="MsoNormal">From there you either waited for it to be fixed or worse, waited for a replacement bus. Alice grimaced at the thought and sat up straight and refreshed herself a little. She’d been hovering near sleep for hours but hadn’t actually gone that far and yet she felt a little rejuvenated. It was good. Maybe she had slept? Maybe she had slept and been free of her dreams? She hoped so.

<p class="MsoNormal">She was still waiting when she glimpsed it. It was the strangest thing, it almost made her laugh. It looked like a hobby horse! By now the sun had come damn close to setting completely and the nearby hill was like a pallid blue sheet but where it met the sky (itself another pallid blue sheet but of a slightly different shade) was a black silhouette that stood out easily. It was a stick with a horse-shaped head and behind it a veil that whipped like a mane in a storm. It didn’t move but it seemed to shudder in the wind. Outside was a faint drizzle—perhaps a storm in adolescence—and she wondered if that lonely thing was cold up on that hill. She had been mesmerised by the strangeness of it. It was faintly comical and she had a smile on her face as she leaned closer and closer to the glass trying to make out the necessary details.

<p class="MsoNormal">When a large calloused hand with a grey complexion slapped against the pane of glass she came close to losing control and flew backwards. She shook violently and was on her back, propped up on her elbows, as the hand’s owner rose into view. Alice scrabbled backwards kicking her legs out desperately to gain purchase. When she fell off her seat and into her aisle she rose up, groping in the dark blindly, and began to scream hysterically for help.

<p class="MsoNormal">He’s here, she said. He’s here.

<p class="MsoNormal">At least nine-foot-tall (he stood almost taller than the carriage), with a torso that looked carved from stone, and a horse’s skull for a head. His hands could have wrapped around her head like an apple. Was this, she wondered, really how her mind saw James? She didn’t wait to find out. She turned, saw the aisle devoid of life, and ran. She stopped screaming and instead focused on breathing. She was a runner, she knew this, and she knew how to maintain focus. When she reached the door at the end of the compartment she heard the glass shatter.

<p class="MsoNormal">It wasn’t hard to open the door but she turned anyway and saw the loping figure clamber through. It was too large to stand in the aisle so it began to scramble over the seats. The sight of that twisted motion made Alice scream once more and she crossed compartments and slammed the door shut behind her. She hadn’t moved far when a fist the size of a man’s head came through and took the metal door with it, wearing it like a watch. The fist quickly shook itself free and slid back into the darkness. Alice was still running, risking the occasional glimpse backwards, when two misshapen hands gripped either side of the frame and launched the strange blue-figure towards her.

<p class="MsoNormal">She was too slow and the hand that gripped her swept her from the floor with ease. It was gripping the back of her coat and she was already struggling to slip free when it spoke with a voice like a continent moving.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Stop,” it said, and she did. Those black sunken sockets surveyed her—the equine head turning a full swing so each empty eye could regard her carefully—and then it dropped her. She fell to the floor and saw the figure stoop to sit on a table, its immense weight crumpling it easily until the material could give no more and it served as a seat. The figure rested its enormous elbows on its thighs and leaned forward.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Can you sing?” it asked.

<p class="MsoNormal">Later, Alice awoke from the dream, her head slumped against the glass where she felt the engine’s vibration keenly. She wiped her eyes and tried to focus on the scene outside but it whipped by in only a blur. It had been barely been fifteen minutes and the sun was still up, warming her cheeks, and bringing a smile to her face.

<p class="MsoNormal">-

<p class="MsoNormal">This time James had walked eagerly, smiling all the way, and when he reached the hill he was ready to begin talking straight away. This time he had brought nothing but a bottle of water which he greedily gulped from while lazily making his way up the hill towards the Mari Lwyd.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Right,” he said, clapping his hands while those eyes regarded him. “So… is it done?” he asked. He waited patiently as the grass whispered in the gentle breeze and the sun continued to prick away at his skin, burning his forearms red. Those eyes gazed at him with unrelenting intensity but they didn’t answer. “Come on,” he said. “I’m here. Let’s talk shop.”

<p class="MsoNormal">Still no reply.

<p class="MsoNormal">James had an inclination of what to do, but he wasn’t keen. Before that he decided to stoop low once more and take a pebble in his hand before pelting it hard at the hobby horse’s head. “Come on!” he cried. “I fulfilled my end of the bargain! Didn’t I? I fuckin’ sang…” James waited, hearing only his heartbeat and the wind.

<p class="MsoNormal">Eventually, and begrudgingly, the Mari Lwyd spoke.

<p class="MsoNormal">“The correct greeting is a song.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“Well friends don’t always greet each formally, do they?” James answered.

<p class="MsoNormal">The sort of displeased grumble that came from the soil was heard typically from old people trying to stand up. Even James found it disquieting to hear from a hill and a tree. Some part of him hadn’t quite come to grips with the idea that he was not speaking to an actual hobby-horse, but the very soil itself. By the time the Earth stopped shaking and the Mari Lwyd spoke again James felt the slightest pang of regret.

<p class="MsoNormal">“I suppose we might one day become friends.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“Eh?” James snorted but shook his head. He had no intention of being distracted by idle conversation. “Never mind,” he said. “Tell me, have you…? Are they…?”

<p class="MsoNormal">“Yes.”

<p class="MsoNormal">The world hung in the air for a moment, distant sounds echoing loosely through the fields around them. Then James burst into hysterical laughter and spun around with his arms out wide.

<p class="MsoNormal">“That wretched little slut has finally got—”

<p class="MsoNormal">“I do miss it.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“Huh?” James cried, turning on the spot and interrupting his reverie.

<p class="MsoNormal">“You asked if I missed being part of my mother. The answer is yes,” said the Mari Lwyd. This times, James noticed, the eyes did not seem to vibrate or twitch madly. In fact, they seemed oddly still.

<p class="MsoNormal">James’ facial expression reflected the strange kind of mental operation employed by those rewinding time in their mind.

<p class="MsoNormal">“No I asked if you had—”

<p class="MsoNormal">“I know,” the Mari Lwyd answered. “She couldn’t sing and I had no interest in her as an offering. She was respectful. Understanding, even. You… are not.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“You’re the God of Jealousy!” James screamed petulantly. “And I performed the ritual exactly as required!”

<p class="MsoNormal">For a moment those eyes looked faintly puzzled, almost amused.

<p class="MsoNormal">“So?”

<p class="MsoNormal">“You have to do as I—”

<p class="MsoNormal">-

<p class="MsoNormal">A farmer, who had glimpsed James’ parked car in a lane nearby and was now on his way to find the wayward hiker and scold them for trespassing, was stopped dead in his tracks when he heard a whip-crack sound punctuated with a desperate yelp. The farmer shivered and began to walk slowly towards the hill where he would inevitably find fresh tracks. He made sure he walked carefully and with great reverence, and when he finally stood in the clearing the sun was close to setting. He hadn’t considered when he’d first set out, and by now his heart was racing and he felt a great deal of anxiety. Such feelings were made much worse when he found an empty water bottle. He picked it up with disgust, furious that people were stupid enough to come her and mess with the hill where they hanged that wretched witch, Evelyn Wyttick, for the second time. She had apparently spent the whole time doing most un-ladylike things which had been the very reason for the first hanging (three towns over).

<p class="MsoNormal">The farmer’s thoughts were cut off by a faint singing rising up from the bough of the willow tree.

<p class="MsoNormal">“We lay my love and I…” it began in dulcet tones that fell gently on his ears, like lint settling on furniture. He would have been moved by its fragile tenor were it not for the heart-wrenching reality of where he was. The Mari-Lwyd had a sinister relationship with song, and as he approached he shook with terror

<p class="MsoNormal">He didn’t want to crest that hill, but what if it were some lost child? What if the Mari Lwyd had tricked some hiker and now held them in its evil thrall, demanding they sing? His grandmother had told him to beware such a fate himself. If she saw him now she would have scolded furiously for being stupid enough to approach the hill. But being a grown man he felt compelled to check for the safety of an imagined innocent.

<p class="MsoNormal">He didn’t know what to expect of course, but seeing two—not one, two—hobby horses was completely unheard of. He gave an audible shriek at the sight of a new Mari Lwyd, with bulging blue (not grey) eyes that glistened, set in the sockets of a real horse’s skull. Those eyes manically twisted and turned as tears streaked down the dusty bone; the eyes themselves glowed red like coals, filled with popped vessels and visible grit. Such a thing would have been frightening on its own, but it was the tongue that most upset the farmer. It was fat and swollen and blue and where it hung from the top of the jawless skull—where stringy tendon met bone—it dripped blood onto the sand below.

<p class="MsoNormal">Worst of all, the meat slapped loosely against the roof of the skull’s mouth and produced an impossible melody. The farmer, seeing this, froze in terror and fell backwards down the hill where he picked himself and ran desperately out of the fields.

<p class="MsoNormal">He had failed to notice the real Mari Lwyd with its eyes closed, lulled to sleep by ‘O Willow Waly’.

<p class="MsoNormal">-

<p class="MsoNormal"> <ac_metadata title="Mari Lwyd"> </ac_metadata>