Alice J. Barker
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Stories (3)
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Grief, and other horrors
When my brother Sigur died, his sweetheart Bryn took to sleeping in a ring of fire. Sigur's body lay on my mother’s table for a day and a night. From all over the town, women and daughters came and mourned jealously over him, each mother swearing on this and that thing that if only he had lived, he would surely have married a daughter of theirs. “My Gudrun,” said Gunnar’s mother, “certainly caught his eye but a week ago.” The ladies left flowers and trinkets on his body with equal jealousy. If one girl placed a lock of her hair over his heart, no sooner would she have turned her head away to weep than another would snatch it up, and install her own in its place.
By Alice J. Barker4 years ago in Fiction
Bread-Boy and Not-an-Elf
Taliesen corn-born, unglamorous and bready skinned, stayed in the sea for 7 years. After 7 years he found himself drifting near the green bulk of Ireland, and was caught up in a net. Fish nibbled at his feet, took crumbs of him into their mouths and puffed them out again with mouths in Os, their faces full of surprise.
By Alice J. Barker4 years ago in Fiction
