By A J Dalton
The wind groaned
like something unwilling, rising
from its peace and rest, angered.
–
The wood around us creaked
as if in protest
pushed aside from its natural place.
–
Our flames flickered
struggling to ward us
against the hungry dark and deathly cold.
–
Would we last against whispering imagination
and suggestion, unholy fear and ill influence,
blade-violent mistrust creeping in?
–
We shouldn’t have come here to the edge
of the world, the sheer veil between the living and lost
right there – menacing, tempting.
–
Our precipitous leader demanded
the return of some loved one, captured
enemy dragged along as unfair exchange and sacrifice.
–
What, though, would come through
that awful crow-fluttering curtain:
what did we invite to blight and curse us?
–
And so contagion was let loose, corrupting pustules
and throats choking off our cries, my rictus hand
barely able to hold: this pen, to scrawl our confession.
Author Biography
A J Dalton (www.ajdalton.eu) is a UK-based SFF writer. He has published the Empire of the Saviours trilogy with Gollancz Orion, and various collections with Kristell Ink and Luna Press. He also runs the online storytelling community www.creativewritinghq.com on behalf of Middlesex University–all welcome! He lives with a monstrously oppressive cat named Cleopatra. For more of A J Dalton’s poetry, please see Issue V of our very own Gothic Nature journal!