Sophia Adamowicz

I

Dry bones, wake from your sleep. Your home is scored with ditches, its groundwater drained. Only a thin river veins the grasses, and that is clotted with crisp packets and plastic bags and flyaway picnic blankets.

Fingerbones, tunnel through silt and peat until you break the surface. You’d forgotten the taste of air, hadn’t you? The cheesiness of manure in a nearby field is seasoned with salt that blows in from the Norfolk coast. The heat is welcome, too. It’s the end of a long summer’s day. The sunset seems to glove you in rose-coloured flesh.

But there is better clothing to be found. Stir the river until the blanket abandoned after last weekend’s picnic tangles in the reeds. Rise, and cover yourself.

II

The runner moved to the outskirts of the fenland last year. He doesn’t know its deep history.

III

A snake slips into the water as the sleekest in the latest range of New Balance trainers flash by. The feet which pummel the earth have already travelled thirty-seven kilometres today. They are pounded to soreness, as are the runner’s knees and hips. The packets of energy gel, sucked dry and thrown on the ground, pump his blood with enough sugar to carry him through the last five kilometres. Even in the dying sun, he’s burning. He took off his top and chucked it under a tree a few miles back. It’s no loss. He gets a new t-shirt at every event.

The runner doesn’t react to the sound of splashing straight away. He has to stop the dance music that’s blasting out of his iPhone (bloody earbuds ran out of charge 10K ago) and pause his Garmin watch, and then the runner gets lost in checking his stats. Not bad. If he carries on at this pace, he’ll complete marathon distance within his target time of three hours and fifteen minutes. Something to boast about in the boardroom tomorrow. The rush of endorphins should carry him through the sewage works meeting.

The splashing in the nearby river gets louder, more urgent. A heron? A crane? The swans around here grow huge. They can break your arm if you get too close.

He sees nothing at first but ripples in the water, which break the sunset into a thousand fragments of rose gold. A great opportunity for a selfie. The runner holds his phone over his head and strikes a confident pose. He can upload it to his socials with the caption, Post-work marathon: tick #runnerslife #fitness #wixtonfen. What a beautiful place. Shame it’ll become the site of a wastewater treatment plant if he gets his way tomorrow, but shit’s got to end up somewhere.

He zooms in on his face to make sure his forehead doesn’t look too wrinkly, and that’s when he notices it—the picnic blanket in the background of the photo. It has an odd shape. Almost as if something is under it, rising from the water. Something with a large skull and broad shoulders.

There’s a splash behind him, closer.

The iPhone falls to the ground.

IV

The runner finds himself back on dry land. He’s light-headed, his heart thrashing like swans’ wings. The heat must be getting to him. For a moment, he felt as if he was inhaling water, held under the surface of the river by a clawed hand. They say long-distance runs can mess with your head. Five more kilometres, that’s all. He can finish soon and enjoy a big bowl of pasta at home.

He spits, shakes his arms out. Restarts the timer and tracker on his watch.

Those five kilometres ahead of him last forever. 

V

When they find the runner floating face-down in the river the next day, his watch is stuck at thirty-seven kilometres.

VI

And so what will you do, old dry bones? Snatch at every ankle that kicks a packet into the long grass? Silence the late-night revellers who interrupt the sleep of those who resided here long, long before the land was drained?

Yes. Yes, for Wixton Fen is yours, and intruders will learn to fear it. In time, they will stop coming. The river will run clear. No one will dare disturb this ground, and the only sound will be the salt air humming an ancient lullaby through the reeds.

Sophia Adamowicz (she/they) is a writer and tutor based in Suffolk, UK. Her work, both fiction and nonfiction, has appeared in several publications including Cunning Folk, Crow & Cross Keys, Haven Speculative and Trash Cat Lit. As the co-founder of Artemis Writers, Sophia runs creative workshops in communities around Cambridgeshire. In her spare time, she sets herself increasingly ambitious running goals and fusses over her beloved cats and Bernese Mountain Dog. Bluesky: @sophia-adamowicz.bsky.social // Insta: @sophia_adamowicz // X: @SophiaA_writes