Jenny Hart
Listen to Jenny read her story
The dawn is a glorious red as though the sea has set fire to the sky, and we know the Blood Storm will bless us once again. I hear the babble of women woken early, spreading the news through narrow streets until the whole town hums. Soon we’ll have wares to sell again. Crimson wools, and scarlet flax, ruby beer and sweet cakes painted pink.
Upon the hearth sits a box, carved from petrified wood older than the mountains that trap the Blood Storm in our cove. The woollen pouch I remove feels too light. I howl as I search the house and my boy runs to me.
“The Scarab Stone.” I grasp his arm hard enough to leave reminders of my touch. “Do you have it, Luke?” He shakes his head, his curls white like spring blossoms on the hawthorn tree.
“I’ll be fine ma.” He hugs me, this boy-man warm from sleep. I pray that he is right.
All morning, we mend nets as the almost men and women, who will chase the storm for the first time, practice their swirling and swooping and dream of being the monarch of the storm and all the treasure that will bring. Luke arcs a net over Lucy Tenby’s head as she laughs. By the next storm, maybe they’ll have children and be excused from the game, like we were until our boy reached sixteen.
I search the house once more.
“Love, we need to get to the marketplace.” My husband squeezes my hand, and we join the ranks lined up like an army. Then everything is a red, buzzing fury and I can see no more.
When I was sixteen, I wore the Scarab Stone, handed down to me from my mother’s mother. It kept me safe as I gathered the tiny beetles gifted to our town by the storm, stuffing the gaping mouths of my sacks until I was crowned queen of the storm. The rapturous cheering drowning out the voices of those who had need to sob.
The game is done. Children shoot out and pick dying beetles from the floor, tossing broken bodies into buckets. I scan the faces, so red and wet that I can’t tell friend from family. Then I see my husband, sacks bulging with bodies at his feet. Surely, he’ll be crowned the king of the storm, and we will give Luke and Lucy the biggest wedding this town has ever seen.
But of course, there will be no wedding. Luke isn’t there. The Blood Storm demands a sacrifice. And it chose him. My husband collapses against the sacks. They become his sick bed as someone fetches whiskey and someone loosens his oilcloths. I scream as I kneel in the blood beside him, pressing my face to his chest, feeling something hard beneath his red shirt. Something smooth and warm and I know before I rip his clothes open, I have found my Scarab Stone.
Jenny’s prompts were: at a competitive event, teenager/s, something thought lost
Jenny Hart is a writer from England who loves a dark or unusual short story. She has previously contributed to ‘Trash Cat Lit’ as well as ‘Trembling with Fear’, ‘Daikaijuzine’ and ‘Hotch Potch Literature and Art’.
When Jenny isn’t writing, you can find her walking in the local countryside. Probably lost. She lives across the road from a cemetery, with her two cats, Jason and Jeff.
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