Stagtine, 21. Winter’s High Clef
Section 2, Chapter 5
This chapter of Stagtine, my latest book that we are dripping here on The Wildland Chronicles, is provided FREE for all members. If you enjoy this content, we encourage you to become a paid member for $3/mo!
To view a full (slowly released) Table of Contents to Stagtine, my latest book made available to you all in both paperback, digital, and audiobook formats, click here!
You can also purchase all the versions of Stagtine on Amazon.
To read the previous chapter, click here!
This long-ago conversation echoed across my mind as I laid there and as Paddy looked at me, sadly, through the gate. After some time, I opened my eyes, but Morgan was not looking at me and, timidly, I was not looking at her either.
“That was close,” I murmured.
“No,” she returned, her gaze still somewhere else. “That was dumb.”
A light snow fell, and a brief upward gust of tired breath tore through a nearby beech, its yellow leaves cataract down into the winter’s duff. Paddy stood at the gate. His breath, like smoke in cold air, smelled of the long winter, an open tomb, the pallid inertia of short days. It hovered, strangely and unnaturally, as if in question.
“We’ll need to get my boots.”
“Yes,” she agreed. Her eyes still focused on some object in the distance. “If you die, I’m selling the farm,” she half giggled, half admitted, as haphazardly as one who tells jokes under their breath, knowing that they are not jokes at all.
Creaking tiny icicles trebled like wind chimes as they murmured and fell from the empty sugar maple branches above my head. Winter’s high clef writ in water. Paddy’s rumbling bellow and breath shook everyone, everything, everywhere.
“You cannot sell the farm,” I whispered back, the air slowly returning to my lungs. My eyes fixated on the falling needles of ice.
“Then this needs to change.”