Jake Verloren looked up at the sun, a white smudge in the frosted sky. Today was the winter solstice, that hinge in time when the world pushes back the encroaching darkness to welcome the resurgent light.
But this fact was lost on Jake. His hip throbbed after a long day stomping across his neighbors’ snowy fields, hunting rabbits for the stewpot. It had been a mistake to bring his rifle instead of the shotgun. Rabbits would explode from bushes and hedgerows to zig-zag through the fresh powder while he just shot up empty space like a fool.
Now, in the deepening chill, Jake stood at the roadside. Far down the road to his right, he could make out his house, a battered gray Cape Cod with the twinkle of Christmas lights in the side window. Ahead, to the west, stretched a stubbled cornfield ending in a line of barren trees that marked the boundary of the Umbra Woods.
Anger rose in Jake’s chest like indigestion. He mulled over the argument he had with his wife earlier that day. About stupid things, more of the endless bickering that wore him down like sand in a gearbox. And he thought of Sam, his son, who lived only twelve miles away with his wife and kids but might as well have an address on the far side of Jupiter for how seldom any of them dropped by the house.
Jake gloomily stared at the sun descending toward the woods. There was little more than an hour of daylight left. He was about to turn for home when he saw a crow pass overhead. It cawed as it circled, then dropped lightly into the cornfield. The bird stood erect, its head cocked.
Jake had the strange feeling that the crow was watching him with some purpose. His temper flared. He brought the rifle to his shoulder, squinted as he lined the crow up in the gun-sight, and pulled the trigger. Simultaneous with the rifle’s small kick and report, Jake saw the crow abruptly flip and pinwheel into a heap. It lay unmoving. Jake felt a surge of satisfaction.
The echo of his shot had scarcely faded when, to his surprise, Jake noticed a woman standing about a hundred yards off in the cornfield. She was tall and dressed in a belted white shirt, a green cape, a long calico skirt, and stout leather boots. A riot of gray hair hung down over her shoulders and balanced on her head was a battered top hat. In one hand, she held a wooden stave as tall as herself. Facing this absurdly dressed woman in the empty landscape, Jake told himself that she was a trick of his mind — but in fact he felt no tickle of humor. Instead, he had the odd sensation that he was pinned in place, teetering, while the world spun slowly around him.
The woman waved her stave in a large arc from left to right. As if at her signal, a procession of lively figures poured from the blue shadows of the woods behind. A stream of torch-bearers and jugglers, tumblers and dancers, crossed the field toward the woman. They were followed by loaded carts, each pulled by three deer in harnesses. At the rear, a yoke of bears emerged from the trees rumbling out moist snuffling sounds as they hauled a creaking circus wagon painted with multi-colored suns. As the parade approached, Jake saw rabbits, foxes, and raccoons weaving in and out of the cavalcade. Mixed flocks of goldfinches, chickadees, and cardinals flung themselves back and forth across the field like colored rags.
As each rank in the procession reached the woman, the marchers broke off into separate parties, unloaded the carts, and got to work. The bears lumbered to a halt in their midst. A team of tumblers and dancers opened the back of the circus wagon to drag out poles and sections of canvas. As Jake watched, singing crews labored at a steady pace to assemble piles of planks into booths and throw up small and large tents. Yet whenever he looked away, even for an instant, he discovered that they had made astonishing progress, doing in a heartbeat what should have taken hours.
Within moments, a circus had bloomed in the snowy cornfield, dominated by an enormous blue-striped big-top tent and hemmed by a high wooden fence. A prodigious din of laughter and shouting and singing came from inside, accompanied by occasional yips and growls. The woman in the top hat stationed herself just outside the front gate and gestured for Jake to approach. The sensation that he was pinned in place vanished. Jake found himself laying his rifle in the snow and stumbling forward, as if tugged toward the spectacle. He crossed the road into the snowy field as wonder and trepidation tangled on his face.
As he drew near the gate, he regarded the woman. Her brown eyes were odd, widely spaced with horizontal pupils like those of a goat, and an ear, tapered to a point and covered in down, peeked out from her silvered hair. As Jake reached her the woman was flexing the stave in one hand, as if weighing it. Her eyes were alight with merriment.
“Welcome to our circus, good sir.” She held out a hand. Jake eyed her top hat. She smiled and touched the brim. “What is a circus without a ringmaster?” she said. “Come. I’ll be your guide.”
She pointed her stave toward a fat fellow sitting on a stool next to the gate. He was dressed in a shirt and trousers patched in red and green, with a broad-brimmed, drooping hat. His skin was tanned like old leather and his throat bulged on one side with goiter. The man, too, had goat eyes and tapering ears.
“Have you come for the show?” he asked, in a booming voice. Jake read a sign scratched in rough letters and tacked to the wicker gate: Positively no entry without ticket.
“I don’t have a ticket,” he said. He patted his pockets. “And I don’t have any money on me.”
The gatekeeper looked him over from top to toes.
“Ah, Master Jacob,” he said finally, “I see you’ve already bought your ticket. Enter!”
He swung the gate open, and Jake and the ringmaster passed onto the circus grounds. Most of the fenced enclosure was filled with the big-top. A gap of about forty paces separated the giant tent from the surrounding fence. This space was cluttered with booths and smaller tents and blazing bonfires, each ringed with laughing, shouting figures. Under one tent, a barman in a leather apron stood at a keg, filling tankards with ale and passing them out to willing hands. At a nearby booth, a woman in a silken gown and fur muff tended a table covered with goldfish in glittering glass jars. Players tried to toss acorns into jars to claim those fish as prizes. At another booth, a small girl in a lace shawl flung handfuls of seeds and dried berries to a whirling gang of birds and squirrels.
These are strange folk wandering this fairground, Jake thought. They were tall, short, plump, thin — but all had goatish eyes and delicate, pointed ears, and all were dressed in what looked to be the hand-me-downs of generations. Jake squirmed under the bold stares of the revelers. Their expressions were friendly, to be sure, but also familiar, even smirking, as if these strangers recognized him, knew his secrets.
“Who are your people?” Jake asked the ringmaster, raising his voice over the clamor. “I don’t know them.”
“Don’t know us?” scoffed the barman, who had overheard. “Why, didn’t we see you in the woods just this morning? Who do you think it was who kept the rabbits out of harm’s way as you took your potshots?” The barman pointed an imaginary gun at Jake and made popping noises, to the laughter of the crowd.
“We are the wilderfolk,” called out the woman at the goldfish booth.
“The Sióga!” piped the girl as she scattered seed to the birds.
Jake and the ringmaster now walked alongside the big top, whose walls of faded canvas puffed and contracted in the gentle breeze like a creature breathing. No sound was heard from within. They came to a tent flap tightly sealed with elaborate knots.
“Master Jacob, there is something you must see,” the ringmaster said. She tapped the flap with her stave. The knots fell away, and she pulled the tent flap aside.
“Look,” she said. “But keep silent!”
The interior of the tent was as dark as pitch. As Jake’s eyes adjusted, though, he saw, emerging across its ceiling, a dazzling mosaic of strange galaxies, whose starshine lit the landscape within with a faint ghost-light. The ground nearest them was a jagged plain of boulders and stony outcrops that seemed to stretch away to infinity.
A light wind blew from the darkness, brutally cold. It carried no smell of place or life. As Jake’s vision sharpened, he saw at a short distance a squat silver-black shape propped in a jumble of rocks. It quivered slightly and rustled like dry leaves. Jake felt a pressing weight of foreboding.
“What is this place?” he asked haltingly.
At his whisper, the dark shape shifted and now seemed to shine dimly like a beetle’s carapace. It moved crablike toward them in a crooked path, flailing a sinuous appendage. Jake thought he saw a blunt snout emerge from its mass to greedily sniff the air. The ringmaster hastily pulled the tent flap down and tapped it again with her stave. The knots tied themselves up tight just as a large bulk slammed hard against the canvas, then fell back.
The ringmaster gave a sigh of relief. She straightened and turned to Jake.
“There are some who in their hearts love all creatures,” she said. “Their spirits will always walk in the land of the living. But others in this world callously deal out hurt and death. Their souls bring them to the place of desolation. You saw that place, there. And Balor, the one who rules it.”
“But why show me?” asked Jake, a tremor in his voice.
The ringmaster said nothing but pointed her stave toward an old man in their path who sat hunched with cupped hands over a tiny makeshift table. He was shrunken and toothless, dressed in a gorgeous red velvet robe with a high, starched collar and a black cloth cap with ear flaps. The ancient man looked up at Jake, one eye rheumy and glazed, the other a piercing blue. Despite his withered body, the man projected power and grace. Jake looked nervously around him. The crowd had rearranged itself into a large circle expectantly surrounding the old man, the ringmaster, and him.
“Master Jacob,” the man said in a commanding voice that shook his frail frame. “Know that I am the justiciar of the Umbra Woods. You must answer here for the matter of the crow.”
“Yes,” a raspy voice called from the crowd. “Crow Phineas was our friend!” There was a murmur of agreement. The justiciar held up a hand.
“Silence in the court,” he said sternly. He lifted his hands to reveal two walnut shells.
The justiciar picked up the shell on his left to show a white quartz stone beneath.
“The white stone brings you to the place of desolation,” he said. The justiciar then picked up the shell on the right to uncover a glittering piece of onyx. “The black stone brings a penance,” he said.
“What does he mean?” Jake asked, but the alarm in his eyes showed his dawning understanding. The ringmaster looked at him without expression.
“It is trial by game,” she said. “After the justiciar moves the shells, you are to pick one. What lies beneath will decide your fate.” Jake thought for a moment.
“And if I don’t choose?” he asked. The ringmaster smiled.
“You do not understand,” she said slowly, as if explaining to a willful child. “The decision has already been made. Fate chooses — through you.”
“Let the trial begin,” said the justiciar.
He moved the shells rapidly in elaborate circles while shielding them with his palms. Some of the children from the crowd edged toward the table to look on in fierce concentration, trying to keep track of the shells moving in a blur on the table surface.
Then the justiciar stopped, tapped first the left shell then the right, and said, “Choose your fate, Master Jacob.”
Jake studied the shells, perspiration beading on his forehead. The crowd shouted and hooted their advice:
“Pick the left one.”
“No, no, it’s on the right.”
Jake felt his mind go numb with fear. His hand hung wavering above the shells. Then came a creeping sensation, unmistakable; an unseen, irresistible force was unfurling his fingers into a pointing position, lowering his arm toward the shell…on the right. He closed his eyes to avoid witnessing his doom.
Eyes clenched shut, Jake felt a piercing sadness. In his mind’s eye, he could see the endless, monotonous days of his past stretch away to the horizon like a barren string of pebbles. Each of those days had been a wasteland — empty of concern for those people closest to him and for all the creatures of the field and forest. A wisp of a thought flared and floated up like an ember: I wish I had known kindness. Shown kindness. A tear slid down his cheek.
Everything stopped. Jake opened one eye, wondering at the sudden silence. He discovered his finger suspended inches above the table, twitching back and forth between the shells like a jumpy compass needle. Jake saw surprise in the justiciar’s eyes.
“Your fate is still being decided,” the old man said. “Extraordinary.”
Then Jake’s finger shuddered and came down with a thump on the shell on the left. The justiciar picked up the shell, uncovering the onyx stone.
“Is he going to the awful place of desolation?” a voice called out hopefully.
“No,” said the justiciar. “Master Jacob is to serve a penance.”
The crowd erupted with shouts of dismay and disappointment.
“Silence! Silence!” shouted the justiciar.
When order was restored, the old man looked with severity at Jake.
“Master Jacob, you have escaped exile to the dark path…for now,” he said. The justiciar’s mouth puckered into a knowing half-smile. “But you will remember us, I think.”
He gave a cursory wave: “Ringmaster, carry out the sentence.”
“Yes, your honor,” said the ringmaster. She smiled at Jake. “Balor was thirsting for you,” she whispered sweetly. “Revel in your escape!”
She struck her stave hard with both hands across his back.
Jake fell, sprawling. As he tumbled, his body contorted like crumpled paper, his arms broadened, a blanket of sooty feathers sprouted through his skin, and his mouth pouted into the hard spike of a beak. Jake hopped to his feet and called out with anger and defiance at the jeering crowd. Then he took flight, rowing his wings mightily to climb up, up, up through the great column of air.
From on high, he surveyed a now-empty cornfield and the lonely road and the shadowy realm of the woods stretching away into the west. In the declining light of late afternoon, Jake-the-crow first made for the road, then swung back around toward the cornfield, cawing lustily. As he flew, he observed beneath him a solitary man at the roadside. He circled twice and descended to land at a distance in the cornfield. He looked with suspicion at the small man-figure, watched as it pointed an object at him, heard a sharp detonation, felt a piercing pain through his chest that slammed him end-over-end to rest in stillness.
***
The setting sun balanced on the horizon, giving off no more warmth than an icicle. The ringmaster walked out through the circus gate, hearing behind her the last festive shouts. She turned and waved her stave in a broad arc from right to left. The circus flickered, then dissolved, into a drifting curtain of mist. A band of animals and birds streamed away, returning to the woods. The ringmaster alone remained in the field.
She walked a few steps, over to a fluttering blot of black lodged in the bristle of corn stalks and snow. A dead crow, stiff in the bitter cold. The ringmaster contemplated the crow’s body, then poked it gently with her stave. The crow started and unfolded jerkily from its death pose. Life flooded back into its startled eyes. It struggled to its feet, flexed its wings, and looked at the ringmaster.
“Ah, friend Phineas,” said the ringmaster. “You have had a most difficult day.”
She dug into a pocket of her skirt and pulled out a crust of bread. The ringmaster bent and offered it to the crow, which snapped it up.
The crow launched into the sky. As it sped upward, gulping the lovely freedom of living air, the crow picked out a solitary man, stooped and limping slowly away down the road next to the cornfield. He seemed to be making for a house with lights winking in a window.
Exhausted, the crow descended to land on the shoulder of the ringmaster. Together, they trekked across the darkening field toward the Umbra Woods.
Jim Wright (he/him) lives in central New York State, USA. He writes short stories when he can and works as a school psychologist when he must. He is a past member of the Downtown Writer’s Center in Syracuse, N.Y.
Billy Mitch is an author and artist who lives in Georgia. He has three dogs and a cat. He enjoys his time spent, writing and painting. https://billymitch.squarespace.com/
ELEVENTH HOUR LITERARY 